“IT ISN’T FAIR!” DARLA complained to her mom for the third time during their bedtime reading. She meant it wasn’t fair that Wendy only did the housework in Neverland and that Peter Pan and the boys got to fight Captain Hook.
“Well, I can’t change it,” Mom said in her even, lawyer voice. “That’s just the way it is in the book. Your argument is with Mr. Barrie, the author, and he’s long dead. Should I go on?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know,” Darla said, coming down on both sides of the question, as she often did.
Mom shrugged and closed the book, and that was the end of the night’s reading.
Darla watched impassively as her mom got up and left the room, snapping off the bedside lamp as she went. When she closed the door there was just a rim of light from the hall showing around three sides of the door, making it look like something out of a science fiction movie. Darla pulled the covers up over her nose. Her breath made the space feel like a little oven.
“Not fair at all,” Darla said to the dark, and she didn’t just mean the book. She wasn’t the least bit sleepy.
But the house made its comfortable night-settling noises around her: the breathy whispers of the hot air through the vents, the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall, the sound of the maple branch scritch-scratching against the clapboard siding. They were a familiar lullaby, comforting and soothing. Darla didn’t mean to go to sleep, but she did.
Either that or she stepped out of her bed and walked through the closed door into Neverland.
Take your pick.
It didn’t feel at all like a dream to Darla. The details were too exact. And she could smell things. She’d never smelled anything in a dream before. So Darla had no reason to believe that what happened to her next was anything but real.
One minute she had gotten up out of bed, heading for the bathroom, and the very next she was sliding down the trunk of a very large, smooth tree. The trunk was unlike any of the maples in her yard, being a kind of yellowish color. It felt almost slippery under her hands and smelled like bananas gone slightly bad. Her nightgown made a sound like whooosh as she slid along.
When she landed on the ground, she tripped over a large root and stubbed her toe.
“Ow!” she said.
“Shhh!” cautioned someone near her.
She looked up and saw two boys in matching ragged cutoffs and T-shirts staring at her. “Shhh! yourselves,” she said, wondering at the same time who they were.
But it hadn’t been those boys who spoke. A third boy, behind her, tapped her on the shoulder and whispered, “If you aren’t quiet, He will find us.”
She turned, ready to ask who He was. But the boy, dressed in green tights and a green shirt and a rather silly green hat, and smelling like fresh lavender, held a finger up to his lips. They were perfect lips. Like a movie star’s. Darla knew him at once.
“Peter,” she whispered. “Peter Pan.”
He swept the hat off and gave her a deep bow. “Wendy,” he countered.
“Well, Darla, actually,” she said.
“Wendy Darla,” he said. “Give us a thimble.”
She and her mom had read that part in the book already, where Peter got kiss and thimble mixed up, and she guessed what it was he really meant, but she wasn’t about to kiss him. She was much too young to be kissing boys. Especially boys she’d just met. And he had to be more a man than a boy, anyway, no matter how young he looked. The copy of Peter Pan she and her mother had been reading had belonged to her grandmother originally. Besides, Darla wasn’t sure she liked Peter. Of course, she wasn’t sure she didn’t like him. It was a bit confusing. Darla hated things being confusing, like her parents’ divorce and her dad’s new young wife and their twins who were—and who weren’t exactly—her brothers.
“I don’t have a thimble,” she said, pretending not to understand.
“I have,” he said, smiling with persuasive boyish charm. “Can I give it to you?”
But she looked down at her feet in order not to answer, which was how she mostly responded to her dad these days, and that was that. At least for the moment. She didn’t want to think any further ahead, and neither, it seemed, did Peter.
He shrugged and took her hand, dragging her down a path that smelled of moldy old leaves. Darla was too surprised to protest. And besides, Peter was lots stronger than she was. The two boys followed. When they got to a large dark brown tree whose odor reminded Darla of her grandmother’s wardrobe, musty and ancient, Peter stopped. He let go of her hand and jumped up on one of the twisted roots that were looped over and around one another like woody snakes. Darla was suddenly reminded of her school principal when he towered above the students at assembly. He was a tall man but the dais he stood on made him seem even taller. When you sat in the front row, you could look up his nose. She could look up Peter’s nose now. Like her principal, he didn’t look so grand that way. Or so threatening.
“Here’s where we live,” Peter said, his hand in a large sweeping motion. Throwing his head back, he crowed like a rooster; he no longer seemed afraid of making noise. Then he said, “You’ll like it.”
“Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t,” Darla answered, talking to her feet again.
Peter’s perfect mouth made a small pout as if that weren’t the response he’d been expecting. Then he jumped down into a dark space between the roots. The other boys followed him. Not to be left behind, in case that rooster crow really had called something awful to them, Darla went after the boys into the dark place. She found what they had actually gone through was a door that was still slightly ajar.
