Shahrazád's Ghosts


Chapter 7: Peter (Edward) Part I


2350 A.D.


His first memory was of darkness interrupted by the Voice. The quiet trickle of syllables clawed into his consciousness more resolutely than all the beeps and hums and thrums of the machines keeping his body alive, giving his consciousness the buoyancy it needed to cling to the Voice at all.

Soft and low, gentle and firm, faint and finite, he listened to that Voice. It tickled into his senses until it woke them, forcing his eyes to face the dimly lit room of the cavern he found himself in. A low ceiling forged of rough rock curved above him and round him. He lay on a low cot, the scent of bleach and chemicals heavy in the air, and something else, something as sweet and as irresistible as the Voice.

At first, she was only a dark shadow, her movements blotting out the one dim lamp in the room. Until he grew strong enough to turn his head and then he could see the pale face that was the fulcrum of the shadows that surrounded her on all sides. Sequins on her black dress caught the light, but otherwise her figure was swallowed in the darkness her very dress was woven out of, broken only by the darting of her elegant hands as she adjusted machines or flipped through the pages of a book.

She spoke quietly and continually to him, but he could not understand the words, only that he could listen to her forever. He dreamt of the Voice long after its syllables had extinguished and were replaced by the rhythmic monotony of the machines.

It was not often the Voice came to him. Sometimes, the Voice was absent though the Speaker came and hid her sounds within her and let the silence swallow her in the same way the shadows veiled her presence.

Sometimes, it was another who came -a man, tall and angular with short hair on his head and a frown on his face. The white shirts he wore shouted against the shadows and made it impossible to hide him, but he never broke the silence. He came, methodically tended his tasks, and left again, leaving Peter to dream about the Voice the next time his eyelids grew too heavy for them to stay open, searching the shadows, in hopes the silence would be broken again.

The words soaked into his mind in the same way that the heavy porridge soaked into his body and coalesced to form flesh and muscle over the lean, unused bones lying on the bed. It was not long (and yet too long) before he was not only sitting upright and feeding himself, but also speaking and imitating syllables and understanding the meaning behind the sounds he waded through.

"You must speak to him," the Voice chided the Silent One, one rare day when they both came together.

"Why?" he asked, in a voice so deep it rumbled against the walls of his chest.

"That is how he will learn to speak," she said.

"You do not bother with the Others. Why this one?"

"He will not be like the Others," she said. "He is not meant to be a Brave, but a Pirate. He is one who will grow up."

The Silent One grumbled and, in the days that followed, he did speak, but the words were unwillingly uttered and spoken more in mockery than in a desire to impart knowledge. He did communicate…but only that he did not think Peter worth the bother of communicating with.

It was not long before the machines joined the silence of the cavern and the Silent One carried him through a dark passageway and through three sets of metal doorways. The last door opened into a much larger, brighter room filled with a bustle of both beds and bodies. Peter blinked his eyes in surprise at the sudden brightness of the overhead lights and then was hit with the scent of sweat and food and disinfectant.

Each wall of the room was plastered and painted white, though handprints on the wall marred its unbroken whiteness. On the cots lining each wall, men lay or sat or walked aimlessly around. There were over ten men in the room, each of the exact same height and build, though some were thinner and less muscled and some were denser and thicker than the others. Their hair, while varying from fine fuzz to an inch or two of growth, was exactly the same shade of dark red and each face looked upon the newcomer with dull green eyes and sharply angled features. Their identical white shirts and matching white trousers did nothing to individuate them, nor did their bare feet.

The Silent One set Peter down on his feet and steadied him to keep him from stumbling. With a chorus of grunts and gurgled sounds, the men coalesced around Peter, all reaching out with curious hands to grasp him, until the Silent One gave a loud whistle and a low growl. Then the men scurried to their bunks and lay down upon them and did not try to approach or make another sound.

In comparison with the men on their bunks, Peter noticed that the Silent One was different. For one, he was paler, as white as the walls of the room and not blushed with color and warmth like the men around him. For another, his eyes were as vibrantly red as his lips and his hair. The men obviously feared him and kept him in healthy respect. Each of his commands were obeyed without hesitation and they cowered before him when he reprimanded them, which was often.

"Here's your new bed," the Silent One said and he motioned to the bed closest to the door. "Good luck."

When the Silent One reemerged sometime later, it was with a cart of steaming bowls of porridge and cups of water. The room erupted in a happy chorus of hoots and howls and it was not until the Silent One banged a stick against the metal stands of his cart that the men scrambled back onto their cots, each waiting silently with their eyes fixed on the cart as it passed by. They drank their portions with a mad, desperate scramble, each holding up their bowl for a second portion, of which they were granted.

Then, the Silent One vanished again.

This routine continued. Multiple times a day, the Silent One came with a cart of food. Then, he came and turned off the lights and they all lay on their beds to sleep. In the mornings, he came with fresh clothes and he forced them each into a long hall where they were expected to undress and wash and then clothe themselves anew. If they tarried or failed at these tasks, their flesh felt the bite of the Silent One's stick until they cooperated again.

