by A. C. Wise
Wendy puts a hand to her face, brushing at the imprint of leaves pressed into her skin. She tries to brush the dreams away, too, but they aren’t dreams. More like a memory, but one dissipating like smoke, slipping beyond her reach.
She stands, stretching, and her joints pop. It’s not just from lying on the ground with roots poking awkwardly into her back. She’s aged. She’s grown up. And Peter is still the same boy she left behind. She thinks of him standing at the foot of her daughter’s bed—the wicked grin, the fire-bright hair.
The elusive memory returns, sharp as a knife slash—his hand in hers, running through the trees. I’ll show you a secret. A really good one. One I’ve never shown anyone before. The sensation is so real, Wendy gasps aloud to catch her breath. But when she tries to grab hold, the place where the memory should be is a ragged hole, like fabric with a bit torn out. Come on, Wendy. Keep up. It’s the best secret you’ve ever seen, I promise.
Wendy clenches her jaw, leaving her teeth aching. Whatever did or didn’t happen last time she was here isn’t important. What matters now is Jane.
The sky was flush with stars when she’d sat down to rest, but now the sun is up, steadily climbing the sky. There’s no telling how much time she’s lost. She moves at a quick clip until she emerges from the trees and back onto the beach. Wendy is surprised to find the ship much closer than she thought. Did the landscape shift as she slept, the coastline curling in upon itself at Peter’s whim? Or did she walk farther than she realized?
The sand bears dimples in the places the tide doesn’t reach, the memory of feet surrounding the ship without drawing too close. She remembers the welcome party of boys that greeted her, Michael and John when Peter finally brought them down from the sky. There are long branches scattered around the remains of the ship’s hull as well, the kind that might be used as a shelter. Was Jane here? Did Peter bring the boys to meet her on the same spot where Wendy met them herself?
She almost bends to touch the footprints in the sand as though she could guess which ones belong to Jane. Her daughter, here in Neverland. It still doesn’t seem possible. The two worlds should never have touched. Jane is the life Wendy built to save herself from Peter. She should have told her daughter everything. Kept her safe.
Wendy takes a shuddering breath. Her clever, curious daughter. Will she be smarter than Wendy, less susceptible to Peter’s charms? Wendy can only hope.
She draws closer to the wreck of the ship. Beached and snapped in two, the prow pointing up toward the sky. But the interior might be intact, and there might be weapons or something else she could use. If anything in Neverland ever gave Peter pause, it was Hook. She can very well imagine the boys looking on the ship, even destroyed, with superstition, refusing to step inside what was once the realm of their greatest enemy.
Once. She comes close enough to touch the hull and rests her fingers against the weathered boards. What could be powerful enough to tear a ship in half this way? Were the pirates on board when it happened, and if not, where did they go?
NEVERLAND – 27 YEARS AGO
“Why must I stay behind? It isn’t fair.”
“Because you’re a girl. Girls don’t go to war.” Peter’s fists rest on his hips, elbows jutting out like strange wings. His tone is imperious, as though everything he’s saying should be perfectly obvious and Wendy is dull for not understanding.
“You have to heal the soldiers when they’re wounded so they can rejoin the war. Those are the rules.”
“What rules? Who made the rules?” Wendy is taller than Peter; when she pokes him in the chest he takes a step back, and there’s a moment of satisfaction as she looms over him. His scowl deepens, his bottom lip pushing out as he glares up at her, but Wendy ignores him. “If Michael and John get to go, I should get to go too.”
“No. You stay here.” Peter crosses his arms. He moves to the makeshift tent’s doorway, and somehow his slight frame fills the space so Wendy can’t see any way to slip past him.
“Fine.” She crosses her own arms, turning her head and refusing to look at him. She hopes his expression is hurt, but she won’t give him the satisfaction of looking to see for sure. She makes herself hold the pose, not turning around again until he’s gone.
The sense of triumph is temporary. Almost as soon as the tent flap falls shut behind him, Peter is shouting orders, her presence and their argument just as likely forgotten.
“Everyone, it’s time to choose our swords,” Peter says.
