Pixie Hollow was a place fabulous even by the Neverland's standards, literally dripping with magic which seemed to seep from every corner of it. It was here, in the shade of the Home Tree towering over the valley that the next generations of fairies who each had some kind of specific talent, grew up, wallowing in the luxury of eternal happiness and laughter. If there was ever a place which fully deserved the name of the very heart of Neverland, it was Pixie Hollow. And it was the place that Tinkerbell proposed to go for an answer as to what was happening to the whole land, in hope that her sisters, whom she had left there, would be able to find it. If their magic couldn't find an answer – and who knows, maybe even a solution – then nobody was able to do it.
That was three hours ago. The children were flying now, fighting the gusts of the cold wind off which considerably slowed their flight, and shivering even though the snow storm had already ended. After the first attack of winter, the cold flakes had stopped falling but the amount that had already fallen still shone down below.
From the height they achieved, Peter Pan's team could easily see the extent of destruction stretching out all over the land they knew so well but which just now was almost unrecognizable. Some parts of Neverland didn't exist any more, and left behind big gaping holes of nothingness in the landscape. What was even more strange, was that winter didn't prevail everywhere because from up above, every now and again before the children's eyes appeared green spots of land where winter didn't reach. It was these areas that they landed on to regenerate their strength before their return to the cold and wind and the strange sky which seized them with fear. The sky was odd: livid, crossed with flashes of lightening time after time; what was even more unnatural was that they weren't accompanied by thunder which would have infallibly happened under normal circumstances.
Yet, when Peter and his companions landed in one such part of Neverland which remained untouched by winter, they were able to find even more items lying there, resembling those taken by them from the Mermaid Swamp (since it really couldn't be called a lagoon anymore). They found syringes, clocks, pens looking unlike those the Darlings were used to – small objects, hard to notice in the luxuriant grass, growing in those small oases of verdure as if nothing had happened. Their biggest find however struck them with such awe that they still couldn't shake it off.
It was during their first stopover. This part of the Neverwood above which they flew when they noticed it, was very small, barely a scrap of land not much bigger than the room which could be taken by their underground house, clearly distinguished from the world of winter around. The children sat on the ground, stupendously warm, as the area maintained the same summer temperatures that Neverland had had before winter had taken the whole Neverwood over. When suddenly, Toddles pointed at some rather low elevation behind the clearing, covered in snow like everything else there and asked in a hysterical voice which wouldn't ever be expected to be heard from a Lost Boy: "What is that?!" The boy's friends turned back, unsure what he was asking about. Peter went out for a moment and came near the mysterious mould. The children watched him dig up the snow and carry the object with some effort, still partially covered with hoarfrost and came back to them.
It was a frozen body of a mermaid.
It was the ginger haired one who once was the first to make an attempt at drowning Wendy. Streaks of orange hair, now stiff from the frost, partially covered her body. Her dead glassy eyes were fixed on them. There was no wound on her body, not one at least which could be seen at the first glance so the reason of the fish girl's death must have been freezing. It was only strange how she could find herself in there, alone and far from her companions. The other strange thing was that the dead girl couldn't now be described as a mermaid any more. In the place where she used to have a tail, there was a pair of human legs, not any different than those of Wendy. The aforementioned girl vomited at this sight, the same as Tiger Lily and Cubby. They preferred not to take a closer look at the dead former mermaid. So using this as an excuse, they soared into the sky, while the others covered the frozen body the layer of snow on which had just started to melt in the warmth of the glade with flowers growing there in quantities.
From that time they found a few such places, untouched by omnipresent winter. Fortunately at least none of those contained such a macabre find as the dead mermaid. Now Peter Pan and his young companions were on their way to Pixie Hollow, observing the changes altering Neverland. Some of the places familiar to them vanished or were replaced by others. The pirate ship instead of rolling on the waters of the bay, mysteriously disappeared from there and stood now amidst the trees, partially dug in the ground, its inhabitants however had vanished as far as they were able to judge it. In some places there were strange bluish fog whirls hovering in the sky, like weird portals leading to an unknown world. The children did their best to avoid them.
This festival of grimness taking place before their eyes caused the start of the first doubts to sneak into their hearts. The solution could be waiting for them in the Pixie Hollow – but didn't need to. Even fairies didn't need to be resistant to what was happening; nobody could guarantee their magic didn't stop working in the face of the danger. Or that they, together with the Pixie Hollow still existed.
