Tinker, Pirate, Princess, Pan - Chapter One
Chapter One
The night on which the extraordinary adventures of the Darling children began started with Nana barking at the window as the children acted out one of the favourite stories in the nursery.
But when the children ran and threw up the sash to find the cause of the commotion, there was nothing there. Not a bird nor a leaf; not even the mangy orange tabby that liked to raise Nana’s hackles by leaving a mouse on Mrs. Darling’s bedroom sill. So the children forgot all about it. For what troubles a grown-up, will never trouble a child.
Now it could easily be said that there never was a kinder, simpler, happier family than the Darlings. Mr. Darling was a banker who knew the cost of everything - even a hug.
Mrs. Darling was the loveliest lady in Bloomsbury, with a sweet mocking mouth that had one kiss on it…one that Gwen could never get. Though there it was: perfectly conspicuous on the right-hand corner.
Nana was the finest nurse on four paws, even if she did have to sometimes have to let young Master Andy ride on her back until she bucked him off into the bath.
And sometimes there was Aunt Yvonne; who felt a dog for a nurse lowered the whole tone of the neighbourhood.
They would spend their evenings listening to Mrs. Darling play upon the piano, he elegant fingers dancing over the keys while Mr. Darling sang along, and sometimes, like on this particular evening, Gwen would regale the family with a story. For as she made a point of telling her Aunt:
“My unfulfilled ambition is to write a great novel in three parts about my adventures.”
“What adventures?” Aunt Yvonne immediately demanded after her declaration.
"Yeah and defeating evil Captain Hook!" Owen chimed in as he pretended to gut Andy with his hooked finger.
“I haven’t had them yet,” Gwen readily replied trying to draw Aunt Yvonne away from their antics. “But I am sure once I have them they will be perfectly thrilling. Perhaps I will become a detective and track down evildoers, or maybe a secret agent, saving the world for the Crown,” she added excitedly.
But Aunt Yvonne was not pleased with such ideas. “But child,” she said shaking her head. “Novelists and detectives are not highly thought of in good society.”
Gwen frowned and Mr. and Mrs. Darling shared a look of concern.
“And there is nothing so difficult to marry as a novelist, let alone a secret agent,” Aunt Yvonne finished, as Gwen’s eyes went wide.
“Marry?” she answered in surprise.
“But Aunt,” Mrs. Darling quickly interrupted, “Gwendolyn is not yet 13. Surely she is too young to worry about such things.”
Aunt Yvonne gave her a knowing look. “Walk toward me my dear,” she said, turning towards Gwen, “so that I may appraise you.”
Gwen hesitated until Mr. Darling urged her forward, encouraging her to stand up straight as she went.
Meanwhile Owen and Andy giggled as Aunt Yvonne had her turn around.
“She’s on parade,” Owen snickered. Bespeckled and precocious at eleven years of age he took great pride in both protecting and pestering his sister, in equal measure of course.
“Like a float!” eight year-old freckle-faced Andy agreed, burying his face in his teddy bear’s fur to suppress his giggles.
“Ah there it is,” Aunt Yvonne said at last, looking satisfied. “Gwendolyn possesses a woman’s chin.” Gwen cupped her chin in surprise, trying to feel what her Aunt had seen. “Have you not noticed?” she continued, looking to her parents. “There…hidden in the right-hand corner. Is that a kiss?” she asked, causing Mrs. Darling to gasp in surprise.
“But what is it for?” Gwen asked in concern. Was the kiss going to make her sick?
Aunt Yvonne smiled. “It is for the greatest adventure of all,” she explained, standing up to clasp Gwen’s hands in her own. “They that find it have slipped in and out of heaven.”
“Find what?” she asked confused.
“The one that the kiss belongs to,” Aunt Yvonne explained beaming with pride.
“My Gwendolyn,” Mr. Darling said as he and Mrs. Darling stood to join Aunt Yvonne. “A woman,” he said in awe.
