Somewhere in Never Land…
“Wait, did we look over by the Troll Bridge?”
“…We did?”
“What about the Tonal Spring?”
“And the beaches around the Shimmering Sea?”
The asker of these questions was a slender young man of indeterminate age—though perhaps if an observer looked him dead in the face she would notice the last pockets of baby fat plumping his cheeks just above the cheekbones. His eyes and mouth and even nose wiggled and puckered with every word and thought in between, like a toddler telling a very important story to his mother. His hair was mussed up and red, his eyebrows a thicker, darker red.
And were his ears just a touch pointed, at the tips?
The one who answered his questions certainly had pointed ears, though the same observer might be hard-pressed to make out any ears—or actual answers—at all. The boy spoke to what appeared to be little more than a golden light that bobbed and sparkled and tinkled like bells. In fact, the whole scene resembled a mesmerist quizzing a pendulum held from a long golden chain, glittering in the sunlight, whose vague swings returned meanings known only to the occultist himself.
But upon looking more closely, one would see that inside the golden bauble was a tiny woman with very pointed ears, a serious face, a green dress, and sparkling wings. Her body was like a series of energetic globes, from her golden hair in its messy bun to her hips to the round silver bells that decorated her shoes. Throughout the conversation every part of her was as animated as her friend’s face.
“Really? We looked in all those places? Huh. Well, what about…here!”
The boy spun suddenly and grabbed the side of a tree, as if to physically move it out of the way. Really, he was just looking behind it. But there was nothing hiding there aside from some brightly colored lichen, a camouflage moss, and a few grazing unicorn beetles.
From this sudden motion and burst of energy to dead exhaustion; the boy slumped, strangely drained by disappointment and exertion. He slid down to the base of the tree, causing at least two of the shining white beetles to flee into higher branches.
The bauble of light glittered aggressively up and down. It jingled angrily.
“I can’t anymore, Tink. I’m beat. I just…I just don’t feel like it.”
The fairy—for that is what she was—zoomed closer, concerned. And it was when her light shone its brightest on his countenance that the most unusual detail of an already fey and wondrous scene became apparent. For no matter how intensely she glowed, no matter how perfectly yellow and dazzling the sun in the sky shone, neither source of light managed to produce a shadow off the boy.
The bauble jingled in tones of hope.
“I don’t know. We’ve looked everywhere. Twice. Tink, I just don’t know where it could be!”
The bauble swayed quietly, pensively. Almost as if the fairy within was in that rarest state of all for fairies: deep thought.
Possibly bothered by something.
But the boy, even in his diminished state, still kept his attention permanently fixed on himself. He did not notice.
She jingled once, tentatively.
“Naw, I don’t feel like flying. Not right now. I think I’ll just rest here for a while. You go on without me. I could use a nap. Then I’ll feel better. I just know it.”
The fairy jingled worriedly around his face.
“Just…go look without me.” He swatted her away like a gnat, sleep already overtaking his body once the decision had been made. “Don’t feel like flying…anymore.…”
He yawned a giant, repulsive yawn, and was soon snoring.
The fairy regarded him silently. She hung in a cool shadow of the generous tree, spun gently by a summery breeze.
They were at the edge of the Quiescent Jungle, which was the friendliest forest in Never Land. The leaves of the trees spanned every shade of golden green, and the creatures who lived there were all harmless and mostly furry. The air smelled like ripening blackberries—although it was not quite the right season—and a whisper of cool moistness hinted at a delightfully icy stream somewhere nearby.
Only a fool would want to leave. Only a genius would choose to nap there.
But Tinker Bell was twitchy. She had a rather dark inkling of where the shadow could be, since they had effectively proven where it could not be.
And if her friend ever found out that she’d had this inkling all along, he would be very cross with her indeed.
She floated silently over to his face, her golden sparkles illuminating every lash, every freckle, every pore. He blew out through his careless lips, and his breath lifted up the ends of his long, shaggy bangs. She hovered above his pug nose. After debating and biting her own lip, she gave him the tiniest quick fairy kiss on it.
Then she steeled herself and zoomed into the sky like a bee bent on finding its way home after a day of foraging nectar.
But she was not going home.
She was going to look for Peter’s shadow in the scariest place of all.
She was going to London.
Yes, it’s a scene re-created so often it has become almost a caricature of a trope, but let’s go through the process once again anyway because it’s necessary, even to this story.
Low clouds do not blanket the sky, for that implies coziness and comfort. No, these clouds mask the sky, weigh on the sky, choke the sky. They are strengthened by smoke from below, the trickling-upward effluence of a hundred thousand chimneys that decorate the landscape like unhealthily angular flowers. The slate-and-clay-shingled, higgledy-piggledy rooftops seem to extend forever in an industrial upside-down version of the fairy-tale hills and dales in a children’s book with bright pictures and bad perspective. Everything—everything—is in shades of gray and black. A great gray river slinks through the city like a tired but friendly snake, hobbled by bridges far less impressive than their names imply.
(Don’t believe me? Look up London Bridge and gaze at its pictures. An utter disappointment.)
Of course there’s Big Ben, the giant clock with equally giant gunmetal and copper hands that an astounding number of fictional characters have wound up standing on at one time or another. Its bells, along with all the church bells of the city, toll the hour menacingly with the obvious mournful implication of time passing, death coming, soup’s getting cold.
On the cobbled streets below the towers and rooftops, weather has some impact and energy; the almost-rain and morning mist combine to make a wet, stinging atmosphere that has men swirling into greatcoats, nannies bundling up their charges, and mums shouting, “Come out of the garden, you’ll catch your death in the fog!” Also many, many umbrellas. So many black umbrellas with the usual spindly frames—like insects or skeletons or whatever—that watching them pass is almost torturously jejune.
There.
London.
End of one century, beginning of another.
Got it?
Good.
Halfway between where the umbrellas ended and where the sky should have started, maybe twenty and a half feet below the tallest chimney, was one particular casement window. Gazing out of it was a young woman in an unfashionable pale blue dress. Her hair was a popular shade of brown and her eyes an exquisitely normal blue for that time and place.
At first she looked up at the sky, but it was impossible to make out any shapes in the clouds because of their utter completion, filling the heavens from one end to the other in the same unbroken shade. So she looked down. But the dismal garden below soaked up the wet like a moldy sponge; there were no puddles, no reflections. The tree was sodden.