Page 18 of Never Landing

“I’m so happy you’re here,” I whispered shakily into his T-shirt. “I missed you so much.”

“Me too,” he whispered back.

And when the timer went off that said the dough was ready to go in the oven, we ignored it for a long time.

11

Everett

When we were kids, Peter always seemed older than me. He knew more than I did about everything. All the types of trees and plants, and when it was going to rain, and when the sun would go down.

Now, here he was, an adult...or was he? Was he fourteen, a hundred and sixty-seven, or—or something else?

He wasn’t acting like a child. Not shouting and running away again, or demanding to play hide and seek like when we were kids. But also, he didn’t know a lot of basic things. How to use an oven. How old he was.

Fuck me, math enough to count his age.

Now, some of that was simply that apparently, he’d never gone to school. Which was odd, because we’d done some of my homework together when we were kids, and he’d always seemed to grasp technical things more easily than me. Math and science, he’d ended up helping me with. I’d been convinced he was the smartest person I knew, and there he was, confused about how long he’d been alive.

But then, he’d forgotten his mother, and seemed to remember her now, at least some. Maybe that was part of it—maybe he’d forgotten things over the century and a half he’d been alive.

When we eventually pulled apart, he wasn’t crying, but thoughtful, biting his lower lip and staring off into space. I didn’t want to press for answers he might not even have, not when this was so new, and we were both fumbling in the dark for a light switch.

Hell, I was still reeling from the notion that this was real. Peter was here and alive and maybe...maybe he’d been kidnapped by fairies almost two centuries ago, and lived as a child in the woods that entire time.

Whatever was happening, it was important not to push things, not to make this harder, at least not right away. For now, it was pizza time.

So I set the oven to preheat, then showed him how to stretch the dough out into a large round with slightly thicker edges, setting it on a pan with a sprinkle of cornmeal to keep it from sticking, and finally pulling out the ingredients to put on it.

We spooned on tomato sauce, smoothing it into an even layer, and totally not having a mutual fit of laughter when I accidentally flipped some onto my nose. Hell, was he growing up, or was I reverting to childhood?

It didn’t matter, because whatever it was, Peter was there. So I cut up fresh pineapple chunks into little pieces, then the same with some ham, and we scattered it all over the pizza, and covered it with cheese before sliding it into the oven, then starting on a second pizza, this one with some sausage I fried up before scattering it across the sauce.

Peter sneaked a piece straight out of the pan into his mouth, and the look on his face at the taste of it was pure bliss. I grinned and grabbed one of my own, and before long, we were practicallyjust eating the sausage out of the pan, and only half made it onto the pizza.

By the time we finished making the second pizza, the first was finished, the cheese bubbly and slightly browned at the edges.

I found Grandma’s old pizza cutter and sliced it up, then paused. Peter frowned and reached for a slice, but I grabbed his hand. “It’s really hot. You’ll burn your mouth.”

He cocked his head at that. “Burn?”

Holy fuck. How did I explain burn? How had he never burned himself? Any five-year-old I knew understood the concept of burning oneself, even if they didn’t know all the situations to expect it in.

“It’s...it’s too hot. It’ll hurt. And cause an injury, so it’ll keep hurting for a while. Days, maybe, if it’s bad enough.”

He turned and stared at the pizza in shock, like it was something entirely different than it had been a moment before. Not frightened, like he was worried about it, but like it was unexpected and fascinating.

That was when I realized something.

Peter’s ears were...long, and pointed at the end. How the fuck had I missed that? I’d stared at him when I woke before him, thinking about how beautiful he was.

But there they were, pointy and obvious and a clear sign that yes, the most ridiculous possibility was indeed true. Peter was Peter Hawking, who’d been kidnapped by fairies a hundred and sixty years ago, replaced with someone else who went on to become a doctor, while Peter himself continued to run and play in the woods for...forever?

Except not forever. He was here now. An adult, not a child, even if there were some things he needed to learn to really be an adult. An adult with pointed ears, and no identity.

How the fuck were we going to get him a driver’s license? A birth certificate?

People right there in Cider Landing might manage with it. It was a small town, and you could walk just about anywhere. No one was going to demand to see ID for someone buying groceries or walking down the street. But what about when he got a job? Or if he ever wanted a car? People in books and movies were always creating fake IDs and false identity trails, but I was a fucking advertising executive. I didn’t know how to do any of that.

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