Chapter 10
WINNIE
I’m standing at the edge of Marooner’s Rock, looking down at the crashing waves below. It’s almost deafening here, the roar of the ocean, the sheer force of the water.
I don’t love leaping off the cliff, into the ocean, in order to get back to my world, but it’s one of the quickest ways to travel between worlds.
There is an urgent need to get back to the mortal realm, find my mom and return her home, so I can return to Neverland.
I have a life here, one I don’t want to leave. One I very much enjoy.
I bet Mom just wandered off and got lost. She’s probably already been picked up by police (which would not be the first time), and maybe she’s already been dropped off.
But in order for us to resolve this, we need to go before the sun rises so Pan isn’t caught in the light.
“Ready, Darling?” Bash comes up beside me, threading his hand with mine. Using their magic, he and Kas have cast an illusion so their wings are gone. We can’t really traipse around the mortal world with two winged fae men in our group.
“I think so,” I tell him and he squeezes my hand as if he can sense that I am not, in fact, ready.
“Let’s go first,” he says. “Get it over with, huh?”
I nod. “Okay.”
“On the count of three. One. Two.”
I squeeze him tighter, wishing I could fold myself around him, anchor myself to him and never let go.
“Three.” He pushes off the edge of Marooner’s Rock, and because I’m still clutching to his hand, I’m dragged forward with him.
The ground disappears and there is nothing but open air and ocean beneath me.
The salty air of the sea rises up to greet us and for a second, I can’t breathe, can’t think straight. My body desperately wants to have solid ground beneath it, and my arms flail. Only Bash’s grip on me keeps me from flapping like a bird.
“Wooohoo!” Bash shouts, the sound of his voice over the thundering of waves is enough to lift some of the worry and anxiety. Bash’s enthusiasm has always been infectious. When I need to feel safe, I look to Pan or Vane. When I need to feel joyful and hopeful, I look to Kas and Bash.
We hit the ocean like a bullet. Just as the water is folding in over top of me, I’m forced upward again, bursting from the surface in a shallow pond in the middle of Madison Park. The very same park Mom apparently disappeared from.
I gasp for air, slapping at the water as the muddy bottom finally orients me in the mortal realm, on gravity.
Bash laughs beside me and whips his head to clear the wet hair from his face. “You okay, Darling?” he asks.
“Fine. Wonderful.” I trudge for the shore, Bash behind me, as water sloughs from our clothing.
Time works differently between the two realms, but we know for certain that when it’s nearing sunrise in Neverland, it’s nearing midnight in the mortal realm. So we’ve arrived at the perfect time.
Behind us, Vane breaks the surface, followed by Pan and Kas.
We’re in a less frequented corner of the park, where the pond curves around a copse of willow trees. We slip out undetected and within seconds, all four of the boys are dry. It takes me longer.
I’m still incredibly new to magic. How it works, what it can do.
And shadows are particularly nebulous because there are only fourteen in the Seven Isles, two to each island.
Which means there isn’t a great depth of information on them.
Most of those who’ve possessed a shadow have been very guarded about their power.
I’ve had to learn what I can from the boys, mostly Vane and Pan, because they have the most experience with them.
What they’ve hammered home more than anything is that thoughts are a powerful way to shape magic, but that it’s important to guard yourself against wandering thoughts.
I learned that lesson when I was pouring a cup of coffee and had a random thought about how the handle on the pot looked like the neck of a duck and then the pot turned into a duck and started squawking at me when I dropped it.
Bash could not stop laughing at me chasing that damn duck around the treehouse trying to get it to return to coffee.
But magic doesn’t work the same in the mortal realm as it does in the Seven Isles and my grip on it here feels loose and edgeless, like I’m trying to manipulate the mist.
The boys wait patiently for me as water drips from my nose and sloshes around in my shoes.
“Close your eyes,” Pan instructs. I exhale a frustrated breath before doing as he asks. “Can you feel the shadow?”
It’s always there with me, like a faithful dog, but one with a constant thirst for blood and boundless energy that wants to be spent and recovered just as quickly.
“Yes,” I answer as the shadow writhes.
“Breathe up your spine and ask it what you want.”
I don’t really know what he means by breathing up my spine but I imagine it must happen better with my back straight, so I level out my shoulders and imagine a breath racing up each knob of my vertebrae.
Please help me be dry, I tell it. Though it has no shape, not like a dog, I still picture it as one tossing its head back at me.
Please, I think again, insisting harder, and then a wellspring of magic flows toward me. When I pop my eyes open I look right at Vane, knowing he helped.
I am suddenly dry and comfortable in the gentle night air.
Thank you, I think, and I know he senses it, even though I wanted to make it happen on my own.
One day I will get it.
Won’t I?
“Where to first?” Bash asks.
“We should first check the spot where Merry disappeared,” Pan says. “And then check her cottage.”
When I decided to stay in Neverland, Pan and the boys helped me move Mom from the old, crumbling Victorian to a small, sunshine-yellow cottage in South Wind.
It was the perfect city, walkable and friendly, with plenty of greenery and a mild winter.
And even better, most of the city is run by people either familiar with or transplanted from the Seven Isles.
For a while, when we visited the mortal realm, we would stay in the old Victorian, but it was too far removed from Mom, and it made more sense to be closer to her when we crossed realms.
So we bought a larger house about a mile away in the neighborhood known as the Woods because it butted up against a protected forest and was known to host the best trick-or-treating.
The day we purchased the house, a sprawling, ten-bedroom Gothic Tudor built by a son of one of the original railroad barons, I asked Pan where he got all this money.
