Shadow

by Kara Swanson

  Pixies. Dying pixies.

  And standing in the middle of the field of magical, winged creatures whose lights are blinking out is a woman with stringy red hair and a wild, raging look in her eyes. “You can’t do this!” she hisses, glaring at us. At Connor who’s nearly passed out on the ground beside us.

  She holds a knife, but it’s not Paige that makes my stomach curl. It’s a certain dark silhouette slithering across the jungle floor beside her. A silhouette whose boyish form mocks me, and who knows every move I will make.

  Shadow. He’s with Paige.

  My malicious, boyhood self has teamed up with the sister I had forgotten.

  And both of them look like they’re here to tear me apart.

  Neverland

  Paige is unhinged.

  She’s wild with fury that we’ve stolen her chance of escape. She shrieks at Peter, screaming at him, “You can’t do this!”

  She kicks the carcasses of dead, shriveled pixies out of her way. The pain that reverberates from Paige, the way Connor’s shadow-self has leached this island of all its color—it’s all too much for the pixies. Their lights blink out all around us.

  I believe. I do.

  It’s no longer enough.

  A shiver comes over me, and I realize that the spilling pool of darkness has started to encroach again. Shoving back the bile rising in my throat, the hopelessness, I focus on doing the one thing I can—use my light to keep the darkness away from my brother.

  Connor is unconscious on the craggy ground. The darkness that bled out of his shadow is like a small lake of acid, burning and sparking and charring the ground, turning the air putrid as it tries to flow back to him.

  I pour more pixie dust from my fingertips and palms, letting it flow from my skin in a steady stream that creates a barrier between its darkness and those I can still protect. At least for this moment.

  I have no idea how we bring Neverland back from this.

  My mind suddenly shifts. If the pixies’ lights have gone out, what has happened to Lily and her people?

  My vision starts to dim, a panic attack swelling, but I force back the fear. Right now I have to hold on to the last shred of a happy thought that I have like a lifeline, a weapon, and force this crawling bog of darkness back. While there is life, we have hope. I stare at the remnants of the dark magic still connected to the star but no longer inhabiting Connor’s shadow. The longer we stand here, the more the darkness seems to grow. Seeping into the ground and spreading thick veins across the dusty jungle floor. Drawing from the oppression that fills this place thicker than air.

  Don’t let go, I tell myself, thin flakes speckling my skin and filling the air. I move just enough to gaze at Peter. Don’t stop.

  “You can’t do this to me!” Paige is shrieking again as she draws near.

  Peter’s hands are up, and his tone is cautious, coaxing. “Whoa there! I’m not sure what you mean.”

  Paige stops in front of Peter, one hand gripping a knife. It’s quivering far too much for comfort. Peter’s treacherous little shadow has followed her, slithering across the ground. It tries to grab at Peter’s ankles, but he kicks it away.

  Paige waves the knife around at the decrepit landscape of Neverland. “Why couldn’t you let Connor have his dream world? Why couldn’t you just let it be?”

  I speak up before Peter can. “Because that world isn’t real, and it’s dying.” I maintain the barrier of pixie dust but keep an eye on how close she is to my unconscious, defenseless brother. “If Connor’s world stayed, he and the whole island would have rotted from the inside out.”

  Paige only shoots me a fiery glance. “Don’t tell me what’s real and what’s rotten.” The hand with the knife twitches. “Let me go, Peter.”

  The color drains from his features. “What?”

  “All I have ever wanted was to escape from here. To leave. But you could never let me, could you?”

  Peter is watching her warily. “What do you mean?”

  “Silly little brother.” Her tone is dripping. “Little Peter. Always so selfish. Always wanting things his way.”

  He glances down at his childish shadow coiled at Paige’s feet, like a snake waiting to strike. “You wanted your own life,” Peter agrees. “And if it’s still what you want”—he switches his gaze up to her—“can’t you just leave?”

  Paige’s whole body goes rigid, and her eyes spark. “If I leave the island, I die, Peter. Connor rewriting Neverland was my only chance of severing that tie. But now you’ve ruined it all!” She slaps him hard across the face.

