Peter Pan

All children, except one, grow up—and from the moment little Wendy Darling plucked a flower at two years old and watched her mother's heart break with the wish that she might stay small forever, she knew this truth as surely as any of us come to know it. Two is the beginning of the end, after all.

The Darlings lived at Number 14, a household presided over by Mrs. Darling with her romantic mind like those puzzling Eastern boxes nested one inside another, always one more to discover, and her sweet mocking mouth that held a kiss in its right-hand corner that no one—not even Mr. Darling, who had won her by taking a cab while other suitors ran—could ever quite capture. Wendy thought perhaps Napoleon might have managed it, though one imagines him storming off in a passion when he failed. Mr. Darling was a man who knew about stocks and shares, or quite seemed to know, which amounts to much the same thing where respect is concerned. He was frightfully proud of his children—Wendy first, then John, then Michael—though each new arrival required his most rigorous calculations with pencil and paper, adding up expenses differently each time while Mrs. Darling looked on imploringly, until somehow the children just squeaked through with mumps reduced to twelve and six.

Being poor from all the milk the children drank, yet determined to keep up with the neighbours, the Darlings engaged a nurse who happened to be a prim Newfoundland dog named Nana. She was a treasure, really—thorough at bath-time, up at the slightest cry, a believer in old-fashioned remedies and rhubarb leaf who made sounds of contempt at all the new-fangled talk about germs. No nursery could have been conducted more correctly, though Mr. Darling sometimes wondered uneasily whether the neighbours talked, and whether Nana quite admired him as Mrs. Darling insisted she did.

There never was a simpler, happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.

Mrs. Darling first encountered him while tidying up her children's minds—that nightly custom of every good mother, rummaging through their thoughts like drawers, folding away naughtiness and airing prettier notions for morning. In those mental landscapes she found the Neverland, that snug island each child carries within, crammed with lagoons and flamingoes, wigwams and wolves, coral reefs and caves. But perplexing her most was a word scrawled boldly across all three minds: *Peter*. The name had an oddly cocky appearance.

Wendy explained he was Peter Pan, a boy who lived with fairies and never grew up. Mrs. Darling dimly recalled believing in such a person once, before she was married and full of sense. Mr. Darling dismissed it as nonsense Nana had put in their heads—just the sort of idea a dog would have.

But it would not blow over. Leaves appeared on the nursery floor, skeleton leaves from no English tree, found near the window three floors up. Wendy mentioned casually that Peter sometimes visited at night, sitting on her bed and playing pipes, though she never woke to see him. Mrs. Darling searched for strange footprints, rattled the poker up the chimney, measured the sheer thirty-foot drop from window to pavement. Surely Wendy had been dreaming.

She had not.

On Nana's evening off, with all three children safely asleep and Mrs. Darling drowsing by the fire over Michael's birthday shirts, the window blew open. A boy dropped onto the floor, accompanied by a darting light no bigger than a fist. Mrs. Darling started up with a cry and knew at once he was Peter Pan—a lovely boy clad in skeleton leaves and tree juices, entrancing chiefly because he still had all his first teeth. When he saw she was a grown-up, he gnashed those little pearls at her.

And so the extraordinary adventures of the Darling children were about to begin.

Mrs. Darling's scream pierced the nursery air, and as though summoned by that very cry, Nana burst through the door—faithful Nana, home from her evening's liberty. The great dog growled and lunged at the strange boy, who escaped through the window with the lightness of something not quite earthly. Mrs. Darling screamed again, though this time her heart clenched with fear for him, certain he must have plummeted to his death. She rushed to the street below, searching frantically for a small broken body, but found nothing at all. When she lifted her eyes to the heavens, she could make out only what might have been a shooting star streaking across the black night.

Upon returning to the nursery, she discovered Nana clutching something peculiar in her mouth—the boy's shadow, snapped clean off when the window slammed shut behind him. Mrs. Darling examined it thoroughly, turning it this way and that, but it proved to be quite an ordinary shadow, as shadows go.

Nana, possessing the practical wisdom of her kind, hung it out the window straightaway, reasoning that the boy would surely return for it and ought to find it waiting. But Mrs. Darling could not abide the sight of it dangling there like Monday's washing, lowering the tone of the whole house. She considered troubling Mr. Darling with the matter, but he sat absorbed in calculations for winter coats, a wet towel wrapped round his head to sharpen his thinking, and she knew precisely what he would say: *It all comes of having a dog for a nurse.* So she rolled the shadow carefully and tucked it away in a drawer, waiting for the proper moment.

That moment arrived a week later, on a Friday—that never-to-be-forgotten Friday. For years afterward, Mr. and Mrs. Darling would sit in the empty nursery with Nana between them, reliving every detail until it was etched into their very souls. "If only I had not accepted that invitation to dine at 27," Mrs. Darling would lament. "If only I had not poured my medicine into Nana's bowl," Mr. Darling would confess, crying "*Mea culpa, mea culpa*"—he had received a classical education, after all.

The evening had begun unremarkably enough: Nana drawing Michael's bath, Michael protesting bedtime with magnificent futility, and Mrs. Darling appearing in her white evening gown—dressed early because Wendy so loved to see her mother beautiful, wearing the necklace from George and Wendy's own bracelet borrowed for the night. The children had been playing at birth and parenthood, and little Michael, nearly in tears at being unwanted, had leapt into his mother's arms when she declared she very much wanted a third child, a boy.

Then Mr. Darling had burst in like a tornado, brandishing his tie—that crumpled little brute that would knot itself twenty times round the bed-post but refused to cooperate round his neck. Mrs. Darling tied it with her cool capable hands, and soon they were all romping wildly, father and children together, until Mr. Darling collided with Nana and found dog hair all over his new braided trousers.

It was then Mrs. Darling told him about the boy. He pooh-poohed the story at first, but grew thoughtful upon examining the shadow: "It does look a scoundrel."

What followed was the medicine catastrophe—Mr. Darling's foolish prank of pouring his own bitter dose into Nana's bowl. The great dog's sorrowful red tear, the children's reproachful silence, and Mr. Darling's wounded pride all conspired toward one terrible decision: Nana would be chained in the yard. Mrs. Darling warned him, reminded him of the boy, but he would not listen. He needed to be master of his house.

As the children were tucked into bed, Wendy heard Nana's bark—not unhappy, but warning. *She smells danger.* Mrs. Darling checked the window, looked out at the stars crowding close as though eager to witness what would happen, and felt an inexplicable dread clutch her heart. Little Michael's last words to her were simple and sweet: "Mother, I'm glad of you."

When Mr. and Mrs. Darling stepped out toward Number 27, the stars watched them go, and the smallest star in all the Milky Way screamed into the night: *"Now, Peter!"*