Checkmate

31. Stories and Lost Boys

Mrs Kazinski was pleased to see me fresh faced and smiling that Monday morning, welcoming my report with open hands. She took one look at the words before calling me back, curious to hear it read aloud. "Now?" She nodded eagerly, hand holding the paper out to me.

I sighed and stood at the front of the class, taking the papers in hand, glad I had spent the previous day editing the length. "A long time ago." I began. "Before roads and mobile phones, and even indoor plumbing, lived a man and his son. The man longed for a place he visited repeatedly in his dreams, willing to do anything to feel the dirt of the island beneath his feet. When he eventually got to the island, his son in hand, he was faced with a shadow that offered him eternal youth on the island in return for his heart, which it pulled with vigour from his chest."

Most of the students in the room visibly flinched at the thought of such a thing, but Thomas remained intrigued, his eyes fixed on me.

"Instantly the man became a boy, but the shadow warned, a boy could not have a son, and so carried his child away. The boy screaming for his papa, dropping his favourite toy in the process." I cleared my throat, the boy having once been me, dragged away from my father. "The man, now a boy himself, picked up the toy and called himself after it, and that's how he became Peter Pan."

I continued, my eyes flitting across the room. I pulled the book off the corner of Kazinski's desk where I had left it on Friday, the woman having not dared moved it.

"This is different to the story in the way that Peter claims he ran away from home, unwilling to grow up after hearing his parents discuss his future. He was found by Tinkerbell and taken to the Neverland."

"Peter Pan as you all probably know, has a band of friends called the lost boys, but he didn't always have them. For a long while, he was alone on the island, choosing to collect the children out of loneliness rather than power. He used a set of enchanted Pan pipes to lure lost children into his embrace, the music overpowering them to lose control. This is how he became the pied piper."

"In the book." I lifted it a little higher to emphasize. "Pan only collected the boys who fell out of their prams, claiming that girls were much too smart to do such a thing. In truth, he collected the girls and took them to the Neverland too, only to kill them if they refused to do his bidding or got too annoying. Sometimes he even used them and others as bait for the mermaids."

A hand shot up from one of the girls at the back of the class. I addressed it after looking to Kazinski for confirmation. "Mermaids are sweet and gentle, there were a few in the enchanted forest."

"Yes, but they weren't Neverland mermaids."

She scoffed, looking to her friends pointedly. "What's the difference?"

"Think of them like piranhas. Mermaids in the waters of Neverland were once women. They had their hearts broken and turned into vicious, blood lusting monsters with teeth like sharks and a hunger to match. Many would rather drown you than talk to you and tear your body into chunks to alert to her sisters that it is feeding time."

Shocked by either my words of my solemness, the entire class froze, the girls visibly paling.

"Where was I?" I joked, my eyes scanning the pages of writing. "AH, yes, my mother."

I held up the book once more.

"Wendy Moira Angela Darling in this book was taken to the Neverland along with her brothers by Peter himself. The boy usually flying a great distance just to hear her stories, instead choosing to take her to the island to hear them."

"In truth, Wendy was taken by a shadow to the island and dropped at the king's feet with no more than a cold draft and a hard thump. Having initially wanting her brothers, Pan allowed Wendy a few nights on the island, hardly any time having passed on the main land. He warned her before sending her back, that he would give her some time with the boys before coming back for both of them."