Jane watches Hook converse with empty air, speaking to it, and listening as though it responds. She wants to strike him across the face, snap him out of it. She can’t have the pirate captain and her uncle both unraveling on her. It’s too much.
Michael spoke to her. He begged her not to go to war. It wasn’t the shadows inside of him. It was Uncle Michael, and he knew somehow, even though she’s told no one in her family that she’s even considering enlisting as a nurse. What’s the sense in waiting for soldiers to come home broken, like her uncle, if she can be on the front lines? There, maybe she can do some good before it’s too late.
Her uncle had sounded so afraid. It’s as if the ghosts in his eyes told him her intentions. The way he’d said it, it was as though he really could see her, her future, among men crying out in pain. She’s used to her Uncle Michael seeing ghosts, but nothing like this. And now Hook maybe be talking to ghosts of his own, and she isn’t sure she can bear anymore.
But, of course, there is more.
“Jane?” The small voice from behind her pierces straight to her heart.
Jane knows what she will see before she turns. It’s impossible, and yet there is no other way things can go. She came here looking for Peg, hoping to save her, and she’d failed. Now, here is another failure, staring her in the face.
Jane turns to face Timothy and says his name—a choked version of his name that’s half sob, half broken laughter.
She watched him die. She held him in her arms as he bled out and his body went still and cold.
He peers at her with moon-wide eyes, unchanged, and she runs to him even knowing he can’t possibly be here. It’s an illusion – Neverland, or whatever remains of it, playing with her head. And none of that matters. She runs to him, and Timothy’s eyes widen further.
“You promised you’d keep me safe and you let me die. You let them hurt me.” Tears start and he whirls on his heel, sprinting away from her.
Jane is much taller than him now, her legs so much longer. It should be nothing to catch him, and yet he weaves between the trees, always just ahead of her, a flash of silver vanishing in the dark.
“Wait! I’m sorry!” Jane pants, her coat flapping, hot and weighing her down.
She wiggles free of its sleeves, shedding it behind her like skin as she runs, but keeping the strap of her satchel clutched tight. It occurs to her that she’s left Hook and her uncle behind and she decides she doesn’t care. She has to catch Timothy.
She scrambles over a fallen tree, over tumbled stone, climbing. Sweat sticks her clothing to her skin. She stretches, wedging her fingers into whatever gaps she can find, reaching after handholds. She doesn’t give herself time to think, and because she doesn’t, climbing is the most natural thing in the world. It’s eight years ago, and she’s playing follow the leader with Peter and the boys, and she will not be left behind.
Jane’s foot slips, and she bangs her shin painfully, hissing in a sharp breath. Blood seeps through the fabric of her trousers even though the cloth itself didn’t tear. She forces herself to keep climbing. She can’t see Timothy anymore, but he must be just above her.
Their positions reversed from the night they climbed to the cavern where he died, the first time she promised him everything would be okay, and he almost fell. And her mother saved them.
The satchel slung across her body bangs against her hip as Jane hauls herself up until she can plant her knee on a plateau, then push herself to standing. Her legs and arms tremble with the effort. There’s nowhere farther to go. She’s at the top of a spill of stone that looks as though it was shattered by a giant fist.
Her hair hangs in her face, and Jane takes a moment to untie and retie the ribbon her mother gave her. As she does it, there’s a sudden pang. She remembers her mother braiding her hair when they finally found each other in Neverland—a moment that was absent and tender both. Her mother should be here. Jane blinks rapidly, and tucks the strands of hair the ribbon refuses to hold behind her ear.
No. She doesn’t need her mother, or anyone. She can do this on her own.
The red and flickering sky feels closer without trees in the way, as if being higher up means that all she would need to do to touch it would be to stretch herself a little taller. She knows that isn’t the way the sky works. Except maybe in Neverland it does.
A jagged crack, like black lightning, races across the bloody red. Jane catches sight of stars, briefly, and they make her think of home. She strains to catch a glimpse of Hook’s pirate ship, ghostly and tumbling through the skies. There’s nothing. Nothing except the sketched suggestion of something that looks almost human. Human, but vast and stretched across the bowl enclosing the world. Like a boy, but with horns and hooves.
She must be imagining it. Her mother stitched Peter’s shadow back onto him. She made him into a monster. And then? The thought is too terrible to contemplate, and she tears her gaze away from the sky.
Except she can still feel it. It makes her want to drop to her knees and cover her head. She wants to crawl under the rocks so the terrible thing in the sky can’t see her. Because there’s a sense of attention, the sense of a waiting pause as if something impossible and ancient is sweeping its gaze over the exposed plateau where she stands.
