Shadow

by Kara Swanson

  I expect another headache to swell at those words. For the island to splinter and kittens to cry or some other dramatic nonsense. But instead, nothing shifts. Except the look on Tootles’s face. For the first time, I think I see hope in his gaze.

  “This new Peter may just be the only one who could actually pull this off.”

  Neverland

  The vines slither away, freeing my body—but I’m more entrapped, more frozen than ever. I can’t feel my legs, throat closing up as I stare at the boy in front of me. No, not boy. The man.

  It’s been over six years since I last saw him. Since he disappeared.

  This Connor I barely recognize. But the shattered look in his eyes is far too familiar. I take in the pale blue of his irises and the way he stares at me.

  Like I’m not the only one trapped.

  His skin is so pale it’s almost bluish, and for a moment I think maybe he’s cold and that’s why he’s shuddering, shivering. But then he looks away, and the hair hanging over the right side of his face shifts, and I see the dark veins. Thin, inky spiderwebs climbing up his neck, pulsing beneath his skin and spreading out, crossing his jaw and up his cheek.

  Instinctively, I reach out to touch his face. I feel his cold skin beneath my fingertips. Connor whips away. “Don’t.”

  I take a trepidatious step nearer to him. “Are . . . you okay?”

  He’s turned a little away, and after a pause, he faces me fully on. As he takes me in, a slow, fragile smile warms his face. He reaches out a hand. “Sorry for scaring you.”

  I stare down at his hand, pale, and the faint bluish hint of his dark veins beneath the white skin—but familiar too. The soft scar on his palm he got tumbling down the stairs in one of our foster homes.

  I put my hand into his. “It’s really you?”

  Warmth seems to surge through his skin as he clasps my hand tight, voice a little raw. “Yeah. It’s me.”

  And with that, I vault into him, letting go of his hand and wrapping both arms around his neck. Pulling my brother into a hug so tight neither of us can breathe, but I don’t care.

  I’ve found him.

  I can’t even speak, relieved, disbelieving tears welling in my eyes and swelling my throat shut.

  “Please don’t let this be a dream,” I murmur, so quietly.

  But Connor has buried his face against my neck and whispers back, “It’s not a dream. I’ve missed you, Claire-y.”

  I bite my lip, hearing the old nickname. A few tears trace a path down my cheeks and wet his pale skin.

  We stay like that for a long time, but it’s still not long enough. Not long enough just holding my brother after spending what feels like an eternity wondering if I could ever get him back.

  But everyone who told me it was hopeless was wrong. I’ve found him. And I’m never losing my Connor again.

  Releasing a long breath, I lightly pull back, staring up at him, taking him in again. All the questions suddenly flood my mind. “How did you do that? With the vines? And how . . .” I wave a hand at the twisted, craggy world around us. “What happened here? What happened to you?”

  His pale lips quirk slightly. “So many questions, as always.” He dips a shoulder. “The vines were . . . to keep you safe. This island isn’t so friendly. I didn’t want you to keep running or to get hurt. Or to run from . . . me.” The last word makes my whole heart ache.

  I squeeze his hand again, voice trembling. “Never, Connor. I’d never run from you.”

  It’s the first time I’ve used his name aloud.

  His eyes lighten as he watches me, and then he gestures to the island around us. The mist has ebbed away, but the sky is still dark, trees gnarled and bent toward us. Neverland frail and skeletal. “Peter and I didn’t get along so well, and the island got kind of sick.” He’s avoiding my eyes.

  “It’s okay—you can tell me all of it. What really happened with Peter.” I look up at him, waiting for him to meet my eyes. Finally, his icicle-blue eyes drift down to meet mine. I try to coax the answer from him. “What kind of sick? What do you mean you didn’t get along?”

  He glances over his shoulder, and I follow his line of sight and see two figures approaching us distantly through the mist and shriveled palm trees. One of them walks with a slight limp and a familiar curve of a hook on one arm—the other I don’t recognize. But it seems feminine.

