by Lisa Maxwell
Pan chuckles at my gasp when we enter a wide clearing anchored by a towering waterfall. He touches down and gently lowers me to my unsteady legs, but he doesn’t release me.
Instead he leans in close, like he wants to tell me a secret. “Welcome to Neverland, Gwendolyn.”
How long ago was it that the Captain gave me those same words, not as a gift as Pan offers them, but as a threat, a warning? It feels so much longer than a handful of days. And with my memories of the time before so hazy, it’s hard to imagine I even had a life before my captivity on the Captain’s ship or before I was brought to this world.
I take a deep breath to steady myself and use the opportunity to look around. We are in the center of a wide, level valley. On one end, across a smooth, clear lake, water glints in the morning light as it cascades from a steep rise of rose-colored rock. And anchoring that rock is a towering waterfall that’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. The falls remind me of the tumbled tiers of a wedding cake and each step throws up clouds of mist that shimmer in the soft light. It’s like watching a living prism, the rainbows within the mist shifting and dancing over the many pools.
The Captain had tried to explain that we were no longer in the human world. After all I saw on his ship, after all I experienced, I came to believe him, but now, standing here in this place in the very heart of the island, my heart understands the truth. “This really is Neverland,” I say with a kind of strangled awe. And if this is Neverland, how much more could be true?
Pan takes me by the hand and leads me forward, closer to the edge of the mirrorlike surface of the lake. “Welcome home, Gwendolyn, my dear.”
Home.
A feeling of joy crashes through me, and for a moment I can’t help but accept the absolute rightness of his words. A longing wells inside me so startling, so complete, it shocks me.
Because this place isn’t my home. And I can’t let Neverland become my home. But there is something about the land around me that pulls at me. Calls to me in a way I cannot remember ever having felt before.
Covering my reaction the best I can, I gently pull my hand away from his grip and touch the stones at my wrist, forcing myself to remember my life from before. But the memories that surface are hazy and indistinct. And they aren’t easy or comforting.
I can’t seem to envision any of the places I’ve lived, but I can remember the overwhelming feeling of rootlessness, of being unsettled and out of place time and again. Of knowing that each move we made was only a stop—a pause that let me settle just long enough to almost get comfortable before I’d be uprooted again. But I don’t remember any of those stops ever really feeling like a home.
Even through the murkiness of my memory, I know I’ve never had a place that truly felt like my own. But as I open my eyes again and take in the beauty around me, Pan’s words of welcome echoing in my head, there is a traitorous part of me that wonders whether this could be the home I’ve been looking for. With all this beauty around me and the almost comforting pulse of the island beneath my feet, a voice deep inside me whispers, Would it really be so bad?
I step back from Pan, unsettled by how easily I almost let myself give in. The Captain had warned me about this—he’d told me Neverland would tempt me to betray everything I once knew. I hadn’t understood . . . not really. But maybe now I’m starting to.
I can’t forget who I am and where I need to get back to. I won’t let myself be taken in by this world again.
“Gwendolyn?” Pan asks, his voice filled with concern. When I don’t answer, he lifts my chin gently. “Are you well?”
I give a slight nod. “I’m fine,” I tell him, finally forcing myself to meet his eyes.
Safe on the ground and with the morning sun finally lighting the world, I take my first real look at him. He certainly doesn’t seem like any Peter Pan I’ve ever seen. He’s no child, for one. He’s taller than the Captain, but he looks about the same age—Pan, too, is maybe a couple of years older than I am. Though the barest hint of light stubble lines his jaw, his face is missing the worn, exhausted quality I now realize was the Captain’s defining feature.
His white-blond hair stands on end in an artful disarray that gives the impression he’s constantly in flight, like the wind itself can’t keep its greedy fingers out of those unruly locks. Just as I’d suspected back on the ship, he’s beautiful. But I see now that he has a hint of darkness to him, a suggestion of danger that doesn’t so much warn you away as make you want to lean closer, to learn his secrets.
