She recites the details to herself, trying to fix them in her mind. If she doesn’t, they’ll become like a story someone else told her, distant and far away. Peter hasn’t given her any more of the sweet tea to drink, but there’s still something standing in the way of her name, like a door she can’t see beyond. It’s this place, the details of Neverland writing over the details of her home. Earlier, when she tried to think of them, she couldn’t remember the color of her mother’s eyes. She can see her mother’s face, but it’s blurred, out of focus, the eyes a muddy blue-brown-green, and it terrifies her.
In the pre-dawn dark beneath the leaves, she can just make out a hunched shape on the next platform over. Easing onto the thick branch that supports both of their platforms, she scrambles across, quietly enough that the boy doesn’t even look up. It’s the boy who was hidden among the leaves where the sweet-smelling flowers were—Timothy. The one who asked to hear the end of her story.
She’s relieved to see he made it back to the camp, but her relief doesn’t last long. His small body shudders, trying to hold in a grief so much bigger than him. She edges closer and sits beside him, touching his shoulder, and putting a finger to her lips when he looks up, startled.
“What’s wrong?” she whispers.
His tear-stained face is blotched red and pale, his eyes made bigger by the saltwater. He stares at her, and after a moment she lifts her arm, feeling awkward. He dives against her, burrowing into her side so she can feel his shuddering breath.
“Bad dream.” His voice is muffled.
She pats his hair. It’s gritty with sand.
“You can tell me, if you’d like.”
“I was in another place, and I had a bed so big it was like an ocean. There was a window, and two people standing in front of it, but they didn’t have faces and I couldn’t remember who they were.”
“Did they hurt you?”
He shakes his head. She feels it against her ribs.
“They just stood there, looking at me. One of them sang, and the other one reached out to touch my head, then I woke up.”
He pulls away from her so she can see his face. The tears no longer flow, but his eyes remain wide.
“Do you know who they are?” His expression pleads with her, and something catches in her throat.
Her heartbeat is an ache, the feeling of loss. Her mother’s blurred face hangs in her mind, the tune of her humming muffled so she can’t quite hear it anymore. For a moment, she can’t speak, and she swallows hard.
Parents. Parents singing a lullaby and tucking him in for the night. And for Timothy, it is a bad dream. He can scarcely remember what he lost, but the terrible sense of something fundamental missing from his life remains. Looking at him, the bewildered fear on his face, she hurts. The pain isn’t just for him, but for herself as well.
The longer she stays here, the more parts of herself she’ll lose. She’s certain of it now; it’s already begun. She’ll wake up one day and it won’t be just her mother’s features that are blurred. She might not remember that she ever had parents at all.
Timothy continues looking at her, hopeful, expectant, waiting for her answer. Would it be crueler to tell him? If Timothy knows the people in his dreams are his parents, will it be like opening a floodgate, reminding him of everything he’s lost? Maybe it’s better to only know he lost something, and not exactly what. How awful or careless must Peter be to take a mother and father away from a child so young?
“I think…” Anger, directed at Peter, cracks her voice. She swallows, trying again. “I think the people in your dream are people who love you very much. You don’t have to be afraid.”
Relief washes over Timothy’s face, immediate and pure. She envies him, and hates him, and wants to protect him all at once as he nestles against her again. All she can do is not pull away, putting her arm around him and feeling the tension run from his body.
“Will you tell a story? Like you did before?” He murmurs the request softly, barely audible. The sound makes her think of warm milk, but she tenses all the same, her muscles going rigid so he flinches away from her.
Fear spikes. What if she can’t remember any stories? What if she gets them all wrong again?
She forces herself to relax, pulling him close again, trying to ignore the speeding of her pulse. Timothy tilts his head to look up at her. He isn’t like Peter. He’s a little boy, so far away from his family that he doesn’t even remember what a family is anymore.
She’s never thought all that much about the fact she doesn’t have brothers or sisters. Now that’s she’s about to have a little cousin—if she ever makes it home, that is—she’s started wondering what it will be like to teach someone the things she knows. If she had siblings, she likes to think she would be a good big sister, helping to keep them safe, loving them, just like her mother with Uncle Michael and Uncle John.
“I could try,” she says. She remembers her family, at least for now, even if she doesn’t remember her name. She hasn’t lost everything, so she can give Timothy this little bit of comfort.
“What sort of stories do you like?”
“Adventures.” His voice is already sleepy, lulled by the words she hasn’t even spoken yet.
“All right, an adventure story.”
Timothy nods, a motion against her ribs as she takes a deep breath. Off amongst the leaves, in the deep shadowed places where the air is thick black and purple, fireflies blink in a lazy rhythm. Neverland is paused
