Chapter Nine

THE BEACH QUIETED, as it always did when Tink conjured up a vortex. Slightly’s hair was swept back by the wind the tunnel between realms created, and some errant sand and salty ocean water swept into his eyes, but he didn’t blink. Nor did Gwen, hovering by his side, holding Tink’s handlike sensor tendrils. Michael, less used to the vortexes, held his arm in front of his face but squinted around the sides, eyes feasting on the blue tunnel, which had opened this time right above the surf, a bit above his eye level.

James, for his part, stood far from the others, far from the portal. The mere sight of it, the mechanical sound of it, made his insides squirm. He’d adjusted, in such a short time, to the humming of the island, the tinkling of magic replacing the mechanical clangs of metal in his mind so deeply the sounds were now even more hateful to him than they’d been when he first arrived. His eyes were the only ones on the beach focused, not on the portal, but on Peter.

On the boy whose eyes were the first he’d seen when he was being flung through that portal. He’d collapsed in a small pocket in front of the opening, like the hanging bill of a pelican, invisible on Neverland but very present from the inside of the vortex. He’d had to pull himself up and tumble out, on his own, through the hole. And Peter’s wide eyes were the first things he’d seen. Even before he noticed the water, even before he’d registered the rich salt smell, the crashing of waves and the fluorescence of the moon. A real sky.

He’d noticed those eyes.

And he couldn’t help but stare at them now. So different, so much more steely, more broken, since he’d first seen them. But somehow, at the same time, more focused. Less hopeful, maybe, but the hope wasn’t gone. It was afraid. James nodded to himself and stroked the curve of his hook absently. Peter’s hope was afraid.

No wonder the boy had been falling out of the sky so much of late.

But the hope seemed to be back in full force as Peter stared up at the vortex, oblivious to everyone and everything else on the island. His coarse hair waved back behind him with the force of the whirling vortex, but his slim body stayed firm, stayed unmoving, unmovable.

What would it take to move him? James slid his gaze down Peter’s body and found that his hands were fully extended, fully flexed, in tension, in anticipation. In eagerness.

For my name to be Mir. He was surprised at his own bitterness, at the swirling in his stomach that felt, just a little, like jealousy.

He shook his head like he was trying to get water out of his ears and kept his attention on Peter.

His stare wavered, though, when Peter jumped, stepping dangerously close to the portal like he was called by some kind of trance. James looked to the portal in time to see a shadow slip past the hole, possibly dropping into that pocket behind the opening that James himself had fallen into. Peter moved so close to the portal that Nibs almost lurched himself forward in a protective stance. Slightly put a hand on his forearm, and Nib’s breath hitched at the contact. Gwen turned to James and winked with an arch of her eyebrow, but otherwise didn’t comment on the exchange.

“He’ll be fine,” Slightly assured Nibs, and James sighed at the ease of their closeness.

Sure enough, Peter stopped just short of the portal, just short of the shearing forces that made him tilt his head back to protect his eyes from getting the brunt of the wind.

“Mir?” he called, sounding uncertain.

The hand that appeared, just as James’s hook had, made everyone—even James, standing farther back on the beach—shift backward. Everyone except Peter, who gasped so hard, so loudly, so happily, that he seemed to inhale a massive gust of sandy water that had been whipped up by the vortex.

It was just a hand, to be sure, but James knew whose hand it was by the strength of Peter’s reaction alone.

Mir had reached Neverland.