Home. But it isn’t really. It’s her parents’ house. The rooms don’t know her the way they did in the house in London. And now in the car with them is the strange man her mother dragged along with them. He stinks of Neverland. Even though her mother hasn’t admitted it, Jane knows. And she’s certain, too, that he’s connected to the deaths as well—the man on the train and also Peg.
She listened to him and her mother while they thought her asleep. She doesn’t have all the pieces, but enough to confirm some of her suspicion, and the knowledge infuriates her. Her mother promised honesty. She promised Jane could ask her anything. If she confronted her mother, would she tell the truth? But why should she even have to confront her? Why should the burden fall to Jane to drag confessions from her mother like a recalcitrant child? Doesn’t she trust Jane? Or does she think her incapable of handling anything but sugar-coated half-lies?
This is worse than the things her mother has hidden from her before. The man, James, knew a death would occur moments before the train’s brake was thrown and the conductor came through the cars looking for a doctor. A man’s life was at stake, and her mother did nothing. How can Jane forgive her for that? It sickens her now that she thought of her mother as fearless and bold earlier, when it’s clear she’s a coward.
Jane rests her head against the window glass, her body turned as far away from her mother and James as possible. There’s a smell about him, like black powder, like flowers—violence and an incongruous sweetness. She doesn’t like him at all.
Part of her wants to lean over the seat, demand the driver take her back to the station. She could get on a train back to London. Better to spend the holiday alone. Only she wants to see her father and her uncles. And in London, all that waits is a cold flat, the memory of Peg’s shadow burned into her mattress. The man on the train was the same, as if something had hollowed him out completely. The seat behind him hadn’t been stained, but Jane had felt it, a darkness waiting to rise.
When the train crew finds the mark tomorrow, will they remember what caused it? Or will they have already forgotten? She’d seen it starting to happen even as she stood uselessly over the body. Those gathered around her let their gazes drift away, or had them pushed away. They couldn’t help it, couldn’t hold their focus. It’s as though whatever—and Jane is certain now it’s a what, not a who—is doing the killing has the power to rewrite reality. It is not just causing death, but making it almost as though the person killed never existed at all.
It’s a chilling thought and Jane swears again she will not forget. Not Peg, not the man whose name she doesn’t even know. She will hold them in her memory along with the catalog of other things known only to her—her and her mother. Peg, the man on the train, Timothy, and Neverland.
Jane catches herself grinding her teeth and forces herself to stop. It’s too late, a headache is already beginning to form.
The car slows and pulls into the drive. Jane sits straighter, peering through the window. The snow here has largely melted, leaving hard crusted patches of white on the flattened brown-green grass. Climbing out of the car though, Jane feels a twinge of guilt—with the war, with so many people unable to do the only jobs they’ve ever known, it seems wrong that her family should be so comfortable.
She should be happy, she knows. She should be grateful, because who knows what Christmas will be like next year. Will she even come home? Even though she’s only a student, she could still volunteer, couldn’t she? Surely extra pairs of hands are always needed in the field hospitals, especially hands with training. She could gain practical experience and finish her schooling after the war is done. Most importantly, if she did that, she’d be helping people—like her Uncle Michael, like her father.
As they make their way up the path, the front door of the house opens, and her father steps out. Jane forgets her sourness, forgets everything, and runs to him. Even though her father visits her in the city, it isn’t the same as being here with him. Jane is suddenly sharply aware of how much she’s missed him. His hug is tight, and even though she’s practically as tall as he is now, he still lifts her off her feet and she can’t help laughing.
His shirt sleeves are rolled up, and he holds a towel in his hands as if he’s just come from the kitchen. He smells warm, like cooking, like comfort, and all at once Jane finds her eyes stinging and she has to blink before he sets her down. Her father smells like home, regardless of whether or not this is the house she grew up in.
“My Jane.” His expression changes from happiness to sympathy. “Your mother told me about your friend Margaret. I am so very sorry.”
The stinging in her eyes only grows worse and she allows herself to fold into her father once more, buying herself time as she gets her emotions under control.
“I’m all right.” Jane pulls away, but her voice remains thick.
She doesn’t mention the man on the train; let her mother deal with that. As if on cue, her father’s attention shifts. The concern doesn’t leave his eyes, but there’s fondness there, and then startlement as he notices the man from Neverland. How will her mother explain James? Will she lie? Evade? Give her father half-truths?
