Peter didn’t say a thing, not a single thing, when I walked in with my new clothes…as though he didn’t even notice at all.
All the pieces Bets made for me were completely divine, by the way, and he hasn’t said a thing about them once—absolutely zero inquiries. No wondering where I got them, no questions about how I paid for them or when I got them, not even a peep about whether a devilishly handsome pirate won me over a tiny bit by sparing my mother’s emerald earrings—not a single word.
Which then begs the question: Did he even mean what he said in the first place, or was it merely a throwaway thought he said without thinking (how very much like Peter) that I took to heart when I wasn’t meant to take it anywhere?
It is hard not to take the things he says to heart though. I see it happening all around us all the time. I watched him tell Calla that her hair was too long and it was getting in the way; the next day, she arrived with it noticeably shorter.* I heard him tell Kinley that he throws like a girl,† and then I saw him practicing by himself later on. He told Brodie he was taking up too much space on a seat a few days ago, and then Brodie didn’t come to dinner that night.
These parts of Peter are a bitter pill to swallow, and every now and then, I get to a point where I wonder why we’re all here, why any of us stay loyal to him. And trust me, we are loyal to him. But then there’s the other part of Peter where I catch him teaching Percival how to shoot the perfect bow and arrow and showing Kinley how to free dive for huge chunks of time. I saw Calla’s face soften when Peter carried in a bucket of clams and lay them in front of an elderly Stjärna woman and kiss her on the cheek before wandering away.
I do have to remind myself that he was raised by fairies and, in part, the land, and thus he behaves like the weather.
It’s not often that the weather doesn’t dwell in extremes. It’s usually hot or cold, sunny or rainy, stormy or brilliant, and he is the same.
Whatever Peter is in that specific moment, he is wholly that thing. When he is petulant, my god, he is hateful, but when he is sweet, he is the human embodiment of birds landing on your fingers and deer feeding freely from your bare hands.
So then, I reason, that one doesn’t just simply hate the weather entirely because sometimes it, occasionally, behaves a tiny bit cruelly.
Not that I could ever hate Peter, because it’s Peter. I should quite like to if I could; I’ve lain awake at night after he’s spent the day with mermaids, without me. I’ve tried my best to hate him for it, but I can’t, and I know that’s peculiar. I know it is. Maybe I’ve known him days, maybe it’s been years by now, but being around him, he just…soaks into you, and I do suspect that were we ever to fully part ways the way my grandmothers did, that I too would grow into one of those old women, cracking open windows, trying to find my way back to him, trying to catch a whiff of freedom and summertime and the way his skin smells like coconuts and salt. But then, maybe it’s more than that? Because even when I’m with him, even when he’s lying right there next to me, I have this feeling that perhaps if I were to leave him, in any which way, maybe I would die or something? That sounds so odd, I know. It’s just a feeling I have sometimes. I’m not sure why.
At this point, I have accepted (for the most part) that Peter and I do have a peculiar connection, which I’m quite sure has travelled both time and space to be present in front of us.
My grandmothers always said that Peter Pan is a part of our family’s destiny. I suppose that makes sense. Were he to be some kind of generational destiny, that’s fine, but I suspect he’s more than that to me.
Destiny and fate, you think you can interchange them, but you can’t. Destiny is—I believe—impacted by you and your choices and what you choose, but fate is not. It’s concrete. It’s the occurrence of events beyond a person’s control, as though determined almost by a supernatural power.
There is a part to Peter that feels like fate, and I think that’s an important component for me, because I’m self-aware enough to know that I don’t like him all the time, yet there is a perceptible pull I have towards him, and it doesn’t always feel within my control.
This peculiar drift back towards him even if I were to try to swim in another direction—as though the universe is pulling me to where it wants me, and I do believe in the kind of universe that would do that…
On this planet, if the universe can raise a boy, it can surely fate some hearts, so this, I presume, is my lot.
“You’re not going to go, are you?” Peter asked out of the blue the other night.
