Page 41 of Losing Wendy

I won’t let it make me forget who Peter is.

I’m afraid of what I might succumb to if I let myself forget his dreadful shadows, the way they taunted me as a child.

As if thinking of them invited them in, the thought of shadows caressing my skin slithers through me, tantalizing me with their beautiful lies.

I could take away your pain.

If I can’t remember, I’m not sure I’ll have the strength to resist.

It’sa shame Peter doesn’t keep the faerie dust in the Den. Although, the idea of sneaking through Peter’s quarters sends chills against the lining of my stomach. Perhaps it’s better he hides it in the cliffs.

I’ve been wracking my brain all day to figure out a way to scale the cliffs at the edge of the beach. I almost asked for John’s help. He has the sort of mind that would probably engineer a system for usto scale the cliffs twice as quickly as mine will take. But I don’t want John coming with me. He’s sacrificed enough already for our family. Not just his finger, but the time and mental energy he spent—wasted—on trying to find a way out of our parents’ bargain.

Besides. Someone needs to stay behind to watch Michael.

So I wait until night falls, though I have to guess at it since there are no windows in our room, and for John’s and Michael’s breaths to deepen.

Then I sneak on the pads of my feet and make my way outside.

Every timeI pass through the reaping tree, the process is shorter. Like there’s less and less for the tree to take from my innermost being.

I try not to think about that as I break into a run across the wet sand of the beach. The tide has come in, swallowing up most of the beach’s surface, but there’s still enough of a path for me to run down without having to worry about clambering barefoot through the brush, though occasionally I have to traverse piles of rocks.

The kelp that lines the beach during the day sloshes up with the tide, wrapping its slimy claws around my ankles. Simon told me earlier that the awful-looking plants with shiny bulbs for heads are actually edible, but even the idea of that makes me nauseous. Every time one grazes my skin, I can’t shake the feeling that their tendrils are like those of the jellyfish, just waiting to wrap around my limbs and drag me paralyzed underneath the sea.

The bluish moon has already traversed a quarter of tonight’s black sky by the time I make it all the way down the beach and to the cliffs that bar it from the rest of the island.

I stare upward, frustrated at how difficult it is to see out here. I had counted on the darkness, grabbing a lantern from the hall, but it does little to illuminate my path with the thick fog that creeps up from the surface of the crashing water.

Waves slap against the stubborn facade of the cliffs, whipping the rocks into a slow submission.

Luckily, the cliffs themselves are rather jagged. Not only does the texture provide plenty of handholds, but as I stare upward with my hands on my hips, I glimpse alcoves and small plateaus that will make for adequate rest stops.

So I loop my lantern through my belt—Simon supplied it to me along with a set of trousers and a tunic after commenting on how impractical my ball gown was—and climb.

The rocks at the base of the cliffs are still slick from the waves lapping up and staining the bottom surface, but once I scale several feet carefully, the rocks dry out.

It’s effortful work, and I can’t help but thank my past self for climbing the clock tower’s outer brick facade all those years.

John doesn’t know about that, of course. He thinks I only ever climbed the ladder.

It’s a strange thing, thinking about my younger self partaking in such recklessness. But there’s something about the pounding of blood against my temples, the way my lungs fight for breath, that clears my head of anything besides what’s directly before me.

Not falling—I can focus on that.

I never was able to banish the fears of what all might transpire in the future. But climb high enough, and the simple need to survive drove them out for just a moment.

Eventually, our excursions to the top of the clock tower didn’t affect me like they once did. The ladder felt too stable, too easy, the rungs a tether that kept me from floating away from the knowledge of what my future held.

I was twelve when I first climbed the clock tower from the outside.

It’s positioned in the center of my parents’ manor, in the middle of a gardened courtyard. Meaning I had to make my climbs in the middle of the night. That wasn’t so much of a problem, though. Sleepless nights made my acquaintance from a young age.

The clock tower is styled with bricks stacked perpendicular to one another. The alternating pattern looks expensive, but it serves the unintended functionality of making it possible to scale. It hadtaken years for me to build up the strength and endurance to make it to the top, of course. I’m not sure how many nights I spent on one of the decorative platforms jutting from the tower, mustering up the courage to climb back down.

One time, I slipped and landed on a platform below. I broke my ankle and told my mother I’d tripped down the staircase.

Still, scaling the outside of the clock tower did what the inside ladder could no longer accomplish. It allowed me to drown the fear of something I couldn’t control in the exhilaration of something I could. There’s something empowering about using a fear you choose to smother the one you don’t.

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