Wendy draws her legs up too, mirroring Tiger Lily’s posture. She rests her cheek on her knees, and all at once, she feels every moment of her journey here, the years separating her from when she was last in Neverland. She feels her age, the little injuries of time and the big ones. The fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the strands of gray in her hair, the extra weight on her bones. They’re all earned. Since she was here last, she survived an asylum, her body bore a child. But Peter hasn’t changed at all.

He’s earned nothing, so he takes what isn’t given.

She thinks of him standing at the foot of Jane’s bed, his hands on his hips, his cocksure smile. He hadn’t even seen her—a grown woman, a mother in truth now. She imagines in his mind it had been mere moments since he left her, as though he’d only put her aside briefly, rather than forgetting about her for years. He had assumed Jane was her; he hadn’t aged, so why should she? And when she hadn’t fit Peter’s story anymore, he simply refused to see her at all. In a whole world built to fit his whims, Wendy is the fractured piece slipped out of place.

“What about you?” Wendy asks.

She glances at Tiger Lily again. The question hurts. Tiger Lily’s eyes change, dark and light at once. They make Wendy think of guttering candles.

“He got angry,” Tiger Lily says. Her voice raw and distant at once in a way that makes Wendy think of Mary in the asylum, talking about the man who married her mother.

“When the pirates left. He punished us. He made us burn, but we didn’t die. He changed us. He made me into the worst thing he could imagine, someone grown up. He wanted to prove—” Tiger Lily’s voice breaks, and when it comes back, it’s softer, diminished somehow. Embers, logs cracking into the last of the fire and going out.

“He wanted to prove that we belonged to him. That he could make us and unmake us just like the mermaids, and we could never leave him.”

“No. You’re not…”

Wendy’s throat is too full to speak. Tiger Lily’s words echo in her head—He made me into the worst thing he could imagine, someone grown up. Wendy brushes at her cheeks, furious with herself. She should be focused on Tiger Lily, but all she can picture is Peter’s face as he stood at the end of Jane’s bed, seeing her daughter and not her. No wonder Peter couldn’t see her. She has become everything he hates.

She looks at Tiger Lily again. Is this what Peter thinks growing up means? Becoming a shell with the ghost of the child you once were trapped inside?