“Lasiandra!” Gwen called back. She started running toward the water. She felt a terror gripping her, like at any moment the tides would change and sweep exhausted Lasiandra away. It had been so long since she'd seen her friend, and they had parted under such anxious circumstances, but Lasiandra wasn't going anywhere now. Propping herself up in the shallow water, she tried to catch her breath. Her tail didn't even have the energy to flex and splash up.
Gwen stopped in her tracks. Lasiandra was not smiling. The haunting sensation that Lasiandra would be swept away transformed into a more nebulous fear. Gwen didn't know what she feared, but she sensed something was very wrong.
“What happened to you? Are you alright?” she called.
“I'm fine,” Lasiandra replied, “just a little winded. It was a long swim here.”
“Did you and Jay make it out of the lake alright?”
“Yes, but of course,” Lasiandra answered, water still dripping from her hair. “He's fine. I promised you I'd keep him safe and get him home, Gwen.”
Lasiandra was as good as her word. This had always been true, but everything Starkey had said about mermaids twisted in Gwen's mind and filled her thoughts with wordless worries.
“Come over here and give me a hand,” she instructed.
“What's going on? Where have you been?”
“I can explain everything,” Lasiandra said. “Come over, Gwen. We haven't much time.”
She wanted Gwen to give her a hand—with what? They didn't have much time, but time for what?
“Do you still have the skyglass?” Gwen asked.
“No,” Lasiandra answered. “It has done its work, and I know what I need of the stars' backward secrets. We're all going to have what we want now: you, me, Jay… all of us. Come over and help me!”
Still, Gwen hesitated. She might not have trusted immature Peter or callous Piper, but she had trusted Mr. Starkey as much as a teenager could trust an adult. Even he had warned her against the mermaids.
Lasiandra saw her reluctance, but her urgent expression did not leave room for her look hurt. “Gwen, for the stars' sake, come here. I'm not going to hurt you.”
Mermaids never lied. She saw no choice but to rush to her friend.
She ran over, and as she looked down at her friend she saw a satisfaction in her eyes that she did not recognize. She approached, charging into the shallow waters on her bare and sandy feet. Gwen started to form another question, but before she could, Lasiandra reached out. Not for her hand, but for her ankle.
With a sudden jerk, Lasiandra grabbed her foot and pulled her down. Screaming as she toppled over, Gwen smashed into the surf, hurting herself as she crashed down.
A mouthful of bitter saltwater tasted as bad as the ocean water felt against her open and aghast eyes. She reached out, groping in the dark silence of the water for Lasiandra. She could feel the sand beneath her, but it shifted and swayed with the tide. Gwen flailed in the water as she attempted to get back to her feet, or at least get her face back to air.
She surfaced, spitting the water—but not its taste—out of her mouth. Blinking back the burn of the saltwater in her eyes, she looked up and saw Lasiandra standing over her, the sun's shine blurring into the glow of her light hair.
“I'm sorry, Gwen,” Lasiandra told her. “You have no idea what you've set in motion and I don't have time to explain it.”
On legs as tall as her her tail had been long, Lasiandra stood over her and looked down at Gwen in the sandy surf as she had so often looked down at her. She took a step away, as if she had been walking away from things her whole life.
“Where are you going?” Gwen demanded.
She looked back. “To the Never Tree, Gwen. That's what we're here for. It's part of the deal. One last thing for them, before you and I get everything we want.”
Lasiandra walked away while Gwen wrestled her abject horror. Storming and splashing to her feet Gwen realized all at once what had happened. “You!” she shouted. “You brought them here?” The adults hadn't devised a way to navigate to Neverland without one of its native inhabitants leading them. They had never needed to.
Lasiandra stopped. Turning back to face Gwen, she gave her a weak smile. “I have made you promises, Gwen, and I stand by them all. The stars and I are going to give you everything you want, my friend, and manifest those hazy desires you have not yet realized and named in your own heart.” She spoke with confidence, yet had an apologetic melancholy in her expression, as if she know she was hurting Gwen and took no pleasure in it.
“I don't want this!” Gwen screamed. “How could you think I want you to destroy Neverland?”
She looked so collected, like a model in the sunlight. She stood triumphant in a short, dark diving suit as her wet hair curled past her shoulders. Gwen, disheveled and emotionally destroyed, felt hideously small in her sodden dress and frazzled hair.
“You don't know what you want,” Lasiandra told her. It was true, Gwen knew, but irrelevant. “You never know what you want. I've never understood that about you.” Lasiandra threw a gestured to herself and to the sky. “I know what you want. The stars know what you want. How can you not see what sits in your own heart?”
“I would never sacrifice Neverland!” she yelled.
“No—of course not,” Lasiandra agreed. “Who could expect you to pay a price for a desire you didn't even understand? That's why I'm here. I love you, Gwen, and I will do what it takes to give you what you want.
She felt violated. How could someone else purport to know her when she didn't even know herself? But that was Lasiandra's point. If Gwen couldn't make sense of herself from the inside, someone else—maybe anyone else—would have the perspective needed to understand and decipher the mechanics of her soul.
“I'm sorry it comes at such a cost,” Lasiandra apologized, “but this is what has to happen if we're to realize our desires and finally get to our happily ever after. If the adventure never ends, it's not a fairytale, it's just a nightmare, Gwen. You'll thank me for this someday, when you're less confused.”
