Wendy, Darling

by A. C. Wise

  The first time she was here, everything seemed uncomplicated. And now? Is this what growing up means, the thing that terrifies Peter so? As a child she only saw bright colors, pure sunlight, or utter dark. All of Neverland is built around those stark contrasts—the sun becoming the moon in the blink of an eye, the sharp demarcation between beach and forest, Hook and his pirates versus Peter and his boys.

  A tremor passes through her, and for a moment Wendy wants that surety again, the world flattened to black and white, right and wrong. She has the urge to turn a cartwheel on the sand, pound her feet along the line of surf and let the years fall away as she runs. Instead, she wiggles her toes, burrowing them deep before spreading her arms wide and twirling. Her shawl flares, the trees and sky, the ocean and the shore, blurring into one.

  When she stops, she’s dizzy. The waves tumble smoothed stones and leave behind a delicate lace of sea foam. Nothing can ever be as simple as merely good and bad again.

  She thinks back on the beach holiday she took with Ned and Jane in Brighton when Jane was six years old. Wendy pictures her daughter running along this shore instead of that one, chasing seabirds, her footprints tracking wildly across the sand. She pictures her pausing to dig for shells, trying to uncover the secret homes of tiny, scuttling crabs. She imagines Ned’s fond smile, his cheeks coloring with a day of wind and sun, Jane’s fingers sticky with melting ice cream as memory and imagination bleed into one. The ache is nearly too much. She should be sharing this moment with them. Her family. Or, she should have shared it with them long ago, the day she agreed to marry Ned, the day her daughter was born.

  Even as the ache grows in her like a bruise, she knows Neverland is a lie. This is the ideal of a beach, the tide wild enough for adventure but never so rough as to be a threat; the water never too warm nor too cold. Every tree in Neverland is perfect for climbing, and the stars always make fantastic pictures in the night sky. It’s a world built by a boy to satisfy his every whim. It isn’t real.

  Ned and Jane are her true home. She belonged here once upon a time, but they are the life she chose. Every day since leaving St. Bernadette’s, she has chosen them, and she will choose them again now. As much as that long-lost part of her wants to run, to fly, to be utterly free of responsibility, the star she navigates by now is Jane.

  Wendy tucks her rolled stockings into the toes of her boots. If she’d told Ned the truth long ago, they might have protected Jane together. Their lives may not be perfect under the ever-present shadow of her father-in-law, but it is a better life than Wendy ever could have hoped for on the day she first heard Ned’s name.

  There are husbands and wives, she knows, who barely speak, inhabiting separate realms in their households. She and Ned have learned to be partners. Friends. Her father-in-law would be scandalized to know that some of the ideas his son brings to him for their business originate with Wendy. He might drop dead on the spot if he knew Ned takes Mary’s advice as well. If he could see them sitting down to meals all together, or the private jokes Ned and Mary share that even Wendy has no part of…

  The thought makes Wendy’s eyes sting, and she blinks rapidly. More secrets. It’s emblematic of her life, it seems. Truths kept from her father-in-law—working side by side with Mary in the privacy of their home, calling her Cook and treating her as a servant under the eyes of anyone else. Teaching Jane to call her Cook as well lest she slip up, no matter how much it hurts Wendy to do so.

  And what of Michael and John? Is her reconciliation with them as much of a half-truth as her life with Ned? The breeze blowing from the cream-colored ocean carries a chill suddenly, nipping at her, and Wendy pulls her shawl closer. If John and Michael could return here, would they be happy? Would things be different between the three of them, all the weight of the intervening years melting from their shoulders? Could Michael laugh again, the ghosts slipping from his eyes? Might his shattered leg even heal, letting him run again the way he had as a boy? Might John finally smile without lines of worry crinkling at the corner of his mouth and across his brow?

  Wendy thinks of Elizabeth, John’s young bride, impending motherhood just beginning to show in the slight curve of her belly and the glow of her skin. She’s seen the adoration in her sister-in-law’s eyes when she looks at John, but worry still shadows John’s brow. What if he could bring his child here, hold his or her hands as they splashed together in the tide?

