Jamieson lifts her, as easily as he might a child, keeping her arms pinned to her side. She kicks wildly, but none of her blows land.
He drops her into the ice.
Water sloshes over the sides of the tub. Her head goes under. Wendy comes up gasping and choking. The cold burns, like her skin has been stripped from her bones. She scrabbles at the sides of the tub, more water splashing, but Jamieson holds her down. He dunks her under, and time stops.
Blood rushes in her head, magnified by her panic and the water, louder than anything she’s ever heard. Her lungs scream with the need to expand; she won’t be able to stop herself from breathing in a mouthful of water. Pressure throbs behind her eyes, aching as she fights to keep her mouth closed. She can’t, she can’t let him win.
Jamieson hauls her up, dripping and spluttering. Wendy coughs, her body shaking, her jaw clenched against the cold. She braces herself, but Jamieson doesn’t push her under again. He holds her—his hands on her shoulders, showing her how easily he can keep her in place. It’s almost worse, the tension of his arms, the tension of her body, waiting for him to shove her down. She kicks out, but her heels only slip, finding no purchase on the bottom of the tub. She can’t stand up, she can’t escape. She can’t do anything. And just like that, Jamieson has won.
Wendy stops fighting. She wishes she could stop shaking too, but that’s beyond her control. Tears stream beneath the blindfold, and she hates herself. Their heat does nothing to warm her; she barely feels them. Slowly, she pulls her legs up, wrapping her arms around them, trying to preserve heat, make herself small.
She isn’t certain when the pressure lifts from her shoulders, or how long it’s gone before she realizes it’s no longer there. She grips the sides of the tub, her fingers numb and clumsy. She expects Jamieson to smack them down; they might even shatter, brittle with the cold. But the blow doesn’t come.
It takes multiple tries to work her shaking fingers and get the blindfold undone. Water has tightened the fabric, making the knot even more stubborn. When she finally pulls it off, ripping out several strands of hair as she does, she’s alone. Her knee is already tender from hitting the tree, and she strikes it against the side of the tub, slipping as she climbs out. Her legs betray her and she falls, hitting the tiled floor hard. Her breath leaves her in a whine and she curls onto her side, letting misery wash through her for several moment before she even tries to move again.
The drab gray cloth of her dress clings to her skin, weighing her down. Wendy crawls to the door, gets her fingers around the handle. Locked. She rattles it. Pounds on the wood with hands still aching with the cold. Blood stands out beneath her chilled-white skin. She screams, but plenty of people scream in St. Bernadette’s. No one will come for her. She’s trapped until Jamieson chooses to unlock the door. All around her is tile and metal and unforgiving blank walls. There’s nowhere to escape the cold.
Wendy lies on her side, body pulled in tight around itself, eyes closed. Peter. There isn’t even a window here to show her the sky or the time of day. She can’t fly away from here, from this. Maybe she never could. Peter, where are you? Why don’t you save me?
MAKE BELIEVE
The crowing call goes out across the island, echoing through the trees, seeming to come from every direction at once. A flare like lightning, like ice-cold water, runs the length of Wendy’s spine—joy and fear all wrapped into one.
His call. Not quite human, not animal either, and for a moment, it undoes her completely. The sound is home; she knows it as well as she knows her husband’s eyes, her daughter’s smile. It’s written in her bones. It means adventure. It means something terrible and wonderful is about to happen and she aches to rush headlong toward that call with all its promise and threat.
Even now. Even after everything. Peter. She wants to run with him. To stand at his side and conquer the world.
And in the same heartbeat, she wants to put her hands around his throat and squeeze until the light leaves his eyes. He took Jane away from her. He stole her daughter, and Wendy has crossed worlds to get her back.
Her boots sink into the sand. The call comes again and she turns, trying to pinpoint it. The boys are close enough for her to hear them shouting to each other, though she can’t make out the words.
The wild riot of sound bounces deceptively, first in front of her, then behind. Among the trees, then further up the beach. She runs a few steps, then stops. She backtracks, frustrated, and loops over her own path, erasing her footprints with new ones. The next time she hears Peter’s call, it’s faint, far distant, and she can’t hear the boys anymore at all. Neverland twists around her, confounding her and keeping Peter out of her reach.
Behind her lies jungle. Up ahead, birch trees, their bark peeling away in papery strips to reveal curls of pink as soft as sunrise. To her right, a massive willow trails long, silvery leaves into the clear waters of a pond.
As a child, she’d delighted in the way Neverland constantly changed around her. She would follow Peter up the beach
