Chapter 48
Angry tears sluice down my face, rinsed away in the rain of an oncoming storm as I hurtle myself down the beach and toward the cliffside.
Stupid, stupid man. I could have helped you. I could have saved you, I think to myself, though that’s the opposite of what I should be concerned about in the moment. Still, I can’t help but wonder what will happen to the captain when the tide comes in. I’d left him close to the mouth of the cave out of spite. I’d only wanted to frighten him, make him wonder whether the waves would get close enough to carry him away, swallow him in their greedy depths.
I’m unsure that I judged the distance correctly.
I imagine his corpse rotting away like Victor’s father’s, except instead of worms laying their young in his eye sockets, it’ll be the fish and the bottom-feeders.
My heart aches, and it’s stupid for doing so.
I push the captain from my mind, cursing him and leaving him to rot in my past. I have my brothers to save.
Sand scratches against my bare feet as I run, and I can’t help but regret that the captain didn’t decide to assist us. It was a risk, offering myself in exchange for him helping get John and Michael to safety. But leaving Neverland through a gap in the Fabric seemed like a more sure way of getting my brothers out of here than my current plan.
But I suppose faerie dust is how we entered, so faerie dust is how we must go.
I’m hesitant to dose my brothers again. When I think of it, I remember my mother tipping the faerie wine to my lips. The way I scorned it at first, but then, after exposure, began requesting it. John and Michael didn’t seem to have trouble after that first dose that had carried them here, but neither had I when Peter gave me the tiniest bit at the storehouse or when he’d offered me just enough to dance with him in the stars.
It was the third dose that had done me in. This will be their second. No, I realize with dread. Peter gave Michael another dose when he panicked outside the reaping tree. Still, better addicted to faerie dust than dead. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. A gnawing voice in the back of my head can’t help but wonder if that’s what my mother told herself, too.
I’m so lost in thought, I don’t notice the figure until I smack into him.
He’s all lean muscle, and at first I think it’s Peter. Fear shoots through me, but then I realize the pull of the Mating Mark is absent, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Going for a nighttime run? You are insane,” says Simon, his dark eyes glittering with friendly teasing. “Better back away from me before Peter sees and gets the wrong idea,” he says.
I do just that, stepping back quickly. “Peter’s here?”
Simon wrinkles his brow. “No. It was just a joke.”
“Oh.” I force my mouth into a smile. “Right.”
Simon’s cheerful disposition dips into concern. “You all right, Winds?”
“Of course. Just couldn’t sleep, that’s all.” I’m breathing too heavily. “Thought I’d wear myself out pretty good before trying to go back to bed.”
Simon wrinkles his nose. “You think you’re gonna sleep better when you stink like that?”
I’m not in the mood for it, but I punch him in the chest playfully, trying to keep up my ruse.
That seems to appease Simon’s worries a bit. Part of me wonders if I should ask him what he’s doing out here so late, but I feel like time is slipping through my fingertips like grains of sand. I’ve no idea how long it will be until Peter can move and realizes I’ve left.
“Well, I’m not quite worn out yet,” I say, and Simon grins sheepishly.
“Right, I won’t keep you then. See you in the morning, Winds.”
He walks away, but I’m frozen in place. Dread keeps me sutured there, on the beach between the Den and the cliffs. The space between the Lost Boys and my brothers.
You can’t save them all, I remind myself. But I know deep down that’s not entirely true. It would be possible to get all the Lost Boys out of here, the same way I intend to get my brothers out. The problem is getting them to believe me. The Lost Boys practically worship Peter. What are the chances that they’ll believe he’s the one picking them off?
Still, a vision glances through my mind. Yellowed bruises on a lifeless neck, singed hair, a missing pinkie, Simon’s eye sockets the ones eaten out by worms. My stomach twists, and I twist with it.
“Simon,” I say weakly. Almost in a whisper. Almost hoping he won’t turn around, that I’ll be able to go off with my brothers in peace and tell myself for the rest of my life that I tried.
He turns around, hands in his pockets. “Yeah, Winds?”
My heart thumps wildly. This is stupid. There’s no way I’ll be able to get all of them out of here. At least one of them will go running off and find Peter out of blind loyalty.
But Simon is my friend. How can I live with myself if I let him die?
“You’re not safe here.” I make myself rush the words out, before I become too much of a coward to speak them.
He flashes me a confused smile. “Of course I’m not. Have you seen the size of the nightstalkers on this island?”
Grief punctures my heart. I glance at the moon. It might as well be a shooting star for how it’s moving through the sky. “No. Simon, I mean, you’re not safe with Peter. None of the Lost Boys are.”
A shadow ripples from out of nowhere, overtaking Simon’s face. “What? Don’t tell me the two of you had a lovers’ spat?”
I shake my head emphatically. “No, you have to listen to me. Peter. This place. It’s not what you think it is.”
“I’ve never known what Neverland is.”
Tears sting at my eyes. “If you stay here, if any of you stay here, you’re going to die.”
“We’re all going to die eventually, Winds. It’s just part of the fae curse.”
A lump forms in my throat. Simon adores Peter so much, and it kills me to rip that brotherly facade out from under him. But I don’t know how else to make him understand. Parchment crinkles against my fingertips as I slip Peter’s journal out of my pocket and hand it to Simon.
He glances at me warily before opening it, eyes tilting down and darting across the open page, lit by the bare moonlight.
I can tell when he gets to the end by the way his muscles tense around his jaw.
“Where did you get this?”
