Chapter 20
A s we sprint down the hallway, I hear footsteps behind me.
“Winds.”
I spin around to find Charlie and Maddox in the hallway. Charlie races up to me, placing her hand on my shoulder.
“Let us go,” she says. “You stay with the captain.”
I breathe heavily, considering her offer. For some reason, it causes anxiety to well up within me. Panic raps at my skull, threatening to tear my ribs apart piece by piece. I know I should stay with him.
I’m his wife, after all.
But I can’t.
“I can’t.”
“Charlie’s right,” Maddox says, coming out behind her. “She and I can travel up the mountain. We’ll find the Sister.”
Not for the first time in my life, the words escape me. They’re inside of me, but they’re buried deep down in the cavern of my lungs, evading the tip of my tongue. How do I explain why I can’t stay here while they go in search of Nolan’s cure?
And suddenly, at the idea of staying here, I feel the walls of the Den encroach upon me—not this den, but the one underneath the reaping tree in Neverland.
“Charlie, I can’t.”
Her eyes go wide, searching me like she’s trying to understand.
It’s Victor who speaks. “She can’t sit here and wait for the two of you to come rescue her.”
Charlie’s face falls, and Maddox looks as if he’s been slapped in the face.
Now that it’s out there, now that Victor has put it to words, my tongue loosens.
“It’s not a lack of trust,” I say. “I just—I need to go. I need to do something.”
Charlie’s brow knits together, but then another voice speaks up from behind her.
“We’ll stay with him,” says one of the Twins.
“Yeah, we’ll watch him. We’ll make sure he’s hydrated and fed, and we’ll explain what happened once the healer gets here,” says the other.
“And I’ll make sure the rag on his forehead stays cold,” pipes up Benjamin. Tears well up in my eyes as I look at these Lost Boys.
“You shouldn’t have to do that,” I tell them. “It’s my responsibility.”
“But you took care of us,” says Benjamin matter-of-factly, as if I should have realized that long ago.
But we’re wasting breath with this conversation.
“We’re with you,” says Charlie, glancing up at Maddox expectantly.
He nods and heads toward the door.
I’m not sure how far the entrance to the trail up the mountain is from Victor’s house.
It feels as if it takes us all night to get there, but that might just be the panic seeping through my bones.
It’s quite possible we’ve only been gone for half an hour or less.
Every second feels like a second wasted—a moment when my husband could have taken his last breath without me by his side.
I’m vaguely aware of how my presence will slow the rest of them down. I’m human, and so is Charlie, but she’s significantly faster than I am. It’s selfish, stupid of me.
I know.
But there’s something about the pull of this mountain—the urge I feel to scale toward the top. It’s an intuition I was too afraid to explain to the others. There’s a part of me that knows, deep down, that I need to be the one to talk to the Youngest Sister.
And I can’t explain why.
If she’s as kind and willing to help mortals as the legends say, Charlie should be able to talk to her.
Maddox or Victor even. But there’s something about the stories, something about this place that I can’t put my finger on—something that reminds me that the shadows have always held a fondness for whispering to me.
At the base of the trail are two guards, one of whom is a pretty girl who looks to be about Victor’s age. She blushes when we approach, and Victor takes her aside, whispering something in her ear.
We watch as they argue for a bit, the other guard looking confused. But then the girl walks up to her companion and explains something. After a few moments of arguing, they decide to let us pass.
When we make it by, Maddox looks down at Victor.
“How did you manage that?” he asks.
Victor offers him a sly grin and shrugs. “People around here like me.”
As panicked as I am for my husband’s health, a glimmer of happiness touches my heart.
Victor was always the least liked of the Lost Boys—ever the outcast.
It makes my heart happy that here, in this town, he’s found a community of people who not only respect but also like him. Even in the way the other Lost Boys treated him back at their home, I can see that their perspective of him has changed.
But Victor has changed too.
He’s not the sullen boy full of anger that he used to be. I wonder if I’ll get to that point. I wonder if the pain inside me will eventually heal.
The only way I see that being possible is if I can manage to save Nolan’s life.
The trail up the mountain is arduous. I slip several times, Victor or Maddox or Charlie having to catch me.
It’s mortifying.
And I’m struck with how, in the weeks—months—since being in Neverland, I still haven’t fully recovered my strength.
There are other things that haven’t recovered as well.
I think of the potion I’ve been taking to prevent childbearing and how it seems, from my lack of cycles returning in the past two years, that there’s no need for it.
Not that I’ll stop drinking it.
You might not have a reason to drink it for much longer , a sinister voice inside my head whispers, but I push it out.
Eventually, we make it to what appears to be the end of the path—until Victor points upward.
“We’ll have to scramble,” he says.
“Wendy, do you think you can handle that?” asks Maddox.
As clumsy as I’ve been walking up the mountain, as soon as I’ve placed my hands on the cool rock, I feel the surety return to my muscles, to my bones.
I don’t answer. I simply climb.
The climb is arduous, but the aching in my muscles I welcome. The blissful soreness of feeling useful again.
I’m halfway up when, from above, I hear a scream.
At first, I think it’s Charlie, and panic causes my muscles to seize. I glance upward but see nothing except for the overhang of the cliff and the moon shining through the speckled clouds. It takes me a moment to remember that Charlie is below me.
I glance down just to check again that she’s there. She’s still climbing up the cliffside, not too terribly far behind me. Below her the ground grows further and further away as my vision tunnels.
