by Anna Katmore
I fight against the dizziness taking over and struggle to stay conscious. Jamie is here. He’ll safe me. It won’t be long now.
Concentrating on my breathing, I tighten my fingers around the rope once more. A tortured whine escapes me and Jamie glances my way. The worry in his face turns to ice-cold hatred. There’s murder on his mind when he grips the edge of the stone platform.
In one swift move, he hoists himself onto it. Standing at the entrance to the cave, he draws his sword. Peter comes out of the shadows, a sword in his own hand. So that’s what he was going to the get from the back. He must have heard Jamie coming after all.
At the aged appearance of Peter, shock crosses Jamie's face. He sucks in a sharp breath. Clearly, it’s worse than what he expected and he probably only now realizes the full extent of what us being together again cost Peter.
“So we meet again, dear brother,” Peter Pan drawls with venom in his voice. “For the last time, I assume.”
Jamie doesn’t move an inch. His body is rigid with muscles tense as taught wire. “Let Angel go.”
“I’m not taking orders from you, pirate!” Peter spits and in the next moment the clanging of blades drifts to me.
It’s not going to help anyone, but all I can do is shriek. Tears of fear for Jamie override the ones of pain.
The two of them thrusts and parry hard blows at each other. Cuts appear on their arms and body but they continue fighting without even so much as blinking. Peter runs Jamie up against the wall and aims a kick to his chest, but Jamie evades him. Peter’s foot drives into the rock instead. It unbalances him for a second. Jamie takes the chance to kick him in the knee and brings him down to the ground. Before the blade of Jamie’s sword can hit him square in the back, Peter Pan rolls to the side. He jumps to his feet and they cross blades again.
I’ve never seen someone fight with such determination to destroy each other. My bones rattle with fear for both.
Peter slams Jamie against the wall, his forearm presses hard against Jamie’s throat in order to squash his windpipe. I yell out both their names, begging for them to stop, but they ignore me. I don’t think either of them even heard my scream.
Jamie throws a hard punch to Peter’s jaw. He staggers back. Fury etched in his face, Jamie goes after Peter and lands another punch to his face. Peter stumbles backward and falls against the rope he used for tying me up. I feel a hard jerk against my wrists. Another shriek escapes me. This time I can’t stop myself, because I seem to be the only one noticing how the rope loosens from the rock.
“Jamie! The rope!” I shout. “Help me! I’m going to fall!”
Both of them stiffen and turn to me, Jamie bleeding from his nose and a cut on his upper arm, Peter wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. He’s the one nearer to the rope. In his eyes, I can read the shock—they almost killed me as they fought. Maybe he’s finally coming to his senses.
“Free me, Peter! Please,” I beg.
He just stares at me for another long moment.
“By Davie Jones’ locker, take her down from there!” Jamie barks and rushes across the cave to my aid. He must have thought the same, that Peter is having a moment of clarity and understands what he’s really doing me—to his friend.
But Peter startles us both as he whirls around and blocks Jamie’s way. He throws a punch so hard at his brother’s abdomen that Jamie drops to his knees, spitting blood.
“You’ll never get to her,” Peter hisses and cements his words with a kick to the side of Jamie’s head.
I squeeze my eyes shut because I can’t watch this any longer, but the punches thrown echo in my ears. The men groan and shout as they keep fighting. Then the worst of all sounds makes me sick. A dull thud as someone is slammed against the wall. A body smacks on the ground.
I don’t want to see Jamie hurt. Oh God, please don’t be dead.
There was already so much blood on his face and shirt. And then being thrown against the wall… It sounded like someone’s skull broke. Why is Peter so cruel? Why did he have to kill him?
Suddenly I drop two feet. A hoarse gasp escapes my throat and hurts like murder. My eyes shoot open. “What are you going to do with me?” I shout at Peter.
Only, it’s not Peter Pan standing in the cave’s opening with the rope wrapped around his hand. Jamie, bloodied and beaten, crashes against the wall for support. “Angel,” he drawls, exhausted. “You need to swing on that rope. Swing over to me. I’ll catch you.”