Tink rode in Peter's pocket. At least she didn't feel cold. Although the idea that other pixies knew magic and maybe they'd be able to use it to cure Neverland with it came from her, this conviction grew smaller and smaller in her with every mile they covered. Even fairies weren't all powerful and Tinkerbell swore at herself for instilling such unshaken hope in the hearts of her friends.
They were getting closer to the realm of the fairies. They were lucky enough to travel the distance of the last couple of miles separating them from it in under cover of summer – they met another spot of verdure spreading out in there which poured new hope in their hearts. Maybe the Pixie Hollow still existed and its inhabitants were already working on the ways of reversing the whole misfortune. The surge of hope which had rebuilt some of their strength, turned out to be deceptive when they finally entered the kingdom of fairies.
Whatever forces were destroying Neverland, didn't have mercy on the home of the fairies. The powerful Home Tree so far towering over the valley, lacked the strength to resist them in this last moment. Now its pieces lay on the ground, like it was destroyed by an explosion. The part of Pixie Hollow which surrounded the tree was practically the only one which didn't cease to exist. Yes, the majority of the valley didn't exist any more, instead of the land there was that strange bluish fog floating just above the ground, resembling the portal-like whirls that the children had previously seen in the sky. Nevertheless, the children rushed to look for the pixies. Tinkerbell stayed, completely broken. She was too afraid to even look at the remains of the tree, in awe that a closer look at them would show her the massacred bodies of her friends who found their death under the boughs of their falling home. It seemed nothing could be done now, as if the destruction of the realm of fairies had taken away any hope that was left. The little pixie threw herself to the ground and burst into tears at this revelation. She remained so for the next minutes, unable to move. Her tiny golden body shaking with sobs.
Then, Tink heard someone's steps and then a familiar voice behind her back. She recognized it but still didn't dare to look back. The little pixie was sure her own ears were deceiving her. She delayed checking it for as long as she could but the owner of the voice was the first to speak. "Tinkerbell!" The fairy finally let herself stand up and cast a glance. It wasn't a delusion as she had feared. It was Rosetta, sitting on Peter Pan's shoulder. A few other fairies she knew so well – Silvermist, Vidia and Fawn were also there, hovering over the heads of the Lost Boys who, it seemed, had managed to find them.
Half an hour later, Tink and her friends learned the whole story as conveyed by the fairies. Despite the hope they had cherished, even the Pixie Hollow hadn't managed to avoid the fate of the rest of Neverland and the destruction of the Home Tree and the twirling "portals" made of the blue fog which were everywhere weren't the only sign of it. None of the inhabitants of the Home Tree lost their lives when it had suddenly started to fall to pieces (here Tink sighed with relief) but many of them underwent a terrifying transformation. As strange as it could sound, they turned into rug dolls. The children pulled them out from under the pieces of wood – little fairy dolls, like those taken from a bedroom of a little girl fascinated with fairy tales. Once living beings, now rag toys, put in a row, like they also were listening to the story, looked at the pixies and the children with their empty eyes embroidered on their blank faces of pink fabric. The rest of the pixies must have vanished into thin air as their bodies weren't found anywhere, while some other ones, like under the influence of some evil spell cast on them, followed in the direction of the fog portals and entered them to never return.
The worst change however took place in Iridessa. The poor pixie couldn't be even known as a pixie any more because as strange as it sounded, the result of the change was her transformation into a human. The black skinned magical girl was now a human woman, kept in ties by the magic of her companions which was necessary, as in addition something had happened not only with her body, but her mind as well. In other words, poor Iridessa had gone insane as that was the only thing that those around her equate it to. She lost consciousness every now and again and after recovering her senses she didn't even recognize her companions, much to their horror. She forgot about her whole life in the Pixie Hollow, claiming she was someone else, that her name wasn't Iridessa but Natalie Willoughby and that she was a nurse. She kept repeating that she wanted to go back to London, where she had come from.
"Take us to her," said Wendy suddenly, widely opening her eyes at the very mention of her home. A human female from her home world? Could it be?
The only thing that had prevented the strange woman once known under the name of Iridessa, a light fairy who was one of Tinkerbell's best friend in this realm of magic, from her taking to flight and entering one of the mysterious portals of fog was magical fetters quickly put on her by her friends, scared by what they had just seen but still keeping their presence of mind. Her ankles and slim wrists glistering from the droplets of sweat which gathered on her dark skin from the strain were held by golden bracelets the material of which was pure magic. They could be very thin and almost as ethereal as mist but apparently strong enough to hold her down, not allowing her to follow the impulse she was doing everything to obey which ordered her to enter one of the portals as so many other fairies had done before her. She must have been very frustrated to have one such portal so close to her – a glistening fog with a subtle bluish light veil of mist just behind her back - but yet so distant because of the fetters not letting her go anywhere. When the children and the fairies saw her, the woman tussling in her ties was letting out low irritated grumbles which stopped at the very moment when her eyes rested upon them. In her gaze glinted new hope.
