Lost in the Never Woods

by Aiden Thomas

  “Only if you promise to call me prince,” he said, helping Cassidy readjust her thumbs.

  “Peter.”

  “Your Highness is also acceptable.”

  “Peter.”

  Finally noticing her tone, Peter looked up. He gave her a quizzical look, cocking his head to the side. He took the flower crown off his head and held it out to Cassidy in both of his hands. “I think you should hold on to this,” he told her. Cassidy reached a hand out to take it, but before she could, Peter added, “But I think it needs to be a bit more fitting for a princess.”

  Slowly, the small, wilting buds began to glow a faint gold. Cassidy gasped and Wendy’s heart fluttered.

  The flowers swelled into huge blooms, the stems growing thick and knotted together. Rotating slowly, the circlet rose into mid-air. Eyes wide, Cassidy watched as it came down to rest around her neck, too large to perch on the top of her head.

  “There!” Peter said, wiping his hands off on his worn jeans, looking pleased with his handiwork.

  Pixie dust.

  Cassidy let out a squeal of excitement and clapped her hands together. “Are you a magician?” she asked, bubbling over, her tiny body literally bouncing with glee.

  “Actually—” Peter started, but Wendy quickly cut him off.

  “Yes!” she said. “But you can’t tell anyone. It’s a secret, okay?”

  Peter huffed.

  Wendy narrowed her eyes at him.

  Peter sighed.

  He turned and gave Cassidy a look of mock seriousness and nodded solemnly.

  “I won’t tell. I won’t!” Cassidy insisted.

  Wendy doubted she could actually keep that promise, which meant they needed to get the hell out of there.

  “Let’s go, Peter,” Wendy said, tugging on his arm. Before leaving, Wendy shouted across the yard, “HEY, REBECCA!”

  Cassidy’s older sister jumped and yanked the headphones off. She looked startled, clearly having just now noticed Wendy and Peter with her sister.

  Wendy waved enthusiastically, giving Rebecca the biggest, fakest smile she could. At least now she was paying attention.

  Wendy stomped off and Peter followed. He looked back over his shoulder and waved good-bye to Cassidy, who cheerily waved back.

  “Cassidy, get back on the porch!” Wendy heard Rebecca say.

  Once they were out of earshot, Wendy threw her elbow into Peter’s side. “You can’t just go around hanging out with little girls in the middle of the street!” she hissed at him.

  Peter laughed, rubbing at his ribs and furrowing his brow. “What do you mean?” he asked, as if he wasn’t sure if she was serious or not.

  Wendy groaned. Did he really not get it? “Because!” she snapped, squeezing the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. Clearly, living in Neverland didn’t leave him with a lot of knowledge of social etiquette in the real world. “People will think you’re up to something, maybe that you might hurt her,” she told him. “You could get into a lot of trouble—you could get us into a lot of trouble.”

  Now he looked genuinely confused. “What? But I would never do that.” The hurt in his voice made her feel bad for chastising him.

  “I know, but people—other people, grown-ups—they wouldn’t know that. They would just assume the worst,” she explained, trying to be more gentle. “Especially with everything going on. If an adult saw you talking to random kids, they’d probably think you were the kidnapper.”

  They were at the end of the street now. Peter stopped and turned to face her. “Why do I have the feeling you’re not telling me something?”

  Wendy bit her bottom lip. “The detectives think you have something to do with the missing kids.”

  Peter’s arms fell to his sides. “What do you mean?” he asked, shifting his weight between his feet.

  Wendy took a deep breath. “I was late because I had to go down to the police station. Detective James—from the news, remember?—he questioned me about Alex, the missing kids.” She added hesitantly, “You.”

  Peter groaned like a kid who had just been found while playing hide-and-seek. “Did you tell them anything?” he asked.

  “No, of course not! How could I?” she spluttered, throwing her hands in the air. “It’s not like they would believe me. We already ruled them out from being any use,” she muttered. If the police couldn’t find her brothers when they’d first gone missing, how could she expect them to help now? This was up to her and Peter.

