The reference to a wizard boy who was raised to the status of a film star and was later kidnapped by a very rich man who wanted him to replace his son comes from Kajtuś the Wizard – a very good Polish novel from the 30's by Janusz Korczak, now a bit forgotten but according to Wikipedia, almost comparable back then in terms of popularity to the Harry Potter series. It was translated into English.
They walked through the swirling mist once more and into the corridor that connected the two worlds. If Dr. Kimball could open the door, then he would catch the sight of the children and his friend disappearing into the bluish fog which was (for obvious reasons) very out of place in the hospital.
The last shreds of the portal swirled in the air before it finally closed, as if the immaterial portal couldn't stand the touch of the atmosphere of this world. It closed a moment after the last person – Slightly – entered it, swallowing them all in the blissful oblivion.
And when it opened for the second time and spat them out, it was no hospital room that they found themselves in but luxuriant greenery. The sun rays, golden and warm were falling on them from the blue picturesque sky which was speckled with white, fluffy clouds. The dark silhouette of a wood loomed up so close to the newcomers to this new world, the cheerful chirping of birds could be heard. The air smelled of summer and flowers which were in full bloom. In other words, this new world looked pretty much like the Neverland that they knew and loved.
But there was one difference. In Neverland there were no old people sitting in armchairs with mysterious smiles on their faces as they looked at the children. Unlike the man who did, at the moment. They didn't see him at first, too concentrated on observing the world they had just arrived in, silently comparing it to the land they come from. Until Salima turned back and out of her mouth a soft "oh" came out. Her companions followed with their gaze to the sight that made her say this and this is how they became aware of the fact that they weren't alone in this new land.
The old man sitting in his armchair which seemed just as out of place in this new world as the portal was in the hospital room, seemed to be completely relaxed, as if he was for many years perfectly familiar with this so Neverland like place, unlike the children. Or weren't they? Though the land of their origin was destroyed, so they came to believe at least, at the sight of their companion the new hope that it wasn't lost yet started to pour into their hearts. They didn't have any reason before to believe it could survive but one glance at the man changed everything.
The face of the elderly gentleman, dressed in elegant clothes from the time period that Wendy came from, sitting in his elegant armchair with its carved mahogany arms, belonged to someone they knew very well – though not in this very form. They had seen the man's face in the ice statue that had appeared in their underground house what seemed like a million years ago. They had seen his face in the face of their leader who stayed in Salima's home and finally, in the old man who had slept his whole life only to dream them in his fantastic dreams and make them come to life in the physical form.
There are moments in life when all one is capable of doing is freeze in shock, unable to do anything else than repeat in their mind, "It can't be, it just can't be". They stood like that for maybe ten seconds, not saying anything because anything which could come out of their mouths would be just mumbling; rugged shreds of words limited to unintelligent: "how?", "what?" and "but we thought that…". No one said anything until Salima, adult and rational, however not any less shocked than the children shook off the stupor and slowly approached the man in the armchair. She reached her hand out standing in front of the armchair, waiting for any sign from the man that he was not a ghost but a real person of flesh and blood. The elderly gentleman, not stopping to smile, reached out his hand, which was covered with an expensive material of the dark suit he was wearing towards the woman and touched her hand.
Their fingers touched. The man's hand was warm; it belonged to a real person indeed. His smile widened.
"You helped them find the way to Neverland, Ms. Junaid," he said in a pleasant warm voice from which a note of kindness resonated. The man who looked like James Matthew Barrie – wait, he was James Barrie indeed, though looking much different than they all were used to, seemed the embodiment of majesty when he was sitting there in his armchair with its mahogany arms, like some baronet rather than a man who spent his whole life in bed. Through his face with its regular features the wisdom and the glow of subtle brittle beauty of an old age was shining, endowing the man with the aura of royalty – not the one of blood but the one that comes from a brilliant mind and a noble soul.
"This is Neverland?" asked Wendy. The thought that this new beautiful land though so similar to the destroyed Neverland she and her brothers had come to love after they were taken from London, could actually be it, was almost hilarious. Almost as much as this man being the same person as the one lying in bed like an amazingly realistic looking figure made of wax. But on the other hand, the armchair man was the same person as him so it meant that this new land…?
The answer that followed was short but not simple.
"Yes, the place in which you are is Neverland. Or maybe rather, it's Neverland." The man pronounced this last word stressing it. He would have dwelled on it more but at the same moment Salima interrupted him."How are you here? Are you the real Mr. James Barrie? How can it be that you are here and at the same time lie in bed in the hospital?"
"Wait, my dear." chuckled the man. "Let me finish. I would love to explain everything to you all. It is a long and complicated story so it will be better if you sit down. The story of myself and Neverland isn't something you can listen to while standing and not feeling any tiredness in your legs afterwards. Sit down and please, allow me to tell you my story."
