Thimble (a Panfiction)

Chapter Three: The Gardens Revisited

Angry and confused, Peter did not immediately return to Neverland.

He flew first to Kensington Gardens to visit the fairies and ask them why Margaret had been angry at him. The fairies always knew.

The first fairy Peter encountered was a grey one.

"Hullo Peter," it said.

Peter alighted next to the fairy on the tree and began to cry softly.

"Why are you crying?" it asked.

"My mother was angry with me," Peter replied. "She has grown up and won't be my mother anymore."

"That's the way with grownups," the grey fairy agreed unsympathetically.

"What am I to do now? Who will help clean in the springtimes?"

"We fairies can help," the fairy replied.

"But I want a mother," Peter whined.

"Then go find one."

Peter flew away in disgust. Fairies. Such fickle creatures.

Peter visited the old island he used to live at. He flew to say hello to Solomon Caw, only to find that he had died a good thirty years ago. He felt a twinge of something that might have been sadness had he been able to properly recall who Solomon Caw was, but it had been too long.

He flew on.

It was Lock-Out Time, so the Gardens were empty except for the fairies, who were currently having a raucous party. Finding no sympathy in Kensington, Peter was about to leave for the Neverland when he heard a peculiar noise.

It was a sort of wheezing, groaning, mechanical sound; loud and slightly musical. Intrigued, Peter followed it to the source. On his way there, he spotted to grownups, an old man and a girl walking along the Baby's Walk. He wondered how they had gotten in after Lock-Out Time, and snuck past them. He probably should have warned them about the fairies, who could be quite protective of the Gardens at night, but he was feeling spiteful towards all adults at this point. Let them face the wrath of the fairies.

Peter found what he figured must've been the source of the sound: a big blue box. It had glowing white words at the top and a sign with more words on the door, but Peter couldn't read. If Peter could read, he would have seen that at the bottom of the sign the words "PULL TO OPEN" had been written. As it was, he pushed instead—and was delighted at what he found.

The inside was bigger than the outside. It glowed with a sort of bluish light. The walls were silver and made of metal with glowing round things that looked like archery targets stuck to them. Blackboards scribbled with meaningless symbols and bookshelves filled with books were everywhere. In the centre was a large machine thing with tons of levers and buttons and switches, all glowing. Peter found a large panel with some squishy white thing in it and stuck his hands into it.

The whole place jerked, and the noise he heard earlier came again, louder now that he was actually inside the box. Everything around him was thrown into chaos. The room shook and crashed from side to side, sending Peter, who weighed almost nothing, from one end of it to the other.

When his surroundings finally stopped moving, Peter hurried to the door and burst out of it. It was the same wooden box it had been when he entered, but he wasn't really bothered that the inside was bigger, for what troubles an adult will never trouble a child. Peter just assumed it was supposed to be that way.

He glanced up and realized with surprise that it was daytime. The reason he hadn't noticed was because of the dark grey storm clouds that had moved in. In fact, it was raining already—he just hadn't been paying attention.

Once again, Peter wasn't much bothered by the sudden jump from nighttime to daytime, nor by the sudden appearance of rain. The Neverland could have even weirder weather than this.

The box had momentarily distracted Peter from the recent events that had been upsetting him. Finding himself in London, and entirely remembering why he had come, Peter did what was instinct to him when he was in this part of the world: he flew to number fourteen. Already, he had forgotten that he'd only just visited Margaret and that she had been furious with him for some unknown reason. Peter's mind could be quite a troubled one, and much the same way fairies could only maintain one feeling at a time, Peter could often only maintain one exciting idea at a time. Now that the box had fully distracted him, his thoughts of Margaret and his mother were muddled.

Flying quickly to number 14, Peter found that she had closed the window. He had a word with the wind, which obligingly blew it open for him again.

Much to his surprise, it was not Margaret who waited for him in the nursery this time. The place had been transformed: the thick dust that had covered every inch of space in the nursery on his last visit had disappeared. Toys and cots were spread everywhere. On the ground slept six boys that Peter hardly recognized. They had not changed much since they left the Neverland, but Peter had forgotten all about them.

On the three beds three more figures slept: itwas Wendy, John, and Michael.