“Well, almost a woman,” Aunt Yvonne corrected. “And if she is to be a successful woman, she must be trained to act properly in society. After all, the family motto is: If it’s worth having, it’s ours,” she added, releasing Gwen’s hands to seat herself back on the sofa. “She has a clear complexion and a pleasant enough face. I see no reason why she should not be at least as successful as you, my dear,” she said looking at her niece Mrs. Darling fondly. “Or even more so, given your husband’s position at the bank,” she added turning to Mr. Darling, who gulped in response.
Later that night, Gwen and her brothers listened from the banister as her parents and Aunt Yvonne made plans for her future. She was to be moved from the nursery to her own room within the week and spend more time with her Aunt to learn how to be a proper lady.
Andy was outraged. “But Gwen can’t leave the nursery,” he complained as they slipped back upstairs. “Who will tell us stories?”
Troubled and unsure, the children settled down to sleep, promising one another that they would find a way to stay together in the morning.
Later that night, Gwen felt something brush against her face and startled awake. A soft gust of wind blew her hair in her face as Nana dashed out of her kennel towards the open window, causing Gwen to get tangled in her blankets and tumble out of bed. By the time she managed to stand up, the window had blown shut. For an instant she thought she saw someone fall, but when she ran to the window, there as was no one there.
Since Nana was still barking, Gwen dashed to a nearby dresser, grabbing a candle before running out onto the lower balcony. But there was no sign of a body, for none had fallen. Certainly she had been dreaming , for by the time she had returned to the nursery Nana was waiting for her at the foot of her bed, settled back into her kennel, but still keeping a wary eye on the window.
The following day Gwen was busy doodling in her arithmetic book about the faerie boy she had dreamt of the night before when she was caught by her teacher, the very prudish and plain Miss Fulsom, who immediately dispatched a letter of outrage to Mr. Darling that set new standards of prudery, even for her. Gwen cringed in shame as the courier boy winked at her and took the letter, and when she was finally released from detention that afternoon walked with her brothers as one condemned, dreading the lecture she would receive when she got home now that her parents expected her to leave behind stories and foolishness to be a proper young lady.
Mr. Darling, on the other hand, had been practicing his small talk and wit all afternoon, hoping for a chance to talk to his superiors and for his family’s sake since Aunt Yvonne had convinced him that it was essential to furthering his standing at the bank and in society.
And now his opportunity had arrived.
Sir Edward Quiller Couch, the president of the bank, was a man who enjoyed small talk almost as much as a good balance sheet, and was currently making his rounds of the bank floor.
As chance would have it, Gwen saw the courier as he approached the entrance to the bank, and ran after him, hoping to stop him before the letter was delivered. Just as Mr. Darling had worked up the courage and started to approach Sir Edward, the courier burst through the doors, with Nana and the Darling children hot on his heels.
But the bank’s marble floor was slick due to the rain outside and as soon as the stepped upon it Nana slipped, bumping first into Gwen, then sliding into the courier, before skidding into Mr. Darling and knocking over the entire senior staff of the bank.
To say Mr. Darling was unhappy with this event would be a grave understatement indeed.
Furious with the afternoon’s events, he banished Nana from the nursery, chaining her up in the back garden as he tried to gather up some shred of dignity and re-establish himself as the head of the household. He even went so far as to remove Nana’s kerchief, declaring to all within shouting distance that she was not a nurse, but merely a dog.
“It is time for you to grow-up,” Mr. Darling said to Gwen as he finished his rant. “Tomorrow you will begin your instruction with Aunt Yvonne and be moved from the nursery to your own room. Now all of you go to bed.”
That evening, as Mrs. Darling prepared to go out and help Mr. Darling salvage his reputation, she lit the nightlights in the nursery as a precaution. Nana’s barking below made her uneasy, so adding a little extra bit of protection over her children set her heart at ease.
But the children were still unsettled.
“Mother, must you go to the party?” Gwen asked her clearly put out that she was siding with father, who in Gwen’s opinion was being far to strict.
