Chapter 44
That night, when Peter is out making his rounds around the island, searching for the killer, I sneak into his room.
It’s just like I remember it from both the night Tink attacked me and the night he pressed the faerie dust to my lips and lifted me to the heavens in a swirl of color. My mouth salivates with the memory.
I swallow my spit and remind myself that the dose Peter’s given me is enough. My parched throat disagrees.
I’m not sure what exactly I’m looking for. Evidence of the boys’ histories, maybe. It’s not that I don’t trust Peter, I just can’t tell him what’s spurred my curiosity without betraying that I’ve been hiding the captain from him. All I want are records of some sort. Surely he’s kept something from the orphanage—it was his home too, wasn’t it?
I’m not sure what I’m hoping to find in the records. Perhaps evidence that the orphanage warden took an unwholesome interest in the boys. Evidence that he was the man I killed on the beach. It doesn’t make complete sense, given Peter would have recognized him. Then again, I wouldn’t put it past Peter to keep a matter hidden with the intention of protecting the happiness of those he loves.
There’s nothing of note in the drawer to the bedside table. Nothing underneath the bed, either. I could go through the piles of trinkets—pocket watches and such—but something tells me that would be a waste of time.
It’s then I consider exactly where Peter would hide something he didn’t want the Lost Boys finding.
The book on etiquette sitting on Peter’s bedside table. Of course.
When I crack it open, my heart flutters as my fingers brush along the ridges of paper, into which has been cut a rectangle. Inside of it is a leather book. It looks to be a journal of some sort, but it could very well be a book of transactions for all I know.
Slowly, holding my breath, I unbind the shoestring strip holding the journal together.
The pages fall open, shooting dust into the air, but I swallow my cough lest I make enough noise to alert any of the boys who might be wandering the halls for a snack in the middle of the night.
Ridges of ink press against my fingertips as I run them over the pages. I realize this is the first time I’ve ever seen Peter’s handwriting. It’s slanted and seems to bounce right off the page.
The first entry is a continuation of a thought about how to construct a decent kitchen in the Den, and I get the impression this journal isn’t the first Peter has filled. I suppose I just have to hope that the information I need is here.
I sit cross-legged on the bed, take a breath, and begin to read.
When the Sisterfirst wished to bargain with me to save the boys, I remember thinking it was a treacherous sort of deal. The type humans tell their offspring not to strike with the fae.
I should have listened to those instincts. Shouldn’t have let my youthful optimism blind me to what exactly the Sister was placing on my shoulders should anything go wrong.
But I’d told myself nothing would go wrong. All would go to plan, and we’d remain safe in a world, if not of my own design, then at least born of my own imagination.
I thought I could keep them from growing up.
I keep thinking about the blessing she bestowed on me. The gift she presented me so that I would be up to my task if the day ever came. It felt like a blessing then. One I would never have to use for terror, but could drink the benefits of ever after.
But something is changing in the boys.
Thomas keeps asking me about what happened before Neverland. If he and Victor have any living family back home.
At first, I dismissed his questions as natural curiosity.
But then he asked me if there was a warden where he came from.
I avoided the question best I could, but there was no mistaking Thomas’s agitation when I refused to answer. The Sister won’t like it if she knows he’s asking questions.
We thought that wiping their memories would solve the problem, but it seems the effects of the spell are wearing off.
I tell myself I can fix it before it goes too far.
Telling myself that is working less and less.
If Thomas remembers, it’s only a matter of time before the other boys discover the truth.
When the Sister bestowed on me my gift, it was so that I would not falter if it came time to end them. She’ll see Thomas’s knowledge as a disease, ready to infect the others.
It’s all I can think about anymore.
The restof the journal is empty.
There’s a whipping sound as the pages slap together when I slam the book shut.
Letters, written in Peter’s script, coil and swirl in my vision.
End them.
It’s only a matter of time before the other boys discover the truth.
She’ll see Thomas’s knowledge as a disease.
End them.
End them.
End them.
My heart races and pounds,confusion rippling through me. It doesn’t make sense. I crack the journal back open, skimming over the passage, thinking I’ve understood it wrong, but the more my eyes scan over the lines, the more condemning they read.