After the first meal of the day, Peter's schedule diverted from the other men. Peter assumed they had their own lessons, but he never knew what they learned. The men in the room stayed as they were, but the Silent One took Peter away. For hours, he was taught words and sounds and syllables and it grew his mind in the same way the porridge grew his body.

Sometimes it was through a machine which spewed out stale, mechanical phonemes or phrases. Sometimes, it was a screen which displayed objects and spoke words and produced a written form of the object for him to ingest. Other times, the Silent One was forced to sit and grudgingly converse with him.

"I really hate this," he said one day. "There's a thousand things I would rather do than sit here and teach you to speak. But if I do not obey, I will not be rewarded and I would do a lot worse things to get rewarded than this." Then he gave a wide, gleaming grin as if there were an underlying meaning to what he said that Peter could not know. "Let's get on with this. The sooner you can sound intelligent, the sooner I don't have to put up with you and your inane thoughts anymore."

Peter did not know how to respond to this so he sat quietly on the metal chair beneath him, chipping away at the dull paint with his fingernails.

"What is your name?" the Silent One asked.

"What is a name?"

"Idiot, a name is what you are called by. It's what you are known as. If I call your name, you answer and know I am addressing you. What is it that our Lady always calls you?"

"Peter," he answered.

"Good. You are called Peter because you are one of the few who wake hearing our Lady's stories. Most never meet her and fewer speak with her, but you, well, you are going to be in charge of the storerooms of milk and medicine and so your training is a little different from the others."

"What is your name?" Peter asked in return.

The man laughed. "I am called John, but you will address me as 'Sir' and I am one of the Lost Boys. I take care of all the new Braves."

"What does that mean?"

"Your companions in the bunkroom? Those are the Braves. They are Tiger Lily's army. It is my job to keep them alive and keep them from killing each other long enough for them to be ready for their next level of training. Though if I do my job well enough with you, I might just be able to be promoted to something more interesting than dealing with all you dunderheads."

"If you do not like it, then why do you do it?" Peter asked.

"Oh, you will not be able to understand yet. You may never understand. If she ever promotes you, then you will understand and you will do anything and everything our Lady asks you to do, and then some."

Peter nodded. He knew enough to know he would already do anything the Voice asked of him, not because of any possible retribution, but because he wished to do anything in his power to please her.

John groaned and then let it progress into a mocking laughter. "Oh, you are a sap. I see you are mooning over Darling already. Don't flatter yourself. The Ice Queen never lets any of us within a hundred yards of her and it's not for want of trying. Any and every one of the Pirates, Braves, and Lost Boys would gnaw off his own arm if it would get him a chance with our Lady, but none has ever succeeded. Save yourself the heartache and forget about her now. She will reward you greatly for your service, but she will never care if you live or die."

Peter grimaced, but did not speak the doubt or the temporary shattering of hope that John's words created, but he had the feeling that John knew anyway.

"All you Pirates and Braves start out so very predictably. You pick one center point and let it define you for all of your short, pathetic lives."

"What do you mean?" Peter asked.

"Oh, the Creatives aren't so intolerable- they make music while they work or create art in their bunkrooms and they grow moody over profound musings that nobody else finds so very profound. Occasionally we develop the stray scholar or boxer, but those are rare and barely worth mentioning.

Then there are the ones who find religion or piety and start obsessively praying the Rosary or praying to Mecca or following the Eightfold Path and do not approve of the rest of us, the happiest of all. We are the blessed hedonists and, in our hearts, we pray our own mantra every day: 'Let us eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.' Ours is the most fulfilling of existences by far, and I believe I am quite an expert on all the pitiful attempts the inhabitants of Neverland make to find a reason to keep living.

"The sorriest saps of all are you Romantics. You wake struck with 'Cupid's bolt' and suffer from 'love's wound' all the days of your short lives. You spend day and night in lovelorn distress, pining over our elusive mistress as if Puck himself painted your eyelids before you woke."

Then John stood upright, his hand over his heart as he changed the cadence of his voice and closed his eyes in mock emotion as he spoke:

"'I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again.

Mine ear is much enamored of thy note,

So is mine eye enthrallèd to thy shape,

And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me

On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.'"

Then John burst into laughter. "Oh, if only one of you lot could find your lifelong passion requited and then, perhaps, the rest of us could have some reprieve from your incessant daydreams!"

"What happens to us all?" Peter asked, uncomfortable at both his sudden bout of transparency and John's mockery.

John gave a dark laugh. "Oh, if you stay Pirates, then you grow up, of course. Those of you set to become Braves become the most devout followers of Epicurus for you never have the chance to know of any other way. You fight and build and labor for the good of our beneficent patroness and all her sensual bounty. You will worship none but her and the ambrosia that only she can give them, for she is our living incarnation of Dionysus. We all, like the Etruscan pirates, can only look in awe at the 'beauty and pleasure' of her vines and berries."

John dropped his voice and fell back into the voice he used when he read stories again as he passionately motioned to the room around them.

"'Wine. That is what happened first of all. It was all alongside the swift black ship. Sweet to drink, it was splashing around, smelling good, and the fragrance that rose up was something immortalizing. The sailors were seized with amazement, all of them, at the sight.'"

