Jane steps back, anger and adrenaline draining to leave her shuddering as if with the cold. The tiny movement takes her much farther away, leaving her watching the scene unfolding as if she has no part of it at all. Her mother takes her place in turning to shout at Captain Hook. When Uncle Michael lunges suddenly, his wrong-colored eyes fixed in loathing upon the former pirate captain, his voice and movements broken, her father and mother are both there to catch him.
“Don’t hurt him,” Jane says, but her voice is small and lost in the chaos.
It’s still her uncle, only there’s something else wearing his skin. A scaled beast, the thing that killed Peg. But not just that, because it speaks with the voice of a man—multiple men.
Jane’s thoughts snag on that, a weird mixture of sickness and hope. The beast was in her mother’s stories, the enemy of the pirate-prince who she now knows to be Captain Hook. It killed him in at least one of her mother’s tales, but here he stands in her parents’ home, whole where her uncle is now broken. The rules for death are different in Neverland. Did the beast kill the men whose voices it uses to speak now? Or are they part of the beast somehow? One thing Jane is certain of is that she’s looking at the beast that killed Peg. And she saw Peg on the lawn last night before the beast appeared—does that mean some part of Peg is inside the beast too?
The thought leaves Jane dizzy, her chest constricting.
There’s broken glass everywhere, the wind and snow still howling in through the missing panes. Uncle Michael twists, leaning his weight forward. He looks straight past Jane. He doesn’t seem to see her father either, though their bodies are braced against each other, her father trying to hold him in place. Uncle Michael shouldn’t be stronger than her parents together, but it’s clear they’re struggling to hold him, even with his bad leg.
“We should tie him to a chair,” Jane says, louder now, and all eyes turn to look at her. She feels like a stranger, an intruder, as the room falls silent. “So he doesn’t hurt himself.”
Or anyone else, is the part she leaves unsaid.
“I’ll find something to cover the window.” She needs to be doing something, and her decisive motion is enough to shake everyone else into action.
Jane returns with a sheet, a hammer, and a handful of nails. Her mother and father move Michael across the hall into the parlor. Jane rights one of the chairs, shards of glass slithering and crunching as she climbs onto the seat to reach the top of the window. The knot in her stomach remains at the thought of Peg somehow trapped by the beast, and her uncle, a prisoner in his own body. At least she hopes something of her uncle remains.
The chair wobbles. A hand at her elbow steadies her. Looking down, she sees Hook. She wants to be angry all over again, but she’s just weary. She sets to work pinning the corner of the sheet in place with a nail, stretching it to the opposite side, then climbing down to repeat the same on the bottom as he watches her.
It feels good to be doing something, anything. Jane finds her hands remarkably steady. If she can just keep busy, find something useful to do, everything will be fine. The front of her dress is damp with snow by the time she’s done, and she’s cold. She takes a moment to survey the ruins of Christmas supper, the crackers by each place, the meal her father worked so hard on now grown cold. She bends to pick up a fork knocked to the ground, and Hook speaks softly.
“Don’t you think we’d better join them?”
Jane doesn’t look at him, but takes her time setting the fork back in place, straightening as if they might all sit down again at any moment despite the broken glass and the sheet pulling and snapping taut behind her. She wants to tell him to mind his own business, that he doesn’t understand a thing about her family. This is all his fault.
But there’s nothing left to do here, so she steps past him, and Hook follows her. Jane listens to the point of his cane tap the floor, focusing on her breath, on keeping her pulse steady. A fire crackles in the hearth, a cheerful counterpoint to the scene—her mother standing directly in front of her uncle, her father off to the side, looking uncertain.
“Michael?” Her mother touches her uncle’s shoulder gingerly.
The sound that comes from her uncle’s lips is a stuttering growl, caught somewhere between animal and human. He whips his head around, snapping his teeth, and her mother stumbles back. Uncle Michael keeps his teeth bared, almost a grin, too wide and too wild, as if the thing inside him changed the very structure of his bones.
His attention shifts to her as Jane steps forward, his eyes narrowing, the shine of them unnatural. It makes her think of something bright glinting underwater, a coin dropped into a dirty puddle.
“Jane, don’t.” Her mother reaches for her, alarm in her voice, but Jane ignores her.
Uncle Michael watches her approach. Or rather, the thing inside him watches. Jane searches his face for some evidence of her uncle trapped behind the shadow inhabiting him.
“He’s still in here.” The grin on Uncle Michael’s face turns nasty, his narrowed gaze plucking the thoughts from Jane’s mind.
“My uncle isn’t the one you want.” Jane’s voice is steadier than she would have imagined. “Why don’t you leave?”
All three of the adults watch her, waiting instead of any one of them taking charge. Tightness knots her belly. Another growling sound emerges as Uncle Michael’s gaze slips past her, to Hook, and Jane understands it for frustration.
“You missed, and now you’re stuck.”
Baleful golden eyes turn to glare at her, then slide back to Hook again.
“He must suffer.” The effect of the overlapping voices coming from her uncle’s mouth is truly unsettling.
Part of her wants to strike the creature, even wearing her uncle’s face. She imagines slapping him so hard his head snaps backward, blood threading from his nose. The impulse to violence shocks her, and she keeps her hands clenched firmly by her sides. Shadows move beneath her uncle’s skin.