Another scream—this time, one belonging to Maddox. Except I’m sure that it’s not Maddox, because I just saw him on my right.
“Did you hear that?” I ask Maddox and Charlie.
“Hear what?” they practically yell back over the howling wind that has just started to pick up.
I glance to my left. Victor’s eyes are wide, his face ghost-white.
So you heard it too, my eyes say, though my mouth does not have to.
“There’s something up there,” I shout, though I’m not sure Charlie can hear me as she grunts down below, not as adept at climbing as I am.
“What kind of something?” says Maddox. “I don’t like the sound of something.”
I turn to Victor, still clinging to the wall. He shakes his head, breathing heavily.
“Do you want to turn back?” Maddox asks.
“No. No,” I say. There’s nothing down there for me except a dead husband.
We keep climbing.
Maddox reaches the overhang first, Victor next. Charlie and I take up the rear, and I’m the third to reach the top. Maddox and Victor are already hanging over the edge, arms outstretched, ready to pull me up.
I swing my arm up and over. Maddox clutches it and yanks. My knees hit the solid ground just in time to hear another scream.
Charlie’s—again.
Except this time, instead of coming from the cliff, it’s coming from down below, where Charlie was just behind me.
“Charlie, no!” I say, whipping around.
“I hear it!” Maddox yells, then lunges over the side, his belly on the ground.
I have to scramble over to see what’s happening down below. Charlie is hanging from Maddox’s arm, her feet having slipped.
“Something swiped at me!” she yells, half-screaming.
Maddox grunts, the muscles in his back flexing as Charlie tries to climb up his arm, but the ground at the edge of the cliff is slick, and he starts to slip.
Victor and I exchange a look, then both lunge for Maddox’s legs. Our weight is enough to keep him stable as Charlie climbs up his arms and over his head, flailing onto his back.
“Something swiped at me,” Charlie says again, insistent, her eyes wide as she glances across the plateau we just found. “I felt it, heading in that direction, but when I looked?—”
I turn around, expecting to find nothing.
Instead, I am met with a whirl of darkness sweeping toward me. I scream, and my instincts from my training with Maddox take over. I grab at the dagger in my scabbard. It flashes in the moonlight as I whip it out and slash into the darkness descending upon us.
There’s another cry. Another scream. And a flash of dark feathers.
At first, when I see the wings, I think of Peter, and my body freezes.
But when I push the dagger in further, the creature squawks.
The clouds shift, and the moonlight reveals not a person, not a fae, but a bird, its throat caught on the tip of my dagger. It’s the size of a large dog, and the weight of it has me slumping backward and onto Maddox’s back.
The four of us scramble, everyone trying to get me out from underneath the large feathered creature. Finally, Victor hauls it off of me and flings it to the side, its black ichor stuck to my blade.
“What was that thing?” asks Maddox.
“I don’t know,” Victor says.
“It sounded like you,” I say to Victor.
Victor shakes his head, staring at me. “It sounded like you .”
I turn back to Charlie and Maddox, who are both gawking down at the creature.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Charlie says. “I just felt it swipe at my ankles.”
She pulls her pant leg up, revealing a fresh cut where the bird’s talons must have struck. I check the bird’s talons and find them soaked in blood.
“We’ll have to keep aware,” says Maddox.
“Why can Victor and I hear them, and you can’t?” I ask.
“Beats me,” says Maddox. “Just make sure you tell us next time you hear them.”
Another scream. This one sounds like John. It’s agonizing—to the point where I fall to my knees, and all I can picture is John swinging from the reaping tree.
Except, that’s not how John died. Now all I can picture is John, unable to breathe, Peter strangling him with his bare hands.
“No,” I say.
“It’s not real,” says Victor. “You have to get up.”
I open my eyes just in time to witness a bird dive across my vision, taking Maddox by the shoulders. It digs its talons into Maddox’s skin. My friend lets out an awful cry, and seconds later, he’s airborne as the bird sweeps him into the trees.
Charlie darts after them.
Victor and I are not far behind. We dash across the tree line, ducking underneath branches and weaving through the trees.
We can still hear Maddox shouting from up above, and through the canopy, we watch as his shadow grapples with that of the bird, as he shoves and kicks and punches, trying to twist himself from its grasp.
“It must be taking him to its nest,” says Victor.
“Not helpful,” says Charlie.
As we race through the forest, the trees seem to come alive. But maybe it’s just the sound of the screams. Victor whirls around as a voice beckons through the trees. I can hear this one too.
“Victor,” it cries. “Victor, please! Please! Simon’s hurting me! I can’t—I can’t breathe!”
The voice is unfamiliar to me, but I glimpse recognition on Victor’s face.
“Thomas,” he breathes.
His brother, who died shortly before I ever stepped foot on Neverland.
“It’s not him,” I say.
But he doesn’t seem to hear me.
“Victor, it’s not him.”
I place my hand on my friend’s shoulder, but he wrenches it off.
“Thomas,” he says, his voice no longer sounding like the young man he’s turned into, but like a child. “Thomas, I?—”
He halts, mid-step, just as he places his foot down. There’s a smack—and a red handprint left on his cheek.
I gasp, having just witnessed Charlie slap Victor across the face.
He blinks, looking at her in surprise and stroking his cheek. Then he shakes his head, clearing himself of the vision.
“Let’s go,” he says.
And we journey into the belly of the forest.