The door opened on to a long, even darker passage that wound into the very center of the tree; the passage smelled damp, like bathing suits left still wet in a closet. Peter and the boys seemed to know the way without any need of light. But Darla was constantly afraid of stumbling and she was glad when someone reached out and held her hand.
Then one last turn and there was suddenly plenty of light from hundreds of little candles set in holders that were screwed right into the living heart of the wood. By the candlelight she saw it was Peter who had hold of her hand.
“Welcome to Neverland,” Peter said, as if this were supposed to be a big surprise.
Darla took her hand away from his. “It’s smaller than I thought it would be,” she said. This time she looked right at him.
Peter’s perfect mouth turned down again. “It’s big enough for us,” he said. Then as if a sudden thought had struck him, he smiled. “But too small for Him.” He put his back to Darla and shouted, “Let’s have a party. We’ve got us a new Wendy.”
Suddenly, from all corners of the room, boys came tumbling and stumbling and dancing, and pushing one another to get a look at her. They were shockingly noisy and all smelled like unwashed socks. One of them made fart noises with his mouth. She wondered if any of them had taken a bath recently. They were worse—Darla thought—than her Stemple cousins, who were so awful their parents never took them anywhere anymore, not out to a restaurant or the movies or anyplace at all.
“Stop it!” she said.
The boys stopped at once.
“I told you,” Peter said. “She’s a regular Wendy, all right. She’s even given me a thimble.”
Darla’s jaw dropped at the lie. How could he?
She started to say “I did not!” but the boys were already cheering so loudly her protestations went unheard.
“Tink,” Peter called, and one of the candles detached itself from the heartwood to flutter around his head, “tell the Wendys we want a Welcome Feast.”
The Wendys? Darla bit her lip. What did Peter mean by that?
The little light flickered on and off. A kind of code, Darla thought. She assumed it was the fairy Tinker Bell, but she couldn’t really make out what this Tink looked like except for that flickering, fluttering presence. But as if understanding Peter’s request, the flicker took off toward a black corner and, shedding but a little light, flew right into the dark.
“Good old Tink,” Peter said, and he smiled at Darla with such practice, dimples appeared simultaneously on both sides of his mouth.
“What kind of food…” Darla began.
“Everything parents won’t let you have,” Peter answered. “Sticky buns and tipsy cake and Butterfingers and brownies and…”
The boys gathered around them, chanting the names as if they were the lyrics to some kind of song, adding, “…apple tarts and gingerbread and chocolate mousse and trifle and…”
“And stomachaches and sugar highs,” Darla said stubbornly. “My dad’s a nutritionist. I’m only allowed healthy food.”
Peter turned his practiced dimpled smile on her again. “Forget your father. You’re in Neverland now, and no one need ever go back home from here.”
At that Darla burst into tears, half in frustration and half in fear. She actually liked her dad, as well as loved him, despite the fact that he’d left her for his new wife, and despite the fact of the twins, who were actually adorable as long as she didn’t have to live with them. The thought that she’d been caught in Neverland with no way to return was so awful, she couldn’t help crying.
Peter shrugged and turned to the boys. “Girls!” he said with real disgust.
“All Wendys!” they shouted back at him.
Darla wiped her eyes, and spoke right to Peter. “My name is not Wendy,” she said clearly. “It’s Darla.”
Peter looked at her, and there was nothing nice or laughing or young about his eyes. They were dark and cold and very very old.
Darla shivered.
“Here you’re a Wendy,” he said.
“And with that, the dark place where Tink had disappeared grew increasingly light, as a door opened and fifteen girls carrying trays piled high with cakes, cookies, biscuits, buns, and other kinds of goodies marched single file into the hall. They were led by a tall, slender, pretty girl with brown hair that fell straight to her shoulders.
The room suddenly smelled overpoweringly of that sickly sweetness of children’s birthday parties at school, when their mothers brought in sloppy cupcakes greasy with icing. Darla shuddered.
“Welcome Feast!” shouted the boy who was closest to the door. He made a deep bow.
“Welcome Feast!” they all shouted, laughing and gathering around a great center table.
Only Darla seemed to notice that not one of the Wendys was smiling.
The Feast went on for ages, because each of the boys had to stand up and give a little speech. Of course, most of them only said, “Welcome, Wendy!” and “Glad to meet you!” before sitting down again. A few elaborated a little bit more. But Peter more than made up for it with a long, rambling talk about duty and dessert and how no one loved them out in the World Above as much as he did here in Neverland, and how the cakes proved that.
