Young Writers Society

This is for the Writer's Digest Science Fiction/Fantasy contest. It's part one of three, because I think over 3,000 words is too much to read on here. It's kind of strange and based on my own skewed version of Peter Pan. I think it will make sense if you've never heard of Peter Pan before, but I'm not sure. Please tear to shreds!

The next part is here:http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work.php?id=96981 and the last part is here:http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work.php?id=96982

Part I: The World Beyond the Windows

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

They called me the hyacinth girl.

Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

- T.S. Eliot, The Burial of the Dead I (The Wasteland)

Girl

She is a child no longer. Once, that in itself seemed impossible. It was always so hard to imagine growing, bones splitting and lengthening, white baby teeth forced from her gums and new teeth crawling in to fill their places.

The year she was twelve a boy stood in the darkness of her room, searching for a shadow, and offered her forever. She ran – no, flew, on wings made of shimmering dust and dreams – away with him. They hunted beasts as big as bears but with skin thick and dry like a snake’s. They rode rainbows until their stomachs ached and their voices were rough from laughing. They scooped pearls from the bottom of the ocean, intoxicated by the blue of the sky.

She shed the properness that had been sunk into her skin along with the thick London fog. When her dress became too tattered to wear, she took a pair of pants and his rough woven shirt instead. Her hair hung long and loose. She was the wild-girl, the Lost Girl who was sure she had just been found. She was his lady, his sister, his mother and sweetheart, each like a cloak she could slip into so easily.

And he was the Boy Who Never Grew Up, the boy who never grew old, who never gave in. Always the same old thing, the same wonderful, new thing, because who can see the magic in every day better than a child? He held her hands and twirled her, fingers laced firmly together. This was Never, Neverland and there was no law in the earth and sky but theirs.

But his world is a mockery, a skewed version of hers, where nothing ever grows and nothing ever dies. Her hands were small and soft, always, and the bowstring cut her fingertips long passed when they should be armored with calluses. Her brother Michael crushed a beetle, two rocks scraping together in his hands, but from the smudged black stain another beetle was born.

She wove a daisy crown, with flowers as white as the moon and as red as blood. She wore it for three days and three nights, but the petals never withered and stems never drooped. On the fourth day, she took the boy’s knife and tore them open, laid before her in pieces. When the new buds peeked through the dirt at her feet, fed by the juicy blood of petals and stems, she ripped them out.

He found her there, crying, her hands tangled in her hair. He offered her a piece of honeycomb and a familiar smile. She offered him his own knife, blade first.

“Do you think you’ll come back too?” she said to him. His lips opened, closed, perfect pink lips like the china dolls all lined up on a shelf back in her empty room. She brought him to his knees, one hand tight in his hair and the other tracing his cheek, gently, with the tip of his knife.

His eyes were wide, impossibly blue in the paleness of his face. He could not be completely real, completely human. But his chest rose and fell, his pulse tapped against her thumb, urgent and strong. She had never seen him afraid before. It made him seem more real.

She rested the knife in the hollow of his throat. He swallowed. She let it drop to the ground and pressed her lips against his, hungry, to taste his fear on her tongue.

He pulled away; buzzing in his ears, and touched his lips with trembling fingers. “Don’t.” he whispered. It was like a prayer to a God that doesn’t exist here, to the blue sky and the wild flowers and the crumbling walls of the castle he so carefully built. “Don’t.” His fingers dug into her arms. His breath was hot on her face, her neck. She closed her eyes to the darkness in his face. It might have been called betrayal, on someone else. On the face of Peter Pan, it had no name.

“Sorry.” She whispered back. “I’m sorry.” The words were bitter in her mouth. But the boy smiled, laced their fingers together and pulled her to her feet, already off on another adventure.

She followed him, because she was a good girl, a loyal girl, and if her smile was a little too big and her eyes were a little too dark, well, she had forever before her to sort these things out.

So they ran wild. They drank icy stream water from the cup of their hands and sprawled back in the shadows to count the stars. The Lost Boys built her a cottage in the woods, and even if she’d rather sleep beneath the stars, she called it the Little House and helped them paint it blue and white.

She was there, caught between those the four close walls and the roof, pushing down on her until she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe the hot, thick air, when she pulled on a shirt to find that the sleeves barely brushed her wrist. She traced the web of thin blue veins peeking out from the hem, hesitant as baby birds.

Quietly, she laced up her boots and tied her hair back. She woke her brothers, little Michael with his war-painted cheeks and John, who reached for his bent glasses. She held a finger to her lips and sent them down a path to the shore.

Last, she went to the boy with the never-changing face, the one who used to hold all of her dreams in the palm of his hand. His skin was smooth and glittering with stardust. She kissed him, to press some memory of herself into him. She imagined it, like a poison or disease, sliding through his red, red blood and carving her name on his heart.

She did not say goodbye.