“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jane.” Tiger Lily releases Jane’s hand. “And Timothy.”
Jane looks to Timothy, fearing his reaction, but his attention has already drifted to her mother. The way he looks at her makes Jane’s heart skip. There’s something like awe, and something like fear as well. Jane also sees a hint of the expression Timothy wears when he’s trying to remember something he’s forgotten.
“I know you, I think. Do I?” Timothy asks.
Jane tenses, and some primal instinct she can’t place makes her want to shout a denial. Timothy can’t possibly know her mother, and his words open up a space inside Jane that feels like sinking and falling and flying all at once. Peter called her by her mother’s name. Her mother knew where to find her, and how to get to Neverland, and Jane is afraid all over again of what it all means.
Her mother turns from examining the rocks around them and faces Timothy. Jane holds her breath, waiting to see what her mother will say. Wind buffets them, fluttering her mother’s clothing. She looks at Timothy more closely, and once again Jane feels the creeping edge of fear that has nothing to do with immediate danger. There is something big and frightening that she can’t quite see. She can only grasp at the edge of it, like a shadow vanishing around a corner. Her mother touches the top of Timothy’s head, a troubled frown tugging at her lips, and she shakes her head almost imperceptibly.
“Maybe once,” she says. “But not anymore.”
Before Jane can ask what her mother means, her mother turns to point at the rock face above them.
“There. That’s where we need to go. Take my hand. Everyone hold on tight as you can.” Without looking back, she reaches for Jane’s hand.
Jane hesitates only a moment, just long enough for her mother to look back with an expression that sets Jane’s pulse going in a new and complicated rhythm. There’s a fierceness to her mother’s expression, one that seems to bristle at her orders being questioned. There’s also tenderness, reassuring Jane, and beneath it all, a hint of fear.
Jane takes a deep breath and puts her hand in her mother’s. She’s already gripping Timothy’s hand, and Tiger Lily takes her mother’s other hand.
“Think of something happy,” her mother says. But her expression is grim, and there’s a twist to her mouth as she says it, which makes Jane wonder what happiness has to do with flying. She certainly wasn’t happy the first time she flew here with Peter. Maybe it’s just about filling up all the spaces where doubt and fear might creep in and make you fall.
Just to be sure, Jane thinks of walking in the park, not just with her mother or her father, but both of them together, her hands in theirs and sunshine bright over all of them. She thinks of her mother making up stories, and her father pulling books from shelves to help Jane answer her latest round of questions. It’s an ordinary thing, a safe thing. Right now, rather than adventures or wonders, it’s what she wants more than anything in the world. The very ordinariness fills her with a happiness so big it makes her chest ache.
Her feet are no longer on the ground. Jane fights the instinct to panic and kick her legs. She grips Timothy’s hand as hard as she can as wind rushes past them. Jane doesn’t look down. Then their feet are on the ground again, and it’s over too soon.
The wind still howls violently. Leaves kick up from trees that are far below them now, swirling in eddies. Her mother lets go and puts a hand on Jane’s head instead, absently running her fingers through Jane’s hair and picking out the tangles. After a moment, she begins separating sections, loosely braiding it in a way that makes Jane think her mother isn’t even aware she’s doing it.
“You’ve been very brave, Jane. Thank you.” Her mother uses her grown-up voice, the one for important and serious conversations with Jane’s father, and Uncle John and Uncle Michael. There’s a weariness in her tone, one Jane doesn’t miss. “I wish there was time to take you and Timothy somewhere safer, but there isn’t, so I need you to be brave for a little while longer. Can you do that?”
Jane nods, a different kind of too-big feeling filling her. Her mother’s hands still. Jane’s hair is so stiff with salt and wind and her time in Neverland that the braid holds without even the benefit of a ribbon to tie it in place. Her mother meets her eyes briefly, then smiles, though Jane sees the hollowness behind it. Her mother is afraid.
Even so, she bends to kiss the top of Jane’s head, and Jane allows herself to take comfort in it for the moment, and not think about what might come next.
“Everyone follow me inside.”
Jane startles at her mother’s words as much as her tone, brusque and commanding. Where is there to go? But as her mother leads them forward, she sees it—a narrow crack in the stone. And even as she notices it, she doesn’t want to notice it. It resists her eye, making her want to look away, to unsee it, so that trying to hold it in her mind hurts physically. Her chest tightens, verging on panic. She’s certain they’ll smash against the rock when they try to enter, and everything in her wants to dig in her heels and refuse to go. Can’t her mother see what a terrible idea this is?
But her mother has a hold of her hand again, and Jane has no choice but to follow as her mother slides through the too-narrow gap as easily as water. Before she has time to properly think about it, Jane is in the dark too, crammed between two bits of rock. It’s warmer almost at once,