"I don't understand," Peter said, feeling all the more uncomfortable at this picture John painted of the Lady he had felt so drawn to, and befuddled by all the incomprehensible words John was using.

"You aren't meant to. Do your job well and maybe, someday, if you are especially fortunate, you will discover all the true ecstasies and freedoms our Lady can pour out for you."

oooo


It was not long before his "training" included more than language and was expanded to physical exertions. John enjoyed this training more as it afforded him the opportunity to fight against Peter. John moved so fast, Peter's eyes could not hope to follow him and the strength of his arms was more than Peter could ever hope to best. John slowed himself down to try to give Peter more of an opportunity for a challenge, but he did not hide the crooked smile on his face whenever Peter surrendered.

The other aspect of training that John didn't mind so much was reading. John enjoyed reading even more than he enjoyed sparring. Peter quickly came to the conclusion that John didn't bother choosing books with Peter's enjoyment in mind, but brought in whichever book John was most interested in and the pair took turns reading aloud until Peter was as fluid and as animated in his readings as John.

The trainings accomplished their goals. Peter could quip back and forth with John without stumbling over words or phrases and he could read any book John left out for him to devour. Peter was faster and stronger than any of the Braves and they gave up fighting him for his extra porridge or his books under his bed when they realized they could not best him anymore.

None of the others learned to speak, though they communicated enough in their own method of language they developed (often involving a solid punch to the nose or a screech of disapproval) and none of them stayed in the bunkroom long. One by one, each of the beds emptied and filled again. John came every few weeks to remove one and he took the chosen victim out of the bunkroom in handcuffs and they never returned to the bunkroom again. Before long, a new Brave arrived, thinner and weaker than all the others, with almost no hair to speak of, and this new man soon became the scapegoat of all the other's ill-tempers and most often to have his gruel stolen or his bunk messed or blamed for the errors of the others and punished by John for it.

Peter didn't bother with the rest for much other than to ensure they left him alone, though he did intervene a time or two on behalf of the new members of the bunkroom. When the others blamed the newcomers for offenses they did not commit, Peter spoke up and declared their innocence. John only smirked and punished the new ones any way. This baffled Peter because Peter got the sense that John knew everything and could understand his thoughts without him having to bother speaking them out loud. He wondered if that was only true of Peter's thoughts and not true of the minds of the wild, frenetic creatures he shared space with.

By the time Peter's hair fell to his ears and his arm muscles had grown to be as large as most of the Brave's legs, John came for him again.

"Congratulations. You have completed the first phase of your training. Our Lady wishes to place you in your assignment."

Peter beamed with pride and burst with curiosity wondering just what this would mean. He hoped this would allow him another long-awaited glimpse of the Lady herself. It had been so long since he last had a glimpse of her that he could barely disentangle his imaginary reconstructions from his actual memories. He hoped to flood his mind with tangible experiences of the material woman to bathe the heavenly specter in his mind with flesh.

He did not have long to wait. John brought him through an extensive maze of corridors until they came to a metal door, identical to the ones enclosing the bunkroom. John rapped twice against it and the door opened to show a second set of doors. These also opened.

The room inside was different than any other Peter had seen. It was perfectly pentagonal with firm, straight walls and no evidence of rock faces beneath. Ceilings, taller than he had ever seen, were painted with geometric kaleidoscopes of colors. Each wall was decorated with designs of gold and dark blue and deep red and black and green and these patterns were illuminated by vaulted lights. A soft carpet covered the floor and muted all sounds seeking to reverberate throughout the nearly empty room. There was no furniture and no other object in the room which made the room feel even larger and more barren.

Standing perfectly still in the center of the room was their Lady. He had never seen her outside of the shadows and the sight of her in the light took his breath away. Pale blue lace dripped from her wrists and onto the floor from the train of her long dress. A matching, translucent veil fell back from her hair to reveal brunette curls falling to just below her shoulders. Golden eyes bore into him from her otherwise expressionless face. Then he caught that scent, that glorious, beautiful scent. It washed over him again, tickling his nose and making him want to close his eyes and dream of holding her in his arms and seeing if her lips tasted as delicious as they looked.

Ambrosia, he thought to himself. Surely that is the scent of the very sustenance of the gods on Olympus and one draught would grant immortality.

John snorted, breaking the spell that had fallen upon him and making Peter flush at the thought of his thoughts being laid bare for John's reproach. Then, even worse, he wondered if their Lady could also hear his thoughts.

"Peter, my Lady," John said with a slightly irreverent bow and a lazy hand wave between the pair. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and waited in impatient anticipation.

"Thank you, John. Your medicine is waiting for you in your room," the Lady said with the slightest of nods in his direction.

John's face broke into the most genuine smile Peter had ever seen from the man, almost gleeful, and before he could blink, John was gone.

Peter swallowed sharply and his cheeks grew hot when he realized he was alone with the Lady.

She was smaller than he expected, the top of her head barely reached his shoulders, and her frame was so slight he feared he could break her in half if he wished to. By the assurance with which she moved, he wondered if she was the one who could break him and if appearances could really be trusted.

"Peter, I hear you have learned quite well," she said, her voice a symphony of sounds to his ears.

"I have tried, my Lady," he said, wondering if that was the appropriate way to address her but not knowing what else to say.