  My whole body is humming with tension, and that familiar thrum of panic speeds up my pulse again. I fight holding onto this barrier, holding back the spreading darkness.

  “You let me drown, brother.” She spits that last word at Peter like a curse. “It’s Neverland that brought me back, using the remnants of magic from my connection to the island.” She’s swaying a bit as she talks, and I’m acutely aware of the knife still in her hands. There’s an edge of insanity in her tone. “The sirens didn’t know, so they took me to their graveyards at the very edge of the Neversea.”

  “I almost drowned.” Her voice grows more fractured. “And any time I try to leave, it happens again. Water, filling my throat. . .” She lifts a pale hand to her neck as if she’s actually struggling for breath.

  Watching her through my wall of pixie dust, I realize something that I hadn’t seen before. Peter might have thought Paige had drowned and run away from that memory, but it was his Neverland that kept her from drowning. In his creation of Neverland, care and love for her was there—deep within.

  Suddenly, she straightens and places a hand around the front of Peter’s neck. I wait for Peter to react, but he holds very still. “I almost had it this time. When Connor was connected to the star. I was actually able to fly past the boundary of Neverland. But then, then you stopped it all.” Her voice is high-pitched, frantic. “Do you have any idea what it’s like?” Her grip on his throat tightens, and now Peter starts to pry at her fingers. “To not be able to breathe?”

  “Paige . . .” he chokes out.

  “Let go of him.” I keep my voice low, controlled. “I’m sorry you weren’t able to leave, but I won’t let you hurt him.”

  Paige surprisingly lets go of Peter’s throat and steps back, scrutinizing me. “Your new pixie companion looks like Mother, you know,” she remarks. “You were always like her, Peter. She had magic too. She would have believed this place was a gift. But it’s not.” Her eyes narrow at Peter. “This island is a curse. And the only way for me to escape it was to remake its rules. But you keep taking that away from me.” Paige spins toward me. “You have taken it from me, Claire Kenton.”

  Her blade flashes, but Peter is there in an instant, catching her wrist and pinning her hand back.

  He tries to wrestle the knife out of her grasp. “Would you really sacrifice all of Neverland and every creature here just so you can escape? Will that really solve everything?”

  At his words Paige’s mouth parts a bit, and I can practically see the wheels turning behind her forehead. As her shoulders start to droop, my eyes widen. Is it possible he’s actually getting through to her?

  “I don’t know anything else, Peter.”

  Her fingers go limp on the knife, and Peter takes it safely out of her grasp, and she stumbles forward a bit and crumbles into him.

  We can’t trust her . . .

  My brows rise, uneasy. Peter has put his arms around her and is speaking earnestly. “I can help you. We can help you. You can start over right here. If we can save Neverland, we can change things. There can be a fresh start, and you can have the freedom you want so badly.”

  She leans forward, face against his shoulder. Every hair on my arms stands on end. Something is very off about how quickly she’s gone from talking about our destruction to falling apart in her brother’s arms.

  But then I think about Connor.

  Could there be a chance for P
aige too?

  Peter is still talking. “Or this island could be your home, if you let it.”

  “Really?” asks Paige.

  Peter nods. “Yeah. I can make you a right ol’ Lost Girl.”

  Paige leans in a little deeper, and I hold my breath, not sure what—

  Suddenly she darts out a hand and reaches around Peter for her knife he has hidden behind his back. She grasps it and jumps up. Spewing curses, she glares down at her brother.

  “I’ll never be another of your little playthings.”

  It’s clear that she isn’t willing to surrender her own pain to make the most of a world she blames for it. She’d rather see that world burn with her.

  This time, I’m ready when she streaks toward Connor, knife raised. I make a quick decision. I let my hands drop and run for my unconscious brother.

  As I reach him, Paige halts. She steps over Connor’s body, and her eyes meet mine.

