Chapter 21 #2
He was tall. Broad-shouldered. A grown man. His jaw was sharp, his cheekbones high. His hair the same wild tangle of red-bronze curls, but longer now, falling across his forehead and past his ears. He wore a loose white shirt, open at the collar, and his skin glowed faintly gold in the dim light.
He was beautiful.
He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
My breath caught. My heart stammered. Somewhere beneath my ribs, something old and buried stirred, the girl I had been, the girl who had loved him, the girl who wished he could be what he had promised her.
The raging, burning pull and tug of my insides, the scrape of claws deep within me, was gone. Alleviated, cooled. Healed.
He smiled. Soft. Sad. I felt my brothers behind me, one on either side, each of them trying to measure how this was him.
Peter smiled, his teeth so white. It was a smile I’ve seen the children make when they were caught staying up late or stealing biscuits from the pantry. It was a smile that said, I knew what I was doing was bad, but I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Please forgive me.
He scratched his head. “I know … I’ve put you through a great big fuss.”
A great big fuss? All of this? This was more than just a mistake.
“Wendy,” he said, pleading. His voice was low. Warm. A man’s voice now, rich and deep, and hearing my name in it felt like I’d been caressed.
He descended the ladder slowly. Gracefully. The crows screamed overhead.
“You can ignore them,” he said. “They’re not a bother.”
I glanced over my shoulder to John and Michael, their looks of confusion matching my thoughts. What was going on here?
Something in the space between us changed. My brothers were still there, I knew, but it was as if they were being pulled away. Miles. Another world altogether.
“Where …” I reached for my thoughts. My memories. They all seemed clouded now, covered by a veil.
Peter approached, one hand in his pocket, the other gesturing as he spoke.
“I was a child,” he said. “I didn’t understand what I was doing. You understand? Of course, I know you understand these things. Because you’ve always been the better of us. My better half, if I’m allowed to say that. Always so smart, my darling girl.”
In the distance I thought I heard someone shouting something. A word, but I couldn’t quite pick out the letters.
“I didn’t know how to love without hurting,” Peter continued. “Thank you so very much for giving me a second chance. I’ve waited for you, Wendy. All these years. I’ve waited for you to come back to me.”
Again, a word. A sound So far, but … something. Someone calling.
Peter stopped a few feet from me. Close enough to touch. His eyes, those impossibly green eyes.
“My darling …” He reached a hand out but pulled it back. “You look hurt. Are you all right ? Don’t worry. We’ll make sure you get your rest.”
“I …” I reached back into my mind. Wendy. Darling. Peter. What else?
He reached his hand up again, slowly, holding it steady there by his temple.
His eyes churning. “You’d like to stay here, right?
That’s what you told me. Don’t you remember, my darling?
I asked if you would come away. You agreed.
You were very excited when I asked. Do you remember, my love? Come away?”
My body began to tremble. Not from cold. Not from fear. From something much worse. It started deep in my chest and spread outward until my hands shook and my knees threatened to fold beneath me.
He stepped closer. I should have stepped back, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.
“Oh no … shhhhh. My love.” His voice poured over me. “My love. My Wendy. You’re shaking. You must be cold. We’ll get you inside. You’d like that, right?”
His hand came up. I watched it move toward my face as if from very far away. As if I were trapped behind glass, watching someone else’s body, someone else’s life.
His fingers touched my cheek. Warm. Gentle. Real. And then, something inside me slipped.
A memory, gone before I could grasp it. That feeling when you wake from a dream and wish to catch it but just can’t.
Something about a house. Children. A woman with kind eyes who had told me something important. I tried to reach for it but found nothing. Just smoke and shadows in its absence.
“You’d like to come away with me,” he said. Not a question. A truth. Certainty. “You want to come away with me. We discussed it. Don’t you remember?”
Did I? I tried to think. There had been a reason why I came here. A name. A little girl with … what color hair? I couldn’t picture her face anymore. Had there been a girl?
His thumb traced along my cheekbone. Down to my jaw.
Another memory dissolved. Brothers. I had brothers. Didn’t I? Their names were … their names …
“I remember,” I heard myself say. My voice sounded strange. Distant.
He lowered his voice. “Shhhhh, of course you do, darling.” His touch left trails of warmth that sank into my skin and spread. “You’re tired. I’ll help you. I’ll tell you what you remember. You remember the second star.” He nodded yes, encouraging me to do right.