She approached him and circled him, looking at him carefully from head to toe, and he shifted uncomfortably on his feet, wondering if she was pleased in what she saw or if she was rifling through his head to withdraw whatever thoughts dwelt there.

"Very good. I have need of you in our Storeroom," she said. "You must do precisely as I say and show yourself trustworthy. Can I trust you, Peter?"

"Yes."

"I am glad," she said and the barest hint of a smile ghosted her lips and Peter knew he had no choice. Anything this woman wanted would be hers, if it was in his power to grant it to her.

By the delicate way her smile expanded, he knew she knew it, too.

Oooo


A man named Mullins took Peter to a complicated series of tunnels and halls which connected with more unmarked doors than Peter could keep track of. Mullins was a gruff man with a thick, red beard and hair that fell in braids down his back. He was a bit larger and heavier than John and he walked with a bit of a limp on his right leg. They walked through dim lights and shadowy darkness for hours until they arrived at a set of larger rooms and well-lit passages where fresh air blew from vents above them. Finally, Mullins opened one door and told him he could stay there with Smee.

"Welcome to the Jolly Roger," said a man within. He sat on a small cot, his back hunched into a curve, and his hands placed loosely on his knees. Peter gaped. He had never seen anything like the man. His hair fell grey and white, except on the top, where it no longer grew at all and bare skin peeked through. His skin was a mottled pink and brown and hung off the edges of his bones like a mussed shirt worn too many times. He looked at Peter through merry, watery eyes and when he smiled, his mouth revealed large gaps where his teeth should have been.

"What are you?" Peter asked.

"What? What?" the man burst into a wheezing laughter and grasped his knees to contain himself. "I believe you mean who? I am Smee."

"He's the oldest of us, now that Peter is gone," Mullins said.

"I am not gone. I am here."

"No, young one. You are Peter's replacement. Peter was the first of us and he lived till all his teeth were gone and his eyes could barely see, but he lived. Once he failed to wake, they had to make a new one. Same as what will happen to me. Someday sooner rather than later, I will join Peter in the Happy Hunting Grounds and that will be that. A new Smee will take over my bunk and my job in the Jolly Roger, same as what will happen to you."

Peter could not comprehend being so replaceable. It irked him in a way he could not fully put a finger on.

"What is it that you do?" he asked.

"I tend the machines that make milk."

"What is milk?"

"What the Braves and Lost Boys eat. Mullins, here, he is more important to us. He makes meals for the Pirates like us...and the young Braves who haven't learned to drink milk."

"We do not drink milk?"

"You are welcome to try!" Mullins said with a hooting laugh. "George tried it once and the look on his face was enough to scare the rest of us off for life! I'll stick to my porridge and stews, thank you!"

"What is my job to be?" Peter asked.

"Oh, it will be the same as your namesake. Peter kept the bottles in the Storeroom and made sure everyone in Neverland gets their milk or medicine, though, towards the end, he only managed the milk. The medicine proved a bit too dangerous. There are some in Neverland who are a bit too anxious to get their medicine and they tried to force Peter into extra deliveries. He lost a hand and his right leg from it until the Lady intervened."

Peter grimaced at the thought of losing a limb. He had twisted a wrist in a scrabble over extra porridge one day and it hurt him for a week. He couldn't imagine losing the entire appendage.

"It isn't so bad, most of the time," Smee said, noting Peter's glance at his legs. "Tootles took over the medicine deliveries and so you won't have to mind it. I can even teach you to make the bottles sing."

oooo


Smee was true to his word. With carefully measured differences in liquids in each glass container, his metal spoon really could make the bottles sing. The favored pastime of the Pirates in their resting time was to compose songs together, each perfecting sounds on their chosen hand-made instruments. The box-drums and spoons kept rhythm while the bottles and pipe flutes made the melodies. The songs accompanied them to their shifts in their various assignments around Neverland, though they could no longer be sung by the chorus of voices. Solo performances continued throughout the long hours of work until the Pirates could reconvene with their shipmates again.

Peter's work in the Storeroom was mundane, tedious work, but it was not difficult. Huge storage vaults required stocking with bottles, each bottle had to be properly labeled with a series of numbers and letters, and kept track of in a computerized database. Orders came for different bottles each day and he had to load carts with the required orders and deliver each to a variety of halls, windows in rooms, door slots, and little drones tasked with special deliveries. He walked for hours, carefully fulfilling each order and taking away the empty bottles to be sent to the cleaning department, where Cecco or James were in charge of cleaning.

There was a total of eight Pirates in Neverland. Two cooked, two manned the machines that filled the bottles, two worked in the Storeroom delivering the bottles, and two were in charge of cleaning. In this way, the operations of Neverland continued unceasing. While one Pirate worked, another slept and then the pair exchanged again places again.

Peter's reward for all his efforts came once a month when he made his delivery to Her. She requested a different order every two weeks. Peter delivered one and Smee the other. She had no box or window or slot to place her order in and so they were forced to knock on her door and hand-deliver it to her. If she was away, they left her order on the threshold of the great room for her to receive later.

