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