  Wendy cast a wary glance down both sides of the street. “Let’s keep walking,” she said.

  Peter fell into step beside her. Fewer and fewer places felt safe anymore, and the last thing she needed was to be overheard talking to Peter by Jordan or the cops or, even worse, her parents.

  “They do think you have something to do with the missing kids,” she continued.

  “We already knew that from the news,” Peter pointed out.

  “It doesn’t seem like you’re a suspect”—Peter winced—“I think they think that you were kidnapped, too,” she added quickly. “And since they connected you to my disappearance, they think that the person who is taking the kids now is the person who took me and my brothers.”

  Peter only nodded. It was hard to read his expression as he stared down at his feet, deep in thought.

  Wendy sighed and rubbed her palm against her forehead. “I guess, technically, they’re right?” she thought out loud. “Your shadow took my brothers and now it’s taking more kids.”

  Again, Peter said nothing.

  Wendy wrung her hands together. “It’s not hurting them, is it?” she asked, nervous to hear the answer.

  Peter shook his head. “No, they need to be alive,” he told her, looking dismayed.

  Wendy didn’t like how that sounded.

  “In order for the shadow to feed off them, they have to be awake.”

  “Awake and terrified,” Wendy finished.

  Peter nodded again.

  He’d told her before how shadows got stronger by feeding off of a person’s fear. Their terror and sadness, their sense of hopelessness. John and Michael had been trapped by the shadow for years. What was it like for them? What kind of existence was it, to be consumed by fear and unable to escape it?

  Wendy’s chest ached. She couldn’t stand the thought of them suffering, especially for so long. She and Peter needed to rescue them.

  “Do you know where they are?” Wendy asked.

  “No—well, in the woods,” Peter corrected himself. “Definitely in the woods, but it could be hiding them anywhere with magic.”

  They crossed the street and started walking down the road that led into town. It was the road that hugged the woods. The same one where Wendy had found Peter. They walked along the shoulder but, even in daylight, it made the hair on the back of her neck prickle. Her steps became slower and more hesitant. The overgrown trees and hanging branches loomed above them.

  Peter put himself between her and the woods, pushing rogue branches out of the way as they walked. His presence made her feel … better. Less scared, like she had someone who finally knew what she was going through. Someone to go through it with. But then there was also this undeniable warmth that she could feel radiating through her body when she was close to him.

  She took a quick couple of steps to catch up to Peter and fall into stride next to him, far away enough to not be touching him, but close enough that she could reach out and brush her knuckles against his if she wanted to.

  Wendy glanced over and took in his profile: his nose that turned up just a little at the tip, the hard line of his jaw, the small points to his ears. He wore the jeans Wendy had patched and a dusty rose T-shirt that was sun bleached but made his eyes all the more disarming.

  Wendy wondered if the heat she felt was part of Peter’s magic. Or was it just … him?

  It was comforting, but she could still feel the woods pressing against her mind. They buzzed like the pressure in her ears when she dove into the dee
p end of the pool at swim practice. She still felt like she was being watched, just as she had last night in her driveway. The memory came flooding back to her.

  “There’s something I forgot to tell you about last night, before you found me in the woods,” Wendy said slowly.

  Peter turned to look at her. “What happened?” he asked, face scrunched up like he was bracing himself to get hit.

  “I went to get my swim bag out of my truck last night,” she began. “It was dark out and while I was digging around for it, I could—” Wendy paused, trying to put the experience into words. “Feel something behind me. I turned around and out of nowhere there was this guy. He started talking to me.” Wendy watched him for his reaction, absently rubbing her arm as she remembered how her skin had crawled.

  “Didn’t you just get done telling Cassidy not to talk to strangers?” Peter asked, cocking an eyebrow at her.

  Wendy felt a flare of annoyance. This wasn’t a time for jokes.