I was playing a game of go fish with Rune, and I looked up at him.
“Go where?”
He shrugged. “Anywhere.”
Rune jingled, and I gave her a look to quiet her.
I give him a delicate look, still not quite entirely sure what he was trying to communicate.
“Um—” I gave him a gentle smile. “I’m sure sometimes I’ll go places.”
“But not away,” he clarified. “The others all left, but you’re gonna stay, right?”
I watched him for a few seconds before I suddenly felt myself nodding even though I hadn’t agreed to the thought in my mind.
He smiled, pleased with himself, and then flew out the window.
Sometimes it does feel like loving him is something that’s happening to me, not through me or in me. An external thing that’s disconnected from my day-to-day life and how sometimes I think I might feel, I always feel a different way eventually anyway when I see him call a cloud over to give a wilted flower some shade.
It’s fate. It has to be. That’s why it doesn’t bother me* when he’s off gallivanting with Calla or when he spends the day showing off to the mermaids, because it’s not the same. They don’t mean the same things to him that I think I do. He doesn’t share his bed with them, he’s not kissing them,* and they’re not who he comes home to. I think that counts for something, doesn’t it?
Rye is coming over today, and we’re going out and around in Preterra.
He said he wants to teach me how to forage so I can look after myself. I told him Peter said he’d look after me, but he just smiled and said he thought it would be a good idea just in case.
That made me frown a bit, because in case of what? But he tacked on a shrug at the end and said, “You know, in case you get lost or something?” I don’t know if he actually meant that or he was just saying it to soften the blow, but anyway, what blow?
I hide the book that Jem gave me like I have every time I’ve left the house. I’m enjoying reading about it all so much, learning about this land and how it all came to be, but I suspect for some reason that Peter won’t much care for it as, thus far, he doesn’t feature in it once. Which, actually, if we’re honest, it seems like someone was trying to make a point. I don’t know how old Peter Pan is. I don’t know how long he’s been the boy wonder of this little island, but for there to be a history book written about Neverland and Peter not to be included in it? Well, that feels rather intentional.
I’m wearing one of the outfits Bets made for me. It’s a little white boatneck blouse with tailored shorts, and just quietly, between us, I’ve liked the feeling of wearing the clothes that Jem bought me because I feel like I’m wearing a secret.
It all appeared to be wasted on Peter who, at breakfast, barely looked up at me. Yesterday, he flew to one of the towns on one of the other islands and fought a pirate to the death.
“For what?” I asked.
“For honour!” he cried, and the Lost Boys har-har-ed.
His real prize though, it seems, was the knife he took from the pirate.
The handle is silver and twisted. Some of it’s dark, some of it’s light, but how sharp it is feels of a particular concern, especially in the hands of a boy like Peter.
“Look how sharp it is,” he said to no one in particular at breakfast before he gently tapped his finger on the tip of the blade and immediately a drop of blood formed. “It’s magically forged,” he told us, and the boys “ooh-ed.”
Peter held out his hand towards me. “Can I have a hair?” he asked without looking at me.
“What?” I stared over at him, and then he looked up at me and plucked a hair right off my head.
He held the piece of hair between his thumb and his finger like he was trying to thread a needle, except he was literally trying to split a hair just to prove to no one that the knife could do it.
So I kissed his cheek, and he said nothing when I said goodbye.
On my way out, he runs after me and kisses me up against the giant mushroom by the door.
“You look really pretty today, girl,” he tells me.
My cheeks go pink. “Do you want to come with me and Rye? We’re going for a—”
“Boring,” crows Peter, and I roll my eyes, and then he claps both his hands on my face and kisses me again and takes off in the other direction.
“You two seem to be doing better,” Rye says, pushing himself up from the tree he’s leaning against. I hadn’t noticed him there, and I flash him an embarrassed smile.
“Sorry.”
“What for?” He shrugs, indifferent. “You ready to go?”
I nod once.
“Got your basket?”
I flash it to him.
