Chapter 12
CHAPTER
DAYS WENT BY in relative quiet.
Today, the air outside the hospital bit sharp. Smoke and antiseptic mingled in the fog.
Ambulances rattled over the cobblestones. Men pressed up steps, some limping, some carried on stretchers.
A woman in the waiting room clutched her newspaper tight. The headline read: brITISH FORCES SUFFER HEAVY LOSSES AT THE FRONT
And beneath it: FEARS OF BOMBINGS IN LONDON GROW
“Margaret …” I said, rushing past the secretary. The typewriter clattered behind me as I entered the corridor.
“Wendy!”
I found Beatrice waiting for me. She grabbed my hand and we hurried along. Her cheeks were flushed. Her apron streaked with gray smudges. Her gaze swept the hall, a quick defensive sweep, before she took hold of my hand and pulled me along.
“We’re running low,” she said.
The inside of the hospital felt like a scream. Movement. People bumping into one another. Moans. Pleas. It smelled of iron and sweat.
“On what?”
“Everything.”
Inside, the space throbbed with motion. The air reeked of bleach. Orderlies surged past, arms stacked with towels, bandages, sheets. Somewhere down the hall a man screamed, a low, dragging howl. Everything here vibrated with pain.
She spoke low. Quickly. “They’re saying the trenches are full. With the wounded. With the dead.” She brushed a loose red curl from her face. “Officers are just leaving boys out there to die.”
She squeezed my hand tighter. “Boys”—her voice went thin—“just boys playing soldiers.”
The thought lodged beneath my ribs. Boys played war on the island too. Their endless battles all turned to bloodshed, all for sport. No one ever grew old enough to survive them all, except of course Peter, who planned all of the adventures.
“They’re saying we’re to prepare to be overrun, but we already are,” Beatrice said. “Dozens more are coming tonight. Hundreds. I just don’t know what we can do for all of them.”
She hesitated. Her voice shifted, gentler now. “I’m sorry … How are you?”
“It’s difficult. I just … need to be there for the children. They’re all so confused by it all. I …”
I stopped. What could I truly tell her? That I feared what would happen to the rest of them? That I was beginning to wonder if I was capable of protecting anyone at all. Including myself.
Beatrice’s face softened, reading something in my silence. “Please tell me you’ve spoken to your brothers …”
“I’ve written them letters. I’ve called. Nothing. Michael answered once, but said nothing. They’re not writing back. No one is answering my letters.”
“Pay them a visit.”
“I just …”
“Go to their homes, Wendy. Walk up the stairs and knock on the door.”
“I will. Today. I promise.”
“Good.”
Beatrice stopped walking. She turned to face me fully, and something in her expression hardened, not with anger, but with the kind of fierceness that comes from watching too many people give up.
“Wendy.” She squeezed my wrist. “Learn to take up space. You’re allowed to do that. You don’t have to shrink. You don’t have to live small.”
Her eyes searched mine.
“My love, your life belongs to you.”
My life belonged to an ash ring. To a promise. To a boy who took and took and called it love.
“Beatrice,” another nurse called. Breathless. “We need you. A bad one’s come in and we’re shorthanded. Doctor says surgery now.”
Beatrice rolled her eyes. “I’m so tired,” she said. “I just came from surgery.” She reached to the wall to steady herself.
“Go,” I said. “I’ll see to Edward.”
“Thank you, dear. I’ll … I’ll see you later.”
A stretcher screeched past me, wheels squealing. A man lay upon it. He looked just a few years older than Willie. His face turned away. Head dangling over the edge.
Somewhere deeper in the wing, a doctor shouted for more clamps. What followed was the wet unmistakable snap of bone setting.
Farther on, a man with a bandaged head sat alone on a bench, staring at his empty hands as if mourning something taken from them.
I continued making my way to Edward’s room, surrounded by screams that pitched and dulled.
When I turned the corner, my breath hitched.
Light and shadow shifted at the far end of the corridor. A small shape stepped forward, moving into the light. It faced me.
A little boy, no taller than my ribs. Curly. Or more like the idea of him.
He wore animal skin. A lion’s pelt draped over his small shoulders, the great cat’s head lolling against the little boy’s own.
Fresh blood slicked the fur. It was smeared across his cheeks and wrists, staining his shirt in dark, tacky streaks.
His hair veiled his eyes, and then there was that familiar tilt of his head. I had seen it too many times.
“Peter misses you.”
My blood went cold.
