Chapter 32
Nearby, Peter stirs. I hardly notice.
I killed a man.
I killed a man.
I killed a man.
It’s as if I think repeating it to myself will punish me somehow. Will make me believe it. I feel as if I should need to vomit, but nothing comes up. My hands tremble, black sand embedding itself underneath my fingernails as I stare at the open-mouthed corpse.
“You’re going into shock,” says Peter, scraping his cheek against the sand as he hefts his body to turn and look at me.
“I suppose that makes sense,” I say quietly, unable to take my eyes off the man I just killed.
Just a few moments ago, he was climbing. His robust body was scaling the rock in the midst of the storm. Strong and lithe and agile. It’s amazing what the human body can do, but the fae body even more so.
What is equally amazing is how quickly all that ability drains away. It doesn’t seem like it should be possible. To die that quickly. That easily. Of course, it wasn’t quick, I remind myself. It wasn’t some strange accident that removed the man’s head before he had time to register that death had come for its prey early.
I drove my dagger into his back.
No. Drove is too definite a word. I hacked into his organs, carving his flesh, his very life, from his chest cavity.
“He was going to kill me,” says Peter, his voice too even, too sure.
“Right,” I say, shaking my head back and forth. This was a madman. Not only was he going to kill Peter, he had Thomas’s bracelet. The one that they never found when they recovered Thomas’s body.
This man had killed an innocent boy. And I had killed him.
It was only right.
“You did the right thing,” echoes Peter.
It sounds true on his lips, so why is my soul so skeptical? Perhaps it’s forever imprinted from the plunging of my dagger into his flesh, the awful crunch of ribs and burst of fleshy cardiac muscle underneath my blade’s too-dull point.
“Wendy Darling, I need patching up,” Peter says, flicking his tattered wing to emphasize his words.
I nod my head like doing so will shake out the shock paralyzing my body. It doesn’t feel as though it should work. I can’t feel my limbs, a horrible numbness settling over me so completely it’s a wonder they move at all.
I watch my fingers as if I’m not the one guiding them, as if I’m an apprentice gazing upon another’s hands at work. It’s someone else’s hands that follow Peter’s instructions to get the stitching material out of the pouch hanging from his belt.
I take a breath.
I can do this.
Luckily, the motion of stitching is familiar to me, having taken so many lessons in embroidery as a child. Peter’s hide is tougher than cloth, but I tell myself it’s not the flesh of his wings. That I’m simply stitching a crisp pattern into leather.
Leather is already dead.
My mind repeats these words as if they’ll help, but I find it’s the familiar task that steadies my quivering fingers. I thread the needle in and out, paying careful attention to the section where a flap of wing hangs, almost separated from the wing itself. The man must have struck while they struggled in the sky. No wonder Peter dove.
As a fae, Peter should heal quickly, though I’m sure it helps if all the pieces that need healing are in the correct place. Likely, that makes it even more imperative that I stitch Peter up quickly.
“You’re not even flinching,” I say.
Peter cranes his neck, his cheek dusted with black sand, and winks at me. “I have an abnormally high pain tolerance.”
I think he’s trying to make me feel better. That much is obvious. Or perhaps he’s keeping himself from flinching because he knows if I feel the slightest indication that I’m causing him pain by ripping into his skin, I’ll lose the contents of my gut.
At least, that’s what should happen.
I’m not sure why it’s not happening. I just killed a man, after all.
Peter closes his eyes and breathes deeply throughout the entire process, not even clenching his jaw to brace himself. I read once that fae wings are highly sensitive to both touch and pain. I’m not sure what to make of it that Peter is pretending this isn’t excruciating for him. Maybe he innately knows what I need right now.
“The man…” I say, hoping if I say this aloud, maybe I’ll feel something. Maybe the words will get stuck in my throat and I’ll sob. I don’t, so I continue. “I found Thomas’s bracelet on him.”
Peter goes still as the surface of an undisturbed pond.
“Why…” I swallow. “Why do you think he hurt him? Why was he trying to hurt you?”
Peter’s breathing isn’t quite as even anymore, and from where I have one hand braced on his wing, I can feel his pulse accelerate.
“How did he even get here?” Finally, my voice breaks, though it’s not with guilt so much as anger. Anguish ripples through me each time I make a puncture in Peter’s skin. Each cut feels like piercing my own flesh.
It’s not only Peter I’m angry for. I’m angry for me. Angry at the stranger who forced me to shed blood, who stole my innocence. Whose back did not break easily, whose ribs protected him and forced me to linger longer in the moment than I should have.