“Can’t Father go by himself?” Owen asked. “He’s been a bit of wanker if you ask me,” he said sharing a smirk with Gwen.
“Owen Jonathon Darling, watch your tongue!” Mrs. Darling scolded causing both their faces to fall. “Your Father is a brave man. But he’s going to need my special kiss to face his colleagues tonight.”
“Father? Brave?” Owen scoffed.
“There are many types of bravery,” Mrs. Darling explained. “There’s the bravery of thinking of others before oneself. Now your father has never brandished a sword or fired a pistol, thank heavens. But he’s made many sacrifices for his family, and put away many dreams.”
“Where did he put them?” asked Andy curiously.
“He put them in a drawer,” she answered fondly. “And sometimes, late at night, we take them out and admire them. But it gets harder and harder to close the drawer. He does, and that is why he is brave,” she concluded hoping they would understand. “Now go to sleep, dear ones. I will see you in the morning.”
While the children settled down to sleep, Aunt Yvonne was giving Mr. Darling a pep talk as he tried to muster up the courage to attend the party despite the afternoon’s debacle at the bank. When he finally managed to square his shoulders and leave with Mrs. Darling on his arm, he was so intent on keeping one foot in front of the other, that he never noticed the flicker of starlight that streamed overhead in the direction of the nursery window.
As you can imagine, the flicker of starlight was much more than it seemed.
When it arrived at the window and stilled for a moment, it was easy to see that the light was not a light at all, but merely the glow of magic and faerie dust surrounding a male faerie no more than six inches high. But this was no ordinary faerie, for Ianto, as the faerie in question was called, was a Tinker.
Tinkers are a special kind of faerie, chosen for their bravery, cunning, wit, charm, and had were given the most important job in Neverland: being both guide and companion to the current Pan.
Now being a male faerie and a Tinker was a rare thing indeed, for most Tinkers tended to be women. But for all the prestige it might bring, Ianto had originally wanted to be something far different. In fact, most of his family was made up of tailors. Because of this he took great pride in his fine waistcoat and breeches, both made of soft autumn leaves of red and gold, and his shirt of finely spun spider silk; all were made by his father, the Master Tailor to the Faeire Queen herself. But despite his love of fine garments, Ianto had never planned on being a tailor. In fact, he had a passion for history and had originally been apprenticed to the master archivist of Neverland, intending to continue his work in preserving Neverland’s stories so that they could someday be published and shared with all children, especially those too weak or sick to visit Neverland themselves. But that had all changed when he had been chosen as the next Tinker and paired with Jack, the current Pan of Neverland.
Despite his initial misgivings he found that he enjoyed his post, even if it did sometimes mean getting Jack out of scrapes…like his current search for his lost shadow. Jack had been visiting the window outside the Darling family nursery far too often of late, and Ianto was getting worried. While the stories, though amateur at best, were somewhat interesting, most of them tended to involve an overly aggressive female heroine who no doubt was fashioned on the girl who told them. He had heard tell of this happening before; of Pans being drawn back into the human world, and though he was concerned, part of him wondered what he would do if Jack decided he wanted to leave Neverland. They had been friends and confidants for so long now, and if he was honest, he really couldn’t imagine his life or adventures without him. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Jack perched atop a nearby tree; his leaf-covered trousers and braces slightly askew as they always were after a long flight. Ianto raised an eyebrow at him as Jack made a couple of rude gestures at the tabby watching him from a nearby rooftop before giving Ianto his trademark grin and urging him forward. Rolling his eyes, Ianto threw open the window with a flick of faerie dust and swept inside.
Books flew off the shelves and toys scattered about as he frantically searched for the lost shadow, hoping to find the offending thing, reattach it, and be on their way before the girl or her brothers awoke. A pile of blocks fell over and Gwen sat up, blearily looking for the source of the noise, and Ianto quickly darted behind a nearby lampshade to hide until the girl’s eyes grew heavy and she fell back asleep.