For Peter, this delivery was the highlight of each month. For ever so many precious moments, he stood on her threshold. If he was especially fortunate, he gazed upon his Lady and all her solemn stillness and heard a syllable or two of her Voice. Then he ruminated over those freshly acquired memories through all the mundane tedium of the rest of the week, dreaming of the day she would fill his soul with more words and let him stay all day in her presence and gaze upon the loveliness she wore as closely as her skin.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" John said when Peter made his first delivery to his former teacher. John lived in hallway of single rooms, far across Neverland. These were the largest and most elaborate quarters of any in Neverland, save those of their Lady. Each room housed a single inhabitant, but each personalized their room and made it their own.

The inhabitants were, as John explained, the Lost Boys. Each resembled John so strikingly that if they did not wear their hair in a variety of lengths, Peter would not have been able to tell the difference between them.

"I suppose so," Peter answered with a slight grimace. He former tutor was none the happier for their reunion and Peter had to admit the feeling was mutual.

John chuckled harshly and took his bottles from Peter's cart. He wrinkled his nose as he opened them to smell what was within.

"She wouldn't give me the good stuff this time, eh? Figures. The old miser wishes to keep it all to herself. Well, I'll be a good boy and maybe I'll get it sooner rather than later. Be on your game, Petey. The last supply run dummy got ambushed by newborns. I'd hate to see you come to the same fate."

John laughed at the obvious confusion on Peter's face, lifted the bottle upwards before taking a swing, and then shut the door behind him.

oooo


Peter's hair had grown past his shoulders and he knew the halls of both the Jolly Roger, Neverwood, and the Home Under the Ground as surely as he memorized each of the labels he so carefully categorized. Then, it happened – the moment he had heretofore only dreamt of. His last supply run ended at the room of his Lady. When she opened the doors for him, he was surprised to find her prostrate on the carpet, her head carefully pillowed on her hands and her eyes closed. He quietly knelt and placed her bottle at the entrance and turned to leave, but her low voice called him to stay.

"Peter, come here," she said.

He obeyed, his heart beating in his chest at the unexpected sound of her voice.

"You are able to read, yes?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Take that book on the floor there and read it to me," she said. "Yes, sit here, beside me. I wish to hear the words instead of reading them myself. Good. Start at the beginning."

He obeyed. He sat on the floor, only an arm's breadth from her, and he carefully flipped open the first page of the nearly tattered book. He cleared his throat before he began to read:

"All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, 'Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!' This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end. "

He read to her until his voice grew hoarse and still, he kept reading. He didn't mind, if it meant he could sit so close to her, sneaking glances at how her hair slipped over her back and revealed the thin straps of the violet dress beneath or he could let the sweet scent of her go to his head and make his vision swim and his breath catch in his chest. She did not move or change positions or so much as inhale, but she listened quietly, her eyes closed the entire time. He had only just started reading about the Mermaid Lagoon when she dismissed him.

"That is enough. Thank you. You may go," she said.

Peter left, pausing to cast one final glance at the Lady on the floor.

oooo


The next time she asked him to read, his hair had grown to the middle of his back and a beard grew thick and nearly as long down his chest. He did not mind so much as this made him look like all the other Pirates and less like the Braves and the Lost Boys. They always kept their hair short and very few grew beards. He did not care for them and he preferred to keep company with the other Pirates, where he belonged. He kept to his work, as he always did, and continued to sing and weave melodic stories with the other Pirates.

"Has she ever asked you to read to her?" Peter asked Smee one day.

Smee chuckled and stroked his wild beard. He nodded and spoke wistfully. "Three times, I think. If was Peter, the old Peter, was right in what he thought, it was only when her eyes are black as olives that she asks one of us to read to her. Those are the days she is downright melancholy and wishes for company. It's only you and me that can read now. None of the others can. They have no need. Our Lady says we don't all need to know stories."

The other Pirates enjoyed a good story, but this meant Peter and Smee were the main story-tellers around the Jolly Roger. The tales spoke of places and experiences that none but Smee could truly comprehend.

"I remember seeing the sun, back in the days when Peter and I were young," he said once. "There were so many different kinds of people there, in the lands above the ground. There were other living creatures. I do not remember what a horse looks like, but it must have had four legs instead of two."

All the Pirates clung to each drop of first-hand knowledge that the old man still had, each trying, and failing, to visualize what it was he spoke of for themselves.

Books were hard to come by around the Jolly Roger. John would sometimes let Peter borrow some, if he promised to deliver milk to him first. Peter readily agreed. He would make twice his normal number of deliveries if it meant he could read a book after his work was over and it was time for him to rest.

The Lady of Neverland had been as reclusive and as silent as a shadow during the months that followed the day she asked him to read. Some months, he wondered if she were within the cavernous halls of Neverland at all. In his cherished, private moments, after his hands had stilled and his body rested on his cot, he thought back on that day with her like it were a stolen, hidden treasure, only for him. He remembered the sheen of the light reflecting off her hair, the way her lashed eyes flickered with unfathomable emotion, and the drapes and folds of fabric that fell from her prone body on the floor like water.

