Wendy raises her head, losing the thread of Ned’s words in mid-sentence.
“What’s wrong?” Ned touches her hand.
“They’re back.” Wendy is already on her feet, running toward the door.
She plunges onto the lawn and stops, head tilted to the sky. Frost sparkles on the grass, crunching under her feet. The sun is barely risen, the sky still pale. Ned comes up beside her and takes her hand.
This time, Wendy sees it when the door in the sky opens. It’s faint, but visible, and all her breath catches and stops in her throat. Pale stars glimmer behind her daughter like a frame of diamonds set in a blood-red sky. And behind Jane and Michael, Wendy can see clear through to Neverland.
Her heart lurches. It aches. The thread stretched between herself and that other place is suddenly there again, tugging at her core. All she would have to do is follow it. She’s stretched, yearning, almost rising on her toes, almost leaving the ground.
And then without moving, she slams her heels back down to the ground as firmly as she can, focusing all her attention on her daughter instead. Jane is home, and that’s the only thing that matters.
Jane touches down, Michael beside her, and Wendy rushes forward, but stops short of where her daughter and her brother stand. Did Jane see the moment Wendy’s gaze drifted past her and still wanted, despite everything, to run toward Neverland? How can she explain that she is broken, but she wants to heal? How can she explain the fear that finding her way back to Jane in this world will be ever so much harder than it was in Neverland, but that she will never give up, never stop trying?
Wendy opens her arms like a question. Jane steps into them. For a moment, it feels like the years falling away between them. Jane is a little girl again, and nothing is complicated. Then Jane stiffens, almost imperceptibly and steps back. It’s too soon, and Wendy fights down the urge to cling to her as Jane steps around her to hug Ned. The way she hugs him is purer, less fraught. It hurts, but Wendy understands. There’s still a trust that needs to be healed between them; there’s still work that needs to be done.
“Windy.” Michael’s voice sounds as young as it ever did in the nursery, tugging at her.
Wendy turns to her brother. He’s pale, shaken. He looks the way he did the first day she and John brought him home from the hospital. Like part of him is still trapped somewhere else, gone away so far that she will never reach it.
Back then, she begged him to remember Neverland, the only way she could think of to try to find him and bring him home again. He’s been there now, been and come back again. Wendy can almost see the light of that other place resting on his skin, a shine, a shadow, and her hand trembles as she raises it to Michael’s cheek. It’s wet with tears.
He starts at the touch, but doesn’t pull away. His eyes focus on her. They are clear blue, empty of shadows, but not of ghosts. He puts his hand atop hers, pressing it to his cheeks, leaning into her touch like he needs to reassure himself that she is in fact real.
“I saw…” His voice breaks. His entire body shudders. “I saw…”
Peter. Neverland. The Lost Boys. All the things the world promised him as a child, all the things the war and return to the real world took away from him. A sob breaks free, and Wendy folds him in her arms, holding her baby brother as he shudders against her.
“Shhh.” Her hands stroke his back, holding him to her to show that she is real and not going away.
What else can she say? Telling him that everything will be okay is a lie. Telling him it was all a dream would be equally cruel. There is nothing to say, no way to be sure how much he’ll remember, if he’ll remember, or if he’ll go away inside himself again and forget, because it’s less painful, easier. All she can do is hold him in this moment, be here for him, listen as he finds the words to tell her what happened. He’s gone so far away, and so far into the real world, into places she can’t follow. All she can do is be here for him when and if he finds his own way home.
* * *
“Well?” Wendy asks softly, just one word, and she can barely bring herself to say even that, holding her breath, afraid of the response, afraid of silence.
She’s been bursting with questions all day, holding them back, and now she and Jane are alone in the kitchen. The air is warm, the lingering smells of cooking still in the air. Since Ned prepared most of the meal, Wendy had insisted on washing up alone. She was surprised when Jane had quietly risen to join her.
Jane’s arms sink almost to the elbows in soapy water. She washes and rinses a plate, and hands it silently to Wendy. Perhaps she’d simply had too much company with John and his wife and their young daughter arriving soon after Jane and Michael had made it home. Blue smudges mark the skin under Jane’s eyes. She must be exhausted, Wendy realizes. Several days passed here while they were gone, all the time between Christmas and New Year’s. Her daughter hasn’t slept in that entire time. She’s barely had a moment to herself to breathe. She still hasn’t had time to process her grief over Margaret. Peg.