  “You’re the only thing standing between rebirth and oblivion.” There’s something chillingly calm about the way she says it, the way she suddenly seems perfectly, impossibly sane. I can almost see the woman James Hook fell in love with in her dimmed green eyes. Can almost see the sister Peter grew up with in the freckles and planes of her face.

  But Paige’s expression turns stone-cold.

  “It’s too bad pixies have such short lifespans.”

  She sets the razor-sharp edge of her knife against my throat. Peter screams my name. I feel sudden pain.

  The world moves in slow motion.

  This can’t be real.

  This must be a nightmare.

  But I’m not waking from this dream. This fairy tale.

  Crimson spurts out, showering my dress, staining my dust red.

  I fall to the ground, writhing, wracking, overwhelmed by searing pain. Suffocating. My vision spins, darkness seeping in at the edges, while spots of white-hot agony cut through every nerve.

  Paige is standing over me, just watching. “Don’t fight it. You’ll die faster if you let it take you. Trust me, it’s less painful that way.”

  My fingers are digging into the craggy ground, raw skin breaking across my fingertips. I somehow manage to turn my head, hair sticky and thick with blood. Across from me I can see Connor, still out cold.

  I’ll never get to say goodbye.

  Peter is on his knees at my side trying to staunch the flow of blood with his hoodie.

  Something slithers across the ground. A boyish shape, laughing at me.

  Darkness is here too. Spilling toward Peter’s shadow. Pooling around us and swallowing up the ground again without my dust to hold it back.

  My body is so, so heavy. And it takes all my courage just to force my weighted eyelids back open, wanting only to see Peter.

  To let his big, beautiful green eyes be the last thing I see.

  But it’s not Peter that fills my vision. It’s a shadowed silhouette, dripping blood and streams of darkness, rising from the ground and towering over me.

  I want to warn Peter, want to scream, but I can’t even feel myself anymore.

  They’re all hazy figures now. Peter tries to duck around Shadow that is now dripping the dark magic that used to inhabit Connor. Peter’s fingers touch me—but his shadow is too fast. The last thing I see is Shadow throwing himself at the redhead, clawing at his face and hissing, trying to squeeze the life out of Peter Pan. Peter’s worst enemy: himself.

  And then it’s gone. All of it. Neverland, Peter, the struggle of light and darkness. In an instant, wiped away. My pulse slows, my chest no longer rises, oblivion taking me.

  The shadows win.

  Neverland

  Claire’s blood coats my skin and drips from my hands as I punch at Shadow and try to shove him away so I can get back to her. Tears blur my vision, and every time I manage to duck around him, he’s there. Faster than me. More concrete because of the dark magic pulsing through him.

  “Let me go!” The words rip from my throat in a guttural scream, and my knuckles are raw and bleeding from the amount of times I’ve dashed them against this blithering shadow. This awful reflection of myself, all my sins, holding me back from her.

  From Claire, lying there, choking on her own blood. I watch her writhe as I scream and kick at my shadow, tearing at its dark hands as they claw at my face and neck. But then Claire stops moving. Her eyes go glassy.

  Every single bone in my body feels like it shatters. The pain overwhelming, exploding from my chest.

  “No!” I scream, too desperate now to care. I kick at Shadow’s almost translucent knee and manage to sweep his legs out. I throw myself toward Claire, landing on my knees beside her. I fumble with her wrist for a pulse with one hand, the other grappling with my hoodie that presses tightly against her neck. But the green fabric is already soaked with red, and it’s flowed down her chest, over the dress the pixies had made her.

  No, no, no, no!

  This can’t be possible.

  There’s so much blood. Far, far too much.

  Her light has completely dimmed.

  I have never been so insanely terrified in my life.

  “Claire!” I gather her in my arms, still trying to staunch the blood. Her dust has vanished, and her skin is becoming cold. “Claire, talk to me. Please, please . . .” My voice breaks, words breaking, heart breaking.

  Shadow jumps on me, trying to drag me away from her. As I fight against him, my eyes catch on Paige standing a few feet away. Her face is expressionless, her voice flat.

