Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 An anthology of stories

He had more dark memories now than in Wendy’s day, and he was older, at last. Ashley could not hold him, but she did her best. She stroked his wild curling hair until he was quiet.

“What did you dream last night?” she asked the next day.

“Dream?” said Peter, and laughed a blithe sweet laugh. “I have so many adventures when I’m awake, I never have to dream!”

“You dreamed something last night,” Ashley persisted, following him. He was playing a game of leapfrog from one toadstool to the other. You would think they might break under Peter’s weight, but they never did.

Peter spun on his toadstool, and Ashley found herself staring down the length of his blade.

“No, Ashley lady,” he said. “I never dream.”

Ashley stepped back. Peter sheathed his sword and performed a cartwheel in midair.

“What adventure shall we have today? Do you want to—”

“No, I don’t,” said Ashley. “I’ve told you. I don’t want to be your mother, and I don’t care for Neverland!”

She turned on her heel and then found Peter hovering before her. He was very irritating that way.

“Oh well,” he said. “Why didn’t you say so? Would you like to go on one of my missions for the Queen?”

I am afraid to tell you that Ashley was not what you might call a trusting soul. She did not believe a word of Peter’s tale about being a spy for Her Majesty’s government.

In her defense, Peter did tell the Taj Mahal story.

Of course she did not believe him, but she did see an opportunity.

“If I go with you on this adventure,” she said, with great cunning. “Shall we play a game? Shall we have a bet, between us?”

Peter’s eyes lit. “Yes!”

“Great,” said Ashley. “If I don’t like this adventure, and if, after it, I still want to go home—you have to take me.”

Meeting the Queen of England is an important event in a girl’s life. The social niceties should be observed. Little things like using the correct fork, dropping a deep enough curtsy, and not breaking into the royal boudoir while wearing pink pajamas.

Ashley found herself rather embarrassed before she realized that the Queen was responsible for her kidnap.

“Doesn’t that strike you as a bit of a terrible thing to do?” she demanded, cutting her off as the Queen briefed Peter about a new mission.

The Queen had taken the break-in with great aplomb, sitting up in bed and reaching for her spectacles with one hand while waving away her killer butler with the other. A little thing like being accused of a criminal act was hardly going to faze her.

“My dear child, I do a hundred terrible things before breakfast, that is the role of the monarchy.” She directed her spectacles toward Peter again. “Do you understand the situation, Mr. Pan? I would like you to apprehend the person who has invented this device to multiply the mass of objects by ten.”

“You can rely on me with absolute confidence!” said Peter, who was perched on the edge of a priceless Ming vase.

The Queen rubbed her royal brow. “May I stress that ‘apprehend’ means ‘bring to me,’ Mr. Pan? We need this person’s brain in her head, rather than—I pick this example purely at random—impaled on one of the clock hands of Big Ben.”

Peter rolled his eyes in protest at this senseless rule.

“I am forced to trust in your discretion, Mr. Pan,” the Queen said. “Remember that the fate of the free world rests in your hands.”

It was very unfortunate that at that precise moment Peter aimed an idle kick and shattered the Ming vase into a thousand pieces.

“Oh my God, you—you… Your Majesty,” exclaimed Ashley, not quite outraged enough to insult royalty. “I beg your pardon. But are you insane? The fate of a boiled egg shouldn’t rest in his hands! Isn’t there some other agent you can send?”

“Another agent with the power of flight and little helper ninjas?” the Queen asked, her brows lifting above the frames of her spectacles. “I regret to say, no. Please close the window on your way out, Mr. Pan: last time there was a shocking draught.”

“So will we have to stake out the town?” asked Ashley, who was beginning to get enthusiastic about being a spy. Being personally given a mission by the Queen of England is very motivating. “To see which house is the crazed inventor’s—oh!”

Do not be alarmed. Peter has not dropped Ashley out of the sky, only to catch her at the last minute. Ashley had made it clear she did not think that was a hilarious game.

She had merely spotted the small picturesque village of Litford by the Sea, which had thatched cottages and rambling manors, cobbled byways and streams under wood bridges. And on top of a hill near the town was a gaunt black structure with fiery windows. It looked like a castle of nightmares, a place an old pirate went to retire and gnaw on booty and bones.

It looked like something out of Neverland.

“Seems to me we’ve tracked the varlet to his lair!” Peter crowed.

“Peter, doesn’t this seem a little weird to you?”

Peter stared at her, all guileless eyes and crazy smile curling around those little pearl teeth, his dead leaf bowtie fluttering in the wind.

“Weird?”

“Ah,” said Ashley. “Never mind.”

It struck Ashley that this was something Peter and the ninjas just accepted: the macabre and fantastical, all the trappings of Neverland. Ashley was the only one who could see the difference between what should be real and what should not be: she had some power here.

It pains me to confess Ashley had little poetry in her soul.

She would have preferred titanium body armor.

The castle floors were largely made of big flagstones. Ashley’s bare feet ached for the carpets of home, or even the forest floors of Neverland.

The castle echoed with the creak of machinery, the pop and sizzle of flames, and the sound of screams. This place reeked of pure, storybook evil.

Ashley kept thinking of a particular name in the story.

Hook .

“The villain never really dies,” she murmured as she crept after Peter. Her ninja training made her light on her feet, so it was really a shame that Peter and the fairies showed her up by gliding silently a few inches off the ground.

She was distracted from these dark musings by three mad scientists. Ashley could tell they were scientists by the lab coats, and that they were mad by the maniacal laughter.

Peter drew his sword and killed two of them. Ashley gave the other a kick in the kneecap, and then he went down. The fairies finished him off.

“Now we put on these evil lab coats and make our way into the heart of the evil fortress,” Peter commanded.

Ashley put on her lab coat doubtfully. It was really quite evil-looking. The name tag read DR STRANGE FEELINGS OF CONFUSION AND RAGE.

She was also extremely uncertain about two barefoot kids trying to pass themselves off as scientists, no matter how mad said scientists happened to be. It would never work.

When she heard steps barging down an appropriately echoing stairwell, she thought frantically of how the spies on TV would act to distract attention from what they were doing.

So as the next set of mad scientists approached, she whirled, pushed Peter up against the wall, and kissed him on the mouth.

She had her eyes shut, but she could feel his mouth open in amazement. For a moment the world was still and peaceful, the hard angle of his jaw against her fingers, her senses flooded with the taste of berries and the smell of leaves.

When the scientists had passed, Ashley leaned back. The world remained peaceful for a moment, the wild lights in Peter’s eyes gone golden and a little hazy.

“Peter,” Ashley asked softly, “Do you know what that was?”