“Got your shears?”
I shake my head.
“A knife?” he asks.
I pull a face.
He shrugs. “I’ve got two. Come on.”
“Where are we going?” I ask him after a few minutes.
“The best place to forage.”
I lift my eyebrows, waiting for more.
He looks over his shoulder and gives me an excited smile. “The Fallen Kingdom.”
I blink at him. “The what?” I guess I’ve not reached this particular part of history in the book yet.
“The fairies, right? They live in tiny pockets, a few here and there. A lot of the time they’re alone.”
“Right.” I nod. They live in the trees mostly, and you can spot them because there’s always this bright light that feels almost too beautiful to be real but feels too warm to be your imagination. The little hollows are usually mossy, baby mushrooms growing around them, the tiniest flowers you’ve ever seen and so much sparkle. I haven’t dared peek in, but it sounds like wind chimes and chirping birds.
“But they used to live in a kingdom.”
“Really?” I stare after him.
“They used to be big too.”
I stop in my tracks, because now this just sounds fake. “What?”
“They still can be.” Rye shrugs.
I shake my head. “Then why?”
“When they’re small, they’re harder to catch.”
I frown over at him. “Who’s trying to catch them?”
Rye gives me a sobering look. “Lots of people.” He reconsiders this answer. “Lots of things.” He doesn’t say anything for a couple of minutes again before he stops and crouches down. “This is a type of mycorrhizal mushroom.”
“Oh.” I nod. “We have those on Earth.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “I think they’re from there originally, but my people brought them with us. Anyway, it’s safe and edible.” He picks three of them and puts them in his basket. “This one”—he points to a smaller one that’s stringier looking—“also edible.” He pulls a face, and I squint at him, confused. “But the pirates, they’ll come out here looking for these. They’ll grind them up and—” He sniffs.
“Oh!” I gasp. “Like drugs?”
“I mean—”He shrugs. “I don’t know what that is. That’s not what we’d call it here.”
I squint over at him. “What would you call it?”
He chuckles and thinks for a half a second. “Herbal recreation.”
“Drugs.” I nod with a laugh.
We keep walking.
“There’s a few plants around that do that. Flowers and leaves and mushrooms—”
“Do you use them?” I ask as Rye stands and keeps walking.
“Sometimes,” he says.
“For what?” I ask nosily.
He looks back at me. “When I need to.” He stops at a tree and reaches up for a branch, pulling it down. “Come smell this.”
He’s tall and broad and has such a warm face that it’s impossible not to grin up at him as I do. His eyes are dark like leather, short dark brown hair, brown skin, and the loveliest smile. He’s handsome too, and I suspect that he knows it, though he doesn’t appear to use it to his advantage.*
“Lune blå.” He breathes them in, and I don’t know how I’d explain the wonder of the smell. Maybe muddled blackberries with cream?
“It’s the leaves,” he tells me. “Not the berries. You make tea from it.”
He picks me a bunch and puts it in my basket, flashing me a quick smile as our faces are close enough to feel each other’s breath. It’s not deliberate; it’s just by circumstance.
“Peter likes that.” He nods at the leaves in my basket and then he clears his throat.
“So…” I glance around. “Are you seeing anyone?”
Rye’s eyebrows flicker, confused. “I can see you…”
“Oh!” I let out a little laugh, shaking my head. “No, on Earth, you’d say—” I purse my mouth as I think. “Are you, um, romantic with anyone? Are you…in a…couple? With someone?”
“Ah.” He gets it. “I’m…interested in someone, yeah.”
“Oh!” I look over at him, delighted. “That’s exciting.”
He rolls his eyes and keeps walking. “Is it?”
I nod even though he doesn’t see me. “Do they know?”
“I don’t know,” he calls, not looking back. “Hard to say. They’re always preoccupied.”
I frown. “What with?”
He flicks me a look. “Other people.”
“Ah.” I nod once and wonder if he’s talking about me. He might be.
