Chapter 30
When the dance is over, Peter pulls me back into his chest and flies me to the top of a tree on a nearby cliff. We settle into the shelter of its branches, Peter slipping his arm around my shoulders as I lean into him.
It shouldn’t, but it fills me with an assurance of safety I can’t describe, can’t quite get a grasp on. While the joy in the sky jolted the melancholy out of me like lightning fraying a mast, nesting in Peter’s arms smothers the heaviness in my chest in the blanket of his embrace.
His wings are too large for our resting spot, so he cocoons them around us both, casually tracing my shoulder blade with his thumb. I’m as high on excitement as I was plummeting through the sky, and all it takes is his wayward touch.
“How did that feel?” he asks, his voice a whisper riding the breeze.
My attention is so focused on the warm trail of his touch, it takes me a moment to realize he’s talking about flying. Falling.
“It felt like letting go,” I say, and I’m reminded of entering Neverland, of Peter’s command. I hadn’t considered it much before now. Perhaps that’s due to the glamour he used on me. “Did you use magic to take away my fear of you when we first arrived?” I ask.
“It’s not quite as simple as that,” Peter says. “I can’t compel you with my glamour. Only suggest. Whether my suggestion takes root depends entirely on whether you let it. And even then, it doesn’t work on everyone.”
“Why does it work on me?”
He pauses. Considers. “It only influences those who already want it to.”
I bite my lip, waiting for the horror to skitter up my spine. It doesn’t. All my life, I’ve been afraid, and though there’s part of me, the part my parents trained into me, that screams I should quake at Peter’s power over me, it’s not my fear. Not really.
“I was frightened of you, you know. They wanted me to be frightened.” For the first time, I wonder how my childhood would have gone had my parents not taught me to be afraid of the dark. Would I have learned to dance with the shadows earlier? Would I have set aside the vain pursuit of finding a husband and lived out my youth like the other children, unconcerned with the future?
There’s something else, though. Something that threatens to steal away the enjoyment of how it feels when Peter touches me. And I’m so very tired of the pleasure being leached out of everything I do.
“I suppose I was frightening,” Peter responds, his voice light, though it’s softer than it normally is. His hand twitches ever so slightly. I wonder if he’s as uncomfortable as I am, if we’re thinking the same thing.
Probably not. The fae from the ancient stories had a tendency to steal their human brides away at an age rather younger than what aristocratic society would deem appropriate.
“Wendy,” Peter says, his voice knowing.
“Yes?” I ask.
“Is it possible that something is bothering you?”
I bite my lip. “What makes you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps the way you’re staring off into the distance.”
“What can I say? It’s a beautiful view.”
“And you’re avoiding my question.”
I scoff. As if Peter isn’t the prince of avoiding questions.
“Let me guess. It has something to do with my shadows visiting you when you were a child?”
I gulp. “It’s not just that.”
Peter chuckles, his hand stroking my shoulder. “Then a combination of my shadows visiting you as a child and the way this,” he says, caressing my shoulder, “makes you feel.” True to his word, a shudder reverberates on the skin he so casually touches.
I clear my throat.
“It’s a fair question,” says Peter.
“Then why aren’t you answering it?”
“Because you haven’t asked.”
My chest tightens, my face paling. I want this so badly—for the way his touch makes me feel to be okay. Acceptable. Real. But the doubt in the back of my mind claws at me now that we’re not swimming in the thrill of the sky. Now that the taste of faerie dust has faded from my tongue.
“My master,” he says, his throat dry, “wished that I keep an eye on you as a child. Mark your whereabouts. Make sure your parents weren’t trying to sneak you away, hide you in some remote place of the world.”
My heart thuds against my chest. “By master, you mean the Fate. The Fate who healed me. Cursed me.”
It’s nothing more than a guess, though one I’ve had years to educate myself about. My mother never told me it was a Fate who came to her. Maybe it was the way my imagination ran away with me as a child, but I always thought—hoped—it was a Fate. As if that would somehow imbue my suffering with meaning.
