Because she threatened to leave.

She said, "Well, we'll be off then."

And I felt so empty for that one moment, right after she'd said that, and I grabbed her arm, forgetting for a moment her coldness in my desperation. "Wait," I found myself saying. "Wait. Go with you where?"

Neverland, of course.

Neverland, the land of flamingos flying over lagoons and lagoons flying over flamingos. The stuff of adulthood dreams and childhood nightmares (a boy who steals you away in the night, all cloaked up in his sneaky, animate shadow), the stuff of legends and English major thesis papers. And yet, the idea of it was not as impossible to me as her eyes were, as her glow was, as her tea-coloured skin. I could not let her leave. I couldn't let her evade me again.

Beautiful, she was, if skinny and aloof, framed in the window sill as she stood with her arms extended, tenderly embracing the wind. "Careful," I called. "Don't f--"

I yelped as the girl pitched herself from my window, headed straight down like an arrow shot from a bow. I slapped a hand over my mouth. Had I just witnessed a suicide? Out of my own window? Strangely enough, I wanted to cry. I missed her. It had only been three seconds, the same amount of time it took for me to start loving Nancy after I saw the positive result on the pregnancy test.

Then like a plane reversing course, she soared back up again and my heart fell back into place. The impossibility of her flight seemed less disturbing that the possibility of losing such a beautiful creature. She floated like paper shredded and blown to the sky, suspended trustingly on a cushion of wind. I approached the window, curling my fingers around the sill to keep from falling back in disbelief.

She sailed closer, easy as a girl floating on a lake surface on a warm afternoon. The girl laughed at my shock, waving a hand. The glow around her seemed to jump, jump towards me in a brief flutter of golden energy that felt as palpable as an electric current. "Your turn," she said.

"Wait." I touched the thin silk of my nightgown and shivered. "How long are we going to be gone?"

"It doesn't matter," said Odysseus. She snapped it like she was the adult and I the child, like I should know better. She yanked me forward, pulling me onto the window sill. "Come on."

"Wait," I repeated, swallowing hard. For her to fly, perhaps that was possible with her light, birdlike limbs and moonlight aura. But me, clunky old man-shouldered me, it seemed so dumb to believe I could. Your dreaming, my brain said. "Can Wilbur come?"

Odysseus cast a look of disdain behind me. "That sack of cocks? Well, of course not. The spiny thing, maybe, but not the beast. Haven't got enough pixie dust anyhow. And besides, Hestia was enjoying the little thing, weren't you now?" The light gave a giggle of agreement, darting back into the apartment, apparently to kidnap my hedgehog. I was between laughing and crying with my freezing toes gripping the edge of the windowsill. You aren't a bag of cocks, I wanted to tell Wilbur, but Odysseus's stare held me.

The light returned, Margie reluctantly in tow. I did laugh, then, to see the stubborn little thing floating through the air like a putted golf ball.

"Hestia," said the girl. "Could you give her the pixie dust now? It's time we were going."

My heart leapt, stomach lurching forward. The light shook violently, clanking with protest. "What does that mean?" I asked, wiggling my toes over the edge. Out here was a terrifying new world of lights and magic and height, behind me, my dark and gloomy apartment. I could not imagine jumping, but neither could I imagine returning.

"Oh, she's just being difficult." Odysseus gave the light a stern jab. "Well, of course she believes," she told it. Her? Hestia. What a warm name. "Would she be standing here like that, otherwise?" Looking back to me, she said, "Flying's not so hard, really. All it is is that, you can't doubt."

"Doubt?"

"If you doubt you can, then you won't be able to."

Then suddenly, the light whizzed in such frantic circles around me that it blinded my eyes and I fell, not so much doubtless in my own abilities as thoughtless with panic.