Part II: Sometimes I Think I'm Bigger Than Sound

Part II of The Devil In the Wishing Well, for the Writer's Digest Science Fiction/Fantasy Contest. Probably won't make sense on its own. 

You can read the first part here: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work.php?id=96979 and the last one here: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work.php?id=96982

Part II: Sometimes I Think I’m Bigger Than Sound

Son of man,   

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only        

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,   

And the dead tree gives no shelter. Only, 

There is shadow under this red rock,                     

And I will show you something different from either     

Your shadow at morning striding behind you     

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;   

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

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

Boy

He sees his life in panes of glass. One is frosted, for the time that escapes memory before his seventh birthday; the next stained in all of the bright brilliance of Never Neverland, reds and blues and a thousand shades of green; one completely, painfully clear. That is the Wendy-pane, the mirror that sees to the very soul of his world. He loves it, sometimes, and other times he wishes he could shatter it on the rocks.

            The last is dark, because he does not know what comes after her.

            Her mark has been left on them, in the changing colors of the leaves and the bright patterns of the flowers. He can feel it, pulsing, thrumming beneath his skin. It is strange, this feeling of belonging to someone, to a boy who has never known any ruling but his own.

Girl

            The world she returns to is the not same one she left. Hers was a place of cobblestone streets and air thick with smoke, ladies in billowing lace skirts and men in waistcoats. But in the land of Never, Never-ending, and Always, Always-waiting, the days run into weeks run into months run into years, and the place she and her brothers stumble upon, blinking in the sunlight like people who have just woken from a long sleep, was grown. It had twisted itself into something harsh and metallic and strangely beautiful, iron and plastic and smooth shiny vinyl. It is so different from endless forests and clear blue sky that it makes her feel safe. Here, she is secure in her own skin.

            They are shuffled from family to family, some with houses teeming with screaming infants and some with quiet shelves of books. They grow, the three of them, little Michael with his war-painted cheeks and John with his bent glasses. One becomes a fearless boy, a boy who wails to the sound of a guitar and only sometimes pretends he could fly. The other hides behind a book, a shield of paper and ink, from a world that is swallowing him like an ill fitting shirt.

            The girl grows wild and free, fiercely protective of the little family she has made herself. She colors dresses in plastic buckets of dye set out on the cracked sidewalk. She lies on the fire escape of their new apartment until the sun burns her skin tight and dry, so she can be sure it fits.  

Sometimes, she takes a needle and thread and creeps into the room of her sleeping brothers, to be sure that their shadows are fastened to the soles of their feet.

Boy

            It’s Tiger Lily who tells him.

            He’s flying, dancing, whirling in sweet open air. He crows to the birds and names the shapes of fluffy white clouds. But then she is there, in a clearing in the woods with her fists clenched and her face red. Tiger Lily screams his name, over and over again until it cracks and splinters with effort, until he covers her mouth and twists a hand into her hair. Her eyes are so dark, almost black.

            “Hook,” she says, and her voice is less then a whisper among the trees that scrape the sky. He feels the shape of the word against his palm.

            Her fear is electric, palpable, but he is Peter Pan and he refuses to feel it. Instead, he spreads his arms like wings and flies, like a bird, like a dragon, like a butterfly ready to be destroyed by the first frost.

            The air is cool and damp. It reminds him of a day, a year ago, perhaps, or a thousand years ago, when a girl with dangerous blue eyes held his own knife to his throat.

            “Do you think you’ll come back, too?” she said, and as she rested her knuckles over his heart her fingers trembled.

            But he is Peter, Peter Pan. Somewhere his name is written in the sky, in stardust and wishes and dreams. He cannot die.

Girl

She has tried so hard to leave behind her childhood. Isn’t it ironic that whenever she closes her eyes she can imagine herself back in that chaotic, beautiful place of never-ending? When she paints the pictures are flying pirate ships, fairies with butterfly wings and fish girls with hungry eyes, their bodies smooth and scaly.

