Terry Brooks - The Hook (1991)

His hands shook. "Wendy," he breathed. "This is where… This is Wendy's house. Tootles and Nibs built it for her. There were make-believe roses for decorations and John's hat for a chimney-"

He gasped in shock. "Tink, I remember!"

He whirled about. "This is the home underground!" He rushed over to the remains of the rocking chair. "Wendy used to sit and tell us stories in that chair-except it wasn't here, it was over there! We'd come back from adventures, and she would be darning our socks. She slept here. Tink, Tink, your apartment was here as well-right here! And little Michael's basket bed was here! And John slept here!"

He was charging about now, pointing to first one spot and then another, the words flooding out of him. Tinkerbell watched breathlessly, rapture shining on her face, adoration mirrored in her eyes.

Peter stopped, catching sight of something else amid the wreckage. He knelt, brushed back the ashes and silt, and held up a worn, half-burned, one-eyed teddy bear.

"Taddy. My Taddy," he whispered. His eyes lifted, and he seemed to look somewhere far away. "Taddy used to keep me company in my pram. My mother…" He swallowed. "I remember my mother…"

Tink darted forward, her light flashing as she came. She hovered at his ear. "What about your mother, Peter? What do you remember? Tell me!"

Peter was clasping Taddy to his chest now, his head shaking slowly. "I remember her… my mother… and my father… looking down at me, talking about how I would grow up and go to the finest schools…"

The words triggered old, forgotten memories, and they came to life once more, bright and vivid.

He lay in his pram, just a baby, tucked beneath his blue blankets, staring upward at the sky, at the clouds that floated, at the birds that soared.

"… you can be sure, very fine schools indeed." He could hear his mother speaking, her voice insistent. ' 'First Whitehall, then Oxford. Of course, after graduation he will prepare for a judgeship, then perhaps a term in parliament…"

"It was only what all grown-ups want for their children," Tink advised solemnly, her soft voice like a bell in his ear.

"Yes, but it frightened me so," said Peter. "1 didn't want to grow up… and someday die."

The baby thrashed wildly in his pram and the brakes came loose. Down the walkway it went, gathering speed, rolling toward a pond. Peter's mother gave chase, frantic to catch up. At the edge of the pond, the pram suddenly stopped, safe.

But the inside of the pram was empty. The baby was gone.

It was night then. Rain tumbled down from the clouded sky. Thunder rolled and lightning flashed. On an island at the center of the pond lay the baby, soaked to the skin and crying dismally. A tiny light appeared and transformed into Tinkerbell. She stood looking down at him, then picked up a leaf to shield his face from the rain. Cooing and whispering, she calmed him. The baby murmured, and she replied. Then she threw a sprinkling of pixie dust over him, took hold of his tiny hand, and away they flew into the night.

"I brought you here to Neverland," whispered Tink.

Then Peter was three, flying back again to Kensington Gardens, night all about, moon and stars distant and pale. He flew to a third-story window and tried to open it. But the window was locked. The boy stared at it in confusion. Despair filled his eyes as he saw that inside his mother slept with her arms wrapped close about another child.

"She had forgotten me," Peter said softly. "She had found… someone else."

Then he was twelve, flying boldly through the nursery window at 14 Kensington Gardens at a dozen years past the turn of the century. The Darling house was dark and still and the nursery bare of the furniture it held now, save for a few of the toys, which looked newer and brighter. He'd found other windows to visit since his own had been locked. He'd chased his foolish, stubborn shadow in and out of this one a few times, and finally it had been caught by Nana and then shut away by Mrs. Darling in a bureau drawer. He came looking for it, found it, and was unable to reattach it. They wrestled in the dark. He tried to stick it on with soap and, when that failed, burst into tears, waking the sleeping girl…

"Boy, why are you crying?" she asked him.

They bowed to each other and he asked her back, "What's your name?"

"Wendy Angela Moira Darling. What's yours?"

"Peter Pan."

Peter's eyes were wide and staring and his breathing was rapid. How many times had he come back for her after that? Always in the spring, to return her to Neverland for cleaning, to take her away once again…

He saw her aging, growing up while he did not, leaving her childhood while he remained oblivious and unchanged. Thirteen, fifteen, seventeen…

And then one day he forgot to come for her and did not come again for many years. When at last he did, when finally he remembered, he found her kneeling in the nursery by the fire, her face in shadows, the room transformed once more…

"Hullo, Wendy," he greeted.

"Hullo, Peter," she replied. A pause. "You know I cannot come with you. I have forgotten how to fly. I grew up a long time ago.''

"No, no! You promised you wouldn't!"

But she had, of course, despite her promise, because in the world outside of Neverland you always grew up. So Peter became friends with her daughter, Jane, and for many years they went together to Neverland.

But Jane grew up as well, and one day Peter came to the Darling nursery to discover that Wendy was a grandmother and Jane's daughter now slept in her bed. Peter, ever adventurous, skipped onto the bedpost to view the sleeping child and found himself face-to-face with Moira. Something in the way the smile on her lips hid their kisses enchanted Peter and made him reluctant to leave. Every time he tried to go, he was forced to turn back again. A dozen times he ran to the window and started to fly away, Tink beckoning from without, anxious to go on to other windows, to blow out the stars in other skies. But each time he hesitated and went back for another look.

Then Wendy appeared, slipping through the door of the nursery, racing to stay his passage for a single moment, so anxious was she to see him. But Peter needed no staying this night, drawn by what he saw in Moira's face, caught in a net that even he could not escape.

"I shall give her a kiss," he offered finally.

But Wendy dashed to stop him. ' 'No, Peter. No buttons and no thimbles for her. Moira is my granddaughter, and I cannot bear to see her dear heart broken when she finds she cannot keep you - as I once found I could not."

She cried then, overcome with a vision of what might have been. Peter sat next to the sleeping Moira, twirling a thimble between his fingertips. But at the last minute he changed his mind for reasons that would be forever unclear. Captivated by the girl, he bent to kiss her on the lips as he had seen others kiss, and as his lips touched hers the thimble dropped away.

He failed to see the sudden closing of the latticed windows - as if a breeze had sprung up. He failed to hear the click of their lock. He failed to see the look of horror on Tink's face as she peered through the glass from without…

"I thought I had been shut away from you forever," she whispered, remembering with him.

Then Peter was in school, dressed in a jacket and tie and polished shoes, his hair cut and combed, everything neat and proper and in place. He sat at a desk among other schoolchildren, staring out the open window into a fall afternoon thick with colored leaves and musty smells. A teacher walked to him, smiled, and said, "Peter? Where did you go?"