�Perhaps it was a dream after all?� She bit her lip nervously, feeling torn. Then she remembered her treasure, �Now where has it gotten to?�
She started at her dresser. With only the gas lanterns on, it was difficult to see inside the dark wood. She searched all five drawers, but could not find her treasure. What she found instead, underneath her pajamas in the bottom drawer, was some sort of map. She picked it up anxiously. Wendy was the sort of organized person who would make a map to treasure. She had used her father�s ink pen, and she thought she noticed a few places where her hand must have smudged the black pigment. The map proudly displayed a pirate ship next to an island; there were primitive drawings of a large tree and a waterfall leading to the lagoon, and several Indian teepees. Between them all: a meandering dotted line. It started at the pirate ship and ended with a giant �X� near the teepees.
�Now how can this help me? This map isn�t even of my bedroom.� She made a face and made to throw it out, but hesitated a moment, and carefully placed it back in its hiding place, �I shall have to find them on my own.�
A brisk search of her vanity drawers revealed nothing, and a quick check under her bed revealed the same. She was near ready to give up when the thought struck her. She immediately went to her toy box. The hinges complained upon opening, but they exposed a different world than the clean organization of her bedroom�they revealed a mighty mess.
Within the old toy box were many things she was beginning to forget. There was the doll that used to guard and occupy her bed in the mornings, and John�s top hat, which, at the time, had made him feel very grown up indeed, and Michael�s teddy bear. She smiled fondly at these things and continued to look. At last she found it: a small and very plain wooden box. The wood had lost the scent of the tree that it once was, but it could remember itself being some sort of Walnut. And now, as a box, it had the very important task of holding Wendy�s most valuable treasures.
She held it with two hands, for indeed, it was very valuable to her, and she took it with her to the bay window. Looking out, she could see the near fullness of the moon, heavy with magic, and opposite it, two stars shining more brightly than all the others. It seemed to her that the second one, the one on the right, twinkled with a secret message�a message only for Peter Pan. She smiled at the stars and sat down with her box, sighing as she opened it.
Everything was in the box that should have been: a pirate flag (neatly folded), the tunic she had carefully sewed out of the leaves and never-berries, her little sewing kit, and�most importantly�The Kiss. It was only a little acorn button, but Peter had given it to her, and it had saved her life.
It had been their first meeting, and she had sewn his shadow back on for him. Afterwards, she told him that she would give him a kiss if he liked. Now, being a boy, and a near-fairy boy at that, he hadn�t seemed to understand the idea, and held his hand out expectantly. So Wendy gave him a thimble, and, in return, he offered her a kiss. When she held her cheek out in expectation of a proper one, he gave her the button, and at once was very pleased with himself. Later, she taught him what a thimble was (so as not to confuse the two) and kissed his cheek with a blush. Tinkerbell stopped him from returning her affection.
In a flood it all came back to her, and she felt very silly in ever believing that Peter Pan might not be real. She heaved a great sigh, without truly knowing the cause, and set everything back into place again. �I do wish he would hurry here.� Part of her felt a little indignant that he had not come as he promised. The other part of her was panicking, thinking that he would never come and that she shan�t see him ever again. But perhaps the biggest part of all told her that it was well past her bedtime, and since it was a particularly sleepy night, she fell to sleep by the window.
Wendy was just at the favorite part of her favorite dream�it was the one where she and Peter were quite grown up and living alone together in a large house made of brick�when she felt a cold air that caused her to wake. She was all gooseflesh when she cracked open her eyelids. The room seemed strange from the cushioned bench�and for a moment it was hard to recall where she was�when she noticed that the shadows on the floor were moving�
There was her own shadow, neatly arranged by the moonlight, and the shadow of another. He seemed to have a long coat on, a rather large hat and�
�Hook!�
She hadn�t the time to turn about, and she was hastily stuffed into some sort of sack.
