Wendy, Darling

by A. C. Wise

  “Peter!” She yanks her hand from his, and he turns to frown at her. When he follows her gaze, his expression doesn’t change— impatience, not fear or shock.

  “You’re too slow.” Peter stamps his foot.

  “But…” Wendy points, her arm a disconnected and ghostly thing floating in the dark. “Those are bones. They must belong to someone. You said no one can die in Neverland.”

  Peter’s face scrunches, folding into lines around the constellations of his freckles.

  “They aren’t someone, silly. They’re just skeletons. Come on!”

  He grabs her arm so roughly Wendy has to move her feet or fall. She twists around, trying to keep the bones in sight. Does Peter really not know that people have skeletons inside? Or is he lying to her, keeping secrets? Does he even know what it means to die? She thinks of the boys playing war, their swords harmless, the bloodless wounds she spent the day binding.

  She tries to think of the exact number of boys she saw in the tent that day, or before on the beach when they first landed. Are they the same? The numbers and names and faces shift and blur in her mind, making it hard to keep track. She’s certain of herself, and Peter, Michael, and John, but aside from that, she couldn’t say exactly how many children are on the island.

  The opposite sensation of what she felt squeezed between the rocks as she wiggled her way into the cavern seizes her now. It’s as though she’s standing on the edge of something vast; at any moment, she might fall. Ahead of her, Peter’s silhouette is ragged, wavering as the light grows brighter around him.

  “We’re here.” He stops, and Wendy teeters to a halt behind him.

  “What—” But she doesn’t get any farther, forgetting the bones and everything else.

  The cave floor slopes sharply, becoming a bowl. In the center of the bowl, there’s a monster.

  “It’s my secret.” Peter beams.

  The orange light cuts harsh shadows into his face, making him utterly inhuman. Wendy’s gaze slides to the thing crouched below them. It’s like night, but darker. The orange glow doesn’t illuminate the creature the way it illuminates her and Peter. There are no details, only a solid blot like spilled ink forming the impression of a hunched spine, bones pressed against skin, legs bending the wrong way, wicked, curving horns.

  “No.” Wendy shakes her head. She doesn’t want to look at it, and she can’t look away. She takes a step backward.

  The monster turns toward the sound of her voice. It has no eyes, but somehow it’s still looking at her. It huffs a breath, scenting for her, or showing displeasure, she can’t say. The air smells of struck matches, like Wendy’s old sheepdog when she comes in from the rain.

  Wendy takes another step back and her heel catches on the uneven stone. She trips, hitting the ground hard, pain jarring all the way up her spine and making her teeth click together. The monster—it’s still looking at her, and she is looking at it. The shape of it. She knows it. It’s impossible. It…

  Wendy feels a needle between her fingers, dragging thread through darkness and skin as Peter writhes and screams. That shadow, the one she sewed back onto him, withered and died. And the thing in the pit is…

  “Wendy, what’s wrong?” Peter stands over her, blocking her view.

  Her gaze snaps back to him, momentarily free of the creature so she can think again. She breathes, mouth open, shallow breaths on the edge of panic. The angle and the light make Peter look taller, his head scraping the cavern ceiling. He’s too big. Too terrible. A sliver of orange light has gotten trapped in his eyes, shivering like a flame.

  “Monster.” Wendy’s voice breaks; she covers her face with her hands.

  Neverland is so beautiful—the mermaids with their scales shining in the sun, their voices like flutes made of glass; Tiger Lily’s brown fingers next to hers, showing her how to weave reeds into crowns. Flying. Wendy has never had such adventures, never felt so free. This can’t be the truth of it.

  “Look at it.” Peter crouches, pulling her hands away from her face and gripping her wrists. There’s a seriousness to his expression she’s never seen before. All at once, he looks like a totally different boy from the one who flew through their nursery window, who led them in games of follow the leader. He looks much older than his slight frame implies, like being here, now, next to the monster, has made him into another person entirely. “Look at me, Wendy. My secret.”

  His face is inches from hers, his breath harsh. Behind Peter, the shadow-monster snorts again, its sides heaving like bellows.

  “No.” Wendy shakes her head. Tears slide hot against her skin.

