Disclaimer: If you recognise anything, it's not mine.

AN: The song Alba in this chapter is by the Medieval Babes. Sorry it takes so long for each chapter, but something inevitably comes up whenever I want to post something new. Thank you to my reviewers and to everyone who reads this – you all get a solid chocolate parrot for Easter, you are the most lovely and generous reviewers ever.

Chapter Sixteen

When John Darling felt the warm grass of Neverland under his feet he thought he might be imagining the rest, a delirious euphoric haze of stars and flight and liberty, and now sun and flowers, and a clear voice drifting towards them on the wind.

"Is that -?" he began to ask, but Peter was smiling, so it must be her.

"They're over here," Peter said, detached but perfectly friendly, just like before. As if John were just another Lost Boy, as if he'd never left or been anything else. To his surprise, John began to feel that familiar warmth spread over him again. Peter was Captain and king, and somewhere close Wendy was singing. Everything was just as it should be. He lifted his bag again, smiling.

As they drew closer, words began to filter out through the trees, ancient words that John knew very well. Bel compagnon, si dormetz o veillatz?

He found himself humming the old tune under his breath. Non dormatz plus, suau vos ressidatz . . .

He'd sat for hours last night in her empty room, and then that morning on his own bed he'd found a white feather. He didn't know what it meant, but it was in his pocket now. Qu'en orien vei l'estela, creguda qu'amenal jorn, qu'eu l'ai ben coneguda . . .

There in a sunlit clearing Wendy sat, a small white-haired boy on her lap and a half-dozen others grouped around her. John and Peter stopped behind a thick cluster of greenery. She smiled as she sang, the littlest boy playing with a daisy chain she held loosely in her hands. Ostensibly she was singing for his amusement alone, it appeared, for the other boys were making a fairly good show of being involved in other pursuits. John rather thought the dark-haired one should stop singing the refrain under his breath, but apart from that they seemed quite disinterested.

"Et ades sera l'alba," she sang, interrupting herself with a peal of laughter as the littlest boy grabbed the daisy chain from her and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. "Bad Imp!" she scolded amiably, doing nothing to retrieve the flowers. The boy laughed, then, to John's surprise, turned on Wendy's lap to point right at Peter and himself. Peter shrugged, smiling, and went out into the clearing. John followed.

Wendy put the boy down and stood up, holding out her arms to John. Her face was alight with happiness, and she was smiling, as he hadn't seen her smile in years. "John," she said cheerfully, hugging him tight, then laughing at the sight of his bag. "Whatever did you bring that for?"

He hugged her back, aware more of her happiness than he was of the Lost Boys' stares, or even of Peter's silence somewhere to his right. "Aunt Millicent fussed and fussed until I didn't have any choice about the bag," he said ruefully. "Mother packed you some more nightgowns and the green cloak, remember, from the dress-up box? And Grandmother Darling's mourning dress, for some reason. That's what takes up the most space in here. Let me think . . . oh no, I remember. Michael and Nibs made you some chocolate fudge."

He extracted a long thin package from the bag, which Wendy took apprehensively. "How did it turn out?" she asked.

"Well, you can snap bits off, and if you don't mind the smoky flavour it's not too bad. But the best saucepan's burnt beyond repair, and Nibs was sick all last night. Though that might have been unrelated."

Wendy handed the supposed fudge back to him. "The boys will like it," she said, turning to them to make the introductions. "Boys, this is my brother John. John, the Lost Boys."

Peter went and sat under an oak tree behind the ragamuffins, watching Wendy count them off for John. "Charlie, Gert, Peeps, Twin, Southey and the Imp."

John rather liked the look of Charlie; the oldest there, he seemed twelve or even thirteen. The last child Wendy pointed to was the little white-haired boy, chewing industriously at his daisy chain.

"Hullo," he said, sitting on the grass before the other boys. Wendy sat down beside Peter in the shade, bringing her knees up within the circle of her arms. Everyone seemed to be waiting for him to do something, but he had no idea what.

"Are you really John Darling?" the red-haired one piped up.

"Yes," he admitted. As far as he knew, this was so. In adult company, one's identity was rarely challenged following introductions, but it seemed quite natural here.

There was a snicker from the boy called Gert, and the one beside him asked, "Did Princess Tiger Lily really kiss you?"

John started, horrified to feel himself begin to blush. "Well, I – this is, um . . . yes. To some degree. Um. Certainly."

To his surprise, the others did not treat this as a reason to laugh at him, rather as his membership of some kind of club. Southey and the one called Twin nodded at each other, and Charlie looked quite impressed.

"When you went back, did you have to go to school?" Gert asked. He was relieved – finally, a half-way normal question. He became conscious of a murmur to the back, and when he looked over saw Peter talking to Wendy in a low voice. Her shoulders were shaking, and she had a hand over her mouth.

John decided to ignore them.

"School," he said, "Oh, school. Well, we used to go to school, Wendy and Michael and me, but when the boys came to live with us Mother and Father hired a governess."

"What's a governess?"

A question John knew very well how to answer. "A governess is a bitter old hag who comes to your house to give you lessons and tries to make you act like a grown-up all the time."

A collective shudder rose from the group. "Sounds dreadful," Twin said cheerfully.

"She is," John replied. "But my brothers couldn't go to an ordinary school; who'd have them? A bunch of heathens dressed in odd bits of fur."

The boys looked rather proud, fitting this description as they did to the letter. 

"So we all stayed home with Miss Plum," he continued, ignoring sudden amusement from under the oak tree. Wendy was whispering now to Peter, and he was nodding and whispering back something that precipitated another stifled fit of hilarity. "And she made us do lessons all day, and she gave Wendy singing lessons and made her leave out all the good bits in her stories, and then she brought some utter pill to the house to marry her – Wendy, not Miss Plum," he added, "Not pinch-faced old Plum, not hardly. And then we came here."

The Lost Boys looked rather surprised that this was all that had happened to the Darlings in three years. "Is that it?" one began, but John couldn't tell who it was, because he was immediately interrupted by laughter, suddenly uncontained and ringing.

Wendy and Peter were leaning on each other, laughing helplessly. "And . . . and . . ." Wendy was trying to say, giggling too hard to get the words out, and Peter made a vague fluttering motion with his hands that to John suggested a bird, and this set them both off again.

The boys stared in frank astonishment. "Mad," John said wonderingly. "You're both completely mad."

"Utterly," Charlie agreed.

"Indubitably."

"Without a doubt."

"Mad as hatters," Southey and Twin chorused.

Peter managed something nonsensical that sounded like "Not if there wasn't one left," and Wendy laughed so hard she slid right off him and into the long grass.