“Mama!” The word pierces, all heartache, as Jane catches sight of her. The expression she turns on Wendy is utterly stricken.
Wendy has never seen such raw grief. With one look, Jane begs her to make everything better, to fix it, but there’s nothing Wendy can do. The knowledge wrenches everything inside of her. She wants to fall to her knees, hold Jane and take all of her hurt away. But she can’t. The cave is still coming down around them, and if she spares Jane’s feelings now, they will both die.
“Mama, you have to help him.” It’s there, the knowledge inside her little girl. Jane is smart enough to understand the truth, but right now, it’s too much for Jane to hold. And she shouldn’t have to, but Wendy can’t afford to be kind. Not until they’re safe. Not until they’re free.
“No.” The word drags rough from Wendy’s throat. She should say something comforting, but there is no mercy left in her, no mercy left for her either. Because Wendy stitched Peter’s shadow back to his skin; she made Timothy’s wound real.
She knows what will greet her if she touches Timothy’s throat. No rabbit-racing beat of pulse. No sluggish struggle for breath. No flutter of hope against her palm. Wendy makes herself look at the baby roundness of the boy’s face, and burns the image in her mind. She doesn’t know him, but maybe she did, once upon a time. A child. Just a little boy, younger than her daughter, lost and so very far away from home.
“Come away, Jane.” Wendy holds out her hand.
Jane clings to Timothy even harder, staring at her mother as if looking at a stranger. At least Timothy didn’t die alone; at least her daughter was there to hold him tight, maybe sing him a lullaby. It doesn’t ease Wendy’s heart any, knowing this, and if anything it makes it weigh more heavily inside her.
“We have to help him. I promised I’d keep him safe.” Jane’s voice breaks, shuddering as she gasps for breath.
Wendy closes her eyes. A moment. A breath. Against her lids, she sees Tiger Lily burning. Life is unfair, that’s what happens when you grow up. She’d told Peter, now she has to swallow the bitter lesson herself. She opens her eyes. She can’t hate herself for what she’s about to do; Jane will do plenty of hating for both of them, but only if they survive.
The ground heaves, nearly throwing Wendy from her feet. Her knee throbs, her bones feeling like they’re grinding together as she takes a step to steady herself. A fissure splits the stone, cracks crazing the walls and floor. There’s no more time.
Wendy grabs her daughter’s arm, perhaps more roughly than she needs to. Jane screams, not terror but the sound of rage and a breaking heart. Wendy knows what it is to promise someone you won’t let anything in the world hurt them and to fail. She throws Jane over her shoulder. Jane alternately beats her fists against Wendy’s back and reaches for Timothy. Wendy takes the blows; there is nothing else to do.
She carries Jane from the cave. The journey through the narrow passage is over in a blink, even with the rolling ground and world trying to shake apart. Even with Jane’s weight draped over her shoulder.
When she steps outside, cool night air slices Wendy’s skin. The moon is still full, but now it has a bloody hue. All around it, the dark itself falters, cracks riddling the space between the stars. Jane lies limp against her, exhausted of her anger, weeping silently.
“Second star to the right,” Wendy murmurs, hoping it’s true in reverse, hoping that happy thoughts indeed have nothing to do with flight. “And straight on until morning.”
There is no time now for doubt and regret. Holding her daughter as tight as she can, Wendy leaps into the wind, up into the sky, leaving Neverland behind one last time.
HOME
LONDON – ONE DAY AFTER NEVERLAND
Shadows crowd the corners of Jane’s room. She’s home, surrounded by all her things, but none of them feel right— the butterflies pinned in their cases, the neatly labeled rows of pressed leaves and polished stones. Empty. Lifeless. They might belong to some other girl, and she is merely here, an imposter inhabiting that girl’s room. The curtains on her window, the covers on her bed, the dollhouse her grandfather gave her for her birthday when she was five—how can objects she’s been surrounded by for years be at once so familiar and so strange?
She sits up, knees tucked against her chest, arms wrapped around them, and surveys the space carefully. She almost misses the sounds of boys sleeping, the tense waiting filling Peter’s camp. A particular clot of shadows in the corner beside the dollhouse catches Jane’s eye, and she starts. For a moment, it resolves into the shape of a boy, eyes moon-wide and trusting. Timothy.
Then the shadows are only shadows again and the momentary hope crushes her. Her chest aches with waiting tears. But she’s already cried so many times already, and she’s sick to death of weeping. Anger chases hard on the heels of her pain, rising up and leaving her cheeks hot.
Her mother could have saved Timothy, and she refused. She left him instead of going back. She left them both in the first place. If she’d stayed rather than dragging Peter deeper into the cave, Timothy would still be alive.
The door to the hallway edges open, and Jane starts again, catching at the covers. Her mother’s face peers through the gap, and Jane’s first instinct is to turn away, refuse to talk to her. But at the same time, questions crowd her tongue, and there’s no one besides her mother that Jane can ask.
Her mother enters, closing the door softly, and sits on