Peter nods, and my breath hitches at this subtle confirmation of a question that’s been rattling me my entire life. I remember what he said about his master, how she has no friends, only lovers and slaves. How quickly it had become apparent that Peter never wanted me to be enslaved to him. It was her idea all along.
“I kept in my shadow form because…” He draws in a breath. “I’m not myself then. I suppose I’m parts of myself, but not entirely. In some ways, it’s a curse, but in other ways, it helps me stay detached. Even my memories of what happens when I’m in my shadow form are hazy. It’s like how dreams seem clear in the moment, but then you have trouble reconciling the details when you’re awake. You were never real to me, Wendy. Just fragments of a memory. It must feel strange to you, like I’ve known you since you were a child. But to me, I didn’t know you until the moment you took my hand in the tower.”
My mother’s voice warns me, claims I shouldn’t be swayed by what he’s saying, but I can’t help but wish for it to be true. I want so badly for our night in the stars to be a beautiful memory, one I can cling onto in safety. A night where I became brave, the type of girl who soars through the night, not one who teeters on the edge, too afraid to jump.
That’s the thing.
I’m tired of being afraid.
My fear is a weariness leaching my soul from my bloodstream, the blood from my already sallow cheeks.
I don’t want to fear Peter anymore.
“Tell me about her. The Fate.” I hate how breathless my voice has gone, how thirsty I am for the story of the being who set my life on a path I couldn’t escape.
Peter’s face goes blank again, and I wonder if I’ve struck a nerve, picked at the crack in the dam of his larger-than-life exterior.
“You have to understand, growing up in the orphanage I did, there wasn’t much to look forward to in life. They’d keep us until we grew up. Reaching adulthood was about as good as having a noose tied around your neck for kids like us. Tossed out on the street without the orphanage to feed us. Most turned to thievery, made the wrong noble angry, and ended up on the wrong side of a noose. I can’t tell you how many of the older boys I saw hanging from the juniper tree in the middle of the town square, just weeks after they’d come of age. Growing up was a death sentence,” he says.
“Isn’t it always? At some point, I mean.”
The smile he offers me is almost sad. Almost. “I can’t imagine why you seek out such thoughts.”
I shrug, pulling my overcoat into myself, stroking the furs of my sleeve. “I like to know what to expect, what I should anticipate. Even if it’s pain, it’s not quite as frightening once you get a full view of it. Take it in for what it is.”
“Like me?” Peter says, swiping his hand with a flourish down his lithe body, wrapped head to foot in black leathers.
“No,” I say. “You’re just frightening. Only, in a different way.”
Peter’s eyes light with mischief, but he continues on with his story. “I wanted so badly never to grow up when I was a child. I’d seen death. My…” He blinks quickly, then pivots. “Well, I suppose you don’t have to have too grand of an imagination to figure out why I ended up in an orphanage. I’d seen death wrap its slimy fingers around someone I loved, seen the breath stolen from her sunken mouth. Seen the boys I used to play cards with and make bets with swollen with after-stench in the town square. I figured I’d find my way out of it, if I could.”
I wonder then if such dread of death is worse for the fae. From what I know of the legends, the fae used to be close to immortal, living hundreds of years. Their lifespan was cut short due to a curse a century and a half ago, though the curse only applies to fae born after the curse was enacted. But most of the fae were wiped out in the War, so if there are any with immortal lifespans, they’re likely few in number. I wonder what it’s like knowing your body possesses the capability of living a thousand years, but magic is keeping you from it. It stands to reason that Peter would try to outdo the curse through magic. As a child, he wouldn’t have been able to see that beating the curse, never growing up, would not save him from the cruelty of his society.