Quickly, he flew from hiding place and scoured the room, knowing that Pan’s shadow could not have gone far. Darting over to the dresser, he peeped inside the keyhole and smirked to himself as he saw the shadow nestled inside. Flitting back to the window, he whistled to Pan who immediately flew in behind him. Standing atop the dresser he tapped his foot in impatience as Jack lazily flew towards him.
“Hold your horses Ianto,” he said rolling his eyes at the Tinker. “Let’s do this on three, ready? One, two-“ On three, Jack wrenched the drawer open and grinned as his shadow flew out. He chased the shadow across the room and into the hallway, narrowly missing Aunt Yvonne as she came up the stairs to check on the children, and accidently knocking Ianto back into the drawer, managing to trap him inside as a result. After Aunt Yvonne left, he finally caught it, smirking to himself as he sat down on the floor and took up a piece of soap he’d snatched from the wash basin on the far wall, rubbing it against the shadow and his foot as he tried to reattach it. Frustrated, and near tears he threw the soap against the wall as causing Gwen to awake.
“Boy, why are you crying?” Gwen asked, causing Jack to jump up and back towards the window in alarm.
“I wasn’t crying,” he protested. “Pans don’t cry.”
“Is Pan your name then?” Gwen asked. “Mine is Gwendolyn Elizabeth Cooper Darling by the way,” she stated proudly holding her head high.
The boy laughed. “That’s a mouthful,” he said, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “My name is much better.”
“And what might that be?” Gwen huffed in annoyance.
“Jack the Pan,” he answered proudly, placing his hands on his hips. “But my friends just call me Jack.”
“Where do you live?” Gwen asked, certain that this was the boy she had imagined before.
“Second star to the right, and straight on till morning,” Jack answered with a grin.
“Do they put that on the letters?” Gwen asked as she moved towards him.
“Don’t get any letters,” Jack replied, stepping away from her.
“But doesn’t your mother get any?” she prodded.
“Don’t have a mother,” he answered annoyed.
“No wonder you were crying,” Gwen answered smugly.
“I wasn’t crying about mothers,” Jack snapped in frustration. “I wasn’t crying at all. I was upset as I couldn’t get this shadow to go back on,” he explained, tugging his shadow back out of the corner as he gathered up the soap to try and attach it once more.
“You’ll never get it on that way,” Gwen said in a know-it-all voice. “I could sew it on for you if you like.”
“Really?” said Jack in surprise. He had never seen anyone besides Ianto or his family sew, and he wondered if this girl would use the same glittering spider silk thread that they did.
Gwen smiled and ran over to the dresser to get a needle and thread, oblivious to the fact that as she opened and shut the drawer she had slammed a jar full of buttons directly into Ianto, squishing him into the back of the drawer.
As Gwen prattled on about school and boys and flirted with Jack, Ianto scowled in annoyance at being still trapped in the drawer, pushing the jar aside he made his way forward, watching through the keyhole as she attempted to sew Jack’s shadow back in place.
Though the job was poorly done in rough thread and the stitches were far from even, the shadow was soon reattached.
“Oh, the cleverness of me!” Jack announced as he flew in a circle and his shadow followed.
“Of course, I did nothing,” Gwen replied with a huff as he landed and put his hand on his hips, smiling as his shadow did the same.
“Ah, you did a little,” Jack conceded, perching atop the footboard of Owen’s bed.
“A little!” she scowled. “Well then, goodnight,” she curtly replied, throwing the covers back over her head.
“Aw come on Gwen,” said Jack with a grin. “One girl is worth twenty boys,” he soothed, trying to coax her back out from her hiding place beneath the blankets.
Ianto rolled his eyes as she quickly threw her covers off to rejoin him. Clearly it had all been a ploy to get him to apologize.
After declaring that it was ‘perfectly lovely the way he talked about girls,’ Gwen declared that she should like to give Jack a kiss, and Ianto watched in horror as she drew closer to boy.
But not knowing what a kiss was, Jack just held out his hand until Gwen finally placed the thimble she had used to sew on his shadow into his hand.
