The True Story of Tootles

This is the true story of Tootles. Long before Neverland, he fell from his pram in Kensington Gardens — a black lacquered pram tipped in the tall damp grass, and no one came back for him. The nurse turned a corner. The world turned another.

J.M. Barrie tells us that the fallen ones are taken to Neverland if they are not claimed within seven days. Tootles was not claimed. He arrived quietly — the way he does everything. The fireflies carried him. The second star showed him the way.

In Neverland, he became a Lost Boy — one of Peter's band, one of the mothered and the mothering. The others gave him a bear-cub pelt. He wears the hood up, the small round ears above his own head, and it is the only armour he owns. Tootles is the humblest of them, and the unluckiest — the one who is always sitting on the log with a piece of flint and a piece of soft pine when the great adventures happen. The one who hears about the pirates and the mermaids second-hand. He does not mind. He carves a small wooden bear for each story the others bring him back.

But one morning, something bright came down through the trees, and for once no one was there to run ahead of him. Only Tootles. Only the yew bow he had almost never drawn. Only the three arrows he had almost never loosed. He thought it was a great white bird. It was a girl.

When the Lost Boys came back, Tootles did not run. He knelt in the ferns beside her fallen nightgown, and he took off his bear-cub hood — the only armour he owned — and he offered his small bare chest to Peter's dagger. He asked for the punishment. He did not weep. Peter did not strike. Wendy lived.

Tootles put the hood back on. He put the bow back across his back. He returned to his log at the edge of the clearing, and he sat down, and he began, very carefully, to carve another small wooden bear.