“I searched for a Fate, tried to trap one through all the clever means I could devise, but never once was I successful. When I came of age, I convinced the warden to give me a position on the orphanage’s staff. But then,” he says, his throat going hoarse, “one night, everything changed. The children were asleep, but I was never a good sleeper. Not after years of training my body to stay up all hours of the night, watching for a Fate. I’d given up my search by then, but I heard a draft from the window, and she just…appeared.”
Peter’s eyes go glassy now, his awe still peeking through the surface. “She was hideous and beautiful and hidden in the shadows, but I knew she was one of the Fates. I was so sure she had come for me, after all those years. I called out to her as she approached the bed of one of the boys. It must’ve startled her, because she whipped around, and it was only then I realized she hadn’t come for me at all, but the boy in the bed across from me, still sound asleep. At first I suppose I was jealous, but now that I had her attention, I was sure I could keep it. I was always good at finding and keeping attention,” he says, an affectionate smile for his younger self playing on his face.
“The Sister appeared intrigued that I didn’t cower from her presence and that her sleeping spell had not worked on me. Upon further examination, she realized it was because I had been waiting for her, expecting her, that I was immune to her glamour. I begged her for a chance to prove myself. Promised I’d make any bargain she wished, if only I didn’t have to be thrown out onto the street where I would surely become a bloated corpse. You see, there was talk of a new warden overtaking the facility after unflattering rumors had circulated about the current warden. I wasn’t sure it would be as easy to convince the new warden to keep me on staff.”
“Why not?” I ask.
Peter blinks, then continues on with his story. As if he didn’t hear me at all. “The Sister stared at me a long while and informed me my aspirations were too meager. That they wouldn’t protect me from that which I truly feared. This confused me, but she had already turned back to the boy across from me. I scrambled out of my bed and followed her, watching as she unstoppered a vial of shimmering liquid.”
My heart pounds as I hang on every word of Peter’s. My mother never told me this part of the story, but one night I overheard her telling my father she’d had a nightmare that the shadowed woman had come for me. That Mother had consented as she’d pressed a vial, dripping with opal liquid, to my lips. My mother had instantly regretted it, but it had been too late. The potion had already stolen the color from my cheeks, the blood from my lips. I’d gotten the impression that, in reality, before the Fate had offered my mother a bargain to save my life, she’d offered to put me out of my suffering.
When I first read the story of the Sisters in a tattered faerie tale book caked with dust, I imagined it had been the Eldest Sister who had healed me. I’d been young and thought that since the Eldest Sister was obsessed with love, it had to have been her who promised me to her Shadow Keeper. Only after I learned of my mother’s nightmare did my attention shift to the Youngest Sister, who had appeared at my sickbed not to heal me, but to usher me to the grave without pain.
Peter continues. “She lowered it to his mouth, but I defied her, grabbing the vial before the liquid could brush his lips. I knew I had forfeited my life, then. I just expected the Sister to end me with a true death. Never did I anticipate the punishment that ensued, though even then, I didn’t realize it was a punishment.
“She told me I was a fool. That she was a Fate, and she could see that which I could not. Killing the child in his bed, in the middle of a deep slumber from which he would not wake, a full belly and a heart full of bedtime stories—that path would have been a mercy, she told me. She told me she was the most compassionate of her sisters, and that she had seen what their dark hearts had worked for this child. She told me there was a plague within the walls of the orphanage, one that had already infected the boy. A disease that he’d already spread to some of the others.”
I think of the way my parents described the plague to me. Sailors waking in the middle of the night to the sound of scraping metal, thinking someone was unfurling the chains that held the anchor, only to discover it was coming from their bunkmate’s chest. The ill losing limbs to a sickly necrosis.
“The Sister claimed death was a mercy. When she told me what the boy’s future held, my whole body trembled, the vial with it. I couldn’t imagine such a fate for my friend, and I immediately had to run to the latrine and unburden my stomach. She appeared pleased, at first, that I had heard of the pain to befall the boy and been affected by it. Perhaps she felt my reaction justified her perception of mercy. But I couldn’t bear to poison my friend, even knowing the future it would spare him.
