Chapter 17
Michael is missing. It takes a moment to register as I jolt from bed, stuffing my journal underneath my pillow.
Panic seizes me as I consider all the worst-case scenarios as to where my brother might have wandered off to. John is still asleep, looking peaceful and drooling a bit on his cot, his spectacles tucked neatly by his pillow.
I pace back and forth, wondering if I should wake him. Together, we could cover ground more quickly. But it could very well be that Michael is just outside in the hallway. If that’s the case and I’m simply overreacting, there’s no reason to worry him.
In a split decision, I grab the fur coat Simon lent me and tuck it around my shoulders, determining that if I don’t find Michael within the next several minutes, I’ll come back to wake John.
Scouring the tunnels does me no good. It’s early—Michael’s internal clock has always woken him at least an hour before the sun thinks it a decent time to rise—so none of the boys are out and about either.
Except for Joel, whom I happen upon in the dining room as he squats by the hearth carved into the walls.
“Pardon me, but have you seen Michael anywhere?” I ask.
Joel flinches, which I find odd until I tell myself it’s probably just because he’s not used to anyone else being up this early. When he turns from the hearth, I can’t help but notice the way he keeps his shoulders huddled toward the fire and away from me.
“Haven’t seen him, but Peter walked by that way a little bit ago. Might could ask him,” he says.
Glad for a lead, I make off toward the tunnel Joel indicated. Quickly, my mother’s lessons overtake me, and I spin on my heel to thank the boy. From this angle, I can see what he’s messing with in front of the fire.
It’s a rodent, one he’s managed to trap in a twig-knit cage. I don’t much like rodents and am not sorry to see one terminated, but it’s what Joel is doing with the cage that has unease piling in my gut.
Propped open with a stick is the cage door, positioned in front of the fire. The little rodent is curled up on the opposite side of the cage, trying to escape the heat. It squeaks in protest as Joel prods its bloated belly with his whittled stick, forcing it to flee directly into the fire or be skewered.
“Perhaps you could try breaking its neck instead,” I offer, trying and failing to keep my voice casual.
Joel turns to me, color blotching his tanned cheeks. I can’t remember if his flush was already there from the warmth of the fire.
“Good idea,” he says, though he doesn’t remove the cage from the proximity of the hungry flames.
I feel as if I’m going to be sick, but I can’t be worrying over the fate of a rodent that’s stealing our food supplies and probably carries diseases. Not when Michael is missing. So I swallow my trepidation and make off to find Peter.
Halfway down the hall, I hear the gentle and familiar sound of Michael singing. Relief washes over me, and I slow my pace. If he were frightened, his pitch would be much higher and more urgent. As it is, Michael sounds content.
I follow his voice until I reach the corner and peek around.
I got in the habit of peering in on Michael when he was young, mostly because he does some of the most clever and wonderful things when no one is watching. One time I found him cross-legged in a circlet of Mother’s crystal chalices. He’d filled them to varying levels and was tapping them with a nail he’d found. To this day, I don’t know where he learned you could make music that way. I like to think he just discovered it himself.
As I peer around the corner, I’m shocked to find Michael isn’t alone.
Michael’s standing across from Peter, who’s pulled up a little stool and perched upon it. Peter’s a large enough man that it hardly makes him eye level with Michael, but it’s pretty close.
I tense up, immediately distrustful of this interaction. Peter can be cruel, and even if Michael is less than likely to pick up on the subtlety of Peter’s humor, I’ve always despised it when people talk to Michael as if he’s not in the room. As if he doesn’t understand.
“We don’t know that he doesn’t understand us,” I remember telling my father one day. “Even if he doesn’t always grasp the meaning of the words or the metaphor, he picks up a lot through our pitch.”
But there’s nothing mocking in Peter’s voice as he plays with Michael.
Michael’s gotten his hands on a wooden toy train, but instead of placing it on the tracks, he’s disconnected all the boxes, leaving the majority of the train in a horizontal line on the floor. The caboose has always been his favorite. He’s got it upside down in one hand, spinning the wheels as fast as he can with the other.
I wait for Peter to take it from him, to try to make him put the train back together and play with it “the right way”—on the tracks.