She watches as her mother keeps pace with James, who leans heavily on his cane. Her father wipes his hands one last time, then drapes the towel over his shoulder.
“I should have known to expect the unexpected.” Her father sounds bemused, more than angry, though still wary as well.
“I didn’t know myself until a few hours ago.” At least her mother has the good grace to sound embarrassed. “This is James. James, this is my husband, Ned.”
Her mother says nothing beyond the man’s name, but Jane notes the silent look that passes between them, a promise to explain later.
“A pleasure.” James shifts the grip from his cane long enough to grasp her father’s hand. Jane notes her mother at the ready to catch him if he falls. “I hope my presence does not cause too much inconvenience, but I do thank you for welcoming me to your home.”
“Not at all. We have plenty of food, and we’re happy to have you.”
James inclines his head, a strangely formal motion. Again, though her mother hasn’t said it directly, Jane is certain James and the pirate captain, Hook, are one and the same. The why and how of it don’t need to make sense—nothing in Neverland ever did after all.
Who else could James be, after all? His false hand is wooden, but the way he holds himself, Jane sees the echoes of command. There’s an air about him of a man used to being obeyed. In her mother’s long-ago fairy tales—the stories she’d told Jane instead of giving her the truth about Neverland—she’d made Hook into an enchanted prince wearing a blood-red coat. And there is a bearing of royalty about him, a man who believed himself king above others, at least at one point in time.
Why her mother would invite Captain Hook to their home, Jane cannot begin to guess.
“Well, come out of the cold.” Her father ushers them toward the door, but Jane falls back, hesitating.
Something tugs at her. The nape of her neck prickles above her scarf, and it’s nothing to do with the wind. She glances at the trees bordering the property. Was there a blur of motion between the branches? She takes a step, but her father calls to her from the door. When she looks again, whatever she thought she saw among the trees is gone.
* * *
Jane surveys the room. It’s neat, the single bed made up with a white quilt patterned with tiny pink roses. She wonders if her mother sewed it. There’s a dresser in heavy mahogany, matched to the headboard and footboard of the bed. The pink lampshade matches the quilt’s pink roses, and there are delicate, cream-colored doilies set atop the furniture that match the curtains. It’s all so coordinated and fussy Jane wonders whether it was simply picked from a catalog at random. Even though she’s trying to maintain her annoyance at her mother, she can’t help the way the thought makes her smile.
Jane’s eyes settle on the one piece of furniture in the room that doesn’t belong. The bookcase from her childhood bedroom. A globe stuck with pins sits atop it, and the shelves are filled with books she read as a child—Treasure Island, books of faerie stories, and books about the natural world. Did her mother put it here, or was it her father’s idea?
Jane kneels, running her fingers along the spines on the top shelf. On the next shelf down, in front of the books, is a glass case with a butterfly pinned inside. Holly blue, Celastrina argiolus— Jane recognizes the label in her own hand. All the butterflies and rocks and leaves she collected as a child, did her parents keep them all? She could hardly take two steps out of doors without stopping to pick something up, to slip it into her pocket. She must have been impossible.
She sets the case down. There’s something missing. Instinct makes her cross to the dresser, pull open the narrow drawer on the left-hand side. There’s a rattling sound as she does, and reaching inside, Jane already knows what she’ll find. An arrowhead—the one she brought back with her from Neverland.
It sparkles ever so slightly, the chips made to sharpen its edges glinting as if reflecting a different light than the one in the room. Her mother must have put it here; her father never would. A promise, once, between them, that there would be no more secrets.
As she crosses to the window to peer out at the lawn, the knapped stone against her skin seems almost to tingle. A soft tap against the door startles her, a sound so quiet it almost seems as though it’s trying not to be heard. Jane tucks the arrowhead into her sleeve, an old habit. She expects her mother or her father, but it’s her uncle, already half turning as if he would slip away again. A tension she hadn’t realized she was holding on to slithers away from her and Jane opens the door wider, beaming.
“Uncle Michael! Come in.” He’d arrived shortly after Jane and her mother had, but between getting everyone settled and eating supper, Jane had barely had a chance to speak with him.
There’s a stack of journals tucked under his arm now, and Jane’s grin widens. He moves to the bed, free hand gripping his cane, gait stiff. The faint outline of his brace is just visible through the fabric of his trousers—something new her uncle’s doctor had recommended to help him with the persistent weakness in his leg.
