“There are boundaries between your world and this one, to be sure, but I’ve no idea where they’re hidden. And I’ve no power to breach them.” His dark eyes are serious and steady on mine. “Think of how you came to be here, lass. It wasn’t a ship that brought you, now was it?”
“The monsters,” I whisper, remembering the strange pressure, the dizzying flight.
“Aye,” he said darkly.
I grip the railing so tightly, my fingertips ache, and I close my eyes against the sea and the island and a truth too terrible to accept. “What is this place?” I ask, my voice shaking. When he doesn’t immediately answer, I open my eyes again to find him watching me. “Where am I?”
He studies me for a moment longer, and when he does finally speak, his voice sounds haunted and very, very far away. “That bit of land is known now by only one name, lass. You’ve no doubt heard of it,” he says, his serious eyes turning again to the sea, to the tiny speck of land in the distance. “In the world you came from, they tell tales of this place.”
His voice has gone so grave that I’m almost afraid to ask, but I force myself to release the railing. “They do?”
“Aye, they do.” His dark eyes glitter as he leans in close. “Let me be the first to welcome you to Neverland.”
The ship rolled, angry, on the unsettled sea, bearing them onward toward those fabled shores. The boy knew death was a possibility there, yet he could not help but be tempted. For that land held the promise of living only for the present moment—without care for past or future, for who he might have once been.
There, he could become anything.
Chapter 10
I PULL BACK, MY HEARTBEAT thundering in my ears, and wait for the mocking curve of his mouth to break into a laugh. Because this has to be a joke. A hugely unfunny and terrible one . . . But the Captain’s expression remains impassive, not playful.
A nervous laugh bubbles up in my throat, and I cannot stop it from escaping. The Captain sighs then, a weary exhalation of breath that has me choking back another nervous, completely panicked giggle as he draws away from me.
“They never do believe at first,” he says. As he watches me with those hard eyes of his, what’s left of my laughter dies in my throat. “And what you saw through the glass? That wasn’t enough to be convincing you?”
“Even if I believe we’re in some sort of magical otherworld,” I say, “even if I accept that much, you expect me to believe I’m stuck in some kind of fairy tale?”
His mouth turns down. “I never said this was a fairy tale, lass.”
“You said we’re in Neverland!” Saying it out loud only makes it sound more ridiculous. “As in the story? As in Tinker Bell and the Lost Boys and Peter Pan?”
The Captain stiffens, and when he responds, his voice has turned cold and dangerous. “He doesn’t usually call himself Peter. Finds it a bit too human for his tastes.”
I go still at the bitterness in his voice. At the absurdity of what he’s saying. “Right,” I say. Because what else is there to say? Rubbing at my eyes, I will away the headache that’s started to throb. “What’s next?” I ask doubtfully. “Fairies?”
“Well”—he turns and leans his hip on the bulwark so he can face me—“they have been a large part of the mess you’re finding yourself in.”
The sincerity of his tone makes me blink. He didn’t miss a beat. He’s either completely delusional or . . .
“I don’t believe in fairies,” I say firmly, smiling defiantly as I remember the story. “There. One less of them for me to worry about.”
He shakes his head, but the ghost of a grin is teasing at his lips. “If it were as easy as that to kill the bastards, don’t you think I’d have accomplished the task ages ago?” He fixes those dark eyes on me, and the grin falls away. “Besides, I’d think it would be difficult to refuse what your own eyes have seen.”
“I’ve already seen a fairy?” I can’t stop myself from asking.
“Aye. You met the Dark Ones, did you not?”
My mother told me all sorts of wild things about the monsters she thought were chasing us, but nothing she ever said could have prepared me for the dark creatures that took me from London. Still, as I touch the bracelet at my wrist, I think about the iron nails and the runes she was so obsessed with, and I wonder. . . .
I hesitate before speaking again, and when I do, my words are slow, careful: “You expect me to believe those things that took me are fairies?”
“They’re not exactly wee things, are they? But then again, they’re not exactly fairies in the sense that most usually think of them.” His mouth turns down thoughtfully. “And I don’t think they’d particularly enjoy being described as such.”
“Of course they wouldn’t,” I murmur numbly.
His brows draw together, and his expression almost softens. “I understand, lass. After all, I grew up with all sorts of tales of the wee folk, but even they didn’t prepare me for what I found in this world. Nothing about this world or the creatures that inhabit it is quite what the stories of our world would have us believe.”