The Piper's Song ~OUAT Peter Pan fanfiction (Book 1)

The Piper's Song

*2 years after Felix disappeared*

Anne Rosa Beastly was now a fifteen year old expert on this once unknown place called Neverland. What her parents had hid in that box with the two stars were all the secrets to Neverland...or so it seemed. What her parents had left in that special box were journals, maps...fairy dust. The journal entries spoke of mermaids and their intentions...Indians and their tribes...fairies, sea beasts, pirates, and so much more. Anne never knew why her parents had decided to bury such a box to begin with and why they hadn't left it with the maps, notes and key. And why leave the key behind without the box? Anne had discovered the key went to the box.

Something else her parents had left with those many journal entries, maps, and some fairy dust, were patterns of when the great piper that had stolen her brother would play his special song. Studying these patterns, Anne translated them into dates. Tonight would finally be the night that the pipe was expected to sound.

And tonight, Anne decided would be the night she'd follow the piper's song. She had made sure she was prepared of course.  

Pacing around her room in her brown leather boots, the time made her ache. She wanted dinner to fly by desperately.If only there was something to scratch this itch at which captivated her so...she hoped.

Crouching down, she pulled from beneath her bed that special star-marked box. Moving her blonde hair behind her shoulders, she lifted the old key out from her white, long-sleeved blouse. Holding it in her hands a moment, she took off the string it was on and unlocked the box.

Digging through, she collected the paper with the dates of the piper's song and overlooked it. "Anna dear, come down, dinner's ready!" Lily's voice sounded eager downstairs from outside Anne's closed bedroom door. This, Anne loved because she, too, was eager, but to finish dinner rather than start it.

~The village lay quiet, finally...and asleep.

Fixing the brown leather corset that was wrapped around her blouse and stomach, Anne laced it tightly in the back. Coming to the mirror, she re-laced the strings that tied the top of her blouse together. The side strands of her blonde hair--that were usually laying over the front of her ears--were both braided back and banded together. She adjusted the rest of the wavy silk so it all fell down her back instead of over her chest, and it fell far down her back.

Around her waist had been a belt with a handmade knife hooked on one side and on the other side was a leather covered canteen of water. But it was special water...with herbs mixed that'd help heal cuts or bruises. The herbs gave the water a sweet and bitter taste that probably only Anne really enjoyed. She had got these herbs from a witch in the village who had blessed her canteen to always have cleansed water. Lily didn't know about this witch but Anne didn't want her to.

In the village, witches weren't so trusted and were often blamed for crimes in the forest, or around the village, but Anne knew it was never them. It was the regular kinds of people...thieves...and men who were believed to work with the evil ogres in the forest. Men who worked for such beings were regular to Anne compared to the real dangers out there and not just in the forests around her village but every where, things in different portals that went to far away lands.

~But to Anne, Pan was the only being that truly frightened her...however, her fear was not enough to stop her from saving her brother.

It was hours after nightfall. At this time, Anne would look out her window at the stars but not tonight. Tonight, she looked for something else. Sitting on her bed, some journal entries she'd fear she might forget were rewrote and summarized, and tucked deep within in her corset--as well as warnings and little notes she made to herself based off her parents' notes and warnings.

Having had already thrown pixie dust over her head, she secretly kept some more in a little cloth tucked in an inside pocket that she had made in the back of her corset for her brother. Knowing how valuable the notes and things her parents had left, she did not want to take those with her for when she'd go to Neverland...that's why she memorized most of them and remade some that were too little for her to remember. But everything in that special box mattered. Though, Anne would be taking the Neverland map her parents had left...that was also tucked in her corset.

And the key that went to that box was still hanging from her neck and tucked in her blouse...only because she felt it had more purpose than unlocking just the secrets in the box. Maybe it unlocked other secrets somewhere. Not only that, Anne also had it to remind her that her parents once held it in their hands. Sure they held the box but the box was going to stay safe beneath her bed...it was too noticeable and precious for her to take to Neverland because what if Pan got a hold of it?

He clearly had something to do with her parents and it was obvious that for her parents to leave and leave behind information on Neverland, they certainly must have been there...and maybe part of the reason they had left, Anne and Felix could have something to do with Neverland and Pan. That was something else Anne was going to look for...the answers to her parents disappearance.

The key also gave Anne hope...and hope she needed, and she knew this very well, that's why she wasn't going to let Pan lay a finger on it or any of his lost boys. Anne didn't count Felix as Pan's lost boy--even though that was what he had left her to become.

Some other things Anne had was a sack over her shoulder with clothing and some aid for injuries as well as other less important things Pan would never find useful. With that sack, she also had another sack, but of handmade arrows and a bow latched on to it. 

Holding everything she'd be taking with her to Neverland, she clutched it tight against her and listened far off in the night from her open window. Looking at the clock in her room again, it was only a few seconds till midnight--the time the song would be playing. Anne's hopes were higher than ever...

The clock finally struck and chimed, echoing like her parents voices in her mind. She waited for the noise to die down...and finally it did. Anne waited some more.

Then finally, the haunting, wind blown and distant pipe song cued her, sounding almost like a peaceful warning.

~Anne leaped from her window.