Chapter 39
It’s almost morning by the time I make it back to the Den. That concerns me, mostly because I don’t like that I lost track of time while telling the captain my story.
His words still grate on me, the way he took my pain and used it as yet another reason to justify what he did to my parents.
I’ve worked myself into such a fury that I don’t notice Joel until I run straight into him.
“Winds?” he says, placing his hands on my shoulders as he looks down at me with a sheepish grin. I fight the urge to recoil at his touch. Joel has always been kind to me, but I won’t easily forget his tendency to torture animals.
“What are you doing up so early?” he asks, noting the satchel slung across my body.
My heart pounds, my mind searching for an answer that will satisfy him. I’m so exhausted, it takes me a moment to realize that he asked what I’m doing up early rather than why I was out so late.
“I’m about to go gather…” I stare at my satchel. “Herbs. Today’s a busy day, so I thought I’d get an early start.”
This seems to satisfy Joel, because he nods and says, “Makes sense. Especially since you have cooking duty with me tonight.”
“Right,” I say, neglecting to mention that I’d forgotten all about that.
“Hey, I’m glad I ran into you.” Joel plunges his hand into his own satchel. When he pulls out a furry white mouse, I cringe, which he immediately misinterprets as pity for the disgusting creature.
“No, it’s not like that,” he says, eyes wide as he clings to the wriggling animal. “I’m not going to hurt him. I’ve been keeping him as a pet. Found him in the garden a week ago, caught in the tomato vines. I’ve been taking care of him ever since. I thought…” He stops, swallowing, desperation haunting his sallow cheeks, begging me to understand.
“You’re replacing a bad habit with a good one,” I say, though keeping a rodent as a pet isn’t exactly what I would normally classify as a good habit.
Joel’s face lights up. “Yeah. And it’s working, too. But it’s all because of you. Knowing that there was someone out there who knew about my…well, problem, but didn’t treat me any differently. It helped, somehow.”
My stomach sinks as I recall all the times I’ve had to school myself to hide my fear of Joel.
“Anyway,” he says, extending his hand to me, “I wanted you to have him.”
I blink, staring at the squirming rodent. “You what?”
I endup back outside the reaping tree with a splitting headache and a mouse named Benedict squeaking in my satchel.
When I’d turned to go back to my room, Joel had reminded me that I was supposed to be out picking herbs, so now I have to find a way to kill time before I return to the Den.
I’m not sure how it happens. At first I tell myself I’m just taking a walk.
The route is circuitous, but I need time to think anyway, time to clear my head. Walking does nothing to cleanse my mind of the captain’s cruel words, though, so I end up climbing a cliffside, hoping the exertion will distract me.
I don’t even realize I’m by the shed until I’m standing at its door, picking the lock, my hands and fingers more steady than they ever are these days.
The door creaks open, and there’s a blissful moment when the scent of faerie dust wafts through the air, already filling my lungs with a gentle, pleasant numbness, a weightless euphoria that feels like nothing, nothing at all.
It sounds like the absence of Captain Astor’s voice in my head. Smells like velvet untouched by lingering incense.
I don’t wait until I’m outside the shed. I convince myself it’s because I’m afraid of the shadows attacking me like they did the last time I scoured for faerie dust.
I dig my fingers into the nearest pouch and lick the faerie dust off my finger like I might honey I’d just found in a stray piece of comb, fallen from the hive.
It tastes like silence.
It’sdark by the time I come to myself. At first, I don’t know where I am. Wood scrapes against my cheek. It takes several blinks for my eyes to adjust in the dark, but when my vision clears, I realize I’m lying atop a rafter, my cheek pressed to its flank. Drool has already hardened at the edge of my lips.
Unease fills my gut. I didn’t think about floating being a side effect when I dosed myself. It’s a good thing I was in the shed rather than out in the open. The splashing of the waves against the cliffs outside reminds me as much.