He’s wearing the same tight, jaggedly stitched pants as Fiona and a high-necked vest that exposes the well-defined muscles in his bare arms and chest. The pale skin over his collarbone and around each bicep and wrist is adorned with bloodred tattoos that remind me of something.
It takes a second for the memory to bubble up, murky and indistinct as all the others, and then I realize where I’ve seen markings like Pan’s tattoos before—they’re similar to the rune stones my mom has always made and collected.
That recognition helps me remember her a little more clearly—every time we moved, she would take her collection of small, smooth pebbles and line our new windowsills with them. In every new place we went, she found another stone and painstakingly carved a crooked symbol into its surface. She’d wrap each stone carefully and keep them with her until she could set them out on the next window. My mom always said the runes she used were old Celtic symbols for protection—
I reach out without thinking, and touch one of the red markings that adorns the skin below Pan’s collarbone. The red lines aren’t smooth like a tattoo should be. They’re raised, ever so slightly. They’re not just tattoos, I realize. They’re scars. Someone carved these symbols into his skin.
The warmth of his skin beneath my fingertips brings me back to myself and, embarrassed, I pull my hand away like I’ve been burned. My cheeks are hot with the awareness of how strangely forward it was to touch him like that, but even in my embarrassment, something makes me want to reach out again, something pulls me toward him.
I clench my hands into fists at my sides instead. “What are they?” I ask.
“They were a gift from my mother,” he replies with a small smile.
“Your mother did that to you?” I say, horrified.
“She did it for me, Gwendolyn,” he says.
His face is still serene, pleasant even, as he takes my hand and brings it up to his chest again, covering mine with his own. Beneath my fingertips and the raised edges of the carved lines, his heartbeat is slow and steady. His eyes, with their glacial-blue irises ringed by midnight, never leave mine.
“In this world, power requires sacrifice, Gwendolyn. The Queen sacrificed some of her power to bestow these gifts onto me. I accepted the pain, and in return, I received the power they give me. Some allow me to break free from the earth—flight, as you’ve seen. Others give me the power to speak to the island and compel it to obey,” he says, pointing to a different marking.
Then he takes my hand in his, pulling it away from the marks on his chest, and raises it to his lips. Still holding my gaze, he kisses the underside of my wrist softly before releasing it.
I rub absently at the bit of skin that burns where his lips brushed over it. When he smiles again, my skin practically buzzes with heat where his lips touched me. But there’s a memory tugging at me, even through the pleasant haze of his attention. There’s something I’m supposed to be doing. . . .
Olivia, a small voice whispers, reminding me.
I can’t seem to look away. “Where’s Olivia?” I murmur, the words thick and unwelcome in my mouth.
I think I see impatience crash through his expression, but it’s gone so quickly, I wonder if I imagined it. “She’s most likely still sleeping. I thought I would show you my favorite part of the island rather than disturb her so early.”
What I want is to see Olivia, but he looks so hopeful—almost shy and boyish—I can’t seem to make myself disappoint him. “It’s beautiful,” I tell
him honestly.
“Come.” He gestures that I should sit at the water’s edge before he lowers himself to the ground, his long, leather-clad legs outstretched comfortably.
The clearing is empty and silent except for the soft rush of water from the falls. No one knows where I am. I don’t even know where I am. Tentatively, I sit, keeping distance between me and the beautiful boy who’s brought me to this place.
On nights such as that one, the boy came to understand that the key to not dying was remembering he was alive. For the world around him was strange, and often it felt like he was dreaming, though wide-awake. So he almost did not trust his eyes when he turned and saw his brother, gray and pale as an apparition, in the dim evening light. . . .
Chapter 17
SO THE STORIES ARE TRUE,” I say, watching the dance of the waters. Maybe the tales weren’t accurate, exactly, but . . . “Neverland is real.” I glance over at him. “And so are you.”