Instead, Peter just takes the train engine from Michael’s line, flips it upside down in his hand, and starts spinning the wheels along with Michael. At first, Michael pays him no mind. But then something extraordinary happens. Without looking at Peter, Michael sets the caboose to the side and takes the engine from Peter’s hands, testing out those wheels, too.
It’s complicated to explain why that snags on my heart like it does. I know it’s silly, tearing up over Michael paying attention to the engine of the train instead of the caboose. But there’s something about Michael wanting to explore an object because someone else did that has my heart twisting up.
Eventually, Michael goes down the line of the train cars, testing the wheels of all of them. I watch as Peter sneaks away the last car, popping the wheels off and hiding them behind his back before returning it to the line. When Michael reaches the broken toy, he stares at it, unblinking.
The two of them sit in the quiet for so long, it takes everything in me not to jump from the shadows and give Michael the words to ask for help, like I’m so used to doing.
But then he pushes the toy into Peter’s lap and says, “Do you want me to fix it?”
A smile brushes across my lips. Michael’s always used questions that way, but I don’t have to explain as much to Peter.
“Let me fix it for you,” Peter says, snapping the wheels back into place.
“It’s all better now,” Michael whispers, smiling pleasantly as he continues to play with the wheels.
It’s so odd watching him. It’s not that people outside the family have never attempted to play with Michael. It’s just that, typically, they have a set way they think Michael should play, and they can’t seem to understand when he isn’t interested. Why would he not toss a ball back and forth with them or make the horse go to sleep in the barn, when that’s how other children might do it? They mean well, of course. Everyone wants to teach Michael something. But sometimes I wonder if perhaps Michael might have more to say than others give him credit for.
I can remember countless men attempting to court me, boring me to tears with the state of their financial conquests. Often, I found I had nothing to say, not because I couldn’t possibly communicate about such things, but simply because I had so little interest, my will to converse about such things dried up.
So I watch in wonder as Peter plays with Michael, yet allows my brother to take the lead.
“Wendy Darling wants to play,” says Michael, and I jolt in place. I didn’t realize he knew I was here, and I’m not sure I love Michael calling me by my full name like Peter does, but I emerge from the shadows, nonetheless.
“Of course I want to play.”
Peter offers a hand, and when I take it hesitantly, he pulls me to the ground next to him.
“Michael here was just showing me a new way to play with the train set,” he says. “I must say, I’m rather partial to it.”
“The Lost Boys are on an adventure.” Michael tosses the train to the side. Taking a stick from the ground, he jabs Peter in the torso like it’s a sword.
I don’t see him do that often—pretend with objects that don’t look exactly like what they’re trying to be. I can’t help the smile that encroaches on my lips.
Once Peter is sufficiently stabbed, Michael loses interest in playing with us and grabs his pile of stick swords, retreating to the corner to play quietly, organizing them from shortest to longest.
Just then, Benjamin strides into the room, a knife and oblong block of wood in hand. “Oh, great! Michael is playing with the swords,” he says, bouncing on his heels as a smile stretches across his deep brown cheeks. He turns to me to explain. “Those are too small for the rest of us to spar with. Beginner mistake on my part. But I’m so glad Michael’s here now to play with them. It would have been dreadful if all that hard work had gone to waste. I can’t help but notice that he likes the train set I made as an experiment two months ago. Perhaps, if he prefers toys with wheels, I can craft him a wagon as well.”
“Benjamin here is a genius with a blade,” says Peter. “He made all of our spoons and bowls.”
“And forks,” corrects Benjamin.
Peter smiles softly. “Those too.”
When the conversation lulls to silence, Benjamin turns toward Michael. “I noticed he doesn’t talk much, but when he does, he uses quite peculiar turns of phrase. Peter says I didn’t talk until I was five, but that I make up for it now.”
“Yeah, now we can’t get you to shut up,” says Freckles, his red hair poking in all directions as he appears around the corner and chucks a wad of parchment at Benjamin. “Come on, you’re supposed to be helping me chop firewood today.”
Benjamin throws his hands out. “We already did that yesterday.”
“Yeah, and then half of it disappeared. Wonder where it went,” Freckles says, chuckling as he stares pointedly at the block of wood in Benjamin’s hand.
