“Can you all fly then?” I ask loudly, looking down at them.
“Only while we’re with Peter,” says the one without glass in his glasses.
“Why?” I look between them.
Kinley shrugs. “Those are the rules.”
I arch an eyebrow. “According to whom?”
Peter stares up at me, a defiant sparkle in his eye as he cocks a brow.
“So no one can fly here except those with your permission?” I frown at him, the beautiful dictator that he appears to be.
Peter flies back up to me, this sweet grin on his face.
“That’s right.”
I roll my eyes at him. I think he might fancy himself clever for controlling gravity.*
I peer around the tree house as I listen.
“Where are the others?” I ask no one in particular, but Brodie hears me, and his eyes tighten a little.
“We are the Lost Boys,” he says.
“Yes, but there were many before, were there not?” I frown, confused. “Where are they now?”
“Gone, I guess?” He shrugs.
I frown more at that. “Gone where?”
“Just gone,” he says, looking around as though he himself just noticed their absence now. “I used to have a brother, I think, maybe?” He looks up at the ceiling, but I can tell he’s actually looking back inside his mind, like he’s trying to remember a thing he has forgotten.
I blink twice. “And he’s gone?”
Brodie holds my eyes for a sliver of a moment and then he shrugs a little. “I must have made him up,” he says before he bounds off, diving back into the nets.
The four of them are fighting and wrestling in the nets, and it occurs to me that all three of the Lost Boys are younger than Peter, and that would have struck me as odd and maybe I would have even thought on it more were it not for the ball of light that flies in, bouncing off the beams and then finally hovering right in front of my face. It’s not so big, no larger than my fist, but oh my god, once it’s still, I see what it is, and she is beautiful.
So now, I know what you’re thinking—we all know what they say about fairies, and some of it is true, but a lot of it’s slander.
Tinker Bell did not like Wendy, that we know, but Grandmother Mary didn’t know Tinker Bell; she had a different fairy, and hers was rather friendly to her. And me, well, I’ve never till now seen one in my life, but I’ve had many a pleasant dream about fairies and—in retrospect now—I’m not convinced that all of them were dreams after all as much as they were a prologue to the life awaiting me here.
Yes, it’s true that their tininess can inhibit the diversity of what they might feel in a single instant, but it is my personal opinion that Tinker Bell was occasionally （and particularly） ill-tempered and frightfully bold.
That said, I did arrive in Neverland a tinge nervous that perhaps in the same way Pan was fated to always find a girl like me, maybe too was the same girl fated to be hated by the fairies.
But the little fairy hovering in my face, she’s like a speck of sunshine. Very pale, almost translucent skin, huge light blue eyes and long, straight,? nearly white-blond hair.
“Well, hello.” I give her my warmest smile.
She sounds like chimes when she speaks.
“No, I can understand you.” I nod at her, and Peter looks over, frowning and curious.
“You speak Stj?r?” he asks me, floating over. He swats the fairy away carelessly as he zones in on me.
“I don’t—I didn’t know I did.” I give him a look. “But maybe?”
The fairy chimes again, landing on top of Peter’s head, strutting around, ignoring how he’d just shooed her away a moment ago.
“I think my grandmothers taught me.” I look from her to Peter. “I thought we were playing, but—I’m Daphne,” I tell her as I extend my finger out for her to shake. She shakes it back. “Rune?” I repeat her name back to her and look over at Peter to check.
He nods, glaring at the fairy, who zips down his arm like it’s a water slide before flying back up to my ear and tinkering
“Oh!” I beam at her. “Well, it’s my absolute pleasure! Yes, I arrived today, just.” I nod. “Yes, from London. Oh, it wasn’t so bad. I’d never seen the inside of a black hole before, so that was rather special.”
I can see in my peripheral vision Peter and the Lost Boys hovering behind us, watching, curious.
“She likes you,” says Brodie.
“Should she not?” I frown, a bit confused.