He grins then, a wickedly charming smile that makes my heart kick up in my chest. “It does appear that way, does it not?” he murmurs, his voice soft, coaxing, and again I feel pulled toward him with an urgency I don’t understand.
“It does,” I agree, but I also remember what the Captain told me about stories and the lies they often hide.
Though it’s clear now that the Captain’s stories held lies of their own.
“What did the Captain do to that boy on the ship?” I ask Pan.
Pan seems to ignore my question as he lets the tips of his fingers trail through the water of the pool, making small eddies ripple across the glassy surface. Tiny brightly colored fish swim over to investigate. They look like jewels glinting just below the surface. One of the braver fish stills and then, darting forward, latches itself on to Pan’s finger with an unexpected violence. He doesn’t even flinch. He simply lifts his hand from the water, the fish still dangling from his fingertip.
“We each belong somewhere, Gwendolyn,” Pan finally says, examining the fish. “This creature belonged to the water. . . .” The fish’s scales are a brilliant sapphire-blue and startling purple, too vibrant and bright to belong in the seas of my own world. But as I watch, the colors fade and tiny black lines begin to snake themselves across the surface of its body. The lines remind me of the cracks that appeared in Davey when the Captain drank in his life.
“But when a creature ventures beyond the safety of its own world, often it can’t survive.” Pan flicks the body of the fish from his fingertip, and it falls to the ground, where it crumbles on impact into brittle shards that look like bits of broken glass. Dark blood begins to well from Pan’s finger, but he ignores it. “Your Captain doesn’t belong in this world, Gwendolyn, and so he depends upon the Dark Ones for his life.”
I stare at the blood beginning to drip from Pan’s finger and think of the way the boy’s life drained away from him when the Captain inhaled the glowing thread, and I have a feeling I understand more than I want to.
“You see, my dear, children do well enough here in Neverland. This world is a place for the wild, unruly desires of innocence. But your Captain is no longer a child, and he’s certainly no innocent. Without what he takes from those boys, his body would become as fragile as this poor creature’s.” With a deft flick of his wrist, he brushes the shards of the fish back into the water. The other fish immediately swarm, darting in and out to scavenge the remains of their friend. “As all human bodies become here as they age.”
The tattoos. On the ship, the older boys all had dark, scarlike lines that I’d thought might have been some mark of loyalty or rank, but I see now they weren’t. What just happened to that fish is happening to all of them.
“All humans?” I ask, my voice wavering. I’m not any more of a child than most of the tattooed—no, cracked—boys in the Captain’s crew. Neither is the Captain.
“Well . . . perhaps not all,” Pan concedes. “As you saw in the hold of the ship, your Captain has found a way to avoid such an unfortunate end. When he accepts what the Dark Ones offer, he takes for himself his victim’s innocence and youth. The younger the child, the more power it contains, the more time it buys him.” His cool eyes bore into mine as his expression goes coldly dangerous. A moment before, the valley had felt like a peaceful, welcoming place, but now there is a dangerous tension radiating from Pan.
“But it will never be enough for him. This world will never be a place where he belongs.” Pan’s features soften, and his mouth curls into a slow, satisfied smile. “Not as I belong,” he says, brushing his hand over the soft grassy ground cover between us. Tiny white flowers appear at his touch. “And not as you could belong, Gwendolyn.” His cool eyes meet mine, but he doesn’t speak for a long, uncomfortable moment.
“Me?” I say with a surprised laugh. But a small part of me still wonders at the pull I feel to the island, to Pan. “This isn’t my home. I don’t want to stay here,” I force myself to say. And it’s only partially a lie.
“But it could be,” he says simply as he trails his fingertip along my leg, drawing a line of his blood from my knee down almost to my ankle. I can’t look away from the dark smudge of his blood on my pants, and can’t help but think that he’s basically marked me. But for what? the small voice inside me asks.
