The Way To Neverland

The Cave

'Pan! What hap...' The boy's voice fades away when he sees the girl in his leader's arms.

Peter completely ignores the question and carefully lays down Raven in the middle of the cave. The boys stand around him in complete silence, respecting the vulnerable state of their leader. Wendy slowly crouches next to Peter and puts her hand on his arm to comfort him. He sniffs and jumps on his feet, shaking Wendy's hand off.

'Why is everybody still in the cave?' he says while rubbing his eyes.

'There's...something...written on the back of the cave, but it's just a lot of numbers and some doodles' says Quinn soft.

Peter slowly walks past Raven to the back of the cave. The whole back wall is covered in drawings. There are handprints and stickman everywhere portraying everyday acts like screaming sleeping, but also extraordinary things, like flying and doing magic. Above all of the scenario's are numbers and it's painted with some kind of clay or mud. Peter lays his hand against the wall, on a small handprint.

'What does it mean?' asks Quinn.

'I'm not sure...' answers Peter extremely soft, it's scary to see him so fragile.

'I think...' he looks back at Raven, but she's still unconscious, or worse.

'Peter, what?' asks Wendy.

He deeply frowns.

'I think, it's the beginning of Neverland'

'Why...What...How do you know?' stutters John.

'Look' he says pointing at the drawing on the left side of the wall, a sad stickman. 'This is The Old Man, his parents abused him...'

He slowly lets his finger slide to the drawing right from it, the sleeping stickman.

'He went to sleep, and somehow...' he puts his hand on the strange squiggly lines above the sleeping stickman that leads to the next drawing, the stickman on green grass, with a big smile on his face.

'He made Neverland' adds Quinn mumbling.

'Exactly'

'He seems happy...Why does the story go on, why no happy ending?' asks Wendy not understanding.

'Look, it's not finished' says John.

He points at a sad stickman a few inches further, the green grass is black in this drawing and the trees hang down.

'Neverland was dying' whispers Wendy.

This drawing is connected to the next one with the same sort of squiggly lines.

'He went back...' says Peter blunt.

'He took children?' asks John pointing at the small handprints.

'He took us,' replies Peter looking at Raven. 'and he took us back'

Squiggly lines lead back to the drawing from Neverland, like Peter said. The next drawing is two little stickman, sleeping in their beds and a dreamcatcher near it. Above it is a smiling face with a cross through it and a sad face without a cross.

'Dreamcatchers only catch bad dreams' says Wendy, thinking of what her mother told her. 'The happy dreams can still get trough'

'He needed sad children to keep Neverland alive' says Quinn disgusted.

After that is a drawing of a raven, near a window with screaming stickmen in it.

'Raven needed to pick the miserable children' says Peter with a tense jaw.