Chap. 28 quote from Lines Written in Kensington Gardens by Matthew Arnold.
Sands In An Hourglass, Melicent's Song, Everybody's Dreams and other original material are property of the fanfic author. Imbedded material of Barrie et al. falls under the usual disclaimer.
-o-
Time can last forever if your childhood does as well;
And if the child lives in you, shhh! for you should never tell,
But read this under covers in a warm bed late at night,
When no one hears you snicker-snick or sees your torch's light.
They'll never know you read it, lest they happen to espy
A persistant telling curious little twinkle in your eye.
And so I take my quill in hand to scribble out with care
A fantasy for I-know-who, whose twinkle's always there.
Sands in an hourglass, stars in the night;
Straight on til morning, second to the right.
1. The Night of The Not-A-Bat.
One hundred years of nights and days passed, in which Wendy Darling begat Jane, and Jane begat Margaret, and Margaret begat Belle, and Belle begat Andrea -- a sturdy, beautiful woman. And Andrea begat Melicent and Michael, the joys of her life.
Andrea's years were but twenty-seven, and she died...
-o-
Melicent Darling, only nine, thought herself entirely too young to have no mother. But life comes and goes.
On the cold, dreary afternoon of Sunday, 29 December 2002, with azaleas in hand, she walked with her father through the family's old burying-ground in the woods near Dappling, to visit the spot where her mother now stayed.
Some of the stones were eroded from age, and hard to read. A few of the names, though, were familiar to Melicent from previous visits, and because Mum had told her about them -- the girls of the family, her ancestors.
She knew as soon as they walked past the tall column ("Moira Devon Darling, 1857-1901") she would see the stones she knew, lined up, one after another --
MOTHER
Wendy Darling Fynnis
devoted wife of David
born 23d of Jan. 1878
died 25th of Dec. 1944
aged 66 yr. 11 mo. 2 da.
Wendy Darling was Melicent's "long-ago grandmother." Mum used to call her that to make it simple. She said Wendy was the first of the girls to fly.
Jane Fynnis Barry
beloved wife of John
1903-1990.
Jane was Wendy's little girl. She too had gone to Neverland to sweep and chat -- as did her daughter Margaret, who was also here:
Margaret Barry Dowell
1923-2001
Widow of Lt. A.S. Dowell,
RAF, 1921-1943, lost at sea.
Beloved mother of Peter and Belle.
The little girl named Belle mentioned on that stone was Melicent's actual grandmother. Melicent couldn't remember meeting her, but had seen many photos, and thought she was pretty. She was there too, next in line --
Belle Dowell Baine
loving wife of Roland
1943-1995
And just beyond, her mother's new headstone had finally been erected. She carefully read the sharply cut inscription on the shiny stone --
Andrea Baine Darling
1975-2002
Beloved wife of Alan
and
mother of Melicent and Michael.
The grass seed on Mum's grave hadn't taken hold. There hadn't been hardly enough rain this year; perhaps, next Spring. Melicent picked up the dried remnants of flowers from their last visit, and left the fresh azaleas on the frozen ground.
Melicent missed seeing her mother's smile, and hearing her songs, and combing each other's long brown hair. Mum would trust her to play alone with Michael at times, even when he was a baby, though she was always close by to help if anything happened. Like a good mother, she taught Melicent how to tuck her bed sheets, and which side of the plate to put the forks on, and a million other things that girls and boys had to learn. Melicent knew her letters and numbers before her first day of school, because Mum had taught her that, and so much more.
When little Melicent was in a pouty mood, her mother only had to take her in her lap, and hug her, and swing from side to side gently, while singing to the Twinkle-twinkle song, but with more words--
Be good and be cheerful, laughing on your way,
Nothing could be happier than having fun today.
Other girls and boys can cry about most anything,
But Darling girls and Darling boys should fly about and sing.
Sands in an hourglass, stars in the night;
Straight on til morning, second to the right.
Mum had told her that Wendy Darling had sung that song to soothe her youngest brother, Michael, when he fretted. Melicent said she thought she might learn it, and sing it to her Michael when he felt bad. So Mum helped her to memorise it. At that time, Melicent hadn't heard what it meant, about being able to fly about, and "second to the right" and all, but concluded it was a just silly song, and silly songs could say anything.
And then, on Melicent's 6th birthday, Mum had explained it to her ... everything! Flying, and pirates, and fairies, and never-birds, and Peter Pan.
Melicent wondered if this Peter Pan fellow would recall the burying-ground. He had been brought here on his last visit -- so the story went -- when Mum tried to explain to him that Gram had died. She often needed to refresh his memory. Mum had pointed to his old friends' names on the stones, and read them aloud -- "Wendy... Jane... Margaret..." Although Peter could not read, he ran his fingers over the names.