  The impossible simplicity of it hurts. Neverland isn’t what she once believed it to be, an escape, a cure for all ills. As children, they ran away here without even any troubles to escape from, and wasn’t it Neverland itself that left her scarred? The memory she couldn’t shake that caused the rift between herself and her brothers in the first place? And now it’s put her daughter in danger.

  Wendy shakes herself. She’s been stalling, putting off her search. What if she can’t find Jane? What if Neverland keeps her hidden? Or what if she finds her and it’s too late? There’s a pull to this place, an allure Wendy can’t fully explain. It’s why even when she chafed under Peter’s rules, she longed to stay forever. Peter had made it easy to forget so many things—his unfair rules, the small cruelties she’d witnessed among the boys, even her home. There were times with Peter when London felt like a distant dream, when returning to her parents felt like the lie, and Neverland where she truly belonged. Even now, she feels the subtle pull, the way she’d wanted to run on the sand and forget everything else, even her mission to save Jane. What will Neverland do to her daughter? What if Jane forgets her, forgets Ned, forgets herself? What if when Wendy brings her home, Jane sickens the way Wendy herself did as a child, rages against London as her home, breaks her bones insisting she can fly?

  Wendy should have spent every night arming her daughter against the day Neverland came for her instead of telling her half-truths couched as fairy tales.

  She shades her eyes, peering down the curving length of beach. Just before the land dips out of sight, the prow of a ship juts up toward the sky, the angle of it all wrong. Behind her, a spire of rock rises from the trees, which are a scatter of deciduous, conifer, and tropical all mixed together. Above the trees, it seems for a moment that a ribbon of darkness drifts against the sky. Wendy squints, trying to see better. A murmuration of starlings? No. Smoke. Like something at the center of the island burning.

  A faint memory of Peter promising to show her something, a secret, holding that promise like the sweet, crisp perfection of an apple, just beyond her reach. He would show her, as long as she followed his rules. Had he ever, or had the promise only been another of his lies?

  Looking again, Wendy can no longer see whatever it was she thought she saw. Smoke, dissipated now, like a flock of birds moving on. Like something alive.

  Wendy lets her hand fall to her side, pushing the unsettling thought from her mind and focusing on the trees again. If Jane were here beside her now, she would point out the difference in leaves and bark, sharing facts Wendy would never know if her daughter didn’t tell her. She aches for Jane’s explanations, her ordered world, and scrubs a hand over her face, trying to focus.

  She should be able to cut through the woods here and come out at the sheltered lagoon on the other side of the island. Unless everything has changed since she’s been gone, Peter erasing the map of Neverland and writing it over again.

  Wendy retrieves the rolled stockings from the toes of her boots and pulls them on over the sand-grit clinging to her soles. She shoves her feet into her boots, and turns her back on the water. Birds chatter as she steps beneath the trees, their voices subdued. Do they recognize her? The Wendy come home. This was her home once. She cannot deny it, and in fact, doing so might put her daughter in even more danger. She needs to own her past, and use everything she learned here once upon a time to save Jane and bring her back safely.

  LONDON 1918

  Tears roll silently down Wendy’s cheeks as the razor scrapes across her scalp. Shame fills her; it’s a silly, vain thing to cry over, but she can’t
help feeling a fundamental part of her is being taken away. Her hair, her choice to wear it long or short, pinned up or spilling down her back—now she has no choice at all.

  Locks scatter on the tiles, curled like question marks. Lice, the nurse who wields the razor claimed, but from the pinch of her lips Wendy knows it’s a lie. If it were lice, the room would be filled with patients waiting to have their heads shaved, but it is just Wendy and the nurse alone. This isn’t for her protection, or her health; it’s punishment.

  Jamieson accused her of stealing. Wendy never even saw what she was meant to have taken. All she saw was the expression on his face as he cupped his big hands and angled his body to hide the “proof” he showed Dr. Harrington.

  “What about the other girl?” Dr. Harrington had asked. “You say she was involved too?”