Jane does drop then, digging at the rock, burrowing in a senseless panic so that it’s a moment before it fully registers that there is somewhere to go. There’s a gap, just wide enough, even though the satchel drags at her as she tries to worm her way through. A new fear seizes her, squeezing her chest tight. She’ll be caught between the rocks, or they’ll shift and crush her. She scrabbles at the strap, fighting the tightness that tells her to gasp in shallow breaths because there isn’t enough air.
She forces her breathing to remain even, forces herself to relax. Struggling will only make things worse. Fear is her enemy and if she gives into it, then she will get herself wedged, or in flailing and clawing to escape, she will be the one to shift the stone and cause the collapse. Deep, even inhales, followed by exhales. There is enough space, enough space even to work the strap of the satchel over her head and push it ahead of her.
The way widens, and Jane is even able to get to her hands and knees rather than slithering on her belly. Then all at once, her hand comes down on nothing, and Jane plunges forward, her heart dropping, her body dropping, air whistling in a throat that has suddenly closed to a pinhole, refusing her even the relief of a scream.
Her shoulder bangs painfully against the stone, arresting her fall. Pain blooms, erasing everything with white heat, and it’s a moment before she can convince herself she isn’t falling. Her head hangs downward into a space that she can’t make sense of at first. And then she can, because she knows this place. Where else would Timothy’s ghost run to except the place he died?
Jane shifts her weight, and her shoulder screams in response, a grinding of bone against bone. There’s nothing else for it but to scream back—not pain or fear, but sheer frustration. She will not let Neverland break her.
Using her good arm, Jane levers herself up. Agony spikes through her, making her eyes water, and she squeezes them closed, breathing and breathing until she can be sure she won’t be sick or pass out. Slowly, she shifts her body, trying as much as possible not to jostle her arm, until she’s seated on the edge of the hole that breaks through into the cavern below.
In the gloom, she can’t quite gauge the drop. She hauls her satchel around, hoping the canvas itself is enough to shelter the contents. Jane lets the bag fall, holding her breath to listen. Not that long until she hears it thud to the ground. It can’t be that far.
Or at least so she tells herself. Because what choice does she have? She can’t crawl back the way she came, not with her shoulder the way it is. She has to go farther in.
Jane takes a deep breath, an irrational thing, as though she’s about to dive into the ocean. She pushes herself off from the lip of stone, and for a moment, she’s certain she’s thrown herself to her death. Then she remembers to tuck and to shelter her arm if she can, and manages somehow to hit the ground with knees bent rather than legs rigid, staggering to the side and catching herself in a crouch instead of collapsing in a heap.
Only it’s her bad arm she catches herself with and Jane lets out another scream, voicing all her agony and frustration in a cry that leaves her throat raw. Darkness threatens the edges of her vision, but she forbids herself from passing out. Somehow, she’s able to stand without falling, taking a deep, shuddering breath as she does.
Another wave of sickness sweeps over her as Jane bends to retrieve her satchel, hanging it from her good arm. As gently as she can, she probes her wounded shoulder. More water stings her eyes, and Jane catches a breath, freeing tears.
Not broken, she thinks, only dislocated. At least she has a concrete diagnosis, and problem to solve. She must think rationally, think of herself as just another patient, and take things one step at a time.
There’s a trick she saw one of the younger doctors at the college perform once, one of Simon’s friends. He’d laughingly called it a miracle cure. She and Peg had gone with him and Simon and two other doctors in training to the pub for a drink. The young doctor, Ethan, had only just completed training at the college himself, and now worked as a teaching assistant part time, while also working at one of the local hospitals.
It had been an icy night, and as they’d been leaving the pub, one of the other men—Paul—had slipped, landing badly and dislocating his shoulder. Peg and Jane had immediately insisted he needed to go to the hospital. Ethan had promised, however, that he could fix it himself, and it would take less than a minute. He’d seen a man do it at a traveling show, and it was the easiest thing in the world.
Jane had been horrified, certain Ethan would only make things worse. She’d argued, accusing him of being drunk and a show-off. What had finally reassured her, at least a little, was Ethan’s own admission that he’d initially been convinced that the traveling showman had been a phony too. But he’d watched carefully as the man performed his miracle, and then he’d lingered until the exhibitions closed, and he’d plied the miracle worker with drinks until he’d explained his wondrous cure.
