The Pan whirled back toward him. “Liar!” she crowed. “My Wendy is the best Wendy, which means I get the best games, and not your children at all! And if you lied about this then you must have lied about that, because that’s what liars do! Snips! Gantry! Take this Wendy’s children to the enlistment tent. They need to learn how to play properly.”
The Pan’s two lieutenants began grabbing the younger children, collaring them by ones and by twos and dragging them out of the clearing. The Wendy started sobbing in earnest, blubbering incoherent pleas for the Pan to leave his children alone. The Pan’s hand caught him across the cheek, sending him crumpling to the ground.
“You’re not a Wendy,” said the Pan. “You’re just a scared little boy. Follow Gantry to the tent. We’ll teach you how to play yet.” She raised her head, looking around at the carefully composed faces of the other Wendys and the remaining Lost Children. “Enlistment is open for another two hours, and then we’ll play at sword practice, and then? Back to war.” Her smile was almost bright enough to make up for the darkness in her eyes. “Beautiful war.”
Somewhere in the back row of Lost Children, a little girl began to cry.
The Pan made yet another grandiose speech about the glories of the great game of war before she turned and flew out of the clearing, off to do whatever it was she did when she wasn’t terrifying Lost Children or challenging pirates to fights she couldn’t win. The Wendys began calling their children to them, counting noses and tweaking ears when necessary to get them to fall into line. There was a time when this process would have taken hours, with the youngest Lost Ones needing to be cossetted and cajoled into lining up and quieting down. That time was in the past, and as every single one of them knew, what was past was beyond recovery. Past was even more inaccessible than the bottom of the lagoon, with no helpful, hurtful mermaids to dive down and bring things back to you once they were lost. In a matter of minutes, the children were lined up and the Wendys were leading them away, leaving the Pan’s Wendy standing alone and looking at nothing.
“Cecily.” The name was accompanied by a small hand on the side of her arm. The Pan’s Wendy turned to see a girl who looked scarcely seven years of age standing beside her. The girl was wearing a much-mended cotton dress, and had her cottony hair tied into two puffballs on either side of her head, each secured with a blue Wendy-ribbon. “We need to speak of things, you, and I, and the other Wendys.”
Cecily—who was called Wendy by all except her fellow Wendys, because they had to have some way of differentiating themselves, didn’t they? At least when they were alone together, with no sprawling families of ever-shifting children to count or mind—shook her head. “I’m sorry, Edith, but I can’t,” she said, without real regret. “The Pan might need me.”
“She’s flying the lagoon’s edge, flirting with mermaids,” said Edith. “We lost five children tonight, Cecily. Five. Can you continue putting this off?”
“Yes,” said Cecily flatly. “I am very good at delaying things.”
“Angus says the apple trees have stopped bearing fruit, and no one’s found a ripe melon in days and days,” said Edith. “Can you delay that? The land is failing. We water the sea with our blood. The only ones who eat well are the mermaids, and that’s the only reason they still fight with us. Even the fairies have started to disappear! I don’t care how good you are at delaying things, Cecily. Some things refuse to be delayed.”
Cecily hesitated, reaching for excuses, and finally offered the only one she could think of: “What about the children? Someone has to stay with them.” She had no children of her own to watch over—the Pan demanded the whole of her attention, and her heart—but she knew that she was an aberration amongst her kind.
“Angus has offered to take all the youngest children while we have our conference, and the older ones have already gone to train for the Pan’s war,” said Edith. “Come.”
Cecily sighed. The rules of the fellowship of Wendys were clear: if the other Wendys wanted her, she had to go, unless she had reason to think they were leaving their Lost Children in danger. Angus was a good mother. He would care for all the children like they were his own.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll come.”
Edith smiled.
