A Land of Never After

by R. L. Davennor

  Peter stood in the water, wrestling—a corpse?

  Blinking as I staggered upright, I concluded it was much worse. Not a corpse.

  A mermaid.

  She was the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen, and that was including the Nightstalker. Bloodshot eyes, thinning hair, and a tail devoid of color far separated the mermaid from the gorgeous maidens I’d seen depicted in countless illustrations. Scales and skin alike sloughed from where Peter attempted to regain his desperate grip on her thin arms, but though rotting bone and muscle were exposed, it didn’t slow the monstrous creature. Flashing needle-like teeth, she sank them into his shoulder, proceeding to thrash about not unlike a crocodile.

  Peter’s scream blended into my own; though the last thing I wanted to do was approach, I had to do something. The mermaid had pulled him beneath the shallow waters of the lagoon, now using her tail to keep him pinned as the ripples surrounding them turned red. Though only seconds had passed, already his flails were growing weaker.

  My legs moved of their own accord, but my mind was slower to act. This wasn’t a fight I could win with my bare hands—Peter had proven that—so I needed something. Anything.

  I decided a nearby piece of driftwood was good enough. Though mostly worn smooth by the water, one end at least had the appearance of being pointy. After flipping it over in my hands and taking a deep breath, I entered the lagoon, swiftly wading within reach of the mermaid’s ugly grey tail. Raising the driftwood over my head, I brought it down with as much force as I could muster.

  Never had such a disgusting squelch been so satisfying.

  A muffled cry rippled through the water before the mermaid lifted her head, followed by Peter. I didn’t have time to be relieved; while he caught his breath, I needed to be certain her sights were set on me. Bringing my arms back, I prepared for a second strike.

  It never landed.

  With inhuman speed, the mermaid snatched the driftwood in midair before squeezing, shattering my makeshift bludgeon into thousands of useless splinters. Her pale lips twisted into a horrific smile before parting. She hadn’t even opened her mouth fully before that awful scream came again, and in such proximity, its effect was instantaneous.

  My vision went with my hearing, but this time, there was no pain. Only darkness.

  IV. the curse

  Featured Songs: Wendy, Wendy and Peter’s Lament

  Bells, faint and comforting, rose and fell to a gentle melody—the lullaby from the music box. Though my lips couldn’t form sound, I still attempted to move them, if only to add my voice to the song in spirit.

  I managed far more. Words I never recalled learning blended perfectly with the soprano timbre, blending lyrics with the lullaby. Barely audible, the voice was far too ethereal to be human, or even something living.

  Someone was singing, I realized. It just wasn’t me.

  A blurred face slowly came into focus, revealing the source of the sound. The woman paid me no mind, even when I all but gasped at her beauty. Freckles dotted her sun-kissed cheeks, and deep lines etched into her face betrayed her frequent smiles. The dark hair cascading down her shoulders caught me by surprise, given the brightness of the rest of her.

  Within me struck a chord of recognition that had nothing to do with the song. She was so closely tied to the music box they were almost one and the same.

  “Mother?” I whispered.

  She turned to me then, but only to bring a finger to her lips. The music continued without her, now playing something darker and more sinister, and growing louder in her silence. I couldn’t recall at what point the melody had changed. Her gaze softened as she regarded me, but it wasn’t long before she began a new song—this one as unsettling as it was beautiful.

  “Wendy, Wendy,

  too late to run.

  Wendy, Wendy,

  what’s done is done.

  Wendy, Wendy,

  don’t fear his gun.

  Wendy, Wendy,

  soon, all will be won.”

  When she finished, I had to remind myself to breathe. Everything had stopped—the music box, the ringing in my ears and even my panic, leaving only us.

  The longer I stared, the more certain I became; it was her. I’d seen glimpses in dreams, felt her presence when I played my music box, but none of it compared to this. After sixteen years, my mother was standing close enough to touch.

  I reached out, and she didn’t move away. Stepping closer, I unclenched my fingers to encircle hers—

  Blackness. Rot. Death.

  In an instant, she went from whole to absolutely covered in it: Neverland’s blight. Her eyes were glazed over, unseeing and useless, and her parted jaw clung to her skull only thanks to a few threads of sinew. Though actively decaying with each passing second, she managed to utter a final warning.

  “Dragon. Serpent. Wolf. Crow. One to smite, the second to fight. The third bites, and the fourth? He’ll give you quite the fright.”

  When her rotting hand curled around my forearm, I screamed.

  “Wendy—Wendy! It’s me!”

  A voice that wasn’t my mother’s. I clung to it, shaking off the worst of the nightmare as I bolted upright. Despite the room being pitch dark, I’d have leaped from the bed if arms hadn’t prevented it; growling, I struggled against their grip.

  “Let me go—”

  “Easy,” the new voice hissed. “You’re not the only one who got hurt.”

  “You should do as he says, Wendy,” another voice warned—this one much higher in pitch.

  I sucked in a breath. “Tink?”

  That telltale tinkling answered my question. “You’re safe now. Peter brought you back.”

  He hadn’t drowned or been eaten alive, and we’d made it back to the tree? Shocking… yet relieving.

