The Never Land is a place you may have tried to memorize but can never quite remember. To wake up here is to realize that you are dreaming. The landscape has this distance, this quality of longing. The air had the syrupy consistence of evenings and the silence sounded vaguely like crickets; the horizon breaks your heart, and you ache with what has been lost before you had the chance to find it.
Wendy Darling knew that there was something she had forgotten. She awoke in a field where the flowers grew past her knees. Her shoes were gone and the ground was still and fresh beneath her feet. Wendy dusted the pollen from her dress and wondered how she had got here. As she wandered through the field, she fell on rather than chancing upon him; he had been looking for his shadow and was taking a break on his back in the fields and staring at the sky. Peter was the first person she came across so it was only natural they fall in love at the end.
"Hello," he said, pleasantly enough. It was as if he had expected her.
"Hello," Wendy replied. "Is this a dream?"
Peter was amused. "I know I'm not a dream," he offered in a way of an answer. "Maybe you are."
Wendy was slightly insulted. "Well, I know I'm real." And by this logic she concluded: "Therefore, you must not be."
Peter paused and took careful inventory to be sure. He examined the indent below his kneecap, the bends of his elbows, the back of his hands, and concluded triumphantly: "I'm real too. Why can't we both be?"
He was charming rather than handsome with eyes bright green like a mermaid's tail. Peter had a habit of looking right through you, through to all the wonderful places you would go together, and you stop yourself from reaching out to him just in time, lest he disappear. He was warm and wicked and wild.
"Because this is a dream," Wendy explained, kindly. "Only one of us can be real and since this is my dream…" The shrug was self-explanatory.
"Why are you so certain that this is a dream?"
There is a certain certainty that accompanies dreaming. It cannot be questioned lest it render the dreamer aware, and for the first time, Wendy felt unsure.
Peter examined her. His first impression was that of a dirty romantic – a fairy with wide-set eyes and flaxen hair that would complain in summer showers. It would always run free of trivial things such as brushes and ties. Despite her best efforts, he saw that the ends of her dresses would always fall to tatters and sleeves would slip off her shoulder lending her that permanently slept in, disheveled air.
Her nails were bitten into stubs and her mouth was missing a kiss. Peter wondered briefly about this kiss.
"Now that we've decided we're both real," Peter said. "What are you going to do?"
Wendy frowned, thoughtfully. "There is something I have lost," she said. "But I can't remember what it is."
And Peter offered to help her.
Theirs was a friendship struck on the foundation of lost things. Wendy was surprised to find that Peter had indeed misplaced his shadow, and Peter in turn proved quite determined to help Wendy find what she had forgotten.
"It's always easier if you remember what it is," offered Peter, helpfully.
Wendy frowned. She searched the corners of her self, straining all her senses and almost caught a glimpse of it but quickly, it slithered out of sight, dissolving into a lingering feeling that she couldn't quite put her finger on.
"I woke up somewhere over there," said Wendy, finally. "So it should be there, somewhere."
And Peter sifted through the flowers, dutifully.
"When was the last time you've seen your shadow?" she asked.
"I can't remember," he replied.
The sky was the color of Indian mangoes when the pair finally deigned to leave the field, empty-handed.
"Would you like me to walk you home?" he asked.
"I can't remember the way."
"Me either."
"Alright," she smiled.
But surprisingly, Peter did know the way.
"I've never seen you before; you must have moved in to the Sky Manor at the top of the hill."
Wendy laughed and gazed at him with such warm admiration, a kiss clearly missing from the corner of her sweet and mocking mouth that Peter was determined to make her laugh again.
"Where do you live, Peter?" she asked.
"In the summer, mostly with the lost boys."
"Are they really lost?"
"Yes, but they know exactly where they are. We stay in the abandoned mansions next to the creek because it's easier to get to the In Between there."
"That sounds like fun," said Wendy, wistfully.
"It is," he agreed. "Would you like to come?"
"Yes," she replied immediately, and after a pause. "Could Michael come too?"
"Who is Michael?' asked Peter, warily.
"My brother."
Peter contemplated this briefly. "If you like," was the indifferent reply.
It was still light out the next day, when the Darling children made their way down to the abandoned row by the creek, as if the sun could not bear to part with the wild flowers and the wild things that lived here.
"Where is the In Between?" Michael asked.
"Peter said it was close."
As they cut through the fields, Michael assessed the tree line and wondered if there was really enough room between here and the horizon for a whole world.
"There?"
"Close."
Unlike Wendy, Michael's spirit of adventure required a map. He had a thoughtful countenance, and was sharp as six knives. This compounded into an awkward charm, which led to Michael being often underestimated. He believed this to be his most redeeming quality.
The Darlings found Peter's summer residence despite his vague yet certain set of directions: down by the creek, there you'll find it. Fireflies had settled atop the roof of a mansion, second from the right at the end of the row. They signaled to the children in a Morse code of lights: a glittering trail of breadcrumbs that led to the most wonderful of houses, the Morning Star Manor.
"Look, Michael," said Wendy, breathlessly. "There it is."
The fireflies had taken a liking to Wendy; perhaps it was her hair that smelt of chamomile and smoke or the folds of her petal-soft dress. As the children approached the house, they alighted on her, glowing softly, and so she was softly glowing, underneath the pale moon, framed by a crown of stars waiting for him on his front door step. Peter thought she was the loveliest thing he had ever seen and told her so.
Wendy blushed and Michael had to clear his throat lest they forget he was there.
Peter's strength as a tour guide appeared to lie in his enthusiasm. Wendy and Michael struggled to keep up with him as he led them through the house. Rooms chased corridors, battlements of bookcases served as dividers and there were gaps in the roof to collect starlight and rain. The manor bled into the fields and the sky so that sleep, bread and love were exposed, unable to be compartmentalized by brick and plaster.
It was a house that demanded to be explored.
Occasionally, they would lose Peter behind a particularly tight corner or rather Peter would lose them as he careened happily through the house as if he had already forgotten they were there. It was really quite irritating, and Wendy was hurt that Peter could forget her so quickly although she would never admit it.
"Where are we?" asked Michael, quite cross.
They had followed Peter into a large drawing room where he promptly disappeared. The air in the room was heavy and sweet, like stone fruit gone to rot and the heady perfume made the children fidget, uncomfortable. A large table dominated the room, set with thick pieces of drawing paper as its placemats and spidery instruments its silverware.
"So this is where Baron Von Schmancy has his dinner," Michael mumbled to Wendy and she laughed.
Thankfully, Wendy never needed to admit anything to Michael.
The Darling examined the table for lack of anything better to do as they waited, or rather hoped for Peter's return. They found the slabs of paper to be a series of maps and diagrams, waiting to be finished. Michael was in a heaven of his own, trying to jigsaw the pieces together to see the final picture.
"It looks like some sort of tactical war map," he decided.
Wendy glanced over the half-rendered map of a shapeless island; pools of ink demarcated its unexplored parts and in that inky blackness, Wendy recalled a sadness so familiar, she shivered as it gripped her shoulders and whispered in her ear.
"Careful." Peter was right in front of her. "People get lost in here."
The next leg of the tour was more subdued. The corridors finally relented, giving way to a wide foyer. Peter challenged the Darlings to a sliding match across the mirrored floors, which appeared to be polished for exactly this purpose.
He won, naturally.
"You practice," Wendy accused, laughing
"I do," he admitted with a grin, and raced them down the hall.
There are many ways to get into the Never Land: you could wake up in the twilight that falls between asleep and awake, or even stumble into a quiet pocket in a busy crowd only to find the world has changed.
However, the simplest way of all as you would probably agree is pixie dust.