“Are you really called Wendy, then?”
A gull screams, its shadow falling on the boy, then the sand, as it circles overhead. The way Arthur and some of the other boys look at her, it’s as if they know her, or think they do, though she’s certain she’s never seen a single one of them before.
“I’m—” She wants to say no, but Peter cuts her off once again, keeping her from answering.
“Of course she’s called Wendy. She’s here to be our mother.” His mouth presses into a straight line. The expression makes him look far older than his slight body implies, but it’s only a moment before it cracks again in a lopsided grin. “Isn’t that right, Wendy? You’re our mother, and you’re going to cook for us, and tell us stories, and take care of us when we’re sick.”
“I don’t know how to cook.” She blurts the words, and they aren’t entirely a lie.
She really is only at the beginning of her lessons with Cook, and she’s never made anything on her own. Half the time when she’s in the kitchen, she lets herself get distracted by Cook’s stories about her home in Canada before she came to England. As long as her mother isn’t around to keep an eye on them—and sometimes even when she is—it’s easy to get Cook telling stories about Star Boy, and the Above People who live in the sky, or all the different birds and animals and plants in Canada that don’t live in England.
And really, what does it matter whether she knows how to cook or not? Who is Peter to order her about and tell her what she is and what she’ll do? She isn’t interested in being anybody’s mother, not now and maybe not ever, and besides, half these boys are older than she is anyway. She’s about to open her mouth to say as much, but Peter talks over her once again.
“Don’t be silly.” He seizes her hand, putting an end to the argument before it’s even begun.
He tugs at her, so she’s forced to follow him or trip and find herself with a mouth full of sand. Then he’s nearly running, and she’s too stunned and breathless to object. The boys fall in behind them, talking and shoving as they follow along.
Peter leads them away from the brightness of the beach. She turns to glance over her shoulder, seeing the ship properly for the first time. It’s only half a ship really, wrecked upon the shore like the bleached skeleton of an impossibly huge whale. One mast remains whole, the other cracked halfway down. A flag stirs at the top of the unbroken mast. Time and weather have faded it from black to gray, but as the wind snaps it straight, a skull and crossbones grins at her.
Pirates. Her father read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island with her after they went to see the ships in the harbor. She’d loved the story, and asked her mama to tell her a story about pirates too. Her mother’s stories were always made up from her head instead of out of a book, but they felt just as real as anything written down, like they’d always existed and her mother was just remembering them.
She used to beg her mother to show her the book the stories came from, certain she must be hiding it somewhere, just knowing it would be full of the most wonderful and terrifying illustrations. All the stories fit together, all of them about the adventures of a Little White Bird and a Clever Tailor. Absolutely anything could happen in her mother’s stories.
Once she understood there really was no book her mother pulled them from, she didn’t see why the Little White Bird or Clever Tailor couldn’t meet a band of dastardly pirates in their next story. As soon as she’d suggested it though, her mother’s face had changed, a cloud coming down over her eyes, and she’d said that was enough stories for one night. She’d been afraid to ask for stories about pirates ever again.
There aren’t quite as many bedtime stories now that she’s older, but sometimes something she says will bring that same cloud-cover look into her mother’s eyes. She never knows which things those will be though, and what not to ask about. It isn’t that her mother yells, or even gets angry with her, but the silence that results is worse. It’s like her mother goes away in those moments, to somewhere where she might not be able to find her way back again.
“Come on.” Peter tugs her arm again, dragging her toward a line of trees.
High above them, a faint smudge like the palest of smoke hangs against the blue of the sky. Then the ground changes from sand to dirt, beaten flat by a thousand footsteps. It’s like entering a completely different world, a clear line drawn between the beach and beneath the trees. She glances up into the thick canopy overhead, catching a brief flash of red and blue that might be a bird. She tries to identify the trees by their leaves and bark, but nothing looks familiar, and Peter moves too quickly for her to get a proper look.
“This is where we live.” Peter stops so suddenly she crashes into him.
Her mouth drops open, and for a moment she forgets to be afraid, or even annoyed. A castle with turrets and ladders and defenses sprawls between the trees. Bridges and walkways and platforms tilt madly around branches and trunks, some looking ancient and some brand new. It’s almost like something grown instead of built, except some of the wood is clearly salvaged from the ship on the beach. Other sections are carved right into living trees, or woven from branches still attached to the trunk.
The whole structure looks like it’s been started, abandoned, and restarted many times over countless years, no one part of it matching another. The most uniform part she can see is
