Annabel was too old to go to Neverland.
Her eighteenth birthday had already come and gone when she went on her first date, with one twenty-three-year-old Matthew Jamison, prompting her mother to throw her arms around Annabel’s shoulders and exclaim tearfully, “My little girl’s growing up!”
“But Mama,” Annabel said, extracting herself from her mother’s grip, “I don’t want to grow up.”
“Oh, my darling, you’re already nearly there,” her mother said. “You can’t help it.”
“I shall run away to Neverland, and then I can help it.”
“Darling, you’re too old! The fairies wouldn’t take you there anymore.”
If her mother had ever said that Neverland didn’t exist, Annabel might’ve given up on it, but as it was she never did. A stubborn, four-year-old part of her firmly believed in Neverland, in fairies, in Peter Pan and second stars to the right and straight on til morning. She wanted to go to Neverland and never grow up anymore, and she would. She told Matt so one spring night as they lay in her backyard, just as she had told her mother.
“As long as you take me with you,” he said.
Annabel leaned over and kissed him.
“Of course!” she said.
But when the time came, she left him behind.
Determined as she was, she was already nineteen years old by this time, an adult in the eyes of society and technically too old, as her mother had said, to be spirited away to Neverland. They had not, however, counted on the fairies. So few people believed in fairies anymore that those who did had only to make a wish and the fairies would steal them away before the world disabused them of such childish fancies. And Annabel did wish, again and again. She wished it when she paid her car insurance. She wished it when she drove to the community college during the week. She wished it when she bagged groceries at work. She wished with all her heart to go to Neverland and stop growing up.
Finally, the fairies heard her.
* * * * *
They came for her on a velvety night in mid-June. Matt walked Annabel home from his apartment, gazing at her with half a smile on his face at the way she skipped ahead of him to chase lightening bugs.
“Millions!” she cried. “Millions of fireflies!”
She twirled around until she fell giggling onto a lawn. Matt’s smile widened.
“Maybe they’re really fairies,” Annabel said.
“Maybe,” Matt agreed, and he held out a hand to pull her to her feet.
At her door they kissed and said their I-love-yous, and then Matt turned away reluctantly to walk home. There were an awful lot of fireflies out tonight, he thought, floating over every lawn and through the parks and glowing so magically they might have been Annabel’s fairies after all.
As he passed, they stopped in midair to stare after him and whisper to each other in a language like the sound of bells. Then they zoomed away, and a moment later there wasn’t a single firefly in sight.
Annabel sat at her vanity in her nightgown, humming to herself and brushing her dark curls. The moon shone through her balcony door, a tall glass piece she called her Peter Pan window, and out on the lawn fireflies swarmed. They flew together in a giant circle now. Annabel stared at them from the vanity, fascinated. She set down her hairbrush and went to the balcony door to watch more closely. The fireflies swirled slowly upward, looking for all the world like a great, silent tornado – not quite silent: The softest sound of tinkling bells emanated from its green depths. Without thinking, Annabel pushed down the door handle and stepped onto the balcony.
The fireflies rose to meet her, close enough now that she could see them in detail. But they weren’t fireflies – fireflies didn’t have human faces, or delicate hands, or clothing made of flower petals…
“Fairies,” Annabel breathed. “I knew you were real.”
They chimed at her in their bell language, gazing at her out of slanted eyes that changed color even as she stared back. Now that she knew they were here, they gave up masquerading as fireflies: Their bodies enlarged, and instead of all glowing green, they also glowed gold, pink, blue. Annabel reached out to touch them.
A mischievous smile flashed across each face, the sound of bells shrilled, and suddenly Annabel fell off the balcony into the shimmering horde. Tiny hands grasped hers and pulled her higher, higher into the night, too shocked and thrilled even to scream. And then she started laughing and couldn’t stop: Finally the fairies had come for her, finally she was going to Neverland to live as she pleased and have adventures and never grow up. She laughed with childish joy as they whizzed away towards the moon like a shooting star.
A shooting star that Matt saw out the window of his apartment. He decided to leave it be and let Annabel wish on it. If he had known that the shooting star was her wish coming true, he might have wished for the fairies to bring her back.
* * * * *
Annabel didn’t remember falling asleep on the long journey through the stars, but she must have: She woke up shivering, with silver frost clinging to her eyelashes and snow drifting down around her. The fairies flew over an ocean now, skimming the frigid water with their tiny hands. Annabel’s teeth chattered.