Jane burns with curiosity—professional, of course—but she would never ask her uncle outright and so she bites her lip. Once he’s seated, he draws out the journals with a flourish and a pained smile, setting them atop the quilt.
“Hot off the presses, just like I promised.”
“You’re wonderful!” Jane reaches for the topmost journal, dropping a quick kiss onto her uncle’s cheek as she does.
“Won’t any of the patrons miss them?” she asks, flipping to scan the list of articles in the table of contents.
“Amazingly, no. As it turns out, no one but my niece is eager to read the latest in medical science over the holidays.” He offers her a wry grin, and Jane feels her cheeks warm.
At the same time, a kind of weariness creeps over Jane. Yes, she wants to read the articles and papers her uncle brought for her, but if she were a man, would she feel the need to push herself to do so as fast as possible when she’s supposed to be on break? It isn’t just that she can’t afford to fall behind, she has to stay ahead, as far as she can, running full tilt so there’s no chance that anyone will ever trip her up or catch her.
Jane feels the frown twisting her lips, and she sets the journal down, forcing her face into a more neutral expression before her uncle can ask her what’s wrong.
“How is the library anyway?” She keeps her voice light, airy.
“Quiet. Peaceful. Not many people. Just the way I like it.”
“Isn’t a librarian’s whole job to help people find books?” She means it be teasing, but Uncle Michael’s shoulders tighten almost imperceptibly before he forces himself to relax again.
“Special collections are less in demand, especially at this time of year. Some days, I can go hours on end without seeing anyone. It’s perfect, really.” Another flickering smile, and Jane can tell he’s trying to make a joke of his words too.
The words and his expression spark a mixture of guilt and regret. Jane can see how hard he’s trying, for her sake, and she can see that it pains him as well—merely smiling, merely being around other people, even family. No wonder he prefers the silence of the library and books. She tries, as she has many times before, to imagine what her uncle was like as a child, when he and her mother and Uncle John would play at make-believe in the nursery. She can scarcely picture it. This is the only version of her uncle she’s ever known—the one who came back broken from the war, not just his body, but his spirit. The one who retreats so far inside himself at times it’s almost as though he disappears.
The ghosted look in his eyes is one Jane knows all too well. She’d seen it earlier, when they’d all been gathered in the kitchen and the radio had switched from holiday music to a news broadcast, which inevitably spoke of the current war. A darkness had come into Uncle Michael’s expression, and Jane had clearly seen the moment he retreated within himself, shut away from the world until her mother switched the radio off.
Looking at him now, she can almost see the edges of the mask he tries to keep over his face at all times, the one that tells the world everything is fine. Except when it slips, like now, when he’s exhausted, and the hurt comes seeping through. He looks down, trying too late to hide the shadow in his eyes, and Jane bites her lip again.
She wants to tell him she understands. How every day at the Royal College she wears a mask too, smiling and smiling until her cheeks hurt, until a headache creeps its way up her jaw and bursts behind her eyes and leaves her next to tears. It’s exhausting, and sometimes she just wants to let it go and scream at the world for being unfair, but outwardly, she keeps right on smiling. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s all fine.
Jane’s hand twitches at her side, halfway to reaching for her uncle’s shoulder before she remembers the arrowhead tucked in her sleeve and drops it again. According to her mother, not only had both her uncles forgotten about Neverland after they’d returned from their adventures with Peter as children, but they’d vehemently denied it. Michael especially. It was as though after he’d gone to war and come back, the very idea of a magical land where death wasn’t real and children never grew up was too cruel to even contemplate, salt rubbed into the wound of everything he’d been through. The men he’d called brothers who died screaming in pain and weeping for families they’d never see again. Boys who would never grow up and never go home. Bad enough to risk making things worse by telling him it’s okay to hurt, to be scared about the new war. How much worse would it be if she accidentally reminded him of Neverland?
When her mother had introduced James before dinner, Uncle Michael had startled at first, but an instant later, Jane had seen not even the faintest sign of recognition in his eyes. In fact, as soon as James has been introduced, her uncle’s gaze slid away from the former pirate captain. It was as though Uncle Michael couldn’t see him, refused to see him. Unless James was actively speaking, or directly in her uncle’s line of sight, Uncle Michael seemed to mentally edit him out, eliding an uncomfortable reminder of Neverland.
