Teaser

I've been told I'm something of a teaser when it comes to talking about my as of yet unseen work... and that seems about right.  But only because I'm the type who doesn't like flat-out "spoilers" so much as quips of info to trickle around in one's thinking.

I've been typing a lot about my forthcoming interquel Peter Pan: Betwitxt-and-Between.  So I thought I'd not be a tease for once and put up the first two pages of the book.  Oh.  Wait.  That counts as a tease, no?  Nevertheless, here it is.  I hope you enjoy it and it causes you to want to read the rest!  (No, really? ;] )

            One night, of all nights, it happened.

            Peter Pan lay in the grass amid the trees of Bird Island, an infant kicking his legs gaily, looking up at the many stars and wondering.  The stars winked back occasionally, making Peter even more good-spirited.  He thought for sure they could hear his thoughts and often he would think things out to them.  He never did get a reply other than friendly winks and when Peter caught forty of them, he fell asleep.  He normally slept during the day, so that he could have his reign of the Gardens during Lock-out Time.  Perhaps due to the irregularity of it, this night nap produced a troubling dream, the first of many throughout Pan’s life.
           At first the dream went pleasantly wherein he left his Thrush’s Nest boat and took to the air delighting in his power of flight restored.  He zipped around the Kensington Gardens, happily sailing in the sky without a care.  So much did he enjoy his aerial maneuvers and devil-may-care journey that he took no heed of where he flew.  So not long after, unfamiliar territory stretched around him.  He heard crying.  He assumed it to be his own and took to crying himself.  After a bit, though, he noticed that some of his sobs did not match up with the others.  He quieted himself.  After a few leftover gasps, he listened intently to the weeping in the distance.  The gasps from this weeping became more frequent.  Eventually, these gasps turned into sharp little quips of sound.
          Peter Pan hovered in midair, unable to move from curiosity.  He could not figure from which direction the strange cries came.  He kept listening and before he could tell that a switch had been made, the sound turned to a sharp laughter.  The laughter surged through him and gave him a chill like the very first night he spent in Kensington Gardens after his triumphant escape from the nursery.  He did not like the feeling even one little bit and wished, for the first time in too long, that his mother could have comforted him.  Thinking of his mother within the dream while the boyish laughter still cackled must have been too much to bear and he awoke with a jolt.

© Peter Von Brown - Please do not quote this book without permission.

P.S. - For those who've read Peter Pan's NeverWorld and have thus figured out the laughter part - it's a continuity reference only, he doesn't show up in this book.