Be Mother Forever
Wendy is overjoyed when she finds the shadow. It hangs limp in her hands like a dishcloth, but she loves it anyway. She knows that it's Peter Pan's shadow, and if she has it he must meet her to get it back.
When he finally arrives in her bedroom, she thinks that it's strange she knew Peter would be young, but she cannot tell just what age he is. He is small and has small, pearly teeth like Michael's, but he speaks in a way that reminds her of how grown-ups talk. He infuriates her, only to win her back with a few beguiling words. Wendy isn't sure she likes it, but he tells her of magic and flying and fairies and that keeps her interest.
He invites her to Neverland with him. It's too good to refuse, so she does not.
Neverland is everything she imagined and more. Peter calls the Lost Boys and they do all that he ask. At his command, they build Wendy a house. On his orders, they call her Mother and Peter Father.
Wendy worries for the Lost Boys. A mother must take care with the health of her children, and something seems wrong with hers. They are pale and cold to the touch, and no amount of blankets or soup seem to help.
Peter insists that this is normal for them. It's simply how they do not grow up. He does not forbid Wendy to tend to the boys, but does not understand why she bothers.
Bedtime is a struggle at first, as the Lost Boys refuse to go to sleep at night. Hooligans that they were, they wanted to stay up and run about the island to chase pirates and Indians.
Wendy would have none of that. Good boys, she said, went to bed when the sun went down and woke up in the morning. The way they were carrying on, they ended up staying up through the night and sleeping away the entire day. No respectable mother would let their children act like that!
The Lost Boys protest this, but Peter tells them to listen to Mother. Grumbling, they do as Father says. Wendy tucks them all in and reads them a story before wishing them sweet dreams.
As she steps out of the room, she sees Peter giving each of the boys a goodnight kiss on the cheek. After that, there is no more trouble getting them to sleep.
Wendy is not certain how long it is until she sees the blood for the first time. There's not much at all just a few small streaks here and there but the bedsheets she finds them on are white and the smears contrast sharply.
When she shows the blood to Peter, he seems just as unconcerned with that as with the illness of the Lost Boys. That too was normal, he said. If the blood was too difficult to wash out of the sheets though, he promised to order the Lost Boys to stop bleeding. Wendy wonders how he can make such a promise. She also wonders what could cause the Lost Boys to bleed in such a way.
The answer came a few days later, when Wendy was helping Curly with his bath. As she checked to see if he washed behind the ears, she noticed two holes in his jawline. They weren't large, but Wendy could see they were somewhat raised and red.
After Curly finished his bath, Wendy went to check on the other Lost Boys. Each and every one of them had holes on them, in almost exactly the same place as Curly did. It was the same with all of them the skin around the holes looked raw and painful. All of the boys seemed frightened when Wendy asked how they got them. Tootles burst out crying when she brushed her fingers over his wounds.
Again she went to Peter. Something was wrong, something was very wrong! The boys had all been bitten by something, and they had to set about soothing the marks.
Yet again, Peter does not understand her concern. He agrees to make bandages from strips of cloth and find herbs in the forest to make a salve, but he acts as if it's a game he can't quite grasp the rules of. He insists over and over that the Lost Boys will not - can not - die, so it makes no difference what they do.
Wendy is beside herself. She turns from Peter and sobs, asking how he could be so cruel. He is Father and his children are sick! Their family may be a game, but Wendy's fear is real. Until her children are well, her motherly heart can not rest.
Her tears confuse Peter. He understands being Father and ordering his children about and putting them to bed and teaching them lessons, but he knows nothing of what to do when Mother is so upset. He asks Wendy what her father would do if her mother was crying and, after taking a moment to compose herself, she says he would kiss her.
And so Peter does.
It is a clumsy kiss. Peter has not had much practice, after all. He leans in too quickly and hits against Wendy's lips a little too hard. The movement surprises her enough to distract her from crying though, so Peter decides it was a success and flies off.
Wendy is confused. She is as inexperienced a kisser as Peter, but she thinks there's something odd about feeling needle-like scratches against her mouth. She tries to put it from her mind, but when she runs her tongue over her lower lip, she tastes something coppery and salty.
