After their late dinner, the children immediately cuddled into bed. Their full stomachs overpowered their busy minds and lulled them into sleep. The children could compartmentalize in a way Gwen couldn't. They fell asleep, untroubled by what tomorrow would bring. She didn't toss and turn in bed, but simply failed to fall asleep. She stared at the ceiling, her eyes feeling wired open. How could she sleep on the eve of an invasion?
Rosemary slumbered in their canopy bed and the other children's snores drifted in from bigger beds and smaller hammocks elsewhere in their cavernous home. The underground house at night always had the faint hum of a kindergarten class during nap time.
Gwen had learned to wander without disrupting the children's sleep. For as much as she tried to assimilate to Neverland's daily rhythms, she still found herself alone with her unsleepy mind some nights. It didn't surprise her that consciousness clung hard to her tonight. Creeping out of bed and treading on quiet feet, she went to the secret drawer in her wall and opened it with her skeleton key.
When Bard had given her the key, she had remarked that it came from Margaret. Gwen wished that she had demanded an explanation at the time—with Bard gone now, she would never know the history of this open-all key or the girl who first owned it. Gwen had no magic keys in any of her stories, and Bard had been captured before Gwen started telling the story of Margaret May to the children. The raven tree she told Rosemary about might have manifested in Neverland, but certainly a character from her story hadn't sprung to life here. Gwen didn't know what to believe anymore, which alarmed her, since belief was such a powerful force in Neverland.
From out of her hidden cubby, she pulled Jay's sketchbook and carried it with her down the tunnel hall and to the old oak tree. With a deep breath half as quiet as silence itself, Gwen hurried up the hollow trunk and emerged among its branches. She walked down a thick bough and sat down where she could overlook half the island as it lay gleaming in moonlight. The oak leaves cast scattered shadows over the sketchbook, but the night glowed with enough ambient silver light that Gwen could still appreciate the black and white drawings.
The night carried such solemnity, it felt appropriate to go through the book once, start to finish. Her eyes lingered on every drawing, marveling that Jay would trust her with an entire volume of his art. She flipped through the first, familiar images and progressed to unknown territory. She watched the incremental evolution of Jay's skill as she paged through months of practice. Still life with football gear, ocean landscape, and portraits of his militarized video game protagonists all went by. Every image evoked the same sense of nostalgia, the same wishful desire to see Jay and talk with him about his art—to talk with him about anything—until she saw the last picture.
Their final night, that frantic moment at the lake, made so much sense as soon as she saw the portrait. He had insisted on meeting her the night she left—he had been working on a gift for her. She hadn't imagined he had done her portrait.
She recognized the picture. He had drawn it from a photograph she'd once used as a profile picture. Jay had captured her likeness fantastically—if he had misjudged any of her face's shapes, the change only flattered her. Studying this careful charcoal love letter, Gwen felt decidedly less beautiful than the portrait portrayed her.
Was she as grown-up as she looked in Jay's portrait, in Jay's eyes? The portrait looked like a pretty young woman. Had her fat, childish face and pudgy nose really smoothed out into such mature features? She'd been in Neverland for so long, and hadn't seen a mirror since she left reality. In her head, she still looked so much younger. Gwen had spent the vast majority of her life a child. It didn't seem so strange that her self-perception lagged behind her reality.
She felt her childhood, like a balloon on a string, trying to float away from her. Gwen could not hold it down, not keep it in her hands. The most she could do was hold onto it from this distance in Neverland, keeping it from floating any further away than it already had.
Her branch shook, and Gwen clutched the sketchpad in one hand and held onto her seat with the other as Peter emerged from the oak hallow. He leapt out, full of confidence. Anyone else who moved with such bold and presumptuous swagger did so for show. For Peter, the joy of making an entrance or impression came secondary. He swaggered for his own sake, even when he didn't suspect anyone would see him.
“Oh hullo!” he announced. “Fancy finding you up here.”
“Same to you,” Gwen answered. “What brings you out?”
“I wanted to see the moon rise.”
