Chapter 35
WINNIE
It’s decided that Mom and Hansel will return with us to Neverland. I don’t want to let her out of my sight. Not yet anyway.
Most of my life, I wanted to escape her. She was both too much and not enough for me. Once I moved to Neverland, I was almost relieved to be free of her. I didn’t want to think about her, I didn’t want to worry about her, and I didn’t want to repair my relationship with her.
It was a wound I knew would never properly heal and I wasn’t willing to consider what it would take to rip off the scab and start over.
I’m not sure where we go from here, but for the first time, I think I’m willing to try to repair what is, to see what could be.
When we arrive back on Neverland soil and I breathe in the salty sea air, some of the tension in my body fades. This is where I’m meant to be. I know that now more than ever.
With the sun close to rising, Pan says goodbye to us and disappears to his tomb, and I make him a promise to join him later.
“Will you take a walk with me?” I ask Mom.
She’s been clinging to Hansel’s side since the warehouse. I can’t tell if it’s because she missed him, if she still loves him, or if it’s something else. Maybe he, like Pan, has given her a feeling of safety and stability, something we both have been sorely lacking in our lives.
Mom follows me from the treehouse, down the worn path to the lagoon.
The spirits of the water are dancing just beneath the surface, more active now than I’ve seen them in a while.
“I forgot how beautiful this place is.” Mom kicks off her shoes and sits in the sand on the shore.
“The lagoon is probably my favorite.” I sit next to her, digging my toes into the sand. It’s warm on the surface, but cool just a few inches below.
With the summer solstice approaching, the lagoon is in full bloom with a rainbow of flowers. The longer I’m in Neverland, the more excited I am to see how it changes through the seasons, and how it changes along with us.
“Did you love him?” I ask.
Mom draws her knees up and folds her arms around her legs. “Yes.”
“And he broke your heart.”
“Yes.”
I take up a handful of sand and let the grains slowly seep out through my fingers. “I suppose I understand why he left. If dear Aunt Gretel had found out about me as a child, I wouldn’t have been able to defend myself like I did today.”
Mom nods.
“So I’m willing to forgive him. How do you feel?”
She’s quiet for a long time, watching the spirits twist in and around each other. Tonight they look pink and violet against the turquoise blue of the water.
“I never had a great love story,” she says and drags her hand through the sand between us. “When I was your age, I mean…you…before Peter Pan.” She pauses and takes a breath. “Sorry. My head is still a jumble. What was I saying?”
“You were talking about love.”
“Yes.” She smiles. “I thought I could outrun my past. By the time I was sixteen, my mother was dead. I was on my own. An adult in the eyes of the state. But somehow I wasn’t scared.
I thought with my mother gone, she had taken the madness with her.
” She laughs to herself. “Delusional! I was delusional!”
“No you weren’t. Because I thought the same thing.”
We laugh together.
A black bird swoops into the lagoon and lands on a drooping branch behind us, cawing softly.
“Hansel said you wanted to study art.”
She drags her index finger back and forth in the sand, drawing a star. “I liked art. It made me happy.”
“I never bothered to think about what you might have wanted for your life before me,” I admit.
“You were a child. It wasn’t for you to worry about.”
But how tragic it is that she wasn’t able to follow her own dreams.
“What do you want to do now? And Hansel…”
“He told me…she…a witch…ummm…” She frowns, her gaze going unfocused. “Who were we talking about?”
“Hansel,” I remind her.
“Right. He told me that he knows a witch who might be able to help my jumbled mind.”
“Really?” The hope that floods through me takes me by surprise. And I realize in this moment how desperately I wanted my mother to be well. But just as quickly as the hope springs up, a bit of suspicion breaks through. “A Witch Killer knows a witch that will help him?”
“He told me that since meeting me, he’s started to question the mission of the Order and sometimes he would help the witches escape. One of them told him to come see her, if he ever had a need, that she would repay his kindness.”
“That’s great, Mom. I really hope it works.” I squeeze her shoulder. “You deserve to be well.”
She nods. Her chin wobbles and a tear steals out. She quickly swipes it away. “It would be nice. I think. I don’t want to get my hopes up.”
“Lots of impossible things are possible in the Seven Isles.”
She nods again. “We should get back. It’s getting late. Or early, I suppose.”
“Yes. We’ve all become night creatures with Pan sleeping during the day. But…let’s sit here just a few more minutes so we can see the sunrise.”
“I’d like that.” She stretches her arm out, inviting me into an embrace. And I sink into her side, tears burning in my eyes. All I ever wanted was the warmth of my mother.
When we return to the treehouse, Hansel greets us on the balcony.
Vane is nowhere to be found. Pan is already in his tomb.
And the twins pull my mother into the living room with the promise of a sweet nightcap.
It’s a treat they make me often enough nights and contains chamomile tea, a splash of fairy wine, and valerian root.
It’s calming, soothing, and makes me sleepy, and I think it’s exactly what Mom needs after what she went through.
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” Hansel asks me.
“Sure.”
We sit in the lounge chairs that overlook the ocean in the distance where twilight is giving away to morning in soft shades of pale blue and lavender.
“I just wanted you to know that I don’t expect anything from you,” Hansel starts. He’s still in his bloody clothes looking every bit the woodsman witch hunter from the fables.
And yet, I sit beside him as his daughter, just as equally entwined in fables as he is.
“I ran from you and your mother,” he goes on. “That’s a choice I made that impacts you and Merry, and I’ll do what I can to make amends, but please know that if you want nothing to do with me, that’s your right and I will respect it.”
“I would like to get to know you,” I tell him. “I feel like I already do from the bedtime stories. Mom used to read it to me all the time. It was my standing favorite for an entire year.”
This seems to make him happy. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Though Gretel was my favorite. Clearly I was a delusional kid.”
“Ahhh. Well.” He sighs, long and low. “She had her moments.”
We’re quiet for a beat and then:
“I want to help your mother, if you’re okay with it.”
“She said you know of a witch who might be able to heal her fractured mind?”
He nods. “She’s a powerful witch who lives in the upper highlands in Summerland now. I helped her escape my sister a few years back.”
“Why?”
He thinks for a beat, then, “I had always lived by the code of the Order. I never questioned it. But it started to make less and less sense to me after I fell for your mother. There is good and bad in every corner of every realm. But I’ve come to realize the good far outweighs the bad.”
“And sometimes it’s more gray than anything, and we don’t mind a bit of gray area.”
“I’m not here to judge your men. Morally gray or not.”
“Good. Because I’d toss you into the ocean if you did.”
He chuckles. “Of that I have no doubt.”