The boys cheered and clapped at each of Peter’s pronouncements, and threw buns and scones across the table at one another as a kind of punctuation. Tink circled Peter’s head continuously like a crown of stars, though she never really settled.
But the girls, standing behind the boys like banquet waitresses, did not applaud. Rather they shifted from foot to foot, looking alternately apprehensive and bored. One, no more than four years old, kept yawning behind a chubby hand.
After a polite bite of an apple tart, which she couldn’t swallow but spit into her napkin, Darla didn’t even try to pretend. The little pie had been much too sweet, not tart at all. And even though Peter kept urging her between the welcomes to eat something, she just couldn’t. That small rebellion seemed to annoy him enormously and he stood up once again, this time on the tabletop, to rant on about how some people lacked gratitude, and how difficult it was to provide for many, especially with Him about.
Peter never actually looked at Darla as he spoke, but she knew—and everyone else knew—that he meant she was the ungrateful one. That bothered her some, but not as much as it might have. She even found herself enjoying the fact that he was annoyed, and that realization almost made her smile.
When Peter ended with “No more Feasts for them with Bad Attitudes!” the boys leaped from their benches and overturned the big table, mashing the remaining food into the floor. Then they all disappeared, diving down a variety of bolt-holes, with Tink after them, leaving the girls alone in the big candlelit room.
“Now see what you’ve done,” said the oldest girl, the pretty one with the straight brown hair. Obviously the leader of the Wendys, she wore a simple dark dress—like a uniform, Darla thought, a school uniform that’s badly stained. “It’s going to take forever to get that stuff off the floor. Ages and ages. Mops and buckets. And nothing left for us to eat.”
The other girls agreed loudly.
“They made the mess,” Darla said sensibly. “Let them clean it up! That’s how it’s done at my house.”
There was a horrified silence. For a long moment none of the girls said a word, but their mouths opened and shut like fish on beaches. Finally the littlest one spoke.
“Peter won’t ’ike it.”
“Well, I don’t ’ike Peter!” Darla answered quickly. “He’s nothing but a long-winded bully.”
“But,” said the little Wendy, “you gave him a thimble.” She actually said “simble.”
“No,” Darla said. “Peter lied. I didn’t.”
The girls all seemed dumbstruck by that revelation. Without a word more, they began to clean the room, first righting the table and then laboriously picking up what they could with their fingers before resorting, at last, to the dreaded buckets and mops. Soon the place smelled like any institution after a cleaning, like a school bathroom or a hospital corridor, Lysol-fresh with an overcast of pine.
Shaking her head, Darla just watched them until the littlest Wendy handed her a mop.
Darla flung the mop to the floor. “I won’t do it,” she said. “It’s not fair.”
The oldest Wendy came over to her and put her hand on Darla’s shoulder. “Who ever told you that life is fair?” she asked. “Certainly not a navvy, nor an upstairs maid, nor a poor man trying to feed his family.”
“Nor my da,” put in one of the girls. She was pale skinned, sharp nosed, gap toothed, homely to a fault. “He allas said life was a crapshoot and all usn’s got was snake-eyes.”
“And not my father,” said another, a whey-faced, doughy-looking eight-year-old. “He used to always say that the world didn’t treat him right.”
“What I mean is that it’s not fair that they get to have adventures and you get to clean the house,” Darla explained carefully.
“Who will clean it if we don’t?” Wendy asked. She picked up the mop and handed it back to Darla. “Not them. Not ever. So if we want it done, we do it. Fair is not the matter here.” She went back to her place in the line of girls mopping the floor.
With a sigh that was less a capitulation and more a show of solidarity with the Wendys, Darla picked up her own mop and followed.
When the room was set to rights again, the Wendys—with Darla following close behind—tromped into the kitchen, a cheerless, windowless room they had obviously tried to make homey. There were little stick dollies stuck in every possible niche and hand-painted birch bark signs on the wall. SMILE, one sign said, YOU ARE ON CANDIED CAMERA. And another: WENDYS ARE WONDERFUL. A third, in very childish script, read: WENDYS ARE WINERS. Darla wondered idly if that was meant to be WINNERS or WHINERS, but she decided not to ask.
Depressing as the kitchen was, it was redolent with bakery smells that seemed to dissipate the effect of a prison. Darla sighed, remembering her own kitchen at home, with the windows overlooking her mother’s herb garden and the rockery where four kinds of heather flowered till the first snows of winter.
The girls all sat down—on the floor, on the table, in little bumpy, woody niches. There were only two chairs in the kitchen, a tatty overstuffed chair whose gold brocaded covering had seen much better days, and a rocker. The rocker was taken by the oldest Wendy; the other chair remained empty.