She almost gave him the unfortunate news that the moon had risen long ago, but she followed his pointing finger. On the horizon, a golden-orange orb began to lift into view. Hadn't she been looking through Jay's art book by moonlight just now? It didn't matter. Peter wanted a moon rise, so the moon rose.
He sat down beside her on the branch. It shook as he took a seat, but then the tree became as still as the night. “What's that?” he asked.
“Just an art book,” she answered.
“Where did it come from?”
“A friend gave it to me.”
“Which friend?”
“One from back home—before Neverland.”
Peter appeared to struggle with this idea. “Huh,” he replied, as if it stretched the bounds of his impressive imagination to conceptualize Gwen having a life before Neverland. This threw him off, and Gwen was happy he asked no further questions about the sketchbook.
“How are you doing?” she asked him.
This question shot him straight back into high spirits. “Clever as ever and fine as a clementine!” He grinned, but it seemed more like instinct than emotion.
“You're not worried about tomorrow at all?”
“Nope. Why would I be? Worrying was invented by grown-ups. I never cared for it.”
“But there are adults coming to attack Neverland.”
“It will be a fantastic adventure.”
“They'll bring weapons. They might try to kill you.”
“It will be a glorious battle.”
“It might not end well.”
“It certainly won't end well for them.”
“It might not end well for us.”
“Poppycock.”
Gwen wished she could announce poppycock and dismiss her concerns as easily as Peter dismissed them. “Well, if you're not worried,” she asked. “Why aren't you asleep?”
“Because I wanted to see the moon rise.”
His eyes went to the horizon again. Gwen and Peter sat together, watching the silver moon's light come through a filter of atmospheric haze that left it almost as orange as the sun, but easier to look at. Gwen wondered why anyone ever watched sunsets. What good did it do to watch the day end, staring at a ball of light with no distinguishing features? This moment felt better than any sunset she had ever seen. It was less boisterous, less colorful, but watching the night begin was a sublime experience, and she could study the subtleties of the moon's stippled surface, like freckles on a smiling face.
The wind rustled the oak leaves only enough to keep an empty silence from setting in. Gwen loved the way Neverland smelled at night. All the sun-warmed flowers and sun-ripened fruit radiated their aromas, but the cool breeze muted and mellowed the smell.
“I was thinking,” Peter announced. Gwen expected him to elaborate, but he didn't. Governed by instincts, whims, and the occasional burst of emotion, Peter did very little thinking. “And I could not stop thinking and get to sleep. So I decided that, if I had to think, I might as well think while watching the moon rise.”
He swung his legs as he sat, and the branch swayed with the motion. The slight rocking reminded Gwen of how she had felt aboard Starkey's boat, with the ship bobbing on the ocean water. “What were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking about your story,” Peter answered. “It was a very strange story.”
“How so?”
His brow furrowed, as if his precise feelings remained a mystery even to him. “I didn't quite know who the villain was. It seemed Margaret May was the hero, but then she behaved almost as bad as the first raven witch. Margaret May's real parents were quite awful, and the changeling sister was also awful, but she got better, so I don't know about her.” He thought a moment more, and then decided, “Everyone in it changed.”
He said changed with such scorn, the story's character arcs seemed like a personal affront to him. “You didn't like it?”
Peter made a face and replied, “It was a good story.” He shook his head and gave Gwen a stern look as he told her, “But don't ever tell me a story like it again.”
“Okay,” Gwen agreed. “I won't.”
“It was so complicated,” Peter declared, but Gwen knew he'd had no trouble following the story. He his complaint wasn't with the presentation of the narrative, but rather its structure.
“Sometimes life is complicated.”
Peter shook his head. “Mine isn't.”
“Some people's are,” she told him.
“Then all the more reason,” Peter explained, “to have simple stories and balance it out.”
The moon had almost finished rising, but it clung to the horizon like a child with separation anxiety. The sky was so vast and so dark—and the horizon was such a tidy, neat line.
“I think tomorrow might get complicated,” Gwen told him.
She expected a flippant line or another quick dismissal. It surprised her when Peter, still staring at the moon, answered, “Maybe.”
Gwen bit her lip and allowed herself to think of all the outcomes she feared most for tomorrow. “What happens if we lose?” she whispered.
