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 her mother’s face. Her mother’s arms are around her, holding her tight, and they’re flying. It’s nothing like flying with Peter. Jane is safe, held, and it is the deepest truth in all the world that her mother will never let anything bad happen to her. She will not fall.

They rise, landing on a wide rock ledge. Jane gulps at the air, trying to catch her breath, and all the while, all she can do is gape at her mother. She feels like a landed fish, snatched from one place and dropped into another where nothing makes sense anymore.

How can her mother be here? Is she dreaming? Did she fall and hit her head on the ground? Worse, is she dead?

A tremor passes through Jane, and it has nothing to do with the shaking ground. She wants to bury her face in her mother’s side, but her mother looks so fierce and wild with the wind howling around them and the cliff side trying to shake them off that Jane doesn’t dare. The woman before her is her mother and a stranger both.

In an instant, her mother’s face changes. She makes a sound between laughter and a sob, closing the space between them, and touches Jane’s face. Her mother’s eyes are wet, and her expression says she cannot believe the reality of Jane either. Then her mother throws her arms around Jane, hugging her so tightly Jane can barely breathe.

When her mother finally lets go, Jane has so many questions she wants to ask, but the words that tumble from her mouth are, “You flew.”