Shadow

by Kara Swanson

  “Claire—” Nyssa tries, but Claire cuts her off.

  “No. No, you abandoned me.” She looks at me. “Even before he did. I’m done with being abandoned.”

  I brace my hand against the bark, try to lean forward, try to reach for her—but that only makes my head pound harder. A flash of pain cuts through my chest, and I double over, groaning.

  Claire takes a step toward me, balancing on the round trunk. I try to hold back the pain and look up at her. Her face is cast in shadow and hazy from the subsiding ashen dust. A few flakes land on me, adding to the overall torment.

  “Pixie-Girl . . . they didn’t mean to really harm—”

  Claire kneels beside me, balancing on the rocking log. Her expression is quieted, tinged with a gentle sadness. “But you’re wrong, Peter. They did mean it. Because it was what was best for them. Only not for anyone else. Sound like anyone?”

  I can’t even look at her.

  “I thought I’d find something beautiful here.” Claire’s tone is distant, wistful. “But instead, this island is just a reflection of you.” She strokes my cheek almost pityingly. “With all your wild boyishness. But still so very selfish.”

  I wince, because the truth hurts even more than the pain burning through my ribcage.

  “I’m sorry.” My voice cracks.

  “I told you being trapped in that cell gave me a lot of time to think, Peter.” She brushes a strand of hair from my forehead. “I forgive you for what you did, but I won’t be manipulated anymore. Especially not by a selfish island.”

  Her eyes fill with a heavy sadness. She glances out at the sirens who have all swum a few lengths away, eyes poking above the water, dark hair splayed in halos around their heads, watching.

  “I thought this place was my birthright, but maybe I don’t want that after all.” She turns back to me, and I’m taken aback when she leans forward to press a kiss to my forehead. “I promise to get you somewhere safe after I do this . . .”

  I stare up at her. “What do you—?”

  Dust lifts from her palms, swirling around me and coating my skin. It soaks in with the same warmth as the last time she healed me. Only this time, as the magic sinks in, Claire peers down at me and whispers, “Rest.”

  My muscles relax, eyes growing heavy as all the adrenaline that held me up dissipates. The fatigue knocking at the edge of my consciousness washes in like a flood. I try to stay awake, but my exhausted body can’t manage it any longer.

  Darkness curls in around the edge of my vision—and then I’m lost in the nothing.

  Neverland

  A gray wind cuts through my hair as I fly over the charred, crippled remnants of Neverland. It’s almost unrecognizable as massive chasms rip through the center of the island. Parts that have already broken off. Skull Rock is tipped on its side, the lagoon is practically gone, the lush jungle is nearly flattened, and the mountains are crumbling.

  The island is coming apart at the seams, just like the last shreds of my hopes for this place.

  I left Peter squirreled away in the nook of a tree after I’d healed his wounds as much as I could.

  But I can’t stay. I can’t even look at him anymore. Can’t look at this place.

  This whole island is just a reminder of how everything is so horribly wrong.

  Tears streak down my cheeks as I aim toward the half-dissolved remnants of Blindman’s Bluff. I’ve gotten better at leveraging enough dust to fly, but it is still unsteady compared to how much I used to be able to conjure up.

  The emotional weight of everything doesn’t help.

  I almost leave right then. I lift my face to the sky, prepared to give in to the heat that pours through my bones like lava. Skin crawling, every inch of this nightmare a reminder of just how broken all my hopes are.

  But then I realize I’m not the only one here, balanced at the edge of Neverland.

  A lonesome figure is sitting on the very edge of the bluff, staring down into the water, head bent and darkness literally dripping from him. I can see it pouring from his skin and soaking into the island.

  I know he’s dangerous, but . . .

  Despite everything, he’s still Connor. He’s still my brother.

  And I know, just as surely as I know the scars that trace my own skin, that I’ll always regret it if I leave without trying one last time to wake him.