Panicked, I scramble down the nearest beam, stuffing my pockets with as many pouches as I can reasonably hide. Once I’ve locked the storehouse door behind me, I check for the moon’s position. It’s still over the ocean, meaning there’s hope I haven’t yet missed dinner.
I’ll definitely have missed cooking it, which is unfortunate, since Joel seemed so excited about it this morning. I can’t imagine it will do him good if he thinks I forgot about him.
Not to mention, I feel guilty for letting the boys go hungry tonight. So I grab my satchel and begin making my descent, hoping the boys will forgive me, and that no one will smell the honeysuckle on me.
By the timeI reach the reaping tree, I already know something’s wrong.
I know it before I hear the voices, high and panicked.
I know it before I hear the pacing footsteps.
I know it before I hear Michael’s song.
I know it because the shadows tell me. They don’t encroach on my vision like they used to. They don’t speak to me aloud. The shadows know better than to get close now that I’m consistently dosing myself with faerie dust, but that doesn’t mean the shadows disappear.
They sway in the corners of my vision, keeping their distance, moaning softly as they speckle the ground in the pattern of leaves above, stopping the moonlight. They sway and cry and shift and mourn. If they’re screaming, the faerie dust mutes the sound, leaves them shapeless, blurred, harmless.
When I arrive at the reaping tree, the Lost Boys are crowded together in a circle, packed shoulder to shoulder, the ones in the back pushing their way through the cracks between the taller boys, who take up the front.
Only John and Michael stand back, John holding Michael from behind as Michael wriggles and sings, “They found him in his bed, a bottle by his head, the old man is dead, the old man is dead.”
My blood runs very, very cold.
When John sees me approaching, he shakes his head ever so slightly, eyes wide and shining.
I snap my neck back over to the Lost Boys.
To the seven Lost Boys.
No.
No.
I count again.
And again.
My counting keeps coming out to seven, but that can’t be right, because there are eight.
So instead of counting, I start accounting for them by name.
Simon.
Nettle.
Victor.
Benjamin.
Smalls.
The Twins.
Who’s missing?
My breath catches.
No.
My feet carry me over to the boys, uneven as my back begins to ache from my descent. I tripped on a rock on the way here and thought that was a problem worth cursing about.
While the boys shove each other out of the way, I place my hands gently on their shoulders. The touch must be calming, because they part for me. Smalls glimpses me, and a sob bursts from his throat. The same throat that was just yelling to get out of his way.
He opens his mouth like he’s going to tell me what’s happened, but this time, no noise comes out.
When I place my hand on Simon’s shoulder, he says my name, ever so faintly. “Wendy, you shouldn’t look…”
But I do.
I look, because it’s the only thing one can do in a situation like this. Even though my mind is screaming at me not to. Even though I don’t want to know, don’t want to remember him this way.
The one boy I couldn’t find in the crowd.
Number eight.
He’s face-up on the ground, his eyes as wide as ever, except there’s no playful light in them. His mouth is slightly ajar, a trickle of blood already crusting in the corner.
“When there was no dinner at the table, we knew something was wrong,” says Simon.
“It had to have happened a few hours ago,” says Nettle.
“Not possible,” says Benjamin. “I asked him when dinner would be ready an hour ago. He said he was going to try to find Wendy because she hadn’t shown up for cooking duties and he was worried about her.”
My heart stills in my chest.
Simon looks at me and frowns, sympathy welling up in his eyes, but an unspoken question too. A where were you?
My jaw works, but no words come out.
Because lying dead on the ground is Joel.
His pinkie is missing.
I don’t knowhow long it takes for Peter to find us. He swoops in from above, toppling branches of the canopy as he barrels into the crowd. One shout from Peter, and the Lost Boys part a way for him.
He must have scented the blood.
I stay with Joel, grasping his cold hand in mine.
I don’t know why I do it. He’s dead. It’s not as if he knows I’m here.
