Note from the author: I'm taking out the part I wrote earlier about Peter being afraid of death. I had an idea of how to work that into the story, but I've decided to discard that idea. It hasn't been changed yet, but I'll keep you posted on when it is. By the way, there is a little bit of a story, more of a paraphrase, really, that I intend to write someday, or, rewrite, rather. It's about Rapunzel. I think I'll replace the bit about Rapunzel in this chapter with another story, eventually. I hope you enjoy this chapter. It's definitely a turning point in the story!

"Can I see him?" I asked excitedly. "What's his name?"

"Slow down, dear! You'll get to see him soon enough!" but I could tell my father was excited as well. Finally, the midwife brought the beautiful baby boy from my mother's room and placed him in my father's arms.

"What shall we name him?" I asked again.

My father smiled into the eyes of his new son. "Your mother and I decided that if we would have a boy, his name would be Jackson, after my father. Would you like to hold him?"

I took my new brother in my arms and found it hard to believe how tiny he was. Certainly I had never been so small- I was quite tall for my age nowadays, and was growing all the time, though I thought quite awkwardly. I had a mound of tangled, mousy-brown hair tumbling down my back, knobby knees, and eyes too large for my face, but my mother said she looked the same way when she was my age. I find that hard to believe, for she is so beautiful and I can't imagine her any other way.

In time, I learned that my brother served me a great purpose- for telling stories to. I had the wildest imagination, which my parents often said I got carried away with. I tried sharing the stories I wrote down, and the ones straight out of my head, with them, but they always sent me to study for school, to fill my head with numbers and reason, calling my stories "rubbish". Jackson provided a non-critical, and somewhat attentive audience, especially if I used stuffed animals as characters in my charades. I knew he didn't understand anything that I told him- he was, after all, an infant- but making him laugh was a great delight. Jackson was just what I needed in my life to inspire me, to free my imagination. I could have always told my stories to myself, of course, but this did not have the same effect as having an audience did. But little did I know that I had more of an audience than what I saw before my eyes.

Jackson was born on May 15, and I only had a couple of short months to enjoy with him before my parents were to send me to Madame Severnea's Finishing School for Girls, very far away in Newcastle. I had heard dreadful things about the place, that it was more of a prison for girls than a school, but my parents insisted that I go to become a more refined individual. Refined like iron. The matter was very distressing to me, as I was very afraid of the school. The headmistress was said to have wrapped the knuckles of girls who have committed offenses such as a bow not being tied perfectly straight or handwriting on a composition not being perfectly tidy. I would walk in a girl, and come out forgetting I was ever a child.

As I had a short time left to create stories, I told a different story to Jack every night before he went to bed, though pretended to be practicing Latin when my parents came in to see what I was doing. On the last night before I was to depart for Madame Severnea's, I decided to finish performing my last tale.

"Rapunzel grew tired of waiting for the prince to find his way to her tower, and so when the witch came for her diner dishes, she kept the knife, hiding it in her pocket. When the witch left to go to town that day, Rapunzel began sawing at her hair, trying to cut it. She sawed with all of her strength for hours and hours, until the braid was a pile on the floor. She tied one end to her table leg and dropped the rest over her window and climbed down, to find her prince in a battle with the evil witch. The witch heard her coming, and without blinking an eye she turned herself into an identical for of the prince so that Rapunzel did not know who to help"

My brother was now asleep, and upon seeing my lack of audience, I stopped the story and kissed him on the head, and covered him up with an extra blanket, as the wind might be cold once I opened the window before I went to bed. I don't even remember the reason that I sleep with the window open; I just know that every time I shut it at night, I am unable to sleep. Even after I fall asleep and my nurse comes in and shuts it I immediately wake up. Even when it's open, I have a hard time sleeping, and the strangest dreams fill my head that make me wake up in a cold sweat, shivering and frightened. But I never remember why.

I slipped under my covers, and suddenly the realization that this would be the last time I would be in my own bed for a very long time punched me in the stomach. I wept bitterly for what seemed like an hour, soaking my pillow in tears. Something leapt onto my bed, very softly, and I assumed it was my Persian feline Geraldine come to comfort me, but as I pulled the covers away from my head, I was staring not into the blue eyes of a cat, but the blue eyes of a boy. I was far too frightened to scream, and instead spoke in a hoarse whisper.

"Who are you?"

The boy, whose face was illuminated by moonlight, grinned impishly, and stood up on my bed, bowing regally. "I am Peter. Peter Pan."

Old and dusty memories, packed away in boxes, were released and came rushing at my head like a flood. I knew that name. I knew that name! Oh, where had I heard it before? I sniveled and wiped away the last of my tears, concentrating hard on why this name meant to much to me†And then I remembered.

