Chapter 6.

"Suppose we go to buy some fabric for the wedding?" I stopped myself from entering the parlor at the sound of Wendy and Jeanette's conversation. "I know of a lovely little shop that sells this silk print that you would look simply gorgeous in."

"We cannot afford it," Jeanette's sensible manner shocked me. "I am quite content just wearing a simple cotton dress."

"But would you not like to look good for your husband to be?"

"Nicholas cares not how I look. He is not marrying me for my looks, pray you, but because he knows I can be a capable, devote wife."

Their talk faded as I held my breath. Nicholas was going to marry Jeanette? My hand was removed from the parlor door as I sank to the floor and hugged my legs to my chest.

"Does Annie know?"

"I suppose Margaret would not mind. She and Nicholas were playmates, so she is bound to enter him into the family easily. It is quite providential."

"He is a great deal younger than you…"

"Only by two years."

"He is closer in age to Margaret?"

"Yes, he is a year older. But he is quite mature for his age. Very determined and able. I have no doubt that he will be able to provide for us."

The thought of Jeanette moving out and living with Nicholas in some quaint little farm, sitting before the fire the rest of their days sent shivers through my body. An uneasy feeling filled my stomach, and I felt the cream Jeanette had scolded me for helping myself to beyond reasonability would resurface.

"Do you think Annie will mind?"

"Come now, Wendy, you have already asked me."

"Yes, but he is Annie's friend. I do not think she will have as positive an attitude as you think."

"You cannot think that Margaret might love him!"

Jeanette's mention of such a thing had me sitting up straight as I opened my mouth to retort her but held my tongue since my presence was not known in this conversation.

"I am just saying that fifteen is not an unlikely age to develop feeling for a friend. She may fall for him yet."

"Margaret refuses to grow up, and cannot even picture herself dressing appropriately, let alone falling in love."

"I think Annie might be more grown-up than you think."

"Oh, and she still doesn't trump about with her skirts up, giving into her silly childish dreams over what is expected of her?"

"I suppose Annie has quite a bit of growing up to do."

"Yes, I believe she does."

"How silly I was for that moment," Wendy let out a petite laugh. "My, here I am drifting off on talk of Annie when I should be talking of you. Has the butterflies visited you yet?"

"They only visit if there is something worth worrying over," Jeanette told her. "But, for Nicholas and myself, I believe we have nothing to fret about. I look forward to my marriage."

"Oh, how odd it shall be to have you gone with Nicholas! You must promise to name your fist child after me."

"Perhaps the child be a boy?" Jeanette suggested. "I would so much like to please Nicholas with a son first."

I gagged at the idea of Jeanette and Nicholas having kids, with little Jeanettes and Nicholases pulling at my skirts and calling me Aunt Margaret Anita. Cringing at such a future, I grew tenser as their conversation continued.

"Nicholas said he wished us to be married right away, so we may work to supply ourselves with enough necessities before winter. How thoughtful of him!"

"Do you love him?" Wendy questioned when Jeanette began to clap her hands about like an excited girl on her birthday.

"Why, I suppose I do." Jeanette's matter-of-fact tone made me doubt it. "Nicholas never proposed vows of love to me, but I know I can grow to love him. I feel myself loving him more and more as thoughts of spending the rest of my life with him drift about in my head…"

Hearing my sister's ambitious talk of marriage with my childhood friend gave me a sense of emptiness I knew no extra helpings of cream could fill. It was then, when the tears began to come, that I realized two truths.

Firstly, I knew Nicholas was to marry Jeanette, and this reunion of my sister and best friend was leaving me completely alone in this world.

And I realized then that I was, as Wendy had guessed, in love with Nicholas.

When I had escaped the clutches of my dreamless sleep, I awoke to find a pair of green eyes beaming at me intently. Sitting up from the small bed I slept in, I saw Peter leaning over the side of the bed, hovering a few inches above the ground.

"Do you always watch your guests sleep?" I grumbled groggily.

"No one has slept in here for years," Peter looked to the corner where a rocking chair sat with a torn teddy bear. "Perhaps decades. I lost track of time awhile ago."