I don’t understand.
Peter brought the boys here to save them. To keep them sheltered from their fates. Why would he ever think to end them, and what does that even mean?
And what did Thomas remember? What memory was dreadful enough to get him killed?
My mind rewrites the story Peter originally told me. He claimed the boys were brought to Neverland to keep from infecting their region with a terrible plague, to keep them from meeting their horrible fates.
But what if he lied?
No. That doesn’t make sense. Victor told me that all the boys were ill when they first awoke in Neverland, which supports Peter’s story.
Maybe it wasn’t so much that he lied, but that he omitted part of the truth. Perhaps the Lost Boys witnessed something they were never supposed to see, something the Sister wished to keep hidden. What if that’s why she was truly there that night—to silence witnesses, then excuse her actions under the guise of preventing the spread of a plague?
Conflicting thoughts muddle my mind, attacking me from all directions.
Even if Peter killed Thomas at the Sister’s command, it doesn’t explain the murders of Freckles and Joel.
Unless…
Freckles didn’t care for Thomas. Did his disdain have something to do with Thomas’s returning memory? What if Thomas told Freckles what he remembered? If it reflected negatively on Peter, I could see Freckles not wanting to believe it. Could see him thinking that Thomas was trouble—spreading harmful rumors for attention.
That still doesn’t explain Joel’s death, though.
Besides, there’s something else Peter said in his journal that bothers me.
I thought I could keep them from growing up.
In Estelle, you aren’t considered of age until you turn twenty, but like John said the other night, that’s only been the case for a few decades. Most of the surrounding kingdoms still consider adulthood to commence at sixteen.
I think back to Peter, to the way he spoke of coming of age as if it were a death sentence.
I’ve never asked how old the boys are. I’ve been assuming that most of them are around fifteen or sixteen, except for Smalls. All I know is that Thomas was the oldest.
But something is changing in the boys.
My whole body goes numb. Was there more to that than I thought at the time? Some innate belief that life ends at that age, or at least innocence does? Would Peter, if he truly believed that, take up the dagger just like the Sister and plunge it into the Lost Boys’ chests, just to keep them from what he perceived to be a worse fate—growing up?
My head spins. Is it even real, the story he told me about the Sister? Or is it just a figment of his imagination? According to the journals, she was the one who tasked Peter with killing the boys if it became necessary.
But what if he’s simply given himself an excuse? A mission for ending them when they start to grow up?
Panic strikes me as I consider the time. How much of it has passed since we arrived in Neverland? John is years past his sixteenth birthday.
Will Peter kill him too?
Panic overcomes me, squeezing down in my chest, as I think of the hands I let touch me all over. Had Freckles’s blood still been underneath Peter’s fingertips the night I let him dig them into my back as he catapulted us into the air? Had the same mouth that drowned me in kisses also lured Joel out of the Den, away from the other boys, offering to go help him look for me?
I search for a third explanation, but I keep coming back to the same two: Either Peter is killing the boys to keep the Sister’s secret, or he’s a madman.
And the crazed man I killed on the beach—I know now, in my very gut, who he is. The story paints itself in my mind. A man discovers his boys have been taken. How they ended up in the orphanage, I can’t reckon, but that’s hardly relevant. He sets off on a journey to find them, guided only by his anguish. An anguish of soul that, of course, leads him straight to Neverland.
Where he hunts down the man who had taken his sons.
The man who had killed Thomas, his little boy.
My hand finds my mouth, grasping onto my silent screams as I imagine it all unfold. A father finding the discarded carcass of his oldest boy on the sand. A broken-hearted man sobbing and taking the boy’s bracelet, wearing it around his own wrist to carry a piece of his lost boy with him. Just like he carried a sketch of both boys in his pocket. The same sketch that had led him all the way to Neverland.
And then he’d found him—the Shadow Keeper who had taken everything from him. The being who had squeezed the breath from his son. Ended him in the name of saving him from a worse fate. A fate he didn’t get the chance to choose.
He’d been about to enact justice.
Instead, he’d found himself on the wrong end of my blade.