  “I thought the darkness would go back into Connor. I thought everything would be reset again so I could escape.”

  I shove an elbow into the dark visage behind me, and Shadow’s grip lessens just enough for me to scream brokenly at her, “Why not me? Why couldn’t you have killed me?” A sob wracks my shoulders, and the fight drains from me as I stare down at Claire. At her body, far too still.

  Paige turns away from me. All my sympathy for her has drained into her pool of darkness.

  Shadow has again climbed on my back, his arms strung around my neck, cutting off my air. I want to throw him off, but he’s too wiry and strong. Just like I was.

  But now I feel anything but strong. My very bones feel hollow and frail enough to snap from the weight of my grief.

  Shadow’s grip tightens. I’m not quite sure why he’s doing this, until the thought comes. He does hate growing up, after all. I am everything I never wanted to be.

  “Peter!”

  At first, I think the voice must just be a hallucination. Something cannons into me, knocking Shadow off my back. I gasp for air. Vision clearing. I sit up to find Tiger Lily rolling to her feet. She raises her staff and points at Shadow.

  He stands far more solidly than he used to, actually upright, not just sliding like a piece of paper across the ground. He hisses at her.

  Tiger Lily’s whole body is postured for fight. Her dress is in tatters, cuts and bruises are everywhere, and her braid is tangled and matted.

  She glances at me, and I see eyes that carry the most wear. “Is Claire . . . ?” She can’t even finish it, and I don’t want her to.

  I don’t want any of this.

  I limp back to Claire but am shocked to discover that Lily isn’t the only person who has appeared. Captain Hook strides across the cracked ground, his crimson coat gone, and his white shirt shredded and stained with blood. There’s a pistol holstered at his side, and he holds his sword in one hand. He looks like he’s been through as much blasted hell as the rest of us.

  As I sink to my knees at Claire’s side, Hook stops in his tracks. The look of utter desolation that crosses his face is the most real expression I’ve ever seen him wear.

  I gently take Claire into my lap.

  A sob wracks my shoulders as I cradle her, brush back her blood-stained curls.

  “Did you do this?” Hook is glaring at Paige, his voice edged with a dangerous growl. He stabs the end of his sword into the ground, leaving it sticking out of the
rough earth. He steps forward, eyes fixed on her and asks again, “Did you do this?”

  Paige wavers, like a mirage in the wind. Her eyes plead with him. “I thought I had to. For us to escape, James.”

  Hook’s eyes travel to me with Claire cradled in my arms, then over to Connor, lying unconscious a few feet away.

  My shadow tries to lurch at Lily but she bats it away with her staff. It’s becoming more and more agitated. She won’t be able to hold him back for long.

  Hook turns those gray eyes on me again. He reaches for his side, and for a moment, I stiffen, thinking he’s going for the pistol holstered at his hip, but instead he pulls something out of his pocket. Hook tosses a small drawstring pouch at me. I catch it, cradling the small pouch in my hands. I don’t have to look inside to know what it is. It’s almost lifting off my hand.

  I raise my eyes to the pirate. “Claire’s dust?”

  He nods as he comes over to us. He tenderly trails the edge of his misshapen hook over her cheek.

  “She really was magnificent.” When I see his eyes fill, I lose it. I bury my face in Claire’s silky hair.

  Sobs wrack my whole body.

  This is worse than death.

  Hook’s hand is on my shoulder. “I’ll deal with Paige. You need to destroy that shadow somehow, Pan.”

  I numbly lift my head to him. This foe suddenly turned almost a friend. “How? What good is any of it anyway?”

  Hook looks down at Claire. “We have to try, Peter. We have to try. She wouldn’t want the island she gave everything for to die without a fight.”

  My skin bristles at the way he talks about her, like he actually knew her, like he actually cared. Maybe he did.

  Because he’s not wrong.

  Claire wouldn’t want me to let things end here.

  I nod and glance over at Lily. Slamming her staff hard into Shadow. Over and over, beating him back, but he’s learning, getting faster. He’s starting to duck and dart around her swings.