Still looking down, her uncle rubs absently at his brace. The moment he touches it, Jane sees him startle, as if he’d forgotten it, as if he’d done his best to edit it out of his reality too.
“Is it helping?” Jane can’t help the question, and it isn’t professional curiosity now; she really wants to know if her uncle is okay, and if he isn’t now, whether he might be one day.
He looks up, his hand jerking away from the brace and his expression stunned, as though he’d already started to drift, to withdraw, forgetting Jane was there and he wasn’t alone.
“Some. At times.” There’s an edge to his voice, then after a moment, Uncle Michael offers her a smile meant to be reassuring—the veneer back in place once again.
It hurts Jane to see it. He shakes himself, using his cane to stand, and leaning upon it heavily.
“The doctor says I just need time to get used to it.” He taps the brace lightly with one knuckle, and now the smile spreading across his lips is more genuine. “Once you’re a doctor, you’ll invent something even better, and I’ll be out there running marathons I’m sure.”
“I guess I’d better get to studying then.” Jane spreads her fingers to indicate the journals, returning her uncle’s smile.
She’s never seen her uncle walk with anything other than a pained limp; the image of him running stings at the back of her eyes and Jane blinks rapidly.
“Don’t forget to sleep and eat occasionally too.” Uncle Michael indicates the journals, then draws Jane close enough to plant a kiss on her forehead.
As he steps back, Jane almost tells him to do the same, but she bites back the words. He’s an adult, and she has no business lecturing him like a child, no matter how dark the circles under his eyes. The door closes with a soft click behind him and Jane turns to the slim volumes spread across the quilt. Just the thought exhausts her. She can afford one night to herself, can’t she? She drifts back to the window, drawing the arrowhead from her sleeve again and turning it in her hand, a soothing motion, despite everything it means.
Tired as she is, she can’t even think of sleeping. She should have thought to bring a novel with her at least. And the thought is a blow, leaving her winded, bringing Peg to the front of her mind again. She’d almost forgotten. Almost let her slip away, like Uncle Michael editing the pirate captain from his mind.
Peg’s family will spend the holiday without her. Here Jane is, surrounded by the people she loves, and part of her resents it. The thought makes her feel small and selfish, makes her hurt all the way through.
Where the arrowhead in her hand was almost a comfort moments before, now the weight of it drags at her, cold and laden with memory. She will not allow herself to forget, but she can understand her uncle’s denial of Neverland, why it would hurt so much to recall. It’s a bright lie, a world of fun and games painted in a thin veneer over the darkness underneath. The first time Jane experienced death, intimately, had been in Neverland, and now some shadow of it, some echo, it seems, has taken Peg from her as well. It’s too much, Jane thinks, for the number of years she’s lived. It’s too much to carry. No wonder her uncle disappears into himself entirely at times. No wonder he prefers to forget.
Jane rests her head against the cool glass of the window. There are times Jane wishes she could disappear and forget everything she’s seen too.
NEVERLAND – 8 YEARS AGO
Jane turns the arrowhead over in her hand. She managed to find it after shooting it at Arthur, one of Peter’s Lost Boys, to stop him from attacking her mother. It feels important somehow, holding on to it. It reminds her that she isn’t powerless, even though that’s exactly how she feels right now.
It isn’t cold in the cavern—if anything, it’s far warmer than it should be—but Jane still wants to shiver. It’s nervous energy, pent-up adrenaline with nowhere to go. She tucks the hem of her nightgown under her bare feet and tries to take comfort in Timothy’s weight nestled against her side. Her mother took Peter somewhere deeper into the cavern. She made Jane promise to stay here, to be brave, no matter what might happen. Stay here, protect Timothy, wait for her mother to return.
But it feels as though it’s been ages already and she wants to be doing something. She wants to help her mother, not sit here like a useless lump. She tried again to get Timothy to stand, to come with her and go looking for her mother, but he wouldn’t budge. He’d insisted again that he’d been kilt when Arthur ran him through with his sword, even though there isn’t a scratch on him. Another one of Peter’s stupid rules in his games of make-believe war.
“How long do you think it will be until you’re alive again?” Jane asks, trying to keep the impatience from her voice.
Could she leave Timothy behind, go looking for her mother alone? No, she promised to protect him, like a big sister would. He’s younger than her, smaller than her, she can’t leave him here alone in the dark. Timothy shrugs, looking miserable.
