Wendy, Darling

by A. C. Wise

  She resists the urge to ask him how he can talk if he’s been killed, pointing out the illogic of Peter’s rules once more. In truth, she’s glad for Timothy’s voice. It’s something to listen to other than the sound of their breathing, the sound of her mother and Tiger Lily’s footsteps fading into the dark. Jane shifts, trying to get more comfortable on the stone, but there’s no comfort to be had.

  “I don’t know.” It’s the only answer she can give. She wishes she had even some idea of what her mother had planned, but she’s at a loss. And she still can’t shake the feeling something terrible is about to happen.

  “Jane?” Timothy’s voice is even softer than before.

  She turns to look at him. He isn’t looking her way but staring straight ahead. Something in his fixed expression makes his eyes look sunken, the shadows around them deeper. Even his body leaned against hers seems rigid and cold, and she has to force herself not to shudder.

  “What is it?”

  “I think I remember.”

  The way Timothy says the words makes Jane’s heart flutter, like it’s a live creature, jumping around in her chest and wanting to escape.

  “Remember what?”

  “Before I was here.” His words are halting, and he continues to stare straight ahead. She doesn’t want him to go on, but it would be unfair to tell him to stop just because she’s afraid.

  “You can tell me, if you want. If it would help.”

  Timothy’s breath comes more rapidly, his shoulders hitching beneath the pressure of her arm. His expression is fearful, but at the same time, the words seem too big for him, too much to hold back.

  “There was a little wooden boat someone made for me. We went to sail it in the pond at the bottom of the big field. The grass grew up so tall we couldn’t see the house anymore.”

  Jane holds her breath, dread filling her. She wants even more now for Timothy to stop, but her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth; she can’t get it to work at all.

  “The boat got caught. I thought I could reach it with a stick, but I slipped.” Timothy trembles harder now. There’s a glassiness to his eyes, as though he isn’t seeing the cave, but a pond, surrounded by high grasses and weeds, and a little boat, trapped and struggling to get free.

  Jane sees it too. She sees the moment Timothy slips on the slick mud and goes under. A hand reaches for his, only slightly bigger than his own, maybe an older brother, or even a sister. His arms churn at the surface, but his head keeps going under. Then doesn’t come up again.

  Jane’s lungs squeeze tight, as though she too is drowning. Bubbles rise from Timothy’s lips, already blushed the color of dark plums. There are weeds all around in the murky green, wrapped around his leg, holding him tighter than the hand that tries to grab his wrist and pull him free. She feels the scrabbling panic in her own chest, the cold closing in, the feeling of being terribly and utterly alone.

  Then suddenly not alone anymore. Not a weed wrapped around his ankle, but a hand, pulling him down to the other side of the world.

  Jane shoves the thought away with such violence it’s almost a physical thing. That cannot be what happened. She refuses to believe. She’s let her own imagination run wild. Timothy has a loving family back in England waiting for him, and they’ll be ever so glad when she brings him home.

  Jane wills her pulse to slow, letting out a shaky breath. She pulls Timothy closer, fitting his body against hers, even as it remains rigid. In this moment, Jane decides she would like to be a big sister after all. Not just any big sister, but Timothy’s. If they can’t find his family then he’ll come live with them, as simple as that.

  “It’s all right,” she says, finally unsticking her tongue. She squeezes his arm to punctuate her words. “I’ve got you now, and you’re safe. I won’t let you fall ever again.”

  SHADOW PLAY

  “You can’t do this. Let me go.” Peter is back to fighting and squirming in Wendy’s grasp as she drags him deeper into the cave, even as his shouts fade to a whine.

  Everything inside her is held in a delicate balance. She keeps putting one foot in front of the other, not looking at Peter. If she does, that balance will collapse.

  There’s a scent to Peter, above the struck-match-and-ash scent of this place—fear. A boy smell, like any other lost child. She must be the girl made of ice, the one who survived St. Bernadette’s. She must be the mother who came all this way to find her daughter. Nothing else. She cannot be the girl who flew the skies of Neverland. And she certainly can’t be Peter’s friend.

