LONDON 1918
Tears roll silently down Wendy’s cheeks as the razor scrapes across her scalp. Shame fills her; it’s a silly, vain thing to cry over, but she can’t help feeling a fundamental part of her is being taken away. Her hair, her choice to wear it long or short, pinned up or spilling down her back—now she has no choice at all.
Locks scatter on the tiles, curled like question marks. Lice, the nurse who wields the razor claimed, but from the pinch of her lips Wendy knows it’s a lie. If it were lice, the room would be filled with patients waiting to have their heads shaved, but it is just Wendy and the nurse alone. This isn’t for her protection, or her health; it’s punishment.
Jamieson accused her of stealing. Wendy never even saw what she was meant to have taken. All she saw was the expression on his face as he cupped his big hands and angled his body to hide the “proof” he showed Dr. Harrington.
“What about the other girl?” Dr. Harrington had asked. “You say she was involved too?”
It doesn’t surprise her that Jamieson would try to implicate Mary. He hates them both—for their sex, for the color of Mary’s skin, because they find ways to smile and laugh, speaking with their foreheads together, sharing stories and secrets. Although Wendy suspects that at the end of the day, Jamieson needs no reason to feel justified in his actions; cruelty is its own reward.
“Mary had nothing to do with it.” Wendy had spoken quickly. “It was all me.”
Doubt in Dr. Harrington’s eyes, scorn in Jamieson’s, but what did it matter? The whole accusation was built on a lie. In truth, Wendy stole all the time, but her thefts were never discovered. Whatever Jamieson had produced as evidence was something he’d planted himself, but which of them would be believed? Certainly not a girl who made up stories about an imaginary land.
So now Wendy is strapped to a chair, leather cuffs pulled tight around wrist and ankle, even though she hasn’t once struggled. The last curl falls, a leaf dropped from a winter tree. Her scalp feels chilled in the empty, tiled room. A sudden memory— Peter touching her hair, calling her a wood sprite, promising to introduce her to the Queen of the Dryads. He never did, distracted by another one of his games.
Wendy laughs, a bitter sound she immediately cuts short so it turns to a cough. There’s a click as the razor is set down. Wendy looks straight ahead as the nurse undoes the straps and leads her to the door. As they pass the common room, other patients flinch, looking away too quickly, or reflexively touching their own hair. Wendy scans the room, but Mary isn’t there.
She hopes Mary is being smart, staying out of sight. Despite Wendy’s protestations that she committed her supposed crime alone, she wouldn’t put it past Jamieson to find some other way to torment Mary while Wendy was having her head shaved. There’s strength in numbers, Wendy has learned that much, even if that number is only two. Jamieson rarely goes after either of them if they are together, and therefore he’s always seeking ways to separate them.
Wendy has gotten good at interventions, creating distractions, and when necessary, redirecting Jamieson’s attention to herself and away from Mary. Jamieson is not a particularly subtle man. If she’s able to catch him whispering with the other attendants, or even simply glancing Mary’s way, she knows it’s time to go to work. Once, Wendy secreted a small amount of cleaning powder in one of the many temporary pockets sewn into her clothes. The smallest of pinches in Jamieson’s tea—not enough to harm him, really, just enough to make him sick—saved Mary last time. Another time, one Wendy is particularly proud of, a well-aimed stone upset the wasp nest built into a crook of the tree Jamieson favored for smoking beneath, sending him screaming and running.
The thought brings a smile to Wendy’s lips, but the sense of victory is short-lived. She’d paid for those transgressions even though Jamieson could never prove his sickness or wasp-stung flesh was her fault—bruises where Dr. Harrington would never see, pain inflicted but leaving no mark. She’d once spent nearly two days locked in a small supply cupboard until Mary had contrived to get her out. His suspicion was enough. Or perhaps, like all the other times he’d chosen to hurt her, he would have done it regardless of whether she took action against him or not.
Now, as the nurse marches her down the hall, it takes all of her will not to run her hands over her scalp, but she will not give the nurse the satisfaction. Another memory comes unbidden to her mind—sitting on a rock beside Neverland’s lagoon, one of the mermaids braiding her hair, weaving in fragrant blossoms with thick white petals that shimmered in the sun. Wendy blinks, lifting her chin higher.
Only once she’s alone in her room does she allow herself to run a hand over her head. The ghost of her hair bristles against her palm. Wendy sits in the center of her narrow bed and tucks her feet beneath her body. She closes her eyes, resting her hands on her knees, straightening her spine. It’s been fourteen years, but she can still summon the feeling of wind streaming past her skin, whipping strands of her hair around her head like a wild nest of snakes as she flew. Hair that, like so many other things, has been taken from her now too.
A deep ache fills her, like a bruise close to the bone. She is worn thin, a piece of
