12 Peter Pan - Read By Stephanie Poppins

Peter Pan, written by J.M. Barrie, is a classic children's novel first published in the early 20th century. The story revolves around the beloved character Peter Pan and follows his adventures in the fantastical Neverland, along with a young girl named Wendy Darling and her brothers, John and Michael.

In this episode, we get to see the Lagoon.

Transcript

Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph,

Your go-to podcast that offers you a calm and relaxing transition into a great night's sleep.

It is time to relax and fully let go.

There is nothing you need to be doing now,

And nowhere you need to go.

Close your eyes and feel yourself sink into the support beneath you and let all the worries of the day drift away.

This is your time and your space.

Take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out with a long sigh.

There is nothing you need to be doing now,

And nowhere you need to go.

Happy listening.

Chapter 7 continued.

Adventures,

Of course,

As we shall see,

Were of daily occurrence.

But about this time Peter invented,

With Wendy's help,

A new game that fascinated him enormously until he suddenly had no more interest in it,

Which,

As you have been told,

Was what always happened with Peter's games.

It consisted in pretending not to have adventures.

In doing the sort of thing John and Michael had been doing all their lives,

Sitting on stools,

Flinging balls in the air,

Pushing each other,

Going out for walks and coming back without having killed so much as a grizzly.

To see Peter doing nothing on a stool was a great sight.

He could not help looking solemn at such times.

To sit still seemed to him such a comic thing to do.

He even boasted he'd gone on a walk for the good of his health.

For several sons these were the most novel of all adventures to him,

And John and Michael had to pretend to be delighted also,

Otherwise he would have treated them severely.

Peter often went out alone,

And when he came back you were never absolutely certain whether he'd had an adventure or not.

He might have forgotten it so completely he said nothing about it,

And then when you went out you found the body.

And on the other hand,

He might say a great deal about it,

And yet you could not find the body.

Sometimes he came home with his head bandaged.

Then Wendy cooed over him and bathed it in lukewarm water while he told a dazzling tale.

But she was never quite sure.

There were however many adventures which she knew to be true,

Because she was in them herself.

And there were still more that were at least partly true,

For the other boys were in them and they said they were wholly true.

To describe them all would require a book as large as an English to Latin,

Latin to English dictionary,

And the most we can do is give one as a specimen of an average hour on the island.

The difficulty is which one to choose.

Should we take the brush with the red skins at slightly gulch?

It was a sanguinary affair.

And especially interesting is showing off one of Peter's peculiarities,

Which was that in the middle of a fight he would suddenly change sides.

At the gulch,

When victory was still in the balance,

Sometimes leaning this way and sometimes that,

He called out,

I'm red skinned today,

What are you tootles?

And tootles would say,

Red skinned,

What are you nibs?

And nibs would say,

Red skinned,

What are you twin?

And so on.

And then they were all red skinned.

And of course,

This would have ended the fight had not the real red skins,

Fascinated by Peter's methods,

Agreed to be lost boys for that once.

And so they all went at it again more fiercely than ever.

The extraordinary upshot of this adventure was,

But we have not yet decided that this is the adventure we are to narrate.

Perhaps a better one would be the night attack by the redskins on the house under the ground with several of them stuck in the hollow trees and had to be pulled out like corks.

Or we might tell how Peter saved Tiger Lily's life in the mermaid's lagoon and made her his ally.

Or we could tell of the cake the pirates cooked so the boys might eat it and perish.

And how they placed it in one cunning spot after another,

But always Wendy snatched it from the hands of her children so that in time it lost its succulents and became as hard as a stone and was used as a missile and Hook fell over it in the dark.

Or suppose we tell of the birds that were Peter's friends,

Particularly of the neverbird that built in a tree overhanging the lagoon and how the nest fell into the water and still the bird sat on her eggs and Peter gave order she was not to be disturbed.

That is a pretty story and the end shows how grateful a bird can be.

But if we tell it,

We must also tell the whole adventure of the lagoon,

Which would of course be telling two adventures rather than just one.

A shorter adventure and quite as exciting was Tinker Bell's attempt,

With the help of some street fairies,

To have the sleeping Wendy conveyed on a great floating leaf to the mainland.

Fortunately the leaf gave way and Wendy woke up,

Thinking it was bath time,

And she swam back.

Or again we might choose Peter's defiance of the lions when he drew a circle round him on the ground with an arrow and defied them to cross it.

Though he waited for hours with the other boys and Wendy looking on breathlessly from the tree,

Not one of them dared to accept his challenge.

Which one of these adventures shall we choose?

The best way will be to toss for it.

OK,

I have tossed and the lagoon has won.

This almost makes one wish the gulch or the cake or Tink's leaf had won.

But of course I could do it again and make it best out of three.

However perhaps fair is to stick to the lagoon.

Chapter 8 The Mermaid's Lagoon If you shut your eyes,

And are lucky,

You might see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness.

Then if you squeeze your eyes tighter the pool begins to take shape and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire.

But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon.

This is the nearest you ever get to see it on the mainland.

Just one heavenly moment.

If there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids sing.

The children often spent long summer days on this lagoon,

Swimming or floating most of the time,

Playing the mermaid games in the water and so forth.

You must not think from this that the mermaids were on friendly terms.

On the contrary,

It was among Wendy's lasting regrets that all the time she was on the island she never had a civil word from one of them.

When she spoke softly to the edge of the lagoon she might see them by the score,

Especially on Maroona's Rock where they loved to bask,

Combing out their hair in a lazy way that quite irritated her.

Or she might even swim,

On tiptoe as it were,

To within a yard of them.

But then they saw her and dived,

Probably splashing her with their tails,

Not by accident but intentionally.

They treated all the boys in the same way,

Except of course Peter who chatted with them on Maroona's Rock by the hour and sat on their tails when they got cheeky.

He gave Wendy one of their combs.

The most haunting time to see the mermaids is at the turn of the moon.

Then they utter strange wailing cries.

The lagoon is dangerous for mortals then,

And until the evening of which we have now to tell,

Wendy had never seen the lagoon by moonlight,

Less from fear,

For of course Peter would have accompanied her and she had strict rules about everyone being in bed by seven.

She was often at the lagoon however on sunny days after rain when the mermaids came up in extraordinary numbers to play with their bubbles.

The bubbles of many colours made in rainbow water they treat as balls.

They hit them gaily from one to another with their tails and try to keep them in the rainbow until they burst.

The goals are at each end of the rainbow and the keepers only are allowed to use their hands.

Sometimes hundreds of mermaids will be playing in the lagoon at any one time.

It is quite a pretty sight.

But the moment the children try to join in,

They had to play by themselves.

For at that moment,

The mermaids immediately disappeared.

It must have been rather pretty to see the children resting on a rock for half an hour after their midday meal.

Wendy insisted on doing this,

And it had to be a real rest even though the meal was make-believe.

So there they sat in the sun,

When their bodies glistened in it while she sat beside them and looked important.

It was not long before night came,

And something as dark as night had come with it.

It had sent a shiver through the sea to say it was coming,

But what was it?

She should have roused the children at once,

Not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them,

But because it was no longer good for them to sleep on a rock that had grown chilly.

She was a young mother,

However,

And did not know this.

It was well for those boys,

Then,

That there was one among them who could sniff danger even in his sleep.

Peter sprang erect,

As if he was a dog,

And with one warning cry he roused the others.

Pirates!

He cried,

And the others came closer to him.

Dive!

They all became sharp and incisive,

But all they could do was stand ready to obey.