Chapter 29 Inside the Wound
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Inside the Wound
Iam ripped from myself and hurled into a haze of smoke. It fills my lungs, clings to my skin, and for a heartbeat, I don’t know who I am. The sorrow clawing at my chest is immense, alive, and it is mine.
The darkness parts. I stand in a grimy London street—my London, but older, harsher, its edges roughened. Mud sucks at my bare feet. Chimneys belch black smoke until the sky feels suffocated.
I move forward and find myself before the doors of a massive brick building. They groan open. Children pour through, thin and ragged, and I’m swept along with them.
Inside, there is ceaseless motion. My small hands push a stiff-bristled broom across stone floors until my hands ache.
Coal buckets dig into my shoulders; soot clings to my skin until I look like a shadow myself.
Young girls hunch over baskets of clothes, needles flashing like tiny blades. The air reeks of sweat and smoke.
Scrape. Clatter. Cough. A never-ending drumbeat of misery in my ears.
The boys call me Peter. My stomach aches with hunger, my limbs with exhaustion. And yet, inside me, another world flickers—fragile daydreams of places not my own, candle flames in the dark.
That night, when the others collapse into flea-ridden cots, I don’t lie down with them. I perch on the narrow sill of a drafty window. Across the street, a warm glow spills from a lamplit parlor, illuminating a woman cradling her child, lips moving over a worn storybook.
I watch, rapt. Longing swells so large inside me that it nearly threatens to drown me.
My lips move silently with hers, though I can’t hear the words.
In my mind, it’s my own mother holding me—rocking me gently, telling me of pirates on far seas, of mermaids glimmering in the deep, of faeries whose wings could carry me anywhere.
For a moment, I can pretend she never threw me away.
The stars glimmer faintly above London’s haze. My gaze lifts, wide with yearning.
“Please,” I whisper to them, so softly the boys around me don’t stir. “Let me fly away from here. Let me go where there are no chores, no rules… just fun. I want to play.”
The next day, I can’t keep my head down. My spirit is too big. I convince a few boys to turn our chores into a game. With no adults in sight, I grab a broom, hop onto a crate, and brandish it like a sword.
“I’m your captain now!” I shout, assigning them roles in my pirate crew.
Bright laughter rings out, the first I’ve heard in a long time. Joy sparks inside me, sudden and fierce.
Then the bucket tips. Water floods the floor. A broom cracks loudly against stone.
The matron storms in, eyes blazing. She snatches me by the ear, white-hot pain lancing through me, and hurls me to the floor.
“You again!” she yells.
Her cane whistles down, cracking against my skull. The sound ricochets off the walls. My head rings, pain sparking behind my eyes.
“Teach him a lesson he won’t soon forget,” she snaps.
A few of the older boys step forward, knuckles popping, grins too wide. They circle me like wolves.
I fight. Of course, I fight.
But I’m small—brittle against their bulk. Fists slam into my ribs, knocking the breath from my lungs. Boots crash into my side, again and again, each blow a dull explosion of pain that caves me inward. Someone laughs. Someone else curses as I claw uselessly at their legs.
Then a heel drives into my head.
The impact is brutal. There’s a sharp, blinding crack behind my eyes, like something splitting open. Light bursts across my vision, white and roaring.
Pain floods me, shattering everything until I can no longer tell where my body ends and the agony begins. The sounds around me blur, stretch, smear into something distant and unreal. My limbs won’t answer me. My thoughts slip, unraveling.
Tears burn hot. Rage swells—wild and useless—and my body betrays me, dragging me toward sleep. I fight it. I claw at the dark. I refuse to close my eyes.
Why is the world so cruel?
So lonely?
So unfair?
At last, they tire. Two boys haul me up, my limbs hanging limp, and drag me outside. The matron’s wide shadow follows. With a final shove, they throw me into the street, my body striking stone with a hollow thud.
“If you survive the night,” she says, smiling with all her teeth, “you may come back in tomorrow.”
The door slams shut. Cold night swallows me whole.
I curl on the ground, the stone biting into my ribs, its chill seeping into my skin until I can’t stop shivering.
Warm blood pools beneath my head, sticky and warm against the cold.
