It all started out on one dark and stormy night when I was baby sitting. The kids where getting ready for bed, and they were terrified out of their minds with fear of the storm. It was going to be at least five more hours until their parents were going to come home, and the kids were refusing to go to sleep unless their parents were home. Basically, the night stunk. I made a deal with them that I would read them as many stories as they wanted though, in a small attempt to get them to doze off while I was reading. I started to work, and then a huge clap of thunder would come and wake them up again. Finally, as the storm started to pass, the kids were out like a light, and I was free from reading. After turning off the lights in their rooms and leaving the hall light on, I went down stairs and turned on the television to some cheesy soap opera. Since everything was fine, I started to nod off into my own little world of sweet dreams and fantasies.


After a while, the show had ended and I sat up, stretched, and turned off the television. Cable TV has some weird shows on at night. When I turned off the TV there was a news report on an escaped unicorn. Whatever. However some people get their entertainment is none of my business. But as I groped my way around in the darkness, it felt as if the floor turned soft and springy. After about five minutes of randomly wandering, I finally gave up trying to find the stairs and lights and sat down to find that I was right about the carpet. Where the floor used to be was now a large and springy field of grass sprinkled with wild flowers that glowed ghostly white in the dark. If that wasn’t weird enough, all at once within the minute the sun popped over the horizon and odd creatures started to walk, fly, gallop, and hover all around the field. It felt as if I were living in some kind of pop-up book, because right before my eyes a whole little town unfolded out of thin air along with roads and wagons cutting straight through the field. Trying to make sense of everything, I stood up and blinked a couple of times. This could not be happening, right? Wrong. I took one step and my foot fell into a rabbit hole, when I pulled it out, a very angry bunny came up with it. There I was, looking Peter Cotton Tail straight in the eyes to only get yelled at by him for stepping on his home. Jeeze! If he didn’t want people to step on it, then why didn’t he build a home where people can’t step on it?!

After the interesting encounter with Mr. Cotton Tail, I decided to head towards the town to see if there was something I could do to get back to the MacDreaden’s, the family that I was baby sitting. As I started to get closer to the town though, it seemed as if the buildings were growing, shrinking, and twisting into towers, to in some other form morphing. But when I finally reached the town, it was the weirdest town I have ever seen. There were a handful of castles scattered across the town, a few cottages, one old Victorian house, and a HUGE ship sailing the open skies. It seemed as if every story that I had read to the kids had come to life. I could see the cottage of the story Hansel and Gretel, the castle and carriage of Cinderella. The wrought iron fencing and the dark castle of Beauty and the Beast, the quaint cottage of Snow White. The Victorian house of Peter Pan and Captain Hook’s Ship perusing Peter Pan, Wendy and the gang. Even as I was taking all of this in, the ground started to shake as a huge plant thrusts its way up to the sky, and a minute later I realized that it was Jack and the Bean Stalk, reaching its way up to the giants’ layer within the sky. A dragon soared up above; a centaur trotted past me; elves hurried past with a wagon load of leafy blue plants; goblins were roaming the inner corners of the dark alleys. It was then that I fainted.


“Miss?” said a twitter-y high voice. “Miss? Are you alright?”
I opened my eyes and found myself surrounded by talking forest creatures. All I could do was stare in silent horror.

“Billy, go and fetch Cinderella. She seems to be better at talking to humans than we are.”
The one who was talking was a little blue bird that was no bigger than my thumb. A mouse wearing a tiny emerald green scarf scurried off, and I assumed it was the mysterious Billy gone to fetch Cinderella with the rest of the animals in tow. The little bird started to talk again.

“Hello miss! My name is Beverly. May I ask what your name is miss?”
I couldn’t help but remember that in the story of Cinderella I read, there wasn’t a bird named Beverly or a mouse named Billy. But deciding to be polite, I answered Beverly.

“Uh, hi, my name is Liz.”
A silence followed. Beverly had now perched herself on my middle finger and had stared to clean her feathers.

“Beverly? You told Billy to get Cinderella right?”
She looked at me. “That is correct.” She chirped.

“So are you Cinderella’s friends?”
I could have sworn that Beverly’s cheeks had turned cotton candy pink then.

“Well, you could say that. We aren’t necessarily friends; me and Billy just do her chores so Prince Charming won’t get mad.”
Now I understood why they weren’t in the story; Cinderella didn’t want ‘Prince Charming’ to find out her dirty little secret. I decided to get more information out of Beverly.

