Chapter 35
After the dreadful evening when my mother and father sat me down at the foot of their bed and shattered my world by telling me of a sickly girl and a bargain struck with a shadow, I didn’t sleep for weeks.
When my young, restless body finally succumbed to slumber, I began walking through the house at night, screaming when I would awake to find myself lost in the wailing shadows.
My mother, as incapable of handling my pain as she was the dreadful night I fell ill, came up with a solution.
One night as she tucked me in, she waited for John to fall asleep—Michael was yet to be born—and tipped a cold goblet to my lips. She told me it was juice. I knew how juice was made, by squeezing the liquid from a grape, but as soon as the foul liquid hit my tongue, I knew there had been a mistake. The grape must have soured before the juice had a chance to be made.
I remember gagging as the vile liquid stung on its way down my throat. After several seconds, the sensation of being lowered into a freshly heated bath washed over my body. Like having a fever, except without the sweats and chills and body aches that make fevers so unpleasant.
Not only that, but the shadows in the corner that had just seemed so looming, so terrifying, now appeared like regular shadows.
I didn’t fight my mother after that. Instead, I asked for another sip.
Peter doesn’t returnthat night. Or the next. Or the night after that. I ask Simon about it, and he says when there’s a blood moon, it’s not unusual for Peter to be away for weeks.
Peter took his pouch of faerie dust with him.
He left some behind with Simon. Enough to keep me protected from the shadows, Simon explains. But he’s on strict orders not to give me more than a pinch. The burst of color I get from my daily dose is the pinnacle of my day, but it’s never enough.
My blood feels as if it’s scraping through my veins. I try to distract myself, volunteering for half the boys’ chores. While it endears me to them, it does little to soothe the sandpaper feel of my veins.
John doesn’t come to visit me, and he certainly doesn’t bring Michael. I’ve been sleeping in Peter’s bed, seeking solace in the amber and pine scent of his sheets.
Episodes of feverish sweats wake me during the night, but so far the shadows have yet to return. By the third day, I’m positive that if I don’t get more faerie dust in my system, my blood will run dry and I’ll shrivel up.
Presents show up at the foot of Peter’s bed. A whittled set of figurines—a farmer, a merchant, and three women with hoods. Wildflowers from the edges of Joel’s garden—I’m pretty sure they’re weeds, but their blue hue and delicate petals make them beautiful. Nettle brings me my meals, always making sure to tell me when the food was prepared by him, thereby making it superior. Simon brings me a change of clothes to replace the ones I sweated through. The Twins afford me their quiet company, and I often wake to one of them reading silently in the corner, though I’m never sure which one. Even Smalls comes to check on me, though he darts out of the room anytime he realizes I’m awake.
The small acts of kindness touch my heart, but I can’t help but wish they were coming from my own family.
Once I feel well enough to walk, I go back to my room to seek solace in my brothers, but as soon as I enter the room, Michael slinks away from me, hiding in John’s arms.
So I grab my coat and sneak out of the Den and into Neverland.
The plan isto scale the cliffs to Peter’s storehouse. Guilt writhes in my chest for plotting to steal from him. Though I remind myself that it’s not really stealing. Not when Peter would happily provide me with more if he were here.
Well, perhaps not happily. But he would give it to me. I’m certain of it.
As I walk along the beach, the sorrowful wind howls, though what it’s mourning, I can’t say. Beach air sprays in my nostrils, filling my lungs in a way that’s refreshing, clearing my head.
The more I walk and the more my blood flows, the more my one-track mind clears, and it hits me what exactly I’m doing. I’m sneaking out of the Den in the middle of the night to get a fix.
My hands tremble, though I’m not sure whether it’s from withdrawals or terror at the thought.
This happened to me when I was eight. My father discovered me in his wine cellar in the middle of the night, nursing a bottle of aged faerie wine.
I’d downed an entire bottle, and had yet to fall over.
My father was furious, I’m sure, though he wasn’t the type to fight with my mother in front of the children. He didn’t speak to her for months after that.
Apparently, that behavior was considered appropriate in front of the children. Like we wouldn’t notice that Papa suddenly couldn’t hear Mama’s questions at the breakfast table.
Truth be told, it’s amazing I did notice. The doctor had to be called when, after several days without the wine, my body fell into shock, my limbs shaking as I broke into a cold sweat. I vaguely remember shouting obscenities at my parents, words that had never left my mouth before that day and haven’t since.
I remember not being Wendy.
I remember waking up as myself and being terrified.
The aching for the wine stayed with me and remained for a good while, though I found myself slipping into the old habit around courting season. Or in the winter, when the shadows lingered longer.