Each breath rattles in my chest. My head rings, every heartbeat a hammer driving spikes behind my eyes.
My stomach heaves; I swallow bile and the copper tang of blood.
My eyelids grow heavy, the effort to keep them open exhausting. Darkness presses at the edges of my vision, whispering for me to let go. But some instinct, deep and animal, claws at me. If I close my eyes now, I will never wake.
And I want to wake.
I want to move.
I want to live!
My gaze drags upward to the stars, searching. The brightest star feels too far away, crowded with other wishes. I look left, then right, and my eyes catch on the second star to the right. It gleams strangely, almost winking, as if it’s been watching all along.
Please. Take me somewhere else. Somewhere, children can play forever. Fight pirates. Fly with faeries. Swim with mermaids. Somewhere, there is no pain… where no one ever gets thrown away.
The star pulses, swelling until it blazes brighter than the streetlamps—brighter than the world itself. I squeeze my eyes shut as the light swallows me whole.
I blink, bright light stabbing into my eyes. I rub at them with my fists and try again. This time, when I open them, a dense canopy stretches overhead—a blaze of green, shards of blue sky peeking through the leaves.
My hands drift over the ground, brushing soft moss and cool earth.
Slowly, I push myself upright, turning in awe at the forest around me. Flowers bloom. Mushrooms glow faintly in the shadows. The trees hum low, a sound just beyond hearing, and I swear the entire wood is breathing.
I lower my hand to the ground. Beneath my palm, something thrums—steady and warm, almost like a heartbeat. The forest feels alive.
Memory crashes back into me. The beating.
The street. The blood. Being thrown away like refuse.
My hands fly over my body, but there are no bruises, no tender ribs, no dried blood.
No pain at all. Instead… I feel different.
Full. Strong. My fingers graze my sides, and there are no bones jutting beneath the skin.
My face no longer feels hollow beneath my touch.
When my hands brush over my ears, I freeze. The tips are pointed. Startled, I scramble to my feet, marveling at the strength surging through me. No aches. No weakness. Just life coursing through my veins.
And then I see it.
Etched faintly across my skin, runes shimmer and pulse in time with the forest’s beat.
A sharp gasp cuts through the air. I whirl around, finding a girl standing a few feet away, frozen, wide eyes locked on me.
She looks around my age—eleven, maybe twelve—with pale blonde hair pulled back into a neat braid.
Her long green dress flutters like leaves caught in a breeze.
Delicate, translucent wings tremble at her back, beating furiously.
Impossible.
I scrub at my eyes, certain I’m imagining things. When I open them again, she’s still there. The wings, too.
“Who are you?” she asks. Her voice is like delicate wind chimes.
“I-I’m Peter,” I manage.
Her silver gaze narrows. “Just Peter?”
I hesitate, unsure what she means. “Yeah… just Peter.”
She huffs and folds her arms. “Well, my name is Tinker Bell. Everyone has two names.”
“Oh.” My brow furrows. “I don’t.”
I don’t know my last name.
She rolls her eyes but lets it go. “Come along then—I’ll show you around, Just Peter.” Her lips curl into a smile.
“Where are we?” I blurt.
But before she can answer, the word slips from my mouth. “Neverland.”
She glares at me. “Why ask if you already know?”
I shrug. I don’t know how I know—only that I do. Even though the last thing I remember is the cold stone street of London.
The forest glows around me, its colors too vivid, too alive to be real. I glance down at myself again—my skin is smooth, unmarred by scars. The runes have vanished, though the body beneath my hands still doesn’t feel like the one I’ve always known. Sickly. Weak. Always dirty.
“Am I dead?” I ask.
Tinker Bell snorts. “You’re standing right in front of me, aren’t you?”
I nod slowly. And then I remember the wish I made to the second star to the right. Had it really come true?
Time lurches forward, like a movie fast-forwarding.
I’m soaring through the sky beside Tink, the wind tearing through my hair, laughter bubbling from my throat. To actually fly—it’s intoxicating. Every child’s dream since the first time they watched a bird take flight.
We spy on pirates in their cove—the cruel captain with the silver hook flashing in the sun.
We dive with mermaids in crystal lagoons.
We dance with faeries beneath the moon until our shadows stretch thin and silver across the grass.