  Hook and . . . who? My skin crawls. I take the faintest step back from Connor, hoping he’ll follow me. Shelter me. Something. The minutes stretch on, and I begin to think Connor won’t answer me, just stand there, a little bent like the bedraggled trees around us.

  His voice is low. “You know how sometimes there are things you lock deep down? Things that hurt too much to look at?”

  A shiver snakes up my spine. “Very much.”

  He gives a little nod. “Figured you would. Well, here, in Neverland . . .” He lifts his eyes to the shriveled palm fronds rocking against curved trunks. “Those things you bury deep down—they don’t stay buried long. They sort of bubble out and seep into everything. Whether or not you want them to.”

  A cool breeze raises goosebumps along my shoulders, through my ragged cardigan. “What kinds of things, Connor?”

  He shrugs and takes slow steps, tugging me along with him, finally putting distance between the approaching pirate and stranger. “Things I’ve been working through—but I don’t have enough control over Neverland to really manage them right. The whole island is sick because of that. If I could control it”—he brushes a hand over the veins that spiderweb up the side of his face—“I could probably fix a lot of this. Instead of it just leaking out.”

  He’s still dancing around the real truth. Feeding me bits and pieces, but they’re not quite fitting.

  “How can the island help you with the . . . things you’ve suppressed? Control what?”

  He leads me deeper into the jungle, but I notice that the sun has actually begun to filter through the clouds here. “Where are you taking me?”

  He grins down at me, pulling me with him a little faster. “You’ll see! I can’t wait for you to meet them. I’ll explain everything after. They’ve been so excited to see you!”

  “They?”

  He seems almost giddy now. “Just wait and see.”

  We’ve left Hook far behind, but I can’t help but notice how the jungle seems to ebb and flow around Connor. Trees angling toward him, dark puddles shifting out of the way of his steps. “What did you mean about control of the island? Is that how you moved those vines?”

  He ducks around the arching arm of a tree and gestures for it to lean back for me, and it does. “We’re both connected to the island, Claire. The same bond we’ve had since we were just children and the same bond Peter has. Only ours is much stronger than his ever really was.”

  We walk quickly, skirting past some towering palm trees and jumping over a small rippling brook. “Bond?”

  He pulls up to a stop, behind an arching mossy cluster of rocks. “Why else do you think Neverland speaks to us? It’s the magic in our veins. It’s why whenever Peter left, Neverland would freeze over, and why when he’d return, it would thaw out.” Connor is talking not as a boy who read a bedtime story, but as someone who observed it. He kneels down and places a palm against the ground. “It’s why the whole island breathes with us. Why it sings to us and does what we ask.” Two vines shoot out of the underbrush, slithering toward us. I jump back.

  Connor waves a hand, and immediately the vines fall still. “Don’t worry. They’re not dangerous. They’re just doing what I told them. You could probably control the island, too, if you tried.”

  I remember the tree that had reached toward me earlier today. I eye the vine. “Could Peter do that?”

  “With the vines? Or water?”

  Water?

  Connor shakes his head. “No, that’s just us. Because we’re from here—part pixie and part siren.” He braces a hand against the mossy curve of the largest boulder. “Though,
I think you got most of the pixie side while I got the siren. I can’t do the thing with the dust. It’s pretty cool, though.”

  My jaw goes slack, eyes locked on him—“Wait…siren? What do you mean?”

  “What, did you think you were full pixie? At that size?” He gives an odd little laugh. “We’re descended from the most magical creatures of Neverland—it’s why your dust has darker properties. And why we’re connected to Neverland at all and share the same bond with the island Peter does.”

  And while it’s shocking, to say the least, my brother’s revelations seem to click into place. If we are part siren and part pixie . . . it would explain a lot.

  “How did that even happen?”

  He rubs at his forehead. “Something about a siren trading in his tail to walk on land . . . and a pixie giving up her wings to be his size. They died when we were very young, though no one will quite tell me how. But it doesn’t really matter. What matters is what we can do.” His eyes brighten. “I’ll show you everything and teach you what you’re capable of too. But first . . . you have to see this.”