I glance back and forth between Michael and Benjamin, who is now holding the block of wood behind his back. Something deep inside me swells with warmth.
“Thanks for playing with him,” I tell Peter once Benjamin and Freckles leave, offering Peter what must be the most uncomfortable smile ever to grace my face after the horrible encounter Peter and I suffered last night.
Peter smiles, dimples forming in his cheeks. “No need to thank me. Michael is my favorite of the Darling siblings. Much better to play with him than the others, who both seem to have pretend swords stuck up their rear ends.”
His jab is meant in jest, but it pricks and lodges itself right between my ribcage.
“John and I had to grow up faster than most children.”
“That’s possibly the most depressing thing that could happen to a person, don’t you think?”
I remember last night, his thumb caressing my temple, like he somehow knows the darkness that creeps there, how it leaves my soul sodden and damp until I feel as if I’m breathing through a wet cloth.
“I’m sorry about last night,” I say, though as soon as the words are out, I feel a creeping of shame at the skin of my neck for apologizing. Peter is my captor, not my friend. No matter how clearly he sees me.
Lying awake, scrambling for a response that would satisfy his question, had gotten me nowhere. I’m no closer to figuring out what I would do with freedom if I had it.
“Well, I’m not sorry,” he says, his eyes dancing as he watches me intently. “It’s rare that I’m as entertained as I was watching you scale that cliffside. You had my heart pounding, wondering if you would fall.”
My throat goes dry. “I didn’t realize you were watching the entire time.”
“I like to keep my eye on you.”
“And if I’d slipped?”
He jerks his chin to the side, gesturing toward his wings. “I have these, don’t I?”
“Would you have used them, though? Or let me fall?”
There it is, that cruel smile that overcomes his face that I find so grounding. Perhaps because it reminds me not to trust him. “Isn’t wondering half the fun?”
I swallow. “Perhaps for you. I’m not certain I would have enjoyed becoming spatter against the rocks.”
“No, I imagine you wouldn’t have,” he says, standing and stretching his limbs and wings. The action itself is so boyish, so reminiscent of something Michael would do, I fight with a smile tugging at my cheeks.
He turns to leave, but I find myself speaking up without the permission of my good sense. “You would have caught me.”
Peter turns slowly, curiosity brimming on his face. “What makes you think that?”
“Because you could have let that nightstalker rip me to shreds, and you didn’t.”
“But Wendy Darling,” he says in a voice that has a shudder snaking through me, “that’s not nearly as satisfying as watching you fall.”
Michael refusesto leave the room until all the toys are sorted from smallest to largest in the nearest closet.
Closet is probably too generous a term. It’s more that there’s a woven pine needle curtain covering a hole in the earth.
“A clean room makes Mama happy,” Michael says. I can’t count how many times our mother said that to him while teaching him to clean his messes.
Unfortunately, while Michael no longer leaves toys strewn across the floor, he now knows the subtle joys of having a pristine organization system, and once he sees the havoc of the closet, there’s no turning back.
We spend the rest of the morning reorganizing.
I’m about to give up and go find John to ask him to relieve me when a sheet of parchment tucked behind one of the shelves catches my attention. It’s rather small, about the size of a piece of letter paper, but someone has sketched on it with charcoal. It’s a beautiful portrait, the type that my parents would have paid good money to be professionally done back in Estelle. When I look closer, I realize it’s a drawing of the Lost Boys, each of their faces immortalized on the smooth side of this thin piece of hide.
The resemblances are uncanny, and I find my gaze lingering over how the artist managed to capture Simon’s toothy grin, Freckles’s dimples, Victor’s scowl and the shadowlike bruises that frame his eyes. Even the cunning glint in Peter’s expression.
As I examine the boys’ faces, my gaze halts and retreats back to one of the figures.
He looks to be the same age as the others—excluding Smalls—no older than sixteen, with messy hair and a captivating grin, though I can’t help but think his face looks distorted compared to the other boys’. As if the artist didn’t know it as well as the others.
As I stare into the boy’s smile, something cold and scaly slithers in my belly.
Because I’ve never met him.