Chapter 30
CHAPTER 30
JOHN
I ’m perched on a lone log, long ago carried away by the waves only for the sea to spit it back out, leaving it to petrify on the beach and be used as a bench, when Peter, just returned from his most recent excursion, approaches me.
“Can we talk?”
It’s the most genuine request I’ve heard from Peter. Usually he’s commanding, if not cavalier. Not as if he’s giving you an order, but like he can’t fathom anyone denying him anyway, so why bother posing it as a request?
“About what?”
“About your sister.”
My chest bottoms out for a split second.
“Why? Did you find her?”
Peter shakes his head, looking off into the distance as he places his hands on his hips. We might as well be discussing whether he found a stray cat.
“Any news, then?”
“No,” he says. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is there to talk about?”
If I ever thought Peter was capable of feeling discomfort, it would be right now. His jaw works, like he’s been planning a speech and has forgotten all the right words. Peter isn’t used to others being skeptical of him. It throws off his innate charm.
“I love her too, you know,” he says.
“Something tells me it’s not quite the same,” I say, placing my deadpan reaction between the two of us. Beyond us, eerie waves lap against the onyx shore.
The beginnings of a smile appear on the edges of his mouth. “You’re implying that the love of a sibling is greater than that of a lover.”
Tink’s face flashes before my eyes. “It’s more unique, at least.”
He cocks his head. “How do you suppose?”
“It’s not replicable. Sure, you can have multiple siblings, but if you lose one, the other could never hope to replace the hole in your heart where the other once was. Loving one sibling doesn’t make the love for the other fade over time.”
Peter flashes me his teeth. “What are you implying?”
“I’m saying if something happens to my sister—if we find her dead—you’ll move on. And the next girl you pluck from her bed will wash away the pain as well as faerie wine would.”
“You think that the widowed don’t still miss their deceased once they remarry?”
“Sure,” I say, my voice crueler than I’m used to hearing it, “but Wendy never married you, did she?”
Peter’s face goes cold, like I used to see it do with Wendy when she pushed him too far. I’m still not confident that my comment pierced him like I was intending, but I think it at least landed.
“Why do you insist on being enemies, John?” Peter asks, advancing. “I swear to you, we want the same thing. We want Wendy back here, safe with us.”
I snort. “I want Wendy safe. Not back here. Not in Neverland.”
“Don’t you want for Wendy what she wants for herself?”
I stop for a moment, contemplating. “I think Wendy is twenty years old. I think that it’s rare to find a twenty-year-old who knows what they want. I’d be even more surprised if Wendy did, knowing her. She spent her entire life striving to wriggle out from underneath the clutches of a curse. There was no thought given to what she wanted or didn’t want. Just what was going to keep her safe.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
I stare at my sister’s captor. “Yes, well you should know about non-answers.”
“And if I get Wendy back?” he asks. “And I give her time to make her decision about whether she wants to stay? What then? Do you trust her to be able to decide what she wants?”
“I don’t trust anyone to decide what they want.”
Peter’s eyes narrow. Less in anger, more in curiosity. “And why is that?”
“Because that which we desire the most is rarely the thing that would bring us the most happiness in the end. The two simply aren’t compatible.”
“And you’re better suited to decide what would make her the happiest?”
I consider this a moment before answering. “I wouldn’t have feelings of being in love muddying my reasoning. So, logically, yes. I do think I’d be better suited than her at figuring out what would make her the happiest. But it goes both ways. She’d be better than me at making decisions for me, too.”
Again, Tink’s face flashes across my mind. Somehow, I doubt Tink is who Wendy would pick for me to be spending so much time with.
“It must be difficult living in your head,” says Peter.
“Remind me: is difficulty inherently bad?”
Peter actually smirks, conceding the point.
Before he leaves, he turns back around.
“Yes?” I say.
“Could you…” Peter pauses. “Would you mind telling me what she was like? Before Neverland, I mean.”
“Didn’t you visit her nightly when she was a child?” I practically spit.
Peter frowns. “My shadow form…it’s not quite me. It is, but I have difficulty retaining my memories from it. Even the memories I have…they’re not…from the lens of how I might have seen her.”
A shiver walks up my spine, but it might be the most honest thing I’ve ever heard Peter say.
“Do you want to hear about before you or after you?” I ask.
“I think both would do.”
“I don’t have many memories of her before she fell ill. She was only five, I was four. But I remember her being especially protective of me. I remember that our manor might as well have been an entire realm for the two of us to explore. People always thought she was quiet. Still do, I guess.”
