“You don’t belong to Peter. Some of the pirates left, and that proves it. As much as he wants to, he can’t control everything in Neverland. Trees and plants are one thing, but people are something different.
“Tell me…” Wendy stops, remembering Mary’s reaction the first time Wendy asked if she was an Indian. “Your people must have a name for themselves. Not what Peter calls you, but something that’s all your own.”
There’s a breathlessness to her words, leaving Wendy feeling dizzy and giddy all at once. Tiger Lily glances at her, puzzlement in her sunken eyes replacing the despair. Wendy pushes on.
“There must be stories you tell to each other. Not these,” Wendy indicates the painted walls, “but stories that are just your own.”
A dangerous scrap of hope flutters in Wendy’s chest. Her stories. Mary’s stories. They’re all ways of trying to make the world true, to reshape it in an attempt to control and understand it. Even Peter’s stories, or maybe his most of all, tried to do that, but what if Neverland has its own stories? Older, truer stories.
“Most of the time we were just Peter’s injuns.” Pain cracks Tiger Lily’s voice, a different quality than before. “But…”
Tiger Lily straightens slightly, and something changes in her eyes, a spark that wasn’t there before. Hope blooms in Wendy too, and she leans toward her friend. Tiger Lily’s gaze shifts, looking to a middle distance Wendy can’t see.
“There are times when I remember stories told around a fire. Not like Peter’s stories.” Tiger Lily gestures to the walls.
Her voice is hesitant, but in Wendy’s mind it conjures a fire built high, stars overhead, tall pines surrounding everything. An owl hoots softly. Tiger Lily and the others gathered together, shoulders touching, a circle excluding Peter and keeping those around the fire safe. The mermaids must have had their own stories, too. Maybe even Hook and his pirates. She wants to believe it, desperately. More importantly, she wants Tiger Lily to believe it, too.
“You were never just Peter’s injuns.” Wendy’s voice quavers. She fights to keep it from becoming petulant, a child arguing with Peter over his arbitrary and unfair rules.
For Tiger Lily’s sake, she would have stayed, should have stayed. Being Peter’s mother wouldn’t just have been about protecting him from the world, but protecting the world from him.
Tiger Lily’s shadow sprawls across the cave floor, sharper and darker than the pale light coming through the smoke hole should warrant. It’s twisted, a shackle, rooting Tiger Lily to the ground. When Wendy blinks, the image is gone.
“I remember what it feels like to burn,” Tiger Lily says.
Despite the softness of her voice, the words startle Wendy, sending a chill down her spine. Tiger Lily holds her arms out again, and for a moment, Wendy almost thinks she can see fire running underneath Tiger Lily’s skin.
“If Peter wanted to, he could snuff me out any time.”
“No.” The word is stronger, more adamant now.
Wendy thinks of moments she and Tiger Lily spent together years ago—without Peter, without the Lost Boys, just the two of them lying belly-down on sun-warmed and flattened grass along the banks of one of Neverland’s many ever-shifting rivers. She thinks of her fingers and Tiger Lily’s trailing in the crystal-clear water, fish with scales of silver and gold coming to nibble curiously, then dart away. Those moments were real. Tiger Lily is real, not just a Peter-created shadow.
There is so much she wants to tell Tiger Lily, about St. Bernadette’s, everything she suffered, and everything she learned. She wants to ask about Tiger Lily as well, how things have been for her in Neverland since Wendy saw her last. And she wants to tell Tiger Lily how much she ached for Peter in that time, how she never let go, how part of her aches still, and how she’s ashamed.
“Tell me one of your stories,” Wendy says instead, meeting Tiger Lily’s eyes. “One of the stories you remember from around the fire.”
She wants to conjure for Tiger Lily the picture she saw of safety and family, a place Peter can’t touch. She wants to root Tiger Lily in herself, remind her she is real, that she won’t burn or vanish in a puff of smoke just because Peter wills it.
“All right.” There’s uncertainty in Tiger Lily’s voice, echoed by the doubt in her expression, and dread pricks at Wendy’s skin. “But I can’t remember any happy ones, only the ones about monsters.”
THE FORBIDDEN PATH
The scent of cooking meat fills the air, charred, on the edge of burnt; she’s never smelled anything so good. Fat drips from the spitted boar, crackling and popping where it hits the fire. Her stomach growls, and she feels sick at the same time. She watched Peter slaughter the boar, saw the hate in its eyes, and saw it rooted to the spot by Peter’s will. She watched the boar being butchered. She shouldn’t want to eat it with the remembered stink of its offal still in her nose, but she hasn’t eaten anything since Peter’s awful soup. And this is real—meat browning, sizzling and rich.
She squeezes the stone in her hand, trying to hold onto the memory of nearly choking on it. Nothing here is what it seems. Nothing is safe. If she eats the boar, what will happen? Will she forget more of herself? There are all sorts of myths and fairy stories about cursed food and what happens to those who eat it, like Persephone and her pomegranate seeds. Her mouth waters, a sour taste, and she hates herself for it.
Across the dancing fire, Peter watches her. There’s a brightness to his eyes, an intensity. The flames make his features sharp, wicked.
“Wendy?” He says the name softly, and it lands like a hook in her flesh, pulling at her. It’s so familiar, settling around her like warmth, like home. It must belong to her with the way it fits against