  It doesn’t surprise her that Jamieson would try to implicate Mary. He hates them both—for their sex, for the color of Mary’s skin, because they find ways to smile and laugh, speaking with their foreheads together, sharing stories and secrets. Although Wendy suspects that at the end of the day, Jamieson needs no reason to feel justified in his actions; cruelty is its own reward.

  “Mary had nothing to do with it.” Wendy had spoken quickly. “It was all me.”

  Doubt in Dr. Harrington’s eyes, scorn in Jamieson’s, but what did it matter? The whole accusation was built on a lie. In truth, Wendy stole all the time, but her thefts were never discovered. Whatever Jamieson had produced as evidence was something he’d planted himself, but which of them would be believed? Certainly not a girl who made up stories about an imaginary land.

  So now Wendy is strapped to a chair, leather cuffs pulled tight around wrist and ankle, even though she hasn’t once struggled. The last curl falls, a leaf dropped from a winter tree. Her scalp feels chilled in the empty, tiled room. A sudden memory— Peter touching her hair, calling her a wood sprite, promising to introduce her to the Queen of the Dryads. He never did, distracted by another one of his games.

  Wendy laughs, a bitter sound she immediately cuts short so it turns to a cough. There’s a click as the razor is set down. Wendy looks straight ahead as the nurse undoes the straps and leads her to the door. As they pass the common room, other patients flinch, looking away too quickly, or reflexively touching their own hair. Wendy scans the room, but Mary isn’t there.

  She hopes Mary is being smart, staying out of sight. Despite Wendy’s protestations that she committed her supposed crime alone, she wouldn’t put it past Jamieson to find some other way to torment Mary while Wendy was having her head shaved. There’s strength in numbers, Wendy has learned that much, even if that number is only two. Jamieson rarely goes after either of them if they are together, and therefore he’s always seeking ways to separate them.

  Wendy has gotten good at interventions, creating distractions, and when necessary, redirecting Jamieson’s attention to herself and away from Mary. Jamieson is not a particularly subtle man. If she’s able to catch him whispering with the other attendants, or even simply glancing Mary’s way, she knows it’s time to go to work. Once, Wendy secreted a small amount of cleaning powder in one of the many temporary pockets sewn into her clothes. The smallest of pinches in Jamieson’s tea—not enough to harm him, really, just enough to make him sick—saved Mary last time. Another time, one Wendy is particularly proud of, a well-aimed stone upset the wasp nest built into a crook of the tree Jamieson favored for smoking beneath, sending him screaming and running.

  The thought brings a smile to Wendy’s lips, but the sense of victory is short-lived. She’d paid for those transgressions even though Jamieson could never prove his sickness or wasp-stung flesh was her fault—bruises where Dr. Harrington would never see, pain inflicted but leaving no mark. She’d once spent nearly two days locked in a small supply cupboard until Mary had contrived to get her out. His suspicion was enough. Or perhaps, like all the other times he’d chosen to hurt her, he would have done it regardless of whether she took action against him or not.

  Now, as the nurse marches her down the hall, it takes all of her will not to run her hands over her scalp, but she will not give the nurse the satisfaction. Another memory comes unbidden to her mind—sitting on a rock beside Neverland’s lagoon, one of the mermaids braiding her hair, weaving in fragrant blossoms with thick white petals that shimmered in the sun. Wendy blinks, lifting her chin higher.

  Only once she’s alone in her room does she allow herself to run a hand over her head. The ghost of her hair bristles against her palm. Wendy sits in the center of her narrow bed and tucks her feet beneath her body. She closes her eyes, resting her hands on her knees, straightening her spine. It’s been fourteen years, but she can still summon the feeling of wind streaming past her skin, whipping strands of her hair around her head like a wild nest of snakes as she flew. Hair that, like so many other things, has been taken from her now too.

  A deep ache fills her, like a bruise close to the bone. She is worn thin, a piece of cloth washed so often the individual threads begin to show. She will not let Neverland go, she cannot let it go, but every day it seems farther away. If only she had some sign, something to hold onto, she could endure forever in this place without breaking.