  She wants Peter to be the boy who swooped in through her window. She wants the stars and the rushing dark, the velvety sky never letting her fall.

  Behind Peter, his shadow moves. It doesn’t come closer, but Wendy feels the weight of it nonetheless, as if its long fingers— tipped in wicked nails—hold her wrists instead of Peter’s.

  “Wendy!” Peter shakes her hard enough that she sees stars. Not flying. Falling.

  “You’re hurting me.” She tries to pull away, but his grip tightens.

  “You have to look at it, Wendy.”

  “It’s horrible.” She doesn’t mean to, but she turns her head so she can see boy and monster both.

  One crouched in front of her, one crouched in the bowl of stone; they’re the same. Until this moment, did Peter even remember what he was, how terrible the secret was he planned to show her? Outside of this cave, will he forget again? Darkness blots Peter’s skin, not like the leaf-shadows in the forest, but underneath and inside him. The monster—it’s that same jagged darkness writ large, outside Peter’s body as though he could cast away all the terrible parts of himself and be only one thing, all boy and nothing more.

  “No!” Peter bellows the word, and the thing in the hollow roars back, the walls shaking.

  “Mothers are supposed to love their children. If you love me, you have to love him, too.” His voice cracks.

  Wendy yanks her arms away, hard enough that she smashes her elbow against the stone. She hisses in pain, trying to scramble back, but Peter catches her ankle. She kicks with her other foot. The rock scrapes her skin as Peter wrestles with her.

  “No. No. No!” Peter is a child, throwing a tantrum.

  He screws up his face, blotchy in the orange light. Tear tracks glitter and Wendy stills for a moment, pity stealing her breath. The moment leaves Peter enough room to seize her face between his hands. It hurts, as though his fingertips have burrowed straight to her bones beneath her skin.

  “You have to love me.” It’s simultaneously a whisper and a shout. The boy whispering, the monster howling, or the other way around.

  With the words, sharp as any scissor cut, Wendy feels the knowledge of the shadow snipped from her mind. Only the hole torn is jagged, cut by an inexpert hand. Threads trail, and the pain is the worst she’s ever felt. She howls too, and the monster shrieks back at her before she slams a door over the space, over the sound, blocking it all out.

  She can see the monster, then she can’t. Peter crouches over her, a frightened little boy. Wendy blinks. Her head buzzes, dull, simultaneously empty and full. Something has happened; she’s never seen Peter so afraid. There’s something terrible behind him, and he needs Wendy to protect him.

  Wendy scrambles up, ignoring the throb in her arm, the bruised feeling of her skull. She grabs Peter’s hand.

  They run. She’s falling, then they’re flying, then everything goes black. The ground trembles; the sky rages like the world splitting open.

  “Peter!” She shouts the name, but the wind snatches it from her, leaving her breathless.

  The air refuses her for the first time since she stepped out of the nursery window, too shaken, too frightened to believe in anything as pure and good as flying. She plunges through the dark, pine branches and needles whipping at her and snapping beneath her weight. She strikes the forest floor, and somehow nothing breaks, but the breath is knocked ou
t of her. Silence. Her ears ring. From very far away and very close by, Peter calls her name.

  NEVERLAND – NOW

  Wendy doubles over again, shuddering. There’s a taste in her mouth like bitter medicine and salt, like ash and wet leaves and smoke and meat served too raw. Her stomach clenches, but there’s nothing to bring up. She’s there in the cave with the shadow. She’s back in St. Bernadette’s being dropped into a tub full of ice. She’s clawing and fighting to get away from both.

  “Wendy.” Tiger Lily speaks her name as though she’s saying it for the third or fourth time. She catches Wendy’s wrists, and only then does Wendy realize she’s raking at the sleeves of her blouse, nearly tearing the fabric.

  “The monster…” Wendy falters; her voice breaks. “I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. I know what it is and where to find it. Him.” Her voice is steadier now, but Wendy still feels sick, dizzy.

  Peter. His shadow. His first words to her in the nursery were a lie. I lost my shadow. Will you help me? Will you sew it back on?