It is nearly twenty minutes before the cuts Peter put on her lip stop bleeding. There is not much blood, but Wendy feels sickened. She has a nasty feeling that if she pressed a bed sheet against her lip, it would leave blood smears not unlike the ones she found.
Despite everything that has happened, Wendy does not know true fear until she catches Peter kissing Michael good night.
She watches him leaning over her little brother and she feels dread pool in her stomach. Before she knows what she is doing, she storms across the room and pushes Peter away. She throws her arms around Michael and shouts at him, no! No! He must stay away! Leave her brothers alone!
Her words mean nothing to him. They never do. Far from being shamed, he is impatient with her. He reminds her of what they agreed, that Michael would be their baby. How could he possibly be their baby if he keeps growing?
Michael is limp in Wendy's arms, but she can feel him breathing slow and steadily. It's as if he were sleeping. On his jawline, the skin around the two pinprick holes is already beginning to redden.
Peter takes Wendy by the hand and tries to pull her from the room. She shouts for John to come and take Michael. Only when she sees that John is there to tend to their brother does she allow Peter to take her away.
He takes her to a place in the forest where the moon shines through the trees just right and there aren't any roots or rocks to stumble over. Wendy can hear a waterfall rushing nearby and can feel a hint of misty coolness from the resulting pool.
Before she can say a word, he throws his arms around her it is not the same as the loving embrace she has seen between her mother and father, but Peter is clearly trying and presses his lips to her neck. She has a second to gasp before she feels needle-like pricks pinching her skin.
She can not say how long they stand there, with his face pressed to her neck. All she knows is confusion and fear and the persisting thought that this is not how her mother and father do it, this is not right at all, no, no, no!
When Peter finally draws back, Wendy goes limp in his arms. She feels so drained. Between the spots dancing before her eyes though, she can see Peter run his tongue over his blood-stained teeth. His lips, she is only able to note, look far more red than they did earlier.
He licks the last of her blood from his mouth, keeping her in his arms the entire time. He presses her against him as he insists he can not remember how he became the way he was. He is Peter Pan and he does not grow up and That is That. But being a boy forever is lonesome, and so he takes all the other abandoned children of London to stay with him.
She can be Mother forever, he promises. She does not have to worry. Her children will not stay ill. They are simply halfway through. With enough kisses, they will be able to stay awake during the day and sleep at night, just like Peter and just like the previous Lost Boys, who he weeded out when they became too wild and unmanageable. Michael can stay their baby and John can be whoever she wants him to be. And he can make Neverland however she likes it! All he has to do is look into her eyes and wish it so, and she will believe it is.
It will not hurt, he swears. It would take a few nights to make her like him, but he would be quick. He would learn to kiss her as a Father kissed a Mother, and they could be happy forever.
But this was not what Wendy wanted. She longed to be Mother, but only if she could grow into the role herself. She wished for a family, but not one stolen and unnaturally frozen forever. She wanted Peter's kisses, but not if it meant the pinpricks and the blood and the twisted feeling in her stomach that she could not rid herself of.
"Peter, she said, "I want to go home."
His eyes widened at that. He wailed and screamed and threw himself about like some wild, mad thing. But words had a power, and Wendy made herself clear. Peter was a monster, but he was a fair one. He would honor her wishes.
For most of her life, Jane is aware of something different about her house. It has bedrooms and a living room and a nursery like so many other homes she's seen, but there are...other things. There are far more mirrors hanging on the walls, over desks and dressers, stuck to the doors, every location possible. Jane was used to seeing herself every time she turned around, but she could see it bothered the few guests that her mother and father had. The guests also seemed quite unnerved by the countless crucifixes and crosses scattered throughout the house as decorations. Jane did not blame them on that score. Thanks to the mirrors, there are seemingly countless images of her Lord and Savior in agony on the cross and that is always an eerie sight.