Jane had only relented though when she’d made Ethan promise that he would explain every step to her in turn. To her surprise, he’d agreed. He had treated her just as he would a male colleague, expecting her to keep up and understand immediately, not assuming she would be squeamish or flinch away.
The trick, he’d explained, was getting the injured person to relax, holding the arm straight by the patient’s side with the elbow bent, and applying very gentle and steady outward pressure while massaging the muscles around the joint until they relaxed. The shoulder would then slip back into place on its own, with not even a hint of pain.
She’d held on to her doubt, but watched Ethan like a hawk. As much as a tiny part of her had wanted him to be wrong, yet another braggart overstating his skill to emphasize how much more qualified he was to be a doctor than her, she couldn’t argue with the results. Or his method either. His calm explanation of the process, his steady, jocular tone, had put Paul at ease. There’d been something almost hypnotic to the rhythm of his voice—something else he’d learned from the miracle worker at the fair—convincing Paul’s body to do the work for him. She’d seen the joint slip back into place just as Ethan promised and Paul hadn’t so much as felt a thing.
Here, in a cavern, in an impossible world, Jane doesn’t have the luxury of alcohol, or Ethan’s steady assurance. She’ll have to do it on her own. If only she had taken Hook’s flower.
A rough chuckle escapes her, enough to send another jolt of pain through her, sobering her. The longer she waits, the worse it will be. She lowers herself gingerly to the ground. There’s a stone she can use to brace her arm, elbow at a ninety-degree angle. She won’t be able to apply pressure and massage her muscles all at once. She’ll have to rely on the weight of her body, leaning away from her arm, and hoping it will be enough.
She forces herself to take a deep breath. Another. Think happy thoughts. Her mother’s voice in her head, saying the words a lifetime ago. Jane fights down another rough laugh, one that threatens to turn into a sob. Happy thoughts have nothing to do with flying; even young as she was then, Jane had guessed that truth. But she understands now what her mother was trying to do—chase away doubt, not allow room for fear. She has to do the same thing now.
“It’s just like flying,” Jane says aloud, and her voice echoes weirdly in the cavern.
Another deep breath, and she eases her good arm across her body, focusing on steady breaths, a steady pulse, as she massages the muscles in turn. She leans. She expects a spike of pain and almost tenses against it, but there’s a feeling that she can’t quite explain—the joint popping back into place—and she can scarcely believe it, her breath catching, and then let out again in a whooping victory cry.
She moves her arm. It doesn’t scream in pain. She tests her range of motion, and it’s all there, as it should be. She laughs, wiping at her eyes, tears of relief now. She can barely believe it worked, but it did, and she scrambles to stand. At the motion, the fabric of her trousers pulls against the wound on her leg, and Jane laughs all over again. She’d forgotten all about her scraped shin.
Digging in her satchel, Jane retrieves the iodine, and the bandages. She doesn’t have her scissors anymore, the ones she buried in Arthur’s cheek. Rolling her trouser leg carefully away from the scrape, she swabs it with iodine and wraps a length of bandage around it, tearing it awkwardly, and tying it off. She lowers her trouser leg. There’s nothing to be done about the bloodstained cloth, but at least she can be fairly certain now that infection won’t set in.
It’s hard not to feel a little invincible. If only her mother could see her now. How proud she’d be.
The thought is swift and unexpected, and it nearly takes Jane’s breath away all over again. Jane lifts her head, forcing her scraped chin not to wobble. But the ache of the thought remains, like a bruise. If Jane doesn’t look at it too closely, doesn’t prod at it, then she can pretend it isn’t there. She must focus on what she came here for in the first place—Timothy.
Her eyes have adjusted to the low light in the cave. It should be utterly pitch black, but there’s a faint, hazy grayness, like the sky before dawn. Jane doesn’t question it, the source of the light. It needn’t make sense. In fact, she would be surprised if it did. This is Neverland, after all.
The thought leaves her giddy, a kind of wild humor that might overwhelm her completely if she allows it. She moves carefully, wary of the uneven stone. She slides her feet rather than lifting them, remembering the melted-wax unevenness of the ground, the columns of stalagmites and stalactites. There’s just enough luminescence—whatever the source—to make out the crystals winking in the walls.
That much hasn’t changed. Despite the shattered interior, this part of the cavern at least is the same. The only thing missing is the burning glow, the heat like a furnace roaring somewhere deep within the cave. As Jane moves onward, she sees more evidence of the damage done. Great tables of rock forced up at jagged angles, as if pushed from underneath by a buried giant waking from its sleep. Cracked columns like felled trees.
