Time passed. Wendy finally pushed herself up on the beach with a gasp, brushing granules of sand off of her cheek. The Neverland night was still, water lapping mere feet from where her collapse had left a curled form in the sand. She stood up, brushing off the sand from her tattered dress. Then she began walking on the edge of Pan Island. Ten miles, Peter had said once, ten miles around, a jagged circle.
She climbed over boulders, ducked under branches, making sure that her feet never touched the water. She didn’t think. She just walked, clutching at her chest, feeling the breaths leave her body, breathing in the air of life again. When her mind tried to connect with what had happened, she would give her head a hard shake, pushing the image of Peter leering over her far from her mind. She just walked, kept moving, for her sanity, for hours, just walking until the sun began its languid rise over the horizon, the deep green of the main island made florescent by the harsh orange light. Wendy saw Neverland wake itself up in a blaze of peaches and deep reds, topped by an impossibly violet sky. Insects buzzed, and velvety moon flowers gave a shake to raise their heads to the light.
The sun shook Wendy awake too, and she began paying attention to where she was walking. Finally, she made it back to where Peter had left her, the heart he had drawn in the sand around her still there, its very deep groove surrounding the imprint of her knees, her body. Wendy looked down at the heart and then raised her eyes to Pan Island, her head leaning back to take in its great height, from the sea at her feet to Peter’s flag at its highest tip. Fear began to slip back into a recessive corner of her mind, and her eyes narrowed. With her chin raised, Wendy reached out and scuffed the heart back into the sand with her foot, slowly at first, and then feverishly, until there was just an explosion of sand where the heart had been. Her spine straightened, and she felt her resolve become cold. She would not be his. She did not love him, would never love him. He did not own her.
And yet, when she looked up, her piercing fear of the sky remained.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WENDY MADE HER WAY UP TO HER HUT, wanting to change out of her clothes. Peter had touched them. She wanted to burn her skin off. Lost Boys chatted happily with her on the way, and Wendy acknowledged them but kept moving, her mind elsewhere, her smiles shallow and meaningless. Once she stepped inside the hut, a change in the air was immediate. Someone had been here. The small hand mirror that Oxley had given her was broken in the center, and everything was a bit askew. More than that, it was the palpable heat that filled the room. On the floor was a smattering of dully sparkling dust that trailed across the room and out the window. The sheer curtain was still blowing in her breeze.
“Tink?” In her fear, Wendy had totally forgotten about Tink. All this time, and she had thought Tink was the worst thing to fear. Wendy ran across the room, momentarily forgetting about her hut with its meaningless trinkets. “Tink! Wait!” She climbed out of the window, balancing her feet carefully on a thick branch that ran away from her hut, a trail of dust splashed across it. A large lizard slowly trailed his violet tail through its path.
“Dammit, Tink!” Her father would be ashamed of her for cursing, but Wendy felt she had earned it. Balancing as carefully as she could, Wendy made her way across the branch, grasping at the vines atop her head for balance. The branch spiraled downward before leaping up into a thick brush of thin sticks, rocking back and forth in the slightest breeze, a reedy sound rising out of their throats. Wendy paused for a minute, holding her breath. Directly below her, there was a tiny sound, like the peeping of a new chick. Wendy lowered herself to her knees, her belly across the branch. Below her sat the reedy nest, easily a ten-foot drop. And what was below it? The dimensions of Pan Island were hard to guess. It could be solid ground underneath it—it could be nothing but air.