"Are you real?" she asked them.
"Real? What do you mean by this? You aren't having hallucinations, if that's what you mean," Wendy replied cautiously. It was she who insisted on seeing the woman into whom Iridessa had turned so the Darling girl felt she bore the responsibility for keeping up the conversation with her and figuring out who she could be. The girl never had an occasion to meet Tinkerbell's friend before but if the woman really used to belong to her species (Wendy had no reason to raise any doubts about the truthfulness of the fairies' assurance on this), the change she had undergone was so far going that even having seen all those strange things happening in Neverland, Wendy couldn't believe this young, undoubtedly human woman could ever be someone else than she was. Well, the dolls were once real fairies too, Wendy thought to herself, shaking off the last of her doubts. If the toys she herself had held in her hands could be once living beings (although the world she came from denied their existence) according to the other pixies' words, why could it be less possible that the twenty something chocolate skinned woman lying before her struggling in her magical ties, was once a fairy?
"Help me," said the woman. Any remnants of insanity glinting in her big brown eyes left her at that very moment, they were now vigilant and focused. "I don't know what has happened. I don't know if it's me going crazy but those… pixies," (here, the woman smiled slightly, pronouncing this word in such a voice as if she found incredibly ludicrous the very idea that she, an adult could ever speak of magical beings otherwise than in a jest) "those pixies," she repeated, smiling nervously, "call me Iridessa and claim that I am one of them. They don't believe me that I'm Natalie, I don't even know of any women having such a weird name as Iridessa but they think that I'm crazy. That I don't know who I am." She finished in a low voice as she lowered her head.
When she lifted it again, sudden hostility sneaked into her voice. "Well, in case you prefer to believe them and not me, if you all prefer to believe them, then let me repeat it to you one more time." Here, Natalie/Iridessa averted her eyes which had become narrower from Wendy, fixing them on the pixies instead. "I'm Natalie Willoughby, not Iridessa but Natalie, I'm twenty-eight and I'm from London, I have never been any kind of a pixie, hag or other tooth fairy but a nurse, yes nurse and everything I want is to come back home. I'm Natalie, N-A-T-A-L-I-E, not Iridessa." A note of fear, mixed with sadness appeared in her voice when the woman kept spitting her words out. "I even don't know exactly how I found myself here. I just saw this fog—" A weak nod of her head towards the mist behind her, "and when I went near it, I came through it and that's how I arrived here. Let me go back. I was just taking Mr. Barrie's temperature when I saw the fog… fog…"
Miss Willoughby's voice became strange and had a dreamy quality to it, like she was swimming off into her own world to which nobody besides her had access. "Fog." It was the last word she said before the wild look returned to her eyes. Natalie's flood of words prevented Wendy from asking her any questions they could have about her life – who Mr. Barrie was or how a Negro woman could ever have gotten an education and become a nurse were the first that occurred to her – but as much as she would've liked to ask them now, it wasn't possible any more. Natalie Willoughby who was once Iridessa was unconscious or maybe only sleeping – her eyelids were fluttering like she was dreaming about something – maybe about her London or maybe this version of it in which a black woman could be someone else other than a servant. Those small movements of her eyelids and her breathing were the only signs she was alive.
The wall of the mist barely a few feet behind her was moving gently, as if matching the rhythm of the young nurse's breath. It seemed to change shape and it wasn't an illusion, the shapeless silver and blue wall of non transparent twirling fog which, as Iridessa/Natalie said, was an entry to another world, was slowly assuming a form of a door of some kind.
The children and the fairies stared at the portal mistrustfully. It seemed to hypnotize them gently. The more they looked at it, they all felt a vague feeling that something important was hiding behind the door. The door, although nobody knew what they were to expect upon entering it, was in a strange way tempting. The temptation of the fog that the pixies couldn't resist going through even though they had no idea what was waiting for them on the other side, slowly started to overcome them all as they stared at the strange door.
And the silence which appeared when their legs and wings involuntarily started to lead them towards the portal, waving slightly, was broken only by the sound of the voice of Peter Pan which was gentle and languorous, very much unlike his true voice as he said, "The greatest adventure is waiting for us there."
