She surveys the long stretch of beach. This is the first part of Neverland she ever saw, tumbling breathless to the sand with her brothers all those years ago. The terrain looks unchanged, and yet everything is subtly different. There’s a loneliness, seeped into the very grains that make up the shore, hushing in the relentless tide.

On her first visit, a gaggle of boys waited to greet them, hailing Peter like a conquering hero come home. Hook’s pirate ship loomed in the distance, a ragged black threat against the horizon. The beach, the woods, the tide—everything had been full of danger and adventure held in equal balance then. But now the beach is utterly empty. Wendy might be the only person left in all the world.

She pushes a lock of hair—sticky with salt and tangled with flight—behind her ear. Sunrise paints the waves a creamy orange-gold, too perfect to be real. The air is sweeter here, like ripened peaches warmed on a window sill, or hot, fragrant tea on a cold day. She breathes deep, the salt-tang invigorating her, carrying no hint of rotten fish and green weeds the way it would back at home.

Home. The word stops her. As she leapt from the window and into the sky, she had thought of herself as going home. But isn’t home the life she’s built with Jane and Ned? With Mary? There was a time she would have given anything to be back here, but she isn’t the child Peter stole anymore. That time is long gone. Or it should be.

She knows the pride of seeing Jane take her first step, watching her grow and learn new things every day. She knows the warmth of Ned’s hands in hers on their wedding day, and the feel of Mary’s head resting against her shoulder. She knows what it is to have her brother look at her with respect instead of fear, not like she’s a child about to break something, or a wild animal to be caged. She fought hard for the life she has now. How could this place ever be home?

Yet her blood hushes as the tide hushes, the rhythm of her pulse matched to the waves lapping the shore. She cannot deny part of her still belongs here, the part that raged against John, Michael, St. Bernadette’s, and Dr. Harrington. The part that refused to accept their truths in place of her own. Neverland is as much stitched to the fabric of her being as London. She cannot belong to one place or the other, but both together, a thread stretched between worlds.

Wendy feels it—a thrum along the length of her, the tension anchoring her both here and there. She’s always been divided, since the moment she landed on this beach twenty-seven years ago, since the moment she arrived back into the nursery in her parents’ home.