“I refused to give the Fate her vial back. Instead, I offered an idea. It wasn’t too hard to come up with, not when it had been part of my dream all along. I asked her if the boy could be cured, his fate changed, but she said it could not. The illness had already taken hold.”
My stomach writhes, my breathing labored. “But he wasn’t showing symptoms yet, was he?” I ask. It doesn’t make sense to me, why the Sister could heal me, but not the boy, when I was a step away from death.
“According to the Sister,” Peter says, “it was about more than just the matter of a plague. The boy’s fate was already woven. Had been rewoven a thousand times and still ended with the same horrific result. The sickness would spread, eventually wiping out the entire village.
“I asked her if his fate would change if he were taken far away, quarantined outside of the village, but she said she’d already tried as much in his tapestry. The boy had to die. All other paths led to the same destination.
“I could feel myself desperately grasping for a solution that would spare his life. So I asked, what if we took him out of the realm? What if we wove him somewhere different, somewhere his fate could not reach him? Perhaps then he’d have a fair chance to recover. This, it seemed, struck a chord with the Fate, and I glimpsed a flash of regret in her shadows. It seemed clear to me she didn’t enjoy bringing swift death upon children, even if she perceived it to be a mercy. She said it was indeed possible, though it would not guarantee keeping the boy from meeting another miserable fate. Perhaps the same one. But she agreed it increased his chances of a better life. She faded away, and when she returned, it was with a loom and thread. I watched her all night as she wove.
“When the time came to weave the boy in, I stuck out my hand to stop her. She couldn’t very well put him in a tapestry all by himself. That would be the worst torture of all. According to the Sister, this boy wasn’t the only one who had been infected. She’d come to the orphanage intending to take the lives of several boys, but there was a condition for saving them.
“She needed a Shadow Keeper. Someone to watch over not just the boys, but the realm itself. It was experimental, she said, and she was less than confident that this plan would work. So she agreed only under the condition I would become the Shadow Keeper and watch after the boys she planned to weave into the tapestry.”
“So that’s what Neverland is?” I ask. “A tapestry created by a Fate?”
“More or less,” he says, “though it operates differently from the rest of the realms. It was made under a sense of urgency, so if you were to travel across the sea, you’d find a void where the sea ended.”
“Like a tapestry left unfinished,” I say.
“Exactly like that,” says Peter.
“And the Lost Boys? They’re here because each of them was infected? And when you brought them here, they recovered?”
Peter nods. He doesn’t say whether all the boys he brought to Neverland recovered. It makes me wonder if something about being in Neverland bolsters the body’s immunity, or if the Lost Boys are just a remnant of the group he tried to save from the orphanage.
The unsaid statement hangs between us, swelling in the humid air until I can hardly hold it in. “And Thomas? He was the original boy who got sick, wasn’t he? And he died anyway. And Freckles too.”
Peter turns away from me, staring blankly into the canopy. “The Fate warned me that our plan would not protect them from all possible woes. But even Thomas’s death—this will sound cruel, but if you knew what was to become of him in our original realm, you would likely find his premature death a mercy.”
“Peter,” I say, hardly able to get his name out, “do you think that’s why they’re dying? Because they were supposed to die in their own realm? Because they weren’t supposed to escape?”
“I hope not,” is all he says, which isn’t at all comforting.
“And their memories? Why can’t they remember their time before Neverland?”
“The Sister and I thought it would be for the best, considering the things that happened to them in that orphanage.” He says it so flatly, it almost doesn’t register. Like when he wouldn’t answer my question about why the first warden had been easy to persuade.
I feel sick, but it seems wrong to pry about such private matters. So I pivot to the other question still rattling in my mind. “So why me? If this is the very Fate with which my parents made their bargain, why did she wish to give me to you?”
“That is a mystery, isn’t it?” says Peter.
“You said when you first arrived it was meant to be a punishment. What is the Fate punishing you for?”