“Sometimes it takes forever and sometimes not at all.”
Of course, Jane thinks. Peter’s rules. Peter gets to decide everything that happens here, and all the rest of them simply have to live with it. She squeezes the arrowhead, lets it bite into her palm, because otherwise she might scream with frustration.
“What do you think they’re doing?” Jane tilts her chin to indicate the deeper part of the cave where her mother and Peter disappeared.
She doesn’t expect an answer, but the silence and the waiting is all too much. If she can’t do anything to help, she at least wants to hear the sound of her voice and Timothy’s in the dark to remind her she’s not completely alone.
Timothy begins to shake his head again, and Jane clenches her jaw in frustration. She feels mean and petty, she wants to pinch him until he yelps and jumps up just to get away from her. Make him see that Peter’s rules don’t control him and he doesn’t have to sit here playing dead until Peter says he’s alive again. But Timothy freezes, his eyes going wide, and before Jane can open her mouth to ask what’s wrong, she feels it.
The ground beneath them shivers and rumbles. Dust filters down from the ceiling above, tiny chips of stone bouncing free and clattering down around them. She pulls Timothy closer, sheltering him as best she can.
“It’s okay.” Jane tucks Timothy’s face against her shoulder. Everything shakes again, and a larger chunk of stone slips free, narrowly missing them as it smashes against the ground.
More dust, more debris. Jane coughs, almost crushing Timothy now. They need to get somewhere safer.
“We have to—” Jane’s words are drowned in a terrible roar.
It isn’t just the sound of the stone breaking, or the ground trembling. It’s something else entirely. Something Jane cannot name.
Timothy stiffens against her, lets out a muffled sound. Without meaning to, Jane lets go, clapping her hands over her ears against the terrible noise going on and on inside and outside of her head all at once. It sounds like the world tearing itself apart. And in the next instant, the stone beneath her cracks, dropping her a few inches, jolting her to a sudden stop, and she lets out a startled cry.
“Timothy!” Dust in her eyes. She can’t see him. Panic hammers at her and Jane scrambles forward, feeling wildly over the stone until her fingers find his and she almost sobs in relief.
She closes her fingers, pulling herself toward him, expecting him to squeeze back, to call her name, but he’s silent. Everything is still shaking. She loses her balance, but then she’s at Timothy’s side again, trying to blink her vision clear from the grit stinging her eyes. Her breath stops. Her heart stops and Jane blinks and blinks again, unable to make sense of what she’s seeing.
Timothy’s shirt is soaked in red. A bright, terrible color that doesn’t belong. It can’t be blood. It can’t. And Jane wants to laugh because it’s impossible and it must be a horrible joke. But her mouth is dry and her hands fly to the place where Arthur’s sword went through Timothy before and left no wound, where there wasn’t even a scratch on his skin, and they come away wet and gleaming.
“No. No. Oh no.” Her hands slip, trying to stop it.
There’s too much red. It’s everywhere. She can’t put it back inside no matter how much she tries.
“It hurts.” Timothy’s voice is small and lost in the rumbling, his lips pale, his eyes glassy. “Jane, it hurts, please.”
“It’s okay, you’re all right, you’ll be all right.” The words blur.
Jane knows they’re a lie. She throws her whole body over Timothy’s, against the dust, against the shaking, clinging to him as if she could stop the blood with the force of her will. He has to be all right. He has to. She promised she would keep him safe.
The ground still shudders, but over and above it, Jane feels Timothy shuddering too. One last gasp of shallow breath and then it stops and that’s far, far worse. Jane feels it, and she refuses it. The words tumbling from her, the promises, Timothy can’t hear them anymore. But they are the last thing he heard. Jane lying. Her telling him everything would be okay.
A sound rises, tearing out of her, becoming a howl to rival the sound filling the cave and bringing it down around them. Jane clings to Timothy as hard as she can, not caring for his blood or the falling stone or even the far-distant sound of her mother shouting her name. Nothing else matters, only the small body in her arms, and Jane swears to herself she will make it right. She will fix it somehow. She will never, ever let Timothy go.
LONDON – 1939
The moon casts halos around itself, the clouds turning its light smeary. The way the edges of the clouds catch the light makes Jane briefly think of a doorway, of being pulled through the sky against her will. The memory of Neverland is so close, she can feel it against her skin. The memory of Timothy so sharp, so present, she almost feels the weight of him pressed against her side. Her breath tangles in her chest, a sob wanting to break free. It’s so real, that she halfway expects to find him peering up at her from the lawn, his eyes wide in the moonlight, asking why she left him behind.
