Peter Pan: The Land Beyond

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

There is a throbbing that sounds like drums playing gently in my head. It's repetitive. Within the darkness that surrounds me, I feel suffocated and alone. Before me appears a boy with messy dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. He's wearing leaves and vines as clothing. He smiles, bowing with one hand across his belly and the other behind his back. Don't I know him? He looks so familiar. He stands straight and reaches his right hand out to me.

"Come with me," he whispers.

"But I don't know you," I reply.

His face scrunches together and he frowns deeply. "Lahona."

The smooth, youthful sound of his voice is refreshing somehow. It's inviting. It can manipulate. I reach back, but the harder I reach the further I become. He looks broken like I have said something to devastate him. And then his round eyes sadden, his lips part and pout.

My heart aches and the throbbing continues. Shaking my head, flashes of the boy and I dancing close together in a decrypted castle plays in my mind. And then it switches, to us in the water, my arms locked around his neck and our chests together. The image changes. He and I are in a bed of leaves and moss, our foreheads almost touching as we lay comfortably next to each other. My eyes close, but his fingers linger along my face, stopping at my lips and he watches me.

"Stay with me," he whispers.

It all comes rushing back so fast my brain whips back and forth.

"Peter!" I scream, thrusting up from the cold, wet brick floor. My heart races in my chest and my eyes search frantically for Peter but all I find is a dark and cold and damp room. It's square with a window high above me. The moonlight beams through the little rectangular cutout. Ahead of me are bars and a door.

I try to remember what happened last but it's all blurry.

Clanking echoes throughout the cell and a light faintly glows from the right, cascading the hall in front of the cell to show two shadows coming toward me. Coming out from the hallway and in front of the cell is a tall man finely dressed. He's wearing a large red velvet coat with gold embellishing's, black pants, and a giant red velvet hat with feather plumes of red and black hanging from the back. He has dark brown curly hair, a nicely trimmed mustache, and a thin beard. His right hand is a hook and a gold pummel sword dangles from his waist. I can't tell the color of his eyes in the darkness but they glare down at me.

"It is her." He says with a deep voice.

"The girl Pan has been with?" Asks an older voice. Another man approaches the finely clad man. He's wearing a reddish-orange cap, glasses, a gray-striped shirt, baggy black pants, and a faded green jacket. He's older than the man next to him.

"Yes." He smiles evilly. "What is your name girl?"

"What is it to you, human?" I hiss.

"She's got a temper. My name is Captain James Hook." The man with the evil grin says.

"And I am Mr. Smee." The older man chimes.

"I don't care," I mutter.

"You should, because, you see here, Captain Hook is buying you." Mr. Smee wags his finger.

"Buying me? Where the hell am I?"

"Tsk, tsk. She doesn't know, Smee."

"No, she doesn't, sir."