I look up at him and see again the fear in his eyes. But I’m not afraid. I wanted this. I commanded it. And now I’ll see it through to the end.
I lick my parched lips. “We’ll find out soon enough, I guess.” All around us, the landscape turns hard and brittle as the ground continues to rumble and shake, and Neverland transforms itself in answer to my call.
The pool beneath the falls starts to churn and bubble, like it’s boiling. One by one, the jeweled bodies of the fish rise to the surface, motionless, the once-brilliant colors of their scales fading into a glossy black, like the light within them has gone forever dark. They look like strange floating pebbles now, and are so thick and plentiful that it almost looks like we could walk across the surface of them.
Then, all at once, everything falls completely silent. The land goes absolutely motionless beneath our feet. The plants don’t shift and change, and the surface of the water goes as still as glass.
Rowan releases me enough to draw his sword from its sheath. We wait for what will come next, holding our breath against hope, but nothing happens.
“Well, that was—”
An earsplitting crack shatters the eerie silence and drowns out the rest of what Rowan says. His arm tightens around me as the hilly land echoes with the reverberations of the noise, but otherwise, the world is still completely motionless and quiet.
Afraid to move, we both search for some indication of what caused the sound, but at first nothing seems different. Then I see what is happening.
“The falls,” I whisper.
They aren’t coursing as they once did. Instead, the water level is steadily dropping, exposing jagged steps in the rock as it drains away. As the last bit of water trickles down, it reveals a dark crack splitting the mountain in two. As we watch, the fissure steadily grows, traveling down the center of the rock, like the dark lines traveled across the skin of the boy on the ship.
The island rumbles again as the rock behind the falls begins to move apart, cleaving into two halves and exposing a dark crevasse. The remaining water of the falls drains into the yawning hole in the mountain, and the water left in the clear pool beneath the falls is also draining away, running back into the place where the island split itself apart.
Rowan’s arms are still tight and protective around me as we watch, until all that’s left is the dark, muddy bed of the lake and a wide, deep wound in the land.
I stare at the gaping fissure, horrified and awed by what I’ve managed to do. “Do you think that’s it?”
“There’s only one way to be certain.” He releases me and offers his hand. “If you’re ready?”
I’m not. I thought I was, but just looking at the dark gash in the rock makes my skin prickle in warning. Still, this is what we have come here for. This is what I demanded, and if Neverland answered my call, we need to see what it’s trying to show us.
I take his offered hand, and Rowan leads the way out into the mucky basin of the falls. We avoid the gaping crack that runs down its middle as we make our way across it, toward where water had once cascaded down the mountain. Toward the place where the island has opened itself to us.
The ground of the lake bed is soft, but the brittle bodies of fish crackle beneath our booted feet when we step on them, popping and snapping as we go. Each tiny body I destroy seems like another threat, and another reminder of what we stand to lose.
When we reach the other side, the bare, wet cliffs loom above us as the dark split in the rock dares us to enter. Water still drips from the edges of the dark stone in an uneven rhythm
“It could be a trap,” I say as I peer into the dark cave.
“This whole bloody world’s a trap.” Rowan never takes his eyes from the newly formed opening before us. “We’re going to be needing some light, I think.”
It takes him only a moment to find a branch thick enough and strong enough to serve as a torch. He takes his shirt off from beneath his coat and wraps it around the branch. With the tip of his metal finger, he manages to get enough of a spark on one of the drier surfaces to light the makeshift torch. Then he looks at me, nervous anticipation glinting in his eyes. He doesn’t like this any more than I do, but he wants it to be true just as much.
“Let’s be getting on with it, shall we?”
I give him a tight nod and follow his lead into the gaping jaws of the cavern.
Once we’re inside, the air is immediately cooler. We hesitate, both of us waiting and listening for the unmistakable sound of the Dark Ones. But the cavern is silent. There is no scent of moldering leaves, no rustling of far-off wind. The air is thick and wet around us, but it is not dangerous—not yet, at least.