Darling Wendy

            Knife clutched to her chest, Wendy lay in the dark, in her daughter's bed, and waited for the boy.

            She knew he would come, for he had come every night for the past week.   Confident and cocky, arriving swift and silent at the nursery window, he moved with cat-footed assurance along the narrow ledge and perched to listen with an ear to the glass as she read to Jane.   The knowledge of his presence was like the brush of silk across Wendy's mind.   It had been years, a lifetime, since she'd last felt it.

            Her childhood had been spent in this same nursery, with Father stern and distant, and Mother almost cloying in her attempt to make up for her husband's aloof attitude toward his own offspring.   Back then, Wendy had shared the room with her brothers - John in the bed nearest hers, sleeping with his knees drawn up to his chin and one of Father's old top hats tipped sideways on the pillow, and Michael beyond him, his round behind prodding the covers into a tent as he snored gustily and drooled onto his teddy bear's head.

            She remembered Pan's first appearance, coming then as he did now to listen at the window for stories and songs.   Alien, the unaging child was separated from them by more than a thin pane of glass.   None of them understood that then, nor would have cared if they had, for he was magic and adventure to the boys . . .   and something else entirely to Wendy, with his lean body striped by shadow and moonlight, and his hair a froth of curls caught up with twigs and leaves that she was forever teasing free.

            Their time in Neverland was over too soon, brought about in equal part by Mother's grief and Pan's guilt.   Wendy knew that he could have made them stay had he so chosen, and they would have eventually forgotten their earthly home and family.   Hurt, she'd wondered why he didn't at least keep her, but when she asked, he refused to say.   Still, he came for her the next spring, as promised, missed the following year, then came again.   And if what they did in Neverland had little to do with spring cleaning, it was nobody's business but theirs.

            After that third spring, when her pregnancy became obvious, she made up a story to protect Pan and withstand Father's rage.   Mother remained painfully silent throughout, though with her own secret knowledge, she must have suspected the truth.   The Lost Boy's memories of their commander had shredded like mist before the wind of their growing up.   Even John and Michael, who surely remembered otherwise, claimed it was only childhood fairy stories and put it down to playing pretend.   It was left to Wendy alone to remember fighting pirates, Indian pow-wows, the blaze of starlight across an unobstructed sky, the full moon's lagoon-rippled reflection, mermaid song and, while the boys slept, love in the tall, thick grass.

            She was sent away to have the child.   When it came, it was a changeling with nut-brown skin, unruly hair, faintly pointed ears, and oddly-hued, sightless eyes.   Pan, for all that he'd been born human, was no more human now than his fairy companion.   Born dead, the infant was whisked away and disposed of before Wendy had time to do more than hug it once.   Two weeks later, she returned home and was ordered - in a heated, private, one-sided conversation with Father - to become a proper young woman.   This she dutifully promised to do, all the while secretly waiting for spring and the tap on her window, vowing that this year not even Pan would make her return from Neverland.

            He never came.   Not that spring, and never again, his short attention span pulling him away, forgetting her in the whirl of other adventures and, so she supposed, other girls as gullible as she.   Until now, nearly twenty years later, with her grown, married, and a mother again.

            A week ago this very night the hair rose on her neck as she tucked Jane into bed, and she knew with unshakeable certainty that Pan had returned.   There was no question that he recognized her as well, and forgot her again in the brief instant his eyes swept past her . . . and settled on her child.

            Despite the balmy nights and Jane's entreaties, the nursery window remained locked.   Wendy hardly left her daughter's side at night, her thoughts a roiling mix of a mother's fears spiced with a young girl's jealousy and angry hurt.   Each night, seeing him there and pretending she didn't, she drew the curtains closed, barring his curious eyes, and stopped her ears to the skritch of fingernails against the glass, telling Jane that it was only tree limbs dancing in the breeze.   When her husband (a good man, solid and dependable, nothing at all like Pan) noticed her anxiety and suggested a holiday at the shore, she gratefully agreed and sent her family on ahead, promising to join them after she'd finished some business at home.

            Now here she lay, rigid with tension, cramped in the short bed, her fingers tight around the metal shaft between her breasts, graying hair a loose wealth across the pillow, undone like a girl's to make the bait as appealing as possible, knowing that Pan's self-absorption would let him see what he chose to just long enough for her to do what must be done.   Old hurts battered her, hardening her resolve.   Jane must not be so used, her heart taken and rent, her childhood stolen, her womanhood tainted.

            There was no sound to hint that the now unlocked window latch had been tried and lifted, but a change in the air, a scent that was all Neverland, told her that he was in the room even before a flash of light announced Tinkerbelle's presence.   Through half-shut eyes, Wendy followed the weave and dart of the tiny, nimble fairy until she settled, quite suddenly, upon an unlit candle stub, where she flickered like a living flame.

            "Jane?"

            His voice, wild as honey and far-flung mint, caressed her, raising gooseflesh, lighting her from within like hot gold in her veins, warming her thighs despite her promise that things would be different for Jane.

            For her .

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