Disclaimer: I don't make any money with this story. Honestly, do you really think anybody would pay me for this? Hail to J. M. Barrie…and who ever owns the rights of Peter Pan and Wendy.
Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait, I had to work on Sunday and after spending six hours outside in the sun I had such a massive sunburn…you could think my face was a lobster. I came back home and couldn't work on this chapter and Monday I had to face millions of people with the upper half of my face being bright red (and painful…I can tell you) and the bottom half a nice, unhealthy white. Life can be awfully humiliating.
From now on, I try and go for weekly updates…every Friday there will be a new chapter. I promise. J
Thanks for the fabulous reviews goes to: Wendy, Simone, Rebecca, Captain Oblivious, Dark AngelB, alleluia, Terriah, Lostgurl920, bamaslamma29, kiddo and Kate.
Nucis numquam relinquere.
SHOW ME HEAVEN
Chapter 5
Luckily, Wendy was born on a Sunday. Children who are born on a Sunday are always blessed by the fates and that is probably why she didn't drown that night, for, once she had fallen in the ice-cold depths, it didn't take long until she lost consciousness. However, the current was kind to her and picking her up gently carried her to Flamingo Lagoon where she is now lying surrounded by three little boys.
"I think it is waking up," Jenko said yawning. "Oh, I wish I could still be asleep."
"It's not an it. It's a she," replied Nooves and took of his glasses. The frames were empty, the actual glasses had been long lost, but still, Nooves made it a habit to wipe and clean them from time to time. He was very proud of his glasses. They gave him a kind of intellectual touch, he thought, even though he didn't really know that such a word as intellectual existed.
"Well, we could make her wake up." Mischief was clearly audible in Wiggy's voice and he already had got out one of his arrows and was about to prod Wendy with it, when, again, Nooves stopped him.
"You can't just wake it up. I mean her. We can't wake her up."
"Why not?" Wiggy asked disappointed, but not yet ready to give up on his case.
"I think we should take her home," said Nooves, "to show her to the others."
So Wendy, unconscious and dripping wet, was taken away from the lagoon where the current had taken her the night before. It wasn't but two or three hours later that she finally woke up again and opened her eyes.
She blinked hard.
"Whaw?" she wanted to say "what", but all that came out of her mouth was a muffled sound. She had been gagged. And not only gagged, her hands and feet were tied to a chair. Wendy was in a little green room. All the walls were covered in leaves and only here and there little patches of sun light shimmered through the leafy ceiling and tiny windows in the walls. Maybe walls was not even the right word to describe them…they were rather hedges than walls. There were even some minuscule flowers blossoming amongst the leaves and therefore decorating the room and filling it with a sweet, intoxicating smell.
Apart from the chair she sat on, there was hardly any furniture in the room. Crammed into one corner were half a dozen huge mushrooms, huge enough to function as seats and little tables. Of course, Wendy couldn't see it, but she herself was actually seated on one of these mushrooms. Otherwise, the room was empty.
As she looked around her, her gaze fell on something like a door, or well, she assumed that it was some kind of entrance, which was covered by thick, green vines and therefore was a door. A little face peeped through the gaps in the vines and noticing that she had indeed found his hide-out, a high-pitched voice shrieked "she woke up, she woke up, she woke up!"
Wendy could hear the hurried tapping of little feet and after what was only seconds, the vines parted and in stormed a group of six boys.
The Lost Boys.
There were five of them and they all stood round her in a neat circle, eying her curiously. They all had different sizes and were clad in very dirty furs and rags of cloth. Somehow, they did resemble her new brothers, who were now back at home in London and had once looked just like them. Yet, they were all completely different from them. The smallest of the boys stood hiding behind the legs of another and she could see that he looked at her more with fear than with curiosity in his big brown eyes.
Immediately her heart began to melt. Those poor little boys. They needed a mother. Just like Slightly, Curly and the others had needed one.
But her thoughts quickly vanished when she felt a sharp pain in her side. Wiggy had prodded her after all.
"Oupf."
"Stop it." Nooves ordered. "She is already awake."
"I just wanted to make sure she is. Now, what do we do with her?"
"Well, I don't know. I guess we could keep her and-"
"What if she is dangerous? I don't want to keep her if she is dangerous." It was Fozzy who so rapidly had interrupted Nooves.
"Oh, shut up. If she's dangerous we can always kill her," Wiggy drawled smirking and as if to support his statement he drew his knife.
"Not if she kills us first," said Fozzy and Brownie, the littlest amongst them, crouched even more behind Jenko's legs.
"I would never kill you," Wendy tried to say, but again, it sounded more like a cow regurgitating grass than anything else.
"It can talk," Jenko stated interested. "Can anybody of you speak her language?"
Wendy huffed. At least Nooves seemed to grasp the fact that they only needed to remove the gag from her mouth to understand her clearly. So he cautiously walked up to her and with a swift movement cut the gag so that it fell from Wendy's mouth.
"Thank you," she said and took a deep breath. "Now, would you mind cutting the ropes as well? It's rather uncomfortable to be tied to a chair and it is not very polite, you see."
The boys looked at each other for a while and finally, Nooves shrugged and turning to her said, "very well, but if you try to harm us in any way, we'll kill you."
"I'd never try to harm you. Who do you think I am?" she said and got up after Nooves had untied her as well. Brownie and Fozzy backed away a little.
"For all we know, you could be a pirate, sent to poison us," Wiggy said and giving his knife a flick with his wrist, he added, "maybe we should kill you right away. Just to make sure-"
"I am NOT a pirate!" Wendy stamped her foot.
"You don't look like an Indian either." Jenko said. "So, what are you?"
"I am one of you. I belong to the Lost Boys."
"One of us?" the boys shrieked in unison. "No way. You are a girl."
"Yes, I am." Wendy stated loudly. "Don't you want a mother?"
"What's this fuss all about?" a new voice cut in coming from the door. There was Jaz, holding a dead rabbit by its ears, blood still dripping from a cut somewhere in its fur.
The boys stood in silence.
"Who are you?" Jaz asked immediately as his gaze fell on Wendy.
Before she even had a chance to reply, the Lost Boys answered the question for her.
"She says she is our mother!"
"I don't want a mother, Jaz! Mothers are dreadful."
"Yeah, she'll only boss us around."
"Let's kill her."
"Wait, wait, wait!" Wendy cried, eager to stop them before things would get out of hands. There had been too much talking about killing her already. "Mothers are wonderful. I-"
"We don't want a mother," Jaz interrupted her. "And we don't need one."
"But-"
"So, if you can't give us a good reason for your stay with us, then you'll have to leave and we can't let you go alive since you have seen out hideout."
Wendy's face turned white. She had never even thought of the Lost Boys not wanting a mother. How on earth could she justify staying with them? She gulped.
"Well, I think I am quite good at…at…at telling stories."
Wiggy quirked an eyebrow.
"Stories? What kind of stories?"
"Any kind. Whatever you want to hear about."
Jaz looked at the others before addressing Wendy again. "A story-teller. We've never had one before, but I think we might quite like it." He smiled at her genuinely. "You can stay with us, for now."