  “He knew who I was, Peter,” she snapped. “He knew my name, he said he had seen me at the hospital before, he actually asked me if I wanted to go for a walk with him in the woods.” Wendy shuddered.

  Now Peter looked concerned.

  “And he said something about how I had to be careful because I didn’t want to ‘go missing’ again,” she said, doing her best to remember exactly what happened.

  Deep frown lines creased Peter’s forehead. “Maybe he just recognized you from the news?” he offered. “It’s a small town, maybe he just remembered you going missing…” It was like he was trying to convince himself.

  Wendy shook her head. “No, like you said, it’s a small town, and I had never seen him before,” she explained. “Not only that, but there was something really weird about him. He was creepy. He felt…” She paused, trying to think of a way to describe him. “Dangerous. I couldn’t see what he looked like, either,” Wendy continued. “It was dark, sure, but it was more than that. He was standing right in front of me, but I couldn’t make out his face. It was like I couldn’t focus on a feature because they kept … moving around, like I was looking at him through water, you know? But dark.”

  He shook his head, not understanding her train of thought.

  Wendy swallowed. Her mouth felt dry. “It was like he was made of shadows.”

  Peter stopped walking. “Shadows?” he repeated, suddenly very alert. Wendy nodded and Peter stared off into the woods, deep in thought.

  “Yeah.” Wendy shifted her weight between her feet. She didn’t like that look on his face. She wanted to keep walking. She was scared to hear the answer to the question she needed to ask. “Peter, your shadow can’t…” How could she put it into words? “It can’t … take a human form, can it?”

  Peter shook his head. He looked dazed. “That’s never happened before,” he said. “It’s never even become a solid being before.”

  Wendy felt hopeless. “Why is this happening, Peter?”

  He looked like he was holding himself back from saying something as he sucked on his bottom lip. But then he just sighed and shrugged. “I have no idea.” That was not what she wanted to hear.

  “Well, when I heard Alex’s voice, he—it—disappeared, or maybe he was still there? I don’t remember. I just took off running into the woods,” Wendy continued. “Then another thing happened after you left and I went to bed…”

  Peter groaned. “Another thing?” he asked dejectedly.

  “I … think it was in my dream last night,” she began, glancing up at him apprehensively. Peter looked at her intently, waiting for her to go on, so she did. “When I fell asleep, I dreamed that I was in the woods,” Wendy told him. “There was snow, so it must have been winter, and it was starting to get dark. I was standing in front of this huge tree—”

  “A tree?” Peter asked abruptly. His shoulders went rigid, his blue eyes intense.

  She nodded. For some reason, his reaction unsettled her. “Yeah, it didn’t look like any of the other trees in the woods,” she explained. She could almost smell the dead leaves from her dream. “It was huge and its branches bent at weird angles. They were completely bare and it almost looked like it was dead. It had a huge tangle of roots.”

  Peter was standing so still, Wendy wondered if he was even breathing.

  “And I could hear something coming from the tree. Like the voices in the woods last night, did you hear them?” Wendy asked.

  Peter only responded with a short nod.

  “Before I could get closer to the tree, the shadow appeared, but this time I could see him.”

  “What did he look like?” Peter asked, but his voice was laced with dread, like he already knew the answer.

  “Like … well, like you,” she said, shifting uncomfortably. “But not you. His hair was dark, his skin was pale, and his eyes were like looking into a pitch-black room,” Wendy tried to explain. She searched the cloudless sky for the right words. “He was a twisted version of you that only a nightmare could conjure up, but it wasn’t just a bad dream.”

  “What do you mean?” Peter asked cautiously.

  “I mean, I don’t think it was a dream at all.” Wendy swallowed and wet her lips. “I think I got a memory back, from when I was in the woods.”

  All the color drained from Peter’s face.

  “And when I woke up, I had drawn the tree everywhere in my sleep—on my blankets, all over my legs, my hands.” Wendy gestured at herself. She held up her hands for him to see. They were less red, but still dry and irritated from all the scrubbing.

