Neverland is a ceaseless place, a jungle that never ends. It has mountains of darkest charcoal and sulfur pits so hot it will burn your skin off to come near them. There is a terrible, disorienting beauty of land that will have you soon forget where you came from.
You wake up on the wet earth among the dense trees and your breath is shaky. You stare wide-eyed and cough up seawater on the ground. For a moment, you even forget your own name.
But your heartbeat remembers it for you -
Wendy - Wendy - Wendy it beats dutifully, reciting it to you. You take in your clothes - the wet nightgown, your bare feet. Soiled and unfamiliar to you now, in this new strange place.
And where to go? Who else is here? These questions run around in your mind, and you also start to wonder - why this, why me?
But these questions are merely words - what you really need is not an answer, but a different face.
Someone led you here, you are almost certain of it.
She walks around carefully in this new world – new sounds from every corner, animals cooing in the trees – a monkey flying past her golden head, swinging between the branches.
Wendy, this is not safe, this is not a place for an ordinary girl a voice speaks inside her, and she can't help but agree. But no matter how hard she tries to remember, she can't manage it – has no idea what brought her here.
But if I coughed up water, surely I must have been in the ocean? Was I shipwrecked?
She wanders through the jungle for a long time – she wants to find the shore, the beach (if there is one) since that is what is a good adventurer would do. Even though she was never taught more than she should – to grow up beautiful and capable for somebody else, Wendy has always had a special love of books, of stories that took place in exotic, faraway places.
The humid air curls her blonde hair to ringlets, so much so that she has to tie it back from hitting her face.
There should be more terror perhaps, to this situation. But there simply isn't – not for Wendy. Perhaps, she thinks, if her younger brother was with her, he would have begun to cry and ask for their mother. Maybe it would have been contagious, making her cry as well. Tears have a way of catching – of spreading from one child to another very quickly.
By the time she finds it, the sky has turned a peachy orange, dusk settling in very slowly. At first she only hears the waves in the distance, gently brushing against the sand.
She doesn't know what she expected to see when she got there – and the shock of seeing it completely empty takes her by surprise too. The sea stretches out in front of her, and all around. There are no boats, and no ships sailing there.
A large bird flies high over the crown of the pink clouds, its strange shriek echoing over the beach.
A wild fear takes hold of her just then – the fear of abandonment, of being all alone. It makes her act in a way she hasn't since she was a very small child, kicking and screaming. She unties the blue ribbon in her hair with a strangled sob, and throws it out into the water. She kicks at the sand, takes up a rock and hurls that too, into the watery depths.
Wendy is so busy being upset that she doesn't notice that suddenly, there is a boy standing on a rock , just a few feet out in the water.
He arrived there without a sound, and just watches her in stunned silence for a moment. Its when Wendy slumps down on the sand to cry that she notices him through blurred gaze.
If he had been an adult, she would have felt shame and embarrassment, but he is not. He is just like her, she thinks. The same age at least, by the looks of it.
The boy blinks twice in quick succession, eyes glinting in time with the shadows in the clouds. For some reason, Wendy knows he is speaking a different language than her – it is all over his shape, his posture. She knows somehow, that she must be careful around this boy.
"Is this yours?" she asks finally, still sniffling.
The boy cocks his head, just like a bird, still staring at her. Did he understand what she said?
"Mine?" he asks, in the same tone of voice, almost an exact mimicry. The boy's clothes look familiar, but they are worn down, filthy - an echo perhaps of what they used to be. Wendy curls up and shivers, the sun setting on the horizon, making the humid air slightly cool.
"Yes – the – this place. Do you and your parents live here? Where are they?"
The boy hops from one rock to another easily, but his head is cocked in a funny manner, like he doesn't want to stop looking at her just yet. He stands completely still when he lands, never wobbles.
"Never seen a parent around here." the boy says quickly, turning around suddenly to gaze out at the water.
"But if I did, I would have them banished " he says in a darkly amused way that confuses her. And just what does he mean by banished? He turns back to her and smiles – a smirk that makes his cheek dimple, at odds with his cruel remarks " – do you have them? Where are they?"
Wendy frowns and stands up, her tears still not dry. "I don't know – I don't know where they are, or where I am." she says loudly, waiting for him to do the obvious. Instead the boy paces with great leisure on his rock, it being slightly raised so that he is taller than her.
"That's a pity." is all he says, and most of Wendy's good manners disappear in a puff of smoke.
"Aren't you going to tell me anything?" She exclaims, having had quite enough of this rude boy and his strange ways. The rude boy's eyes gleam in the growing darkness, amused at her temper.
"Peter Pan."
"Pardon?"
"My name, you stupid girl."