Then, as though sharing the best sort of secret, he bends his head toward mine conspiratorially. “In this world, you could do anything. Become anything.” The sky has lit completely now, and the pink from the sunrise has all but melted into the bright blue of day. A blue that can’t compete with the brightness of his eyes. “I can show you, protect you. Just as my mother taught me.”
“So you’re not one of the Fey?” I ask, surprised. Until this moment I hadn’t known for sure.
“No, but the Queen of this world was the only mother I ever knew, and because of my mother’s gifts, I am as close to Fey as any mortal has ever been.” He plucks one of the tiny blossoms, and as he holds it, the petals turn from red to pink and then to blue. “For some, Neverland can be paradise. I can give you that, Gwendolyn.”
As I reach for the flower to accept it, a part of me also wants to accept the promise of his words. My memories are still so hazy, but the one feeling I cannot shake, the feeling that comes through clear and sure, is how out of my control my life had always felt. Even as I held everything together, each move we made was my mom’s choice. Each time I had to start over was because she decided.
What would it mean to choose the beauty and wonder of this place for myself?
“You could belong here, Gwendolyn,” Pan tempts, offering me the flower. “You could belong with me.”
His words stroke at something inside me, something that wants and aches and cannot remember having been satisfied before. I’m not sure what I mean to accept when I reach out to take the flower from him. But I can’t bring myself to care. I just want something, anything, to feel right and real and true.
But as soon as the stem of the tiny flower is between my fingertips, tiny black lines begin to creep along the petals’ surfaces. With a gasp, I let the flower fall to the ground, wilted and gray on the bright emerald of the grass. At the sight of it, the intense wanting that had reared up so suddenly and so strongly crumbles and fades.
I’m not sure if Pan realizes the emotions that have just crashed through me. He doesn’t seem to, because a moment later he takes my hand and gently settles it palm down in the soft, grassy growth. Then he covers it with the broad warmth of his own hand, pressing my palm so firmly into the ground, I can feel the uncomfortably sharp point of a pebble, the dampness of the earth. Beneath my fingertips is the constant and gentle throb of an island always changing.
“Listen to Neverland, Gwendolyn. Can you feel it calling to you?” His voice is soft and urgent, coaxing me again to believe that what he’s saying might be true.
I want to pull my hand away and rub the heat of his skin from mine, but I can’t. Because it would be a lie. The ground does pulse beneath me, like a heartbeat. And there’s more—somet
hing warm growing beneath my palms. Something comforting and welcoming.
“You don’t have to be afraid, my dear. You need only ask for what you most desire, and see if Neverland finds favor in you,” he tells me, low and sweet. “You need only call to it, to see if it responds.” Pan’s eyes are clear and bright now, hopeful as they meet mine. “Go on,” he urges. “Try.”
I swallow hard, not sure whether the connection I feel to the land is safe—or even real. Not sure whether I can trust his words. But he’s looking at me so ardently, and I can’t bring myself to disappoint him. I close my eyes, and I do what he asks.
I want to go home, I think because it is what I’m supposed to think.
And once you’re back there? the small voice whispers. What then?
I want to have a normal life, a normal home. I want to find a place where I fit without pretending to be something I’m not. That’s what made Westport feel like home, I remember then—I had someone there who didn’t look at me like an outsider, who didn’t ask questions that forced me into lies. I had Olivia.
The ground beneath my hands goes hot, burning against my palms as an ache travels up my arms. I open my eyes and jerk my hands away, scraping them against the ground just to be free of Pan and the uncomfortable heat.
He’s watching me with an intensity that’s almost uncomfortable. An intensity that makes me think he knows what’s just happened. All at once, I realize how easily I was taken by his words. How completely I’d fallen under the spell-like pull of his appeal. And I’m shaken by it.
I glance away, because his gaze is too steady and expectant for me to hold any longer. I focus on the broken flower and make myself ask the only question that matters. “Will you take me to Olivia now?”
