Forever Young

Chapter One

The woods were dark, foreboding, filled with ominous sounds and the feeling of being watched. Pounding through them, running hard with the air of someone fleeing for their life, was an adolescent young man. His heart fluttered in his chest, a cramp twisted in his side, snot poured out of his nose with each gasping, labored breath.

He bounded over fallen tree trunks, dodged half-buried stones, ducked under low-hanging branches, all while darting glances over his shoulder every few yards.

Nothing. There was nothing behind him.

At least, nothing that wasn't all around him.

The trees themselves seemed to have eyes. Their leaves whispered secrets that their roots ferreted out.

He tires of you, they said, rustling softly.

The boy choked back a sob. Crying would only make him lose his breath faster and he was so close, so close, to the shore. Once he made it to the beach, maybe, if luck was with him, perhaps the Jolly Roger would be within hailing distance. Just maybe he could make it.

Of course, the skull-and-crossbones sails hadn't been seen in months.

But he had to hope.

The undergrowth was getting thinner, the loamy forest soil turning sandy. His legs shook with the sudden wave of relief. Still, there was nothing behind him. Just the woods that had been his home for nearly a decade, where he had laughed and played with the others.

Suddenly, his foot slid on sand. He nearly toppled but caught himself.

His eyes scanned the horizon in desperation, darting to and fro, searching for the distinct shape of Hook's pirate ship.

But there was nothing.

Just unbroken ocean.

The waves lapped at the shore.

He's coming, they murmured. They beckoned him, invitingly, offering him a way out.

The boy nodded. Tears slid down his face unchecked. The sobs that he'd been holding back finally came, wracking his thin chest. If the Jolly Roger wasn't there, he was out of options. At least drowning would be a clean death, one he chose, instead of staying to be his plaything.

The waves pulled at his ankles, drawing him in with promises of freedom.

He was ready, he told himself, even as his sobs choked him. At this, the moment of his resolution, it all came crashing back to him.

He missed his family. His mother, his father, even his bratty little sister. He missed getting tucked in at night. He missed Sunday breakfasts and helping with the horses and doing his sums for school. He missed the way his mother would scold him for tracking mud into the house and the way his father would cuff him if he misbehaved. He even missed his stupid sister constantly begging him to play dolls with her. Suddenly, he realized that they had done those things out of love.

Why had he ever run away?

A mighty yawn came from his left. He turned.

There, sprawled quite leisurely across a large chunk of driftwood, was a young man with an unruly mop of dirty blonde hair, dressed in a jerkin and leggings the same deep green of the forest.

The boy stumbled away from him, his eyes wide with fear. "No, please, I swear, I wasn't trying to leave, I wasn't..."

Peter Pan held up one hand for silence, which he received instantly. He smirked, his elvish features going from timelessly beautiful to sinister in that one simple motion.