At last, seeing that no one else was going to claim the stuffed chair, Darla sat down on it, and a collective gasp went up from the girls.
“At’s Peter’s chair,” the littlest one finally volunteered.
“Well, Peter’s not here to sit in it,” Darla said. But she did not relax back against the cushion, just in case he should suddenly appear.
“I’m hungry, Wendy,” said one of the girls, who had two gold braids down to her waist. “Isn’t there anything left to eat?” She addressed the girl in the rocker.
“You are always hungry, Madja,” Wendy said. But she smiled, and it was a smile of such sweetness, Darla was immediately reminded of her mom, in the days before the divorce and her dad’s new wife.
“So you do have names, and not just Wendy,” Darla said.
They looked at her as if she were stupid.
“Of course we have names,” said the girl in the rocker. “I’m the only one truly named Wendy. But I’ve been here from the first. So that’s what Peter calls us all. That’s Madja,” she said, pointing to the girl with the braids. “And that’s Lizzy,” the youngest girl. “And that’s Martha, Pansy, Nina, Nancy, Heidi, Betsy, Maddy, JoAnne, Shula, Connie, Corrie, Barbara…” She went around the circle of girls.
Darla interrupted. “Then why doesn’t Peter—”
“Because he can’t be bothered remembering,” said Wendy. “And we can’t be bothered reminding him.”
“And it’s all right,” said Madja. “Really. He has so much else to worry about. Like—”
“Him!” They all breathed the word together quietly, as if saying it aloud would summon the horror to them.
“Him? You mean Hook, don’t you?” asked Darla. “Captain Hook.”
The look they gave her was compounded of anger and alarm. Little Lizzy put her hands over her mouth as if she had said the name herself.
“Well, isn’t it?”
“You are an extremely stupid girl,” said Wendy. “As well as a dangerous one.” Then she smiled again—that luminous smile—at all the other girls, excluding Darla, as if Wendy had not just said something that was both rude and horrible. “Now, darlings, how many of you are as hungry as Madja?”
One by one, the hands went up, Lizzy’s first. Only Darla kept her hand down and her eyes down as well.
“Not hungry in the slightest?” Wendy asked, and everyone went silent.
Darla felt forced to look up and saw that Wendy’s eyes were staring at her, glittering strangely in the candlelight.
It was too much. Darla shivered and then, all of a sudden, she wanted to get back at Wendy, who seemed as much of a bully as Peter, only in a softer, sneakier way. But how to do it? And then she recalled how her mom said that telling a story in a very quiet voice always made a jury lean forward to concentrate that much more. Maybe, Darla thought, I could try that.
“I remember…” Darla began quietly. “…I remember a story my mom read to me about a Greek girl who was stolen away by the king of the underworld. He tricked her into eating six seeds and so she had to remain in the underworld six months of every year because of them.”
The girls had all gone quiet and were clearly listening. It works! Darla thought.
“Don’t be daft,” Wendy said, her voice loud with authority.
“But Wendy, I remember that story, too,” said the whey-faced girl, Nancy, in a kind of whisper, as if by speaking quietly she could later deny having said anything at all.
“And I,” put in Madja, in a similarly whispery voice.
“And the fairies,” said Lizzy. She was much too young to worry about loud or soft, so she spoke in her normal tone of voice. “If you eat anything in their hall, my mum allas said…you never get to go home again. Not ever. I miss my mum.” Quite suddenly she began to cry.
“Now see what you’ve done,” said Wendy, standing and stamping her foot. Darla was shocked. She’d never seen anyone over four years old do such a thing. “They’ll all be blubbing now, remembering their folks, even the ones who’d been badly beaten at home or worse. And not a sticky bun left to comfort them with. You—girl—ought to be ashamed!”
“Well, it isn’t my fault!” said Darla, loudly, but she stood, too. The thought of Wendy towering over her just now made her feel edgy and even a bit afraid. “And my name isn’t girl. It’s Darla!”
They glared at one another.
Just then there was a brilliant whistle. A flash of light circled the kitchen like a demented firefly.
“It’s Tink!” Lizzy cried, clapping her hands together. “Oh! Oh! It’s the signal. ’Larm! ’Larm!”
“Come on, you lot,” Wendy cried. “Places, all.” She turned her back to Darla, grabbed up a soup ladle, and ran out of the room.
Each of the girls picked up one of the kitchen implements and followed. Not to be left behind, Darla pounced on the only thing left, a pair of silver sugar tongs, and pounded out after them.
They didn’t go far, just to the main room again. There they stood silent guard over the bolt-holes. After a while—not quite fifteen minutes, Darla guessed—Tink fluttered in with a more melodic all clear and the boys slowly slid back down into the room.
