Peter Pan's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Peter Pan had a prophecy to answer, so he went to see his wife instead. The heir who would end his reign had wandered into Neverland weeks ago, remembering things Peter wanted buried. He should steal that child's future today. He knew it. But he swam down through cold water to Ursula's door, because he wanted one hour where nobody expected him to be a king. The Sea Witch Lair sat on the seafloor under a giant clamshell. Coral choked its stone arches. Green weed hung from every lamp. Ursula had not opened the door for him in a long time. He knocked anyway, the way he always had, and waited. She opened it. Small, gray-haired, black-eyed. She looked at him the way you look at weather. "You never come when nothing is wrong," she said. "I came to see you." "You came to hide." She did not move aside. "From what." He told her. A child had crossed into Neverland. The prophesied one. He was supposed to take the child's future, like he took the first, back when he still knew what love meant. He said the child kept remembering. He did not say the child looked like their own children once had. Ursula's face did not change. But she gave him less, not more. "Our son hunts in the Witch's Forest," she said. "Our daughter chases missing children through villages. You never took their futures." "They're grown. I couldn't reach them." "You didn't try." She stepped back now, but not to let him in. "You want me to tell you not to do it. I won't. You already know." Peter drifted closer to the arch. Lanterns glowed behind her in the drowned hall. He remembered a wedding no one had witnessed, two people who used to laugh in this water. "Ask me to stay," he said. "One hour." Ursula held the door between them. Her voice stayed flat. "I collect what people give up. Voices. Names." She looked at him. "You gave up the thing that let you love. Years ago. You handed it over yourself." The words landed like stone. "I keep what's given," she said. "I don't give it back. One woman tried for three years. She left without it." "You're my wife." "I was." She began to close the door. "You cannot spend time with me, Peter. There is no you left to spend it. Go take the child's future. It's what you have instead." The door shut. Coral scraped against wood. The lanterns dimmed behind the small round windows. Peter hung alone in the cold. She had answered him, and the answer was true. He had come here to feel like a husband and learned there was nothing in him that could. Only the taking was left. He turned upward toward the light. The child was still in Neverland, still remembering. Peter went to find the future he could steal, since it was the only thing he still knew how to want.