He dreamed that someday, she would ask him to read to her again and he could once again feast his eyes on her uninhibited loveliness. Every month, when it came time to approach her hallowed sanctuary, his heart pounded and he could barely keep his thoughts together. Every month, when the door remained closed and a note told him to place his delivery on the threshold, his heart sank straight through the rock floor to the tunnels far beneath his feet, and he walked twice as slow back to the Storeroom.

Would it have been better to never lay eyes upon her? He wondered to himself. Then I would not know what I was missing.

One day, he gave a gentle knock on the door and her voice, sweeter than all the melodies of all the Pirate songs put together, welcomed him in. She was lying on the floor, her face staring up at the ceiling through closed eyelids, and rivers of crimson and orange fabric pooled over her and onto the floor around her. He walked as silently as he could and placed the bottles on the floor beside the threshold. He gazed upon her then, allowing his senses the feast they had long desired but been denied. He was about to turn and leave when she stopped him.

"Stay and read to me, Peter," she said. The thrum of his heart felt too loud for his words to be heard, but he still did as she instructed. He knelt on the floor beside her, so close he could feel the deceptive coolness that clung to her flaming dress.

"Where would you like me to begin?" he asked as he picked up the same book she had asked him to read from before.

"You ended at the Mermaid's Lagoon," she said. "Carry on from there."

He flipped through the pages, the task made more difficult by how his hands shook in nervousness, until he came to the page they last ended on.

"If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids singing," Peter began.

He read to her until the very last page of the book and then he decried the treacherous book for not having more pages. Despite the sleep threatening his eyes and the weariness of his limbs, he would have read the entire book over again, if it meant he could stay by his Lady's side. Throughout the hours he read, she did not once open her eyes, shift a finger, or move with the rise and fall of breath. She might as well have been carved from stone for all the signs of life she gave.

"As you look at Wendy, you may see her hair becoming white, and her figure little again, for all this happened long ago. Jane is now a common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret; and every spring cleaning time, except when he forgets, Peter comes for Margaret and takes her to the Neverland, where she tells him stories about himself, to which he listens eagerly. When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter's mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless. THE END," Peter read and slowly closed the book. He placed it on the floor beside him, not daring any other movements for fear it would break the spell of magic enchanting them both into stillness.

"Do you ever wish you had a mother, Peter?" she suddenly asked him.

"I have never considered it, my Lady," he answered.

"No Peter. You may call me Darling."

"Thank you, my Darling."

She gave a light laugh. "While that sounds very well, you may simply call me Darling."

"Yes, Darling."

"I wonder what it would have been like, sometimes," she continued. "I think I would have liked to have a mother."

Peter did not know quite how to answer that. He did not think a mother was something that was as easy to come by as the book made it sound. He sat quietly, musing over the other books that John had and if any of them had more useful information on such a topic. He did not think they did.

She opened her eyes then and graced him with the warmest smile he had yet seen from her. It made every edge of his nerves, from the crown of his head to the very tips of his toes, combust into tiny pinpricks of flames within him. He could not stop grinning or keep his mind on the walkway as he left, leading to a small stumble in the walkway and an extra-long path back to the Jolly Roger.

Oooooo


Months and months and months passed before he saw Darling again. He occasionally caught glimpses of her when she floated through the halls, typically accompanied by a Lost Boy or two, and whispering instructions that he could not hear. Her door remained closed and she remained distant.

His days knew their own rhythm and change. For one, deliveries increased at such a rate that he could hardly keep up with the demand. There was a time or two when he had to leave some of his unfinished orders for Smee to complete when he took over at the shift change. For another, Chas was gone one day and Peter came to know what happened when Pirates died. He was younger than Smee, but he had been unwell for some time and it was not a surprise when he left them.

It was a solemn occasion. The Pirates prone to religion gave words of wisdom and prayers and exhortations from their holy books. The Pirates prone to poetry composed their own odes for their fallen elder. A few could not be bothered. A few cried. Alan punched George in the face and gave him a black eye, though no one could figure out what George had done or how the black eye helped matters. All the Pirates came together to sing their songs of lament for the man.

A few months later, a new "Chas" appeared in their after-hours gatherings, accompanied by the ever-vigilant Mullins.

"Here he is, Pete," Mullins said as he introduced their new companion. "Fresh out of Kensington Gardens and ready for work."

The new Chas was a thin, wiry man without so much as a wisp of a mustache. His red hair grew in a short, spiky carpet over his pale head. He could barely put a sentence together and it took months for the Pirates to teach him to speak properly. It took half that time to teach him to sing and tap a beat on the rock floor with his feet in time to their songs. He caught on quickly enough, but Peter missed the old Chas. Peter wondered how long before he would be replaced with another Peter...and how many Peters had come before him.

oooooo


When the next summons came from the Lady of Neverland, Peter was surprised. It was not time for her monthly delivery, but a note appeared on his computer screen asking him to come directly. He obeyed, gladly.

When he came, she was not in her normal room and he stood in confusion outside the door, wondering if he had misunderstood his directions.

"Peter, over here," she called. She emerged from another door in the hall beyond, attired only in a lavender silk robe. Her hair fell in a wild jumble around her shoulders and her eyes shown a dusky gold.