Wendy sticks her tongue out at the tent wall, even though there’s no one left to see her. Of course when Peter says everyone he doesn’t mean her. His words never say what they ought to, and yet the way he says them is so certain. It infuriates her.
It doesn’t matter that the swords are only long branches and sticks stripped of their leaves. To the boys they’re real enough and the fact that she doesn’t get one of her own still stings. Wendy keeps her eyes fixed on the tent wall, watching the sun cast the boys’ flickering shadows against its skin as they gather their weapons. All except Peter’s.
She thinks again of how he made such a fuss when she sewed the shadow he brought her back onto his body. And after all the squirming and pouting, after all the trouble she went to, it unraveled almost immediately. Wendy knows she isn’t the best seamstress—and according to her mother, she might just be the worst—but her stitching isn’t that bad. Shadows aren’t meant to come apart like that, or, now that she thinks about it, even be separated from the people they belong to in the first place.
Why should it surprise her though—when none of Peter’s other words mean what they should—that he might have lied to her about his shadow, too? It’s clear enough that he managed to lose his somehow, but she’s almost certain the one he brought to her to sew back on didn’t belong to him.
As the boys drift away from the tent, Michael and John among them, Wendy’s shoulders slump. She wonders if either of her brothers spoke up for her, or whether she was the only one to argue with Peter’s ridiculous rules. She looks around the tent, restless and irritated. Peter hasn’t even left her anything to do, other than clean up the boys’ things and she’s had quite enough of that already. Everything can just lie where it is and rot for all she cares.
With nothing else to occupy her, Wendy tries to count on her fingers the number of days they’ve been here, but she loses track immediately. Time is tricky in Neverland, just like everything else. Days and nights blur together, and there’s so much to see and do, it’s easy to become distracted.
Are their parents worried? At least they must know that she and Michael and John are together, and she’ll take care of them, like she always does.
Shouts echo through the trees, layered over the sound of wooden sticks clacking together. She’s tempted to peek her head out, maybe even find a tree where she can hide and watch the war. It sounds exciting at least, and she can imagine Peter leaping over the other boys’ heads, laughing and quick. She’s about to slip outside when a sheepish face pokes through the tent door. Roger, she remembers, is what the boy is called. There’s a gap between his two front teeth, and his brown hair refuses to lie flat, sticking up every which way like a bird’s nest. He holds his arm against his chest as he ducks inside.
“Peter says I’ve been kilt and I have to sit here ’til you fix me so I can go out and fight again.”
Wendy wants to be cross with him, but it isn’t Roger’s fault.
“Oh, all right.” She points. “Sit there.”
Roger hangs his head as he obeys, and she finds a bit of cloth that they were using to play blind man’s bluff last night.
“How were you killed?” Wendy asks, assessing Roger critically.
“Stab wound, right here.” He taps his finger against his chest. “Peter ran me through with his sword.”
“Let’s see, then.” Wendy carefully peels Roger’s hand away from the bloodless wound. She wraps the strip of cloth around the spot he indicated, careful to be gentle, and ties a knot
at Roger’s shoulder.
“Do you like it here?” The question pops into her mouth as she works, surprising her. It feels daring.
“Yeah. It’s brilliant!” Roger grins, the gap between his teeth looking even wider. “It’s all games and no bedtime or vegetables.”
Done with the knot, Wendy lets her hands fall to her sides.
“What about before? When you… When you were with your mother and father?”
“Didn’t have any.”
“No parents?”
“I don’t think so.” Roger shrugs, but a frown carves lines around the corners of his mouth like he’s trying to remember something. She wants to ask who made him eat his vegetables or set his bedtime if he had no parents, but the line forming between his brows stops her. She imagines him like a cup, balanced on the edge of a table. If she tips him too far, he’ll shatter.
“Am I all fixed up?” His voice is hopeful and troubled all at once. Mostly, Wendy thinks, he just wants to get away from her.
“Yes. All healed. Run along.” She waves him toward the door, watching as he bounds off, back into the war.
