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My Darling readers: It's been ages since I've updated!! But here it is, a bit more explanation about what happens to Alex and the fairy Eyril, and I've added what one might consider a slightly humorous twist in here as well ; )

Disclaimer: I don't own the story Peter Pan or any of the ideas from it. Those belong to the wonderful people that made it into a movie (an amazing movie that I've seen 3 times so far) and of course, J.M. Barrie, whose book really gave me a better perspective on the entire story.

ashley: thanks for commenting, I hope you like this chapter too : )

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Chapter Four: Error in the Ways of Magic

Alex woke a little while later, covered in brush and twigs, suffering from a splitting headache. He opened his eyes and sat up, a hand to his head. "Where am I?" he groaned. He saw it was nighttime and instantly lowered his voice. Apparently he was in someone's yard.

He stood and retreated to the sidewalk. It was Wendy's house. "Wendy!" he cried. They had carried her off! Who? His mind asked, and he pressed both palms against his temples as hard as he could, trying to remember. "The boy!" he cried to no one in particular. The boy had kidnapped her! She had been...flying? He rubbed his eyes. It was clearly turning into a long night.

He sighed and leaned against the Darlings' mailbox, closing his eyes and trying to sort out what he had seen...or what he thought he had seen. He knew he ought to alert the Darlings immediately if something had happened to their daughter. He was unsure of what he had seen but positively confident that the Darlings, at least Mr. Darling, did not have very much liking for him as it was, however.

Ah, but poor Wendy! She was so pretty and so much fun; she gave him excitement just by entering the same room. He remembered her laughter, the way she had looked after they had pegged Marissa and Daniel with water balloons. She had been so happy, so much more confident and content than the depressing, heart-broken child he had met a few months short of a year ago.

Alex ran a hand through his short, dark locks, and turned to approach her front door with a determined expression upon his face. He wasn't going to let anyone hurt Wendy, fictitious characters from his imagination or not. Unfortunately, he had not noticed that, since he had started thinking about Wendy, he had risen a little with each surge of happy memory. And that had been quite a lot of surges.

He was level with Wendy's open window. Alex let out a yell and began to fall. He managed to grab and grip the rain gutter outside Wendy's window, more by reflex than anything else, before the shock had fully overtaken him. The realization that he had been flying erased any happy memories with Wendy and replaced them with panic and terror, and a bit of shame. How would he ever explain this one?

Alex blinked and looked up at the stars in between his straining arms. That strange sound of tinkling bells...where had he heard it before? It was 1:20; he could easily see his watch, even in the dim gloom of night. There should not be any clocks going off at 1:20 a.m.

A small, winged lady hovered in front of his face, between him and the edge of the house. She was making the bell noises like crazy and her arms were waving wildly. It seemed almost as though she were trying to tell him something.

The young man's first thought as he stared at her in non-comprehension, besides that he was going insane, was that he should let go of the gutter. If he fell the distance, he might slam into the ground and wake up from this strange dream safely tucked into bed. He had almost convinced his fingers to unfreeze from the terror that still held their grip when the fairy stopped chattering, sighed very heavily, and opened her tiny mouth wide.

"Al...ses...Aleses..." she said, very slowly and carefully.

Alex frowned. "Alex?" he supplied. He wondered how she knew his name but then remembered that it was embroidered on his sweatshirt.

She nodded vigorously, then pointed to the window. Again, she opened her mouth and concentrated on her pronunciation. "Wandie," she said, then let out a stream of words in her natural language, as though frustrated with this slow and seemingly insufficient means of communication.

"Wendy! Where is she?" Again, he nearly fell. The gutter was beginning to creak under the strain. Alex mentally urged the fairy to hurry.

"Pie-tar...Peter...tay-kah...Wandie..."

"A guy named Peter has her?" Alex repeated angrily, his hands clenching even tighter around the storm gutter now. He held the fairy with his gaze; the intensity in his eyes kept her from flying off, though she was beginning to become worried from this sudden display of anger. Peter certainly wouldn't have done it if it hadn't been justified, taking Wendy that is. Oh no, that girl deserved whatever she got. "Where are they now?" A screw popped out of the gutter beside Alex's finger but he did not notice it, and his ears did not pick up its impact against the ground because it fell into a bush.

