Chapter 11
CHAPTER
THE CHAPEL WAS cold, even though warm sunlight leaked through the stained glass windows. Fractured jewel colors, reds and blues and golds shifted across pews.
Dust drifted though beams.
A single day had passed since the fall, and already my world here felt so different. Our safety threatened.
Willie was alive. But the doctors expected he’d be in the hospital for some days, and worse, they were unsure if he would be able to run and jump and play as he once had. How awful it was to have the freedom of childhood movement stolen from him.
Each child held a white feather in their hands. It was Agnes’s idea, which I tried to deter, but Eleanor told me they’re children, and they grieve in their way. What I wish I could tell her was that this idea seemed to come to Agnes from someone else, but I remained silent.
I stood near the back, hands folded together, unable to think clearly.
Eleanor stood at the front, her voice steady despite a tremor in her hands. She spoke to the children of love, of patience and kindness. She told them how Willie would need us when he returned and how we must be gentle with him.
Rosie and Helen dabbed at their eyes. It was then Eleanor informed us that Lucy would remain with Willie at the hospital to assist with his care until he returned.
My thoughts continued drifting in and out. I kept hearing Willie, seeing him. The angle of his arms and legs.
He did this. Peter did this and he would do it again.
The feathers in the children’s hands caught the light and my attention returned to Eleanor’s voice when she spoke of recovery.
She said it would be scary for all of us, as Willie would be in bed many days and in pain, and when people are in pain they may scream or moan or cry.
And how it was important we all helped to alert one another so we could make sure we were doing all we could to keep him comfortable.
The world folded in on itself, white feathers dissolving into white light, all brightness and blur.
When the light dimmed, I was kneeling inside the treehouse. Its walls smelled of sap. The air was humid, heavy.
Curly lay on a bed of moss, shivering. His teeth chattered. Blankets were piled on top of him.
His lips cracked. A sheen of sweat covered his face.
I had been wiping his forehead for so long the cloth had gone warm. Behind me, I heard someone enter.
Peter’s shadow touched me first, sliding over my shoulder like a cold hand.
“You’re supposed to make him better,” he said.
“I’m trying. I don’t have any medicine to give him. All we have is rest and water and time.”
I pressed the cloth to Curly’s burning forehead. “I’m doing everything I can.”
Peter tilted his head. Puppet-like.
His smile arrived a heartbeat later, forming into place, as if he had to remember how. “You’re their mother,” he said. “And mothers fix things. That’s what you’re here to do.”
I could not fix this. What he had dragged back to me was a boy who had eaten a fistful of poison neverberries, on a dare. By him. For fun. For play.
Life and death are all a game to Peter. And we’re the only ones who can die.
Peter crouched beside me, so close his knee brushed mine. An accidental touch, but the air between us grew warm.
“If he doesn’t get better,” he murmured into my ear, “it’s your fault.”
“I didn’t do this.”
He leaned closer, his lips pressed to my ear.
“Why are you crying?”
“I’m not.”
But the tears had already gathered at the corners of my eyes, blurring my vision.
Peter took my chin between two fingers, pressing his nose against mine.
“You are,” he said, smiling faintly. “You always are.”
“Peter, please …”
The smile vanished so completely it was as if it had been wiped from his face.
He removed his hand from my chin, not gently but with offence. “Don’t tell me what to do.” His words were too soft and measured, like a threat.
The walls of the treehouse seemed to flinch.
Then his quiet rage slipped away. “Go rest, Wendy. I’ll take care of everything.”
And I believed him. Why did I believe him? Because I was just so tired.
I pushed myself upright, my legs shaking as I moved toward the door. The treehouse shifted and swayed with my every step.
At the door, I paused. Days had gone by since I’d seen Roger. Or heard from him. He’d told me he’d write, send me messages attached to his pigeons.
“Peter,” I whispered, hand on the frame. “Have you seen Roger?”
The name fell like a stone into deep water.
Peter’s smile faltered.
For one suspended beat, everything stilled, the air, the leaves, even Curly’s strained breath.
Then the change came. A twisting. A turning. As if some hidden strings inside him had been yanked taut.
A ripple slid beneath the surface of his skin. Subtle. Unnatural. Bristling at the sound of Roger’s name.
Light warped around him.
“Roger,” he echoed. “It’s always Roger now, huh?”
He rose with impossible grace. Movement too fluid to belong to flesh and bone. His eyes darkened, a hunter’s green.
For a moment, I thought he might strike me. Not with fists. Not with touch. With that look, the one that made me feel so small, like I owed him an apology for speaking. For existing.
“Don’t worry about Roger,” he said at last. His words low, tender, but venomous.
He stepped closer. Close enough that the air thinned. Close enough that I could smell copper on his breath.
I should have fled. I should have known.
He looked at me with that impossible beauty, that false softness that made me forget how easily he could strike down a boar, gut a marlin with fevered strokes.
How he sat in silence, face blank, when one of the boys returned with their body pierced by swords.
Their blood-soaked clothes tossed into the fire. Their bodies laid in the forest.
“Go sleep,” he whispered again, brushing his thumb across my cheek. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”
So I went.
And in the morning, Curly was gone.
Peter told us he had run away to live with the mermaids across the island in the lagoon. He said it with an easy smile. Bright and cheerful. Words no one dared question.
But I knew.
The sea was loud that morning. Its waves beating the shore like something pleading to be heard.
And Peter knelt by the stream, whistling, as he washed blood off his blade.
Cold wind brought me back. The door to the chapel was open and children were filing out, Eleanor guiding them along.
And there remained Agnes in the front row, staring at the feather in her hands. Head bowed. Shoulders shaking.
“Willie said Peter was coming,” she cried.
Rosie moved toward her. “Hush, love.”
The bell above us tolled again and again.
At the window, a feather clung to the glass. Not white, but black. I approached, and just beyond the pane, in a large oak tree, sat a great black crow.
Its coal-dark eye fixed on me with a terrible, knowing stillness.