She tries to remember what happened to Hook when Peter rescued them. The memory is there in fragments, like two contradictory truths overlapping each other. That monstrous beast with its terrible teeth and snapping jaws—she’d seen Hook devoured by it, torn apart, hadn’t she? She’d been horrified. He’d been a villain, but surely he didn’t deserve to be eaten alive? Did she beg Peter to help him? She can’t remember anything but Peter’s trilling laughter ringing in her head, his voice innocent and dismissive, almost cruel.

No one ever dies in Neverland, silly.

Had she seen him devoured, only to have him resurrected again, brought back from seeming-death to continue to serve as Peter’s eternal enemy? And even if Hook couldn’t die, surely he would still feel pain? The thought leaves Wendy chilled. Does Peter really have that kind of power over life and death?

She thinks of the mermaids in the lagoon. She looks at Tiger Lily, her corpse-like face, her sunken eyes, and she knows the answer.

Tiger Lily shakes her head.

“I hid and watched from the trees. I can only tell you what I saw, not what it means. There were two ships, and they were the same ship. One fell, and one flew through the sky. There was a hole, and through it I could see different stars.”

Wendy’s breath catches, fear momentarily forgotten. Different stars. Her stars? London? Tiger Lily continues.

“Some of the pirates fell screaming out of the sky and they drowned. Not Hook though. Hook survived.”

“How do you know?”

Tiger Lily’s lips finally shape a smile. Her voice still rasps, but for a moment it sounds less pained.

“Stubborn. He would never accept defeat or let Peter beat him one last time. So he must have lived somehow.”

Despite herself, Wendy finds herself smiling too. The expression feels strange, and she calls to mind again the picture of Hook she built for herself on the ship—a broken man, a trapped man, a sad man.

How much worse would it be if he were not only trapped in Peter’s endless games, but caught in a cycle of being killed and brought back to life again, all at a young boy’s whim?

Tiger Lily moves to sit on one of the logs surrounding the dead fire. She draws her legs up, wrapping her arms around them, melancholy taking over her expression. Tiger Lily’s hunched shoulders, the thinness of her body, all of it makes Wendy think of bundled sticks, ready to burn. Tiger Lily rests her cheek on her knees and looks at Wendy.

“I wish I understood how he did it so I could leave too.”