The Lost Boys Found
For Peter, waterlogged and exhausted, rescue happened in a dream. He was borne on the crest of the ocean's waves for many leagues, the soft arms of the mermaids wrapped tightly about him, keeping him safe and warm. The fish-women sang to him, their voices sweet and reassuring. The stories they told were of a time and place only dimly remembered and forgotten again as soon as the words were spoken. There was a boy in the stories, a child who refused to grow up, who lived in a place where adventures were the food of life, and no day was complete without at least several. The boy was fearless; he dared anything. He lived in a world of pirates and Indians, of magical happenings, of time suspended and dreams come true. He was a boy who, Peter sensed, he had once known.
Somewhere along the way the remnants of his pirate garb disappeared and with them his immediate memory of why he had ever worn them.
His journey ended at a column of rock that lifted out of the ocean like a massive pillar, and the mermaids placed him in a giant clamshell tied to a rope that ran up through its center. The clamshell closed about Peter, and he felt himself rising, slowly, steadily, rocking gently in his cocoon. When his ascent was complete, the clamshell's lid cranked open, and he was tossed like a coin on which a wish had been made, landing with an oomph on a grassy bank.
His eyes fluttered open. The waters of a small, clear lagoon sparkled behind him. The clamshell was gone. The mermaids were gone. Their memory was all that remained, and he was already starting to wonder if he might not have imagined the whole thing.
Taking a deep breath, he staggered to his feet, water dripping from his hair onto his face, and from his clothing to the ground. He brushed at himself futilely, then lifted his gaze to look around.
His breath caught in his throat. He stood at the top of the rock column of his dream, hundreds of feet above the ocean, so far up that it seemed the clouds in the sky might pass close enough to brash his hand. The atoll stood just off the coast of the island to which he had been carried, surrounded by azure waters, white foam, and the glistening backs of waves. Mountain peaks rose from the island's spine, their tips white with new snow. Twin rainbows arced from a series of waterfalls into the sea. Far below and miles away, hunkered down within its protective cove, was the pirate town of James Hook. Farther still, where the sky and ocean met in a perfect horizontal line, the sun was a flare of gold and purple light. The afternoon was waning. Sunset approached.
Peter glanced skyward and was astonished to find not one, but three moons, one white, one peach, and the last pale rose. They shared the sky comfortably, as if they might actually belong.
And behind Peter, away from the lagoon and at the exact center of the atoll, stood the largest tree he had ever seen in his life-a great, gnarled, old forest denizen somehow removed to this rock, jutting toward the sky, its limbs stretched forth as if in supplication. It might have been a maple or an oak or a mix of each and still it would have to have been something more. It was like no tree that Peter had ever seen.
It was like something imagined in boyhood.
Or in a dream.
Nevertree. The wind whispered the name in his ear.
He took a step toward the tree, past a patch of rose-tipped yellow flowers that leaned over curiously to sniff at him. He jumped away in disbelief. The flowers sneezed. What is this? He took another tentative step, and another, moving away from the flowers. Flowers that sniff? That sneeze?
He was still wrestling with the concept when he stepped into a rope snare that closed about his ankles, yanked him from his feet, and hoisted him upside down high into the network of tree limbs. His pockets emptied-business and credit cards, wallet, keys, and loose change all falling to the ground below. His breath left him in a gasp, and he flailed in an effort to right himself. But the rope went taut, and he was left hanging helplessly.
I don't believe this, he announced to himself.
He hung there for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Finally, he managed after repeated attempts to jacknife upward far enough to catch hold of his own legs (he really was going to have to get into an exercise program) and from there pulled himself up until he could reach the rope that bound him. Looking vaguely like an oversized tetherball, he began working to swing himself toward a nearby branch that appeared heavy enough to offer support.
That was when he saw the clock. It was hanging from the branch he was trying to grasp, an ornate, scrolled, wood-carved affair that looked as if it had once been the top of a grandfather clock in an English manor house. The clock face was inlaid with gold and silver, and there was an attractive arrangement of flowering vines hanging down about its shell and works.
Peter snatched at the branch from which the clock hung, catching hold finally, causing it to shake violently. From inside the clock came an "Oh!"
Then the clock face swung open and out flew Tink, roused from the shell that served as her bed, her eyes darting this way and that before finally settling on Peter and growing instantly to twice their normal size.
"You're alive!" she gasped.
And everything came back to Peter in a rush, the floodgates of his memory opened in that instant's time.
"Tink! I've got to save Maggie and Jack! Get me out of this trap!"
But Tink was too busy flitting back and forth across his cheek, pecking at him with her faerie lips, crying out joyfully, "You're alive, you're alive!"
"Yes, it was mermaids, I think. I'm not sure really. Are there mermaids here?" He didn't want to make too much of it at this point. "But my kids, Tink. What can I do? How can I fight Hook? I can't! Look at me! I'm a mess! I'm fat and out of shape, I can't fight my own shadow, let alone some pirate-"
"The Lost Boys!" she exclaimed, as if that answered everything. "This is the Nevertree, Peter! This is their home! And you'll need them if you're to do anything about Hook! All we have to do is make them believe that you're the Pan!"
Peter groaned. "But I'm not! I'm Peter Banning!"
"Ha! That's today! You don't look it yet maybe, but you're more Pan than you think! You'll deal with Hook and get your children back. I promise you will! You wait and see!"
Up she flew to where the rope snare bound his legs, produced a pair of tiny scissors, and began to snip.
Peter cast a hurried glance down-which was a long way. "Wait, I don't think-" he started to say, and then the rope parted and he fell with a long, frightened cry to land flat on his back in a bed of moss, the breath and the sense knocked from his body.
"He's back, he's back!" he heard Tink cry out sharply, and caught a fuzzy glimpse of her darting upward into the limbs of the great old tree. "Lost Boys, come out! It's the Pan! He's back!"
Peter blinked to clear his vision. From his vantage point beneath the Nevertree, looking up into a web of limbs that seemed to stretch on forever, he watched in amazement at what happened next.
As Tink flitted from branch to branch, a flash of light against the bark and leaves in the shadows of the fading afternoon, the Nevertree came alive. Branches shook, bells sounded, whistles blew, chimes rang, and doors slammed open. Boys appeared from everywhere, as quick and nimble as cats. The first had long blond hair, a vest and top hat, and carried an antler horn. He blew into it instantly, a deep, lowing call that seemed to trigger everything else. Out of the cacophony the boys appeared, a ragged bunch dressed in every form of vestment imaginable, flashes of motion and color as they filled the Nevertree and began to descend, yelling "Pan! Pan!" Down they came, on vines and ropes, on slides formed of hollow logs and bark, from nets lowered on winches, in buckets, and along ramps.