"I need your assistance," she said and she turned, confident he would follow her. He did, of course, and she led him into a large dressing room. It was full of closets and shelves and drawers in one half the room. The other half contained a large bathtub, mirror, and sink. All surfaces in the room were scattered in a disarray of discarded clothes, shoes, and various bottles and jars and ribbons and things that sparkled. The room smelled of fresh soap and perfume and the air felt heavy with moisture, as if hot water had recently been poured and then drained.

She took the two bottles he carried from him and used her teeth to open them. She sat down on a chair, not minding the pile of clothes covering it, and she drained both bottles without stopping to take a breath between. Her tongue cleaned off the bright smear of red that remained on her lips when she finished and she relaxed into the chair behind her, her eyes closed for a moment.

Peter wondered if he should have left the moment he completed his delivery, but he was so fascinated by the sight of her that he could not move. He had never seen her so unconstrained and the sight of her warred with this mental image of her as the perpetually meticulous statue. Now, the Lady did not fill the room as a queen giving court but as a woman preparing for an outing.

Which is exactly what she was doing. She pulled a pile of dark blue cloth off a side chair and held it up.

"I have failed get these buttons to button," she said, biting her bottom lip between her teeth and letting her eyes fall down to the floor as she did. "Can you help me?"

"Of course, my Lady," he said, swallowing too sharply and trying to ignore the flood of other offers of assistance he wished he could grant her.

"Darling," she reminded him.

"Of course, Darling," he said.

She gave him hint of a smile before vanishing into one of the many closets. She returned without the robe, but with the troublesome garment covering everything but her back. A baffling series of ties and buttons and clasps hung over her bare back and she glanced back at her reflection in the mirror behind her, frowning.

"I hate this dress," she said. She managed to clasp some of the straps over her lower back and around her neck, but the central row of ties, Peter did not think were humanly possible for her to reach, though by the looks of it, it had not stopped her from trying.

It took three attempts and two mirrors for her to direct him how to properly encase her in the complicated dress. He flushed each time his fingers brushed against her bare, cold, perfect skin, in awe at his good fortune for such an opportunity. The awareness of her beneath his fingers did not aid their manual dexterity and he fumbled all the more for his fluster. The end result, though, was stunning. The dark blue brought out the rich paleness of her skin, contrasting with the folds of fabric which pulled tight and then fell to reveal curves beneath that he had only ever imagined but never been privy to see for himself. He forgot himself entirely, gawking in open admiration with the finished presentation.

Darling watched him closely and she gave a tight-lipped smile.

"I see it suits me," she said.

He stumbled to contain his reaction better, though the flush on his cheeks gave him away. He cleared his throat, but he could not think of anything to say.

"I must admit the dress may suit me better than the affair to which I must wear it. I dread these awful affairs," Darling said. She picked up a set of bracelets and began to clasp them around her wrists, sending a scattering of light shards across the room.

"Where do you have to go?" he asked.

"The city above us. To maintain good relations with my business partners, and the politicians which grant me my permits, I must make an appearance from time-to-time at their charity balls and diplomatic dinners. I am one of the primary patrons of tonight's event and so I cannot avoid it. It will be all boredom and droll discussions, but it must be done."

He didn't understand her explanation, but he nodded as if he did.

"'Mrs. Darling quivered and went to the window," she recited from memory. "'It was securely fastened. She looked out, and the night was peppered with stars. They were crowding round the house, as if curious to see what was to take place there, but she did not notice this, nor that one or two of the smaller ones winked at her. Yet a nameless fear clutched at her heart and made her cry, 'Oh, how I wish that I wasn't going to a party to-night.'"

He thought she was about to dismiss him. Instead, she took him by the hand and guided him to the messy counter surrounding the sink. She gave him a tray of sparkling pins and jewels and various bottle of substances.

"When I ask for something, you must hand it to me," she said.

He nodded.

In this way, she completed painting her face to make her cheeks glow and her now light golden eyes even more brilliant. She coaxed her hair into organized waves around her face and piled on top of her head with a series of pins. Finally, she darkened her lips and placed shoes on her feet that forced her so upright that she almost reached his nose instead of his chin. Then she gave herself a final perusal in the mirror, fixing another errant hair, before unplugging her various machines.

"There. That ought to do it," she said.

"You are beautiful," he said, openly admiring her reflection in the mirror again, not caring if it was the right thing to say or the wrong. She gazed back at his reflection as well, her golden eyes meeting his own green eyes for just a moment before she dropped them to her hands and nodded.

"I am grateful for your assistance. You may now leave," she said and she swept out of the room before giving him a second glance. In the hall outside, a Lost Boy waited for her, also dressed impeccably in dark blue and black. Peter's heart spiked with a sudden burst of jealousy when he saw the man offer her an arm, which she took. The sound of their footsteps was soon swallowed by the shadows of the tunnel and Peter was left to wallow in his exultation and his misery.

Peter could barely sleep that night, so full was his mind with visions of that day and so full was his heart with admiration for his Lady. He was still awake when he received another summons, this time in his private quarters he shared with Smee, the pair of cots and chest of drawers which he called his own space. Now, her voice through an intercom rattled him from semi-coherency and he bolted upright.

"Peter, I need your assistance again," she said.

