Peter always said he adored my scales, but I still fumed with jealousy when I saw Wendy’s smooth skin. The “only a friend” who came back to visit him every year. Such a childish venture for someone well into womanhood, I always thought. Why hadn’t she settled down yet? Had her own children? I’d never liked her, but now the jealousy stung differently. Because, as it were, I was different. We all were, after the Sorcerer came. Peter and I, along with many on the island, translated into new bodies. Given the choice to change or to die. Peter and I agreed it was the best chance of staying together, even if that meant it would now be temporary. 

Others, like his dear Tink, would sooner die martyrs in Hook’s prisons, than agree to the terms that the Sorcerer made: he would extract our immortality to build the elixir for Hook himself. Now the only one invincible to death on the island was also the most evil. 

The rest of us took our place. Hung our heads. We labored and toiled, but we were willing to if it meant we could all live. And in the monotony of knowing our place, Hook left us alone, and in peace. But we always know to look over our shoulder. 

When it happened, I washed upon the shore after a tumultuous wave dispersed us. I sat up, sore and sleepy. My mind was muddled, and I stared down at my unrecognizable body, too shocked to react yet. But I was soon distracted by someone else. Lying near me on the shore, a man. His chest rose and fell like he was sleeping. Sand coated the side of his face, his mouth agape. His clothes were torn. Green pants ripped at the knees, long, hairy legs under them. His  green shirt slit open down the middle, exposing his stomach and chest, and arm muscles shown through torn sleeves. I would have shuddered and hid, if his light red hair didn’t unmistakably scream—Peter. My mind caught back up to speed as I remembered the last moments before the wave thrashed me. Hook’s declaration, a sorcerer next to him with a lightning staff, and the words, aging mandate. 

  I stared at my new body, then back to Peter’s, for a long time. I waited for him to wake up and take it all in like I had. I couldn’t prepare him, not even in my calmest voice. He gasped, crab-walked backward in the sand. Kicked, screamed, grasped at handfuls of sand as he looked down at himself and then at me. And when it began to register, he walked over to me, sat next to me in the sand. There was nothing to say, so we stared at the sea together and wept.

When the dust settled, there was charm to the aging, I thought. Peter’s Adam’s Apple, the strong jaw muscles, accentuated by prickly, dark stubble. His hands were veiny and his fingers long. Some days I could still hear his boyish voice under the smooth baritone, like an echo from a simpler time.  

My voice deepened too. I had round breasts and large, dark nipples. In Wendy’s world it would have been 10 years, making her a woman of 20. Our bodies’ ages suddenly lined up. Neither one of us the androgynous figures we’d been when Wendy first visited. But what took 20 years in her world took moments in ours. 

Peter and I, once child playmates, hungered for each other. At first I couldn’t understand the sensations. I felt I could consume him if I got too close. I couldn’t resist him. We waded in the sea, facing each other while our hands explored, and we discovered ways to entangle ourselves. I held him close, ecstatic but petrified. Was this good enough? Wendy didn’t have a tail to fuss with. She could walk beside him on the grass, the marsh, the sand, the dirt. She could sleep in his arms, in his bed, if she wanted. 

Peter was made for the air and I for the sea, but in our moments together, those worlds blended without seam. And I chastised myself for ever doubting his love. But then I would see Wendy and the doubt came rushing back. I wish she’d just stay away.

The Lost Boys, though that’s not what they were called anymore, Hook’s orders, dwindled to a small group of 4. The rest went with Tink. Now they served as Hook’s eyes. A militia to enforce all the curfews, goods distributions, and land occupation. Citizens of Neverland, now Never Isle, were all given jobs, and but their first fruits went to Hook and the Pirates. Whatever was left over was ours to keep, but it was rarely enough. Peter took to hunting, I to fishing. But after the Pirates took their picks, we had mere scraps. Slightly, now named Sly by Hook, still wore his Lost Boy fox furs with Hook’s army uniform. And let us know he was still loyal to Peter by hiding our food in a secret spot in the forest. Since he and Peter couldn’t speak anymore, this gesture was their only way to show their love and friendship. 

My sea sisters and I helped one another when we could, but some days it took all we had to not gnaw and claw one another to the bone for food. But it’s what Hook would have wanted, so we had to resist. Small acts of rebellion and kindness were the only way we could live day to day. 

And then Wendy would come, with vigor and passion, urging us to rise against Hook. Wendy with stories of her war-torn world. The casualties, the trenches. I scoffed. We’d already lost eternity. Maybe her people didn’t mind death, since they’d always known it. Not so with us. 

Wendy was due to visit soon. I held my tongue, sure that Peter was tired of my complaining. I’d get through another visit, let her stir things up for a bit, and wait for it to get back to normal when she left. That was the plan this time. But, as I learned in the years since it became Never Isle, nothing follows a plan.