*The article contains spoilers from the book: Lost In The Never Woods
Lost In The Never Woods by Aiden Thomas starts with Wendy darling; when she was a kid, she and her brothers had ventured into the woods at night with their pet dog, and only the dog returned which had led a whole search party out in the woods for months.
After those months, Wendy alone had returned with no recollection of anything that had happened to her and her still missing brothers.
Five years passed since that incident, and it was Wendy’s eighteenth birthday.
More kids had started to disappear strangely, The first one that went missing was Benjamin Lane, and the new Ashley Ford had quickly followed after.
Wendy had started a strange habit of doodling on things, but it wasn’t a habit; one second, she would sit down with a pen or pencil to write something, then she would faze out, and the next thing she knows is that she had doodles all over. It was always of the same big tree, and a boy, which she was positive about, was Peter Pan from the stories that she would tell children she babysit at the hospital, but she couldn’t understand why.
One night after Wendy’s shift at their local hospital was over, she was driving back home through the forest which she still hated because of that incident when something dark crashed onto her windshield. She had to take an immediate turn after spotting a boy that was on the ground.
Wendy got out of the car to check, and he seemed unconscious, but she immediately recognized him to be the boy that she kept drawing, but she still wasn’t sure since peter pan wasn’t natural and looked to be older than him drawing.
The boy opened his eyes and said Wendy’s name when he spotted a girl sitting with him, but he fell unconscious again, and Wendy immediately called the police.
The boy was taken to the hospital and the police questioned Wendy, but she was taken to the hospital too since her mom worked shifts there.
The boy suddenly woke up and started screaming Wendy’s name continuously until they gave him a sedative so he fell asleep, but before he could, Wendy asked what his name was to which he replied Peter.
Wendy returned home and the following day she found out that Peter had disappeared, but no one had seen him or anyone else comes in or out.
Two detectives had also questioned Wendy if she knew who he was, but she denied it then they told her that they think that he might be connected to her brothers’ disappearances and that he probably knew something.
At night Wendy had run until she came face to face with the woods and she was too scared to go further when Peter magically appeared out of nowhere which scared Wendy and she hit her head, causing her to lose consciousness.
She wakes up in Peter’s current residence which is a hunting shack in the forest which she is scared about.
Peter takes her back to her home and Wendy calms down a little but she is still reluctant to believe that he is Peter pan even though he claims it and she finds out that he needs her help to get back his shadow which has gone missing and Wendy could do nothing since there was proof and his shadow wasn’t present.
It turns out that when she was little she also used to tell stories about peter pan to her brothers and Peter used to listen in but one-night heist shadow escaped into their room and Wendy had used her sewing kit to sew it back on so he thinks that she will be able to help this time too.
That night one of her memories returned and she was in a jungle with Peter and she could also hear her brothers John and Michael but the memory ended before she could see them.
The next morning she saw the same detectives that questioned her at their neighbor and his dad’s colleague Mr. Davies and they are actually going around the neighborhood and warning parents to be on the lookout for their children.
At her shift in the hospital, she was to take care of the children there.
There was a new kid by the name of Alex forestay, the rest of the kids wanted to hear a peter pan story so she told them one and at the end, she realized that Peter was sitting there and playing with Alex, Wendy took him outside of there where he tells her that after his shadow left, he had started growing up really fast since he wasn’t supposed to and his flying has also started to become really messed up.
Then he tells her that his shadow is the reason that the children are disappearing since shadows are made of dark things, and it is feeding on the children’s fear, so they have to stop it and the stronger his shadow gets, the weaker he himself becomes.
The day had passed by, and she went home since it was night.
She needed to grab something from her car when she spotted a stranger say his name, she couldn’t clearly see what he looked like but she had never seen him. He asked Wendy to join him on a walk through the woods but she was starting to get scared when she heard a scream.
She ran towards the shout to find little Alex who was being dragged into the woods but it wasn’t a person carrying him, the forest had seemed to come to life.
It took Alex, but Wendy ran after him through the forest but it was dark and she lost sight of him, the darkness and the shadows around seemed to pull her in.
Suddenly Peter had appeared and he fought until the woods were clear again and he claimed that he used pixie dust but now Wendy had to believe him since she saw the substance with her own eyes.
Peter led Wendy back to her house since they couldn’t follow Alex anymore and Wendy invited Peter in the house where Wendy saw the news, and it turns out that they had already found out about Alex since, among Ashley and Benjamin, the face of Alex forestay had also joined in the news.
After a while, her mom had arrived and when Peter was about to leave he told Wendy that her mother was also once a lost child and she had been to Neverland but she grew up and forgot eventually, Wendy also tells him to meet her tomorrow.
At night in bed, she had another memory and this time it was of the tree but with it was also the same person she saw before Alex disappeared, he gave her a warning then she finally saw his face and it was the face of Peter but a dark, distorted version.
Wendy jumped awake to find she had drawn the tree over and over again when she was sleeping and everything was covered in red marker.
After taking care of her room, she immediately left to find Peter but her dad stopped her, saying that today she was called at the police station and he was supposed to take her there, so with no way to get out of the situation, she followed her dad to the car.