I wonder. He’s been a very good friend to me since I got here, but I thought he was just being my very good friend.
I press my lips together and glance over at him. “Thanks for doing this.”
“Yeah.” He nods, flashing me a quick smile. “Happy to.” Rye blows some air from his mouth and picks a few berries off a bush, tossing them to me.
I look down at them. Beautiful, hot pink, soft, almost velvety. “What are these?”
“Raspberries.” He smirks.
“Oh.” I laugh once, feeling a bit embarrassed.
He chuckles and walks on ahead of me, and for a minute or so, we say nothing, but I think the silence between us is the okay kind, not the bad kind.
“Can I ask you something?” I call to him.
“Yes,” he says without stopping.
“Do you forget things?”
He stops walking, pauses. “What?”
I breathe out my nose and catch up to him. “Why do I forget things here but you don’t and Jem doesn’t and—”
“Jem?” His head pulls back.
“Sorry.” I shake mine. “Jamison.”
He blinks, surprised. “Jamison?”
I swallow and sort of roll my eyes a bit.
Rye gives me a look. “When did Jamison become Jem?”
“Why does that matter?” I shrug, turning away from him to pick some flowers like I know what I’m doing.
“Do you see him?”
I pause, press my lips together, and I’m conscious of how my voice sounds before I let myself speak. “Sometimes.”
Rye stands a few metres away, just watching me. “Wow.”
“Wow what?” I frown.
He cocks an eyebrow and gives me a look, then walks past me, sweeping a branch of weeping willow aside and holding it open for me.
“He’s my friend,” I give him a look.
“If you say so.” He juts his jaw.
“I say so,” I tell him, nose in the air.
He nods, but it’s weird. He looks bothered with me.
I frown up at him. “Why are you being strange?”
“I’m not.” Rye sighs. “I just—nothing.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know why you forget things.” He gives me a shrug.
“Just some things,” I clarify even though he didn’t ask for clarity, and then I realise he’s stopped walking.
He’s standing before a giant, overgrown marble arch.
There are wrought-iron gates all grown over with ivy. Rye pushes them, and they creak loudly, and for some reason, the moment turns solemn.
“This is the kingdom?” I ask, staring up at it all in wonder.
It feels almost like we’re in a greenhouse with a roof so high you can’t see it. The trees stretch ridiculously tall, so there probably isn’t a roof, but as soon as I step in, I have the distinct feeling that I’m under some kind of covering.
“Yep.” He nods.
“Whoa.” I peer around me.
It feels sacred. It really does. We stand under a tree, and the wind blows in, moving around us that way the wind does here, gentle and present all at once, rustling around your ears like a whisper, as though it has something to say. I’ve never seen anything like it here. It’s all marble and stone and overgrown, and life is just teeming from it, crawling from every crack and crevice.
It’s gorgeous and decrepit and mesmerising and agonising all at once. You know how it hurts sometimes to see something that should be magnificent in complete ruin?
“Oh my god.” I bend down to the prettiest pink flowers I’ve ever seen in my life and go to pick one. “Look at these. They’re—”
“Don’t touch those!” Rye says quickly, and I freeze. “That’s glömmfloare. It…” He pauses, squints, and thinks. “It’s bad for you.”
“Oh.” I brush my hands on my dress, smiling uncomfortably. “What happens?”
He stares over at me for a few seconds, then his eye falls to the ground, and his face lights up. “Oh, come here.” He crouches down and nods at a flower that looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s sort of pink, sort of purple, sort of like a sunset—layers and layers of petals, more dramatic than a peony, but just as elegant, and taller too. “This is the blooming nurse.” He gives me a proud smile. “It fixes pretty much everything.” He shrugs. “Broken bones, broken hearts, fractured minds, stab wounds, siren kisses, werewolf bites—pretty much everything but some spells and death itself.”
I bend down to look at it, oohing.
“They’re also really rare and poisonous if not prepared correctly,” he adds as an afterthought.
I give him a look. “Oh good.”