Peter’s eyes twinkle. “Funny. I don’t remember saying you were a punishment.”
“It was implied.”
Peter just smirks, avoiding my question by saying, “The Sister has her own reasons for doing things. If I were to guess, it likely has more to do with something she wants than anything to do with me or you.”
A thought churns in my mind. I don’t love the idea of that creature having something she wants from me. “But if she wants something, why make a bargain with humans at all? Why not just weave it into my fate?”
“Human and fae fates are more complex than that. The Sisters themselves have some control over them, but you have to remember that there are three of them, so when the will of one diverges from that of the other two, she must become crafty to get her way. You see, we individuals sometimes move the threads ourselves in the Fates’ sleep. I imagine they find it quite frustrating indeed,” he says. A lovely defiance winks in the corners of Peter’s expression, in the way he clings to me all the more tightly.
“So you gave up your life in your original realm to watch over the Lost Boys?” I ask.
Peter shrugs. “It’s not as if I had much of a future anyway. At the end of the day, I got what I wanted, didn’t I? Not to find myself cast out on the street, begging and stealing food until I turned up in the ground, facing whatever horrible fate awaits me.”
I frown, sorrow for Peter overcoming my chest.
“And your shadow self?”
“I can only return to the other realms if I’m in that form, but it takes something away from me. The last bit of reason and self-control that keep my less desirable qualities in check.”
“Unless?” I say, remembering the night he took my hand in the clock tower.
“Unless I’m touching you, so it seems,” he says, his thumb drawing circles on my shoulder. “Though why I was provided that lovely little loophole, I can’t say.”
My throat goes dry. “That hardly seems necessary. The part about only being able to visit the other realms in shadow form, I mean.”
“I don’t believe the Sister ever wanted me to leave here willingly.” He winks at me. “She’s been known to think I’m flighty.”
“But you’d never leave the boys.”
Peter shakes his head, then after a moment, says, “I apologize for how I treated you when in shadow form. As I said, it’s me, but without any restraint. Without a moral code guiding my actions and desires. I am sorry for frightening you as a child, but I hope you believe me when I say I am not that being. Not always, at least. Not now.”
Again, I feel that swell of indecision surround me. There’s a gentle trust ebbing between us. There has been since the moment I not only let him drop me, but begged him. He caught me, didn’t he? Every time. If he meant me harm, at least in this form, he would show it. Still, the vision of the shadow creature that dwells inside him lurches through my memories, cutting through his words and swathing them in darkness, so I can’t tell which way is up. What is the lie and what is the truth.
My mother used to tell me that I had an uncanny gift for seeing everyone else’s perspective. She said I could tiptoe into their minds and peep out from behind their pupils. From the way she spoke, you would have thought it was an asset, but it’s not as simple as that. It’s having to rethink everything I believe each time a new point is brought to my attention. It’s evaluating everyone else’s opinion, everyone else’s story, with equal seriousness, regardless of whether they’ve earned it. It’s forgetting myself every time another person opens their mouth, then waiting for my own opinions to return to me only in the safety of quiet loneliness.
“I need some time to think,” I tell him, because I can’t trust my own thoughts with Peter’s voice in my ear, his hands on my waist.
With what I now know, I want nothing more than to comfort him. But what if I were to tell John the truth? Would he offer a perspective I hadn’t yet considered, one that sounded as convincing as Peter’s? I don’t doubt that John wouldn’t trust Peter’s tale, but how much of that is because John will never trust Peter, no matter whether Peter deserves it?
Peter presses something into my palm, leathery and sure. The hilt of the curved dagger is weighty, the leather supple against my chapped fingertips.
“I want you to keep this with you,” he says, nuzzling his face into my hair. “The shabby one Simon sometimes lets you borrow wouldn’t protect you from a wild hare.”
I fall asleep like that, in Peter’s arms, the very ones I once feared. We’re high above the ground, but I no longer fear falling.
I fall asleep with a dagger clutched to my lap.