Jane suspected that the mirrors and crosses were her mother's idea. Her mother did so many things that Jane did not understand, like rubbing the window frames with garlic and keeping vases of roses with the thorns still on and dabbing holy water behind her ear as if it were perfume on the rare nights she went out. Once, when Jane was very little, she found the nursery too stuffy. It was a particularly warm night, and she saw no harm in opening the window. Her mother walked in as she struggled to open it, and oh how Jane remembered the scolding she received! From then on, she was made to understand that if the windows were closed, they were to stay closed until her mother said otherwise.
Her father said that not even her mother understood why she did those things. She had begun to do them when she was a little girl and she will continue to do them when she is an old, old woman. When he asked her what purpose it served, she had only stared blankly at him.
It is not until the eve of Jane's departure from the nursery that she understands.
She is awoken in the middle of the night by a tapping at the window. She sits up in bed and gasps in astonishment there is a boy sitting on the window sill!
Forgetting all of her mother's warnings, she runs to the window and fumbles with the latch. She cries out, asking if he is alright and how he got there to begin with.
"Jane," says the boy, and she wonders how he ever learned her name. "Jane, please let me in. I knew your mother, Jane."
The window latch is undone, but the window itself is stubborn. Jane struggles to lift it even an inch.
"She was Mother for me and my boys long before she was yours, Jane," says the boy. "If you want, you can also be Mother. Come. Come away to where you'll never have to worry about growing up. Come away to Neverland."
Jane is certain that the window will open any moment. A little more. A little more...
But then a scream from the doorway causes her to leap away from the window, hands snapping guiltily behind her back. She turned to see her mother in the doorway.
Jane nearly cries. She had never seen her mother look so horrified before, and she was sure it was her fault! She forgot the warnings and nearly opened the window! How could she?
The boy slaps his palm against the window. "Wendy!" he cries. His pale face is lit up like the moon and stars and he is smiling. "Wendy, why did you stop visiting? Why did you grow up? Oh Wendy, Wendy, I can not bring you to Neverland again! I can help your daughter though, if only she'll agree! We can have Mother again in Neverland, if Jane will come!"
Jane steps back. She noticed for the first time how long and sharp his teeth are. It is silly, but she feels as if a wild animal is perched on the sill instead of a boy.
Her mother steps forward, kneels, and gently takes her daughter by the arm. "Jane, hide in your new bedroom," she whispers. "He won't find you there."
As Jane hurries to the door, she hears the boy wail and pound on the glass. She turns just before leaving and sees her mother advancing on the window, a cross held before her. The boy shrinks back from it and leaps from the sill. It might be a trick of the night, but Jane swears she saw him fly away.
From that night onward, her mother remembered why she did so many odd things. Jane herself understood it all as well. With her mother's encouragement, she took to wearing a small cross on a chain around her neck and rubbing her bedroom window with garlic every night. At her mother's insistence, the nursery was shut up after that fateful night. Jane had her own bedroom from then onward. If the boy knew where she had moved to, he never gave any hint of it. Never again did he come to her window.
Jane was not a stupid girl, though. She heard her mother's stories about a magical land filled with fairies and mermaids and children who could fly. She knew all about the Lost Boys, who slept through the day and played all night, and about their leader, a small, odd boy who never grew up. Knowing all of that, she knew not to fool herself into thinking Peter was gone for good.
She lived. She loved. She grew up. All too quickly, she married and had a daughter of her own. And as she had grown up watching her own mother's strange habits, little Margaret grew up watching hers.
Even from a young age, Margaret was enraptured by her mother's hobby. She bragged to everyone she met how her mummy could carve the best toys ever. The child would visit her in the evening, as Jane whittled away at blocks of wood, and beg for a toy rabbit or dog or other such things. And Jane would smile and comply, because the smile on her daughter's face was worth any number of carved figurines.
After Margaret was asleep though, Jane would work on far more important jobs. She was not stupid. It had not taken her long to piece together what her mother told her and realize what Peter Pan was, just as it had not taken long for her to realize he would not be satisfied trying to have her and her mother.
And so every night, Jane whittled. When she finished her job, her fingers curled around the stake in her hands. She was ready for the night that would inevitably come. The night when Margaret's nursery window would be visited by a small boy in green.
