Chapter 53
CHAPTER 53
WENDY
T he forest is sinister, the shadows enveloping where there should be a faint outline of the trees in tonight’s bright moonlight. There should be light, and there is none, and it seems the shadows are doing it on purpose. They jump from the brush and obscure my path, holding their fingers over my eyes like I’m a frightened child.
They don’t want me to see. Don’t want me to find what’s at the end of this path. But my feet propel me ever onward.
I run, skirting by trees, slamming into bark when the shadows obscure my vision too fully, but I run all the same, allowing the forest to beat my body to a pulp.
All the while, I hear John’s laugh.
I hear it as he yells, “Last one to the top’s dead meat,” in the middle of our tutoring sessions. I hear it as he grabs Michael and throws him over his shoulder as we race toward the clock tower, Michael’s giggling contagious. I feel John’s spindly fingers around my ankles as he lunges for me in our hallway manor, doing anything he can to keep me from winning.
At least, I think I feel it. But it’s just the thorns on the forest floor grasping at my ankles, begging me to turn around.
I can’t just turn around. I run, and with every step, I leave an imprint of my heart—torn in two—on Neverland’s floor.
And then I’m back to the day John, Michael, and I raced through this forest back to the Den. The day John had pretended to lag behind, just so he could tease me about how he could still outrun me.
How he would still get there first, despite being younger.
I only know I reach the clearing with the reaping tree in the center because there’s no longer any tree trunks to slam into, nothing else to block my path.
The shadows stay firmly wrapped around my eyes, nothing deterring them now that my blood is clean of faerie dust.
“Please,” I tell them. “Please, you have to let me see. I have to know. I can’t bear not knowing.”
Still, nothing but darkness.
“Please,” I beg. “You can’t protect me from what’s real.”
There’s a hesitation, and I wonder if the shadows intend to blind me for the rest of my life. But then they dissipate, slowly leaking from my eyes. It’s the glow of the bulbs on the reaping tree that sneak through the darkness first, a gentle beauty as deceptive as the reaping tree itself.
The shadows slink back into the forest, leaving me alone, though not entirely.
They’re still obscuring the face of the dead boy hanging on a noose from a branch of the reaping tree, its lights backlighting his form. I don’t need to see his face to know that it’s him. I recognize his lanky frame, his long limbs.
When I take a step forward, something crunches underneath my feet. Pain and blood flow against the soles of my feet.
Glass from round spectacles litters the forest floor.
It takes me blinking the tears away, limping closer to the body, before I can make out his features.
John’s face is sallow. His neck bruised with purple blotches that creep up around the noose.
I hear the cause of death matter-of-factly, in John’s voice. Like he’s standing next to me instead of dangling above me. “ Victim’s neck must not have snapped. Bet he was too thin for his weight to do it for him. He probably struggled up there for a few minutes before he lost consciousness. ”
I’m faintly aware of Peter’s approaching presence. I think he and Victor were arguing in the forest. They must have been because when they rustle out from the trees behind us, Peter snaps, “Ever get between me and Wendy again, and I’ll—”
I only turn to face them because I’m aware Michael was with Victor. It’s like there’s a checklist in my head of things that have to be done.
What to do when your brother is dead.
Number one. Make sure Michael doesn’t see.
But Michael has already seen. That’s why he was chanting earlier. Why his voice was high, strained. Why he sang the song that led me here. That way I could see it too, make it make sense to him.
But I can’t make it make sense to Michael.
Not when it doesn’t make sense to me.
Victor has tied a scrap piece of fabric over Michael’s eyes. A gamble, but Michael seems not to mind the darkness. I whisper to the shadows to watch after my brother for a while.
And then I look at Peter. He’s staring up at John’s body, pure shock on his expression.
So that’s what it looks like when Peter’s in pain. There’s none of the familiar indifference left. The cool apathy. Peter’s blue eyes have watered over, his breath going labored.
When he looks at me, he’s distraught. I think it might be on my behalf.
When Peter approaches me, I let myself melt into him, then have to remind myself that it wasn’t my choice to do so.
It feels easier to pretend it’s my choice. I don’t have the energy to resist any longer. Who cares if my life is tied to Peter? John is dead.