The police asked him a few questions about Alex and even pointed out that most of the kids that were disappearing were around her, and he also mentioned Peter though he thought that he was also a victim of the kidnapper.
After that, she went to look for Peter and tell him everything, she found Peter playing with Cassidy, who was a kid that she would also sometimes babysit. Wendy told Peter about her dream and that she thinks that the person she saw before Alex disappeared was Peter’s shadow but in a human form.
Wendy suggested for them to go in the forest and find that tree since she knew that it had something to do with everything, but they took a break first and then entered though they soon found out that a tree that kind would be quite deep in the forest and they wouldn’t be able to do anything, so they went back.
When Wendy arrived at her house, she got into a fight with her best friend Jordan since Wendy had been avoiding her, but the argument ended up going in the wrong direction and Jordan went home.
At night Wendy got yet another Memory flash of Wonderland and this time she could see her brothers but Wendy recognized the memory as the last in Neverland since Peter had retaken her home.
In the morning, Wendy awoke to find that two more kids had gone missing, and this time it was Joel Davies and Mathew Davies. They were their neighbor’s and Mr. Davies’s sons, The police had also decided to take firm action and go into the woods in search parties in search of the kids and her father is also going to be going with them.
At this point Wendy was positive that the shadow was trying to infuriate her since both of them were the same age as her brothers were when they had gone missing, Joel was ten while Mathew was seven.
Wendy made an excuse for being out of the house for the night but it was very close though she managed to convince her parents even though it was very close.
Outside she could again see detectives at Mr. Davies’s house but in her car, she spotted Peter who was trying to hide from the view of the police but he had a lot of injuries.
He said that he had tried to fight his shadow by himself but he could barely do anything.
They entered the car and took a different route into the forest to find the tree.
They finally arrived at the Tree and they could hear whispers of voices around, then the shadow suddenly appeared.
It gave a few taunts that he left an angered Wendy behind who was being held back by Peter.
They left since the longer they stay here, the bigger the chance is to get found.
Wendy had suggested Peter stay at her house for the night since the search parties could find where he was staying and sure enough, when they entered the house the TV was on and on the news, they had found Peter’s hunting shack, where he was staying.
In the middle of the night, Wendy woke up to find that Peter wasn’t there so she went to find him around the house when she stumbled upon her and her brother’s old bedroom door, that has been locked for years but from the inside, she could hear the same soft whispers of the children but she got distracted when she heard her mother sleepwalking but someone was replying to her.
Wendy entered her mother’s room to find Peter talking to her Mother in her sleep in John and Michael’s voice, trying to ease her worries.
Later Wendy asked and he just said that he doesn’t like to see anyone in pain.
In the morning, her mother was in a better mood than usual and Wendy had spent the day with her so when she was finally free, it was night but Wendy had found the keys to her and her brother’s old room and with Peter, she went inside but nothing was out of the ordinary and instead everything was just who it was when they left.
Wendy and Peter spent a while there but Suddenly something happened and Peter’s shadow was there.
Peter had slowly started fading out of color and his shadow told Wendy that it was because his magic had drained out.
The shadow explained that at the night when Wendy, John, and Michael had run into the woods, John and Michael died.
It turns out that Peter pan actually took lost souls that have been tragically killed to neverland so that they can calm down before they move forward but when he came to take John and Michael’s souls, he saw Wendy crying there asking him to her with them and Peter had grown quite fond of her so he took her with him but Wendy was the only one alive at wonderland and that started messing things up so he had to get her back but his shadow escaped.
After explaining the shadow left along with Peter leaving Wendy alone but now she wanted to remember what had happened so she tried and she saw her and her brothers were playing by the huge tree that she kept drawing when suddenly they both fell down with blood dripping from them.
Their dog went to them to try to protect them from whoever did that and Wendy was scared but she saw that it was Mr. Davies.
Mr. Davies was drunk and he had his hunting outfit on with his gun in his hand, he was shocked after seeing what he did and he ran to his car to quickly get his shovel.
At that point, Wendy was really angered but she went back into the woods back towards the tree.
When she arrived, she could see all the missing kids there and they called for her help but they were stuck in a weird cage that was made out of shadows and she couldn’t even budge it when Peter’s shadow arrived along with an unconscious, colorless Peter.
The shadow then went after her, trying to drown her in darkness and despair but from the corner of her eye, she could see that the kids were getting free the more the shadow focused on her so she was fine with it.
Suddenly a bunch of little arms grabbed her and they were bringing her back, then along with the help of the kids, she pulled back the shadow back towards Peter since he was getting weaker by the lack of fear then she sewed the shadow back to Peter.
Slowly color started coming back to his face and he woke up and flew in front of the kids but he had to leave since one of the search squads had found them.
Luckily none of the kids said anything about magic or Peter and they were able to come up with a pretty good lie as their parents started coming to take them away one by one.
Wendy’s father had also arrived and when he was there Wendy said that she got back her memory and that John and Michael were buried under that tree, she also told them that it was Me. Davies who killed who got arrested after he also admitted it as true.
In the end, everything went back to as normal as it could and Peter returned to Neverland since he still had to do his duties while Wendy left for college and decided to become a pediatrician.