A small, pale boy with sharp teeth who never grew up.
A boy still searching for Mother.
When he finally arrives in her bedroom, she thinks that it's strange she knew Peter would be young, but she cannot tell just what age he is. He is small and has small, pearly teeth like Michael's, but he speaks in a way that reminds her of how grown-ups talk. He infuriates her, only to win her back with a few beguiling words. Wendy isn't sure she likes it, but he tells her of magic and flying and fairies and that keeps her interest.
He invites her to Neverland with him. It's too good to refuse, so she does not.
Neverland is everything she imagined and more. Peter calls the Lost Boys and they do all that he ask. At his command, they build Wendy a house. On his orders, they call her Mother and Peter Father.
Wendy worries for the Lost Boys. A mother must take care with the health of her children, and something seems wrong with hers. They are pale and cold to the touch, and no amount of blankets or soup seem to help.
Peter insists that this is normal for them. It's simply how they do not grow up. He does not forbid Wendy to tend to the boys, but does not understand why she bothers.
Bedtime is a struggle at first, as the Lost Boys refuse to go to sleep at night. Hooligans that they were, they wanted to stay up and run about the island to chase pirates and Indians.
Wendy would have none of that. Good boys, she said, went to bed when the sun went down and woke up in the morning. The way they were carrying on, they ended up staying up through the night and sleeping away the entire day. No respectable mother would let their children act like that!
The Lost Boys protest this, but Peter tells them to listen to Mother. Grumbling, they do as Father says. Wendy tucks them all in and reads them a story before wishing them sweet dreams.
As she steps out of the room, she sees Peter giving each of the boys a goodnight kiss on the cheek. After that, there is no more trouble getting them to sleep.
Wendy is not certain how long it is until she sees the blood for the first time. There's not much at all just a few small streaks here and there but the bedsheets she finds them on are white and the smears contrast sharply.
When she shows the blood to Peter, he seems just as unconcerned with that as with the illness of the Lost Boys. That too was normal, he said. If the blood was too difficult to wash out of the sheets though, he promised to order the Lost Boys to stop bleeding. Wendy wonders how he can make such a promise. She also wonders what could cause the Lost Boys to bleed in such a way.
The answer came a few days later, when Wendy was helping Curly with his bath. As she checked to see if he washed behind the ears, she noticed two holes in his jawline. They weren't large, but Wendy could see they were somewhat raised and red.
After Curly finished his bath, Wendy went to check on the other Lost Boys. Each and every one of them had holes on them, in almost exactly the same place as Curly did. It was the same with all of them the skin around the holes looked raw and painful. All of the boys seemed frightened when Wendy asked how they got them. Tootles burst out crying when she brushed her fingers over his wounds.
Again she went to Peter. Something was wrong, something was very wrong! The boys had all been bitten by something, and they had to set about soothing the marks.
Yet again, Peter does not understand her concern. He agrees to make bandages from strips of cloth and find herbs in the forest to make a salve, but he acts as if it's a game he can't quite grasp the rules of. He insists over and over that the Lost Boys will not - can not - die, so it makes no difference what they do.
Wendy is beside herself. She turns from Peter and sobs, asking how he could be so cruel. He is Father and his children are sick! Their family may be a game, but Wendy's fear is real. Until her children are well, her motherly heart can not rest.
Her tears confuse Peter. He understands being Father and ordering his children about and putting them to bed and teaching them lessons, but he knows nothing of what to do when Mother is so upset. He asks Wendy what her father would do if her mother was crying and, after taking a moment to compose herself, she says he would kiss her.
And so Peter does.
It is a clumsy kiss. Peter has not had much practice, after all. He leans in too quickly and hits against Wendy's lips a little too hard. The movement surprises her enough to distract her from crying though, so Peter decides it was a success and flies off.
Wendy is confused. She is as inexperienced a kisser as Peter, but she thinks there's something odd about feeling needle-like scratches against her mouth. She tries to put it from her mind, but when she runs her tongue over her lower lip, she tastes something coppery and salty.