The fairy sighed again. Sighing opened her mouth wider and it was proving to be an effective stress-reliever. "Fay-rays," she said. "Nava... land."

"Fairies in Navaland?" He wanted to grab her and shake her, but he forced himself to keep his voice level. This was, after all, the one person...being... that knew where Wendy was. And besides, he wasn't in much of a position to grab and shake anybody. "But where is he taking her?" Alex demanded.

Now it was the fairy's turn to be annoyed. Hadn't she just explained this very specifically? "Navaland!" she cried, focusing on this one word, forming it with her tongue carefully. "Neverland!"

Alex blinked. "Wendy's Neverland?" he repeated doubtfully. Just then, the gutter snapped in his hands.

The fairy, who was, of course, Eyril, cried out in surprise and flew down after him, scattering fairy dust through the air. Her light came back on as she did so, but she didn't notice nor care; the fairy dust would only work if the boy thought of something happy. And he obviously didn't realize that.

Alex hit the tree that he had been hiding behind. He fell down through the branches, feeling them grabbing at his clothes. He was trying to yell but his own panic and fear kept stealing his breath away in pants and gasps. Just as he was nearly free of the tree, he was bumped backward by a large branch and his head slammed hard into the trunk. He fell the remaining few feet to the ground in front of Wendy's house in unconsciousness.

Eyril, feeling quite ashamed of herself and worried so much that she could hardly fly, swooped down and landed on his chest. "Alex!" she whispered; she had gotten the pronunciation of his name right when he had said it to her. "Alex!" She nudged his chest with her foot through the sweatshirt, then jumped up and down. One of her little feet got caught in the folds of fabric and she stumbled for a moment.

"Peter won't be happy about this," she told herself inwardly, pointing her finger at the boy's head after a slight hesitation.

Alex awoke with a jerk; his eyes popped open and he jumped up, sending Eyril flying into the grass with an irritated squawk. She jumped up and flew to hover at eye level, yelling at him in the fairies' language so that he blinked and frowned at her.

"Are you real?" he asked, his voice uncertain and his expression rather dazed.

Fairly indignant, she nodded furiously. "Of course!" she spluttered in English.

"Oh," he said, then looked around. "Where am I?" He looked down at himself. "And who's Alex?"

The fairly frowned. "Yoo-uu. you are Alex."

"No I'm not." His frown grew and he scratched his head. "Or maybe I am. I can't remember my name. But I'm pretty sure it's not Alex." He looked around. "What am I doing here, anyway?"

Eyril groaned inwardly and flew a slow circle in realization and dread. She buried her head in her arms, tears sparkling in her eyes, and slowly dipped down toward the ground. Alex watched her, bewildered and feeling slightly disoriented, still frowning deeply. His head was pounding and he wasn't sure where he was. He tried to remember...but there was nothing there. "Fairy?" he said. "What's your name?"

But she wasn't listening. "I can't believe this!" she said to herself, and she did not notice that she was speaking English, and speaking it perfectly at that. "I can't believe I altered his memory! That's not supposed to happen! I should have known better, I am rather new at directing my magic..." She sighed and turned back to him. "Alex," she said, "would you like to take a trip?"

"A trip to find Wendy?" Alex had been searching his memory and all he could see were blurs of people and places that he must have seen and visited. He couldn't remember any details about his life...until the name Wendy popped into his mind with the strength of a 500-watt light bulb switched on in pure darkness.

Eyril stopped falling, did a little flip and whooped with joy. "Yes! Wandie, you remember!"

"Who's Wendy?"

The fairy stopped mid-whoop and sighed again. For the second time since midnight, while standing in the front yard of the Darling house, someone thought that it was going to be a very long night.

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Yeah, I know it's kind of strange that Mr. and Mrs. Darling didn't wake up while all of this was happening, but their room happens to be located on the opposite side of the house, and the Lost Boys, who shall be addressed in a couple of chapters, will play their own role in the discovery of what happened. Look for more about Wendy and Peter in the upcoming chapters, and a full explanation of what in Neverland is going on ; )