Once, she covered Tatiana’s eyes and laid them out on worn bedspread for her. Tatiana, with her kohl-rimmed eyes and crochet scarves, fearless Tatiana. She’d touched them like she might draw them out of the canvas with the pressure of her fingers.

Tatiana doesn’t understand her. She grew up under hot stage lights, behind musty velvet curtains. It was easy as breathing for her to be herself, and be others besides. Tatiana does not understand, but she is clever enough to let her keep her secrets, and for that she is grateful.

 She never paints the boy, even if he is there is every line of Never, Neverland. They breathe his name. Her brush strokes are to the rhythm of his laugh. Sometimes, she lights them on fire to watch him go up in smoke.

Boy

            The sky is dark with smoke. Flames, bright, hot flames, lick the trees like parched tongue searching for water. He does not fly; now, he runs. Branches snap beneath his feet. Soot clings to his skin, his hair, like black fairydust. It sticks to his lips.

            The Tree House is burning, bending, buckling under the weight of its own future and crumbling at his feet. And there he is, thin as a scarecrow and sharp as a blade, his coat red like blood and dark with sin.

            “Hook!” the boy yells, screams, and when those empty black eyes turn to him he is not afraid. His heartbeat pulses in his fingertips, in his mouth and in the soles of his feet. He slices the air with the blade of his knife.

            The Captain laughs. It is deep, rumbling, the growl of some terrifying beast as he sharpens his claws. His steps are muffled by decaying leaves. He comes so close that Peter can see the circle of his pupil, swallowed by color. There is something familiar in the shape of his face, and he thinks that once he may have trusted this man. Might have even loved him. But it is a fleeting thought, gone before he can grasp it.

            He holds him at knifepoint, this enemy of his, who raises his sword. His face is distorted in the reflection of the metal, pale and drawn.

“Little boy,” says the man with the cold eyes. “Are you afraid to die?”

            “No!” Peter shouts, but the roar of the flames swallows his voice.

Girl

They’re in a pandemonium of dry ice smoke and lights flashing a thousand different colors to make up for the starless sky. The music pounds through the pavement, thrums through the air like rolling thunder. The crowd writhes, a collection of faces, legs, hips, clad in leather and scraps of silk. Girls in too much makeup and boys with bleached hair sway, their skin glittering with sweat.

She wants to feel bad about dragging John to the concert. She can see that he hates it, in the curve of his shoulders and the bow of his head. Other boys yell with the screaming vocals, but only John tries to disappear. She could have brought Michael or Tatiana, who thrived on shadows and the beat of a hundred hearts. But John understands her. When her skin is too tight, burning and tingling with the weight of herself, just being closer to him anchors her. She needs him to be whole so she wouldn’t be empty. 

“Good, right?” she yells to him. He nods, smiling weakly, and stares back at the ground. She dances, twirling and twisting between hot bodies with sweat soaked skin, drinking in the dark of the sky until she is intoxicated by the simple sensation of living.

It crosses her mind that this is something she has felt before, caught in the air between the deep blue sky and the far-below ground.

Boy

            It’s the way his blood sings, his skin jumps, alight with excitement. It’s the smell of smoke and sweat. That’s why he can’t stop, he can never stop: fighting, living, breathing. His body is coiled, ready to strike.

            Staring into death’s cold eyes, the tip of his scythe moving with the rise and fall of his chest, he’s never felt more alive.

            (But he’s a Never-Boy, with fairy dust in his veins as well as blood, and his memories wash away with the rain).

            He grins, who ever thought to give a boy with his first set of teeth a knife as wicked as that?

 He is still grinning, still awaiting a battle that has already been won, when the man with the cold eyes slides a sharp hook between his ribs as if it is the easiest thing. He leans close, twisting fingers into hair. “Keep what you love closer, Peter, or else someone will take it from you.”

He leaves him there, the Captain with the hollow cheeks and blood bright as poppies on his hands. He leaves him broken, while ash falls like rain and flames climb to the sky, with his own blood on his lips in place of words.

And Peter Pan falls to earth.