The places of the Wendys were safe and secret, bolt-holes carved out of the fabric of Neverland to allow them the brief moments of peace their hearts required if they were going to keep on loving the Lost Children like their own. Cecily had long suspected that the love the Wendys gave wasn’t really mother-love, which was selfless and strained but couldn’t be broken; Wendy-love was selfish, demanding tribute and loyalty in a way she couldn’t imagine mother-love would need to, and revoked as soon as its targets strayed too far. Mother-love was given freely and without constraint, and while Wendy-love might aspire to that great height, it could never quite achieve it.
There were four other Wendys waiting when Edith led Cecily down the ladder and into the safe, cool space beneath the roots of the old sycamore. Belinda, Michael, Sara, and Pike sat on the narrow benches. Cecily felt suddenly as if she had walked into a snare. Those four Wendys were among the eldest of their fellowship, second only to herself . . . and to Edith. Edith had been there long enough see five Pans come and go while she remained a Wendy under the grace of Neverland’s eternal summer sky. This was something more than just a gathering of mothers.
Edith closed the door, turned to Cecily, and said without preamble, “The Pan is not keeping us safe. What say you, sister, who flew here first by this new Pan’s side?”
Cecily bristled, pride and caution warring in her belly. “This ‘new’ Pan has kept Neverland safe for days and days,” she said. From talking to the new children who sought Neverland’s shores, she knew that it had been more than a hundred and fifty years. Words like “decade” and “century” were forbidden, but even as the Pan had outflown her predecessor, so had Wendy outloved and outlasted all but Edith, who seemed as untouchable as the ocean tides.
“Days without counting, yes, but days end,” said Belinda, somehow making the statement sound completely reasonable, when Cecily knew in her heart that it was anything but. “Twilight comes when night is falling. The land is failing. Our children are dying. We are suffering for this Pan’s frailties.”
“The Pan is heartless and cruel,” said Cecily pleadingly. “She keeps us safe. She keeps these skies safe.”
“I remember when you first came to Neverland,” said Edith softly. “You were a beautiful child, and you have grown into a beautiful mother.”
“But not a woman,” said Cecily. The pleas were gone from her voice, replaced by a hard core, like steel. “I’m a child. I’m a Wendy.”
“You were a child when you came to us, and you’re a Wendy now, but you didn’t arrive alone, did you?” Edith looked around at the blank, bewildered faces of her sisters and brother, and sighed. “I hate this part. This is a difficult part, and I hate doing it.” She stomped her foot, for just a moment looking like the child she’d been when she flew away from home. “I don’t want to.”
“Then don’t,” said Cecily. “The Pan is tired, that’s all. The tide of war will turn. It always turns, and we’ll drive those blasted pirates out to sea just like the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that.”
“But there has to be a time when Neverland loses,” said Edith. “There has to be a time when the pirates sail on valiant tides, because otherwise there would be no way of losing this game, and a game that can’t be lost isn’t worth playing anymore. Some Pans lose on their own. Some Pans lose because they can’t keep a Wendy with them long enough to learn to depend on her. And some Pans . . .”
Cecily’s eyes widened. She shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, you can’t make me do this.”
“You didn’t come to Neverland alone, Cecily.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, but what are you talking about?” Michael frowned, standing as he asked his question. “I know
Cecily is the Pan’s Wendy, but how can she change whether or not the pirates win? Why would we want the pirates to win?”
“So the game can go on,” said Edith. She watched Cecily as she spoke, and her eyes were sad. “The game is Neverland, and Neverland is the game. The game is the war unending, the battle unrefused, and it must be fought, or Neverland will fall.”
“I don’t care,” spat Cecily. “I know what you want me to do, and I won’t do it, I won’t. This isn’t right. This is . . .” She paused, fumbling for the greatest condemnation she could think of, and finally said, “It’s against the rules.”
“Why would Edith ask you to break the rules?” asked Sara, frowning.
“It doesn’t break the rules, because this is in the rules. I’m sorry, but it is.” Edith shook her head. “There have been Pans before this one. None of you remember them, but I do. Franklin, Amanda, Wesley, Padraig . . . and Peter. He was my first Pan, although I was never his Wendy. That honor, and that burden, fell on other shoulders.”
