Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it's not mine.
AN: Mara Trinity Scully – dear God, would you believe I actually thought of that while writing chapter eleven? And that it made me laugh? Seriously, you and I both need to get out in the fresh air more, maybe play some sports or something . . .
And thanks for reviewing A Peep Into The Future, to those who did. I'd like to continue that story, but not until Neverland's finished.
What else? Oh yes, in chapter eight of Blood and Cherries, Harry's quill snapped and it freaked everyone out because the atmosphere was so tense. I forgot to add that to my Author's Notes in chapter nine.
Enough unrelated comments - on with this story.
Chapter Twelve.
They were well on their way home when Wendy realised that she didn't know where home was. She'd vaguely assumed that they were heading for the old oak that had formerly hid the secret entrances, but they couldn't be – Hook's pirates had discovered that hideout, and not all of them had been killed in the last battle. In fact, they walked right past the venerable tree.
When she asked Peter about it, he looked awfully pleased with himself, and said only that no pirate would ever think to look for them in their new place.
"Safest place in Neverland, I shouldn't wonder." One of the boys trailing behind them piped up.
"Is it really," Wendy said archly. Peter grinned and said nothing.
"He knew they'd search the whole island . . . every place but one." She thought this voice might have been Charlie's.
"It really is jolly clever, Mother," came a voice that she recognised as Twin's. It felt so strange to be addressed as Mother. Wendy smiled to herself.
The Imp had evidently had enough of being ignored in Peter's favour, and tugged at her hand, holding up a fist for her inspection. She knelt instinctively and held out her free hand. The Imp's fist sprang open, and suddenly something awful and many-legged was scrabbling on her palm, and oh dear God what was it -! She shrieked, flinging the hideous thing away from her, and Peter gave the Imp a not wholly gentle cuff round the ear.
"Bad Imp! Is that any way to behave?"
The other boys looked as though they were doing their best not to laugh. Wendy scrubbed her palm on her skirts convulsively.
The Imp beamed up at her, wholly unrepentant and adorable to boot, and she didn't know whether to laugh or to give him another smack.
Peter solved her dilemma by taking her hand and walking on as if nothing had happened. This told her a great deal about the Imp. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Charlie pick the small offender up bodily and say something she couldn't catch to the other boys.
"Just up here," Peter said, "right . . . about . . . here."
They were standing in a patch of forest undergrowth no different from any other patch of undergrowth they'd waded through before. When she looked around though, all the younger boys were gone, and Peter was looking almost exactly as wickedly gleeful as the Imp had before he'd unleashed arachnid horror on her hand. Wendy was suitably hesitant.
"Right here?" she asked. "Where are the boys?"
In response, Peter stamped his foot, and the ground fell away.
As far as Wendy could tell, when the mad hammering of her heart slowed enough for her to hear her own thoughts over it, they had fallen no more than six feet. The clump of vegetation was returned to its natural state, leaving them in darkness, in a space not much larger than an upright coffin. She clutched her flowers to her.
There was motion beside her, and then what must have been a door opened directly in front of them.
Peter pulled her by the hand, and then they were moving through the door, down a series of steps, and along a low passageway, to another thick wooden door.
He opened the door, and yellow light flooded in.
She breathed, "Oh, you strange and astonishing boy."
Peter looked, to use her brother's phrase, insufferably pleased with himself.
"It's the very same house, isn't it?" she asked wonderingly. "We're in the very same place."
The main room was festooned with further examples of the Lost Boys' interpretation of "flowers", but in most particulars looked the same as it had the night she'd left. The boys stood grinning beside the great table. Candles and lamps were scattered liberally about, and the whole place shone with flowers and light.
"Oh, Peter."
"After I disabled the old entrances, this was the safest place on the island. The new tunnels took some doing, but . . . the pirates won't find us here. They won't think to look here, and they wouldn't be able to find the way in if they did."
Wendy opened her mouth to comment on the ingenuity of the arrangement, but surprised herself with a yawn instead.
"Boys," Peter clapped his hands, "to bed at once, and no noise. Anyone who wakes Wendy sleeps outside tomorrow."
"Bed? But its morning!" she said, as the Lost Boys obediently grumbled and fussed their way out of the room.
"Oh, well we have adventures at night, and sleep all day," Peter said carelessly, watching them go.
The door shut behind Charlie, and Peter looked at her, now strangely hesitant. "We . . . that is, I, brought your little house, from before, down into the left hand room. And I hung some cloth, for curtains, round my bed too. I . . . didn't know where you'd want to sleep."
Wendy looked at his bed, at the end of the room, and felt a queer little thrill run through her at the sight of the makeshift curtains.
She checked to make sure her feet were still touching the ground, and then smiled into Peter's eyes.
"John can have the house -" she said, and that was as far as she got before Peter expressed his satisfaction with the arrangement in no uncertain terms.
They retired behind the white curtain, and a veil was quite literally drawn over the scene.