We were still children, for all that we thought we weren’t. We were in that in-between place, the twilight between childish things and grown-up things.

Sometimes at night, when the nightmare clung to me, I wondered if Peter’s assurances that I would never grow up were only assurances that I would die before such a thing happened. I wondered if that were better, to die before I became something withered and grey and not wanted.

I only wanted them near me because I loved them. Though, of course, it was because I loved them that Peter had to take them from me.

It was Peter’s island, Peter who’d brought us here, and in the back of every boy’s mind was some form of the same thought— He could send me back, if he wanted.

He’d been around the island for a while, and I’m sorry to say that being bashed around in Battle and at raids had done nothing very good for his brains.