It is nearly twenty minutes before the cuts Peter put on her lip stop bleeding. There is not much blood, but Wendy feels sickened. She has a nasty feeling that if she pressed a bed sheet against her lip, it would leave blood smears not unlike the ones she found.
Despite everything that has happened, Wendy does not know true fear until she catches Peter kissing Michael good night.
She watches him leaning over her little brother and she feels dread pool in her stomach. Before she knows what she is doing, she storms across the room and pushes Peter away. She throws her arms around Michael and shouts at him, no! No! He must stay away! Leave her brothers alone!
Her words mean nothing to him. They never do. Far from being shamed, he is impatient with her. He reminds her of what they agreed, that Michael would be their baby. How could he possibly be their baby if he keeps growing?
Michael is limp in Wendy's arms, but she can feel him breathing slow and steadily. It's as if he were sleeping. On his jawline, the skin around the two pinprick holes is already beginning to redden.
Peter takes Wendy by the hand and tries to pull her from the room. She shouts for John to come and take Michael. Only when she sees that John is there to tend to their brother does she allow Peter to take her away.
He takes her to a place in the forest where the moon shines through the trees just right and there aren't any roots or rocks to stumble over. Wendy can hear a waterfall rushing nearby and can feel a hint of misty coolness from the resulting pool.
Before she can say a word, he throws his arms around her it is not the same as the loving embrace she has seen between her mother and father, but Peter is clearly trying and presses his lips to her neck. She has a second to gasp before she feels needle-like pricks pinching her skin.
She can not say how long they stand there, with his face pressed to her neck. All she knows is confusion and fear and the persisting thought that this is not how her mother and father do it, this is not right at all, no, no, no!
When Peter finally draws back, Wendy goes limp in his arms. She feels so drained. Between the spots dancing before her eyes though, she can see Peter run his tongue over his blood-stained teeth. His lips, she is only able to note, look far more red than they did earlier.
He licks the last of her blood from his mouth, keeping her in his arms the entire time. He presses her against him as he insists he can not remember how he became the way he was. He is Peter Pan and he does not grow up and That is That. But being a boy forever is lonesome, and so he takes all the other abandoned children of London to stay with him.
She can be Mother forever, he promises. She does not have to worry. Her children will not stay ill. They are simply halfway through. With enough kisses, they will be able to stay awake during the day and sleep at night, just like Peter and just like the previous Lost Boys, who he weeded out when they became too wild and unmanageable. Michael can stay their baby and John can be whoever she wants him to be. And he can make Neverland however she likes it! All he has to do is look into her eyes and wish it so, and she will believe it is.
It will not hurt, he swears. It would take a few nights to make her like him, but he would be quick. He would learn to kiss her as a Father kissed a Mother, and they could be happy forever.
But this was not what Wendy wanted. She longed to be Mother, but only if she could grow into the role herself. She wished for a family, but not one stolen and unnaturally frozen forever. She wanted Peter's kisses, but not if it meant the pinpricks and the blood and the twisted feeling in her stomach that she could not rid herself of.
"Peter, she said, "I want to go home."
His eyes widened at that. He wailed and screamed and threw himself about like some wild, mad thing. But words had a power, and Wendy made herself clear. Peter was a monster, but he was a fair one. He would honor her wishes.
For most of her life, Jane is aware of something different about her house. It has bedrooms and a living room and a nursery like so many other homes she's seen, but there are...other things. There are far more mirrors hanging on the walls, over desks and dressers, stuck to the doors, every location possible. Jane was used to seeing herself every time she turned around, but she could see it bothered the few guests that her mother and father had. The guests also seemed quite unnerved by the countless crucifixes and crosses scattered throughout the house as decorations. Jane did not blame them on that score. Thanks to the mirrors, there are seemingly countless images of her Lord and Savior in agony on the cross and that is always an eerie sight.