  He starts to climb up the mossy boulders, beckoning for me to follow. A little uncertain, I brace one foot against one of the lower rocks and clamber up after him. He gives me a hand up, and soon we’re sliding over the other side, a short drop to the ground. I land soundly on my bare feet, dust myself off, and lift my eyes to take in where he’s brought me.

  My jaw drops.

  We’re nestled in a small glade of some kind. A circle of trees rim the area, but instead of shriveled and bent, they’re actually woven and curled together like an intricate latticework. Moss glides down from the boulders and sweeps across the ground, speckled with little flowers that have opened delicate white petals.

  But it’s not the scenery that makes me gasp—it’s the flickering, golden little balls of light that flutter across the mossy knoll and set the latticework of trees alight. Like fairy lights strung in a circle around us, but they’re alive. Real. Tiny pixies that drift through the air leave drizzles of pixie dust everywhere the eye can see.

  “What is this?”

  “Pixie Grove.” A curious little smile appears. “Do you like it? I made it for you. The Pixie Tree isn’t too far from here.”

  I can’t seem to take it all in. “It’s incredible.” The pixies begin to drift in toward me. Small, bobbing bodies that leave behind trails of glorious, gleaming dust. My own dust lifts from my skin and joins the cool late-afternoon breeze, igniting the air with glimmers of gold. A few pixies reach me, and they pepper my arms and neck with butterfly kisses, whispering greetings and sweet nothings.

  Connor drifts closer, but the pixies seem more taken with me. “Welcome home, Claire,” he whispers.

  My eyes well up. Seeing all these pixies filling this grove, seeing this part of my family in their homeland. Their gleaming light and the way they flit and soar. It reminds me of the first time I met them in Kensington Gardens.

  “If this was all here”—I blink back my tears—“why did you let Hook keep me trapped on the Roger? Why didn’t you try to let me out?”

  Connor’s scraggly hair falls over the side of his face again. “I told you, the island isn’t very safe. I was hoping I could make it more beautiful before you saw it.”

  I nuzzle one of the pixies back and gently catch one that tumbles out of my hair. I watch them chatter and chide each other and chuckle.

  Finally, I turn. “I’m not fragile, Connor. I can handle the reality of this place. I’m just glad the pixies are okay.”

  There’s a slight tick in his jaw, and the veins across his features pulse a bit, growing darker for a moment.

  I point to the dark veins spiraling up his face and abruptly ask, “What is that, Connor? Does that hurt?”

  He won’t look at me.

  “Will it go away?”

  He remains silent as I persist. “Can I help you somehow?”

  That captures his attention. “Actually, I could use your help, Claire.”

  “Of course. What can I do?” A few more pixies fly in little swirls around my body, creating streams of pixie dust that loop around me. Out of my periphery, I can see others of the small winged creatures break off into pairs and go dancing and skittering across the glade. A few grab my fingers and start to pull me toward the middle of the grove.

  The ground underfoot is silky with moss and clusters of those bunched white flowers. Pixie dust is scattered throughout the air and sinks to the moss, igniting the whole grove like dangling sparks of sunlight. A gentle breeze whistles through the hem of trees, softly rustling tropical leaves.

  I humor the pixies as they tug at me and dance through the air around my head, laughing at their antics. I glance over my shoulder at Connor, who is following on my heels. His icicle-blue eyes watch me unwaveringly. “Yes, there’s one thing I could really use your help with,” he responds.

  “What’s that?” The pixies begin to spin me, and I smile, batting a few away that tug too hard on my hair. I don’t mean to ignore Connor who is standing stiffly by, watching, but I can’t help getting caught up in the moment. “You aren’t going to dance?”

  “Not my thing.”

  “Suit yourself.” I give a little spin.

  He rubs again at the veins climbing the side of his neck. “Maybe after you give me your connection to the island and I can finally manage some of this, I’ll feel like dancing.”

