Disclaimer: J.M. Barrie owns the story; P.J. Hogan the movie. No copyright infringement intended

Wendy sat on her rickety wicker throne and folded her hands, smiling fondly at her brothers and sons as she waited for them to settle down.

They had finished a dinner of succulent fruits, fresh catfish from the lagoon and Slightly's favorite sour berry pudding for dessert. Now it was Story Time.

Wendy enjoyed sharing the word gems, and was thrilled to see that her audience was still both attentive and appreciative after almost three weeks of nightly recitals.

She was trying to keep things lively by providing plenty of variation. To this end, after a few evenings in a row of her own childhood favorites, she sometimes told one about Peter - just for a change.

She told her own version of his first skirmishes with the Indians, and of course of the day he had relieved the dear Captain of his right hand. She made up the details on the spur of the moment, and embellished the events shamelessly.

Peter loved the narratives, and cared not a whit about their inaccuracy, since the exaggerations only painted him as more heroic. He laughed in delight to think of Wendy privately ruminating on his adventures before they ever met, and gloated so much that the sheer force of the emotion sometimes caused him to take flight.

"Oh, the cleverness of meeee!" he would cry, breaking his own etched-in-marble rule that no one was EVER to interrupt Mother during Story Time. As the boys cheered, he would turn cartwheels in the air, not stopping until he banged his head on the opposite wall, at which point he'd simply turn and cross the room again.

Peter often made her restart the story as much as eight times before she even got to the exciting part. Of course, he thought that the stories featuring him had nothing BUT exciting parts.

And when she finally finished, he would implore her to tell it again and again and again, only relenting when she truthfully confessed a sore throat and pleaded for mercy.

Wendy grinned.

All the boys were impossible on the nights she told them stories about their leader and Father.

To her surprise, Peter left the selection of stories entirely to herself. A few days after Story Time started, while they lounged outside her little house in the dappled sunlight, she asked him, "What shall we hear tonight?"

She had seen him surprised at things she said about school, and startled once or twice by a sudden cry during games of Capture and Kill. But this suggestion marked the first time Wendy ever saw Peter look truly shocked.

When he regained his bearings, he gravely shook his head. Hunting and fighting practice were his responsibility, but stories were HER domain alone, he said respectfully. No one would choose or tell them but her.

Wendy was flattered. And for two reasons, she gradually lost her fear that she would run out of tales as the nights went on.

Firstly, the boys never minded hearing a yarn repeated. In fact, they loved being able to anticipate what Nibs dubbed the "best brave and bloody bits".

Secondly, Wendy was delighted to realize just how many stories she had living comfortably in her brain. In Neverland, in which very few books existed and where most of the boys, including Peter, could barely read (and he still mixed up many of the 26 letters), she became their link to new worlds and faces both evil and heroic.

Sometimes she felt like Scheherezade, spinning her wordwebs night after night on pain of – well, she didn't know what. But when she saw Peter and the boys snap forward if she paused for even a second, she knew she didn't want to find out. Wendy shivered in delight to think what punishment might be inflicted on her in the radical event she ever ran out of fables and yarns.

There was only one caveat – the stories had to have happy endings.

One night, she introduced them to "The Star Child". Its arrogant, selfish boy protagonist eventually learned the meaning of kindness and love, but the lessons, forced at the hand of an evil magician, were so hard-learned that he died within three years of being made king of his long-lost homeland. When the tale reached its melancholy close, Wendy blinked a light, stinging film of tears from her eyes. When her vision cleared, she was dismayed to see that all the children looked stricken and sad too.

"Then what happened, Mother?" the twins asked together.

"Well – that's the end, dears," she told them gently.

"WHAT!?"

Their reaction had bordered on apoplexy. Peter had been livid, and although he did not go so far as to scold "Mother", especially in front of their boys, she could tell he was disappointed.

The next day, Slightly was the evil, enslaving magician of 'The Star Child" during the Boy's games, and was killed over and over again from breakfast to bedtime. With every stab of finger, toy dagger and alarmingly sharp twig, the point drove itself into Wendy's brain.

No. More. Sad. Endings. Even if she had to take what her ex-English teacher deemed "creative license" and change the events of the classic tales she told, they must come to a conclusion that brought glory to the hero and eternal pain to the fiend.

Wendy had always been a quick learner. That night, she told a version of Icarus in which the doomed Greek boy who soared on fake wings of feathers and glue did not plummet to his death into the icy sea. Instead, he was saved just in time by a huge, friendly bird who taught him to fly on his own. Peter was enchanted, and Wendy was so gratified by his smile that she felt no guilt at making up her own ending.

The boys were sometimes so exalted and transposed by the sequence of adventures that they became overexcited. "Help him!" they interjected on the heroes' behalf, their grubby hands clenched unknowingly into fists. "Dastardly villain!" they would curse the story's sinners. "Feed his liver to the sharks!"

When this happened, Peter would rise from his chair behind the gaggle of boys, come to stand beside Wendy at her story throne, fold his arms and ask quietly, "Who wants discipline?"