Over the course of the war, she sees every boy at least once, all except Peter, because Peter always wins. Later, when the war is done and they’ve had supper, Peter sits beside her on one of the logs circled around the fire and nudges her with his shoulder.
“Are you terribly cross at me, Wendy?”
“I suppose.” Wendy doesn’t look at him.
Mostly, she’s tired. She asked every boy who came into the tent some variation of the questions she asked Roger, and their answers were all the same. The only ones she didn’t ask were John and Michael. What if she already found forgetting in their eyes? What if John and Michael couldn’t remember their parents? She’s already found that if she doesn’t concentrate, she starts to forget home, or ever being any place other than here. So she didn’t dare ask, afraid of what the answer would be.
“Come with me.” Peter seizes her hand suddenly, startling her and pulling her to her feet. He grins at her, the glint in his eyes promising adventure, and just like that, she’s forgiven him, wanting to follow him wherever he might go. “I promised you a secret and I’ll show you now since you were so good about fixing all my soldiers up. It’s a really good secret, too. I’ve never showed it to anyone before.”
NEVERLAND – NOW
Wendy braces herself and crawls inside the torn ship. Despite knowing it to be grounded in sand, she half expects the deck to sway beneath her, timbers creaking as Hook leans over her, his posture designed to intimidate. She can’t help straining after the sound of shouting voices, the lines groaning, and the sails snapping in the wind. The other half of her expects skeletons like the bones littering the lagoon, but the ship is eerily empty, eerily still.
The ship’s interior is largely intact, only tilted askew. The mermaids in the lagoon, as horrible as their deaths are, at least those are deaths Wendy can understand. Here, it’s as though she can feel the missing crew moving around her, as though at any moment one of Hook’s pirates might brush against her sleeve hurrying from one end of the deck to the other. She doesn’t believe in ghosts, not the kind that haunt houses and ships. Yet, as a girl she saw an impossible monster with dark mottled skin and slavering jaws rise from the waves to snap at Hook’s remaining hand. She’s met mermaids; she can fly. So why not ghosts, too?
If Hook were here, would he still seem a villain to her eyes? As a child, she’d failed to see the truth of Peter, or even consider there might be more to him than his games and bright smiles. Had she misjudged his greatest enemy as well? Might she see a flicker of desperation in Hook’s eyes? Fear? Wendy can only imagine what his life in Neverland must have been, a grown man trapped by the whims of an impetuous child, as subject to Peter’s quicksilver moods as the tides and the winds and the weather.
Wendy tests her footing on the canted deck. The boards complain, but her foot does not go plunging through. How many years has the ship lain baking in the sun, all the moisture sucked dry, as though it always belonged on the sand and never upon the sea? The last time she was here, she and John and Michael spent most of their time tied to the main mast, until Peter saved them. She never saw this part of the ship back then. She has no idea what a real pirate ship might look like, but now that she’s here, she takes in Peter’s idea of one. The remains of tangled sleeping nets hang from the ceiling in one narrow room. In what must have been the galley, she finds overturned crates and emptied barrels. And in every space she crawls through, the pervasive sense of haunting remains, of being watched and yet utterly alone.
Finally, at the ship’s prow, she finds a large cabin that must have belonged to Hook. Shreds of rich brocade—dark like new blood—hang from the railing above a narrow bed. There’s a writing desk, overturned and smashed against one wall. A sea chest thrown open, its contents scattered around the room. The frame of a full-length mirror still holds shards of silvered glass. They glint dully in light slanting in through a window that once looked out to sea and now points toward the sky.
The heavy, warped glass distorts the light, turning it a sick-yellow color, like weak tea. A shadow passes in front of the glass, flickering through the shard of mirror at her foot, catching her attention. An eye peers up at her from the broken glass. Wendy swallows a shout, clapping a hand over her mouth to hold in the sound. It’s Hook’s eye, dark and glittering.
She reels back, bracing herself against the wall, heart pounding. From this angle, the mirror only reflects the blank wood of the ceiling. She slides a foot forward, edging toward the broken glass. She makes herself look, holding her breath. Nothing. It is only a mirror, and nothing looks back at her save her own reflection.