  “What are you going to do?” Tiger Lily asks. Her voice is soft, and Wendy glances her way. Tiger Lily holds herself alert, as if sensing the thing that awaits them without knowing precisely what it is.

  “I’m going to put him back together,” Wendy says.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’s known ever since she stood at her window and looked out at the night. The part of her mind standing behind a locked door was still hers, and she knew, even though Peter tried to rip the knowledge away. She filled her pockets with everything she needs—needle and scissors and thread. It’s the first thing that ever made her useful to Peter, and now she will finally stitch him whole.

  Peter shivers in her grasp. Wendy lets go of his ear, taking his shoulders and turning him so she can see his face. He isn’t crying, but his eyes are wide.

  “You can’t,” he says again.

  “I can, and I will. Look.” They’ve arrived; she turns him again, making him face the thing in the sloping bowl of stone.

  And she makes herself look as well.

  The shadow creature is smaller than Wendy remembers. Still, when it snorts the ground shivers, and she has to force herself not to flinch away. The air around the monster shimmers with heat. Its edges are ragged and tattered, hard to see.

  Wendy looks to Tiger Lily. Her friend’s expression is difficult to read. The cavern’s ruddy glow traces the seams of Tiger Lily’s face, threading her skin with fire. If she’s afraid, it doesn’t show in her eyes.

  Wendy keeps her hands on Peter’s shoulders, holding him still, not allowing him to look away. He stares at the creature, and Wendy tries to guess what he’s thinking. How long has it been? Does he still recognize his shadow? Does it recognize him?

  “You don’t have to stay.” Wendy speaks to Tiger Lily without looking away from the creature, mesmerized.

  Is she being cowardly? If she’s wrong, if this kills Peter, or makes him into a monster entire, will Tiger Lily go with him? What about Neverland? Wendy’s stomach tightens, fear and guilt knotting inside her. In Tiger Lily’s cave, she swore she would choose Jane if it came to it, and she will not back down. But now, with Tiger Lily at her side, staring down Peter’s shadow, something cracks inside her.

  Wendy sees them as girls again, alone among a sea of boys. Running, splashing each other in the stream, climbing, staging their own private wars and proving themselves every bit as fierce and adventurous as Peter and his small army. Telling Tiger Lily stories of London. Lying together in the grass and naming the stars.

  She’s seen Peter glance at Tiger Lily more than once, his expression puzzled, like he’s trying to remember something lost. Does he even recognize her, who she used to be, and what he’s done? Wendy thinks of the last time they were in the cave, claiming the bones she’d seen didn’t belong to anyone. Is he really callous enough to hurt without memory, to not see the people he causes pain? If all his darkness is in the shadow then maybe it’s true. Except she’s seen the light in his eyes, the way it changes like liquid fire. Peter was always monster and boy both, she just never saw it clearly before.

  Tiger Lily straightens. The fire-colored light surrounding the creature outlines her. She faces Wendy, and even in shadows, her eyes are bright. Wendy sees the woman Tiger Lily might have become, should have become, if she’d been allowed to grow up properly and not into this wasted thing. All at once, her guilt and fear are irrelevant. It isn’t her choice to make. It’s Tiger
Lily’s.

  “Peter is my fight as much as yours. Maybe more.” Tiger Lily’s voice is no longer a wounded thing, wind soughing through trees. It is flint, striking sparks. “You left. I stayed.”

  A different kind of guilt knifes through Wendy. She left; Tiger Lily stayed. But back then, what else could either of them have done? What choice did they have?

  “All right, then.” Wendy takes a deep breath. “It’s far past time.”

  She loosens her grip, but not enough to let Peter escape, guiding him down the slope ahead of her. Tiger Lily follows, and Wendy tries to ignore the way her legs tremble. The creature turns its head to track their progress, looking at them in its eyeless way. It makes no other move, and Wendy thinks perhaps it can’t, rooted in the very stone.

  As they near the bottom of the slope, Peter stumbles. Instinct makes Wendy reach to catch him before she can think whether it’s deliberate or accidental. The movement puts her off balance, and Peter uses it, rolling forward and letting his weight pull them both down. Wendy loses her grip as she tumbles. When she stops, she finds herself resting up against Peter’s shadow. It is solid and insubstantial at once. Hot and cold. The absence of light and unbearably bright; she can scarcely look at it.

