Finally, seeing that he indeed had no intention of returning, that he really had lost all interest in finding something to crow about, they exchanged looks of disgust and disappointment and followed after.
A Welcome-Home Party
Peter wasn't quite sure how he made it back to camp. A good eye and a clear memory would certainly have helped had he possessed either, but since he lacked both, it was most probably luck that saw him safely through. He ran the entire way, and the Lost Boys never did catch up to him. He believed he'd left Tink behind as well, for he neither saw nor heard from her during his flight. Pursued by demons he recognized all too well, he charged down the winding island trails with blind disregard for his safety, heedless of the heights he scaled and the drops he descended, consumed by bitterness and despair. Everywhere he turned, in shadowed woodland niches, in the mirrored surface of a pond, in the clouds that sailed peacefully overhead, he saw Jack with Hook.
I've lost him, was all he could think. I've lost him.
He couldn't bear to consider what had become of Maggie, what Hook might have made of her. It was a parent's worst nightmare-his children stolen away by a terrible influence, a bad habit, lured to a life that was doomed to end badly. Peter railed against himself furiously, laying on blame in thick layers, salt on his wounds. He knew he had failed, that Hook had won, that he had lost his fight for Jack and Maggie. How awful to realize the truth, to see clearly for the first time that things might easily have been different. A little more time spent with his children, a little more attention paid to them, a little extra effort to be there when they needed it, and none of this would be happening. Jack and Maggie were with Hook because Peter had chosen too many times not to be with them.
It was irrational thinking, of course. But then Peter Banning was in an exceedingly irrational state, a parent stripped bare of the armor of Parental Responsibility, an adult bereft of childhood memories, an authority figure only marginally in command of himself.
He crossed the rope bridge from the island to the atoll where the Nevertree stood straight and tall against the blue waters of the ocean, and he raged anew at fate and circumstance, at missed chances and poor choices, at heaven and earth and Hook. He did not fully know where he was as he stumbled on, grasping now in belated hope at the promises Tink had made him, at the wishful looks in the Lost Boys' eyes, at the dreams of rescue that seemed to have eluded him forever. He lurched about in a fog, muttering words of power that had gone empty and flat, now spreading his arms as if they were wings and jumping up and down in a vain effort to fly, now crouching to thrust and parry with an imaginary sword. Back and forth, left and right, hither and yon he staggered, descending into a madness that shut him away within himself as surely as barred doors and latched windows close an empty house. Tears blurred his eyes and ran down his cheeks, and the bitter taste in his mouth choked him until he could barely breathe.
And then, suddenly…
WHAP!
Something hard smacked him squarely on the top of his head. Down he went in a heap, his arms and legs outstretched, his body limp. He lay without moving for a time, stunned and frightened, drifting on the edges of consciousness, curling up within himself and hiding away from the pain of the world.
When he finally opened his eyes again, he found himself sprawled at the edge of the Nevertree pool. He took several deep breaths to clear his head, then struggled to his knees and bent over to splash water on his face. He remained kneeling when he had finished, watching the waters clear before him. As they did, the face of a boy appeared. The boy was perhaps fourteen and had wild, blond hair and mischief in his eyes. The boy, Peter thought, seemed familiar.
For though he wasn't, he looked very much like Jack.
Jack! Jack! Jack!
In the distance somewhere, the pirates were chanting his son's name, over and over.
He reached down and touched the reflection in the pool, tracing the lines of the boy's face. The water rippled slightly with the movement, and the image changed.
Peter caught his breath. The face had become his own.
Jack! Jack! Jack!
He caught sight of something beneath the image, something round and solid that rested at the bottom of the pool. He reached down into the waters and carefully extracted it. He held it wonderingly in his hand. It was Jack's autographed baseball, the one his son had hit out of Pirate Square.
Understanding flooded through him. It was the baseball, falling at last out of the sky, that had struck him.
Jack's baseball.
Come somehow to him.
It was a small thing, really-a meaningless circumstance, some would argue. But Peter Banning held that ball aloft as if it were a trophy, and something primal came alive in him, something so feral he could neither understand nor contain it. He reared back and screamed. But the scream did not come out a scream at all, but a crow as wild and challenging as any given forth by Rufio.
Peter surged to his feet, galvanized by the sound, backing away from the pond in a crouch until he was up against the trunk of the Nevertree. A voice whispered. Here! Here! He whirled around, searching for the speaker. A shadow thrown against the shaggy old tree was poised to flee. Peter moved and the shadow moved.
Then he saw that the shadow was his own.
He stared down again at Jack's baseball, and as he did so he saw out of the corner of his eye his shadow move, gesturing to him, beckoning anxiously. The voice whispered again. Here!
Peter glanced up hurriedly and the shadow froze. Peter traced the shadow's legs downward to its feet, finding them attached to his own. He lifted his leg and so did his shadow. All well and good.
He rubbed his head where the baseball had struck and took a step closer. This time his shadow did not follow, but actually charged ahead, waving him anxiously on, calling out to him to hurry. Come on, Peter, come on! He went obediently, not bothering to question that such a thing could be, wondering only where it would lead. The shadow pointed downward to a gnarled hole. Peter pushed back a tangle of vines and grasses that half masked the wood and bent close. What he saw was the outline of a face, revealed by just the right slant of the sun's bright light, the image etched clearly in the worn bark, eyes and nose and a mouth that stretched open as if it were…
Crowing.
And there was more. There were names carved in the bole's flat surface, names out of time and memory, names from a past he had thought lost to him forever.
TOOTLES. CURLY. SLIGHTLY. NIBS. JOHN. MICHAEL.
Forgotten for so long, Peter realized as he traced the carvings with his finger, feeling the familiar roughness against his skin. Forgotten in the loss of childhood. Forgotten in growing up.
"Tootles," he whispered. "Wendy…"
And then the knothole opened before him, a door to something that lay within. Peter hesitated just an instant, then began to crawl through. There was a hollow space beyond. It was dark and the fit was tight, but he kept at it, knowing somehow that the rest of what had been lost to him, the rest of who he was, was waiting inside.
Halfway through, he became wedged like a cork in a bottle. He braced his hands against the sides of the opening and pushed. Abruptly he popped through, tumbling headfirst into the darkness to land on his hands and knees.
Behind him, the knothole closed. Peter reached out blindly, groping without success for something solid to grasp.
Then a light appeared, approaching out of the darkness, growing steadily brighter. Abruptly Tinkerbell appeared, tiny and radiant as she hung in the air before him, no longer dressed in her faerie garb, but in a flowing gown of lace and satin, of ribbons and silk, of colors that shimmered like sunsets and sunrises and rainbows after thunderstorms.