Peter was the last to arrive.
“Oh, Peter, we were so worried,” Wendy said.
The other girls crowded around. “We were scared silly,” Madja added.
“Weepers!” cried Nancy.
“Knees all knocking,” added JoAnne.
“Oh, this is really too stupid for words!” Darla said. “All we did was stand around with kitchen tools. Was I supposed to brain a pirate with these?” She held out the sugar tongs as she spoke.
The hush that followed her outcry was enormous. Without another word, Peter disappeared back into the dark. One by one, the Lost Boys followed him. Tink was the last to go, flickering out like a candle in the wind.
“Now,” said Madja with a pout, “we won’t even get to hear about the fight. And it’s the very best part of being a Wendy.”
Darla stared at the girls for a long moment. “What you all need,” she said grimly, “is a backbone transplant.” And when no one responded, she added, “It’s clear the Wendys need to go out on strike.” Being the daughter of a labor lawyer had its advantages. She knew all about strikes.
“What the Wendy’s need,” Wendy responded sternly, “is to give the cupboards a good shaking-out.” She patted her hair down and looked daggers at Darla. “But first, cups of tea all ‘round.” Turning on her heel, she started back toward the kitchen. Only four girls remained behind.
Little Lizzy crept over to Darla’s side. “What’s a strike?” she asked.
“Work stoppage,” Darla said. “Signs and lines.”
Nancy, Martha, and JoAnne, who had also stayed to listen, looked equally puzzled.
“Signs?” Nancy said.
“Lines?” Joanne said.
“Hello…” Darla couldn’t help the exasperation in her voice. “What year do you all live in? I mean, haven’t you ever heard of strikes? Watched CNN? Endured social studies?”
“Nineteen fourteen,” said Martha.
“Nineteen thirty-three,” said Nancy.
“Nineteen seventy-two,” said Joanne.
“Do you mean to say that none of you are…” Darla couldn’t think of what to call it, so added lamely, “new?”
Lizzy slipped her hand into Darla’s. “You are the onliest new Wendy we’ve had in years.”
“Oh,” Darla said. “I guess that explains it.” But she wasn’t sure.
“Explains what?” they asked. Before Darla could answer, Wendy called from the kitchen doorway, “Are you lot coming? Tea’s on.” She did not sound as if she were including Darla in the invitation.
Martha scurried to Wendy’s side, but Nancy and JoAnne hesitated a moment before joining her. That left only Lizzy with Darla.
“Can I help?” Lizzy asked. “For the signs. And the ’ines? I be a good worker. Even Wendy says so.”
“You’re my only …” Darla said, smiling down at her and giving her little hand a squeeze. “My onliest worker. Still, as my mom always says, Start with one, you’re halfway done.”
Lizzy repeated the rhyme. “Start with one, you’re halfway done. Start with one …”
“Just remember it. No need to say it aloud,” Darla said.
Lizzy looked up at her, eyes like sky blue marbles. “But I ’ike the way that poem sounds.”
“Then ’ike it quietly. We have a long way to go yet before we’re ready for any chants.” Darla went into the kitchen hand-in-hand with Lizzy, who skipped beside her, mouthing the words silently.
Fourteen Wendys stared at them. Not a one was smiling. Each had a teacup—unmatched, chipped, or cracked—in her hand.
“A long way to go where?” Wendy asked in a chilly voice.
“A long way before you can be free of this yoke of oppression,” said Darla. Yoke of oppression was a favorite expression of her mother’s.
“We are not yoked,” Wendy said slowly. “And we are not oppressed.”
“What’s o-oppressed?” asked Lizzy.
“Made to do what you don’t want to do,” explained Darla, but she never took her eyes off of Wendy. “Treated harshly. Ruled unjustly. Governed with cruelty.” Those were the three definitions she’d had to memorize for her last social studies exam. She never thought she’d ever actually get to use them in the real world. If, she thought suddenly, this world is real.
“No one treats us harshly or rules us unjustly. And the only cruel ones in Neverland are the pirates,” Wendy explained carefully, as if talking to someone feebleminded or slow.
None of the other Wendys said a word. Most of them stared into their cups, a little—Darla thought—like the way I always stare down at my shoes when Mom or Dad wants to talk about something that hurts.
Lizzy pulled her hand from Darla’s. “I think it harsh that we always have to clean up after the boys.” Her voice was tiny but still it carried.
“And unjust,” someone put in.
“Who said that?” Wendy demanded, staring around the table. “Who dares to say that Peter is unjust?”