That Wendy Darling …
It was her mother’s fault, you know. She stuffed that girl’s head with stories and now look at the poor child.
“Curly’s dead,” the shape of that little boy said. “You left him and because of that he died.”
Laughter roared through the corridor.
Lamps guttered. Air thickened. The smell of that other place charged in, earth, moss, rot.
The boy tilted his head again, as if listening to someone just beyond my sight.
“Come away …”
And this time, it was not Curly’s voice. It was his voice.
I clapped a hand over my mouth.
My knees loosened beneath me.
Curly’s dead. Curly’s dead. Curly’s dead.
The figure smiled. Lights blinked on and off, and the form of that little boy unraveled into shadow before collapsing in on itself.
Gone.
By the time I reached Edward’s door, my hands were shaking.
I found him writhing beneath the thin cotton sheet, his limbs jerking as if yanked by invisible strings.
His eyes strained toward the darkest corner of the room, rolling so far back I could only see thin crescents of white.
Foam formed at the corners of his mouth.
I turned around, looking back to the door, to the empty hallway. I knew there were no doctors available. Nor nurses.
I held my hands out, not knowing where to start. What to do. I’d done this before. I’ve calmed children with convulsions.
When I approached, that’s when I saw it. On the pillow beside his head lay a feather. Black and slick. It glistened in the lamplight.
I reached for it and tossed it to the floor.
“Edward,” I whispered. “Edward, look at me.”
His lips parted. A rasp slipped out.
“Edward,” I tried again. “It’s Wendy. Your friend. I’m here with you.”
“… Wendy.”
He blinked once. Deliberately. And when he opened his eyes, they shone green. Glimmering.
Not Edward’s eyes. Peter’s.
On the wall behind me, my own shadow shuddered.
Something seized in my chest. I coughed, hacked. I felt like I was choking. Like something had lodged itself in my throat. My hands went to my neck.
“He’s come for your shadow,” Edward’s voice said.
My shadow.
Every lamp in the corridor flickered, blinking in and out. Something creaked in the far corner of the room.
His gaze slipped past me, upward, toward the ceiling. I followed, and saw them, all of the shadows pulling apart from their source in this room and gathering above us.
“… you promised …” Peter’s voice.
My breath broke. I gasped, pulling in a deep breath.
I backed away from the bed. “I would have never gone with you had I known what you were! You lied to me! You were never good!”
The room shrank. Then green fire in Edward’s eyes burned.
“Let him go!” I said. “He doesn’t belong to you.”
Then, just as suddenly as they appeared, the color bled out of them. Green tears slid down his cheek.
Edward’s eyelids fluttered. His body seemed sagged back into the pillow.
But his eyes …
They were open. This was him. Edward. He was awake now.
“Wendy?” he rasped. His own voice.
I sobbed and threw my arms around him. “You’re awake.”
He placed a weak hand on my back. “It’s dark … I heard gunfire …”
A nurse. A doctor. I needed to find one. Now. “I’ll get a nurse. To help. I’ll be back. Don’t move. I mean … I know you can’t. But please …” I didn’t know what to tell him. Be cautious of shadows and green-eyed boys. None of his world was making any sense.
A knock at the door. Beatrice.
“He’s awake.” Beatrice smiled and put her hands on her hips and looked from me to Edward. “I knew you couldn’t stay asleep that long with a pretty girl by your side.”
She pressed close to me. “Miss Eleanor called.”
“What?”
“She left a message at the front desk with Margaret. She needs you there straightaway. Agnes is missing.”
At Marigold House, I found a young constable in the nursery, tapping the windowpane with the back end of his pencil.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“This is an investigation, miss. I can’t divulge information to you.”
I knew that if Agnes had left on her own accord, she would not have done so in silence. She would have woken everyone up to tell them her plans. That was Agnes.
The latch was locked. That’s what I’d come here to check. If she didn’t leave this way, she must’ve left another way.
Another constable, stockier, gloveless, stood by the bookshelf. His hat sat low over his face. His fingers moved slowly, leafing through books I kept here for the children. The Water Babies. Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales. And then, I saw what he was holding in his hand: Peter and Wendy.
My stomach dropped. Who brought that down here?
The constable flipped through the pages. “My children love this story,” he murmured to himself.
I turned and walked downstairs. A chorus of spoons against bowls rose from the dining room, the children eating their supper. This time, in relative silence. I passed Helen in the hallway, carrying dirty dishes back to the kitchen. Her eyes were pink from crying.
“It’s just so awful,” she said beneath her breath. “All of it.”