Blue fruit

As requested--no, really--a short vignette that didn't make the cut for The Stowaway, but which manages nevertheless to work in several themes of the book. We begin with Captain Jas. Hook speaking to Vivian Drew.

"We need to replace the oranges those wretched boys stole. Care to accompany me to the island?"

It couldn't be much more dangerous than the ship had been recently, I thought, and agreed, provided we could stay within hailing distance of the Jolly Roger. So after a brief stop at the cabin for hats (the lesson had finally taken), we took possession of the dory.

"We're rowing ourselves?" I had never thought to see James take this duty on.

"We can hardly do a worse job than some of our compatriots," he said, a point I could not argue.

This is Koh Samui, Thailand, not Never Neverland, but the resemblance is notable.

The sea was calm and the afternoon windless. We left the dory in a small cove and set off along the powdery sand of the beach, picking our way carefully through a crowd of tiny spotted birds intent on dining from shells and strands of rotting seaweed. 

"Look up, Viv. Mr. Smee says they're delicious." I followed his gaze to the feathery leaves of a pale-barked tree and a cluster of fruits tucked within, something like plums but with skins of turquoise blue.

I shaded my eyes with my hand and frowned. "Pretty enough, but we shouldn't eat them."

"They didn't hurt Mr. Smee, Viv, and they won't hurt us."

“Didn't your mother ever warn you about blue food?”

“It's a wonder my mother didn't encourage me to eat it.”

I shook my head, but squeezed his forearm to acknowledge the real mistrust that lay beneath his words. Probably my own parents wouldn't have even noticed if Miles and I had poisoned ourselves on blue food, as long as we'd ultimately survived.

“You don't eat blueberries?” James asked.

“They're more purple than blue," I pointed out.

He waved aside my further protests, plucked one of the fruits, and sliced it open with his deck knife. The flesh inside was as blue as the rind, and crunched like an apple as he chewed. Curiosity won out over caution as he presented to me another slice upon the point of his hook, and I bit into it with only a moment of hesitation. 

“It tastes somewhere between an orange and a lemon,” I said in surprise.

“I wonder if these would be any protection against scurvy. Probably best not to chance it.”

“Probably best to see if we survive the remainder of the day after eating them,” I said. “Assuming we don't die at the hands of the lost boys or the teeth of the crocodile.”

Neverland, according to the 2003 film adaptation of Peter Pan

“I have made you dismal, haven't I?”

I thought for a moment. “No, not much more so than I have always been.”

“We are distressingly well-suited for each other, then."

“Agreed.” I took another bite of the blue fruit.

“There are worse ways to die than this,” he said.

“If a person is looking for one.” I wiped my hand on my skirt and sat down carefully in the coarse grass at the base of the tree, leaning against the trunk and closing my eyes.  “Take the first watch, will you, sir?”

“As the lady commands,” he said, but belied his words when he reclined beside me and rested his head in my lap.

“Hmph,” I said sternly. But I was already stroking his hair, and I doubt anyone of our acquaintance would have believed I truly objected.

Uncharted

The Neverland map we're familiar with was not drawn by J. M. Barrie, but rather Walt Disney studios and many artists thereafter. There's no map in the original book, and given Barrie's description of Neverland, it's no wonder.

"...the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.

Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. ...on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood still in a row you could say of them that they have each other's nose, and so forth......Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed."

The only locations Barrie mentions specifically in Peter Pan are the Neverwood, Mermaid Lagoon, and Marooner's Rock. So some of the locations we think of now as part of Neverland--Skull Rock, Cannibal Cove, Crocodile Creek--are Disney creations. This sent me off to do a bit of fact-checking when I first began The Stowaway so I wouldn't inadvertently crib from Disney. Now it's a handy reference point for me as to whether artists and writers are using Barrie or Disney as their starting point.

According to KStirling, contributor to the jmbarrie.co.uk message board (now mostly inactive, which is unfortunate for my research), a scenario Barrie wrote for a proposed silent film of his book was reprinted in a book called Fifty Years of Peter Pan by Roger Lancelyn Green. (I've found copies of the book online, but haven't committed yet to spending what it would cost to have one.) In his screenplay, Barrie wrote:

"We see the island all glorious and peaceful in a warm sun. We see the whole of it as in a map, not a modern map but the old-fashioned kind with quaintly exaggerated details. I have a map of the Never, Never Land, in this style which should be reproduced." The Beinecke Library at Yale has Barrie's actual film typescript, but I haven't been able to find out if it contains the map.

Wikipedia tells me users of Colgate-Palmolive's "Peter Pan Beauty Bar with Chlorophyll" received a copy of this promo map for the Disney film by sending in three wrappers with fifteen cents. I want one.

So, as it stands, the only maps of Neverland are from the Walt Disney film or are based on it. In The Stowaway, the Captain has a map of the island on his wall, useful as he makes excursions to and from and around it--but I make no claims as to the map's veracity, or how often its features may change.

Ultimately, I suppose the best description of Neverland's location is from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick: "It is not down on any map: true places never are."