  “Please—lie back down. Your hearing has returned, but your vision might take a few more minutes.”

  Tink was right; I couldn’t see, and someone else confirming it did nothing for my panic. I blinked repeatedly, but though my eyes were open, they showed nothing but blackness. “But it will return, won’t it?”

  “It’ll take a hell of a lot longer if you keep thrashing around like that,” said Peter. “You heard the cry of a nerisa completely unprotected. Its magic needs time to wear off.”

  Tink’s bells rang apologetically. “I’d have helped you stuff your ears had I known one would be there. It’s been ages since we’ve seen one—”

  “It’s your fault this happened at all,” Peter snapped in Tink’s direction.

  “What the hell is a nerisa?” I asked, ignoring both the ringing in my skull and their arguing. When I brought a hand to my earlobe, it came away wet with blood.

  “A cross between a siren and a mermaid. Both started becoming scarce once the curse took hold of Neverland, but after they grew tired of slaughtering one another, they started doing… something else.”

  I recalled the awful thing and its gruesome appearance; it would have been ugly even without the decay, a mutant in every form. “Did you kill it?”

  “Thanks to you.” Peter’s hand encircled mine just as my vision began returning little by little. I fixated on our clasped fingers before trailing my gaze upward, but the act made me dizzy. Seeming to sense my discomfort, he released me. “Rest. I have something that may help.”

  I lay down but kept watching as he crossed the room with Tink hovering close behind. Grabbing a wooden object from the table, Peter brought it to his lips, blowing a bit of air through the pipes before beginning his song.

  Two notes sounded at once: a drone and a melody. Sad and mournful, it didn’t take long for the pipes to flood the room, their sound rich and full in Peter’s expert hands. He closed his eyes as he played, and whether it was to encourage me to sleep or because he was simply that focused on what he was doing, it hardly mattered. Desp
ite my best efforts, it was working.

  I almost dozed off but shot awake at the last second. Peter had put away his pipes, but now stood with his back to me. He wore pants, but no shirt save for bloodied bandages encasing his upper chest and shoulder. After conversing in hushed tones with Tink, she passed him even more. I assumed he planned to change the ruined linen for something clean; instead, he started wrapping over what was already there, pulling tighter with every pass. A grimace flashed across his face, but because it hurt or because he was having difficulty, I couldn’t be certain. Though part of me was still furious, another pitied him; what would have happened had I not showed up?

  I cleared my throat. The dizziness had passed, at least for now. “Need a hand?”

  Startled, Peter let the bandages fall loose and drop slightly. Narrowing his gaze, he looked far from pleased. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I’m not tired,” I lied. With my mother’s nightmare still fresh in my mind, closing my eyes again was the last thing I wanted. “Are you hurt?”

  “My shoulder.”

  I nodded, recalling the bite. “Your chest, too?”

  Peter stiffened, hesitating before his answer. “Yeah… that too.”

  I sat up, gaze repeating my original question. Peter’s stance informed me I didn’t yet have permission to approach. We stared at one another for a short while before I sighed.

  “Listen, if you don’t want help, I’m sure I can find something else to occupy—”

  “Peter,” came Tink’s quiet voice from the corner. “Let her.”

  He scrunched up his face as it reddened. “Fine. Just… don’t touch me.”

  “Understood.”

  I rose slowly, fully aware the dizziness could return if I pushed myself. Once I’d reached him, Peter handed me the end of the wrappings before raising his arms so I could continue. I worked steadily but carefully, doing my best not to draw out what was clearly an uncomfortable experience. It was becoming more obvious that he wasn’t wounded where I wrapped him, at least in the physical sense; this was something more.

  “Tighter.” He kept glancing anywhere but me, and visibly quivered now.

  “You need to be able to breathe—”

  “I beg to differ.”

  Biting my lip, I did as he asked—as much as I could stand, anyway. His chest was as flat as a board, achieving what I suspected was the desired result, so to yank any harder would be unnecessary.

  “There.” I tied the wrappings off in the back without him needing to ask. Stepping away, I watched him test my handiwork, running his hands over his front.

  He nodded. “This will do.”

  “You’re welcome.” I raised an eyebrow. “So, are we even now?”

  “Even?”

  “You saved me, I saved you—even.”

  He put on his shirt before answering. “I suppose we are. It’s just a bit of a foreign concept. No one—well, except Tink—has needed to ‘save me’ for decades.”

  Decades? I studied the boy before me carefully, scrutinizing every detail. From the moment we’d met, I’d gotten the unshakeable sense of him being much older than he claimed or seemed, and only now were the pieces beginning to fit together.

  “How… How old are you?”

  Peter answered without missing a beat. “Twelve.”

  “How long have you been twelve?”

  “A… while.”

  “So… you don’t age?”

  “Not here. A land of never after—Neverland. It’s not named so simply because most can never leave.”

  “But you can. So why stay?” Why would Peter subject himself to such an awful curse, especially given the chance to walk free? “What about your mission—the map you’re seeking?”

  He absently touched his chest. “It’s all connected, Wendy… I’m seeking the map so I don’t have to stay here forever. But until I find it, here I must remain, because aging will turn me into something I’m not. It’s already gone too far, and once the rest of it happens, I can never go back. As I’ve already pointed out, I would rather stop breathing.”