“What would make a Pan want to grow up?” asked Belinda, sounding shocked and slightly disgusted by the idea. The others murmured agreement.
Cecily wanted to scream. Growing up was the only end any of them could conceive for a Pan’s tenure in Neverland, even with Edith right there, talking about losing, talking about letting the pirates win. They were Wendys to the core, and they couldn’t see the truth even when it was standing right in front of them, waving its arms in the air and screaming.
Maybe she had never really been a Wendy after all.
“Edith isn’t talking about Pans going home and growing up,” she said, and sighed. “She’s talking about Pans letting the pirates win.
“She’s talking about the ones that have died.”
Silence fell across the room, and Cecily allowed herself a brief, cruel moment of satisfaction. If they were going to put this on her, at least they could understand what they were doing—and what they were asking her to do.
“The Pan didn’t come to Neverland alone, and she wasn’t the Pan when she came,” said Cecily. “Her name was Sheila. And she was my sister.”
They flew to Neverland with hands clasped tight, following a boy they barely knew who said that he could take them to a place where they would be children—and together—forever. What he didn’t tell them was that he was recruiting soldiers for his private war; what he didn’t tell them was that inside of a week, they would have swords in their hands and blood in their hair, and be fighting for their lives against a pirate crew straight out of a storybook.
Cecily had cried and flailed with her sword, barely hitting anything, but Sheila . . . Sheila had laughed and flown to the highest mast, daring the pirates to follow her. Cecily remembered the look in her sister’s eyes, like she was drunk on something more powerful than brandy, more addictive than laudanum. The boy—the Pan—had seen it too, and Cecily had expected him to yell for Sheila to come down and fight properly, but he’d only smiled.
He’d been dead by morning, and Sheila had flown away, surrounded by a chiming cloud of fairies, only to come back in a gown made of skeleton leaves, with a crow in her throat and a wild new light in her face.
That was the first time she had called Cecily “Wendy.”
That was the day that Cecily had lost her after all.
The Pan flew to the edge of the water and landed, her feet touching down with the familiar faint buzz that was Neverland welcoming her home. She’d felt it every time she’d touched the island’s hallowed soil, even back to the first time, when she and Cecily had flown in from—where? She didn’t really remember where they’d started their lives, but she remembered Cecily was her sister, and that seemed like enough of a past to be burdened with. Neverland wanted her. Neverland had welcomed her with open arms and a gown of skeleton leaves peeled from the body of a dead boy with too many freckles and a smile like a Tuesday morning (not that she knew what a Tuesday was; not that she knew the boy’s name, then or now or ever). Neverland would never let her go.
Pirate ships with storm-cloud sails bobbed on the horizon, waiting for the wind to pick back up and the tide to turn around, allowing them to resume their endless assault on the island’s shores. They’d been fighting this war for as long as the Pan could remember—had been fighting it when she first arrived, when the Lost Children were led by that freckle-faced boy in his vest of skeleton leaves. But it had never been like this before. It had never been so unending and so . . . so vicious. The pirates would attack, a few people would be injured, leaving them with interesting scars to brag about at night, when they lay in their hammocks under the trees, and that would be that; the pirates would go away again, leaving the Lost Children to more important concerns, like rabbit hunts through the thorn briars or moonlit swims with mermaids. But not this time. This time the pirates were fighting to kill, and they just kept coming and coming, like waves against the shore, and people were dying, and the Pan didn’t know what to do.
No one was supposed to die in Neverland. That wasn’t the agreement. That wasn’t the way.
A fairy zipped in from the side, hanging in the air in front of the Pan’s face and ringing softly. Her wings cast a soft pink glow over everything around her. The Pan had heard some of the newer Lost Children scoffing at her Wendy’s fairy, calling it too “girly” for the Wendy attached to their Pan. The Pan didn’t quite understand that; when Vinca had first attached herself to Wendy (Cecily), the Lost Children had laughed and said a proper girl would have a blue-glow fairy, leaving the pink fairies for the boys where they belonged.
