Page 141 of Losing Wendy

Nettle is shaking, a gargling sound scraping from his throat. He stares down at his ribs. At the dagger hilt protruding from his side.

“Oh, thank the Sisters,” he says, and the desperate relief in Nettle’s voice rattles me to my core.

Behind him stands Simon, his hands red with Nettle’s blood. His face is blank as he drives the hilt in further, sending Nettle to his knees.

When Nettle falls face-first onto the grass, Simon takes a sharp inhale, then slowly looks up at me. “He made me believe I killed Thomas,” he says, as if the blood on his hands needs explaining. As if I walked in on the blood-spattered aftermath of a crime, rather than witnessing the whole thing.

“I know,” is all I say.

“Careful, Michael, or you’re sure to fall.” Our necks snap to the side, Michael’s voice summoning us out of the moment.

My legs break into a run, a mad dash for my little brother, whose voice has heightened in pitch after watching Nettle bleed out. He’s at the edge of the cliff, kicking stones and watching the crumble of dirt and debris fall into the crashing sea below.

But the cliffs aren’t prepared for my brother’s weight. Or maybe they are, and the sea is simply hungry, the cliffs executing the sea’s bidding. Because the edge of the cliff collapses underneath my brother’s feet.

I hurtle myself across the grass, flinging my hand at his ankle. My fingers brush the heel of his boot.

And then Michael slips away.

I’m sure I scream. At least, my mouth opens and air whooshesthrough my throat, but it’s caught up in the wind, which carries away my scream like I don’t deserve the catharsis of agony.

Because I let my brother fall.

I did this, in alerting Simon. In trying to rescue all of them, I failed my brother, who it was my job to protect.

No. No, no, no.

I’d distracted Nettle long enough for Simon to sneak up on him, and I’d traded one brother for the other.

Soft dirt scrapes underneath my fingernails, causing a shooting pain as I drag myself to the edge of the cliffside. The idea of looking makes me want to vomit, but I have to. Can’t bear the idea of not honoring Michael by sheltering myself from the evidence of my failure.

I hope he passed out on the way down.

I hope he flew higher than the faerie dust ever took me.

Foaming, angry waves lash up against the cliffside, obscuring the surface of the water in a foggy haze. I try not to imagine the waves beating my brother’s body against the shore, but refusing to imagine it feels like refusing to be there with him in his pain. But then, a dark form appears from the mist, a shadow from my memories.

A shadow with wings.

My hands somehow find my mouth as I choke out a sob, throat burning. I watch in trepidation and hope and agonizing fear as the shadow takes form below, as it soars upward out of the fog, shooting past the edge of the cliff and into the sky.

Peter lets his wings relax, and floats ever so gently in front of me, his blue eyes flickering with a fierceness I’ve yet to see.

In his arms is Michael.

My brother is whispering, “Do you want to do it again?”

CHAPTER 50

In the end, we bury Nettle in a grave that’s deep enough for the worms not to get him.

Or, at least deep enough so that we don’t have to acknowledge them.

Tears stream down Simon’s face as he does it, and I can’t help but stare at him. As I watch him take clods of dirt and earth and cover the boy he murdered, the boy who turned him into a murderer, I marvel at how Simon has changed so much in such a short time.

When I first arrived, Simon was all smiles and laughter. Would do anything to cheer me up when I thought my worst nightmare had come true by being brought to Neverland.

Now there’s none of that person left. Only agony and grief, and a potent self-loathing I can almost smell.

---