But it is Peg she finds staring up at her from amidst the melting patches of snow. Not a glimpse from the corner of her eye, but unmistakably solid, as if the shadows parted a moment and she stepped through. The arrowhead drops to the floor. Jane steps back, knees hitting the bed, folding her to sit heavily as her legs lose their strength.
In the next instant, she bounces back up, rushing to the glass. Her foot catches the arrowhead, sending it spinning. It must have been her imagination, grief and guilt toying with her. She presses her face to the pane.
Peg remains, peering straight up at Jane’s window. Only it can’t be Peg, because Peg is dead. The longer Jane looks, the more the subtle wrongness of the figure below her sinks in and her skin crawls.
Peg’s smile is too wide. There’s something almost doughy about her face, unfinished, like bread kneaded and left to rise. Soft, malleable, the color of smoke.
Jane claps a hand over her mouth, a sour taste rising at the back of her throat. Yet she’s already flying down the stairs, out the door and onto the lawn, forgetting she’s in her night clothes, forgetting her feet are bare. Her soles hit the frosted grass and she barely feels the cold.
It’s more than just the flight down the stairs that squeezes the air in her lungs, and the night’s cold only makes it worse, leaving her gasping. Jane wheezes, the exhalation writing ghosts of its own against the night. There’s no one here. The lawn is empty.
Jane looks up at her window. A square of light falls on her, and she shivers. She has the sensation of standing inside a space recently occupied by a ghost, a lingering presence clinging to her like a spreading frost. But no footprints mark the grass, save her own trailing back toward the front door in long, wet smudges.
“Peg?” She regrets the whisper the minute it passes her lips and her skin crawls.
What if something answers?
Peg cannot be here. She isn’t here. Because something carried her away to Neverland.
The thought rises like a traitor and Jane clamps down on it, pushing it violently away. It’s only cruel and wishful thinking. She’s too late. She can’t save Peg, like she couldn’t save Timothy.
But the sensation that she isn’t alone persists. As she turns to scan the trees, something swoops toward her. Startled, her heel slips on the slick grass, dropping her, and perhaps that is what saves her. A rush of dark wind passes just overhead. Missing her by inches. Close enough to ruffle her hair.
She feels her arm grabbed and Jane lets out a startled cry.
“Let go!” She kicks out, but her foot doesn’t connect, and then she recognizes the pirate captain’s voice.
“It’s returning.” He hauls her up, and stunned, Jane lands on her feet.
James breathes hard. He turns, and Jane turns with him in time to see the shadow rush toward them again. Even though on the train and at the station, Jane saw how James needed the cane to take his weight, he slashes the air with it now, lunging and stabbing, the pirate-prince of her mother’s stories come to life.
The shadow tears as the cane passes through it, shredded temporarily and coming back together again. Jane can’t make sense of it. An animal, a reptile, but massive and made of smoke and moonlight. And there’s more. The air around it roils and churns and there are glimpses of shapes that look almost human, faces rising and then sinking again as if instead of water the creature swims through a sea of ghosts.
Her earlier bravado gone, Jane half drags James back toward the house, expecting any moment to feel teeth sink into her heel. The door flies open as Jane reaches for it, and she nearly collides with her mother, her hair loose and spilling about her shoulders, eyes wide.
“Jane, what on earth—?”
“Inside,” James urges, and they tumble through the door.
Jane glances back. She can’t help it. And she freezes on the doorstep before her mother can push closed the door. Not the shadow she expected to see surging toward them, but something else, something she cannot fathom or make sense of, and so she can only stare.
A hole. In the sky. Definite this time, not just the suggestion of the door. It’s as if the winter night were merely dark fabric, and a giant hand seized ahold of it and tore it, leaving a jagged gap behind. A place where the stars simply stop. Where the thin crescent moon sheds no light. But where there is something else, a thing that can’t possibly be. A ship. Falling.
The image stutters. Repeats in a loop.
“Come inside.” It is James’s hand, rather than her mother’s, firm on her shoulder, pulling her over the threshold.
Jane turns to look at him, the grim set of his expression telling her she is hallucinating nothing. Or that the ship is a shared hallucination; he sees it too. Inside, Jane moves to the window, pulling back the curtain. The sky is as it should be. No hole. No ghostly pirate ship sailing across the stars. She whirls toward James, nerves firing so that she doesn’t care if she is being rude.