  Wendy touches her pockets. She touches the hilt of Hook’s sword. Her hands shake. Ever since she returned from Neverland, people have been calling her a liar, telling her she doesn’t know her own mind. The only consolation she had was her own steadfast knowledge of the truth—Neverland, solid and real all the way through. But Peter twisted that, he took it away from her. He made her forget.

  “Peter showed me. He was proud. He… It was terrible. But he ripped it out of my mind. Like he tore a piece of me away, so I couldn’t know to be afraid of him, and I couldn’t remember for so long.”

  Wendy takes a shuddering breath. She feels small again. Hurt. Betrayed. Peter turned her own mind against her. He made her memories into a lie. Tiger Lily’s arms go around her, and a tremor passes between them. Wendy can’t tell where it begins or ends. He hurt them both. A boy. A monster.

  “Come.” Tiger Lily helps Wendy stand, leads her back to the ashes of the fire and the circle of light spilling through the rock above.

  Wendy sits, and the tightness in her chest eases. The dark corner of the cave, the painting of the monster on the wall, wants to tug at her attention, but she refuses to look its way.

  Peter. Should she have guessed the truth? Not a boy but an ancient creature, a wicked thing. Wendy tries to hold the words from Tiger Lily’s story in her mind—of a creature unfathomably old—but even now her thoughts shy away from the truth. She wants to slam the door again, to forget.

  Dreaming of Peter, dreaming of Neverland—those thoughts saved her from St. Bernadette’s. And those thoughts put her there in the first place. She hurt her brothers for the sake of them. She kept them secret from Jane, from Ned, and for what? They were all lies.

  Wendy feels herself crumbling and it’s a fight not to dig her nails into her flesh instead of her clothing now, clawing down as if she could shed every horrible thing she’s done with her skin. Like a shadow.

  The thought goes through her, sharp as a needle, and she gasps aloud. She must tear the door in her mind from its hinges and never allow herself to forget again.

  Which version of Tiger Lily’s story is true? The one where Peter took responsibility for his actions, or the one where he had it forced upon him? Is his forgetting a mercy he gave himself, or a deliberate lie? Or is the truth somewhere in-between? No wonder he hates age—it’s a reminder of what he once was, or a reminder of what he might one day be.

  “Tell me,” Tiger Lily says softly. “You saw something, in here.” She touches a fingertip to Wendy’s forehead, peering at her.

  Wendy opens her mouth, but she can’t find the words to answer. She sees Peter looming over her, the angles of his face sharp, his eyes raging and heartbroken. You have to love me.

  A little boy. A monster. Both and neither. Peter wanted desperately for Wendy to see all of him, like looking at two sides of a coin at the same time. John and Michael had only ever seen the boy, the adventures. But he’d shown Wendy all the darkness along with the light, and he’d expected her to be infinitely vast enough to contain it all. A mother, strong enough to scare the monsters away, strong enough to love the monster even when it cannot love itself.

  “Peter showed me the truth, then he took the memory away.” Wendy shakes her head. “The monster from your stories, that’s what he really is.”

  Tiger Lily’s expression mirrors what Wendy imagines must be her own. They both failed. Somehow they should have known what Peter was, and kept others safe from him. Even as the thought crosses Wendy’s mind, anger rises in her. She wants to shout at Tiger Lily—how dare she think she bears even the tiniest bit of blame for Peter’s actions? And she wants to laugh at herself, a bitter, hollow sound.

  There’s no sense in telling Tiger Lily that the fault is all Peter’s. Wendy can’t forgive herself, even with what she knows rationally to be true, so how could Tiger Lily?

  “We’ll stop him now,” she says instead, squeezing Tiger Lily’s hand.

  Tiger Lily flinches, so brief that Wendy might have imagined it. Is she lost in her own thoughts of Peter, or something else? The way time passes in Neverland, Tiger Lily and Peter may have known each other for a hundred years, or a thousand. For all Wendy knows, those years could have been an endless cycle of knowing and forgetting. It’s the best secret, Wendy. One I’ve never told anyone before. But can she trust his words? Would Peter himself even know if they were a lie?

  She wishes she had words of comfort for Tiger Lily. She wishes they could anchor each other. Tiger Lily shakes herself, her eyes hard as they meet Wendy’s. There is something remorseless in them, something hungry.