  Peter stepped closer to her, staring at the marks in dis- belief.

  “I’ve been drawing that same tree for weeks now,” Wendy murmured, unable to find her voice with Peter standing so close. “But not on purpose.” Peter gave her a confused look. “Like, I wouldn’t notice I was doing it. I would be writing a grocery list and then I’d space out for a second, and the next thing I knew there would be drawings all over it.”

  Peter took her arm carefully with one hand and gently brushed his fingers along the faded red marks. There was a deep crease between his freckled brows. The sudden closeness made warmth swell in Wendy’s chest.

  “I think there’s a part of me that remembers what happened, and it’s trying to lead me in the right direction. I think that’s why I keep drawing that tree…” She paused, collecting her bravery before adding, “And you.”

  Peter’s eyes snagged hers, still worried but with a touch of curiosity. “Me?”

  Wendy could only nod. Heat flamed in her cheeks.

  She was acutely aware that she hadn’t been this close to him since she found him on the road. The light flecks in his deep blue eyes sparked in the sunlight.

  She couldn’t think clearly with him this close. Wendy cleared her throat and took a step back, pulling her arm away from him.

  Peter seemed unfazed by it and let his hands fall back to his sides, still stuck in his own head.

  Wendy knew the feeling. She started walking down the road again and Peter followed.

  “This is bad,” he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “It’s never been this strong before. With all of the kids it’s taken, it’s getting too powerful,” Peter tried to explain. “Every day I’m getting weaker, and it’s getting stronger. We need to stop it, Wendy. And soon. If we don’t, who knows what it’ll be able to do.”

  Wendy thought for a moment. They still needed more answers, and there was really only one way of doing that, right? She shook her head and rubbed her collarbone. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she mumbled to herself, “but I think we need to go into the woods and find that tree.”

  Peter reeled back. “What?”

  “If what I saw was a memory, then there’s obviously something important about that tree,” she told him. “And all those drawings? They have to be some sort of clue. I mean, I saw your shadow there, too—maybe that’s where it’s hiding? Maybe that’s where they are—those missing kids and my brothers?” She hated herself for
even suggesting it, but if it meant getting her brothers back, then she had no choice.

  “It might just be an imaginary tree,” Peter pressed. “It might not mean anything at all. Or what if it’s a trap being set up by my shadow?” He gestured toward the woods.

  “I can’t say that it’s not a trap,” Wendy confessed. “But we have to try.”

  Peter glanced over his shoulder into the trees. “I don’t know, Wendy,” he said uneasily.

  “What other option do we have?” Wendy asked. Peter didn’t seem to have an answer. “We should try to find it. Maybe today? We still have enough daylight to at least start looking.”

  He still seemed unconvinced.

  “Look, you’re the one who said you needed my help to stop your shadow, remember?” Wendy pointed out. “And since when is Peter Pan afraid of danger?”

  Peter scowled at her. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  Wendy couldn’t help but grin.

  They stopped at the corner of the street. They had made it to a small shopping area between Wendy’s house and downtown. There was a convenience store, a gas station, and a couple of mom-and-pop shops. A pair of women were out, walking their kids in strollers, but a majority of the people meandering about were other teenagers enjoying their summer break.

  “Should we head back and start looking now?” Wendy asked, turning to Peter. “I think we’re going to have to go pretty deep into the woods because of how old that tree looked…”

  Peter didn’t seem to be listening. He was craning his neck around, looking down the different streets.

  “Should we look for clues somewhere?” She had no idea how to go about solving a mystery. She felt like she had been dropped into the middle of a Scooby Doo episode. “How do you even go about looking for clues that’ll lead you to a supernatural shadow? This is all new to me,” she said.

  And Peter was entirely useless.

  “Peter, focus,” she snapped, jabbing a finger into his arm.

  “Hmm, yeah, I know what we should do,” Peter said, nodding firmly, looking at something off in the distance.