"And here," Andrea had noted, "it mentions Peter and Belle."
"It mentions me?" he had asked.
"No; it's my uncle Peter. You must have met him when he was little..? Well, perhaps not. My grandparents named my Uncle Peter for you, and Mother was named Belle for Tinker Bell. Do you remember little Tink?" He'd found the name vaguely familiar. Children only remember what they choose to. Long ago, Peter had chosen to live in the present and think of today's things.
I wonder, thought Melicent, if his Spring cleanings remove dusty memories as well. Sometimes she wished she could dust her own mind. It must be like our loft, full of old trunks and papers and clothing by now. Even at her age, a mind could get so muddled, remembering to bring coins to church, and to knot socks together for the laundry, and how to count in nines, and the names of the planets, and whether Norway or Sweden was the one on the left, and if the shaker with the big holes had the salt or the pepper, and...
And remembering the morning Mum couldn't wake up...
Melicent had been too small when Peter last came, and Michael was just a newborn then; they never saw Peter Pan.
Mum had been 20 that year, and had to tell Peter that she was already a real mother, twice over, and much too old to fly to Neverland now. But she took that one last trip with him anyway -- here, to the burying-ground. Peter finally understood, and he never came to call on her again.
This Peter Pan fellow had never come to visit Melicent, and teach her to fly -- that is, if there really was a Peter Pan! Perhaps he was only a family legend, after all.
There was so much to the legend that her long-ago-grandmother Wendy had written it all in a nicely bound book, and left an equal number of blank pages where the later generations of Darling girls could write of their new adventures for many years to come. Most of it was still blank, waiting for more.
Mum had read it to her last year. Perhaps, when she was grown up and had children, Melicent would have to invent a story about her own trips to the Neverland, as perhaps her mother had, and her grandmother, and so on... five generations of fibbers, and she'd be the sixth.
Would she go to this Neverland place just to sweep for a stranger, and chat with him? Melicent thought not, even if Mum and Gram had befriended him that way.
-o-
On the way home from Dappling, Mr. Darling and Melicent picked up Michael at the sitter's house, and they all went to eat in a nice cosy restaurant where the napkins were paper and it was alright to put your elbows on the table. Michael was well along in school now, and he no longer had to sit on the Household Book of Irish Eloquence to reach the kitchen tabletop, which made him feel very tall indeed.
Melicent stole just two chips from Michael's plate this night, which for her was being particularly nice to him. Maybe, when I die, she thought, Michael will tell them to put "Beloved big sister" on my stone. Michael didn't really notice her kindness -- nor did she take notice when he stole three of her chips.
After dinner, they returned to their house in the city. It was rather late, and after their baths the sleepy children were sent off to bed.
As to territorial needs on the third floor of number 14, the comfy little sewing room satisfied the needs of Michael, aged seven. Melicent tucked him into his bed and tended his lamps; then they said their g'nights. She pitched their day's laundry down the chute and proceeded to the big nursery room, which she had all to herself -- the one with the green walls, high ceilings and huge windows, where the family children had always slept. As many as six children and a nanny-dog had encamped in here once, long ago, fitting fairly comfortably, yet now there was just one mere nine-year-old!
Lying in bed in the dark, she often imagined this huge cavern of a room was her secret underground cave. Half-asleep, Melicent could imagine the old columns by the doorways to be stalactites, and the dim ticking of the downstairs hall clock was the slow drip of water from an underground stream. Perhaps she would see bats in the cave, if she squinted just right, and tried hard enough.
Wait! What was that shadow in the middle of the floor? There shouldn't be anything there -- yet it looked to her like a baby bat, resting himself with his wings up in the air.
She crawled out of bed and across the carpet, being ever so clever and stealthy to sneak up on her perhaps-a-bat. Would it fly off when she reached for it? Would she become a vampire if it bit her? Would she scare it off if she kept yawning so loudly?
She put out her hand --
It wasn't, of course, a bat, and it didn't move. In her fuzzy-headedness, she couldn't make out what it was, and carried it to the hall door, opening it to let in a gentle light and look at her not-a-bat.
Strange. It was two large tree leaves, stuck to each other at the edges.
Her father would be a bit cross if she had tracked leaves into the house! Wiping her shoes was another thing to mind, one of those thousand million things to mind during the day. But it was night now, and she couldn't stop yawning, and she just wanted to crawl to back to bed and sleep.
So she did, nodding off as the cave water dripped, dripped, dripped.