“If this is Neverland, it’s awfully cold,” she said to no one in particular, and then she fell back asleep.
By the next time she awoke, the air was spring-like and breezy and the water friendlier than before.
“Are we there yet?” Annabel murmured sleepily.
The fairies tinkled at her and pointed.
An island reared its head out of the water, thrusting great green peaks into the clouds while seabirds shrieked and wheeled overhead. Annabel heard howler monkeys hooting in the trees further inland and seals barking deafeningly on the rockier parts of the shore. Dolphins leapt from the water to grin at her. The fairies set her down on one of them and let go of her. Annabel gasped and squeezed her eyes shut as the dolphin leapt again, but then she opened her eyes, laughing, screaming with childish delight at the way the waves splashed her.
Suddenly the bell-language shrilled and the fairies zoomed towards the island. They hung over the beach for a moment in a glittering swarm, and then they vanished into the trees. Annabel stared after them.
“Wait!” she cried. “Come back!”
She thought she was close enough now that she could swim to the island, so she slid off her dolphin’s back and struck out through the waves.
It was farther than she had anticipated, wearing her out before she’d covered half the distance. But the dolphins had stayed where she left them, lest they come too close to the island and beach themselves. Annabel pushed on alone, wishing she had been born or a mermaid, or even that a mermaid would chance by and help her. No such luck, however. The waves swept over her and shoved her under until she pushed her way, sputtering, back to the surface.
Then she felt sand beneath her toes. Annabel half walked, half dragged herself the rest of the way up the beach and collapsed on the shore. The waves rolled up and tickled her feet, but she couldn’t bring herself to move even for the tides.
“I want to go home,” Annabel whimpered. She fell asleep thinking of the way her mother had hugged her preceding her first date.
* * * * *
A strong pair of arms carried her over the island through the star-bathed sky. She dreamt of her mother, and of monsters that swooped down to kidnap her. She dreamt of Matt. She cried for him in her sleep, and the arms hugged her closer and a voice, in a language like the fairies’ bells made into speech, sang to her until her dreams and cries quieted. She continued her journey through the stars and the jungle, oblivious.
* * * * *
Matt woke with a jerk at midnight, to the jangling of the phone. He tried to ignore it and fall back asleep, but the ringing echoed through his apartment. He gave it up as a bad job, rolled over in bed, and answered.
“Yeah?” It came out as half a yawn.
The familiar voice of Annabel’s mother crackled in his ear.
“Matt, dear,” she said reprovingly, “I know the two of you like spending time together, but I really do need to know when Annabel’s going to be out all night.”
Matt blinked and rubbed his eyes, trying to wake up enough to comprehend.
“I’m sorry?” he said.
“I know, I know, she’s an adult now, but she’s still my baby – you understand, it’s just a mother’s worry…. I know I’m silly, but—”
“Mrs. Swann—”
“Yes, dear?”
“Annabel isn’t here.”
A sharp intake of air as it hit her, and then the voice faltered, “She isn’t – isn’t there?”
“No, I walked her home at ten,” Matt said. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and flicked on the lamp, swallowing down the panic bubbling with him. He had walked her home, hadn’t he? Then where was she?
The same question had clearly occurred to Annabel’s mother.
“Oh my God,” she gasped. A heart attack sounded imminent.
Matt pulled on jeans and a t-shirt even as he spoke.
“Hey, calm down, okay?” he said. “I’m coming over as soon as I hang up the phone, and we’ll find her. Okay? We’ll find her. But it’s probably nothing. She probably just went for a walk.”
“A walk?” in a dazed voice, and then, hopefully, “Yes, maybe she could’ve gone for a walk. She likes to go out on clear nights to see the stars.”
Guilt squirmed in Matt’s stomach, beneath the panic. Annabel hadn’t gone for a walk: She always stayed in her own yard when she did her late-night star-gazing. Still, perhaps false hope was better for her mother than no hope at all.
A minute later Matt was pounding down the street, back to Annabel’s house to search for her. She had to be there – he’d walked her home. She had to be there. He would search again all the rooms that her mother had surely already searched, just in case.
She’s at home, she’s at home, she is, she must be, she’s at home—
So absorbed was he with repeating that mantra to himself that he failed to notice the blackness of the lawns that only two hours past had been aglow with fireflies.
And thanks. I have a second chapter done and a third mostly done (or maybe a third all done and a fourth partly done, I forget), but now that I'm back in school I haven't had a lot of time to work on it, so it may be a loooong while between postings...