“Wendy’s not quiet?” Peter asks, cocking his head to the side.
I can’t help the chuckle that escapes me. “Not when she’s comfortable. She’ll talk your ear off if you manage to get close enough.”
Peter slides his hands into his pockets. “Did she keep secrets from you?”
The question catches me off guard. “Everyone keeps secrets.”
“Mmm,” says Peter. For a moment, I think we’re done, but then he stares out into the crashing white waves and says, “Something’s wrong. With you, I mean. You’re more sullen than normal.”
“I can’t see why you care,” I say, not particularly eager to share my disappointment in myself for letting Tink go.
Peter levels me with his icy blue stare. “I care about Wendy’s happiness. And you and Michael are intricately intertwined with that.”
I stare at him. “But you wish we weren’t.”
Peter offers me a sly smile. “Don’t group your brother in the same category as yourself.”
I huff. “At least you’re honest.”
“And you’re hiding something.”
My back goes rigid.
Peter nods toward my hands. “They’ve been shaking.”
“My sister is missing.”
“She’s been missing for three months. The shaking is new.”
“Maybe I’ve just now come to terms with her not coming back.”
Peter watches me, eyes observant. “I’ll get her back, John. You and I are united in that.”
I watch my sister’s fiancé, her predator, her monster, and wonder where the truth is hidden behind his cool facade. If he cares for Wendy at all. Or if he’s angry to have had his favorite toy stolen.
If she was stolen at all, or if he stuffed her away.
I don’t know who to trust.
I used to be able to trust Wendy, before he came along and changed her. But it’s not as if I haven’t changed too. I have pain on my hands. Tink’s pain.
“You can talk to me, you know,” says Peter. “Whatever it is, I likely understand it more than you would think.”
“I was supposed to protect her,” I say, more to myself than to Peter. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, ever since the night she came to my room and cried and told me about the bargain our parents had struck when she was sick. She was still so young when she found out. And I swore to myself I wouldn’t let you take her. That I’d exhaust all resources to make sure nothing bad ever happened to her. But it wasn’t enough. In the end, you took her anyway. Worse, I’d devoted so much energy into being suspicious of you…”
Peter gives me a knowing but patient look.
“That I never saw Captain Astor coming,” I say, suddenly aware of the possibility that Peter could very well be telling the truth. Have I been so blinded by my hatred for him that I’ve neglected to acknowledge the other enemy?
“You’re not the only one who failed her, I’m afraid,” says Peter, though he’s not looking at me anymore. Instead, he stares out at the frothy sea.
I can’t help but wonder if he’s talking about losing her to the captain, or something else entirely.
“It’s cruel, you know,” says Peter after a long stretch of silence.
“What is?”
His face is as unaffected as ever, his tone even apathetic, but I recognize the ability to separate oneself from one’s emotions. “That sometimes, the price for protecting those you love is losing that bit of yourself that was good enough to want to protect them in the first place.”
My chest rattles, my mind flashing back to branding Tink’s flesh. How her whimpers—silent as they were—had reminded me of Wendy’s from that night I hid outside the parlor. I’d had to close my heart off to my love for my sister in order to torture the information out of Tink to save her. At least, I’d thought I’d had to do it. To protect Wendy, I’d sacrificed not only Tink, but the part of myself that still cared.
I’m not entirely willing to accept that, though. I’m not willing to accept that the part of me that would die for my sister is gone with my innocence.
“Did you hurt her?” I ask.
Peter doesn’t look at me. “Not in the way you’re asking.”
I think of Wendy whimpering from inside the parlor. How I was too stunned to run and ask my parents for help.
My throat stings. Peter might be laden with guilt for getting Wendy addicted to faerie dust, but he only gave it to her to protect her from the shadows, from herself. I’ve done worse to my sister.
“Do you think she’ll forgive us?” I ask, though I don’t specify for what. For not calling for help when she was being abused. For not seeing the captain coming. For letting my obsession with protecting her go so far that I tortured an innocent person, someone who had likely been abused just like my sister.
Peter doesn’t answer.
I’m on my way back to the Den when, in the dark, something bumps into me, nearly knocking me over. Panicked, I search the nearby forest for any signs of an assailant, but no one is to be found.
When I slip my shivering hands back into my pocket, my right hand curls around a set of wooden tiles.
I pull them out and examine them in the moonlight.
Three tiles. A sun. A downward-facing arrow. And a cave.