“Am I supposed to give you one in return?” he asked, scratching his head.
“If you like,” Gwen replied with a smile.
Jack looked lost as Gwen closed her eyes expectantly, until suddenly inspiration hit and he pulled an acorn from his pocket to present to her. When Gwen didn’t respond, he cleared his throat and her eyes flew open. Gwen frowned at the acorn in disappointment before going over to the dresser to put it onto a chain. As she fastened it, Jack described his life in Neverland, the lost boys, and finally how he had found Ianto his Tinker.
“He’s a faerie,” Jack explained.
“But, there’s no such thing-“ Gwen started to say until Jack rushed forward and clamped a hand over her mouth.
“Don’t say that,” he growled at her. “Every time somebody says that, a faerie somewhere falls down dead. And I shall never find him if he’s dead.”
“You don’t mean to tell me there’s a faerie in this very room?!” Gwen asked excitedly.
“We came to listen to the end of the story, you know the one about the prince who couldn’t find the lady who wore the glass slippers?”
“Cinderella!” Gwen exclaimed. “They lived happily ever after by the way.”
“I knew it!” Jack said with a grin. Turning away from her he began looking through the toys near the window for Ianto as Gwen crept closer.
“Jack,” she whispered as she stopped in front of him. “I should like to give you a…thimble.”
“What’s that?” Jack asked in confusion as Gwen closed her eyes and leaned towards him.
Ianto had seen enough. Bracing himself against the edge of the drawer he finally managed to push it far enough open to escape and rushed to stop Gwen from kissing Jack.
No slip of a big-eyed girl was going to mess with his Pan.
As soon as Ianto reached Gwen he yanked her by the hair and pulled her as far away from Jack as he could, ignoring Jack’s orders to stop as Gwen screeched in dismay.
Deciding to stop him before Gwen woke the whole house, Jack managed to get ahold of Ianto and pull him off of her, tossing him onto her pillow until he calmed down. Ianto promptly stood back up and brushed the dust from the drawer off of his breeches before giving Jack an earful about rude girls who could steal your soul with just a thimble.
Knowing that Gwen couldn’t understand faerie speak, and merely heard the lilting tones of Ianto’s voice as chimes of a bell, Jack quickly translated.
“He’s usually a lot more polite,” he apologized as Ianto mimed gutting someone and choking them to death. “He says if you try to give me a thimble again, he’ll kill you.”
“Oh,” Gwen replied, glaring at the faerie in annoyance. “I had always supposed faeries to be charming,” she said as Ianto flew up and stuck his tongue out at her before flying to the window. Jack grinned and chased after him without a second thought.
“Jack, don’t leave me!” Gwen called after him.
“But I have to tell the boys about Cinderella,” Jack replied, stepping up onto the window sill.
“But what about me?” She pouted. “I know lots of stories. Can’t I come with you?”
Ianto frowned. Pan bringing a girl back to Neverland? That was the last thing he needed.
But Jack had already taken to the idea and even conceded to bringing her brothers along as well.
After the children each made a horrible attempt at flight and landed in a heap on the floor, Jack smacked his head and grabbed onto Ianto, shaking him over each of them in turn, coating them with enough faerie dust that even the simplest of happy thoughts would lift them up into the air.
Nana, chained as she was in the back yard, could only watch in horror as the leaf-clad boy with the unruly spikes of hair charmed her charges into leaving their home for Neverland. Determined to stop them, she broke her chain and ran as fast as she could to the party where Mr. Darling was presently introducing his wife Mary to Sir Edward. In her haste, Nana managed to knock over Sir Edward for the second time that day, and after a hasty apology Mr. and Mrs. Darling ran home as fast as their legs could carry them.
It would be delightful to report that they reached the nursery in time, but if they had, there would be no story.
By the time their parents reached the nursery, Owen, Andy, and Gwen were flying over central London. As they flew past the party the Darlings had just left, Owen reached down to borrow Sir Edward’s top hat, deciding that a true flying man about town must be properly attired.