I hate the stranger for ripping my soul from my chest, almost as much as I hate him for doing worse to Thomas and Freckles. For leaving those poor boys’ bodies mangled for their friends to find.
A scream riles at my throat, but I hold it back as Peter takes a breath to respond.
“When the Sister formed this realm, she warned me it was unnatural. Different from the rest. That its pull would attract lost souls. It’s one reason she sent me to watch after the Lost Boys. She warned that her other Sisters would not like that their fates had been tampered with, their threads pulled. It’s not so easy to rewrite a fate that has been set several times. Because of Neverland’s origins, there are lost souls who find themselves wandering in.”
“But how do they get in?” I almost choke the question out. It’s hot in my throat, on my chapped lips, in the freezing air.
“There are other ways into Neverland besides just the second star,” says Peter. “The second star is one of many gaps. The Sister had to make Neverland in a hurry. From how she’s explained it, there are gaps in the Fabric, holes and mistakes she made as she wove it under a time restraint, racing the boys’ fate. Those are how the wild ones slip in. I’m usually able to find them, to deal with them before they get anywhere close to the Lost Boys. Our Den is as far away from any of the mistakes in Neverland as I could get it. But I told you…Thomas strayed too far for me to protect him. So did Freckles. He was never supposed to go near that cove. They both must have wandered close to the gaps.”
I think of what the wretched stranger did to the boy who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Peter?” I ask, my heart thundering wildly.
“Yes?” he says, though his voice is cold, like he knows what I’m about to ask.
“You said all the Lost Boys were infected, right? That everyone here was supposed to die?”
Peter swallows, and that’s answer enough.
“Does that mean…” I pause, taking a breath. “Do you think the other boys are in danger? That their fates will come to find them too?”
“I don’t know,” says Peter. Why does that sound so much like a lie?
I’m about to confront him about it, but just as I’m about to open my mouth, someone yells from across the beach.
At first, I think it’s just the howling wind, but when I turn to look, I find a group of boys scrambling over the rocks. The Lost Boys approach us quickly, Simon running at the front, John taking up the rear as he holds Michael’s hand.
Why John brought him out given the weather we were experiencing only a few moments ago, I have no idea, but the storm itself seems to have died down. Like it changed its mind after it saw that its fun was over, that the mercenary it sent to do its dirty work was dead.
Simon glimpses the dead body first. His first inclination is to turn around. I watch his gaze bounce atop each head of the group, counting.
Sweet Simon.
As soon as he’s done counting, relief swarms his face.
Then he picks up his pace and runs.
“Peter, what ha—”
Simon’s eyes slip over the corpse’s wrist, landing on the bracelet.
The rest of the boys have caught up to us now. I go to call to my brother, but he’s lost in thought.
John’s attention is fixated on my hands. Or rather, the blood staining them.
Eventually,we get Peter upright, though his wings are already healing around the stitches I made.
“How did you know to come after us?” I ask Simon.
The boys all huddle around in a circle, some of them tending to Peter. Victor alone stands above the corpse, his eyes locked to attention on the dead man. I wonder if he knows. If it’s worth telling him that this is the man who killed his brother. Perhaps he’ll hate me for stealing the kill that was his right.
“Peter never stays out this long in a storm,” says Simon, a teasing grin on his face as he looks at Peter. “It’s because he’s a princess about his wings. You would think they were made of cashmere.”
I consider how that’s not entirely true. He’d stayed out in the rain the day Freckles died.
Peter, now propped against a rock, shoves at Simon’s knees, but Simon dodges well enough.
The Lost Boys look back and forth between Peter and the corpse, an unspoken question hanging in the air.
“Well, if the rest of you are too much of obedient cowards to ask, I’ll do it,” says Victor, his voice hoarse as he looks at Peter. “Is this the man that killed my brother?”
Instead of answering, Peter nods toward me. Lip trembling, I pull the bracelet off the man’s limp wrist and hand it to Victor, placing it in his shaking palm and closing his fingers over it. As soon as he feels the press of the beads against his palm, he lets out a horrible strangled sound.
Rarely have I witnessed a man cry. There’s John and Michael, of course, but even John stopped the habit when my father told him he was a man now, and that men don’t show weakness.
Victor must have gotten the same message because he clasps his hand over his mouth as if to shove the wretched noise back in, as if he can swallow the sound, force it into his gut until the bile in his stomach churns it into excrement.
It doesn’t work, of course, and only serves to make Victor sob louder, thick tears blanketing his face, larger than the beads of rain that trickle down his cheeks. The other boys don’t seem to know what to do. Most of them have tears running down their faces as well, though they’re the quiet sort. The type that would be indistinguishable from the rain if one wasn’t looking carefully.