"What is it like?" I sat on my legs, hugging a pillow and looking up at Peter.

"What is what like?"

"To live forever."

"I don't know," Peter leaned back in the air, resting his arms beneath his head as he laid his back against an imaginary bed. "Never really thought about it. As far back as I can remember, I see me playing and having fun with my lost boys. That's all I can see before me as well."

"But everything has a beginning, I suppose. Do you ever wonder where you came from?"

"I don't need to."

"Don't you ever have questions?"

"Everything I need to know, I already do." he answered roughly.

"But don't you ever get curious?" I knew I was pushing my luck with the situation, but I was falling for Peter fast and wanted to know everything I could before he pushed me away as he had with Wendy. "How can you go about your days living like you do, knowing no other day is any different from the next? It's all just a game for you. What sense of purpose do you have? When all has crumbled to dust and all have fallen and you remain in your Neverland alone with only eternity as company, will only memories of games that you cannot differentiate from the previous one be your only companion? Forever is a dreadfully long time, Peter, and all games should come to an end, I suppose. But to end, they need to begin. Have you no recollection of your past before Neverland? Before Tinkerbell and the lost boys and Hook?"

"I remember Hook," Peter slowly lowered from where he floated until he was sitting beside me with his head hung low. "He had taken my parents. I was left alone in the woods when they disappeared. Hook had taken me and called me his son. I lived with the pirates until I was sixteen."

I saw the tension passing through his body and reached for his hand, giving him an encouraging squeeze.

"Some older woman, I think one of Hook's mistresses, tried to seduce me and when I had shouted for Hook, she had only laughed and said that Hook didn't care a mite about me. That he had killed my parents and kept me alive only because I had entertained him and had the same spirit in my eyes as my parents, and he wanted me as a reminder of his evil deed. It was then I realized my life was all a lie and that I wanted revenge."

"Oh Peter…"

"When I had rushed out of the room, the lady went to tell Hook and he came to fetch me from his room where I hid. At the sound of hearing him opening the door, I had grabbed his sword and cut off the hand he had used to open the door. Hook was too shocked to respond quickly enough and I had escaped before anyone had time to react. You should have seen his face! It looked as if I had taken his revolver and shot him dead in the face, which was not much different from what I had done. I knew from then on I wanted revenge on Captain Hook!"

"Peter…" his boyish tears caused me to wrap my arms around him and comfort him as mother had comforted me numerous times in the past whenever I went into one of my fits. "Sshhh… hush now. Everything is alright in the end, I suppose."

"Tink saved me," Peter grasped the ends of my nightshirt with his hands. "I was stuck in the woods, crying and wishing I never had to grow up and be some nasty old man like Hook. I didn't want to be bothered with things like ugly women seducing me or getting older or dying. I didn't want to grow up. Tink found me, crying beneath a tree grasping the bear my parents had given me, and she taught me to fly. She took me to Neverland and gave me what I wanted. I was allowed to stay a kid forever and never worry about anything that I had to deal with before my arrival in Neverland."

"But don't you miss your parents?" I ask. "You will never see them again if you remain in Neverland forever."

"I've forgotten them," Peter cried vulnerably. "I cannot see their faces when I close my eyes. What if they don't remember me? I cannot picture growing old and dying!" Peter began to whimper as he voice faltered. "I don't want to die, Annie. I can't bear the thought of it. I won't. I won't! I'm afraid…" his voice broke into a whisper. "Promise me forever, Annie."

His soft cries of help and a companion hit right at home. Grabbing his shoulders and looking him square in the eyes, I kissed him with the little bit of experience I had, which was probably enough to write on a grain of rice, if that.

He responded by returning my kiss and pulling me close, wrapping each other in our arms and clinging to one other with a need for a companion. We were both in need of someone to protect us from the emptiness that surrounded us and the hollowness of an eternity, and our tight grips on one another only showed one another that all we needed was what was in our arms…

…and now that we knew, I don't think we ever wanted to let it go.