“Jane! Don’t let them—” Her uncle’s voice, a gasp like a man breaking to the surface of a wave, and then the words cut off, his head rocks backward as if she had struck him after all, a motion of such violence that Jane expects the crunch of bone.
Her uncle’s body twitches, still bound to the chair. It’s as if he’s fighting for control. When his head comes up again, Uncle Michael’s nose is bleeding, a thin line of crimson tracing its way to his upper lip, just as she imagined.
Did she strike him? Jane looks down at her hands, breathing hard. No. But the thing—the things—inside him have the power to hurt him.
“Michael!” Her mother moves forward.
Jane stops her mother, a hand on her arm before she gets too close. The curve of her uncle’s smile, which is not her uncle’s smile, tells Jane he would snap again, sink his teeth into her mother’s hand.
“We have to take him to Neverland.” Jane drops the words into the airless room. “That’s where they belong. That’s where he belongs too.”
She gestures to Hook. Her voice surprises her with its calmness, its evenness, and at the same time, her pulse stutters. The rules of death are different in Neverland—hadn’t she thought as much earlier? Perhaps there is a chance she can save Peg after all.
“Jane, you can’t—” Her mother starts to protest, but Jane rounds on her, her fear, her nerves, all of it spilling out as anger.
“Why? Because Neverland belongs to you?” There are so many other things she could say, but Jane chooses words she knows will cut.
Her mother’s eyes widen, face paling as though struck. Jane feels as if she’s breathing very hard, as if she’s run a long way. She was never given a choice to leave or stay. Peter stole her away. She lost Timothy. And now she’s lost Peg as well. She needs someone to blame and she chooses her mother, because who else is there?
“Jane, that’s unfair.” Her father’s voice is soft, wounded.
He’s right; Jane knows as much, but if she doesn’t hold on to her anger, she’s afraid she’ll collapse under the weight of grief.
“Neverland is unfair.” She meets his eyes and the hurt in them almost undoes her. He’s standing on the outside, only wanting to help her, help her mother, keep them all safe, but there’s nothing he can do.
“I didn’t—” Her mother’s eyes shine, but Jane waves her words away, lifting her chin against the stinging in her own eyes.
“The captain and I were able to see the tear in the sky.” Jane does not say pointedly that her mother could not; she does not look at her mother either. “That means the door is open to us, and we can go through it.”
She’s being cruel, but for so long it’s felt as though her life hasn’t belonged to her, and now she is finally reclaiming it. Peter stole her, yes, and her mother stole her back without giving her a chance to say goodbye to Timothy, to try to set things right. This is her chance to reckon with Neverland, maybe to help Peg, and to set one thing right at least to make up for all the things that have gone wrong.
She turns to face Hook. His expression is hard to read, but Jane keeps looking at him as she finishes what she has to say, because if she looks at her mother, her resolve might shatter.
“We will take my uncle to Neverland. We will undo whatever’s been done to him. You will fix this, and you will not let anything harm him.” Jane lays the last like a charge, partly to see what the pirate captain will do, but more so because she means it.
This is Hook’s fault. The shadow followed him here, hunting him, killing people in trying to get to him. Jane means to hold him accountable.
“Yes,” Hook says. There’s a slant to his shoulders, weariness in his voice, but to his credit, he does not look away.
“Then it’s settled.” Only then does Jane turn to face her mother.
She waits for the challenge. She waits for words that will break out into a fight. From the corner of her eye, she sees her father, distress clear in his expression. Part of her feels as though she’s acting like a petulant child, throwing a tantrum. But doesn’t she deserve to be a little childish? She had to grow up too fast, watching Timothy die, carrying the weight of his death. Her mother—an actual grown up—should have protected them both, but instead, she’d left Jane to take care of Timothy alone and she’d gone off to take her revenge on Peter. Had she ever stopped to think what it would do? No, she’d plunged ahead, childish in her own way, so certain she was right. And she’d refused to apologize for her actions, convinced still that she’d done the right thing. So how can Jane possibly think of forgiving her?
Jane expects her mother to draw up, to demand to go with them, to forbid Jane from going. Instead, her mother lowers her head. The look in her eyes the moment before she does—raw pain, loss, a grief Jane can’t fully understand—nearly breaks her. Jane knows what Neverland was for her, but for her mother, it was entirely different. And there is the heart of it, the thing Jane knows deep down and doesn’t want to acknowledge, because anger is safer, it’s easier, armor to pull around herself to keep from getting hurt. Her mother will not apologize for what she did all those years ago, because she did it to save Jane. She made an impossible choice, let Timothy die, and tore Neverland down, all to bring Jane back home.
The thought leaves Jane breathless, chest aching with regret, but she swallows down whatever words she might say, and waits for her mother to speak.
“I understand,” her mother says quietly.
She does not tell Jane to be careful. She does not tell her to come home safe. Is it defeat, or is she finally giving Jane her full trust, recognizing her fate lies in her own hands—to go or stay, to fight or flee, her choice, and her choice alone?
“Thank you.” Jane says it so quietly that only her mother may hear, so quietly, she isn’t entirely certain she’s said it aloud at all.
The words are painful, spoken around the sudden lump in her throat, and for a moment, she wants to take back all her anger and blame. Instead, she reaches out, and squeezes her mother’s hand. Their eyes meet and then, just as quickly, Jane lets go and turns to face Hook.
“We must be ready to leave as soon as the rip in the sky returns.”