The Pan didn’t understand much about the newest wave of Lost Children, if she was being honest, which was a thing she hated to be. Pans should be liars and fliers, that’s the rule. But these Lost Children came in as wide-eyed and scarred by the adult world as all the boys and girls who came before them, and then they turned their attention to questioning everything. Some of them had even refused to accept the authority of the Wendys! They said they’d come to Neverland to escape adults and their stupid adult rules, and they weren’t going to accept a new set of guardians that they’d never asked for. The Pan had insisted they divide themselves appropriately, sending them to the Wendys who would be their caretakers, but it was strange, and it was wearying.
The Pan was tired.
Vinca rang again. The Pan frowned.
“I don’t know what you want, Vinca,” she said. “I speak Pan-fairy, not Wendy-fairy.”
“She’s telling you not to go for your sword when you hear me creeping up behind you,” said a familiar voice.
“Wendy!” The Pan turned, beaming at the sight of the girl who made everything better just by walking into a room. She looked sad. The Pan didn’t like that much—Wendys should be joyful things—and so she skipped, leaving the ground, and flew the few yards to land nose-to-nose with her Wendy. “Have you come to keep watch with me?”
“I have,” said Wendy, with a small smile. She reached out, brushing the Pan’s hair out of her face, just like a mother should. “I also wanted to talk to you, Sheila, if that’s all right.”
The Pan flinched, her feet touching down. “I don’t like that name. That’s a before-name. I’m the Pan.”
“Pans have names,” said Wendy calmly. “Remember? Franklin was Pan here when we came. He came through our bedroom window, and he told us if we came with him, we could be children forever, and free forever . . .”
“Pans have names, but that doesn’t mean we have to use them,” said the Pan petulantly. “Franklin wasn’t a good Pan. He lost. Remember? He led his lieutenants against the pirates, and he lost, and he died, and I became Pan in his place. He wasn’t a good Pan. So why should I follow his example?”
“Because you’re the Pan and I’m your Wendy, but you’re also Sheila, and I’m your sister,” said Wendy gently. She put her hand against the Pan’s cheek. “Remember? Neverland loves me too much to make you forget that.”
“Of course I remember,” scoffed the Pan. Then
she hesitated before admitting, slowly, “I’m just not sure I remember what a sister is . . .”
Wendy pulled her hand away. “It’s nothing important,” she said. She stood up straighter, looking at the Pan, and said, “I want to come with you when you attack the pirates tonight.”
“What? Why? Wendys are only good for getting themselves kidnapped and tied to the mast.”
“I know. Having me there will confuse the pirates and make it easier for you to win, and then we can get home in time for the feast.” Wendy smiled. “I trust you to rescue me.”
“Of course I’ll rescue you!” said the Pan, her feet leaving the ground again. “I’m the Pan! Rescue is what I do!” She turned cartwheels in the air, crowing, and Wendy watched her, and said nothing.
There was nothing left for her to say.
“This is how it goes. The Pan plans battles, and the Wendys win the war.”
“It isn’t fair.”
“Cecily.” Edith frowned at her. “Whoever told you that childhood would be fair?”
Time passed; the tide turned. Time and tides were dependable that way. The sails of the ships on the horizon grew pregnant with wind, and the pirates of Neverland began the trek to shore. Their decks were packed with men bristling with swords, and their cannons were loaded, ready to unleash hell. At each ship’s helm was a pirate captain, grim of jaw and dead of eye, steering them inexorably toward battle.
On the shore, the Pan flew back and forth before her gathered army, her feet pointing straight down and hanging inches above the shore. All of the Lost Children big enough to hold a knife or a spear were there, and their Wendys were with them, leaving only a few behind to keep watch over the younglings. Mermaids bobbed in the surf, their multicolored fins breaking the surface in brief flashes, like captive rainbows, and the sky overhead glowed with the aurora of ever-moving fairy wings.
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