“It’s one of Peter’s journals.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know,” I say, then quickly explain what Peter told me about ransoming the boys’ lives from their Fates. About the fact that Neverland was made specifically to protect them.
“I don’t understand…” he says, jerking his head up toward me. “End them?” he says, his voice pleading. Like he’s begging me to enlighten him with a reasonable explanation of what those words mean.
It’s then I know I’ve got him. It’s written in understanding that dawns on his face, followed by the grief, the anger.
“Thomas,” he whispers, his voice sounding as if his throat is clenched up.
I nod. “Freckles and Joel, too. My brothers and I are leaving. We’re taking faerie dust and getting out of here. I want you and the Lost Boys to come with us.”
Simon shuffles in the sand. “The others won’t believe this.”
I wince. “You did.”
Simon winces too, then presses his fingers to his forehead. “I’ve known something was wrong for a while now.”
“Tell them Peter had to go away. That he left me instructions to get the lot of you out of Neverland. That strangers are coming in the same way as…” My throat closes up at the betrayal of the lie. “Thomas’s and Freckles’s and Joel’s killer. It’s not safe here anymore. I’m to get the lot of you out and meet him on the other side.”
Simon blinks. “That might work.”
I nod. “It’ll have to.”
Simon turns to go, then spins back around. “You won’t leave without me? You’ll wait there, at the shed, until I get back?”
A lump rises in my throat. “I promise.”
The moonlight glances off the moisture in Simon’s eyes as he turns and runs.
Scalingthe cliffside takes less time than it should. Perhaps I’m propelled by fear this time. Perhaps I’m so distracted by my thoughts that it only seems faster.
Either way, John and Michael are already waiting for me by the time I arrive.
Michael is pacing, trying to get to the edge of the cliff to lean over. John’s hand is interlocked with his, letting him just close enough to look, but with a wide enough gap between him and the edge where he won’t fall.
“I’ve already broken into the shed,” John says, tugging at a sack of faerie dust at his waist. He goes to untie the clasp with one hand, but I shake my head.
“Get just enough for the two of you,” I say. “I won’t be far behind.”
John stills. “What do you mean, you won’t be far behind?”
I sigh. “The other Lost Boys are meeting us here. I’m getting them out too.”
“Wendy. What’s going on?”
I bite my lip. “Just take Michael and go. I’ll explain on the other side. Meet me back at the clock tower, okay?”
John lets out a gust of air. “I’m not leaving without you.”
“John,” I plead. “You have to get Michael out of here.”
“No. I have to get both of you out of here.”
“I’m not your responsibility, John.”
“Yes, Wendy. You are.” John’s heaving now, and I recognize the desperation in his voice, his expression. “I’ve always looked after you.”
My heart wilts as I remember John sleeping outside my room, ready to jump out and slay the shadows before they took me. Before I let them take me. John’s always been there to grab my hand before I go teetering off the edge, always been there to keep me tethered to the earth.
I remember soaring with Peter, two forces pulling me in opposite directions.
“John, you have to let go,” I say. “I have to learn to take care of myself.”
John swallows. “Well, let me know when you do. I’ll happily give up looking after you then, but as of now, I’m yet to be convinced.”
His words sting, but he’s not being unfair. I’m the one who fell for a monster, after all. I’m the one who led my brothers into an adder’s den, then tried to convince them they were safe there. I’m the one who gave up on trying to get them out, and instead settled for my own blissful nothingness, rather than fighting for them to have a real life.
“Michael can’t stay here,” I say.
“First sign of danger, I’ll get him out,” says John.
I nod, recognizing my brother won’t be dissuaded.
So we wait, the shadows pooling around us. I remember the first time I came here, the shadows swarming me until I couldn’t breathe. There’s still today’s lower dose of faerie dust in me, warding them away.
It makes me sick thinking I have Peter to thank for that.
An hour passes according to the placement of the moon, when a shadow appears from the tree line.
John tenses behind me, and I do too. But there are no wings to the shadow. It’s just Simon, looking forlorn.
Simon, alone.
“They wouldn’t come,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s just us.”
I let out a choking sound. “None of them?”
Simon bites the inside of his cheek and shakes his head.
Pain lances through my heart, a grief I wasn’t expecting. In my mind, I glimpse the boys’ faces, each one of them. Benjamin, Victor, Nettle, Smalls, the Twins. Except none of them are smiling.
They’re as dead as driftwood, eyes wide open to the canopy above, mouths slack in horror.
I swallow and use it to steel myself. “All right, then. John, get a dose for Simon and let’s go.”
Michael sings back to me. “Time to go!”
John doesn’t answer.
“John?” I whirl around. John is there, but his body’s gone slack, limp against a figure behind him, obscured by the shadows of the warehouse.
Michael teeters precariously toward the edge of the ridge, looking downward.
My stomach spoils.
“Michael, come here,” I whisper.
He doesn’t pay me any attention, just keeps picking at dandelions near the edge.
“Michael,” I beg, then when he doesn’t listen, I say, “Simon, please go get my brother.”
Simon shifts behind me. When he comes into my vision, he offers me an apologetic glance. I’m going to be sick. Despite that, Simon grabs Michael’s hand, leading him slightly away from the edge. “I’m sorry, Winds,” he says. “There are just some things you don’t understand.”
“We really are sorry,” says the figure in the shadows. Shimmering eyes glint in the darkness. John is limp in his arms, poised with a wet cloth dipped over his mouth.
Out steps Nettle, blond hair ghostly in the moonlight.
His lips twist into a sad smile as he places a blade to John’s throat. “I told you, Winds. I remember. I remember everything.”