Even so, her nerves remain strung tight, the haunted feeling clinging to her. She tries to imagine a storm terrible enough to cause this kind of destruction. Had Peter finally tired of endless battles against his old foe and dreamed up a wave big enough to pick up Hook’s entire ship and smash it against the shore?
Wendy glances at the items thrown around the room—empty bottles, some broken, some whole; a glass bauble, cracked and smoky; a few coins. They’re worn, but she can still see the images, stamped on one side with a leering skull, the other with some sort of bird. There’s no mark identifying them as belonging to any country, but then there wouldn’t be, would there? They’re only Peter’s idea of a pirate’s treasure.
Wendy gets down on her hands and knees and peers under the bed. Something glints in the dark space, and Wendy’s breath catches. It might be more mirror glass, and she’s afraid of what she might find looking back at her, but she makes herself lie flat, stretching to pull it free. Captain Hook’s sword.
Wendy rocks back onto her heels, staring at the blade for a moment. It’s just as she remembers it—curved, the hilt wrapped in red leather. She stands, slipping her hand beneath the guard of tarnished, filigreed gold, and tests the grip. When she swings it experimentally, the blade sings a high, whistling note in the air. Wendy rests the pad of her thumb gently against the edge without pressing down. It’s still sharp.
When she extends her arm, the sword balances naturally. It’s like the treasure—not a sword a real pirate would use. It doesn’t matter that she has no experience with weaponry. Any sword in Neverland would be able to be wielded by an untrained child as easily as by a seasoned warrior. Like the ship itself, like the pirates, the sword she holds is a plaything, a boy’s fantasy of what a sword should be. A toy, but one sharp enough for killing, because that’s the kind of boy Peter is.
There’s no scabbard or belt that she can find, so Wendy tightens her shawl around her waist and tucks the sword into it. A moment of vanity seizes her and she glances regretfully at the broken mirror. It’s a silly thing, but she wishes she could see herself. Does she look as fierce and formidable as the captain himself?
She pictures Hook’s sneer, his red velvet coat—like blood, like poppies—flaring as he paced and turned, all wide lapels and
gleaming buttons. Even in her terror, she’d wanted to rub that velvet between her thumb and her forefinger to see what it felt like. The air around her shivers, the timbers beneath her feet shaking with absent footsteps. The longer she stands in his cabin, the more it seems she can conjure Hook’s ghost. She sees his regal figure striding the deck, shaking his fist and daring Peter to come claim his prize—Wendy and her brothers. She can even smell the oil worked into the long, heavy curls hanging down Hook’s back, blacker than a raven’s wing.
In the stories Wendy had told Jane of the Tailor and the Little White Bird, she’d turned Hook from a pirate into a prince, a wicked and cursed one. Petals scattered from the hem of his coat every time he turned, and poisoned blossoms sprang up beneath the heels of his polished boots. He’d used their petals to lure the Little White Bird into a deadly sleep, until the Clever Tailor had woven a net out of every color of thread to trap the prince and save the Bird.
Wendy shakes her head. Her stories seem foolish now, and her actual time with the pirates almost seems like one of them. Were they ever truly in danger? At the time, the threat seemed real. She remembers the sour stink of fear, the way Michael had trembled, pressed against her side as Hook tied them to the mast. John, with his chin raised but his eyes owl-wide behind the gleam of his glasses. For all his bluster, though, Hook had never really been cruel to her or her brothers.
He’d lashed them to the mast, but the bonds hadn’t been tight, and hadn’t he made sure they had tea to drink, and biscuits from the ship’s stores? She’d hated him, but only because she was meant to; he was Peter’s enemy, therefore he was her enemy too. She hadn’t seen it clearly then, but now Wendy can picture the slant of Hook’s shoulders, the lackluster movement of his hand and his hook as he’d secured their bindings. They’d been merely bait, but even Hook must have known that when he came for them Peter would inevitably escape. He’d captured Wendy and her brothers knowing he had nothing to gain, only frightening them, fulfilling the one role Peter designed for him to play.