An ear-piercing cry split the night, only to be silenced mid-scream, and Wendy knew without question that the first of the men had fallen.
“No,” she whispered. John! Michael!
She turned to try to see who it was, but there was no way to tell. Another voice cried out in agony, and then a third.
“Fall back! To Saint Mary! Fall back!” That was John. He was alive, at least. Wendy waited for Michael to pick up the order and start shouting directions, but the seconds ticked by with no other sounds beyond the clash of steel, more groans of pain, and the creaking of the old church door.
“All in! Bar the entrance!” John’s voice was the last human sound Wendy heard before the door creaked shut, a bar slammed down across it from the inside, and the night fell still.
She was alone with the everlost.
She whirled back to face her adversary only to find that he had moved up behind her while she was distracted. There was hardly a hand’s breadth between them now, and the unmistakable scent of magic permeated the air as he gazed down upon her, a look of cold, merciless appraisal in his ice-blue eyes.
hen confronted by the imminent possibility of one’s own death, the important thing is not to panic. That is what everyone says, and they say it because it is true. Remaining calm will not always save you, which is precisely what makes it such a difficult thing to do, but panicking never will, which is why it is absolutely, positively never the best choice.
Still, it is one thing to say that we must remain calm, and it is another thing altogether to do it, pausing in the midst of the most terrifying situation of one’s life to look around and see what opportunities or means might exist—any little thing we might have forgotten about—that could yet save us from an otherwise certain death. It is very difficult indeed, but nonetheless, we must try.
And if we stop to look bravely around Wendy now, we will see that there is, in fact, one such thing that we might have overlooked, had we not kept our wits about us. Only it is not such a little thing at all. It is, in fact, a rather substantial Newfoundland dog named Nana, who has been waiting for quite some time to rejoin the battle and who cannot help but feel that now, at long last, would be the perfect time to do so.
Ignoring Wendy’s earlier command—or perhaps deciding that it should no longer apply under these new circumstances, which amounts to the same thing—she thrust herself bodily between her mistress and her enemy, rearing up on her hind legs to snap viciously at his neck.
“Nana, no!” Wendy shouted, and she grabbed desperately at the dog, trying to pull Nana’s massive weight out of danger.
“Oh, for the love of heaven, I’m not going to hurt her,” the everlost growled, his tone making it perfectly clear that he found the very idea insulting.
“Behave,” he said to Nana, and he plucked her away from Wendy as though the Newfoundland monster were nothing more than one of those pampered bichons favored by Parisian ladies, tucking her neatly beneath his arm like an overstuffed handbag.
Nana was so surprised by this that she immediately fell limp, blinking and gazing about herself in confusion, trying to comprehend her new situation and searching for her dignity all the while, which she thought she must have dropped somewhere by accident within these last few moments.
“Strange words from the likes of you, I dare say,” Wendy remarked. She had never been one to shy from danger, and Nana’s bravery had inspired her. If they were going to die, which still seemed probable, Wendy could at least choose not to do it like some terrified child, cowering before the headmaster’s switch.
“Is it truly so strange not to harm an innocent animal?” he shot back, hoisting Nana a bit higher on the word ‘animal,’ as though proffering her as a reference. “Are they murdering pets in the streets now? Is that what your precious England has become? Not that it would surprise me.”
Nana remained suspended in midair, looking back and forth between the two, trying to follow the conversation.
“Not that,” Wendy clarified. “I meant that it’s strange for you to invoke the name of heaven, of course. You, one of the everlost, a creature without a soul.”
Perhaps, if I can keep him talking long enough, she found herself thinking, I might discover a way to get us both out of this. Under the circumstances, it certainly seemed worth a try.
“Ah ha!” he exclaimed, his face lighting up in sudden realization. “A creature without a soul! Ergo, lost forever to heaven! Ergo, ‘the everlost’! Well, that explains it, finally. I’ve always wondered.” He smiled at Nana and rubbed her head merrily as though she were sharing in his private revelation.
“But … how could you not have understood the meaning of your own name?” Wendy blinked in surprise.
“Don’t be absurd. It’s not my name. It’s your name. You made it up. Why would I call myself the everlost?” He regarded her the way a child might scrutinize a particularly baffling puzzle lock from the East, as though she were an exotic treasure of unfathomable mystery. “You might lose me, to be sure, but one can never lose oneself. The very idea is ridiculous. I’m always right where I am!”
What a truly odd creature, indeed, Wendy thought, but she was not about to say so, given her situation. “But it isn’t about having lost your person,” she said instead. “It’s about having lost your soul.”
Of course, this was not a very polite thing to say either, now that Wendy thought about it, and she cringed a little, but only on the inside. On the outside she squared her shoulders and looked him straight in the eye, hoping he wouldn’t take enough offense to kill either her or Nana, who still dangled calmly at his left side, supported under her chest by his forearm.
“I haven’t lost my soul any more than you’ve lost yours,” he said lightly. If he felt insulted, he didn’t show it. “I’ve only lost my shadow. Have you seen it, by chance?”
