She circles the lagoon, climbing up the other side of the caldera. There’s less joy in it this time. The rock still shapes itself for her grip, but her body aches from her earlier exertion and from the fall. She feels bruises forming, and on top of that, she isn’t a girl anymore. She’s too old to play queen-of-the-castle.

At the peak, Wendy pauses to push sweat-stuck hair from her face, scanning for the strange smoke she saw earlier. From this side of the lagoon, she can see over the tree tops. She’s about to start her descent, when all at once, a group of branches shiver with a violence that has nothing to do with the wind. The leaves ripple, marking the passage of something unseen. The motion jumps from tree to tree, bending them with an invisible weight.

Wendy’s pulse stutters. Whatever it is, it’s too big for a bird, or a squirrel, or even the little golden monkeys with white faces that Peter showed her how to look for on their hidden perches. It’s moving away from her, but that doesn’t stop the fear locking her in place.

Ghosts. The word comes unbidden. Neverland was never haunted before, but there was never death here either.

Another thought follows close on the first’s heels, closing like a fist around her heart. Not ghosts, monsters.

Running, with her hand in Peter’s hand, breathless and trying to keep up. I’ll show you a secret, Wendy, something I’ve never shown anyone.

There’s something terrible at the heart of the island. Something Peter showed her once. But when she reaches after it, it’s like a door slamming shut in her mind, so abruptly she stubs her fingers against it, leaving her blinking and dazed.

The shaking in the trees stops just as suddenly as it started. She was… There was something…

Wendy shakes her head, letting several heartbeats pass. Whatever it was can’t have been important. She scans the trees, trying to see what caused the motion, but there’s no sign of anything. The shaking doesn’t reoccur, but there’s no birdsong either. No gentle creak of branches in a regular wind.

Haunted. Neverland is haunted. The lagoon is full of skeletons in a place where nothing is supposed to die, and her daughter is out there somewhere. She has to find Jane. Wendy turns her back deliberately on the trees, and descends the rest of the way to the ground.

6: Hide and Seek

HIDE AND SEEK

All around her, boys sleep, their bellies full of more soup made from dirt and stones. This time, she didn’t eat, and now her stomach growls, hollow and sick. How will she survive here? How do these boys live on nothing but dirt and bark and leaves? She pushes the thought away, unsettled in a way she can’t name.