Chapter 12
I was still watching the water when Jean-Baptiste found me. It was dark by then, but I kept staring down into it for any kind of movement.
During the night most of the pirates managed to get out to their ship and they sailed away. At dawn Peter flew over the waves were the Captain had disappeared, but he never found him. His body was never washed ashore, and neither was the crocodileīs. Is he really dead? I donīt know. Time moves in curious ways in Neverland. Itīs not a straight line, instead it spirals and sometimes it bites itself in the tail and forms circles. I have come to the conclusion that nothing ever is certain here, not even death. Perhaps the Captain will come back someday, as bent on revenge as ever.
Jean-Baptiste and I built a new house. Not at the pond, none of us ever went back there. Jean-Baptiste arms healed, but it will never be completely right again. Far too much of muscles and nerves were damaged when the Captain sunk his claw into it.. He will forever have problems with gripping things with his right hand. but, as he says, he still have both his hands.
Though time moves in bizarre ways here, it still moves. Not long after we moved into our house, I found out that I was expecting a child. A girl, Black Hawk said, and I believed him as my heart said the same. Jean- Baptiste said we had to get married.
"But I donīt know who the father is", I protested. "It can very well be the Captain and not you." But Jean-Baptiste said that he didnīt care, he was to be the only father she would have, and I gave in to him. Peter objected to the wedding as well.
"When Wendy was my Mother before she wasnīt married, why should she be that now?" Jean-Baptiste laughed and said that now when I was going to be Mother to a girl it was quite different. As Peter readily believed that girls were very different from boys, he eventually decided that it was best we got married, after all.
So we got married in the Indian village. I wore the white ball gown, though I had to make some changes around my waist, which was already getting thicker. Peter came with an armful of pink flowers to put in my hair.
We settled down in our house and started to learn to live with each other and with Neverland. Peter often came by for stories and so did The Lost Boys. Peter remained Peter. He soon forgot the Captain as he had before and sometimes he forgets that I have grown up.
I didnīt forgot the Captain and neither did Jean-Baptiste. When he wakes up from a nightmare I donīt need to ask what he dreamt about, I know. I dream too. I see the image of the Captain at me bed, his claw buried in Jean- Baptistes body and his eyes flaming red. I wake up with a beating heart and I dread to touch Jean-Baptiste for fear of finding him dead by my side.
But I dream other dreams as well. In them I hear the Captain whisper my name, filled with longing. And when I reach out my hands towards him, there is no claw, just two warm hands that encloses mine. From those dreams I wake up wonder what would have happened if I had stayed with him. Would I have made him a happier man, a kinder man? Those thought are futile, I know, but I canīt help thinking them.
When I was a child I thought that the adults around me knew everything. That nothing was difficult and the choices were easy. But itīs not. And sometimes the choices are made for you and you just have to cope. When I was a child, Neverland was an escape, now itīs my home. And I have learned that itīs as difficult to live here as it would have been if I had been allowed to stay in reality. But I look at Jean-Baptiste and Peter and I feel my baby grow inside me and Iīm happy.
I think of the Captain often. I donīt miss him, not really. I donīt want him back. But he is always a guest in my mind. I think I touched his heart. I know he touched mine.
THE END