What? He can’t expect me to do that, when my life hangs on a brittle tree four hundred feet above the ground.
At the sheer terror on my face, Jamie takes a small step forward, the move visibly hurting him. He coughs and spits more blood as he wraps the rope a couple times around his hand. “Come on, love. It’s not far. Swing.”
Hanging above nothingness is the horror of my life, but swinging takes the word panic to a whole new level. “I can’t!”
“Yes, you can! I’ll catch you. Trust me.” He stretches out his free arm, encouraging me to start moving in the air. “Come on. You have to swing now before Peter comes to. He won’t be out for much longer.”
My own panic is mirrored in his eyes, but he doesn’t fear that I’ll drop. He’s scared of what will happen to me when Peter wakes up. Clenching my teeth, I summon all the bravery I can master and start moving my legs back and forth in a slow rhythm. Every bone inside me screams in pain. I hold on to the rope so tight that my fingers get numb. But in the end I’m swinging really far. Except, it’s not far enough. Jamie can’t reach me.
“Don’t panic now. I’m going to give you more rope.” He unwinds the rope from his hand, giving me another couple feet of line. I swallow all my fear and keep swinging. “Just a little bit more, Angel,” he urges.
Squinting my eyes shut, I put more of my weight into the next verve. A strong arm catches me around my waist and stops my swinging abruptly. I’m pulled against a protective chest. “I have you, Angel. You’re safe now.”
It hurts like crazy when I lower my arms around Jamie’s neck, and yet nothing ever felt so good.
He cuts my ties and gently rubs the burn marks on my wrists. Then he brushes my hair out of my face. Gazing into my eyes, he exhales a long, relieved breath. “Don’t you ever run away from me like that.”
He almost makes me laugh with it, but I’m aching too much. A weak sob comes out instead. After he kissed me on my mouth, quick and hard, he hugs me to his chest. I bury my face in his shoulder, enjoying the brief moment of reunion.
When I look up again and catch a glimpse over his shoulder, I go rigid in his arms. Peter has gotten to his feet. Dead-set determination on his face, he tightens his grip on the knife in his hand and lunges at Jamie. Too many things happen at once.
I scream.
Jamie whirls about, shoves me to the side and ducks.
Peter stabs the air instead of his brother.
He loses balance.
Jamie throws himself against Peter’s legs and tosses him over his shoulder.
He doesn’t know.
I scream again.
Far too close to the entrance of the cave, Peter hits the stone ground with a groan and skitters on. He shoots out over the platform and falls. I dash forward, but there’s nothing I can do. He’s falling. And he lost his happy thought.
“No! Jamie, no!” I grab his arm. “Peter can’t fly. He’ll die!”
After the brutal fight with his brother, one would have thought Jamie would take the news with joy. But the horror on his face proves my suspicion. He never wanted his brother dead, or he would have killed him before he saved me.
Jamie stumbles to his knees beside me, gripping the edge of the rock. Peter flails with his arms and legs, but it does him no good. He can’t lift himself in the air. My heart stops and I almost throw up.
Suddenly, a tiny spot shoots up from the depth. Golden hair and a lush green dress. “Tami!” She beats her wings as fast as she can to reach Peter in time. When she gets a hold on
his jacket’s collar, she pulls hard upward, but he’s too big and heavy for her. All she can do is slow his fall, but not much. He’s dragging her down with him. And then they disappear out of sight.
“We must get down to him!” I shout, rushing to my feet and starting to descend the steep slope of the mountain. Jamie is close behind me. That he is so silent scares me the most. It can only mean one thing. He has the same fears as I—Peter didn’t survive the fall.
I’m barefoot and not anywhere near as used to the wilderness as Jamie. I know I’m only holding him up and he wants to go down and find his brother so desperately. After we made it half the way together, I stop and let him get ahead of me. When he turns and casts me a look from a face so pale it can’t be human, I push at his arm. “Go! I’ll follow you!”
Jamie nods. I know he’s grateful that I can watch after my own, but he still says nothing. I wish I could soothe him. I wish I could get down faster and find Peter alive. I wish I could change everything.