“Victor,” I say softly, advancing, but he shakes his head, holding a palm out to keep me from coming any closer. The beaded bracelet is still looped around his thumb in the shape of a noose.
“The rest of you go home,” says Peter.
The boys open their mouths to argue, but are stopped when Peter, in a tone more forcefully than I’ve ever heard, says, “Now.”
Dejectedly, the boys turn and huddle in a group to walk back. Only John and Michael linger, Michael’s voice high-pitched as he repeats, “And the monster was slain, and the prince and the princess lived happily ever after. And the monster was slain, and the prince and the princess lived happily ever after.”
“You should get him away from the body,” I say, my throat dry.
John nods, somewhat absentmindedly, moisture fogging his glasses. He offers me a gentle twitch of his head that tells me he wants to talk later.
When he and Michael leave, it’s just me, Peter, and Victor who remain.
“I want to know everything you do,” says Victor. The sobbing has subsided now, his voice dipping into a register I’ve yet to hear from him. “Don’t think you can leave anything out. I deserve to know.”
I listen as Peter explains that there are holes in Neverland where sometimes others can fall through. He makes a point to say they only work one-way. That strikes me as odd, but perhaps he forgot to mention that to me earlier. Then he tells Victor that sometimes the evil, the lost, are drawn to the pull of Neverland. He leaves out the part about why. About the Sister who wove the tapestry specifically for these boys.
He leaves out all information pertinent to their past.
“But why Thomas?” Victor asks, his question a plea.
I want to tell him that there will be no answer to satisfy. That nothing will make the brutal murder of an innocent boy make sense. But I think Victor probably already knows that. Saying so would make him out to be a fool, and Victor is no fool.
He’s just a boy.
And a brother.
“Thomas was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” says Peter. “There’s no rhyme or reason to it other than that.”
Victor’s face goes placid, and I recognize the utter resignation in the way the fight seeps out of him. “I thought there might have been a reason,” he says, somewhat distantly, under his breath.
He blinks away tears, like this is his last shot at them. Like it’s time to put away such foolish things.
“What are you going to do with the body?” Victor asks.
Peter looks at me, hand on his knee, but addresses Victor. “I thought I would leave that up to you.”
Victor nods, placing his fists on his hips and glaring down at the man who murdered his brother. “I want to leave him in a shallow grave. Just like he left Thomas. That way, the crows won’t have any trouble finding him.”
My stomach feels as if it’s going to be sick, but what am I going to do? Tell Victor that letting this corpse rot openly won’t bring his brother back?
I think he probably already knows that.
In the end,we don’t bury the man on the beach. Victor doesn’t want to risk the tide washing away the body. I get the sickening feeling that he wants to come back for it. That he wants to watch it rot, bit by bit. As if he’ll gain some peace of mind from witnessing the worms wriggle and writhe through the rotting corpse.
“When we found Thomas,” Victor says as he stares at his brother’s killer, “the bugs had already gotten to him. He had marks on his neck from where he was choked. I keep wondering how long it took him to pass out. How long he had to live with the realization that he was going to die.”
I say nothing.
I just dig. It doesn’t take us long. Not when the intent is to leave the grave shallow. I dig with my trembling hands next to Victor, whose tears mingle with the rainwater dripping from the canopy overhead, forming mud clots in the dirt.
We dump the body in.
Victor spits on the corpse’s face.
When I get backto the room, my belly is empty, leaving a gnawing feeling like it’s eating itself. But even if I wanted to sneak food from the kitchens, even if I had any appetite, I’m not sure that I could keep it down.
I find the communal bathroom, a room consisting of a bucket and a spigot that siphons water from the underground streams, and scrub at my bloodied hands until they’re raw. When that doesn’t rid me of the stink of the stranger’s blood, I rub so hard that I draw my own blood, hoping that at least it will mask the stench.
It doesn’t. It smells the same as the murderer’s. Like there’s no difference between him and me. Like even my nose is aware of the fact that both of us are tainted, poisoned with the fact that we’ve stolen a life from this world, severed a soul from its body.
I have to turn the spigot off, because the dripping makes me think of blood. I already have to deal with the sound of crunching ribs echoing in my skull. The sound I know I didn’t actually hear, due to the raging of the waves, but my mind seems to have filled in the gaps of my memories.
When I bite down on my sleeve to stifle a scream, something moves in the corner. I spin around and clutch the water basin, only to find John standing in the shadows. His face is pale, more so than usual. Like all that’s happened has scoured the color right out of his cheeks. Like he’s a sketch being erased by an artist struggling with confidence in his work.
