Page 34 of Never Landing

“Really?” A bright voice came from behind a tree, and Jessie stuck their head out. “I love cookies!”

“Yeah!” I got out of the swing and held out my hand to them. “Come inside and you can help us put them in to bake.”

They took my hand, and it—it felt like something was stitching together in my chest, a hurt part of me that I hadn’t wanted to look at too closely before, because I’d been afraid it’d never heal.

I caught Aurora’s eye, and she smiled too.

21

Everett

Peter came back in after just a few minutes, trailing a parade of children. I wasn’t sure if it was cute, or a little scary.

These were children—or not children—of indeterminate age, who lived in the woods, never growing older. They’d been taken from families who loved them, who might still be missing them, and the most adult part of me wanted to lock them in the house and insist on calling the authorities until we could get them sent home.

The girl I’d thought was Peter’s sister gave me an adult, knowing look, though, and I knew it wouldn’t work. She couldn’t be held in by a door lock.

Also, she didn’t have human parents out there waiting for her to come home. Some tiny, trembling part of my brain looked at her and sent me an alert. Like she was a mountain lion or a crocodile, and if I made the wrong move, she’d snap me in half as easily as she accepted a glass of milk from Peter.

“This is a real nice house,” the other girl, Mary said as she sat at the kitchen table, sipping at her milk.

I smiled and inclined my head to her. “Thank you.” There was no reason to point out the peeling linoleum and stainedceiling that needed at the very least painting. I glanced up at it, remembering when the stain had happened. Something about a leaky pipe in the upstairs bathroom. The leak had long since been fixed, but the messy yellow stain it made had remained. Heck, we’d painted over it, and it had come back. Too bad I couldn’t just run my hand over it and make it as good as new, like Peter with the picture of Bandit.

Magic. I shook my head and turned back to where Peter was handing out slices of honey cake. The littlest one, a kid Peter called Jessie, was leaning over and looking at the window on the oven, clearly invested in the idea of the cookies. “You promise there’s no raisins? My daddy used to buy raisin ones. They were gross.”

Daddy. That was interesting. Looking back at our childhood, I had realized that Peter had never spoken of his parents. Like they hadn’t existed. Being a child myself, I had just brushed it off and not worried about what that might mean.

Now I was older, better able to consider subtleties.

“Your mom didn’t give you chocolate instead?” I asked.

Jessie turned, head cocked one way, then the other. “What’s a mom?”

Oh, so much for that. I supposed they didn’t remember all that much.

But then, they leaned in conspiratorially. “My other daddy would give me ones with chocolate chips, and tell me not to tell, because he’d get in trouble. But all kids deserve chocolate instead of raisins.”

That sounded like something they were quoting, and that...oh that was very interesting. There probably weren’t a lot of ways to tell how long these kids had been in the woods, but two daddies? That meant something. That meant that Jessie was a recent addition. There was only so long having two daddies had been possible in this country.

Those daddies might still be alive.

Once again, I had to swallow down the urge to snatch the kid up and run to the authorities.

This time, though, the situation had gotten Peter’s attention. “Other daddy? You had...two dads?”

Jessie nodded, watching like a hawk as I pulled the cookies out of the oven and slowly used a spatula to move them, one by one, over to the cooling rack. “I’m afraid we didn’t have chocolate chips,” I told them. “Wonder if your dad still makes them.”

Everyone in the kitchen stopped moving, and Jessie looked at me like I’d spoken in a foreign language, but then nodded thoughtfully. “Me too.” Then they turned to Peter and nodded. “Two daddies. They were married, like you and Everett.”

Peter blinked at them, looking from Jessie to me and back. Maybe waiting for me to deny it. I thought it was best to let him take the lead, since they were his friends, and he was the one who knew how this all worked.

“Maybe I’ll get married someday,” Jessie speculated, pushing up on their toes to watch the cookies. Like maybe they’d disappear if they weren’t watched continuously.

I picked one up and handed it to them. “Careful, it’s still hot.”

They grinned at me, so beautiful with their blond hair and clear blue eyes that the one missing front tooth only made them look like a freaking perfect Norman Rockwell painting of a five-year-old. I’d never thought about having kids, but something about Jessie made me consider it.

Not that I’d take them. They had parents. Two daddies, who probably still missed them terribly. “You can come by anytime, and I’ll make cookies,” I told them. I couldn’t snatch them out of the woods and away from the fae, or any of the children, but I could try to make a life outside the woods seem like it was a good choice.

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