Once, in a tiny cell and the depths of despair, she had promised him she would grow up with him and stay beside him for the adventure of it. They were grown up now. She had made good on that promise.
“Goodbye, Peter,” she told him.
He gave her a sad and quizzical look. “Don't say that so sad-like,” he told her. “It's a no-good word anyways. I'll see you later. Rosemary will be back. We'll get dinner with James and Lasiandra again. Everyone always comes back again if you want them to.”
She nodded, but didn't amend her words. She smiled, but didn't amend her expression. Peter said his goodbyes the only way he knew how—by promising and proposing and postulating on future adventures. So caught up in these ideas, he didn't notice the frantic distress motions Gwen's shadow made. She stepped behind the half-closed door so her shadow couldn't reach out, and waved to Peter from there as he started up his cantankerous little car and putted off joyfully into the night.
Gwen closed the door. Her shadow continued to thrash. “You know,” she announced, “I'm never going to let you loose as long as you keep trying to cause problems for me.”
The shadow crossed its arms in a temper.
Gwen didn't let it trouble her. She walked over to her coffee table where Peter had set down the unsolved puzzle box and—in perfect Peter fashion—forgotten all about it. “You don't approve of my decision, do you?”
The shadow shook its head furiously, and pointed to Gwen's portrait.
“What would she think?” Over the years, Gwen had gotten better at deciphering her shadow's intentions when they communicated. “I can't imagine it matters now that she's grown up and gone… but I don't think she'd be disappointed.”
The shadow continued to flail in a fluster, but the puzzle box occupied Gwen. With a few quick slides, twists, and latches, she unlocked the Japanese box with practiced ease. Inside, she found the postcard from Sukumo, its back covered in her instructions for tonight.
She had an hour yet before she needed to leave, if she wanted to be there by midnight. She went upstairs and packed a bag. She swept up what little fairy dust Chickweed had left behind and saved it. She had long since memorized the contents of the postcard in the puzzle box, so she bundled it with all the other postcards she'd gotten over the years—from Rio de Janeiro, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Houston…
She put them in her bag, too, but not for sentimental reasons. She just knew she couldn't leave clues behind for the Anomalous Activity Department. She pulled on a pair of good boots and surprised herself, when the time came, with how easily she walked past her high school portrait, her dwindling hearth, and everything that she had made a home with in the little cottage.
Dressed warm for the night in a raven-black coat, Gwen didn't need to walk fast to fend off the cold. She ambled along the old country road in the opposite direction as her guests had driven home. As she walked away from the life she'd spent the past fifteen years building, she felt a little lighter on her feet with every step. She wouldn't fly away—flying was for children—but she appreciated the lightness.
She took her long ash-brown hair and began braiding it to keep the wind from wreaking havoc with it. Out of her bag, she pulled out a little bit of bark that she had stripped off a dying tree a long time ago. She put it in her mouth and started to chew it like jerky.
The stars twinkled in the clear night sky above her cottage, but as she walked down to the beach and the ocean docks, an eerie fog accumulated over the sea, so thick she might as well have been floating among clouds. Despite the murky look of the night air, the sea smelled crisp, bright, and full of promise. Gwen had only fallen more in love with the ocean over the years.
A hulking shadow moved through the fog and took shape as a massive old wooden ship came to port between the docks.
The metal of the anchor rattled and howled as it dropped down into the water, and crew members heaved the ship's wooden gangway down to the dock. The ship, highlighted with gold and crimson paint, had a beautiful masthead carved like a mermaid. Without a second's thought, Gwen walked aboard the gangway. Captain Starkey was waiting for her.
“Miss Hoffman,” he greeted her, “a pleasure to see you. I didn't know if you'd accept my invitation. Does this mean you've forgiven me for trying to spare you the fate of growing-up?”
“No,” Gwen told him, still holding a playful grudge against Starkey for attempting to kidnap her during the last battle of the old Neverland. “But I think I've had my fill of growing up now.”
Starkey's tight smile broke into a wide grin. When she was a teenager, he had seemed so old to her. He had been an adult and an authority, but now he seemed, if anything, younger than her. The moonlight lingered in their eyes and his smile seemed full of starlight, for he had spent his past fifteen years sailing in and out of Neverland's glow.
“They've recaptured Twill,” Starkey told her. “I could use another clever soul on board to help regain him.”
“So I've heard,” Gwen told him, taking the hand he offered as she leapt down onto the deck of the magnificent ship. “Whatever happened to the Grammarian?”
Starkey chuckled, “After the battle, you'd have been surprised and ashamed to see how many of our captured do-gooders defected. My crew all but doubled overnight, and we overtook the first better ship we could lay our hands on. The Grammarian is still harbored in easy waters, should we ever require her again.”
Gwen strode across the deck, Starkey walking with her. She was not the conflicted and confused girl she'd been as a teenager;