Just past the cloud cover, Jack pushed his dirty foot into Owen’s face and wiggled his toes before telling him to hold on. Once Andy and Gwen had followed suit, Ianto gathered up a burst of faerie dust and cleared the way for the four children to pass through the gateway to Neverland.
Once they passed through the gateway, the clouds that protected Neverland parted and sunlight streamed down onto the magical isle, thawing out the icy harbor as both Pan and his Tinker returned home. As the ice of the frozen harbor cracked, the pirate ship stuck at its centre slowly listed back upright and Mr. Smee, the Jolly Roger’s first mate, ran in to alert his captain.
“Cap’n!” he called out. “Spring’s not due until 3PM but it’s come early. That can only mean one thing,” he said placing his pocket watch onto the table in front of his captain so that he could check the time.
An iron hook smashed the pocket watch to bits as the captain raised his head.
“I was dreaming Smee,” he explained giving his first mate a bleary eye. “Of Pan.”
“Cap’n?” Smee questioned, unsure.
“And in my dream,” he continued. “I was a magnanimous soul, thanking him for cutting off my hand and giving me this fine hook, good for disemboweling and ripping throats, and other such homely uses as combing my hair,” he added sarcastically, grimacing as he put on the rig he used to keep his prosthetic arm and hook upright.
“So he did you a favour then, did he Cap’n?” Smee asked.
“Favour?” Hook answered as he screwed the hook into place. “He threw my hand to the great grey crocodile, and the beast liked it so much, it’s been following me ever since, looking to eat the rest of me. You call that a FAVOUR?” he snarled, placing his hook beneath Smee’s eye.
“No. No. No Sir,” Smee stammered with a shudder as the captain withdrew. “You did get a rather good name out of it though, Sir,” he added hastily.
Captain Hook smiled. “Yes, Captain Hook does have a better ring to it than Captain Hart doesn’t it?” he said with a leer. “At least that blasted crocodile swallowed a clock to alert me of his presence or he would have caught up with me by now.”
“True enough, Cap’n,” Smee replied, relieved to have escaped Hook’s wrath.
“Now Smee, what were you saying before you so rudely interrupted my nap?”
“The sun is out and the flowers are all in bloom again, it can only mean one thing.”
“He’s back,” Hook replied as a sinister smile. “Quickly, help me dress; it’s time we gave the flying brat a welcome home party.”
~~~~~~~~
Far above the Jolly Roger, Jack guided the others to peer over a cloud and watch the pirates below. After catching sight of Hook through his spyglass, Jack moved his new charges in for a closer look.
“My hat!” Owen cried out in dismay as it was caught up in a stray gust of wind as they moved forward.
By the time the group had settled on a new cloud, Owen had forgotten all about it, not realizing that it had landed on the deck of the ship, alerting Hook to their presence as he had the crew prepare Long Tom, their long range cannon, to fire in their direction. By the time Jack spied what Hook was up to, it was too late and a cannon ball was already on its way.
Gwen, who was too busy mooning over Jack to notice the danger coming her way, was quickly thrown backwards, while Owen and Andy barely managed to hold onto the tattered cloud above them as they hung from its edge.
“You fetch Gwen, I’ll take care of Hook,” Jack ordered Ianto before flying off.
Ianto, who had had just about enough of Miss Gwendolyn Elizabeth Cooper Darling, grit his teeth and flew after the wayward girl while Jack taunted Hook by sweeping between the ship’s masts until Long Tom managed to take out the main mast in one ill-conceived blow. With the pirates busy scrambling to avoid the falling rigging, he laughed out loud and flew towards the island to meet up with Ianto and the others.
After gutting the man firing the cannon for his insolence in missing Pan, Hook pulled out his spyglass and watched as Owen and Andy, now too sacred to think any happy thoughts fell from the cloud to the jungle below. Turning to his crew he ordered them to prepare to go ashore.
“Perhaps a hostage or two would draw Pan out of hiding,” he said to Smee with a smirk.
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