  “Catch him!” she shouts to Tiger Lily, scrambling to right herself.

  As Peter tries to crawl away from her, Wendy grabs his foot, hauling him backward. He screams, lashing at her with his other leg. Wendy dodges, barely avoiding getting kicked in the jaw. Peter’s eyes shine wild, sweat streaking his face.

  Time surges backwards as Wendy tightens her grip. Peter hasn’t aged a day; he hasn’t changed. She thinks of their positions reversed, Peter looming over her and bellowing in her face, demanding she look at him and look at his shadow. Demanding she love all of him, or not at all. Her fear then turns to anger now.

  Keeping one hand on Peter’s ankle, Wendy gets her other hand on the back of his neck. She lets go of his foot, hauling him up like a mother cat would a kitten. Her nails dig into his skin, and she ignores the noise Peter makes as they do. He squirms, but she turns him toward his shadow and thrusts him forward at arm’s length.

  “Look at it, Peter. Look at yourself. All of it. You can’t hide from what you are anymore.”

  He tries to back away, but Wendy keeps her elbow locked, her fingers at the base of his skull to keep him from turning his head.

  “It’s your shadow, Peter. Look at him.”

  “You’re lying.” Peter’s voice is small. He tries to pull away, and the piteousness of him almost breaks her, but Wendy keeps her grip firm. “You sewed my shadow back on. Remember, Wendy?”

  His voice is a little boy’s. She can almost believe it. For a moment, it is all she believes. She is the monster, not Peter.

  “No.” Wendy’s voice quavers, doubting what she knows to be true. Tiger Lily’s stories. The bones in this very cave. Peter himself had called the creature his secret. “He’s yours, Peter. He’s you.”

  Her palm slicks with Peter’s sweat, and the sound he makes now is altogether more broken, a panicked hitching of breath, like he can’t catch enough air. Petty triumph fills her. Wendy imagines her own head scraping the cavern ceiling, as obscenely tall and monstrous as Peter seemed to her all those years ago. Instead of snatching memory from him as he did to her, she wants to cram the truth down his throat, fill him with it until he’s bursting.

  Wendy yanks him backward, so roughly Peter falls, and she leans over him again, glaring into his face.

  “You see?” Her lips pull back from her teeth; it is not a smile. “Do you see now what you are?”

  She has no need to hold him anymore. Peter curls in on himself, so much smaller than her, transfixed and still. He is a wounded animal, but even so, Wendy’s anger remains. She pulls it around herself like a cloak, allows herself to feel all of it. Despite the fear in Peter’s eyes, or perhaps because of it, she wants to hurt him.

  She is bigger than him, stronger, and she pins him with ease. By the cave’s light, Wendy sees the silhouette of her hand fall across Peter’s face before she even realizes her arm is raised to strike. Peter blanches, freckles standing out like spots of rust, spots of blood. He looks so young. He looks afraid.

  Before he ever stole her daughter, he stole her. He stole years of her life. All that time she spent locked away, believing in him, refusing to give up, he never came for her. He ordered her to love him, but did he ever even think of her once when she was out of his sight? He’d wanted not a mother in truth, but the idea of a mother, like his idea of pirates and Indians, soldiers and war. Someone to tell stories and keep the monsters away. Someone to save him from himself.

  He’d demanded love like a shield, without understanding that love can be a blade as well, cutting far sharper than any pirate’s sword. Loving something means having something to lose, something that Wendy understands all too well and Peter never will.

  All at once, the rage drains from her. Wendy lowers her hand. Peter breathes hard. What has he made of her? What has she become?

  “Help me hold him.” Wendy’s voice shakes and she doesn’t dare look at Tiger Lily.

  Tiger Lily made no move to stop her when she raised her hand, but still Wendy is ashamed. She has to be better than this, better than Peter and his temper-born cruelty.

  She forces herself to look at Peter, really look at him. The boy who wanted to show her wonders, who taught her how to fly. Tiger Lily kneels, bracing Peter’s shoulders. Peter’s eyes are so wide that in the blackness of his pupils, Wendy is certain she sees stars. She thinks of the mermaids, dead in their lagoon. She thinks of Peter laughing and holding her hand. There is good and bad in him, just like anyone else, only more extreme.