He smirks.
“Why can’t it break certain spells?” I ask, and then my face falters at my own question. “And also, what do you mean, ‘spells’?”
“You know.” Rye gives me a look. “Magic?”
“From the fairies?”
“No.” Rye’s face goes a bit serious. “Another kind of magic.”
And he doesn’t say anything else about it, so I bend down to pick it.
“Wait,” he says. “Leave it. We don’t need it.”
I look over at him, thinking about it. Then I nod. “You’re right.
We’re back to quiet again, and I’m wondering about that flower he said was bad and as well as why that magic flower can’t break spells and also—spells?!
“Can anything break a spell?” I ask him, sitting down next to him under a tree.
He shrugs. “There’s a natural counterbalance for the supernatural, most of the time anyway. It depends though.”
“On what?” I start braiding the grass.
“On the spell,” he says, but he’s not looking at me. “I don’t know of a plant that can bring you back from a magic death. But I know about a plant that can lift a sleeping spell or a mind fog spell or—”
I frown at him. “Who’s casting all these?”
He gives me a longish look and then sort of breathes out a laugh. “No one. Don’t worry about it.”
And with that, he stands and goes behind the tree, collecting some mushrooms that are growing beneath it, pointing out which ones are safe and which ones aren’t.
“So how long have you and Jamison been…” He leaves that open-ended, and I make sure he sees my face as I shake my head.
“No, we aren’t…anything.” I shake it more. “We’re just friends.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “Who do…”
I pull a face. “Things together sometimes.”
“Like?”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I thought we just established I don’t remember things.”
Rye rolls his eyes, and I groan, feeling trapped.
“He took me to the library the other day, I think. To a tea shop on another day. One time, he bought me some clothes—” Rye shoots me a look for that one, but I ignore it. “He took me to where the founders landed.”
“The founders.” He gives me a tight smile and a sombre nod.
“Sorry.” I shake my head. “Is that bad to say?”
“Colonisation is not great no matter how good it goes.” He shrugs. “But I guess my people landed once too. Before us, it was just the fae.”
“But your people got along?”
“Our people built Neverland.” He nods. “Just not according to history.”
“Oh.” I frown a bit.
“They were okay for the most part, the elders say, nothing like the colonisers on Earth. We’re just…not in the books. Not those ones anyway.”
“Which ones are you in?” I ask, looking for his eyes. “I’d like to look at them.”
He flashes me a quick smile. “There are caves my elders talk about, somewhere on the island that tells the full story—you know, the prophecy and the rest.”
“What prophecy?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know, something about the kingdom restored.” He waves vaguely around us.
I put my hand on the fallen marble head of a giant statue. “What happened here?” I peer up and around.
“Fairies are insanely loyal, like nuts about it. They’re pack creatures. They love family, they love each other, and you have a thing—it’s a word you use on your planet for wish slaves.” He squints at me, trying to remember.
“Genies?” I offer, and Rye snaps his fingers.
“Genies! Yeah.” He shrugs again. “That’s a caricature of a fairy. Except if you catch one, you don’t get three wishes. You get infinite wishes, and they live for so long, unless you kill them on purpose.”
“Who would kill one on purpose?” I ask, horrified.
“Themselves if they’ve got nothing to live for, or someone else if they’re trying to control another fairy.”
I frown at him. “How can you control a fairy?”
“You can’t, really. That’s why you have to catch them in pairs. It’s the only way you’ll get it to do what you want.”
My brows get low, but I keep listening.
“If you have two, and you threaten to hurt one, the other will do what you want. It’s why fairies tend to spilt up and stay apart. They’re so loyal, they’re too easy to exploit.”
“So what happened here?”
Rye scratches his neck. “People kept pillaging the village to control their magic, for money, for riches, you know—the usual shit people destroy a place that isn’t theirs for.”
I shake my head at it all. “So the fairies just left?”
