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.

15: Home

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.