“Hang on!” Jane shouts.
The handholds that let her climb to this point are suddenly nowhere to be found. She can’t figure a way back to him, and now her frustration is at herself. She should have been more careful, paid more attention. Her arms tremble with the strain of holding on. If she doesn’t move soon, she’s going to fall.
“I’m sorry, Timothy. There’s nothing I can do. You have to climb.” Her stomach sinks, heavy with a feeling of failure. She promised to take care of him, and she’s already let him down.
Timothy raises a tear-stained face. The moon is cruel choosing this moment to show itself, needling Jane’s heart with all the planes of fear it reveals.
She remembers the first time she went on holiday to Brighton with her family, and how her mama taught her to swim. At first the memory seems incongruous, but there’s something there, something she can use. She remembers light sparking off the water, and her mother standing waist-deep, holding her arms out and saying, “I’ll stand right here, Jane, all you have to do is swim to me.”
“You promise you won’t move?” The water had been clear, enough that Jane could see the bottom, but still that didn’t ease her fear. It would be so easy to slip beneath the surface and get stuck there where her feet couldn’t touch to push herself back into the air again.
“I promise I won’t move an inch.”
Jane had dutifully kicked and paddled like her mother had shown her, frantically slapping the water, gasping, and feeling like she was going to go under at any moment. The distance had already seemed impossibly far, the water so much colder and deeper than when the lesson began. But she was doing it. Somehow, against all odds, she was almost there, her fingers almost close enough to reach her mother’s outstretched ones. Then her mother had taken a step back, and another, and Jane had had to keep swimming to reach her, furious when her mother finally stopped and gathered her laughing into her arms.
“You did it, Jane. You swam.”
“You lied! You said you wouldn’t move!” Jane remembers how her skin felt hot all over despite the water, her body fairly trembling with rage. She’d trusted her mother, and her mother had betrayed her. She’d wanted to strike her mother, and felt she would have been justified in doing so. But her mother had only beamed, delight and pride in her eyes so that Jane’s anger had drained, and she’d been able to be a little proud of herself too, though she didn’t dare admit it until the next day.
“I can see the top,” Jane says. “All you have to do is climb up to me.” She feels rotten and mean saying it, but she can see no other way. Timothy has to climb, and they have to keep going.
With painful slowness, Timothy reaches up toward her.
“That’s it. Put your right foot just there.”
She tries to point, and in that moment, Timothy slips. Rocks skitter beneath his small feet. Jane’s heart flies into her mouth. She doesn’t wait to see if gravity catches him; she lunges without thinking, even though he’s too far away for her to ever reach. There’s a terrible sound as the branch she’s holding cracks. All at once, the ground goes out from beneath her, the earth and the sky switching places.
* * *
There’s nothing to do but climb.
Wendy reaches for one of the thick, woody roots, protruding just above head height. The bark flakes against her palm, but when she tests her weight, the root holds. As she plants a foot on the uneven rock, a wind springs up, shoving against her. She falls back a step to keep her balance, and as she does, the ground shudders, like an animal trying to dislodge a fly from its skin. Wendy feels it in her bones, the shadow roaring at the heart of the mountain.
Peter knows, or some part of him knows where they are, and he doesn’t want them here.
She lets go of the root, stepping back to see if she can get a better view. Movement catches her eye, and at first she thinks it must be a bird, then her heart lurches and her breath nearly stops. The figure is human. Even at this distance, Wendy would know her anywhere. Jane.
She swallows a shout, afraid of startling her daughter and causing her to fall. But oh, holding back her daughter’s name bruises her throat, and Wendy gasps for breath. She almost launches herself into the air, flying for her daughter, but Tiger Lily touches Wendy’s shoulder. Wendy lays her hand on top of Tiger Lily’s, and for a moment, all she can do is watch her daughter climb.
While they were in the cave, or the beneath the trees, night fell. Now Neverland’s too-bright moon slips out from behind clouds, and the sharp silver light outlines a second figure, smaller than Jane, climbing behind her.
“Hang on!” Jane calls out, shifting her weight. Wendy’s heart is in her mouth, but Jane’s grip remains firm.
There are more words, but the wind steals them, and after a moment, the figure below Jane begins to climb. Or tries to, only the climber slips, and Wendy sees the moment her daughter— her brave, beautiful daughter—lunges to help the figure below her. And that is when Jane’s grip falters.
Time doesn’t slow or come to a halt. The ground isn’t done with its shaking, nor the wind and trees and everything else shouting. But now, Wendy shouts back. A wordless yell tears through her. And as Jane falls, Wendy shakes off Tiger Lily’s hand on her shoulder and launches herself into the sky.
* * *
She falls.
And just as suddenly, arms wrap around her. The breath she’d been gathering to scream goes out of her in a startled huff, and she looks up, impossibly, into