John is dead.
My brother is dead.
I open my mouth to ask…but then realize I don’t have a question in my mind. So Peter asks for me. “When did you find him?”
Victor pauses, Michael’s hums filling the space. Peter’s chest is warm against my cheek. It’s the only reason I’m still standing. “Only just now. I was taking Michael out for a stroll—he was getting antsy inside. I tried to shield his eyes, but…I think he saw.”
There’s another question there, but my mind can’t process it, my lips can’t form the words.
I cling tighter to Peter. My brother is dead. His spectacles are glass shards at the bottoms of my feet.
I think I understand now why Michael likes to step on sharp things sometimes.
“Get him down,” I whisper into Peter’s chest.
When Peter pauses, I snap, “GET MY brOTHER DOWN.”
Peter pulls away from me, a bit stunned. But he does as I say, wings batting as he flies up to the branch. For a moment, it seems as if he doesn’t know how to go about it—cut the rope or untie it.
In the end, he takes a dagger to the noose, then holds John’s body as it slumps in his arms. When he touches back down, he lays John in the grass.
“Who did this to him?” I ask, falling to my knees before my brother and wiping his hair from his forehead. It’s grown even longer since I last saw him. Our mother would have had a fit.
“Wendy Darling, why don’t we—”
My voice is calm. Like I’m the dangerous one here and I’m brokering a deal with an enemy turned business partner. “I want to find who did this.” I pivot to Victor, my voice sounding far off, even to my ears. “Victor, when was the last time you saw John?”
Peter takes my hand. “Wendy, you’re in shock. You need time to process—”
“Don’t talk to me about processing,” I snap, anger fueling me. Confusion warps Peter’s face.
I want to laugh at him. To ask him what he expected choosing him to look like in practicality.
I can choose Peter all day long. I can let him hold me. I can kiss him and bed him if that’s what he’s after.
I can choose him and make him miserable at the same time. I wouldn’t be the first.
Peter and I stay locked in a stare-down, but he folds first. It takes me a moment to understand his hesitation is because he can’t stand my pain. “I don’t think you’re going to like the answer that you find.”
“I didn’t like finding my brother’s corpse hanging from the reaping tree,” I say, vaguely noticing how hardened my voice has gone. “Somehow, I doubt the answer to my question of when Victor last saw him will be more painful than that. I don’t think finding his killer will be worse than that.”
“And if there’s not a murderer?” says Victor.
“Victor?” Peter asks as we both turn toward the Lost Boy.
Victor nods, almost ashamed. “John stopped eating the onions a few days ago.”
Peter curses under his breath.
“What does that have to do with how he ended up dead?” I ask.
“Because,” Victor says, “Simon stopped eating the onions too.”
My heart doesn’t have it in me to fear anymore. “And what happened to Simon?”
Later, when we bury John, I have Victor help me remove his coat. I can’t bear to do it myself. Feel the weight of John’s body without any of the resistance that would normally indicate life. Can’t bear to wrestle it off of him. Victor helps by keeping John’s body stable, sitting it upright as I tug the coat off my brother’s arms.
The process makes me sick, but I make myself push through. I want Michael to have John’s coat. Something to wrap around himself that reminds him of his brother.
Still, once John is buried, I find I’m the one who’s wrapping myself in his coat, cowered in the corner of Peter’s bedroom—my bedroom now. It’s a pitiful excuse for John’s embrace, but it’s all I have left of him.
My hands haven’t stopped shaking since I found John’s body strung up in the tree. I’m so tired of seeing my fingers tremble, witnessing my body’s reaction to the agony it’s been through over the past few days, so I hide them in John’s coat pockets.
My fingers brush against something cold. Wooden. I remove my hand to reveal a tile, much like the ones John and I used to make for Michael to help him communicate. My heart aches as I turn it over in my hand. John must have been working on a communication board for Michael to use in Neverland. This one says “PETER” and is inscribed with an icon of wings. I can see Michael now, bringing it to John on one of the nights Peter was out on an errand for the Sister, or out looking for me. His way of asking John where Peter was. John trying to explain that Peter was out. That he’d be back soon.
Michael doesn’t understand either of those concepts.
It’s this thought that breaks me most of all.