Chapter 27
We bury Freckles under a mound of rocks off of the shoreline of the cove. It takes long enough that Benjamin and Joel go back to the Den to ask Victor and Simon if they want to take part. I don’t realize Benjamin is wandering off with Joel until they’re already gone, and Smalls tells me. The next half hour is spent with me digging my nails into my palms, wondering if I should tell Peter to run after them, that Benjamin is in danger. But they return soon enough, Benjamin unharmed, Joel glancing at me often—or am I imagining that?
Either way, they both report that Victor turned them down.
I can’t help but wonder if Victor knew about Freckles’s disdain for Thomas. Part of me fills with unease thinking about Victor’s tendency toward violence, but he’d seemed just as rattled as the other Lost Boys at the sight of Freckles’s body. Perhaps he doesn’t wish to help bury Freckles because of the emotions it brings up of burying his brother.
Once we’ve finished the burial, Peter turns to fly off. I go to him, calling his name, but he blatantly ignores me—I can tell because I glimpsed his ears flick at my voice—and launches into the sky.
I stand there with my hands on my hips, watching as he disappears toward the northern bluffs.
“He goes there sometimes, when something bad happens,” says Simon, coming up beside me, brushing his arm against my shoulder. “Went up there after Thomas died, too.”
“Bearing the secrets so you don’t have to?” I ask, not managing to hide the accusation in my tone.
Simon shifts uncomfortably. “Come on. Let’s go home,” he says, gesturing back in the direction of the Den, where the other boys are now heading.
I nod, following the others from behind, but I can’t shake the feeling that my brothers are in danger here, and that there’s only one person on this island who has any answers that might save them. It’s a risk, not warning John about my suspicions regarding Joel. Possibly even Victor. But John’s more skeptical of the Lost Boys than I’ve been. I find it unlikely he’ll follow any of them to remote sections of the island.
Besides, I’ve been unable to coax any information out of Peter up to this point. It’s cruel of me, but I’d be foolish not to recognize that getting to Peter while he’s emotional over the death of one of his Lost Boys might be my only shot at garnering information to help my brothers.
So when Simon catches up to the others, I lag behind, then slip into the trees.
Night falls swiftly.I’m sweating and brambles pierce my skin by the time I reach the top of the bluff.
Peter sits atop a rock across the way, watching me as I struggle to pull myself over the side of the cliff. He doesn’t rise to help, but it’s not as if I expect him to.
The far-off look is still in his eyes, even as he stares at me. Like he’s not looking at me, but through me.
I recognize it. The grief that empties instead of overcomes, drowns instead of burns.
I put myself through pain to mask what’s inside, hoist myself toward a baseline that I can convince myself is normal. Peter runs away from his. Well, flies away, sweeping it under the rug of frivolity and riddles and games.
But happiness can’t drown out pain. It simply isn’t potent enough, or else my mother would have managed it. So I scramble over to Peter and wipe the dust off my clothes as I confront him.
“You shouldn’t have followed me up here,” says Peter, and the way he swivels his head around to meet me makes me wonder if he’s drunk, though I smell nothing on him, and I’ve yet to witness any wine on the island.
“You’re hurting,” I say, hugging my chest and fiddling with my loose sleeves, which are too long given that this tunic was originally Simon’s.
A wry smile casts a shadow over Peter’s face. One that’s outside of his control, not a by-product of his magic, but of his demeanor. “I can assure you that’s not the case.”
Frustration boils up within me. “You love those boys. Adore them. Fight for them, for their protection. And you’re hurting from losing two of them.”
“And what use would that be, Wendy Darling? To hurt? What has that dreadful emotion ever done for you, as much as you like to keep it close to you, as much as you like to cloak yourself in it? Tell me a single time in your life that pain saved you from anything. Did it keep you from being swallowed by the shadows? Did it protect your parents from slitting their own throats? What did it ever do for you to hurt?”
I pause, my words thick and slimy, caught there in the stinging pain of the lump forming in my throat.
“You like to think your pain makes you noble, but it doesn’t hold you in the same esteem, Wendy Darling. You care more for it than it cares for you.”
