Chapter two: The Old Man

Like Nibs before him, Peter floated slowly in darkness. Everything was darkness. Since there was no other color to darkness than the impenetrable blackness that surrounded him, nor smell or temperature, Peter had absolutely no idea where he was. And like his friend before him, the young leader of the Lost Boys had a weird feeling of being split into two – the feeling that Peter Pan had never had a chance to encounter. It was strange indeed, Nibs would agree with him on this point, for sure. The one half knew exquisitely well he was the intrepid Peter Pan, the conqueror of Hook, a friend of mermaids while the other one was shouting to him that it wasn't true. That he was someone else. A different boy. A boy living a completely different life, for whom the world of the pirates, mermaids and pixies was a mere fantasy. And even deeper, hiding in the nooks and crannies of his mind lay another layer of this new knowledge he had suddenly accessed, now whispering importantly into his ear that even this other existence wasn't real. This awareness was followed by sadness and the feeling of something (the Neverland?) coming to an inevitable end, regardless of how much the boy tried to remove this scary thought from his mind.

Nibs, if asked, would be able to recognize this feeling too.

Peter floated through the darkness as if he high in the sky, albeit he was a bit afraid (although it was something he would never admit to his friends) but also excited, as he always was when a new adventure entered his life. He couldn't see himself and when he reached to touch his body, his hands (what hands?) met the emptiness, like the boy was a bodiless nothingness, barely a spot in the space which now was changing.

The darkness which had surrounded him, now narrowed down to a cylindrical tunnel with white sparkles glittering on its walls. The sparkles grew up, assuming the shape of the faces of his companions. Although blurred and vague and almost deprived of color like the faces of ghosts, beyond all doubt they were the faces of the people he knew. The Lost Boys, their mother and her brothers, Tinkerbell, the pirates and Indians – all of them looked at him now. Some of the faces, however didn't belong to the people known to Peter, were adult – or in case of the grown ups, childish - versions of themselves but still amazingly resembling their original selves. Wendy Darling, Peter's "mother" was a woman approaching her forties, the same with Tiger Lily, smiling sweetly at him from the wall. Hook in turn, if it was him indeed, seemed to be the age of a boy who was just entering puberty, not older than twelve, Peter guessed. He was wearing glasses and an unpleasant smile was frozen on his face. Smee's motionless face stared at him from the wall as well. Although in this version he was just a boy with chubby cheeks marked by the first pimples. Adult Nibs was there too – if it could be him at all since the small beard that he was wearing was making him less recognizable. More and more faces appeared on the black walls of the tunnel, the length which couldn't be endless as the boy realized. At its end a tiny light appeared, getting bigger and bigger as Peter approached. He had no body but he could feel that it become much colder. Nibs would have also recognized this feeling, had he been with Peter.

Then, in front of Peter Pan's face or where it would have been, small clouds of vapor appeared and despite having no nose, he breathed in the icy air.

A couple of feet more and the boy was able to look more closely at the tiny light. It was no longer a tiny light but had turned into a kind of large mirror, the edges of which were coated in ice. Peter could easily see through it and view what was happening on the other side.

And his eyes widened in amazement at what he saw through the mirror.

A small room, similar a bit to those he used to see in the world from which he took the young Darlings. But the resemblance stopped there. The nursery in the Darlings' house was warm and comfortable while this room was white and unfriendly. The central area of it was a bed made of metal pipes painted white as were the bed clothes that were covering the man resting in it. The man was old, sunk into a deep sleep. The rising of his chest from his delicate breathing was the only sign that he was alive. Peter couldn't see his face too clearly although he realized something strange that caught his attention more than the man's identity– the tangle of thin tubes coming out from his thin arms below the rolled up sleeves of his blue pajamas. Their other ends were attached to some mysterious machines sitting near him. Other tubes, much thicker this time came out from the old man's nostrils, disappearing in the viscera of the machine. A small screen showed a complicated thin line surrounded by digits that were completely useless to Peter.

The fascinated boy wanted to touch the surface of the mirror, however when he reached out his hand, it changed, turning into cold fog, shielding the view of the white room with its sleeping inhabitant. In Peter's ears strange tones resounded, his mind twirled like the boy remembered something strange he couldn't know. Some memories that couldn't be his (the one about a skating rink coming to the top) returned to him for a short moment but before Peter could analyze them, the tones resounded one more time and the image of the black space faded away, replaced by ordinary darkness surrounding people after they close their eyes.

His eyes were closed indeed so he opened them then and when he did, he found himself lying on his bed, surrounded by the children and Tink hovering over his face, shedding tears of joy.

