Acceptance. Resignation to something vast, and helpless to change it. Powerlessness… Here was growing up too.

CARROLL: We’ll have to watch Lorina carefully, like a fever-sufferer, and at the first sign of the censorious eye, we’ll strike.

ALICE: What’ll we do?

CARROLL: Make her stand on her head.

ALICE is amused.

They walk for a moment.

CARROLL is thinking about something.

CARROLL: It’s only a matter of the clock now. She’ll be up and married and raising a litter of her own soon.

ALICE: Lorina?! She’s still a baby.

CARROLL: She’s 13. That’s a whole year past the age of consent.

They walk for a beat.

CARROLL: Why, in two years you could get married.

There is weight to this.

ALICE: What was he trying to say?

PETER: You know exactly.

ALICE: I was ten years old.

PETER: You had fascinated him. Beaten out your sisters, like you said; your rivals. You sparkled for him. You got your wish.

ALICE: Stop it.

PETER: Don’t you like love stories?

CARROLL: Alice, will you not look at me?

PETER: I thought all little girls enjoyed love stories.

ALICE: You’re a terrible man.

PETER: And what kind of child were you?

ALICE: A child is what I was!

PETER: Not after that night. Might as well start chewing off your leg.

ALICE: You don’t know anything about it! You didn’t walk with him. You didn’t feel his suffering. Like a vibration next to me, like a tuning fork, his need was overwhelming.

CARROLL: Alice? Please look at me.

ALICE pretends to peer ahead for her sisters.

ALICE: Where have they gone? Can you see my sisters? I should catch up with them.

CARROLL: Of course.

ALICE: All right. See you later, sir.

CARROLL: Alice – I’ve almost finished your story.

ALICE: You’re writing it down, I’d forgotten. That’s marvelous.

She moves off quickly.

CARROLL immediately stops walking. He stands alone.

ALICE recovers herself.

ALICE: What would I have done if I looked back and saw him standing there? Would my heart have broken?

PETER: Does it now?

ALICE: Children don’t have hearts yet, not really. They haven’t been hurt into the need for one… You know, Mr. Davies, I think they were born out of sadness, Alice and Peter. Out of loneliness, wouldn’t you say?

PETER: Uncle Jim was the loneliest man I ever knew. For a time he could be a part of us, one of the boys, but that couldn’t last because…

He stops, realizing where this has gone, inevitably…

PETER: Because all children, except one, grow up…

PETER PAN flies in. He’s full of bravado and nerve and looks exactly as you imagine PETER PAN to look.

PETER PAN: I ran away the day I was born! I heard father and mother talking about what I was to be when I became a man. I don’t ever want to be a man. I always want to be a little boy and to have fun. So I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long long time among the fairies.

PETER: He created the one boy who would never grow up and leave him.

ALICE approaches PETER PAN:

ALICE: Wendy felt at once that she was in the presence of a tragedy.

PETER PAN: Would you like an adventure now, or would you like to have your tea first?

ALICE: What kind of adventure?

PETER PAN: I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back, and away we go!

PETER: Away we go…

BARRIE: To fly and fight and fly again. Shall we do that, Peter?

PETER PAN: How clever I am! Oh, the cleverness of me!

CARROLL, who has not moved, looks up.

CARROLL: Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it…

ALICE IN WONDERLAND pops up from a trap door, like one of the Tenniel illustrations come to life. She’s a bold and curious girl.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND: And what’s the use of a book without pictures or conversations?!

CARROLL: So she was considering, in her own mind…

ALICE IN WONDERLAND: As well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid…

CARROLL: Whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies –

ALICE IN WONDERLAND: When suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her!

PETER PAN and ALICE IN WONDERLAND linger nearby.

They are curious about their real-life counterparts. They interact, examine, imitate, and shadow them periodically throughout the play.

ALICE: Once she was born, part of me ceased to exist. As if she had taken part of me.

PETER: Or like a brother.

ALICE: Yes! Like I had another sister.

PETER: Another rival?

ALICE: No, a twin… A shadow.

PETER: That’s it.

ALICE: Even when I had forgotten her for weeks on end, years on end, I would turn, and even be a little surprised, for there she was.

PETER PAN shadows PETER, almost like a game for him. Not for PETER though.

PETER: Sometimes I tried to forget him. Always I tried to forget him. It was unremitting my whole life: “Peter Pan joins the Army”, “Peter Pan marries”, “Peter Pan opens publishing firm” … There was a time I drank terribly to forget him. I still do, there’s the truth.