  Movement at the mouth of the cave draws Wendy’s attention and she tenses. One of the Indians enters, his posture remaining stooped even after passing through the cave entrance, as though Peter’s curse has permanently given his bones a new form. Wendy imagines his face was once lean and strong, but now it’s sunken into a starved sharpness.

  “The girl is on the path again,” he says. His voice, like Tiger Lily’s, is strained, and at first, Wendy can barely make out the words.

  “But…” Tiger Lily’s eyes widen, going to Wendy. “Then it wasn’t you.”

  Wendy looks from Tiger Lily to the man in the cave entrance. His words finally sink in, and for a moment, she forgets how to breathe. The girl. Jane.

  “Where is she?” Wendy jumps to her feet, looking around wildly as though perhaps the man might have brought Jane with him.

  Tiger Lily stands as well, her expression mixing confusion and alarm.

  “You know who she is? She looks so much like you, I thought it must be you,” Tiger Lily says. “Or that Peter was playing some kind of trick on us.”

  “We saw her on the path a few nights ago,” the man in the doorway says. “We threw stones and arrowheads to frighten her away so she wouldn’t go toward the center of the island. She’s headed that way again now.”

  Wendy is dizzy with relief, dizzy with fear, the ground tilting beneath her.

  “She’s my daughter. Jane. I have to go to her.”

  The path and the cave and the monster at the heart of the island. Of course, where else would her brave, curious daughter go? Her heart trips, hard, but there’s a kind of excitement in Wendy as well. If she goes to the cave, Peter will find her there. She thinks of the way the ground shivered, and the black smoke over the center of the island. Some part of him must already know she’s here.

  The hunger Wendy saw in Tiger Lily’s eyes is inside her too, a gnawing ache replacing the hollow where Peter once took the memory of the truth from her. She wants him to find her, she wants to face him. For everything Peter took from her, from Tiger Lily, for everything he might try to take from Jane, Wendy wants to take something from him too. No. Everything. She wants to take everything.

  “Tell me where the path is,” Wendy says. The words come out more harshly than she intended.

  “I’m going with you.” Tiger Lily touches Wendy’s wrist, startling her.

&
nbsp; “But…” Wendy hesitates. She wants her friend with her, but she can’t help thinking of the mermaids in the lagoon, turned to bone because Peter looked away too long. She can’t help seeing the ghost of the girl Tiger Lily used to be, tucked inside what Peter has made of her.

  “It’s my risk to take.” There’s an edge to Tiger Lily’s voice, and a hardness in her eyes.

  Wendy looks down, away, heat flushing her cheeks. She has no right to presume to be Tiger Lily’s protector, or tell her where she can and cannot go. Tiger Lily doesn’t belong to Peter, and she doesn’t belong to Wendy either. Wendy raises her head, an apology on her lips, but instead of anger, she finds hope shining in Tiger Lily’s eyes, as fragile as a broken-winged bird.

  “I want Peter to pay,” Tiger Lily says. “And I want to prove to him and myself that I’m more than just a shadow creature he dreamed into life.”

  “Of course you are.” Wendy catches Tiger Lily’s hands, squeezing her fingers.

  The hope in Tiger Lily’s eyes catches like a spark, roaring in Wendy’s chest. Flame steals her breath, and leaves her eyes stinging and hot. Through a blur of tears, Wendy sees Tiger Lily as she used to be—shadow-dappled, laughing as she showed Wendy how to catch the silvery fish leaping in Neverland’s streams. Those moments apart from Peter that were just their own— Wendy should have seen then how Peter’s idea of friendship was nothing like the real thing.

  Yet even now, even after all this time, when she first heard Peter’s call it cracked her wide, and she almost forgot everything to run to him once more. When it comes down to it, what if she crumbles? What if she isn’t strong enough? What if she proves herself not the mother Jane needs, or even the mother Peter wanted, but simply the girl he left behind?

  “I don’t know exactly what we’ll be facing,” Wendy says, “but I don’t think Peter will let Jane go easily. If I… If I falter, will you finish it, finish him, and make sure my daughter is safe?”