I recognize it now, the vicious tapping against my skull, my body demanding that which it doesn’t need. It threatens to drown out all rational thought, which is why I’m out on the beach in the middle of the night.
In the middle of a storm. I blink, finally noticing the raindrops needling my skin. The murky sky above, clouds obscuring the stars.
How desperate had I been for faerie dust that I hadn’t even noticed it was storming?
It’s a physically arduous task, but I turn myself back around, the magnetism of Peter’s storehouse screaming at me.
That’s when I see it.
Further down the beach, a silhouette lies prostrate in the sand, highlighted by the moonlight.
My steps accelerate into a run. Thoughts of who might be laid out on the sand bombard me. Is it a Lost Boy, or perhaps Peter?
No, it wouldn’t be Peter. I don’t see any wings.
When I approach, I find the man face-down in the sand. When I go to turn him, I’m throttled with a horrible flashback to flipping the murderer’s body in the sand. I hesitate, then tuck my finger into the crook of the man’s jaw. It’s stubbly, rough against my skin, but I feel a faint pulse there, begging me softly to save the stranger. I bite my lip. I can’t make out the man’s features, but he’s dressed in soaked breeches and a white shirt.
What had Peter said?
That Neverland attracts those with darkness in their souls?
My heart flutters, racing faster than it should even under stress due to the faerie dust, but I defy my better judgment and loop my arms underneath the man’s torso, struggling with his limp body as I flip him over.
His back thuds against the ground at the same moment the moonlight flashes across his face, like the sky itself is intent on exposing him.
My gut turns over, my head whirling. Blood painted in the shape of open smiles streaks across my vision, my memories, but none of them obscure his hauntingly beautiful face.
Because the man who lies before me is the one who forced my parents to take their own lives.
Captain Nolan Astor.
Sand lodgesitself between my toes as I pace up and down the shoreline. My fingers are in my mouth as I bite at my nails, something I haven’t done since that first time my father took the bottle away from me. My heart thuds against my chest, Peter’s storehouse calling to me even louder than before.
I need more. My throat bulges with pain, pain that just a drop against my tongue would whisk away, but no.
The captain is here, in Neverland, on the beach with me, and I have to figure out what to do about it.
My belt digs into my flesh as I fumble for my dagger. Even the weight of the hilt against my palm feels like a judge’s gavel, resoundingly permanent. It’s heavier than before, like it absorbed the resistance of the murderer’s flesh, and now I can sense the reverberations of his crunching ribs reaching out to me from the past.
It would be easier this time, I tell myself. Captain Astor isn’t moving.
The very thought makes me want to vomit, but I crawl next to him on my hands and knees anyway. Then I place the tip of my blade to his chest, allowing it to follow the curve of his ribs until I find the soft, open flesh between.
There. I’ll just aim there.
I lift the blade, but my hands are trembling so violently, I lose my place. I don’t know if I can bear to strike him twice, no matter how my hate for him surges in my chest. So I touch the tip of the blade to his chest and determine to throw all my weight into the hilt.
I push there lightly, too lightly. Sweat beads on my forehead, mingling with rainwater, as I remember just how much pressure I’m going to have to apply to actually pierce this fae through.
I close my eyes and try again, but it’s like an invisible hand sneaks in through the past, from the beach where I killed the stranger, and stops me.
I can’t do it.
I can’t do it.
My mother slitting her throat.
I can’t do it for her.
My father crumpling to the floor in a pool of his own blood.
I can’t do it for him.
My scream.
I certainly can’t do it for me.
I had one kill in me, and I spent it on the murderer on the beach.
Panicked, I wipe the sweat from my brow and try to calm myself. It’s okay that I can’t kill the captain. I’ll just find Peter, and Peter will do it for me.
Except Peter isn’t here.
Perhaps I could recruit some of the Lost Boys for help, but they’ve become closer to John lately, and I don’t think I can bear for him to know the captain is on the island. I remember him finding me by the sink basin and asking if I enjoyed putting a blade through Thomas’s murderer. My brother has bloodshed in his heart, a stinging sense of vengeance in his eyes. If he finds out Captain Astor is on the island, he’ll drive a blade through his neck. Or make him cut his throat with his own hand.
And then he’ll be a killer like me.
I don’t know that the shadows will haunt John at night like they do me, but there’s something wrong on this island, in this realm that was rushed to be made. Grief comes in torrents, and where I could hold it at bay in my home world, here it topples over me, consuming me.
So letting out a tiny sob as I do it, I sheathe my dagger and loop my hands underneath the captain’s armpits.
And drag him away.