“They scattered.” He shrugs. “They had to. Once the people worked out if you took two fairies at once they were a lot more compliant, two or more fairies gathering became too dangerous. We tried to shelter them. It worked for a while, my grandfather said, but fairies are so obviously nonhuman, you know? They’re too beautiful. You just knew as soon as you saw one what it was, so they took them anyway.”
“So that’s why they went small?”
“Yeah. Well, that and then the humans started to rape the women fairies to try to make halflings.”
My mouth falls open in horror.
“But humans don’t get it. A fairy’s magic is so powerful and so their own. You do that to a fairy, she’s not giving you what you want. They control their magic. So they use it to control their size, stay small, stay alone, survive.”
I feel ill as I stare over at him. “People would still try to hurt them?”
“Daphne.” He gives me a look like I’m stupid. “Never mind the decade or the planet, but what won’t man do for power?”
You have a vision in your mind of other planets, that they’ll be better than ours, more advanced, more peaceful, more evolved—
And maybe they would be without humans. Humans seem to be the common denominator when it comes to the downfall of others.
“We should go.” Rye nods his head. “I’ll take you back down past Cannibal Cove.”
I toss him a look. “No, thank you.”
He laughs. “It’s just a name. It’s mostly just mermaids.”
And do you know, I really do love it here. For the strangeness and the chaos and the mysteries that seem so above my head, the land is nothing short of spectacular.
Every colour that blooms here is insanely intense. You’ve never seen greens more saturated than this, and there are about a million different shades all layered on top of one another as the fallen fairy kingdom with its forest all overgrown morphs into a proper jungle that spills out onto the most unimaginably beautiful beach. Like no one’s ever stepped foot on it before.
The wind blows against me, and there’s a sweetness in the air even though there are some grains of sand blowing on my face. I turn my head to shield my eyes and spot a mermaid on the rock.
That still feels like such a ludicrous thing to say.
I recognise her. It’s the one with the auburn hair. Marin, I think her name is. Rye told me that she’s actually part siren; I don’t know what that means though.
Her tail stands out against the backdrop of it all because it’s bright and glistening shades of amber and yellow.
And then I notice underneath her a pair of legs. I stop and squint. It’s getting hard to see. The suns are all starting to set.
“Hey.” Rye grabs my arm. “We should go.”
“What?” I blink, confused.
He moves in front of me, shaking his head. “This was a stupid way to come. I don’t know what I was thinking, but we should just go back through—”
I peer around him, and that’s when my eyes come into proper focus.
The mermaid is with someone. Actually, she’s kissing someone.
A lot.
“Peter?” I say his name, but it sounds foreign as I do. It’s a funny feeling, floating but in the bad way. Like I’m at sea and I’m adrift. I think I call his name again as I walk towards him, but he doesn’t stop.
Rye grabs my arm again. “Let’s just go.” He shakes his head. “We don’t want to see this. Marin’s a piece of work. We should—”
“Peter Pan!” I yell loud enough for him to finally notice me.
He pulls back from the mermaid and looks around confused till his eyes finally land on me about ten metres away from him.
“Wendy!” He beams.
“Daphne,” I say, and Rye’s head falls as the mermaid giggles.
“Daphne.” Peter nods, smiling indifferently as he props himself up a bit. “Rye! What are you doing out on this side of the island?”
Rye just shakes his head, gives him a little shrug. “Foraging.”
I look past Peter to the mermaid leaning on his shoulder, staring up at him dreamily, before I look back at him.
“What are you doing?” I ask, sounding braver than my insides feel.
“Kissing.”
And obviously so. I just saw them doing that. I don’t know why him saying it out loud feels like somebody’s dropped a piano on me. Now that I’m closer, I can see he’s sort of shimmery—specks of scales from rubbing up against a mermaid.
“Oh.” I nod a couple of times as I stare over at him. “Why?”
“Because it’s good.” Peter shrugs, and Rye sighs next to me.
“Oh.” I nod again. Another piano.
“Daphne,” Peter says in a voice that makes me feel stupid. “You’re not the only girl I play with.”
