There’s no sense in telling Tiger Lily that the fault is all Peter’s. Wendy can’t forgive herself, even with what she knows rationally to be true, so how could Tiger Lily?
“We’ll stop him now,” she says instead, squeezing Tiger Lily’s hand.
Tiger Lily flinches, so brief that Wendy might have imagined it. Is she lost in her own thoughts of Peter, or something else? The way time passes in Neverland, Tiger Lily and Peter may have known each other for a hundred years, or a thousand. For all Wendy knows, those years could have been an endless cycle of knowing and forgetting. It’s the best secret, Wendy. One I’ve never told anyone before. But can she trust his words? Would Peter himself even know if they were a lie?
She wishes she had words of comfort for Tiger Lily. She wishes they could anchor each other. Tiger Lily shakes herself, her eyes hard as they meet Wendy’s. There is something remorseless in them, something hungry.
Movement at the mouth of the cave draws Wendy’s attention and she tenses. One of the Indians enters, his posture remaining stooped even after passing through the cave entrance, as though Peter’s curse has permanently given his bones a new form. Wendy imagines his face was once lean and strong, but now it’s sunken into a starved sharpness.
“The girl is on the path again,” he says. His voice, like Tiger Lily’s, is strained, and at first, Wendy can barely make out the words.
“But…” Tiger Lily’s eyes widen, going to Wendy. “Then it wasn’t you.”
Wendy looks from Tiger Lily to the man in the cave entrance. His words finally sink in, and for a moment, she forgets how to breathe. The girl. Jane.
“Where is she?” Wendy jumps to her feet, looking around wildly as though perhaps the man might have brought Jane with him.
Tiger Lily stands as well, her expression mixing confusion and alarm.
“You know who she is? She looks so much like you, I thought it must be you,” Tiger Lily says. “Or that Peter was playing some kind of trick on us.”
“We saw her on the path a few nights ago,” the man in the doorway says. “We threw stones and arrowheads to frighten her away so she wouldn’t go toward the center of the island. She’s headed that way again now.”
Wendy is dizzy with relief, dizzy with fear, the ground tilting beneath her.
“She’s my daughter. Jane. I have to go to her.”
The path and the cave and the monster at the heart of the island. Of course, where else would her brave, curious daughter go? Her heart trips, hard, but there’s a kind of excitement in Wendy as well. If she goes to the cave, Peter will find her there. She thinks of the way the ground shivered, and the black smoke over the center of the island. Some part of him must already know she’s here.
The hunger Wendy saw in Tiger Lily’s eyes is inside her too, a gnawing ache replacing the hollow where Peter once took the memory of the truth from her. She wants him to find her, she wants to face him. For everything Peter took from her, from Tiger Lily, for everything he might try to take from Jane, Wendy wants to take something from him too. No. Everything. She wants to take everything.
“Tell me where the path is,” Wendy says. The words come out more harshly than she intended.
“I’m going with you.” Tiger Lily touches Wendy’s wrist, startling her.
“But…” Wendy hesitates. She wants her friend with her, but she can’t help thinking of the mermaids in the lagoon, turned to bone because Peter looked away too long. She can’t help seeing the ghost of the girl Tiger Lily used to be, tucked inside what Peter has made of her.
“It’s my risk to take.” There’s an edge to Tiger Lily’s voice, and a hardness in her eyes.
Wendy looks down, away, heat flushing her cheeks. She has no right to presume to be Tiger Lily’s protector, or tell her where she can and cannot go. Tiger Lily doesn’t belong to Peter, and she doesn’t belong to Wendy either. Wendy raises her head, an apology on her lips, but instead of anger, she finds hope shining in Tiger Lily’s eyes, as fragile as a broken-winged bird.
“I want Peter to pay,” Tiger Lily says. “And I want to prove to him and myself that I’m more than just a shadow creature he dreamed into life.”
“Of course you are.” Wendy catches Tiger Lily’s hands, squeezing her fingers.
The hope in Tiger Lily’s eyes catches like a spark, roaring in Wendy’s chest. Flame steals her breath, and leaves her eyes stinging and hot. Through a blur of tears, Wendy sees Tiger Lily as she used to be—shadow-dappled, laughing as she showed Wendy how to catch the silvery fish leaping in Neverland’s streams. Those moments apart from Peter that were just their own— Wendy should have seen then how Peter’s idea of friendship was nothing like the real thing.
Yet even now, even after all this time, when she first heard Peter’s call it cracked her wide, and she almost forgot everything to run to him once more. When it comes down to it, what if she crumbles? What if she isn’t strong enough? What if she proves herself not the mother Jane needs, or even the mother Peter wanted, but simply the girl he left behind?
“I don’t know exactly what we’ll be facing,” Wendy says, “but I don’t think Peter will let Jane go easily. If I… If I falter, will you finish it, finish him, and make sure my daughter is safe?”
“I will.” Tiger Lily doesn’t hesitate.
Reduced as she is from her former self, the resolve in every line of Tiger Lily’s being is clear. Peter hurt her. He stole from her. She is every bit as determined as Wendy to steal herself back from him.
Wendy lets go of Tiger