He pulled on his clothes as quickly as he could and fairly ran through the halls to where he had last seen her. Sure enough, she was waiting for him in the doorway, still in her formal apparel, but the rows of ties and clasps and buttons of her dress were all undone, save for the center of her back.

"Was the affair as terrible as you thought it would be?" he asked.

"Oh, worse. Far, far worse," she said. Her eyes were closed and she let the faintest hint of a smile on her lips bely the strength of her answering words.

"I am sorry to hear it," he said.

"Not as sorry as I to endure it. Now, this dress. It confounds me again. Maybe I should have just torn it to bits rather than make you help me again, but you said it looks nice so maybe I will keep it."

"Don't destroy it!" he said. "If only to give me the opportunity to assist you again someday."

He gave her a wide, crooked grin, the tiredness and lack of sleep making him bolder than he would usually be. He tried to check himself and remember his place, but with the scent of her to fragrant around him and the deeper recesses of her back becoming visible to him, he could only think of her and how much more he wanted and wished for. He drew his fingers along the buttons, intentionally brushing against the skin beneath more than was warranted, dangerously approaching a caress rather than a fumble with a button. He allowed his fingers to lightly move a stray strand of hair out of the way of where he worked, wishing all the time that he could let his hands remain long after the clasps and ties were removed.

"There, Cinderella," he said. "You have been rescued from your enchanted gown and glass slippers."

She clung to the front of the dress to keep it upright and gave him a nod of thanks. "Cinderella? Yes, that is in my story, but I never heard about the enchanted gown. Do you know the tale?"

"John let me borrow a book once which gave it," Peter said. "Would you like me to tell it to you?"

She nodded, but first she vanished into her closet and reappeared in her robe. She sat back on the chair, her legs crossed neatly in front of her and she leaned forward to listen while her fingers wrestled to remove the various pins in her hair.

"Well, once upon a time, there was a young girl who loved her mother very much. She wept at the grave of her mother every day and tried hard to live as her mother would have wished her to," he began. "She was as good as she was beautiful, though the kinder and more beautiful she became, the more her step-mother hated her…."

When Darling's hair fell down in loosened tresses around her shoulders and Peter finished telling his story, she carefully uncrossed her legs and placed all her removed pins on a table nearby.

"I am glad to know how it ends, now," she said. "I do not like the story though."

"Why not?"

"Beauty is easily attained, but goodness is not. Beauty is more valued by most, and true goodness is harder to find than fairy godmothers and glass slippers...and I do not believe that all the princes or all the kingdoms in the world could replace the mother she lost or heal the rejection and ill-use she faced from her sisters."

"Could her goodness even shine through if not tested by the ill-treatment of her stepsisters, though?" Peter said.

"Do you believe that evil deeds are punished in the same way that good deeds are rewarded?" she asked him.

He shrugged. "That is the way it goes in the stories."

She grew distant and preternaturally still. He almost feared she had forgotten he was there when she turned the full weight of her golden eyes on him again.

"Perhaps you can tell me those stories. Another time. You can go now."

Oooo


She did not ask him for help again after that night. He did not see her, except on the rare occasion when she was attending to business around the massive underground city in which she reigned as Lady.

"Petey, my man! Good work! Every Lost Boy in the place was living vicariously through you that night and what a night you had!" John had said, the day after when they crossed paths in the hall. "You have guts, I'll tell you that. Those moves with the buttons, whooee, you had us all so stirred up, I had to enact emergency protocols to settle the Boys all down again. You gotta tone it down a bit or none of them are going to be able to look at our Lady without your vivid fantasies running through our heads."

Peter gawked and flushed in embarrassment. "You mean, you all could read my mind?"

"You have seen all of us with red eyes? Yeah. All of us can read your mind. At all times. Normally it's a very mundane, tedious place to be and we'd all rather ignore you, but with that crush you have, and the lack of female companionship most of us suffer through, we all appreciate your attempts to…get close to the elusive Lady."

Peter had never stopped to think of it before. He had never seen another woman in the entirety of the underground city. It was entirely populated with men almost exactly like him, except warm and green-eyed or cold and red-eyed. But he had never seen another like Darling. He surged with an overflowing fire of possessiveness and jealousy at the thought of any other of the men in Neverland growing close to her or being permitted near her.

This only made John laugh harder and Peter found himself suddenly without his feet under him and pinned to the floor.

"I'd like to see you take on one of us, little man," he said. "Please, fight for the heart of our Lady with all your strength. I could use the entertainment."

John walked away, chuckling to himself the whole way and saying, "'Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.'"


Author's Notes:

First off, this website is being very cantankerous with its story updates and, for some reason, has stopped giving email notifications for anything.

Let's see if I can even keep up with my quotations…

Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie is referred to so many times in this chapter (and successive ones) that I don't even think I can list them all.

John refers to A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare, Act 2, Scene 1, 175 and Act 3, Scene 1, 140, and Act 1, Scene 1, 240. Then he quotes from the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, translated by Gregory Nagy.

Dionysus is the Greek god of wine, religious ecstasy, insanity, merrymaking, fertility, and a myriad of other things.

Cinderella-I am combining both the Brothers Grimm version and the Charles Perrault version here.