  “Peter—”

  “What?” His eyes flashed as a storm gathered within, like when he’d fought the Nightstalker. “If aging would turn you into a man, would you go through with it?”

  “It’s already turned me into a woman.” Though I knew he was in pain, it was still difficult to keep my tone even. “If you would quit getting so defensive, you’d see I’m offering to help you.”

  Peter stilled. “Oh.”

  “I had a friend that used to try on my dresses when Mrs. Hughes wasn’t looking,” I said quietly. “I couldn’t stand to see the way the other kids treated her, especially when wearing the dresses made her so happy. It was such a simple thing. They wouldn’t even let her keep her hair long.”

  “I cut mine when I was ten.” His gaze clouded over. “I’m lucky it no longer grows.”

  I nodded. “I may not understand, but I’ll help if you’ll let me. Your breasts, then—what about your monthly?”

  Peter flinched. “Thank the gods… not yet.”

  “Lucky again.” I gave him a small smile. “If it does start, promise you’ll come to me?”

  Hesitation—but after a moment, he nodded.

  Understanding passed between us, whether Peter sensed it or not. It wasn’t friendship, not yet… but it was something, enough to keep my anger at bay. I even felt a lingering urge to reciprocate the vulnerability he’d shown me, if only to ease the tension hovering in the air. Not even Tink’s dust could distract me from it.

  I decided to start somewhere easy. “What were you going to get me?”

  Peter knotted his brows. “What?”

  “The docks. You said you were going to get me something for my birthday.”

  “Oh—that.” He relaxed his shoulders the slightest bit. “As we just discussed, aging doesn’t happen here, so neither do birthdays. I admit I may have gotten a little overexcited, but I wanted to do something, even if it was small. Your little altercation with that sailor reminded me very much of Tink. Both spitfires, both stubborn.”

  “True.” The fairy nodded her approval.

  “Anyway,” Peter said, “it was this beautiful little ornament. The shops were a little farther down, but I spotted it from where we stood, because somehow, it glowed. Fireflies, maybe? We don’t even have anything like that in Neverland. I raced off to buy it but didn’t have enough coin of my own. When I returned to tell you, you were asleep, so—”

  “You took my bag.” I raised an eyebrow.

  His cheeks reddened. “Yeah. I did. But it didn’t take long for me to feel bad about it, so I ducked back into Neverland to use my own money to make up the difference. I was only going to be there a moment, but then… your music box.” Peter gestured to where it sat. “It was enchanting, and I was mesmerized. I wasted too much time messing with it, and the next thing I knew, you showed up.”

  The corner of my lips played at a smile. “Good thing, too, or you’d still be a corpse.”

  “Too true.” He grimaced. “If there’s one thing about being in the real world I hate, it’s that it accelerates the rot.”

  “And you came anyway?”

  “I come as often as I can. Still hold on to the slim chance I might find that map someday.”

  I’d nearly forgotten about Peter’s mission, mostly because given what I knew about him now, it didn’t make a shred of sense. He remained in Neverland because it was the only place he didn’t age, yet sought a map to leave? “But—”

  “The map doesn’t lead to a place, Wendy,” he said, a brow raised as though reading my thoughts. “It leads to a witch. One with the power to keep me this way forever, in any world I choose to live in.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “And I interrupted your search.”

  �
��You did no such thing. I helped you of my own accord. And don’t regret it for a second.”

  “You mean that?”

  Peter nodded, and for some reason his confirmation sent an even stronger pang of guilt through me. The swell of emotion didn’t make the slightest sense. It wasn’t as though he’d crossed into my world specifically for me; we’d run into one another by coincidence, and I’d followed him into Neverland of my own free will. Besides—everything had worked out fine. Peter was fine.

  But he might not have been… and for all I knew, I might well have cost him his map.

  Gods, did I care?

  I shook my head before I could divulge the answer and decided a change of subject was best. Wandering to a nearby chair, I all but threw myself into it. “I’m sorry for prying—that’s my maternal instinct, I suppose. The children at the orphanage always came to me for things, so I never really thought twice about it. I did wonder where it came from, though.”

  Peter leaned against the table behind him. “Why? You said it was instinct.”

  “Instinct isn’t always enough. I would have preferred to have had a teacher… a role model.” I swallowed as flashes of my recent nightmare came to the forefront of my mind. “A mother.”

  “Everyone has a mother—”

  “Not one that abandons you before going off to die.” The venom in my voice surprised even me. Everything went quiet, even Tink’s bell noises, leaving me with even more guilt to add to my rapidly growing mounds of it. “Sorry, it just slipped—”

  “It’s all right. It makes sense you would resent her, even for things that may have been out of her control,” Peter said.

  I raised my gaze. “I was dreaming about her just now. It morphed into a nightmare, but you pulled me out of it. She sang to me, said something about a serpent, wolf, crow, and dragon—”

  Tink’s light flashed an angry red hue, cutting me off mid-sentence. “We know the Serpent a little too well.”

  Raising an eyebrow, I waited for someone to elaborate.