Not only had they purchased our house, and the cottage for Mom, but they had also bought the old Victorian in an effort to protect the many secrets we now had buried there (namely the bodies of dead brownies in the backyard).
In answer, Bash plucked a few leaves from a nearby bush and held them out in his hand. “Watch.” He closed his fist over the leaves and then opened it again, just a second later, and the leaves had turned into a pile of hundred-dollar bills.
I marveled at the magic, shuffling through the bills as if I expected the trick to evaporate, for the money to return to what it was. But it didn’t. The paper felt real, slightly textured. And each bill had different smudges of dirt and grim, as if it had built up over a decade.
“How long will it last? And what happens when they realize they’re holding a pile of leaves?”
“Money is just energy, Darling,” Pan had said, like that should explain it.
“It’ll stay like that forever,” Kas clarified. “Or until we change it back.”
“Okay but you can’t really mean to buy a house with cash. Like actual cash.”
Bash laughed. “No. We have a bank account for that.”
And so, that afternoon, the papers were signed, the money transferred, and the keys handed over.
The house was ours.
When I was a kid, I had marveled at houses just like the Tudor, more a fantasy than anything else. How could anyone actually own such a place? I imagined they were princesses living in a fairytale.
We stayed there for the first week as we all settled, us in our Tudor, Mom in her cottage with Leo.
It felt like a fairytale and also so real, it almost chaffed.
Kas heads up the bank, ducking beneath the hanging branches of a willow tree. “Leo mentioned he last remembers them being on the path to the east of the fountain.”
We cut through the willows until we reach the paved path that winds through the park. There aren’t a lot of people out tonight, and the park is quiet with the noise of the city muffled beyond the park’s borders.
Black iron lampposts have already flickered on, illuminating the path in pools of diffused light.
We’re quiet as we approach the section of the park where Mom disappeared. To our left, the fountain is all lit up, the water spraying from the statue of a nymph chiseled from marble.
Nothing seems out of the ordinary.
We keep walking. Leo said they were about ten feet from the nearest park bench. When we reach the exact spot, we break apart and circle the fountain, the trees, the line of bushes, but find nothing. Not even a hint of a struggle.
“Now what?” I say, a sense of unease creeping up my spine.
I hug my arms over my body, glad I had decided to throw on a sweatshirt at the last second.
It’s my favorite sweatshirt, my good luck sweatshirt now.
Bash bought it for me in Darlington Port a few months back right before I got to meet my great-great-great grandmother, Wendy Darling.
I never used to believe in superstition, but then I was wearing it the day I found out Wendy was pregnant, making me an auntie (or great-great-great niece, if you want to get technical).
The sweatshirt is a rich shade of maroon with block lettering on the chest that says The Myth is Mine.
Bash had it custom made by an artist.
Pan rolled his eyes so deeply when he saw it that I thought he was dying.
And from that moment on, it became a permanent fixture in my regular wardrobe.
Come on, Mom, I think, rubbing warmth into my arms. I have the good luck sweatshirt on. Where the hell are you?
“Let’s head to the cottage,” Pan says.
If we follow the path back toward the pond, but cut left before the copse of willow trees, it’ll lead us out of the park, to the street, and Mom’s neighborhood just beyond. From there, it’s just three blocks to the quiet, tree-lined street where Mom now lives.
We walk in silence. A few people cross our path, most ignore us. Two men recognize Pan and nod a hello before ducking their heads and scurrying on.
Mom’s cottage sits at the end of Beech Lane, slightly set back from the street, nestled amongst several maple trees.
In the summer, it has the perfect balance of sunlight and cooler afternoon shadows, and I can only imagine how it’ll look in the autumn, when all of the trees turn orange and yellow and burnt red.
If I dreamed of a fairytale life in the Tudor house, Mom’s cottage was the dream I had that felt close to reality. If she would just get a better job, if the new medicine would just cure her, if, if, if…
On the sidewalk, we come to a stop and scan the house and the yard beyond.
The cottage has a cute little front porch edged in with white railings.
There’s a pot of flowers at the top of the stone stairs.
Gauzy white curtains hang in the front picture window and further back, a little lamp is on in the kitchen window.
Nothing seems amiss. But the house also seems empty.
We go in through the front door.
The living room is to the right, a small dining room to the left, converted into a library and reading room. Then through there, the kitchen and a mudroom where the laundry overlooks the back garden and a clothing line for nice summer days.
I find a half-empty mug of black tea on the kitchen counter. A few dishes in the sink. There’s a basket beside the microwave overflowing with Mom’s meds and a pill box tucked next to it.
The cottage smells of cinnamon and tea and recently burned vanilla candles.
It’s so homey, so cozy, it makes me want to cry.
I wanted this so badly as a child.
I wanted to feel warm and welcome and safe in my home. Instead we had empty rooms and hollowed halls and blood pressed into sigils and wards, drawn from my own back.
Why couldn’t this be mine with a mother that loved me and hugged me and told me everything was going to be all right?
“Win.” I can feel Vane at my back.
“I’m okay,” I tell him, but I’m not.
Why the hell is all of this bubbling up now?
What is the universe trying to tell me?
“The house is empty,” Bash says, joining Vane in the kitchen.
I turn, pressing my back into the counter. “She has to be here somewhere. Did you check the basement?”
Kas appears next to his twin. “Yes. Pan is out flying above to check the —”
The back door is thrown open, causing me to jump.
Pan appears in the semi-darkness, more shadow than man and his voice rings out. “Go! Run!”