“I hate what he’s done to you,” John says, his voice even, though not the type that indicates calm.
The faerie lantern light flickers on his face, gone gaunt at the cheeks. I hadn’t noticed before how conspicuous his cheekbones have become, how he’s all sharp lines and angles.
It reminds me of Captain Astor, for some reason, but I don’t want it to, so I push it away.
“It’s not Peter’s fault,” I say, sticking my hands back into the frigid water behind me, hoping that this time the cold will cleanse them. And if not, at least it will numb them. At least it will keep me from feeling the resistance of the man’s flesh carried up through the hilt of the dagger.
“I’m not talking about Peter,” says John, his eyes glassing over.
“Oh.” My mind flashes back to the night of our parents’ death, and I realize that to John, this isn’t the only time I’ve been forced to shed blood. Granted, it wasn’t my blade that took to our parents’ throats, but it happened because of me. Even if I don’t understand all the reasons, it’s because of me that my brothers are orphans.
I wonder then if secretly John hates me, despite himself. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but then again, I wouldn’t have thought I could draw blood, halt its pulsing, much less.
“What did it feel like?” John asks, blinking until his eyes come into focus. “Taking that man’s life?”
A shiver ripples through me.
“Horrible,” I say, though that’s such an understatement it feels like a lie.
John nods, then frowns. “Did you know he’d murdered Thomas when you killed him?”
I shake my head, my throat dry.
John nods again, thoughtfully. “It makes sense then, why you feel guilt over it.”
“He was going to kill Peter,” I say. “I had to save him. I want it not to have been me who did it. I want something else to blame, but it was my hands, my fingers, my panic.”
John comes over and reaches behind me, taking my numb hands from underneath the chilled water and handing me a rag to dry them off. “It’s because of how you feel about him. About Peter.”
I nod, because that explanation stings less, though something about it still doesn’t sit right with me.
“If he had succeeded in killing Peter, do you think you would have enjoyed killing him more?”
I freeze, that chill rippling through me again. “John, I—”
John stares at me with mournful eyes. “Please don’t look at me like that,” he says.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re disappointed in me. Like you don’t at all understand what I mean. How I could want…” He sighs, letting his shoulders droop, then runs his fingers through his hair. “I dream about it sometimes,” he says, “forcing the captain to slit his throat with his own blade.”
I nod, ashamed of myself for not noticing the bitter hole that’s burned its way through my brother’s chest.
“I doubt it would feel as satisfying as you think,” I say.
“What makes you say that?”
“Victor got his revenge on his brother’s killer. He buried him in a shallow grave so the ravens could pluck out his eyes and the worms could eat his flesh. He spat on the corpse of the man who stole everything from him. And he was still weeping on his knees when we left.”
John stares at me. His voice doesn’t waver when he says, “Victor didn’t get to feel the soul leave that scum’s body.”
My breath catches as I’m transported to that moment. The moment when I knew the man was dead at my hands, when his spirit cried out at me.
“You don’t want that, John. Trust me when I say you don’t want that.”
“Don’t tell me what I want,” he snaps. It’s the first time he’s ever raised his voice at me since we were children.
Just then, Nettle and Benjamin barge in, both cramming themselves through the doorway like they’ve been racing to the bathroom. Confusion swarms their faces as they glance back and forth between me and my brother. The tension in the room must be palpable because Nettle murmurs an apology about not knowing anyone was in here and scurries out, dragging Benjamin with him.
John clears his throat.
I pick at the hairs at the base of my skull, sighing as I try not to take his outburst personally. “John, to take another person’s life…”
“You did it when it needed to be done.”
“Taking a life to save another’s isn’t what you’re talking about.”
“Is it not? What if I need it to save mine?”
John’s blinking away tears now, and for a moment, it strikes through the leather barrier covering my soul. I throw my arms around my brother, pulling him closer, sorry for the pain I let him drown in without my help.
“Don’t let him eat at you from the inside,” I whisper. “I miss them too, but we’re never going to see him again. Fantasizing about revenge, it’s only going to leave you wanting. Empty. Do you understand me?” I ask, pulling away and gazing into my brother’s face. For a moment, I’m shocked when I have to look up at him, not down. It’s silly, because John has been taller than me for several years now, but in this moment, I’d felt like we were still children, John coming to me crying after he’d scraped his knee.
But John hasn’t scraped his knee.
I can see it in the way he looks down at me with pity. Like, though the care I have for him has touched him, he thinks there’s something I’m missing. Something that could set both of us free.
I’m starting to wonder if my parents aren’t the only family members that I lost to the captain that night.