“You don't need to worry about that,” he answered. “Losing isn't something that happens to people, it's something that's inside of people. And there isn't any losing inside of us, so no matter what happens, we'll be okay.”
She had to admit, she couldn't envision Peter losing. She could imagine no circumstance where he wouldn't just fly off, laughing all the way. Maybe she had something like that living inside of her too, just more cautious and a little quieter.
“What if they catch us though?” Gwen asked, her doubt persistent. “What if they take us away and we go back to reality?”
Peter gave her a thoughtful look before he announced, “Supposing they did, that would certainly be the most-disastrous-and-horrible case scenario, but if you and I had to go through it, we'd still be us, so I don't think even that would be so bad. As long as you're around to tell me stories, I don't see how anything can go too wrong.”
All at once, Gwen's misgivings calmed. Peter's confidence did not exist in the shallows of his demeanor—it went all the way down to his blood and his bones. He didn't just feel he could manipulate everything to his liking, he fundamentally believed he could survive anything. That, Gwen realized, was something they shared. She could be happy in Neverland, she could be happy in reality—all her confliction and challenges sprung from trying to decide between many desirable options. Old Willow had thrown her bones once and told her what her fate held: no matter what happened, no matter what she did, Gwen would be happy. And so would Peter. They would always be happy, because they had no losing inside of them.
Peter's cheerful expression muddied into something questioning and disquieted. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Looking at you like what?” Gwen asked.
“I have seen that look before,” Peter proclaimed. “Tiger Lily used to give me that look all the time. She still does—but it's a sad look now, even though it's the same. I don't know how. I don't understand it, and now you're doing it!”
A single laugh escaped Gwen, sounding more like a cough than laugh. She shook her head and looked in the opposite direction. “I'm not doing anything. I'm not even looking at you.”
“You were, though!” Peter told her.
“No I wasn't,” Gwen insisted, refusing to look at him. “I've never looked at you, I've never even seen you. I don't even know what you look like.”
“You have,” Peter argued, leaning over and trying to force his way into Gwen's vision without falling off the tree branch. “You've looked at me tons, and I know you know what I look like.”
Gwen scrunched up her face, still not looking at him as she teased, “You have long dark hair and bright blue eyes, right?”
“Gwenny, look at me!” Peter howled. He grabbed her arm with such desperation Gwen immediately perceived what his frightened expression confirmed: her taunting had actually panicked him.
She looked at Peter, amazed at how her ludicrous joke had disturbed him. “What's the matter, Peter?”
His tense shoulders lowered and he blinked back his panic as he held her eyes. “Don't ever do that again,” he told her.
Still baffled by how wounded he looked, Gwen nonetheless promised, “I won't.”
“It's the moments that you look away that you grow up,” Peter said. “As soon as you look away, you start to forget, and growing-up is forgetting. Don't ever look away from me, Gwenny. Don't ever forget me.” He still gripped her arm, as if he thought she might disappear into the night if he didn't hold onto her. Gwen couldn't imagine why this struck such an ugly chord with him, until she thought about who he was.
Peter did not believe in the past. The present and future all bled together for him, but the past was less than fiction to him. He didn't want to be forgotten for the same reason he didn't care about the secret sketchbook Gwen had spent their late-night conversation clutching. The past didn't exist. It was wholly irrelevant.
Gwen took his hand, and held it in hers, reassuring him, “I won't, Peter. Even if they took me away tomorrow and I grew up and lived to be a ninety-year-old lady, I'd still remember you. I'll never forget you.”
Peter nodded, once, as he recovered from the fright she had given him. “Good,” he said.
The moon bubbled into the night sky, slowly slipping into its natural silver hue. Peter squeezed her hand, but made no promises of his own. Peter did not offer to remember Gwen, he did not promise to never forget her, and Gwen didn't ask him to. She knew that for Peter Pan, there would never be a past. If anything ever separated them, she would dissolve into the no-man's land of his unused memory, never to be summoned again.
Yet they would be happy, even alone—Gwen content with her memories, and Peter untroubled by his loss.