Peter’s face pales and his whole body stills as he takes in the gruesome sight. Blood stains Joel’s shirt, remnants of a knife wound. His flesh is jagged around the stump where his finger used to be. Worse still, blood paints a fox across his cheek.
My stomach turns over, and I pray that he was already dead.
“Tell me everything,” Peter says to everyone and no one at once.
Simon’s the one who answers. “We found him after Smalls got to the dinner table and noticed it wasn’t set. He went to the kitchens and found them empty, then came yelling down the tunnel that something was wrong. That Joel and Wendy were missing.” Simon gives me a quick, sidelong glance, one that Peter follows with his gaze.
He doesn’t ask me where I was, but that terrifying stillness has overcome him. The blank sheet that seems to wash away all expression of emotion. Or smother it, wrap it up like a crystal ball and tuck it away.
I’m grateful that I don’t have to explain to the boys where I was, but I sense the shifting of their feet all the same. The suspicion.
“Benjamin told us that Joel had said an hour ago that he was going to go out looking for Wendy. The group of us set out. A few of us were planning to try to find you, but all it took was stepping out of the Den and…” Simon loses his words.
“You said that man we buried killed Thomas. Killed my brother.”
The voice is flat, coming out from the shadows. Victor is staring at Joel, a coldness in his expression that mirrors the corpse.
“Victor—” Peter says, his arms crossed, but Victor cuts him off.
“You said we got him. You said that was the man. That we buried him. That his flesh is rotting in a shallow grave.” Victor’s voice is warbling on the edge of mania. It’s nerve-racking hearing him like this.
“You said—”
My heart hammers in my chest, and before I realize what I’m doing, I grab at it. Peter glances at me, realization striking his face. “Victor, the man on the beach, he had Thomas’s bracelet. The one that was missing.”
Victor just points to Joel. “So what happened to him?”
“I suppose the most logical explanation is that we have another killer on the island,” says John, still holding Michael as he sways back and forth to the tune of the howling wind.
My mind flashes back to what Peter said, about the terrible fates that were woven into the boys’ tapestries. The ones this very realm was made to protect them from, to help them escape.
Thomas dead, the first boy who was supposed to meet a treacherous end. Now Freckles and Joel.
Peter and I exchange a knowing look, but he shakes his head, just enough for me to be the only one to notice. I hope.
“Peter, can I talk to you?” I ask.
Victor digs his heel into the earth. “No one’s leaving until we find out where everyone was when he died. Wendy, why don’t we start with you?”
All eyes turn to me, every one of them wide, keeping them from blinking back tears.
“You heard me. Where were you when you were supposed to be helping in the kitchen?”
My mouth goes dry. I grope for words, but I can’t find any. The words should be simple. I didn’t kill Joel. I never would harm any of you. But the truth of the matter is, I don’t remember anything from the time I pressed the faerie dust to my lips to the moment I woke in the rafters.
Instinctively, I check for blood on my clothes. I find none, but my glance betrays my intent, because Victor says, “Checking for incriminating evidence, Winds?”
“She was with me,” says Peter, crossing his arms. He gives no further explanation, and my cheeks heat. When I cross my arms, the boys’ gaze dips to my ring, which I’m absentmindedly twirling around my finger.
“I see,” says Victor. “So Wendy gets special treatment. No need to show up to your responsibilities as long as you’re having a tryst with Peter.”
John coughs audibly, sounding like he’s choking. My face goes scarlet with heat, but Peter steps in and puts a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “Stand down,” he says gently, protectively. “Wendy isn’t the murderer.”
“Then who is?” asks Victor.
Strangely, the Lost Boys’ faces turn, each examining the boy next to them.
It’s only then that I realize there’s no squeaking coming from my satchel.
When I open the flap, I find Benedict the mouse, belly plump from gorging himself on a pouch of faerie dust I stuffed in my satchel earlier.
He’s dead, too.