  I almost trip over my own feet, swinging around to look at him. “After I what?”

  “Give me your connection to Neverland,” he restates. “I need a bit more control—once I have that, I’ll be able to make all of Neverland like this.” He gestures to the glade, and I suddenly freeze.

  I just found out about my connection. About how whole I am here. And he wants me to cut that away?

  My pulse kicks up, and I scan the latticework of trees, thoughts tripping and scrambling, trying to find a way this fits together—but suddenly the weave of trees doesn’t look so ornamental.

  It looks like the walls of a cage.

  My chest tightens.

  I made this for you. Connor’s words ricochet in my thoughts. One pixie is tugging on the hem of my shirt, while a few more spiral around my head, but as I really examine the pixies and my surroundings, I notice something I didn’t see before.

  Their eyes.

  Above the almost too wide smiles filling the pixies’ small faces, their wide eyes are almost screaming at me. As they dart around, they seem hardly able to look at Connor. I realize though the pixies swirl around me, they fully avoid him.

  Despite putting on a show for me, a tremor runs through their small bodies, and a haze of blinking red undercoats their golden shimmer. It’s not the angry kind of red I’ve seen before.

  This color means something else. Fear.

  I made this for you.

  One of the pixies that had been sitting at the edge of the grove suddenly beelines toward me. Her brown hair flurries around her green eyes, as she stops just in front of my nose. She vibrates a deep, eerie red—not just afraid, far angrier.

  She stares me in the eyes and says one word that I understand perfectly:

  “Fly!”

  She spins and flies as quickly as she can toward the edge of the grove. But before she reaches the edge of the trees, they groan and snap and twist tighter, until they have bent in and woven so tightly together that they’ve formed a wall around us.

  I turn to look for Connor and jolt to find that he’s standing right behind me, those icy blue eyes darkened.

  “What’s going on?” Pale, almost-panicked dust begins to drip from my fingers.

  He looks at the pixies that have all fled to the edge of the glade and are trying to squeeze out between the branches or starting to aim for the sky that is growing more overcast by the minute.

  “I told them they shouldn’t leave.”

  I still. “Why?”

  Connor’s mouth clamps shut.

  My body hums,
every nerve on edge. “Connor, please . . .”

  His voice is toneless. “The rest are all dead.”

  I gape at him. “N-no . . . can’t be . . .”

  “It’s true.” His words are almost imperceptible. I see a flash of something dark boiling under his skin.

  I grab his shoulders and give him a little shake.

  “Just be honest—what has really happened here? To our world?” My voice is rising, raw, trembling.

  He doesn’t look at me. But slowly, the trees forming a woven wall around us begin to bend and sag and lean back. The remaining pixies that hadn’t flown over the top flutter away. As the pixies and their gold dust disappear, the small glade suddenly feels very, very dark.

  “I told you the island was sick,” Connor mutters. “The pixies are fragile. Most of them couldn’t take it. Peter never really knew how to manage this place either. He would just let the island wipe away anything he didn’t like. Wipe away the memories. Until it couldn’t, and his selfishness started to tear this place apart. I had to take control.”

  This part of the story is the first thing that truly makes sense.

  His brows clash together. “He almost killed me for it. For having a stronger bond with the island—so I kicked him out. I sent him falling to Earth where he couldn’t hurt the island anymore.”

  “It was more than he would have done for me,” Connor adds. “But even with Peter gone, the island is still . . . splintering.”

  I watch as the dark haze fills his pale blue irises. “But you can help, Claire. You can give me what I need to fix everything. Will you let go of your connection and give me the full stream of magic I need to restore this island?”

  A chill slithers down my spine.

  This is my Connor, the one I’ve been searching for so long . . . So, why do I feel like his definition of fix and mine are two dangerously different things?

  Neverland

  Connor watches me, waiting for an answer.

  I take a step back, a sheen of dust coating my palms. The instant I’m out of his reach, his eyes narrow. Another flash of something roiling and inky beneath the surface. There’s something else there. Something lurks below the Connor I once knew.