"He's alive!" the pixie sobbed, wiping her eyes with her tiny hand. Rarely had he ever seen her showing her feelings so openly except when she sulked, so he was all the more delighted at this outburst. Peter didn't remember the details of all that had happened during the day all that well now. The memory of him touching the mysterious, amazingly realistic picture of a boy who had looked a lot like him which had resulted in the…vision? Dream? was very vivid, however Peter Pan wasn't sure exactly what it was that he had seen. Was the sleeping man from the white room a real person?

It was like Peter hadn't left the black tunnel at the end of which was the realm of the old man whoever he could be (assuming he wasn't just a product of his imagination) for good because the temperature of the air was much lower than he remembered it ever being in Neverland. Peter licked his lips and asked the question repeated throughout the centuries by those have suddenly woken up and are unsure as to what has happened to them: "Where am I and what happened?"

"You are at home," answered John and one of the twins simultaneously.

"You fainted," added Nibs. Their leader's mysterious "illness' or whatever it was, again involuntarily woke up in him the memory of his own dream. It seemed so real. What if he didn't wake up from it? He could have laid like Peter, unable to communicate with his friends who were grieving for his fate. These thoughts were pure craziness, triggered by the stress because of Peter's fainting but he couldn't get them out of his head and after every attempt to do so, they came back.

Peter Pan, informed about what had happened since the fit of his… illness, could now easily recall everything, starting with the events at the Lagoon. However, regardless of how hard he and his companions racked their brains, none of them could come up with any explanation. They all were sure though that his fainting couldn't have been a indication of anything good since the white flakes falling from the sky outside, covering everything with white sticky fluff, convinced them of this.

Despite all of these mysteries and feelings of unease, the boys, shivering a bit, started a snowball fight. Then, the Darlings explained to them what a snowman was, so the boys' next step was creating one, bearing a resemblance to Captain Hook and threw snowballs at him until the snow pirate fell into pieces. Even in their clothes made of animal skins they felt cold which prevented them from continuing their play, so they went back inside to deliberate on what they should do next. The winter might be an interesting change but if it was to last longer, their chances to survive were small – especially if it was how the whole Neverland looked.

The ice figure still stood at the middle of the house. Cold and unmoved. It wasn't showing any signs of melting. Nobody dared to touch it even with a tip of their finger, its appearance was so sudden and held such a ghastly resemblance to Peter that it involuntarily commanded respect. Any of the Lost Boys couldn't complain of the lack of courage but fighting pirates was one thing and an ice stature of an aged Peter Pan, was something reaching far beyond their previous experience.

Peter shared the details of his vision with his band. In ordinary circumstances they'd say it was a dream and nothing more, but the sudden and dangerous change that took over Neverland killed in them any thought about consoling each other in this way. It seemed this… snow thing didn't want to stop falling. The Darling siblings had witnessed this weather phenomenon in London many times and it was normal for their world. But in such a land like Neverland where the summer never ended, it was something abnormal. Tiger Lily proposed that they should go to her village, to see whether this amazing climatic change also concerned the place where her tribe encamped. Slightly was for dividing the children into pairs and checking how the situation in various parts of the island looked like. However, before anyone had time to comment in any way on this, Nibs spoke up. "I have something to say to you. I don't know if it means anything but I think I should share this with you." Eleven pair of eyes looked at him, as if at his words there suddenly burned a small glimmer of hope in the children's hearts and that, as impossible as it could seem, their friend had found some solution on how to reverse their frosty predicament. Nibs unexpectedly felt a little silly then. His dream had frightened him but at the very moment when he announced he wanted to say something, he got a feeling his story was just ludicrous in the context of what was happening. What if his friends mocked him and told him to shut up because now wasn't the best time for talking about dreams, regardless of how scary they were for those who had dreamed them? Or they would tell him to shut up and stop joking because they didn't have time to listen to his silly fears and had to think about what to do next. And that his nightmare didn't have anything to do with what was going on or that it's resemblance to Peter's dream was just a coincidence.

Encouraged by the children's hopeful stares, the still embarrassed boy told them about his dream and as he was going on with telling, his voice was getting more and more quiet until it completely died away. When the Lost Boy finally managed to finish, he lowered his head and fixed his eyes on the floor. His breath formed small clouds of vapor in the unexpectedly cold air. He expected sneering laughter the moment he had finished speaking and looked up in surprise when it did not come.

The children looked at each other. Such a coincidence in the face of the danger that had approached Neverland, hovering over it like a sinister cloud from which white flakes were pouring out, threatening to coat the whole island with their white cold pall, just couldn't be accidental. Nibs' and Peter Pan's visions were too similar to remain ignored. They looked one more time at the ice Peter, as if they hoped it would deliver them some form of answer when Tinkerbell, for the first time since Peter's revival spoke up. "If we are to find the answer to what is happening to Neverland, we must go to Pixie Hollow."