“So, this is an interesting place.” And it was. It seemed to be the attic of some house, except all of the walls were covered in shiny mirrors. It reminded me of a fun house at a carnival.

“Oh, yes it is!” trilled Beverly, “This is the place that Cinderella used to live, and every morning she would do nothing except look at herself in the mirrors. That’s why there are so many of them, so she can see every aspect of herself.” Beverly added in hushed tones, “She is very self absorbed.”
Huh, couldn’t tell that Cinderella was self absorbed. Not at all, especially with all of the mirrors. I tried a different approach

“So, um, how do I get out of here?”
Beverly hopped over to a side of the attic, not looking any different than the others.

“You get out this way.” She said positively.

“Beverly? It’s just another wall. I can’t go through walls.”
She just sighed and flew on top of one of the larger mirrors, pulling at something until the wall swung open to reveal a dirt passage way, lined again with mirrors. Cinderella REALLY must have liked looking at herself or something. Without speaking, Beverly flew daintily into the passage way and out of sight. I followed. After about ten minutes, a door ended the passage way. After it was opened, I couldn’t believe where we were. I was standing on a cloud, in Neverland.


It took me a while to stop gawking at the island below me that was so beautiful and perfect. There was a crystal blue ocean surrounding the island, a forest smattered with every color of the rainbow all on different types of unique plants. There were fairies zooming around the delicate lilies at the edge of a pond, and many more things too. But when I looked away, I realized a few things. One, Peter and Wendy seemed to be missing. Two, Beverly had disappeared as well. Third, my normal clothes were gone and I was wearing a white lacy night gown, just like the one Wendy would wear. The fourth and final thing that I noticed was that I was not alone on the cloud, after a loud voice with a heavy French/Bolivarian accent stared to talk.

“Vell, eff it izn’t leetle Vendy, come to sav Pe’er once more.”
Behind me was Captain Hook, with his ship and crew behind him, the ship somehow anchored in mid-air. I saw a boy about my age tied up in ropes, with a cloth in his mouth, preventing him from speaking and escaping, who was looking at me puzzled. I then realized why they were all looking at me. They all thought that I was Wendy, come to save Peter. The only one who knew I wasn’t Wendy was Peter, except he couldn’t exactly say so since he had the gag cloth in his mouth. Captain Hook spoke again, obviously confused on why I wasn’t rushing to save Peter.

“Vendy, eef you aren’t going to save Pe’er zen vhat’s the point of acting anymore?”
Now this threw me off. I was supposed to act like I had to save Peter? Act? In the Peter Pan stories there is never any acting, just Captain Hook being all cranky and hating kids so he takes it out on Peter. Unless, this is all a dream; Yeah, that must be it! All of those stories had gotten to me, and now I am dreaming of it. Hah! At least I know the way to wake up!

I just looked at the crew along with Peter and Hook, gave them the sweetest smile I could muster and said, “Well, I am sorry to be rude, but I must go. See ya!” and as I started to drift my foot towards the edge of the cloud, Peter spat out the rag and stared at me. “You don’t want to do that Wendy.” He said.

I stared at him in disbelief. “I think I do want to do this.” Confused by my own words, I leaned as far back as I could, closed my eyes, spread out my arms and let myself free fall. The wind rushed past me, howling in my ears but I stayed calm. Tendrils of my hair whipped around my face as the skirt of the night dress billowed out from under me. Suddenly an orb of molten gold was zooming at me, and a minute later I realized that it was the legendary Tinkerbelle. Tink zoomed towards me and attacked me with a huge ball of dust, which I am guessing might have been fairy dust. The dust was everywhere, making me look as if I had gotten liquid gold sprayed on me. Tinkerbelle then pressed something into my hand that I could not see. Then the dust started to spread, so I could not see anything else except for the golden powder that soon encased me.


The next thing I knew I was laying on the MacDreaden’s couch, still watching the cheesy soap opera that I had turned on what seemed so long ago. Everything was still the same as I had left it. The only thing that was different was Mary MacDreaden was standing next to me, her night gown trailing behind her as she clutched the arm of her care worn teddy bear.

“Lizzy, can you come in my room? I had a bad dream.” She said sleepily.

“I’ll be right there Mary. Promise.”
When I got up to stretch after my nap though, a shower of golden powder came drifting off of my clothing, and a note that was written in an elegant script was in my hand. Its message read;

You may return to our world whenever you want. Just make sure you return to the same dream.
-Tinkerbelle
I smiled and headed up stairs to meet Mary, ready with a new bedtime story.