  “Hush, now.” Wendy brushes the hair back from Peter’s forehead. She almost leans to kiss his brow, a mother soothing a child awoken from a bad dream, but stops herself. A small kindness is enough.

  She takes the needle and the thread from her pocket. Her hands are remarkably steady. Tiger Lily watches her silently, and it only takes Wendy one try to slip the thread through the needle’s eye. She leaves the rest trailing from the spool. How much will it take to join boy to monster, to make an ancient creature whole again?

  The thought is idle. Wendy’s mind doesn’t rebel as much as it should. Here, now, at the end of all things, she is calm, filled with purpose. Peter stiffens, his breath quickening, but neither he nor the shadow resist her when she reaches for it. Touching it is like plunging her hand into icy water. The cold burns, but she’s felt worse. She will survive this too.

  Wendy tugs the shadow closer. The weight of a beast so huge should overwhelm her, but it flows over her hands and arms, rippling yet remaining solid. It is everything, and it is nothing at all. A lifetime ago, in the nursery, Wendy remembers how Peter shrieked when the needle first touched his skin. She remembers the moments before she made her first tentative stitch, matching up the ragged ends of the shadow with Peter’s foot, and how it hadn’t seemed to fit at all.

  She’d only been a child, and it seemed so natural then, tugging at the strange un-substance, stretching it to fit while Peter waited impatiently. She’d even teased him, asking how a boy could lose a shadow in the first place.

  “Oh, lots of ways,” he’d replied. The response she’d taken for airy at the time is unnerving now, and she sees it edged with a smile less coy and more sinister. She thinks, too, of the bones in the cave, and Peter’s dismissal of them being someone. Could he have stolen a shadow from another boy? And if he had, what would that theft do? She imagines a Lost Boy being lost in more than just name, separated from himself and wasting away, unraveling as the shadow Peter had first demanded she sew to his feet did as soon as they arrived in Neverland. How many boys over how many years?

  “You’ll be our mother when it’s all done?” Peter had asked, once she’d gotten the shadow to behave, once he’d stopped his whining and begun to watch her work with interest.

  Though her stitches wer
e clumsy and uneven, at least it grew easier without his squirming around so, though she’d still had to chide him for fidgeting.

  “I suppose.” She’d barely paid attention to the question; it had all seemed a game—a boy who could fly, who appeared at the window in the middle of the night, promising adventure.

  “Could you love a boy without a shadow?” The question strikes Wendy now as it didn’t then—again the slyness, the way Peter lowered his lids, his lashes almost touching his cheeks, and looked at her from beneath them.

  “I suppose,” she’d answered again, tongue between her teeth, concentrating.

  “Because it might come undone again, but if you were our mother you’d have to love me anyway, wouldn’t you? Even if I was bad?”

  Had she looked up then, met his eyes? And if she had, what would she have seen? Something like the Peter before her now, frightened but defiant?

  “Well, I shall just have to sew it extra tight so that doesn’t happen, won’t I?” Wendy remembers impatience, barely even listening to the words Peter had said, wanting the promised adventures, and not the work of stitching her mother had tried to teach her. If only she’d paid more attention. But how could she have known?

  Peter watches her now, wide-eyed. She touches the needle to his skin, and unlike all those years ago, he does nothing but whimper.

  Wendy steels herself, then pushes the needle through. As a child, she was innocent of horror, and there was no revulsion at pushing a needle through flesh. It hadn’t seemed strange that a boy and his shadow might become un-joined, and it was the most natural thing in the world to put them back together again. Now, knowing better, she expects her hands to betray her, but they do not. The shadow doesn’t resist her, yearning for the thread, yearning to be whole, its hunger guiding her steady touch.

  With the second stitch, she feels the needle in her own skin— Dr. Harrington with his drugs to make her calm, to make her sleep. Trying to convince her Neverland was only a dream. With the third stitch, at last, Peter screams, whipping his head from side to side. Without Wendy having to ask, Tiger Lily bears down, holding him as still as she can.