"No!" I nearly screamed loudly enough to wake up Jack. "No! You cannot be! You aren't anything but an apparition, please go away and leave me alone!" The tears came again, and I buried my face in my pillow. A moment later, I lifted my head again, but the vision of the boy had not disappeared. The grin had been wiped off of his face and he looked at me in confusion.

"Lady, why are you crying?" he asked.

I didn't answer but instead rambled, "Why are you here? Are you a ghost? You can't be†Peter would have been younger than that†please, go away!"

"I am here seeking Mary Kenneth. Do you know her? I think she lives here. I may have the wrong window, but this one was the only window open so I thought it must be hers" he gazed about the room, and his eyes landed on Jack's crib. "Is she in there?" No, she was older than that"

"What does she look like?" I asked.

"She's quite small. Smaller than me. Brown hair. Scar on her left arm from when I" he smiled as if recalling a memory. "From when I accidentally cut her with a sword."

I clutched my left arm and rolled up the sleeve of my nightgown. The moonlight revealed a jagged pink scar. I had forgotten where it had come from. If he knew something as minor as that, he must be Peter! I got out of bed and stood on the floor, looking up at the boy standing on my bed. My voice trembling, I whispered, "Peter, I am Mary."

He looked at me disbelievingly, examined the scar, and touched my face. And sighed. "You're so old."

"You're older than I am," I replied. He looked as if I had gravely insulted him, but he nodded. "I am getting older, but it's ok because I can run faster and climb trees better and do much more†like" He paused, staring at me with a critical eye.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Oh, Mary, there's so much to tell you! To show you! Mary, you must come away with me." He grasped my hand and pulled me towards the window. I flung it out of his grasp.

"Where do you want to take me?"

"Mary, these past few years have been wonderful. That night, when I left, I was taken away by a fairy- my fairy. You know how fairies are born, right? Every time a baby laughs for the first time, a fairy is born and when I laughed for the first time, my fairy, Tinker Belle, was born. She told me this, that night, and begged me to come and live with her, and that she and I would somehow figure out how to stop me from growing up."

"A fairy? Peter, I'm not sure that I believe in fairies."

"You used to. You used to be one. You used to be so many things. Don't you remember?"

"Peter, that was make-believe! I don't believe in any of that before. Not even in fai-"

He clasped a hand over my mouth. "Never say that you don't believe in fairies. Never. Every time that happens, somewhere a fairy falls down dead!"

"Peter, that was something we made up!" I said exasperatedly. "It's just make-believe!"

He eyed me warily. "Mary, make-believe is more real than you or I have ever imagined. Mary, I have been raised by fairies in the time I've been gone. They have taught me to fly. And yesterday, when I was flying, I finally found a place where I can live and never grow up. Never! Mary, you must come with me! You must!" He stamped his foot in exasperation.

"Where have you been living with fairies?"

"Kensington Gardens, of course."

"Peter, Kensington Gardens is where we always pretended the fairies to be"

"And we were right. Where else would they live? Please come with me."

"I can't. I can't leave my parents like that!"

"They'll leave you! They left me, as my real parents before them did."

"They won't. They love me."

"Mary," he sighed, "I have a story to tell you. I remember my mother and father. They played with me every day, and they loved me, but one day they got tired of me. They didn't want to play with me anymore. They left my house, and my nurse took care of me and told me they were never coming back. Then one day, my nurse packed all of my things and put me in a carriage and that was the day I met you. I was happy here, I really was, but Mary, I will not grow up! I want to be a little boy and always have fun! I don't want to have to worry about grown-up things! So I left. And then I came back, but the window was closed."

"Never! Peter, I have slept with that window open every single night!"

"It was closed, I swear. I saw your mother, father, and you inside with a boy. Him." Peter sneered, pointing to the crib where Jack was sleeping. "I was replaced. But I came back one more time, to see if you would come with me to Neverland. I had two mothers, and they both left me. She'd leave you, too, Mary."

I shook my head. "I can't," I said, tears welling up in my eyes.

"Well, then, I must be leaving," he said, in a tart voice that sounded as if I were just someone he had started talking to on the street and was tired of talking to. "I'll come back tomorrow to see if you want to join me. If not, I will probably never see you again. Good bye." He turned to leave, though at that point in time I knew not how he would accomplish that going out the window.

"Peter, wait!" I cried as he did this. His head whipped around. "Peter, you cannot come tomorrow. Tomorrow my mother and father send me away to" I bit my lip as I said the last words, "boarding school."

Peter's blue eyes reflected starlight and glittered. He blew a sparkling powder into my face, and said, "Think of a happy thought." Then, he took my hand, and we flew out of the nursery, out of my house, flying to a place where we would never, never have to worry about grown-up things again