  My feet skim above the ground as I fly nearer to Connor. Even from this vantage point, I can see that he’s gotten worse. His whole face and the skin on his hands are now that odd, cracked texture. The dark veins pulse as they split apart his cold skin. Darkness leaks from those veins, thick like oozing blood. It runs in streams down his face, from his hands, dripping into the ground around him.

  I can’t imagine the pain he must be in. I approach him cautiously.

  “Don’t worry, no one else is lurking to grab you. It’s just me.”

  His words catch me off guard. They’re flat and colorless but seem true.

  “Why are you doing all of this, Connor?”

  He slowly turns his head toward me, eyes glassed over. “I have to. She says this is the only way to move forward.”

  “By destroying yourself and poisoning Neverland? What are you talking about?” I want to scream at his wrenching himself apart like this.

  “Having sole control of Neverland doesn’t work.” He turns away from me, looking out to the angry Neversea. “Paige says there’s one last option. Using me—using my shadow and going straight to the source.” He lifts his hands, staring down at the inky liquid that slowly drips off his fingertips.

  “Your shadow? What does that mean?”

  He looks away. “I’ve already said too much.”

  No, he hasn’t said nearly enough.

  “Can’t you see how messed up all this is? Paige is using you!”

  Connor is in front of me in a flash. He takes hold of my arms, and the dark sludge coats my skin and makes me nauseous. Twin black irises stare at me. “She wants to fix me.”

  “But Connor”—tears sting my eyes, yearning for him to understand—“you’re not broken. This place is.” I sweep a hand out to Neverland. “Peter and Paige created it to hide from the reality of their world, not to face it, not to make it better.”

  “I don’t want to see reality, Claire. I just want it gone. I want it all gone. I want me gone. If this doesn’t work, I’ll find another way.”

  He sounds so hollow. I know that sound, that look, that numbness that leads you to stop wanting to breathe, to exist. For the pain to just stop.

  I grab him. “No! I won’t let you do that.”

  His head whips back toward me, and for a moment, he doesn’t say anything. A sickening slow smirk crosses his face. “Maybe I missed something after all. Maybe I was still holding on to one piece of reality.”

  His hand juts out and curls around my neck. His dark veins pulsing even stronger. “Maybe I need to cut all ties.”

  I push my hands against his chest, as he continues to tighten his hold. I choke.

  “That’s Paige talking—not you.”

  His eyes narrow.

  I take as much of a breath as I can manage, close my eyes, and focus on the stars that wink just above.

  I reopen my eyes and utter each word with a steely force. “Let. Me. Go.”

  A wave of brightening, golden dust slams out from my palms and blasts Connor backward. He lands at the edge of the bluff, coated in a shimmering haze of gleaming pixie dust.

  I rub at my throat, tensed, ready to fly away if need be, but the strangest thing begins to happen. The shimmering dust starts to soak into Connor’s cracked skin. Soaking in deep like it did when I healed Peter—but with Connor, it has a different effect.

  I take a hesitant step closer and watch his skin begin to slowly soften. It starts to gain just a bit more color, the thick veins cutting across his body shriveling a bit. As if the light itself is pushing back the shadows seeping out of him. He lifts his head to me.

  And th
e real Connor’s eyes meet my gaze. Bright, vibrant blue and no longer cold and distant.

  He looks weak, shuddering, but gestures for me to come closer. “I told you to pay attention.”

  With a disbelieving, shocked little cry—I trip forward, grabbing him, pulling him into the tightest hug. “What is going on?” Not quite believing my eyes.

  “It’s complicated, and I don’t know how long your dust will help, but . . .” He struggles to focus and form coherent words, sloppily draping his arms around me. “Paige did something to me. Years ago, when we first met. She found me after Peter said those terrible things, and claimed she understood. She told me that she could help. Make me stronger. So I let her.”

  “What did she do?” I can still feel a pulse of anger, of betrayal, flowing beneath my thoughts, but seeing Connor like this actually seems hopeful.