The response was immediate and total silence. None of them wanted it, because they knew what said discipline would be – ejection from the house right up until bedtime.

Threats of medicine and maiming only rallied the boys to dares, challenges and further insubordination. The prospect of missing out on Story Time terrified them, not least because they knew Peter wouldn't hesitate to carry out the fearsome punishment.

Tonight, Wendy was sharing one of her favorites, the Grimm's Brother's Goose Girl. The boys sat in a haphazard cluster in front of her. Even John and Michael, who had read and heard the tale before, were as rapt as their new Lost Brothers as Wendy brought it to a triumphant close.

"The King turned to the evil servant girl, who was so dazzled by the feast that she did not recognize the radiant woman next to her as the true princess whose place she had stolen.

'What, in your opinion, should be done to anyone who deceives their master thus?' he asked, and told the princess's story as if he had heard it in passing.

The wicked girl immediately said, 'No better than she should be thrown stark naked into a barrel studded with sharp nails, which must then be dragged through the streets by two white horses until she is dead!'"

"Ooh!" the Lost Boys exhaled gleefully at the image of such a gruesome punishment.

Wendy leaned forward, deepening her voice and pointing a menacing finger at the boys.

"'It is you,' said the King, 'and you have pronounced your own punishment, and so it will be done!'

And when the punishment was carried out, the handsome prince, touched by the beauty, goodness and honesty of his true bride, married her at once. They adored each other, were loved by their subjects and ruled in peace and happiness all their days. And they all lived…"

The boys chimed in eagerly with the three sole words that Peter allowed them during Story Time.

"Happily ever after!"

Their part and the story complete, they cheered and congratulated each other on another excellent tale.

Sitting behind them in his evening chair, Peter grinned proudly at Wendy and applauded, impressed by her choice and the relish with which she had told it. Next to stories featuring him and Hook, gory fairy tales were his favorite. He had requested "Jack the Giant Killer" several times already, and had gone around shouting "Fee fie foe fum!" until Wendy felt like screaming, much as she adored his company.

"SILENCE!" Peter yelled when the noise level became too loud for even his ears to bear.

The boys had behaved well during the story but were rambunctious now as they compared favorite parts. Nibs loved the ending, while John favored the severed horse's head nailed to the shadowy underpass wall.

"LESS NOISE!" Peter roared. His tribe obeyed this time, whereupon he began the final stage of their nighttime family ritual.

"Boys, thank your Mother for giving you such a fine, bloody story."

"Thank you, Mother!" they chorused.

"Thank you for the story, Mother," Curly piped in quietly. "It was most tasty."

Wendy beamed at them. "My pleasure, boys. You were not quite as wretched tonight as you usually are, and thus may be spared spankings tomorrow."

They all cheered again, relieved, though they knew their indulgent new Mother never had and probably never would lay a finger on them in anger, except in play.

"Bid Wendy good night, Tink," Peter said to the mischievous sprite, who had been perched on the arm of his chair and was now buzzing in front of him, tickling his chin. She had not missed a Story Time since she had been un-banished.

Her nightly attendance did not stem from any liking she felt to the pretty new interloper - far from it - but rather because she couldn't bear to be excluded from any event that Peter and the boys enjoyed so much.

"Good night, Tinker Bell," Wendy said, smiling politely.

Tink, in a genial mood this evening, grinned, put her hands on her hips and kicked a tiny bare foot up into the air, sending forth a shimmering shower of fairy dust that made Wendy sneeze.

The boys laughed as Tink trilled a "farewell" to them and flitted off to her own quarters.

"Quiet!" Peter shouted. "I shall tuck Mother in. Wish her a good night, boys."

"GOODNIGHT, MOTHER!" they yelled as one, in a voice Wendy was always sure would lead Captain Hook straight to them.

"Good night, boys," Wendy said, and as they passed her storytelling throne in a line, addressed them each by name in a ritual they loved, since it made them feel singled out and important.

"Sweet dreams, Nibs. I shall miss you until the morning, Tootles…do not kick your brothers tonight, twins."

"Goodnight, Wendy." John tipped an imaginary hat to her and scuffed off to his soft pallet, yawning and rubbing at the sleeves of his nightshirt.

"Goodnight, Wendy." Not too big yet for evening cuddles – especially since she was the only source of them - Michael came forward and squeezed her around the waist. Wendy smiled and hugged him warmly, rubbing his back and smoothing his hair, out of which she had brushed brambles and sticky pine needles that very afternoon.

The boys took a while to calm down, each calling "good night" to every single one of their brothers. This always took some time, but Peter and Wendy allowed them to do it since they never failed to fall asleep soon after. Though they would never admit it, their small bodies were exhausted from long days of fighting, gathering food, gorging on said cuisine, hearing exciting tales and chasing animals as well as each other.

He tipped her curtain back and gallantly bowed her into her chamber.

"It is your turn for bed, Mother."

Wendy smiled, eager to begin their ritual.