Lasiandra, so new to humanity, did not yet know that getting what she wanted and being happy were two separate—sometimes unbelievably different—things. Did she not understand that Gwen had been happy, even in her confusion? Apparently not—mermaid's desires ran as deep as the ocean itself. For Lasiandra, desire must have been happiness, identity, and more.
“You've betrayed Neverland!” Gwen howled. “I'll never forgive you for this!”
Lasiandra flashed her a sad smile, as if watching the irrelevant tantrum of a small-minded child. “No, you will. The stars have spoken it, Gwen. We will be great friends, in the end. So I have come to end it.”
She had the stars on her side, of course Lasiandra felt confident she had the moral high ground. She knew how everything would end and just how to push the universe to meet her ends. So rooted in her conviction, she didn't seem to comprehend the depth of Gwen's immediate pain. She couldn't expect, either, how hard Gwen would fight to protect her life in Neverland even when she knew she was going against the stars.
Gwen charged Lasiandra and knocked her to the ground. It wasn't hard to take Lasiandra down—balance was a skill she had only begun to learn. She tried to bat her back, but Gwen trapped her against the sand.
“Get off me!” Lasiandra roared. “I am trying to help you!”
They struggled on the ground, kicking up sand as they wrestled each other. Gwen didn't let her get up. She couldn't. Lasiandra meant to do horrible things, and she had to stop her.
“Don't you know you deserve more than this?” Lasiandra shouted. “You are a real person with so much more potential, with so many greater things than the illusions of this island! You deserve to grow. Everyone does, that's why everyone leaves! You don't want to be trapped here anymore than I do. You gave me everything I needed to escape it, everything I wanted… now let me give you the same!”
Envy was the most insidious of vices, and sometimes the most undetectable. It could pass as respect or flattery, or even vicarious happiness. Gwen had never seen it in Lasiandra's eyes—or else she had never named it as such, even when she knew dark desires dwelled in the mermaid's spirit.
Why else would have Lasiandra come again and again to listen about Gwen's high school, her crush, her life? Gwen couldn't have believed this was all just amiable patter. It interested Lasiandra, and the passionate mermaid couldn't help but covet it. Land represented so many opportunities. Had Gwen thought her friend would be content to see it all second-hand? But not even, because Gwen, despite how much she mused and swooned over everything back home, had still elect to abandon it.
To Lasiandra, reality represented a lost kingdom. The walking world lay beyond her reach, and she was forced to watch it sacrificed for the sake of Peter, Rosemary, and a few other little fools. She felt she could make this right though, no matter how hard Gwen tried to blind herself to the tragedy. She would restore Gwen to that glittering, almost mythical world she called reality.
Lasiandra reached up and slapped Gwen. Forcing the girl's weight off her, Lasiandra flipped them over and pinned Gwen to the ground. “All children grow up,” Lasiandra told her. “The same way all mermaids eventually turn to sea foam and die without a trace in the dark, cold ocean. The difference is growing up is growing. Growing up is making a life, and making memories, and making a mark. We're both going to have that chance now.”
Gwen tried to hit Lasiandra back, but all she managed to do was miss her target as she squirmed under Lasiandra. The traitor whacked her head and as Gwen's hands sprung to hold her throbbing head, Lasiandra got up.
“You don't have to help me, Gwen,” Lasiandra told her, walking away. “But you can't stop me, either.”
Such a threat held little water against a heart as resolved as Gwen's. She would protect Neverland. She was a big sister; that meant she was a protector, and sometimes that meant she was a fighter.
Leaping to her feet, Gwen ran at Lasiandra. The once-mermaid heard her feet on the squishy sand and whirled around to defend herself. Lasiandra didn't have much experience with legs, but Gwen had even less experience with fighting. Grabbing Gwen's arm, she used the girl's momentum against her and toppled her down. Gwen hit her head against a rock as she crashed to the shore, screaming with the pain. On the ground again, she put a hand to her head and tried to will the painful pounding away. She didn't bleed, but her dizziness and pain overwhelmed her. She couldn't fight back when Lasiandra grabbed her legs and began dragging her into the gentle, stinging surf.
“Just relax, Gwen,” Lasiandra coaxed. “With the stars' help, I've brought you all you desire. It's just waiting for you to wake up and seize it. Everything you want is here now.”
Her head seemed to spin clockwise, but everything in her vision seemed spun counterclockwise. Nothing made sense, but Lasiandra was speaking of desires. She spoke of everything Gwen had ever wanted. The girl choked before she could force her question out.
“Where's Jay?” Gwen gasped. Lasiandra had promised to protect him, to get him home safe, to do what he asked of her…
But Lasiandra was no longer a mermaid. She was a person, and people lied. “I'm sorry, Gwen,” she apologized, grabbing Gwen by the hair and forcing her into the water. Her face hit the water, her friend's voice the last thing she heard before the water blotted everything out. “You'll thank me for this someday.”
Nothing followed but the breathless struggle to break out of Lasiandra's hold and surface out of the water. She fought and fought, but hopelessness closed in as everything in her throbbing head and exhausted body got harder, slower, and darker.
And then there wasn't anything.