  “I’m not entirely myself. Paige cut away my shadow, but it turns out that in this world, a shadow is not just a trick of the light.” He gently lets go of me and glances down at the shadow behind me. “Here, shadows are more than that. They are reflections of us—darker, angrier reflections. The fears and uncontrolled sides. The other voice in your head. And mine is worse than most. She told me that by cutting off my shadow, it would help with the voices and the pain.”

  He gives a raw, humorless laugh. “But she didn’t tell me she was going to inject it back inside me.” Connor lifts a hand, examining his pale skin ripped through by the dark veins. “My shadow is not very happy about that. And it’s pretty overpowering. Especially since Paige injected it with dark magic. She thinks because my connection to Neverland isn’t enough that I could use my shadow to corrupt the star and to tether it to me and make this whole island into my shadow reflection.”

  I stare at him, and slowly his appearance begins to make a bit more sense. The way his own skin splinters apart, the dark veins, the way his eyes go dark.

  His own shadow is trying to rip him apart from the inside out.

  And they want to inject that shadow into the heart of Neverland?

  “Can’t you stop it?”

  “You saw how powerful it was. It feeds off this.” He gestures to the broken, cracked island. “It feeds off the desolation of this island and the power that hums in my connection to it. But I think that once I can inject it into the star at the center of Neverland, I’ll be able to breathe again.”

  A shudder sweeps over him, and he grabs at his face, expression contorted in pain, trying to hold the shadow at bay. I see his eyes start to darken, but they flicker back to blue again.

  I pour as much pixie dust out of my skin and across his as I can. “Connor, do you really think injecting Neverland with your pain is going to help you? There has to be another way. If my dust can give you relief . . .”

  The ripples in his brow smooth out as my dust slides across his pale skin. He smiles weakly. “But it can’t help forever.”

  I hate to admit it, but he’s probably right. His shadow is feeding off the magical connection to this whole island, and the more broken Neverland becomes, the stronger the dark magic grows. My dust isn’t even as bright as it should be, let alone enough to fully chase out his shadows.

  Connor suddenly gasps in pain, wrapping his arms around himself, shaking as another shudder ripples over him. Those dark veins start to pulse again, and each word is painstaking. “You’re different, Claire. There is something about you . . . and about who I am, who Peter is . . . how this whole island breathes . . . when you’re here. You bring out a spark of light in others.”

  He slams a fist against his forehead, jaw tight, rocking back and forth. Fighting those shadows again. For a moment, his eyes are consumed by darkness again, so I thicken my steady stream of pixie dust, and it manages to pull him back one last time.

  Just long enough for Connor, my Connor, to look into my eyes and say, “If you abandon us, Claire, the shadows win.”

  He convulses.

  I create a pool of shimmering golden dust in my hands and try to pour it into the chiseled cracks in his skin, but it just slides away as the veins grow darker, cutting deeper. The shadow rising.

  Suddenly Connor’s head snaps up, and he yells at me, “Run!”

  Connor’s expression goes cold and hard. I see the Shadow Connor reach out a hand, and I hear the rustle of vines, his way of manipulating Neverland, but I’m not sticking around long enough for him to ground me again.

  I launch myself into the air, pouring out as much dust as I can, and shoot upward. I plow through the thick, heavy cloud layer, higher and higher.

  My vision blurs as angry, frustrated, desolate tears once more flood down my cheeks. They remind me of the tears I used to cry when I was trapped in that cell, hoping every night that Connor would come for me. That he would magically become the brother I’d remembered him to be.

  All along, he was held as captive as I was, trapped by shadows that are shredding him.

  I don’t realize I’ve left the atmosphere until the air suddenly feels different. Gone. Floating, but still able to breathe somehow. It’s part of the magic of this place.

  I’m coated in a haze of dust and turn to float slowly in this far-reaching sky of shining stars and stare down at Neverland below. It seems so small from up here, the galaxy so vast. The island is resting in a sea that somehow floats effortlessly in the sky too. The whole thing defies explanation. There are snatches of clouds, but no clear atmosphere.

  Magic.

  A world created by a child’s dreams.