Piano.
“Did you think you were?” he asks me, smiling like he’s confused.
I stare over at him, do my best not to let it show on my face that it feels like a little bit of me is folding up inside myself, tucking itself away into a far back corner where I won’t be able to reach it again.
Peter smiles over at me mindlessly, nodding his chin towards Rye. “Come join us.”
Rye shifts uncomfortably beside me, and I glare over at Peter, unable to look away.
“No.” I shake my head.
Peter looks over at me, head tilted, like he’s trying to read a sign in another language.
“Why do you look…stupid and sad?” he calls to me.
Because I am those things, I think.
I say nothing, and Peter gives the mermaid a look as though to imply that I’m the one making things awkward. He sniffs, amused, and the mermaid covers her mouth with her hand, doing a terrible job of suppressing her laugh.
Something about his indifference and how strangely beautiful and cruel she is at once makes my eyes go glassy.
Peter squints over at me in disbelief. “Are you crying?”
And with that, the mermaid lets out a delighted little squeal, and Peter lets out one single laugh, watching me like I’m not the person he shares his bed with every night.
I turn quickly on my heel and walk back into the jungle.
“Where are you going?” Rye calls, walking after me. “I’ll bring you back to the grounds. You can stay with us.”
I turn to face him, crossing my arms over my chest. “Is he like that with Calla?”
Rye sighs, tilting his head. “Daphne, I—”
“Does he do that with Calla?” I ask tonelessly.
He says nothing.
“Yes or no, Rye?”
Rye sighs. “Yes.”
I shake my head at him. “I’m not going back to the Old Valley.”
He looks stressed. “Then where are you going?”
Where am I going? I don’t know. Except yes, I do. There’s only one place left that I can go, really.
I start walking again.
“At least fly there,” he calls to me.
I shake my head. “I can’t fly without him.”
Rye grimaces.
I look back at the rock, and Peter’s there, reclined on the rock, hands behind his head, the mermaid gazing at him all adoringly, finger running down over his nose.
And that’s enough for me. I take off through the jungle.
Flying would be faster, that’s definitely true, and though I’ve never tried, I really am sure that I couldn’t do it without him—that’s what Peter says anyway—and I don’t know if you can do it when you’re sad, because happy thoughts, that’s what Peter always says, and I have none. I’m not willing to feel like a failure at the same time as I’m busy feeling like an idiot.
I do eventually get nervous by myself out here, because I don’t feel I know it particularly well yet. Whenever we’re out here, it never feels like we take the same path. Whenever Rye takes me somewhere, we walk a travelled path, or if one of the Lost Boys takes me, we go down paths that I think look familiar to me, but when Peter’s there, we’re always going strange ways and taking corners and turns I don’t know we need to be taking. A small part of me wonders whether that’s on purpose. So I have to depend on him, but who could I say that thought to, and how would I prove it anyway? And to what end?
So I run through the jungle till I reach the shore of the crescent, and then I run along the edge of the bay.
I will say, it is rather difficult to navigate your way around an island you already don’t know very well when you’re crying; no one tells you that. It’s rather hazardous, and I nearly might have fallen a few times were it not for a couple of little birds that flew along beside me, guiding me and keeping me right with little pecks and flapping their wings against my face whenever I began heading the wrong way.
They come with me the whole way to the start of the town, those sweethearts. I check my pockets to see if I have anything I could give them, but I don’t. I just give them a sorry wave goodbye, and off they fly.
It’s getting dark now. I don’t know what time it is—as though time matters here. I haven’t yet figured out which sun they attach their time to. It couldn’t be too late in the evening, and now that I’m here, I don’t know why I’ve come.
Even though a bit of me does.
I’m sad, obviously. But why have I come here? That’s a question whose eyes I’ve been avoiding because it doesn’t make sense. I can’t really believe it. Peter’s been doing that with Calla and the mermaids? All those times he’s not with me, is that what he’s been doing?
