The Hook (1991)

Author's Note
"How far back can you remember?"

Peter swallowed. "I was cold, alone…" He stopped, angry now. "I can't remember! No one knows where I came from! You told me I was a foundling!"

' I found you," Wendy cut him short. "I did." She took a deep breath to steady herself. "Peter, you must listen to me now. And believe. You and I played together as children. We had wonderful adventures together. We laughed, we cried." She paused. "And we flew."

Peter tried unsuccessfully to pull away. Something unpleasant was stirring inside him, something beyond the reach of his memory.

Granny Wendy bent close, her face only inches from his own. "The stories are true. I swear to you. I swear it by everything I adore. Peter-don't you realize who you are?"

She released him then and pried open the book from between his fingers. She paged through it desperately and stopped. She tapped the page.

Peter Banning looked down. The book lay open to an illustration of Peter Pan, legs spread, hands on hips, head cocked back as he prepared to crow…

This is a story about Peter Pan. It is not the story everyone knows, the one written by J. M. Barrie and read by wise children and curious adults for more than eighty years. It is not even one of the lesser-known Pan stories. It is too new for that, having not come about until just recently and well after J. M. Barrie's time. This is its first formal telling.

This story is not just about Peter Pan either-no more so than any we know. It is about a good many things besides Peter himself, though he would be the last to admit that there were tales of any sort worth telling that did not concern themselves with him. The title, for instance, clearly indicates that the story is about someone other than just Peter. James Hook is central to the telling of any full-blown Pan tale, for every hero needs his villain. Prospective readers might also correctly point out that Peter Pan has already been used as a title and should not be pressed into service a second time simply to satisfy purists.

This story begins many years after the first, long after Wendy, John, and Michael returned from their first adventure in Neverland. It is not concerned with Peter Pan as a boy, for all those tales have long since been told. It considers instead what happened when the unthinkable came to pass-when Peter Pan grew up.

I relate this story to you as it was told to me, having tried the best I could to keep the details straight. I have embellished at times and commented when I could not make myself stay silent. All writers, I fear, have that failing.

My apologies to J. M. Barrie for taking license with his

vision and to others who have done so successfully before me.

This story is about children and grown-ups and the dangers that arise when the former become the latter.

It opens at a grade-school play.