But even with all this beauty, all this freedom, something hollows inside me. A void I can’t explain.
It begins with my shadow. It simply won’t stay put. It slips away at night, creeping off to roam. It wants to be free.
Then I start seeing the runes again, not just on my skin, but glimmering faintly in the air, carved into trees, etched into stone. At first, they’re nothing more than shapes. But the more I notice them, the more I begin to read them, the more the island seems to respond.
When I ask Tink about them, she just blinks at me in confusion and asks if I’ve finally lost my mind.
Maybe I have. Because a strange notion begins to take root.
Neverland is listening to me.
The trees lean close to brush my skin. The wind shifts with my breath. The world bends when I will it. I can’t help but feel we are connected.
One night, beneath the ever-present full moon, I tilt my face to the stars and let myself remember. The workhouse. The cold. The hunger. The loneliness.
But I remember the fleeting joy too—shared smiles, whispered jests in the dark, stolen games when the matrons weren’t looking.
What became of the other boys?
Were they still suffering? Still trapped—hollow-eyed and hopeless?
The thought burrows deep. If I’m not truly dead, then I should be able to go back. I find my star again, the second to the right of the brightest point in the sky, and draw a steady breath.
I wish.
And I fly.
The star flings me upward, outward, tearing me through time and space.
London’s dim lights bloom below me, a scatter of gold and smoke. I laugh aloud, giddy with triumph, drunk on the miracle of it. It takes only moments to find the workhouse again—its hulking brick shape crouched in the street like a monster waiting to swallow children whole.
I find the window to my old room and press my face against the cold glass, peering inside. The boys are still there.
My boys.
Curled tight in narrow beds, bodies too thin beneath threadbare blankets. Hollow-eyed. Hope leeched from them, leaving only exhaustion behind. The sight twists something sharp and aching in my chest.
That’s when I understand. I can’t leave them here. I won’t.
I ease open the window and slip inside, soundless as breath, and move through the dormitory like a ghost. I wake them one by one, crouching beside their beds, whispering their names.
When they startle, I hush them gently and tell them the truth.
That there is a place beyond this city. A place where no one shouts or beats or throws children into the street to die. A place where we can play forever.
Some stare at me as if I’m mad, eyes wide with wonder as belief flickers back to life. Others shake their heads, fear etched too deeply into their bones. They’ve learned not to hope. Not to trust.
I don’t force them. I offer them a choice, one they must make if they wish to follow me. I take them to the window and show them how to fly—to think only of the happiest thoughts, and to be willing to leave the horror behind.
Only six take my hand. Because to reach Neverland, you must want it badly enough. You must believe there is something better waiting for you—and that you deserve it.
The boys and I build a secret hideout high in the forest canopy, woven of roots and branches, vines and shadows. It is ours alone, hidden from the ever-watchful eyes of Captain Hook and his ruthless pirate crew. A place no adult can reach, and boys can be boys.
We call ourselves the Lost Boys.
Tinker Bell insists, again and again, that I need a second name. “Peter what?” she demands. “Everyone has two.”
One of the boys laughs and pipes up, “What about Pan? Like the god of the wild.”
The name settles into me like it’s always been mine.
Peter Pan.
The wildest god of all. Mischief and magic. King of Neverland. Leader of a ragged, laughing band of boys who refuse to be broken.
Years pass—or something like years. Time flows differently when you don’t age.
I return to the mortal world from time to time, always beneath the stars, always near midnight.
I find boys—the lost, forgotten, and unwanted ones—and offer them the same choice.
Some come. Some don’t. Some return to the world of men after a time. Others never leave.
London changes every time I see it. It grows cleaner, larger, and stranger. But Neverland stays the same. Here, we never grow up. We fight pirates. Swim with mermaids. Dance with faeries until our lungs burn with laughter. We are wild. We are free. And eventually—
We are forgotten.
The mortal world forsook us. So we forsake it in return.
And yet…
The void in my chest never leaves. A hollow I can’t name. An ache that nothing fills—not games, not battles, not magic. My shadow grows restless, slipping farther from me, bolder with every passing night. It taunts me, strains against its tether, desperate to escape.
Something in me is breaking.
And then I meet her.