The little group was too excited to even think about standing in one place throughout the whole story without wriggling, let alone sitting. But obediently they sat down in the thick, emerald green grass, listening to the distant chirrup of the birds flying far above their heads. They sat and started to listen; enraptured by the magic of Mr. Barrie's melodic voice and the story he had for them.
"I was only eleven when my life changed," Mr. Barrie began, not looking at the small group gathered before him and pricking up their ears so as not to drop any word coming out of his mouth. Instead, he lowered his head, as if looking inside himself and experiencing the experiences he was talking about one more time.
"My friend who was also named James and eleven like myself pushed me and I fell through the ice. This is what you already know. In a moment I am going to tell you how I can know of this when you that I was laying in a hospital bed the entire time.
"Now let me come back to the very root of my story. I have lain in bed since I was a child. I am not sure when I became aware of what was happening to me but it must have been soon after the accident. I was able to know exquisitely well of everything that was happening to me. I mean, forgive me to my body. There is a difference. I am not sure at what point it was that I created Neverland and its inhabitants either. I was a child when I had this accident and in some way I remained a child because I never experienced anything other than my childhood. I remembered everything from my life before the accident and I wanted to live a different life than the one led in bed. I wanted to play and have fun like my peers. I imagined I lived in a land of magic where I could do anything I wished.
"The shape of this particular fantasy changed several times. These were different worlds. For a short time I lived in the medieval times as a young prince only to decide on becoming – in my imagination – a wizard boy discovering his powers and running away from home to have millions of adventures - I became a film star in Hollywood, later I was kidnapped by a millionaire whose own son and wife had died and who wanted to make me his son. After I got bored with this fantasy, I decided on choosing something new. It must be something original, not based on reality. I decided on an island where I could do anything I wanted. I named it Neverland. I imagined I was a boy who could do everything I couldn't – play and have fun. I named my alter ego Peter Pan. Peter because I liked this name, I got bored with my real name so I decided on a new one. Pan comes from a Greek myth. It was the name of a god who lived in forests far from any other people. But I didn't live far from them. I imagined there were also other children with whom I could play. Over the course of years this fantasy developed and changed, some of the children were replaced by different ones, based on the people I knew. Like the people from the hospital and some of them were my own family members. Or the children I had known before the accident, like the Llewelyn - Davies boys. There were five of them: George, Jack, Peter, Michael and Nicholas. I liked to play with them.
"The same was true for the other people who lived on the island. I liked pirate and Indian stories so I decided my island must have those inhabitants too. I gave them the faces of the people I knew. The ship of the pirates was based on one I had of a ship in a bottle that sat in my hospital room.
"And there were fairies. Let's not forget about the fairies. I liked stories about magical creatures as well. I added them to my Neverland. I had many fairy plush toys in my hospital room. I remember their being brought to me though nobody could guess I was aware of it. I created some fairies in my land on the basis of them and on the basis of the people I knew as well. The same about mermaids. I remember some distant relative of mine, Ardelia. She was a ginger headed teen who was always very virulent. She was six years older than me and is probably dead by now. But I created the mermaids in Neverland using Ardelia and her friends. She had a circle of close friends with whom she used to gossip with. June, Lucille, Agnes, Mary and Annie. I remember their names well. They were very like Ardelia – pretty, shallow-minded and capricious. I never liked them, so the mermaids from my land were given their qualities. Though I do admit, on the other hand, that my alter ego always knew how to get along with them by flattering them – something I never managed to do with the real girls.
"Now as for the way to get to Neverland – second star to the right – in turn comes from the two stars I observed as a child from the window of my bedroom. There were two stars which every night shone above the tops of the trees growing behind our house. My alter ego could fly because I always perceived this ability very useful. It gave me the freedom I didn't have lying in bed. I spent a lot of time in this fantasy, stealing the shreds of reality I knew from the times before the accident to incorporate them into it.
"Over the course of time I saw something strange. The land which I created became somehow real. It wasn't like a mere fantasy because I could really enter it. But not as Peter Pan. I came to the conclusion that this boy, the same as his friends and enemies had their own lives, were becoming real. I couldn't control this aspect of myself to which I gave life as to Peter. I could observe everything though, as pure thought. I could say I became a spirit of this land; a benign bodiless spirit who could come to this world to observe but unable to change anything. I couldn't make Peter not cut Hook's hand off although I did find this deed of him cruel and disgusting. You know Hook was modeled after the boy who pushed me on the skating pond then. He had no hand – an inborn defect. James Hook in my world lost his hand as well at the hands of my alter ego. I subconsciously wanted to punish him for what he done to me and this fragment of myself who was Peter answered this. I told you that I was someone like a spirit of the island but there were more of them, as it seemed. The people who were in a coma long enough to be capable of making the worlds of their own creation to soothe their loneliness. They didn't spend as much time in this vegetative state as myself and when they eventually awoke, the worlds created by them disappeared. Their worlds were afflicted by disasters like my Neverland and finally, they vanished into oblivion. Their inhabitants sometimes died together with them and sometimes only changed their form, becoming someone else. I and the others could share one mind, exchanging thoughts. This is how I know all of this. My physical body will die soon but my mind will always stay in the astral worlds created by the imaginations of myself and the others like me. I feel their presence in here. This is the world we are in which doesn't exist in reality but I shaped it on the basis of the destroyed Neverland. I liked this world of mine. Beautiful summer weather unlike the winter when all of this started, for the whole year. When my body started to die, it changed, starting to resemble this winter. When I die, I will remain here forever, like the ones who were in a similar situation as me and died while in a coma which had first released their hidden powers.