“You don’t have to,” Wendy says quickly. “I can finish up here if you’d like. You should go upstairs and rest. John and Elizabeth will understand.”
“No, it’s all right.” Jane turns from the sink, leans her back against it.
Wendy automatically hands her a towel, and Jane dries her hands and stands there holding it.
“I thought it would be different,” Jane says softly.
Wendy forces herself to be patient, hold back her questions. At first, she’s afraid Jane won’t say more. Her daughter twists the towel between her hands, frowning, not looking at anything in particular.
“It was… I don’t know. Not like I remembered, but also like nothing had changed.” She looks up at last, meeting Wendy’s eyes. “I don’t know how to explain it. Everything was…it was broken, not like the last time at all, but it felt frozen somehow.”
“Stagnant,” Wendy says, and the word surprises her. Jane nods, her eyes bright with not-quite-tears.
The ache is there again, the thread bound around Wendy’s heart, and she carefully puts the feeling aside. It strikes Wendy that despite everything, part of her never really did grow up, never learned who to be without Neverland. She has to believe there’s still time for that now. That part of her life is done, and she’s ready for a new adventure.
“I…found Timothy,” Jane says. Her voice is soft, so full of hurt.
Wendy steps forward, stops, unsure what to do.
“I buried him.” Jane looks down, and now the tears do fall.
Wendy closes the space between them, lifts Jane’s chin gently. She smudges the tears away with her thumb, then she puts her arm around Jane’s shoulders. After a moment, she draws Jane into her and she presses her cheek against Jane’s hair.
There’s so much to say, so much to figure out between them. It’s all uncharted territory, and Wendy isn’t sure how she’ll navigate it. But she’s determined find a way.
There will be time later, if Jane wants to tell her, what happened to James, what happened to the shadows, but Wendy promises herself she won’t push. Neverland isn’t hers. Or rather, her Neverland isn’t Jane’s. She isn’t owed her daughter’s experiences, like she isn’t owed Michael’s. If Jane wants to tell her story one day, then Wendy swears she will be there to listen.
Holding Jane against her with one arm, Wendy’s free hand strays to her pocket—an old, nervous gesture she’s barely aware of making—until her fingers close on the hard shape there and she draws it out. The arrowhead from Jane’s room, the one from Neverland. She remembers vaguely going into Jane’s room to tidy up, restless and worried for her daughter, unable to sit still. She’d found the arrowhead on the floor. Has she been carrying it this whole time, switching it from pocket to pocket every time she changes clothes without realizing it, just waiting for her daughter to come home?
She almost laughs, but stifles the sound. It’s enough though for Jane to draw back slightly and catch sight of what she’s holding, a frown shaping her lips.
“I found it in your room. I didn’t realize I had it.” Wendy feels caught out as she extends the arrowhead to Jane.
She watches her daughter take it gingerly, as if it’s a thing that might burn. The stone looks duller in the kitchen light than Wendy remembers. Jane’s frown deepens and Wendy feels a fluttering in her chest. Has she ruined it all between them again? Jane turns the knapped stone over her in hand, then closes her fingers on it a moment. The expression on Jane’s face is like that of someone listening hard to catch a strain of music drifting in from another room. Wendy finds herself holding her breath until Jane opens her hand and sets the arrowhead on the counter beside her with a gentle click.
“I can’t feel it anymore,” Jane says.
It’s not exactly sorrow in her voice, or loss, but there’s a sense of emotion, one too complex to untangle and name. Wendy feels an echo rise within her, the feeling of wanting to simultaneously run toward and away from something as hard as she can. It’s a place where a splinter has always been, forced beneath her skin, and when it’s suddenly gone, she misses the feel of it there. Jane raises her head and meets Wendy’s eyes.
Jane lifts her hand. Her fingers trace the air above the arrowhead without touching down. As she lets her hand fall again, Wendy catches it, pressing her daughter’s fingers.
“I know,” she says softly. “I understand.”
It surprises her when Jane is the one to step back into their embrace, bowing her head against Wendy’s shoulder like a child seeking comfort after a bad dream. Wendy can almost feel the ache through her daughter’s skin, almost too big to ever heal, but she will try. They will try together.
She feels her daughter shiver against her. Exhaustion, grief catching up with her. Wendy takes as much of Jane’s weight as she can, letting Jane lean against her, trying to absorb the burden, make it easier to carry. It’s all she can do for now. Be here, in this world, right here and waiting for when her daughter needs her.