  And I cry for it. For what Neverland should have been, and for what it has become instead. All the ways that Peter’s selfishness, Paige’s pain, and Connor’s shadows have twisted it.

  But as I stare at this world where I was born, I realize I am not without blame. Although this Neverland is not what I wanted—definitely not what I expected—my first instinct of running away is more of my own selfishness.

  Just because this world is broken and uncertain and may have abandoned me in some way . . . does that mean I should abandon it?

  Or does loving someone, loving a place, go beyond what it deserves?

  If I desert this place, how am I any better than the Peter of old or the creatures who turned their backs on Connor and me when we needed them most? I cringe as the memory of Peter and Tiger Lily’s shocked expressions when I left them behind to travel with Hook sear through my mind.

  My resolution doesn’t happen all at once. It sort of flickers in slowly, as I let the tears flow, let the grief and the sobs and the hopes I’d had for a different world and a different journey drain away from me.

  Once those tears are spent and I’ve cried for everything that is lost . . .

  At the core of that, I find the realization that I am staying.

  I may not have chosen Neverland, but in a way, it chose me. This world, these people, are a part of who I am. Even more than that, they’re a reminder of what I was meant to be.

  Light.

  The only thing that can chase back the shadows.

  I don’t know what that will look like. I don’t know if I can help Peter or save Connor or the island, but I have to try. Because this twisted, fractured, beautiful place is my home.

  A new kind of determination deepens within, and the dust filling the space around me glows a little brighter. I pull my shoulders back, ready to fly back down to that world and go find Pan, when out of the corner of my eye I see a speck of light.

  Two faint shapes are bobbing against the never-ending echo of space. Drawing closer and closer, aiming for Neverland.

  I blink. I can’t think of what they could possibly be.

  And then I can make out the distinctive shape of a certain tribal warrior with gorgeous ebony skin and a soul like fire.

  Fresh tears spill down my cheeks, caught by the dust and floating in the air. But these are tears of sweet, precious relief.

  Tiger Lily is here.

  Neverland

  I can’t find the willpower to move.
/>   Old Peter would have. Old Peter would have shoved out of this twisted tree and stumbled across the ground. The minute he woke, Old Peter would have thrown caution to the wind and gone charging after Claire, wherever she is.

  But I’m not that Peter. Not anymore.

  That Peter’s Neverland has been ripped apart beyond recognition—and I can’t seem to find that little boy anywhere.

  So, I stay here, knees pulled to my chest, head buried in them, just waiting. Hoping that somehow Claire hasn’t left. Hasn’t walked away like I probably would have if I was in her shoes.

  That’s what I deserve. What this whole blooming island deserves.

  The minutes stretch and stretch, and I lift my head to the jungle churning around me. The ground is splintered by the thick, dark veins that cut across it, and the palm trees and tropical brush that used to fill this place with color and life are now shriveled and twisted.

  Just like my mind. Just like the memories that skitter and click into place throughout my thoughts. The things I’ve done.

  Good gad. How did I ever think I was an innocent child?

  I stare distractedly at the limp, crinkled remains of palm fronds littering the ground.

  What if I can’t fix this?

  My island was obviously never the carefree, boyish escape I thought it was.

  Maybe Claire’s right. Maybe it’s only ever been a selfish game.

  My eyes fall closed again, and the only sound I can make out is the hollow chatter of wind cutting across the cracked ground and whistling through the felled, hollow trees. Suddenly I hear footsteps.

  I immediately jolt upright, peering through the mist. Three figures draw near me, and when I catch a gleam of silver tattoos, my first thought is that Lily’s tribe has found me. And they’re about to take their retribution.

  But then I see the gentle glow of gold dust shining through the mist, and the curl of blonde hair. My heart stutters.

  Trusting I haven’t gone totally bonkers, I hit the cracked ground running. As I tear through the mist, the tall, slender tribal princess races toward me. She’s wearing dark camo pants and a teal cutoff shirt that reveals the spiral of tattoos curling up her midriff. Her staff is in one hand, but she now drops it as she barrels toward me.