“You’ve lost your shadow?” she asked, bewildered. “But how could you possibly lose a shadow?”
“I don’t know,” he said, smirking now. “But I’ve looked for it every single night for months, and I can’t find it anywhere.” With this, he actually winked, and then Wendy found herself trying not to smile, which annoyed her immensely. As a result, she ended up scowling at him and looking exceedingly cross.
“Oh, come on,” he chided. “That was a good joke. You know, because you can’t see your shadow at night! Admit it. I’m quite clever.”
“I most certainly will not admit any such thing.”
“Well, why not? It’s the simple truth. All the boys think I’m clever. They tell me so all the time. In fact, they tell me I’m clever so often that most days I wander about the island even in the midst of my many responsibilities singing, ‘Oh, the cleverness of me!’” He crowed this rapturously, singing the words just to demonstrate.
“What island?” she asked innocently.
“Oh, no you don’t,” he shot back. “Never mind about the island. Tell me why you won’t say I’m clever.”
“Well, why should I?” she asked, her voice finally rising with emotion. “Why would you think I would be nice to you at all? You just killed my friends!”
“You just tried to kill me, and you don’t see me holding it against you,” he pointed out.
“But you didn’t actually die,” she retorted, tears finally threatening to overwhelm her. “My friends did.”
He regarded her for a long moment without saying anything, holding Nana under his left arm and absently scratching her behind the ears with his right, which Nana had decided to enjoy as long as he wasn’t threatening anyone.
“If I fix it, will you admit to my cleverness then?” he asked.
“If you … what?”
“Come on,” he said, putting Nana back down on the ground and turning toward the carnage that the everlost had left behind. “I’ll show you. But then you really must admit that I’m clever. It’s the least you could do.”
endy stared down at Reginald, the pious man from Yorkshire. Or rather, she stared do
wn at what used to be Reginald.
His pale body lay battered and broken some distance from the church. His red hair, splayed out across the grass, appeared gray beneath the stormy night sky. His narrow features were locked in a grimace of pain. His right leg—severed nearly clean through. This last detail appeared to be what had killed him, judging from the voluminous pool of dark blood in which his body lay.
A single tear fell from Wendy’s left eye, making its way gracefully down her cheek and catching at her chin, where it hovered for a poignant moment, building up its courage before finally letting go and plummeting away into the great unknown.
“There, there,” the everlost said to her, not unkindly.
Only now he was not the only one.
He and Wendy stood side by side over poor Reginald’s body, surrounded by the rest of the everlost, who had arranged themselves in a loose circle around them now that the platoon had sheltered itself within the ancient walls of Saint Mary.
“He fought bravely,” one of them offered, by way of consolation.
“Good form,” another agreed.
“What would you know about it? I killed ’im,” a third pouted, and Wendy shot an accusing glare in his direction. He had a huge mop of light brown hair that fell across his eyes and just the faintest hint of a beard. He puffed out his chest with pride when he announced himself to be poor Reginald’s murderer, but under Wendy’s angry gaze he shrank back into himself, looking at first confused, and then embarrassed, and then altogether repentant.
“Be quiet, Curly,” the brown-haired statue scolded him.
“Sorry, Chief,” Curly mumbled, casting his eyes to the earth and scuffing his toe sheepishly in the grass.
Wendy silently took in this new information. Apparently the one she had been fighting was their leader.
“Is this the only one?” the leader asked of everyone and no one in particular.
“Aye, the others made it in there,” the first one answered, thrusting his chin in the general direction of the church.
“How long?”
This time, nobody offered up a reply.
“Curly?” he prompted, trying again. “You may speak long enough to answer my question. How long ago did this man die?”
“’E was the one what screamed ’is bloody ’ead off,” Curly muttered. He eyed Wendy cautiously, as though concerned that she might take new offense at this rather graphic admission, but she continued to stare at him in stony silence, her expression unchanged.
“Oy, make ’er stop lookin’ at me like that, Chief!” Curly begged.
“You killed her friend, Curly. She is upset with you. That is how ladies look at you when they are angry. They don’t like people killing people.”
“Not ever?” Curly asked, somewhat incredulous.
They both turned to Wendy for confirmation, who had apparently come to represent all of womankind at some point during the past few moments.
“Not ever,” she agreed. “It is wrong to kill people. Didn’t your mother teach you that?”
“Never ’ad a mother,” Curly admitted, rather shyly.
“You never had a mother?” Wendy exclaimed.
She looked at him again, and for just the very briefest of moments she couldn’t help but think of Charlie. She found herself taking pity on the creature, almost forgetting that he had killed poor Reginald. But then, of course, she remembered what he had done, and she became quite vexed all over again.
“That is still no excuse,” she declared. “You should not go around killing people, whether or not you ever had a mother to tell you so.”
“But ’e was tryin’ to kill me,” Curly protested.
“Yes, well … he was only defending himself, which is different,” Wendy explained. “One is permitted to defend oneself when one is attacked.”
“Well, I’m in the clear then,” Curly said, his face brightening significantly. “I was defendin’ myself! ’E attacked me first! That’s a fact, it is!”