He doesn’t even do that with me, that kind of kissing. It was a lot of kissing… He’s progressed without me, without even telling me.
I walk, brave as I can, towards the Golden Folly, climbing on board and walking straight to where Jamison took me the other day.
Orson Calhoun stands from the chair he’s reclined in on the bridge.
“’Ello.” He nods.
“Hi.” I wipe my face with my hands and sniff. I know it looks like I’ve been crying. No way to hide that.
“Are y’okay?” He nods at me.
“Is Jamison here?” I look past him to the door to his room.
“Aye.” He nods.
“In there?” I walk towards it.
“Aye, but—” Orson starts but it’s too late.
I swing the door open, and there he is with a girl who I think looks familiar, but I can never remember anything these days. It’s someone. He’s with someone. Bent over a table. She’s fully naked, he’s partially naked, pumping away.
“Oh my god.” I clamp my hand over my mouth, spin around immediately, and cover my eyes too late.
“Bow!” he says, startled.
“Shit. I’m sorry!” I keep walking, quickly as I can, scurrying off the bridge. “I’m—Fuck. Sorry.”
I hear movement after me.
“Thank ye for that,” Hook says to Calhoun as he passes him and jogs after me. “Whoa, whoa!” He grabs my arm and spins me around to face him. “What’s going on? What’re ye doing here?”
I snatch my arm away from him, and his face falters.
“Are ye okay?”
“Fine.” I nod a lot. “I’m fine.” I tell him, except now I’m shaking my head. I’m not sure I am fine. I’m about to not be fine. I need those birds to come back. I’m starting to not be able to see again. I wave my hand vaguely in the direction of his quarters. “Don’t let me keep you from—” I swallow heavy. “Finishing.”
Hook breathes out once, and it’s heavy and he looks down at me with this frown that’s confused and maybe even a bit sad.
“What’s happening?” He looks over his shoulder, bewildered.
“Nothing.” I shrug expressively. “Literally nothing. On all fronts.” I nod to myself. “Clearly.”
He keeps frowning at me. “What?”
I wave back towards the girl who’s now filling the doorway, watching us with a frown. “Enjoy.”
“Aye, sure.” Jamison scoffs, annoyed. “I will.”
I walk backwards away from him and flash him my middle finger before I spin around and walk away.
“I dïnnae ken what that means,” he calls after me.
I spin back around to flash him two.
He throws me an unimpressed look and then walks back to the girl, putting his arm around her, closing the door behind him.
Piano.
I don’t know where to go or what to do. I can’t go back to the tree house. I don’t want to go to the Old Valley. I don’t know how to get home.
I spot a little lizard that’s staring at me from a few metres away. He’s glowing this warm sort of yellowy green, perched at the edge of the dock.
I watch him for a few seconds, and briefly I feel better, distracted by something that’s so strange it demands my full attention, and then the lizard drops off the edge of the dock.
I dart towards it and peer over the edge, but the lizard’s landed in a beached canoe.
He stares up at me, blinks twice. And for some reason, I feel like he’s telling me something.
I look over my shoulder to see if anyone else is seeing this, but there aren’t many people around, and besides, who’s watching a sad, crying girl chase a lizard anyway?
I slip down over the side of the dock and land on the sand.
I stare at the lizard, which stares back at me. “Am I to understand we’re to share this?” I gesture to the canoe.
Quite typically of lizards (and as I suspected), he says nothing in return.
I hold out my hand. “Are you a nice lizard?”
He runs onto my hand and immediately curls up in the palm of my hand.
“Well, at least one of us is set for the night.”
I climb into the canoe, curling into a ball, being careful not to squash my new lizard friend as I do.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is no such thing as fate, and maybe I hate it here.
* Though I’m not so sure that he noticed.
† And knowing him, I doubt he meant it in the way where a girl might throw with focus and precision and a quiet strength that would go over Peter’s head.
* Much.
* I hope.
* How good of him. How very superior to all the other men I know on this island.