Chapter 4
Maggie grew used to telling herself that things were far better than they actually were a long time ago.
There was only so much someone could do in order to reassure themselves without fabricating a reality that had no chances of existing.
Maggie found an easy middle by simply telling herself that things weren’t as bad as her heart wanted to believe.
Perhaps it did not work on the first try, or the second, and maybe not even the third, but she did not stop doing it.
In a way, the words wrapped around her shoulders like a blanket, the comfort soothing her racing thoughts more than anything else could.
But, some nights, Maggie found that the words were emptier than they should be.
Every once and a while, the life she lingered in felt like it was too rough to swallow, too harsh along the edges to hold in a tight embrace.
That night, in her small room on the inn’s third floor, Maggie was unable to shake the despair that clung to her shoulders like a shadow.
It remained even when she tried to wave it away, even when her familiar words tried to soothe the ache. All of it lingered.
The room was smaller than the kitchen in Hart’s Crumbs, and less than half the size of her old apartment.
Mold crawled up the walls, old paint had chipped off and scattered across the patchy floor.
The heavy smell of mildew clung to the fabric covering the cracked windows, and had long since already rubbed onto Maggie’s frail clothes.
Even when she bathed the entire day away, something she was forever grateful for, the smell lingered, and it never failed to remind her of the situation she found herself within.
After her quiet bath, the few moments in which she could forget the world around her, Maggie dressed in her simple nightgown, and stared down at her bed.
The thing was made from straw, a few thin blankets draped over it to prevent the prickly stuff, though it did nothing to protect her back from aching each morning she rose.
Sunny already laid on one side, looking rather comfortable, despite Maggie knowing that she wouldn’t be the moment she rested her head on the flattened pillows.
With a heavy sigh, she crawled in beside her singular companion, immediately finding a moment of relief while petting his long fur.
“I suppose if you could talk,” Maggie said after a few quiet moments, “you’d have some good words of encouragement right about now, wouldn’t you?”
Sunny rolled over so she could rub his belly – a rare moment for the feline. He watched her with slow blinking eyes, the love within them so evident it was practically tangible.
Soaking up every ounce of his love, Maggie tried to hold onto it, but found it quickly depleting the moment she dared to cast her gaze across the room.
The hope she wished to have easily disappeared once she realized how bad everything really was.
Remaining positive was the one thing that kept her afloat through most of her life of running and hiding, but there was something about that evening that made her feel deep within the throngs of despair.
Even though nothing out of the ordinary happened, except for the handsome stranger who complimented her food.
Maggie shook her head. “I need to get him out of my mind.”
“Mrow.”
“Easier said than done,” Maggie muttered. “I know.”
Pulling her arm away from the cat, she stretched out her limbs, and almost instantly jerked back.
The aches that overtook her was uncommon and instantaneous, almost pulling a surprised shout out of her.
They came so suddenly and strongly that they lingered even when she stopped stretching, as if there were countless fists digging painfully into her sore limbs.
Maggie groaned loudly, and simply laid across the bed, not daring to move a single muscle.
She had never known it was possible to have been that sore before.
Perhaps it felt ten times worse because she was doing something she hated.
If she was still working at Hart’s Crumbs, she knew that there would be soreness that came with it.
Each night, she struggled to climb the steps to her apartment, and considered how bad it would be to simply sleep within the kitchen, alongside her rising loaves, but ultimately chose against it.
Nevertheless, every day in the bakery left her feeling more sore than the last day, but it never clung to her mind in such a dark way.
Maggie gladly took every sore, every creak in her back, every twist in her legs, if it meant she had the chance to keep working on accomplishing her dream.
There, working in the tavern, Maggie’s displeasure for her job crept into her well-being.
The aches and soreness felt ten times worse, and it was partly because of how down in the dumps she was.
Maggie sighed and let her eyes shut. Perhaps the aching body meant she could have a numbing, dreamless sleep.
Silence spread throughout the small room.
Muffled footsteps from the hallway outside, followed by a series of growing voices, trickled in and out of Maggie’s ears.
Normally, the exhaustion from the day of work was enough to pull Maggie into the throngs of sleep without a second to think about it.
But then, as the sound of Sunny’s quiet breathing grew louder, Maggie tossed and turned till almost all the blankets had been thrown off her straw bed.
Her nightdress grew ruffled and wrinkled the more she moved, a few beads of sweat beginning to stream down her temples in a very annoying fashion. Sleep remained elusive through it all.
Maggie was well aware that only a few simple minutes had passed by.
It didn’t matter how restless she became.
The moving around and huffing in annoyance didn’t force the clock to go by faster, or lull her into an easy sleep she could grow comfortable in.
She was moments away from opening her eyes and leaping out of the bed, determined to do something to distract her mind… when a hand clamped down over her lips.
Maggie lurched forward but could hardly move.
All she could see was the darkened room, a stream of moonlight streaking in through the window.
There weren’t any hands holding her down, but the single palm over her mouth was more than enough to keep her from squirming out of the bed.
As the fear grew to unthinkable heights, Maggie tried to force a scream out of the back of her throat, but the sound simply rumbled against her attacker’s skin.