And for the briefest moment, I wish I had never fallen off my balcony.
At another push from me, Jamie eventually turns and half-runs, half-skates down the serpentine dirt path. When he reaches the upper level of the trees, I lose sight of him. It takes me a felt eternity to make my own way down the mountain. The nearer I get to the jungle, the louder the sobs of the Lost Boys and Tami’s crying become.
Dear Lord, it can’t be. Peter must be alive!
Tears stream down my cheeks as I send prayer after prayer to the heavens above. When I find the small group of boys and Jamie huddled above a figure lying on the ground, it almost breaks me. Slowing to an uncertain pace, I croak out Jamie’s name. Everyone turns their head in my direction.
Jamie looks up and stares at me with a determined expression, quietly counting along with the pumps as he gives Peter a cardiac massage. “One, two, three, four, five…” I wonder where he learned to do that, but living on a ship he might have had to save some of his men from drowning during the years. He leans down, pinches Peter’s nose closed and breathes into his mouth. Then he pumps again. “One, two, three, four—”
Peter’s body jerks and he coughs. Everyone sucks in a gasp of relief. I fall forward on my knees and take his hand, but he doesn’t return my squeeze. His eyes flutter open for a second, unfocused, then they close again. At least, he’s inhaling and exhaling in deep intervals now.
“We must get him out of here,” Jamie says sternly, his voice so full of worry, it kills me.
“Where to?” Toby demands.
Jamie and I reply at the same time, “The fairies.”
From the looks on the Lost Boys’ faces I can tell how much the two women in the forest scare them. But they are Peter’s only hope…if there’s any at all. And they know it. Slowly, one after the other, they nod.
Stan, the tallest of the boys, and Jamie haul Peter to his feet, slipping their shoulders under his arms, supporting his weight. That Peter stumbles along with them is the best sign we got of him yet, even though his head is hanging.
Anxiously rubbing my upper arms, I follow with the rest of the boys. All of them are silent. It doesn’t matter what Peter Pan did or said—to anyone. His family surrounds him now, and everyone of this small group loves him like he’s their real brother. That’s what family is for, I think to myself, watching Jamie half-drag, half-carry Peter out of the jungle.
We wander across the meadows to the fairy forest ahead of us. A quiet sound follows me for a long while, but it takes some time until it sinks in what that sound really is. I turn around and find Tami walking close behind me, sobbing.
Putting an arm around her shoulders, I pull her into my side. “It’s alright. The fairies will know how to help him. They won’t let him down.” I wonder if I said this to soothe myself more than Tami. She nods briefly, but there’s not much confidence in that move. And then I realize what really concerns her. It makes me stop and twist her to face me. “Peter didn’t mean what he said up there. He wasn’t himself, Tami.”
The pixie sniffs and wipes the back of her small hand across her nose. “He hates me.”
“No, he doesn’t. He was just…confused.” Gently, I stroke her golden locks away from her face. “When you were gone, he was so sad that he lost his happy thought. I know he wanted to take all the mean things back that he said to you. And I know he didn’t want to do all”—shrugging helplessly, I glance back at the mountain we left behind—“that.”
“I don’t want him to die, Angel,” Tami pushes out between sobs. “I don’t want to be without him.”
Hugging her to my chest, I caress her hair. “And you won’t.” Then I take her hand and tug her with me, so we don’t lose the others. As we catch up with them, I ask Tami, “How did you and Peter meet?” I was always curious about it, but right now it’s more of a thing to distract Tami and myself from thoughts of doom.
She inhales deeply and wipes her tears away. “I wasn’t born in Neverland, did you know?”
I shake my head.
“I don’t know how to get back to the place where I was born, but it looks like an endless forest, far away from here. There are only pixies in that place and then some animals that I never saw here.”
“It sounds like a beautiful place.”
“The place was beautiful, all right, but my folks wasn’t very friendly. They are hard working people, caring about nature, the four seasons, and the elements. Every pixie had a special ability to bring in to our daily life. Everyone, except me.” Her cheeks turn red with shame and she lowers her gaze to the glimmering nails of her tiny toes. “I should have learned to communicate with the wind, because that’s what my line did. But I just couldn’t. And instead of tending to the forest’s needs, I always found myself distracted by simple things. I loved to tinker.”