My mouth goes dry. “You’ve lost someone very dear to you,” I whisper. “You need time to heal.”
“What for? To get patched up in time for the next death to occur, the next person to be ripped from my hands? Those who keep their pain close only do so because they’re too weak, too dependent to let it go. They’re incapable of admitting it doesn’t make them any better, any stronger. Too weak to lift their sorry chins up and look to the future.”
I could take away your pain.
I venture a step forward. Peter doesn’t tense. Doesn’t react at all.
“If you’re not hurting, why did you fly up here by yourself?”
Peter doesn’t look at me. He just stares into the sky above. “Thomas liked the stars. Before…before Neverland, he must have pored over books about constellations, because he had all of them memorized. That kind of memory wasn’t taken from him. He knew constellations I’d never heard of, though he could never tell the stories that go along with them.”
Finally, Peter turns to face me. “I came up here because the picture you showed me reminded me of that, and I wanted to remember sitting up here with Thomas as he traced patterns in the sky.”
“Oh,” I say. I can’t help but notice how he doesn’t mention Freckles. Like he can’t stand to even approach a pain that lingers so close. Like it’s easier to ignore it and focus on something more distant.
Peter raises his voice. “Come on, Wendy Darling. No comment about how my way of remembering my friend is somehow inferior to yours?”
There’s no acid in his tone—it’s still flat. Bored, almost.
I shake my head, shame wafting over me, tingeing my cheeks in unpleasant warmth.
“No. No, I’d rather not do that,” I say, though it makes me uncomfortable how right he is to assume judgment on my part.
Peter points, and I follow the line of his finger. I stare up at the sky, remembering the lessons my tutors gave me about the stories written in the sky.
“That one’s the Reaper,” I say, identifying the constellation of a robed figure holding a scythe above us.
“Are you familiar with the tale?”
I think back to the story behind the formidable constellation and nod. “The legend is that, when we die, the Reaper comes with his familiar—a fox, I think—to escort us to the afterlife. Some time ago, the Reaper fell in love with a living woman. But he soon grew lonely, desperate for her company as they could only meet one another during the brief moments surrounding a nearby death. Impatient, the Reaper took the woman’s life, slaughtering her with his sickle. But the Reaper was never supposed to take life, only to lead souls as they transitioned from bodily to spiritual form. By killing her, he’d inadvertently tied her soul to the earth. When she rotted, the ground took her as its own, and in the spot she was buried grew a tree. An oak so great it burst through the headstone her family had used to mark where she lay. They say the branches were barren and formed the shape of a hand—the woman’s spirit reaching above, hoping to grasp hold of her lover, but never able to bridge the gap between the earth and the heavens, the physical and spiritual.”
“And what of the roots?” asks Peter.
I scrunch my brow, confused, until the memory returns. “It’s said that if you see a fox digging at the base of a tree, it’s the Reaper’s familiar seeking the woman’s soul in the roots. But…oh.”
I choke back a sob, recognizing now why the pattern carved into Freckles’s cheek looked so familiar. “It’s a fox. The fox.” I search the sky, finding the constellation just below the Reaper.
“I gather you see the resemblance now,” Peter says, voice dry.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence?” I ask. “I could see a killer marking his victim with the Reaper’s familiar anyway, but the fact that Thomas, the first victim, adored constellations…”
“You seem to have answered your own question. And the fox was Thomas’s favorite.”
My mind races. On the shore of the cove, I’d wondered if there were two different killers, given the different causes of death. But the murderer practically bragged about killing Thomas by cutting the Reaper’s fox into Freckles’s skin. “Peter, if the killer knew Thomas…”
He cuts me off. “Why exert all that effort climbing up here?”
I’m so taken aback, the rest of my question gets caught in my throat. “You were hurting. I thought you might want some company.” It strikes me how true the words are. How I’d convinced myself I was doing this for John and Michael.
Peter’s face is devoid of emotion as he finally turns to look at me. “I thought I already told you,” he says. “I don’t want you at all.”