Wendy was preparing to launch into a rather angry lecture on territorial boundaries and invasions and the like, but the leader obviously saw it coming and decided to nip it in the bud.
“That’s enough, Curly,” he said.
“But—”
“That’s enough!”
“Aye, Chief,” Curly grumbled, and he fell silent again.
“The point is,” the leader continued, “that the man hasn’t been dead that long, which means there’s still hope for him. Curly, put his leg back right and hold it steady.”
“Aye, sir.” Curly moved toward poor Reginald’s body, walking right up to Wendy and clearly expecting her just to step out of the way for him, the rudeness of which made her significantly less inclined to do so.
“Say, ‘Excuse me,’ Curly,” the leader said, sighing.
“What’s that?”
“She is waiting for you to say, ‘Excuse me, miss.’ Once you have done so, she will move.”
“Truly?” Curly asked, eyeing Wendy strangely. “Lotta rules women come with, eh? Seems a bloody nuisance, if you ask me.”
“Curly, I assure you, a good woman is more use than twenty men.”
Wendy narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the brown-haired, blue-eyed leader, expecting to find some indication of sarcasm or humor in his expression—or that condescending look men often give to women when they are only saying nice things to try to get themselves out of trouble, even though they don’t really believe a word of it.
But there was no such trace to be found. Wendy saw nothing but sincerity in his ice-blue eyes, and she found herself wanting very much to know where he might have come from, or what events he might have witnessed, to make him realize such value in her gender.
“Excuse me, miss,” Curly said, interrupting her thoughts.
“Hmm? Oh! Oh, yes, of course,” Wendy said, and she took several steps away from poor Reginald so that Curly might have enough room to kneel by his injured leg.
“Huh,” Curly grunted. “Looks like you were right, Chief.”
“That’s why I’m the chief,” he replied, nodding solemnly. “There now, hold him steady.”
While Curly held poor Reginald’s leg back where it was supposed to be, the leader snatched a dagger from his belt and sliced open his own thumb over poor Reginald’s mouth, allowing just two drops of blood to fall before removing the knife and allowing the wound to close right over as though it had never been.
“What are you doing?” Wendy exclaimed. “You’re going to turn him into a vampire!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the leader growled back. “I’m not a vampire, and I’m certainly not making him into one.”
Wendy was about to ask more questions when the wound in poor Reginald’s bloody leg suddenly disappeared and poor Reginald himself took a huge shuddering gasp and started trying to sit up.
“Away!” the leader shouted. The wings that had disappeared from his back sprouted there once again before her eyes, lengthening and unfurling with a resounding snap, like a sail catching the wind. Before she knew it, the everlost were all rising up together into the night sky and disappearing into the clouds, with only the leader remaining behind, hovering just out of reach.
“He’ll be virtually invincible for a day or two,” he advised her. “But he’ll be perfectly himself after that, so do tell him to be more careful.”
Wendy stared up at him with her mouth open, saying nothing. The events of the evening had all proven to be a bit too much for words.
“But now, you must admit that I’m clever,” he continued, “and you must tell me your name. You promised!”
Wendy did not recall promising any such thing, but she found herself answering him nonetheless.
“I admit you’re clever,” she conceded. “And my name is Wendy. Wendy Darling. But now you must tell me yours as well. It’s only polite, after all.”
“Mine?” he exclaimed, and Wendy thought he looked rather disappointed that she didn’t know it already. He began to
rise higher into the air, following the others, but he answered her even as he flew away.
“Haven’t you heard of me? Why, I’m Peter!” he called out, disappearing into the night. “Peter Pan!”
nd then he said his name was Peter. Peter Pan.”
Wendy had been pacing in front of the hearth in John’s private office while she recounted her story, but now she stopped with both hands on her hips, her eyes bright, her face flushed with excitement. She glanced back and forth between John and Michael, each of whom stared back at her mutely, entirely at a loss for words.
They wished they could share with each other a certain look that would say, “What on earth do you make of that?” but they didn’t dare attempt it while she was watching them.
Instead, they looked down at Nana, asleep near Wendy’s feet, as though the dog might wake at any moment and offer up a less controversial view of the night’s events. But it had all been too much for her. By the look of things, she was likely to sleep through until morning right there on the rug.
Wendy, on the other hand, was thoroughly awake. She had come to rest just next to the hearth, and she reached a distracted hand out toward the mantelpiece, commencing her most contemplative sort of drumming. It was entirely arrhythmic as far as anyone else could tell, her fingers deftly performing the grands battements of the ballet, accompanied by the secret orchestra of her own private thoughts.
John, meanwhile, was seated at his desk, his chair having been relocated as far as reasonably possible away from the still-shuttered window. His quill stood poised, unmoving, over a nearly pristine sheet of paper, his elegant script covering barely two lines before the words trailed off into thin air.
Michael, for his part, had sat through the whole tale perched on the edge of the same desk, his expression a study in polite, credulous attention. Each man, in his own way, was trying to figure out how to respond to Wendy’s story without invoking the dreaded March of the Executioner.
The Wendy Page 5