Fingers pressed into her cheeks as her breathing rose, the realization that she did not know how to save herself growing so loud it made her ears ring and ache.
The straw bed rustled as the stranger moved from behind her. With a firm grasp still over her mouth, the figure crossed in front of Maggie’s vision, and she blinked a few times to focus. Tears made everything blurry but it wasn’t too hard to tell who the man was.
The man from the tavern!
For a moment, Maggie was stunted by his eyes. The more she focused on him, the brighter they became. A series of chills rolled down her spine, though she wasn’t sure if it was entirely from fear. He remained close to her, his intense stare heavy with determination and confidence.
He inched further towards her, his eyes beginning to narrow.
It was then that Maggie realized that he hadn’t done anything to hurt her.
Nothing about his stance felt inherently aggressive, though up close, his stature was nothing to scoff at.
A large hand managed to wrap over the entire bottom half of her face without much effort, while the other simply grasped onto both of her wrists.
It was not a shackle, but it held her bound.
And when he spoke, his voice was as cool as the ocean, as rough as the crashing waves, as gentle as the coaxing tide.
But it was the words he used that caught Maggie’s attention more, that made her heart patter far too fast and made the blood rush to her face.
Feeling escaped her limbs, fading into the air and leaving her a numb mess.
“I have been searching through worlds for someone like you,” he said. Something about his hold over her mouth became gentle and tighter at the same time. “You’re coming with me.”
Maggie’s eyes widened as fear grasped at her for another time.
The idea of “searching through worlds” was hauntingly romantic, and dreadfully vague all at once.
She had no idea if she needed to try to run, if she was foolish for not already trying to escape his tight clutches.
But there was something about his eyes that kept her locked beneath him, unable to move even if she wanted to.
It was as if there was another person within her, one that recognized him and sought to be beside him another time.
And Maggie was in no place to argue.
The man’s grip across her lips loosened slightly. “I’m going to move my hand now,” he said in a slow, testing voice. “But if you scream, I’ll have to knock you out. Do you understand?”
Maggie gulped and nodded with sharp movements.
He lowered his hand slowly. Without waiting another second, the man rose from the side of the bed and reached down to Maggie another time.
She was about to squeeze her eyes shut when he hooked his long arms beneath her, and hoisted her off the bed in one sweeping motion.
Unable to muster her voice, Maggie merely sucked in a deep breath, the world no longer beneath her feet.
The delicate nightgown she wore clung to her skin as he kept a firm grasp on her, with one arm hooked beneath her knees and another around her waist. The placement of his hands, warm and calloused fingers touching bare skin, distracted her far too much for her to argue against him.
Surprise and shock clung to the forefront of her mind, and all she could do was grip onto the man’s puffy, cotton shirt, as if it might ground her through the mounting fear.
The man was beginning to take long strides towards the window when a yowl came from behind him, and a bright ball of orange fur pounced into Maggie’s lap.
He paused in front of the window, the streak of moonlight cascading across Sunny as he protectively guarded his spot on Maggie’s lap.
The man eyed the cat as a frown tugged on his lips. “Who is that?”
Many things about those simple three words clung to Maggie’s growing curiosity and list of questions.
The stranger regarded Sunny as a person, unlike many she had previously encountered.
He was also rather unperturbed by it all, especially for someone who was committing a crime and kidnapping someone.
The nonchalant attitude was the stark opposite of what clung to Maggie’s mind, and she feared that there was nothing, not even Sunny’s intrusion, that could save her from it.
Far too confused and overwhelmed with everything, Maggie breathed in sharp, short pants, still gripping the stranger’s shirt for dear life. Her eyes found the man as he looked down upon her, his thick brow furrowing tightly together.
“My best friend,” she finally managed to utter.
The man’s lip twitched. “Alright.”
With his grip over her growing tighter suddenly, the strange man dove towards the window without sparing another word. He pushed through the window’s rusted doors and leapt into the evening air.
A scream whistled out of Maggie’s throat as the cold wind sliced against her face.
She wrapped a protective arm around Sunny, though she wasn’t quite sure what her arm might do to protect the cat.
But instead of experiencing the feeling of barreling down towards their death, Maggie realized that the wind moved around her in the same way that waves move in the ocean, like small funnels.
She blinked a few times, pulling her head out from the nook in the strange man’s arm.
“Y-You’re…” Maggie found her voice again, though it was only a quiet whisper.
The man looked amused. “Yes?”
“You’re flying.”
He grinned and soared through the air. It was effortless, unlike needing to drag one’s hands through the water to be pushed forward.
The man simply looked which way he needed to go, and an invisible force carried him towards it.
She stared up at him with widening eyes.
There was nothing unusual about how he looked.
He was not a freak creature, something otherworldly in disguise.
Unless his disguise was far more impressive than she realized.
Maggie gulped. “Who – what are you?”
The stranger met her gaze for another time, wrinkles delicately curling around his crystal colored eyes as his smile grew. The next words he spoke were the most unexpected, far from anything Maggie might’ve been expecting.
“My friends call me Peter Pan,” he said. “But you may call me the King of Neverland.”
And her head rolled back the moment he finished speaking, consciousness gone in seconds.