"Yes, imagination is a very powerful power, much more than I dared to think when I was a boy who was always making up invented stories. The story of Neverland was the greatest I ever came up with. It was the start of a new, wonderful adventure I never thought I would have. To live this sort of dream life was an awfully big adventure. I don't have a grudge against my friend for what he did to me. It's all thanks to him and I should be rather grateful to him. Who, after all said that real life is always better than the dream one? I know I will die soon and you, the shreds of my imagination will die with me too. But not completely. You will most likely just change your form, in the same way as your predecessors in Neverland did, when I incorporated the qualities of the people I came to know later into them, creating you in this manner. I constantly reshaped the original inhabitants of Neverland who were the members of my band I led as Peter Pan. They were often based originally on other people but later on I made them someone else. You didn't even realize this, thinking you were the same from the very beginning. It didn't hurt you, just changed you, making you become a bit different. Like Tiger Lily. I know she had to stay at home. Yes, since you left Neverland, my worsening state of health influences you. Some of you more, some of you less. Tiger Lily was originally based on a painting of an Indian girl I once saw. Later, when Dr. Salima started to take care of me, the image of Tiger Lily changed, being more created on her. Michael Darling was in turn based initially on Nicholas Llewelyn – Davies, my childhood friends' youngest brother, later becoming based more on my relative – my sister Maggie's great grandson. Almost all my relatives got their roles in this fabulous play I named Neverland. Sometimes very small but still. For example my other sister, Isabella, lived on the pirate ship, together with the rest of the pirates. It was a very small role for her indeed and I myself often forgot about her existence in there – she played the role of their cook and seamstress – but she was in there. You may even didn't pay any attention that there was any woman on the ship.
"Or for another example, the twins. You were different when I invented you. Now you look the same but I imagined you to be your opposites like Flip and Flap from the movies. They were popular when I was a child. It was in the thirties but I always found the earlier times more interesting. My mother was telling me stories on how it looked like when she was young. She was already forty when I came into the world. She was born in 1884. You, Wendy, come from 1904, from the time she was twenty, I chose this year to put you and your brothers in because my mother was a young girl then. 1904 somehow fit my taste much better than the thirties. You are one of those who were the same since I started to spin this fantasy. I always wanted you to be an equivalent of my mother whom I loved deeply, only more beautiful. Your features are more delicate than when she was of your age. I wanted my new mother for my Peter Pan to be as beautiful as possible. Even this blue dress you were dressed in when you were taken from your world is based one that actually existed. My mother saw such a dress once in a store but she couldn't afford to buy it. I always thought that my imagined mother should have something my real mother wanted. I remember that day well – mom took me and my brother David with her to that store. David was her favorite son. He later became a children's books writer.
"But now your life is coming near its end. Or at least the life in the shape you know. Let me stress it one more time. I'm not sure what the difference will be like. But to be honest, I guess I may know it. Before my physical body started to die, I started to think about something, about a different world in which Peter and his companions could play. A forest… animals… a bear was always my favorite sort of animal… But I always liked also those more exotic ones – kangaroos, tigers… No, don't pay attention to me at this very moment, I am just thinking aloud. And now please, I don't want to be impolite but come to the portal. I know you would like to ask me questions but please, come back to the real world. I can control the portals between the worlds but I can do it only for a short period of time. Maybe we will be able to meet each other again here... if my body doesn't die before that time, and then I will explain to you anything more you would like to ask me about but now you must go. There is something bad happening with my body and you have to go."
With those words, being such an unexpected ending for the whole story which had hypnotized the listeners, the man raised his hand. A fog cloud started to form, creating a well known portal like the one they had entered this strange new Neverland. They didn't want to enter it, wishing to be able to ask so many questions to Mr. Barrie, disappointed with his finishing his story so sharp and so suddenly but they had to go, answering the call of the hypnotic portal.
As soon as they did, they forgot about their disappointment and fear. For what could be happening with Barrie's body that it made him go so fast, as their minds were dominated by this feeling they had to come into the fog. It was all that mattered at this very moment. They had to come back. Like the crowd of the hypnotized children of the rat catcher from Hameln, with their eyes and minds blank, they came through the wall of blue mist.