“That’s good,” he said. “You remember that. You also remember what the wind feels like. What it feels like to be free.”
His voice. His hands on my skin. Everything else but him seemed to fade from my mind.
“Peter …” I said.
“Yes,” he nodded again. “Peter and Wendy. That is the story. That is the only story you ever need to know.”
But there had been a building. Red brick. Children running in a yard. I had worked there. I had … I had …
Gone.
“You’ve been so tired, for so very long.” He murmured. “So alone. Carrying all that weight by yourself.”
What weight? I couldn’t remember what I’d been carrying. But I was tired. So very tired. My whole body ached.
“Guilt,” he said, “and grief. They’re difficult things to process. I understand that so very well, which is why you need me to take care of you. No one can take care of you like I can. No one can give you the life you need but me.”
Guilt over what? I searched for it and found only fog. There had been something. Something terrible. Small shapes in the dark. Bones? No. That didn’t make sense. Why would I remember bones?
“I can take it away,” he whispered. “The aches you’re feeling. Loneliness.”
His other hand came up. He was cupping my face now, both palms against my cheeks. Where his skin touched me, I felt pieces of myself lifting away. Floating up like ash. Like the names of the children I had … the children …
What children? Did I have children? I wasn’t a mother … was I?
“You don’t have to be strong anymore, Wendy. You don’t have to fight. You can rest.”
My name. He said my name. Wendy. Yes. That was me. That is me. That was the only thing I knew for certain anymore. Wendy. And Peter. Peter and Wendy. Our names … on the cover of a book.
A book? Where?
Had there ever been anything else? Have we ever been anything else?
I opened my mouth. There was something I needed to say. A word. A name. It had been important. It had been the reason I came here.
But I couldn’t remember coming here. I couldn’t remember anything before this moment. Before his hands on my face, his breath on my skin, his eyes filling up my entire world.
“I can give you everything,” he whispered. His lips were so close to mine now. “The island. Eternity. A home where you’ll never grow old, never grow sick, never be forgotten.”
Behind me, someone was shouting. A man’s voice. Two men. Different voices. They were saying a word over and over again. Wendy? Was that what they were saying? My name? Were they calling me?
Was that me? It didn’t feel like me anymore.
I moved to turn toward the voices, but Peter’s hands held my face firmly in place.
“There’s nothing to worry about over there. You just need me,” he said. “That’s the old world you’re leaving behind. Remember? You don’t want that world. You told me yourself. That’s why you agreed to come away with me.”
Come away …
He was right. It was all fading. They were all fading. Their faces. Their voices. Even the sound of my name in their mouths was growing distant, tinny, like a radio signal dying.
“Say yes,” Peter breathed. “Wendy, do come with me to Neverland.”
His forehead pressed against mine. His nose brushed mine. I could feel the heat of him everywhere now. His chest almost touching mine. His breath warm against my lips. His fingers sliding back into my hair.
Above us, crows erupted. They spiraled overhead. Wings beating the air into a frenzy. The sound was deafening.
The treehouse door opened again, and a little girl stepped out.
Thin. Pale. Her eyes ringed with gray. Standing on the platform staring down with something that looked like confusion.
He turned. Smiled at her and then looked back at me.
“Our daughter,” he said. “We can be a family. Wendy. The family you’ve always wanted. The family you never had.”
His hands slid to the back of my head, fingers curling there, tight.
“I’ve waited so long for you,” he whispered. “Do you know how long? Do you know how many nights I watched your window, wanting you, needing you to come back to me?”
His lips grazed my cheek. My jaw. The corner of my mouth.
“No one will ever want you the way I want you, Wendy. No one will ever know you the way I know you.”
I was dissolving. Melting into him. I could feel myself emptying out. Thought by thought. Memory by memory. But it didn’t feel like loss. It felt like relief. Like setting down a weight I’d been carrying so long I’d forgotten I was holding it. I’d forgotten that I could abandon it.
His lips hovered over mine. Not quite touching. Not yet.
“Say it,” he murmured against my mouth. “Say yes. Be mine. Let me take care of you forever.”
Soon there would be nothing left. Nothing but his hands in my hair and the green of his eyes and the sweet aching promise of his mouth so close to mine.
I wanted to never be alone again, in this land or any.
“Yes,” I whispered.
And he kissed me.