“That was your ship, wasn’t it? I know you saw it, so there’s no use telling me otherwise. You recognized it.”
“Yes. My ship.” James’s voice is soft, meeting her near-yell with something that is almost sorrow, surprising her into silence.
“What are you two talking about? What were you doing outside?” Her mother’s voice trembles as she looks between them.
Fear, concern, and something else. Near-panic, as if knowing there was something there she should have seen, but it was invisible to her eyes.
“You didn’t see it.” It’s only half a question.
Her mother stares at her. Recognition, as though for a moment, she sees the ship, but only as a reflection in Jane’s eyes. A piece of Neverland, hidden from her.
“I think perhaps we should sit.” James gestures toward the parlor. His leg trembles, and he leans heavily on his cane now even though he wielded it as a sword only moments before.
Jane and her mother remain staring at each other, then Jane is the first to follow the pirate captain. Something attacked her; there was a hole in the sky. She saw it, and James saw it, but her mother did not. Should Jane feel a vicious kind of triumph? Or should she pity her mother? Or neither. Should she only feel what she feels now—numb, stunned.
“May I?” James indicates the cut-glass bottles holding amber liquid set on a narrow, wheeled tray next to the window.
Her mother nods, distracted. Jane watches James pour, grimacing, as though each motion hurts him now after his bold attack on the lawn. He hands them each a small glass of brandy, keeping one for himself. Jane doesn’t even want it, but she accepts it, sure to meet her mother’s eyes again, daring her to say something, determined to remind her that she isn’t a child anymore.
Her mother barely seems to notice though, and Jane feels a petty stab of disappointment. The three of them sit, arrayed around the empty fireplace.
“Will one of you please explain what’s happening?” There’s a sharpness to her mother’s tone, but under it, Jane hears lingering fear.
Jane folds her hands around the glass of brandy, balancing her arms on her knees.
“My ship,” James repeats, and it makes just as little sense as the first time he said it. “Or an echo of it. It’s how…we left Neverland.”
His voice breaks on the word we. He drains his glass, seemingly barely aware of it in his hand once it’s empty.
“What were you doing outside in the first place?”
There’s exasperation in her mother’s voice, but she rises automatically, takes James’s glass to refill it. She is shaken. Jane looks to her, to the disarray of her hair, the fine lines gathered at the corners of her mouth and eyes.
Her mother, so used to being in control of every situation, a hoarder of secrets, used to knowing more about any given situation than those around her. But here she is, utterly lost. Jane almost reaches out, but ends up clenching her hands tighter around her own glass.
“What did you see?” James leans forward as he asks it, eyes bright.
Jane opens her mouth, closes it again. She shakes her head.
“A shadow. I thought…” She shakes her head again. Falls silent. After a moment though, she looks up. “What did you see?”
“An old enemy. A thing that should not be here. I saw it on the train as well.”
Jane turns the pieces she has over in her mind. What is a ship without its captain? Her mother had told her how the captain had gotten his name. A beast, she’d said, something like a crocodile, had devoured his hand. Scales and jaws of smoke, turning and hunting and seeking…
“It’s looking for you, isn’t it? It doesn’t care about either of us.” Jane looks briefly to her mother, then back to the former pirate captain. “That thing is hunting you, but something is wrong with it. It can’t tell us apart. It smells Neverland, but it’s confused. It must have come to the flat following my scent, but it found Peg and—”
Her voice breaks. She can’t finish. Her mother and James gape at her. Jane realizes she’s trembling, not from cold or fear though, but adrenaline. She wants to leap up, to grab James and shake him. He’s the key, or his ship is. They both are, tied together, and between them, they’ve formed a door to Neverland.
“I fear you’re right.” James kneads at his thigh, a seemingly unconscious gesture, his expression grim.
“And I think that you ought to start at the beginning and explain everything,” her mother says, her voice firm and her expression set.
She hands over the glass at last, but doesn’t take her eyes from James’s face. Jane looks between them. It’s a moment before her mother steps back and resumes her seat, her back very straight.
“Tell me about your ship, and how you came to London from Neverland.”
“Wendy Darling.” James’s expression changes, a wry smile, and he lifts his glass as if to toast her mother. “I would not dare refuse you.”