Jane suspected that the mirrors and crosses were her mother's idea. Her mother did so many things that Jane did not understand, like rubbing the window frames with garlic and keeping vases of roses with the thorns still on and dabbing holy water behind her ear as if it were perfume on the rare nights she went out. Once, when Jane was very little, she found the nursery too stuffy. It was a particularly warm night, and she saw no harm in opening the window. Her mother walked in as she struggled to open it, and oh how Jane remembered the scolding she received! From then on, she was made to understand that if the windows were closed, they were to stay closed until her mother said otherwise.
Her father said that not even her mother understood why she did those things. She had begun to do them when she was a little girl and she will continue to do them when she is an old, old woman. When he asked her what purpose it served, she had only stared blankly at him.
It is not until the eve of Jane's departure from the nursery that she understands.
She is awoken in the middle of the night by a tapping at the window. She sits up in bed and gasps in astonishment there is a boy sitting on the window sill!
Forgetting all of her mother's warnings, she runs to the window and fumbles with the latch. She cries out, asking if he is alright and how he got there to begin with.
"Jane," says the boy, and she wonders how he ever learned her name. "Jane, please let me in. I knew your mother, Jane."
The window latch is undone, but the window itself is stubborn. Jane struggles to lift it even an inch.
"She was Mother for me and my boys long before she was yours, Jane," says the boy. "If you want, you can also be Mother. Come. Come away to where you'll never have to worry about growing up. Come away to Neverland."
Jane is certain that the window will open any moment. A little more. A little more...
But then a scream from the doorway causes her to leap away from the window, hands snapping guiltily behind her back. She turned to see her mother in the doorway.
Jane nearly cries. She had never seen her mother look so horrified before, and she was sure it was her fault! She forgot the warnings and nearly opened the window! How could she?
The boy slaps his palm against the window. "Wendy!" he cries. His pale face is lit up like the moon and stars and he is smiling. "Wendy, why did you stop visiting? Why did you grow up? Oh Wendy, Wendy, I can not bring you to Neverland again! I can help your daughter though, if only she'll agree! We can have Mother again in Neverland, if Jane will come!"
Jane steps back. She noticed for the first time how long and sharp his teeth are. It is silly, but she feels as if a wild animal is perched on the sill instead of a boy.
Her mother steps forward, kneels, and gently takes her daughter by the arm. "Jane, hide in your new bedroom," she whispers. "He won't find you there."
As Jane hurries to the door, she hears the boy wail and pound on the glass. She turns just before leaving and sees her mother advancing on the window, a cross held before her. The boy shrinks back from it and leaps from the sill. It might be a trick of the night, but Jane swears she saw him fly away.
From that night onward, her mother remembered why she did so many odd things. Jane herself understood it all as well. With her mother's encouragement, she took to wearing a small cross on a chain around her neck and rubbing her bedroom window with garlic every night. At her mother's insistence, the nursery was shut up after that fateful night. Jane had her own bedroom from then onward. If the boy knew where she had moved to, he never gave any hint of it. Never again did he come to her window.
Jane was not a stupid girl, though. She heard her mother's stories about a magical land filled with fairies and mermaids and children who could fly. She knew all about the Lost Boys, who slept through the day and played all night, and about their leader, a small, odd boy who never grew up. Knowing all of that, she knew not to fool herself into thinking Peter was gone for good.
She lived. She loved. She grew up. All too quickly, she married and had a daughter of her own. And as she had grown up watching her own mother's strange habits, little Margaret grew up watching hers.
Even from a young age, Margaret was enraptured by her mother's hobby. She bragged to everyone she met how her mummy could carve the best toys ever. The child would visit her in the evening, as Jane whittled away at blocks of wood, and beg for a toy rabbit or dog or other such things. And Jane would smile and comply, because the smile on her daughter's face was worth any number of carved figurines.
After Margaret was asleep though, Jane would work on far more important jobs. She was not stupid. It had not taken her long to piece together what her mother told her and realize what Peter Pan was, just as it had not taken long for her to realize he would not be satisfied trying to have her and her mother.
And so every night, Jane whittled. When she finished her job, her fingers curled around the stake in her hands. She was ready for the night that would inevitably come. The night when Margaret's nursery window would be visited by a small boy in green.
A small, pale boy with sharp teeth who never grew up.
A boy still searching for Mother.