We fall a little behind again, and it makes me wonder if Tami doesn’t want the boys to hear her story. “One day, my folks made me cry again, like they did so often when they weren’t pleased with my inability to fit in. I was so devastated, that I wished myself away from that place and all the other pixies.”
My eyes grow big. “And that worked?”
“I don’t know how I really did it, but the next thing I know, I was hanging in a tree with my wings entangled in the twigs and Peter Pan freed me. I had no idea how to get back to the Pixie Forest, but I didn’t care about it either. Peter had already decided to never grow up at that point, and he was alone like me. He said if I stayed with him, he’d be my family from then on. He’d always take care of me and would never make me cry.”
“Did he keep his promise?” I ask in a soft voice, liking her story a lot.
“He did. Until today.”
I force a smile. “So you really were the first Lost Girl.”
“Peter is my family. He and the other Lost Boys. I’ve never been as happy as I was after Peter Pan took me in. He was a great big brother, not at all the mean man he has become lately.”
Silently, I agree with her. Peter has been a funny and lovely guy when I met him first. The man Jamie and Stan carry in front of us now has nothing in common with the person he once was. Growing up so fast did this to him. I feel unspeakably sorry for Peter Pan.
We walk the rest of the long way in silence. Toby and Loney take turns in replacing Stan, but Jamie never let’s go of his brother when asked. He carries him all the way to the fairies’ house.
Bre’Shun is at the gate of their small garden and receives us with a concerned look on her pale face. She urges us inside. No one pays attention to the beautiful white horse that’s grazing at the back. When it takes a step forward and eyes us suspiciously, I see the elegant white horn glimmering in the sunlight. The unicorn inclines its head as if to greet me. I know I shouldn’t be surprised about anything that’s happening in this forest, so I respond with a tilt of my own and follow the others.
The boys lower Peter into the grass and we all kneel down around him, Tami and I each taking his hand.
“Why did yo
u wait so long?” The fairy with the golden hair piled on her head narrows her turquoise eyes at Jamie. “I expected you way sooner.”
Jamie catches his breath after the exhausting hike. “What do you mean?”
“Look at him. Did you really have to wait until his heart gives out to think of consulting me?”
I, like everyone else, gaze down at Peter. His hair is white like snow now. When my grandfather died of a heart attack at age seventy-eight, he didn’t look as old as Peter. “Are we too late?” I whisper.
Bre’Shun lowers to her knees next to Jamie, her long, deep red dress fanning out around her. “Too late for the cure I could have provided,” she answers with pain in her voice.
My heart sinks, my throat constricts, cutting of any air. I shake my head, slowly at first, but then violently, as I hear the desperate cry of a young pixie next to me.
Chapter 13
I KILLED MY brother. The only family I had left. Peter’s breaths become shallow and they let out for longer than they should every so often.
“This can’t be it! You always know what to do,” I shout at the fairy. In despair, I grab her shoulders and shake her, growling through gritted teeth. “Do something. Now!”
Bre tilts her head. The look she gives me is disappointed yet somewhat hurtful. The skin where I’m touching her glazes over and turns into shockingly cold ice. My hands burn. I jerk them away, my palms red and marred with angry blisters.
Nostrils flaring, she breathes slowly through her nose. Her eyes turn a much darker shade of blue. I’m expecting a thunderstorm to come down on me any minute as we stare at each other, especially when Remona, who no doubt is having the time of her life as a unicorn, sidles up to her sister and snuffles in my face. But nothing happens. Bre’s anger cools off quickly. Or she warms over…
Her friendly smile returning, she lets go of a long sigh. “James Hook. Whatever shall I do with you?” She turns to Peter and strokes her cold hand over his forehead. First I think that she’s only showing her affection, until I notice how Peter’s lips suddenly turn blue, his skin pales to whiter than chalk, and his chest is no longer lifting.