Darla pursued her lips, wondering how her mom would answer such a question. She was about to lean forward to say something when JoAnne stood in a rush.
“I said it. And it is unjust. I came to Neverland to get away from that sort of thing. Well…and to get away from my stepfather, too,” she said. “I mean, I don’t mind cleaning up my own mess. And even someone else’s, occasionally. But…” She sat down as quickly as she had stood, looking accusingly into her cup, as if the cup had spoken and not she.
“Well!” Wendy said, sounding so much like Darla’s home ec teacher that Darla had to laugh out loud.
As if the laugh freed them, the girls suddenly stood up one after another, voicing complaints. And as each one rose, little Lizzy clapped her hands and skipped around the table, chanting, “Start with one, you’re halfway done! Start with one, you’re halfway done!”
Darla didn’t say a word more. She didn’t have to. She just listened as the first trickle of angry voices became a stream and the stream turned into a flood. The girls spoke of the boys’ mess and being under-appreciated and wanting a larger share of the food. They spoke about needing to go outside every once in a while. They spoke of longing for new stockings and a bathing room all to themselves, not one shared with the boys, who left rings around the tub and dirty underwear everywhere. They spoke of the long hours and the lack of fresh air, and Barbara said they really could use every other Saturday off, at least. It seemed once they started complaining they couldn’t stop.
Darla’s mom would have understood what had just happened, but Darla was clearly as stunned as Wendy by the rush of demands. They stared at one another, almost like comrades.
The other girls kept on for long minutes, each one stumbling over the next to be heard, until the room positively rocked with complaints. And then, as suddenly as they had begun, they stopped. Red-faced, they all sat down again, except for Lizzy, who still capered around the room, but now did it wordlessly.
Into the sudden silence, Wendy rose. “How could you…” she began. She leaned over the table, clutching the top, her entire body trembling. “After all Peter has done for you, taking you in when no one else wanted you, when you had been tossed aside by the world, when you’d been crushed and corrupted and canceled. How could you?”
Lizzy stopped skipping in front of Darla. “Is it time for signs and ’ines now?” she asked, her marble-blue eyes wide.
Darla couldn’t help it. She laughed again. Then she held out her arms to Lizzy, who cuddled right in. “Time indeed,” Darla said. She looked up at Wendy. “Like it or not, Miss Management, the Lost Girls are going out on strike.”
Wendy sat in her rocker, arms folded, a scowl on her face. She looked like a four-year-old having a temper tantrum. But of course it was something worse than that.
The girls ignored her. They threw themselves into making signs with a kind of manic energy and in about an hour they had a whole range of them, using the backs of their old signs, pages torn from cookbooks, and flattened flour bags.
WENDYS WON’T WORK, one read. EQUAL PLAY FOR EQUAL WORK, went another. MY NAME’S NOT WENDY! said a third, and FRESH AIR IS ONLY FAIR a fourth. Lizzy’s sign was decorated with stick figures carrying what Darla took to be swords, or maybe wands. Lizzy had spelled out—or rather misspelled out—what became the girls’ marching words: WE AIN’T LOST, WE’RE JUST MIZ-PLAYST.
It turned out that JoAnne was musical. She made up lyrics to the tune of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and taught them to the others:
We ain’t lost, we’re just misplaced,
The outside foe we’ve never faced.
Give us a chance to fight and win
And we’ll be sure to keep Neverland neat as a pin.
The girls argued for awhile over that last line, which Betsy said had too many syllables and the wrong sentiment, until Magda suggested, rather timidly, that if they actually wanted a chance to fight the pirates, maybe the boys should take a turn at cleaning the house. “Fair’s fair,” she added.
That got a cheer. “Fair’s fair,” they told one another, and Patsy scrawled that sentiment on yet another sign.
The cheer caused Wendy to get up grumpily from her chair and leave the kitchen in a snit. She must have called for the boys then, because no sooner had the girls decided on an amended line (which still had too many syllables but felt right otherwise)—
And you can keep Neverland neat as a pin!
—then the boys could be heard coming back noisily into the dining room. They shouted and whistled and banged their fists on the table, calling out for the girls and for food. Tink’s high-pitched cry overrode the noise, piercing the air. The girls managed to ignore it all until Peter suddenly appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“What’s this I hear?” he said, smiling slightly to show he was more amused than angry. Somehow that only made his face seem both sinister and untrustworthy.
But his appearance in the doorway was electrifying. For a moment not one of the girls could speak. It was as if they had all taken a collective breath and were waiting to see which of them had the courage to breathe out first.
Then Lizzy held up her sign. “We’re going on strike,” she said brightly.