  When it had become clear to them that Wendy wouldn’t change her story, their parents had sent John and Michael away to a boarding school, while keeping Wendy at home under their watchful eyes. It was as though they had believed that separating her from not only her brothers but all other children entirely would force her to give up what they had seen as a youthful fantasy. But it had only ingrained Neverland in her further.

  Wendy had spent those nights in the too-empty nursery without the soft sounds of her brothers breathing beside her recounting to herself every detail of Neverland that she could—the precise way the bark felt under her palms as she climbed the trees while chasing Peter, the way the mermaids’ scales flashed in the sun, the scent of smoke from Tiger Lily’s camp fire, the way the deck had rolled under them when Hook’s pirates had captured them, even the particular way the terrible pirate captain had smelled.

  Being apart from her brothers for the first time since they had been born had taught Wendy her first lessons in silence and lying. She had learned to keep her truths to herself, telling her parents what they wanted to hear. But she had never stopped believing, and those memories, the way she learned to conjure Neverland into her room at night, will serve her well now.

  If she concentrates, she can call to mind exactly how it felt, how the sky over Neverland tasted as she flew, and the exact color of the starlight… There was a time when the stars were so close all she had to do was stretch out her hand to catch one. Wendy stretches out her hand now, curling her fingers into a waiting space. She holds her breath, yearning, concentrating all her will on that invisible tether connecting her to Neverland. But her hand remains empty, no star filling her palm. She closes her hand into a fist, slamming it into the bed in frustration.

  She’s a fool. Did she really expect to capture a star in her palm? In this world, the one she’s trapped in, such things aren’t possible. Stars are distant and impossibly huge, not points of light to be gathered and held against the dark. She knows this, and still it hurts. More than she imagined possible. She’s tired beyond belief. Angry. And she’s beginning to feel hopeless.

  For a year she’s listened to Dr. Harrington telling her she’s sick, and to Jamieson calling her a liar. She’s seen John tire of arguing with her and turn away, his shoulders sloped in defeat. Michael refuses to even visit her most of the time.

  There’s a crack, a fissure running all the way through her and it widens every day. There are times she wants to give in to John and Dr. Harrington. Would it be so bad to play make-believe, pretend to be a girl who never flew, never left home?

  But why should she be asked to forget, to pretend to be something she is not? She’d learned to lie to her parents, but she’s grown up now, twenty-five years old. Shouldn’t she be the one to make
the rules? Why should she let others define her reality?

  Wendy concentrates, willing her body to lift from the bed. Fly. It used to be so easy. Even a fraction of space between herself and the bed would be enough. It would lessen the ache; it would make all the rage, all the suffering, worthwhile. But even without her hair, she’s too heavy. Everything in St. Bernadette’s holds her down.

  When she’d tried as a child, leaping from atop the wardrobe, she’d let doubt cloud her mind. She’d been sick, weak, finding herself disbelieved, seeing her brothers already forgetting. If she refuses to let that doubt in again now, fills up every space inside her with thoughts of Neverland, surely she cannot fail again.

  Wendy bites her lip, digging her shortened nails into her palm. She reaches for the sensation of Peter taking her hand, for the moment her toes lifted from the nursery floor, the dizzy fall through the window and up into the sky, all elation and breathlessness. Everything was bright and wonderful, the stars shining in so many more colors than she’d ever imagined possible. She remembers laughing, the light catching in her teeth and tasting of plums and honey. And…

  Smoke. Raw meat. Wet fur.

  Wendy falls. Her stomach drops and even though the bed in St. Bernadette’s still holds her, she plummets into endless dark. Peter’s hand is still on hers, but his grip is unshakable. Rather than holding her up, he pulls her along faster and faster, running until her feet burn.

  It’s a secret, Wendy. The best secret I know. I’ve never told anyone before.

  It’s a feeling she imagines akin to being struck by lightning. Hollow, tingling, numb. A pain that isn’t quite pain. There’s a hole inside her. A place where something has been torn away.

  Wendy slams a door over the empty space, a primal reaction. On the other side of the wood, something breathes. On the other side of the wood is a raw wound, and she draws away.