She remembers the cavern shaking, tearing itself apart as she begged her mother to go back for Timothy.
She swallows around a painful lump in her throat. The light, whatever it is, seems to be growing brighter. She moves toward it, then stops, her pulse wanting to stop with it, every part of her going cold.
The light brightening the cave, gleaming off the crystals and shattered stone, comes from Timothy. His ghost, standing solemnly with his head bowed, his hands folded in front of him, like a sorrowful guardian. He stands over his own bones.
A sob breaks from Jane. She rushes forward, kneeling, drawing pain from her scraped shin and ignoring it. She lifts her arms, but she isn’t sure whether to reach for Timothy’s ghost or his bones or neither. He raises his head, eyes meeting hers, and his expression stops her completely. His eyes are dark wells, drawing in the light, holding in a pain far too big for his tiny frame.
“I died twice,” Timothy says, barely a whisper. His voice is terrible in the dark and Jane wants to stop her ears, but forces herself to listen. “It hurt, Jane. It hurt so, so much.”
“I know.” Jane draws a ragged breath, tears thickening the words so she barely gets them out.
This is a moment she’ll never get with Peg. As much as it hurts, she has to be here for Timothy, for both of them, and for herself as well. The ache of looking at him is as fresh as the moment Timothy slumped against her, the moment his wound became real, crimson blooming across the shirt whose tails he used to chew on, the same shirt his ghost wears now. She remembers how he didn’t even cry; how death came for him too quickly for that. Only a faint whimper, a truncated sound as he clutched her, and begged her to make it go away, to make him better.
There’d been nothing she could do. Jane remembers her hands slick with blood, trying to staunch the flow. But the blood had kept on going, Timothy’s life bleeding out before her eyes.
There is nothing she can do now either. Timothy is dead, and he has been for years. Or for moments. Time means nothing here, and the pain is fresh for both of them. There is nothing Jane can do to take it away. She can’t go back. The only way through is to go deeper.
“I know,” she says again. “And I am so, so sorry. I’m sorry I left, and I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it, but I’m here now, and I’m not leaving you.”
She reaches for him to fold him in her arms, remembering the way he would burrow into her side for comfort when he was afraid as she told him a story.
But her arms go right through him, and she ends up holding nothing.
The motion tilts her forward so she almost falls upon his bones. She cradles them instead, lifting them gently, and holds them against her body, sobbing.
Timothy weighs nothing. There is nothing left to him at all. Everything bright and beautiful about him is gone, but Jane doesn’t let go.
“Once upon a time—” Her voice breaks. She squeezes her eyes closed, tears scalding her cheeks.
She can’t do this. She can’t. She has to. She will.
“Once upon a time, there was a boy who was very far away from home, and a girl who was far away from home too. At first, they were both afraid, but they found each other, and became fast friends. They took care of each other, and went on many adventures, and neither of them had to be alone or afraid anymore.”
She wants it to be true so badly. She wants it with every ounce of her being. She feels Timothy’s ghost watching her, feels the deep, wounded wells of his eyes. She feels it when the glow fades, and when she finally forces herself to look again, he’s gone. Jane doesn’t know if it’s forgiveness, but she hopes, at least, it is peace.
She looks back to the bones cradled in her arms. She can’t leave Timothy alone in the dark again. But she can’t carry his whole skeleton out with her either, as small as it may be.
The answer comes to her, known the moment the problem occurred to her, and she shoves it away with violence. The thought sickens her, and at the same time, she knows there is no other way. Jane lowers Timothy’s skeleton. She arranges it as carefully as she can, curled on his side, as though sleeping. She feels the fragility, how easily the bones would come apart. She hates the knowledge, that this thing will be easy to do when it should be impossible.
It’s worse than bracing herself for relocating her shoulder. It’s worse than anything she’s ever done, except watching Timothy die in the first place. She takes his skull between her hands. It’s so small. She forces herself to look into Timothy’s eyes, even though he doesn’t have eyes anymore. She forces herself not to flinch or look away, and she twists his skull free.
Jane’s breath goes out in a rush. She’ll never get it back again. She’ll suffocate here.
Then her body turns traitor, breathing in again. She is still alive. Peg may not be, Timothy may not be, but she is, and she has to keep going.
Jane nestles the skull in her satchel, like tucking Timothy in. She’d imagined once, what it would be like to be his big sister. Well, she has to be big and safe and caring one more time. She has to protect him. She lays her hand over the shape of the skull in her satchel and rises.
“Hold on, Timothy,” she whispers. “I’m taking you home.”