“And what, little Wendy, is that?” Peter asked, leaning forward and speaking in the kind of voice grown-ups use with children. He pointed at her sign. “Is it…” he said slyly, “like a thimble?”
“Silly Peter,” said Lizzy, “it’s signs and ’ines.”
“I see the signs, all right,” said Peter. “But what do they mean? WENDYS WON’T WORK. Why, Neverland counts on Wendys working. And I count on it, too. You Wendys are the most important of what we have made here.”
“Oh,” said Lizzy, turning to Darla, her face shining with pleasure. “We’re the mostest important…”
Darla sighed heavily. “If you are so important, Lizzy, why can’t he remember your name? If you’re so important, why do you have all the work and none of the fun?”
“Right!” cried JoAnne suddenly, and immediately burst into her song. It was picked up at once by the other girls. Lizzy, caught up in the music, began to march in time all around the table with her sign. The others, still singing, fell in line behind her. They marched once around the kitchen and then right out into the dining room. Darla was at the rear.
At first the Lost Boys were stunned at the sight of the girls and their signs. Then they, too, got caught up in the song and began to pound their hands on the table in rhythm.
Tink flew around and around Wendy’s head, flickering on and off and on angrily, looking for all the world like an electric hair-cutting machine. Peter glared at them all until he suddenly seemed to come to some conclusion. Then he leaped onto the dining room table, threw back his head, and crowed loudly.
At that everyone went dead silent. Even Tink.
Peter let the silence prolong itself until it was almost painful. At last he turned and addressed Darla and, through her, all the girls. “What is it you want?” he asked. “What is it you truly want? Because you’d better be careful what you ask for. In Neverland wishes are granted in very strange ways.”
“It’s not,” Darla said carefully, “what I want. It’s what they want.
In a tight voice, Wendy cried out. “They never wanted for anything until she came, Peter. They never needed or asked…”
“What we want…”JoAnne interrupted, “is to be equals.”
Peter wheeled about on the table and stared down at Joanne and she, poor thing, turned gray under his gaze. “No one is asking you,” he said pointedly.
“We want to be equals!” Lizzy shouted. “To the boys. To Peter!”
The dam burst again, and the girls began shouting and singing and crying and laughing all together. “Equal…equal…equal…”
Even the boys took it up.
Tink flickered frantically, then took off up one of the bolt-holes, emerging almost immediately down another, her piercing alarm signal so loud that everyone stopped chanting, except for Lizzy, whose little voice only trailed off after a bit.
“So,” said Peter, “you want equal share in the fighting? Then here’s your chance.”
Tink’s light was sputtering with excitement and she whistled nonstop.
“Tink says Hook’s entire crew is out there, waiting. And, boy! are they angry. You want to fight them? Then go ahead.” He crossed his arms over his chest and turned his face away from the girls. “I won’t stop you.”
No longer gray but now pink with excitement, JoAnne grabbed up a knife from the nearest Lost Boy. “I’m not afraid!” she said. She headed up one of the bolt-holes.
Weaponless, Barbara, Pansy, and Betsy followed right after.
“But that’s not what I meant them to do,” Darla said. “I mean, weren’t we supposed to work out some sort of compromise?”
Peter turned back slowly and looked at Darla, his face stern and unforgiving. “I’m Peter Pan. I don’t have to compromise in Neverland.” Wendy reached up to help him off the tabletop.
The other girls had already scattered up the holes, and only Lizzy was left. And Darla.
“Are you coming to the fight?” Lizzy asked Darla, holding out her hand.
Darla gulped and nodded. They walked to the bolt-hole hand-in-hand. Darla wasn’t sure what to expect, but they began rising up as if in some sort of air elevator. Behind them one of the boys was whining to Peter, “But what are we going to do without them?”
The last thing Darla heard Peter say was, “Don’t worry. There are always more Wendys where they came from.”
The air outside was crisp and autumny and smelled of apples. There was a full moon, orange and huge. Harvest moon, Darla thought, which was odd since it had been spring in her bedroom.
Ahead she saw the other girls. And the pirates. Or at least she saw their silhouettes. It obviously hadn’t been much of a fight. The smallest of the girls—Martha, Nina, and Heidi—were already captured and riding atop their captors’ shoulders. The others, with the exception of Joanne, were being carried off fireman-style. JoAnne still had her knife and she was standing off one of the largest of the men; she got in one good swipe before being disarmed, and lifted up.
Darla was just digesting this when Lizzy was pulled from her.
“Up you go, little darlin’,” came a deep voice.
Lizzy screamed. “Wendy! Wendy!”
Darla had no time to answer her before she, too, was gathered up in enormous arms and carted off.
In less time than it takes to tell of it, they were through the woods and over a shingle, dumped into boats, and rowed out to the pirate ship. There they were hauled up by ropes and—except for Betsy, who struggled so hard she landed in the water and had to be fished out, wrung out, and then hauled up again—it was a silent and well-practiced operation.
The girls stood in a huddle on the well-lit deck and awaited their fate. Darla was glad no one said anything. She felt awful. She hadn’t meant them to come to this. Peter had been right. Wishes in Neverland were dangerous.
“Here come the captains,” said one of the pirates. It was the first thing anyone had said since the capture.
He must mean captain, singular, thought Darla. But when she heard footsteps nearing them and dared to look up, there were, indeed, two figures coming forward. One was an old man about her grandfather’s age, his white hair in two braids, a three-cornered hat on his head. She looked for the infamous hook but he had two regular hands, though the right one was clutching a pen.
The other captain was…a woman.
“Welcome to Hook’s ship,” the woman said. “I’m Mrs. Hook. Also known as Mother Jane. Also known as Pirate Lil. Also called The Pirate Queen. We’ve been hoping we could get you away from Peter for a very long time.” She shook hands with each of the girls and gave Lizzy a hug.
“I need to get to the doctor, ma’am,” said one of the pirates. “That little girl…” he pointed to JoAnne “…gave me quite a slice.”
JoAnne blanched and shrank back into herself.
But Captain Hook only laughed. It was a hearty laugh, full of good humor. “Good for her. You’re getting careless in your old age, Smee,” he said. “Stitches will remind you to stay alert. Peter would have got your throat, and even here on the boat that could take a long while to heal.”
“Now,” said Mrs. Hook, “it’s time for a good meal. Pizza, I think. With plenty of veggies on top. Peppers, mushrooms, carrots, onions. But no anchovies. I have never understood why anyone wants a hairy fish on top of pizza.”
“What’s pizza?” asked Lizzy.
“Ah…something you will love, my dear,” answered Mrs. Hook. “Things never do change in Peter’s Neverland, but up here on Hook’s ship we move with the times.”
“Who will do the dishes after?” asked Betsy cautiously.
The crew rustled behind them.
“I’m on dishes this week,” said one, a burly, ugly man with a black eyepatch.
“And I,” said another. She was as big as the ugly man, but attractive in a rough sort of way.
“There’s a duty roster on the wall by the galley,” explained Mrs. Hook. “That’s ship talk for the kitchen. You’ll get used to it. We all take turns. A pirate ship is a very democratic place.”
“What’s demo-rat-ic?” asked Lizzy.
They all laughed. “You will have a long time to learn,” said Mrs. Hook. “Time moves more swiftly here than in the stuffy confines of a Neverland tree. But not so swiftly as out in the world. Now let’s have that pizza, a hot bath, and a bedtime story, and then tomorrow we’ll try and answer your questions.”
The girls cheered, JoAnne loudest of them all.
“I am hungry,” Lizzy added, as if that were all the answer Mrs. Hook needed.
“But I’m not,” Darla said. “And I don’t want to stay here. Not in Neverland or on Hook’s ship. I want to go home.”
Captain Hook came over and put his good hand under her chin. Gently he lifted her face into the light. “Father beat you?” he asked.
“Never,” Darla said.
“Mother desert you?” he asked.
“Fat chance,” said Darla.
“Starving? Miserable? Alone?”
“No. And no. And no.”
Hook turned to his wife and shrugged. She shrugged back, then asked, “Ever think that the world was unfair, child?”
“Who hasn’t?” asked Darla, and Mrs. Hook smiled.
“Thinking it and meaning it are two very different things,” Mrs. Hook said at last. “I expect you must have been awfully convincing to have landed at Peter’s door. Never mind. Have pizza with us, and then you can go. I want to hear the latest from outside, anyway. You never know what we might find useful. Pizza was the last really useful thing we learned from one of the girls we snagged before Peter found her. And that—I can tell you—has been a major success.”
“Can’t I go home with Darla?” Lizzy asked.
Mrs. Hook knelt down till she and Lizzy were face-to-face. “I am afraid that would make for an awful lot of awkward questions,” she said.
Lizzy’s blue eyes filled up with tears.
“My mom is a lawyer,” Darla put in quickly. “Awkward questions are her specialty.”
The pizza was great, with a crust that was thin and delicious. And when Darla awoke to the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall and the sound of the maple branch scritch-scratching against the clapboard siding, the taste of the pizza was still in her mouth. She felt a lump at her feet, raised up, and saw Lizzy fast asleep under the covers at the foot of the bed.
“I sure hope Mom is as good as I think she is,” Darla whispered. Because there was no going back on this one—fair, unfair, or anywhere in between.