Page 1 of The First Lost Boy (The Shadows of Neverland Duet #2)

Hudson

The ship Belle raised from the sea’s soft, ever-shifting floor is little more than brittle bones picked too clean. Where tall, twin masts once proudly stood, only withered nubs studded with barnacles stab the salt air, blanching further with every hour they bake in the sun.

I can’t help but wonder if all we’re doing to restore her is in vain. A gale would send her swiftly back to the depths and all of us with her.

I mentally note each weak place and begin reprioritizing repairs now that some of the worst has been mended, even if only temporarily. Some places need to be braced with simple supports. Others should be excised.

Neither this ship nor I can afford to be vulnerable. Not when everything depends on both of us to be strong.

As the skiff skims over and through the waves with a load of lumber stripped from town to make this galleon sailable long enough to carry us back home across the sea, I wait with hand and hook braced on the sea-eaten rail. I once thought that being trapped in Neverland was the purest form of torture, but the sum agony of those wasted, burdensome years is nothing compared to the hell of having one’s shadow back and choosing to remain in the one place you’ve wanted to escape since the moment you arrived.

The skiff bumps the fragile hull, and by the graces doesn’t punch a hole through her side. Kenya climbs down into the shallow hull and starts the unloading process. The crew and I get to work, lifting wooden planks aboard, gripping coarse rope and yanking the weight as a load of broad planks sways and slaps the hull once… twice… The third time, I wince as rotten clots of pulp fall away and the vessel further crumbles beneath us.

Smee joins me and slaps my shoulder. “We’ll make her ship shape, and then… home .”

Smee’s always been the optimist. I don’t know if any of us would have made it this long in such a dismal place without his happy demeanor. I agree with him despite the worry crawling over my skin. I envy him for more than just his sunny disposition. He seems to know exactly what ‘home’ means. I sure as hell don’t.

I can’t grasp it for the life of me.

And if we somehow manage to escape Neverland’s iron grasp, I don’t know if I should bother looking for Smee’s ideation of it, or if my attempt would be as disappointing as it is fruitless.

My fingers tighten on the small, intact section of railing that’s all but turned to sponge in front of us until I leave indentions and step away.

Maybe when we reach the mainland, the crew should just band together and start anew, scrounge for a future in a world that’s full of people who will never understand our pasts. I’m not sure if or when I should pose the question to them. All might not be on board, but Sydney and a few of the others might be willing to stick together. I just don’t want to mention home too often. Don’t want to make anyone too impatient to reach it.

I look over at my friends who have become family and realize that it’s been an honor knowing each of them.

Paris is on Neverland, and I want him back with us. Ava still has Paris’s shadow and while she’s safe on my ship, she can’t leave this place because she can’t cross the curse line without her shadow, and Pan has it.

Not one of my crew has suggested we leave Paris and Ava behind and make for home, though we could easily do so. No one has raised the point that the Frenchman has likely forgotten us entirely, and that Ava soon will. That most of us can escape, even if it means abandoning the two of them.

No one has spoken it, but I’m sure they must have considered it. And contemplated how they would feel being left behind, choosing to bear the bone-splintering weight of the choice to stay.

Who will succumb to fear and balk before stepping foot on the island again, unable to bring themselves to risk a moment more of their lives now that they truly have the chance to reclaim what was stolen from them? I won’t shame any who do. It’s to be expected now that we can all but taste freedom.

I can’t help but wonder… Does dread claw at the inside of their bellies, too?

The longer we linger here, the less I feel we’ll leave this place. I keep telling myself it’ll be simple. last trek on the island we loathe to find our friend and steal a shadow. We’ve survived all the rest.

Sounds simple enough when you put it that way, but nothing on Neverland is ever easy.

Some might argue that the only reason we managed to walk on the island all these years was because Peter allowed it, just as he allowed us to flee from it. There was never any harm in letting us keep to the sea. Since we couldn’t cross the curse line without our shadows, we weren’t going far and certainly couldn’t venture out of his reach, even if we lulled ourselves into believing we were safe from him on the salty waves.

But that was then.

And while we have our shadows back, which is undoubtedly something Pan didn’t intend, I’m not sure it matters. It feels like we’ve finally crashed our battering ram through Neverland’s wall, only to watch Peter wave a hand and instantly fortify the breach before we can rush through it with our swords drawn.

I’ve told Belle all I know about Pan’s power and trusted her with the contents of my journals from when she and Ava were gone and living on the mainland, but even the pixie hasn’t been able to come up with a way to rescue and free our friends from this place.

Ava’s shadow and Paris are the only bait Peter has. He knows we won’t leave without them. He knows us as well as we know ourselves. He took the time to learn our character when he brought us here and he’s studied us through every interaction since.

With Tinkerbell back and squarely on our side, I should feel better about our odds of success. But lately, Belle’s power has been limited despite her prim insistence that her magic is only stilted and will further regenerate now that Ava has taken on the shadows that were overpowering her magic.

And while she’s managed a few feats and convenient enchantments, like retaining the one that still binds my will to the skiff, raising this spindly ship from the seabed, and the scant amounts of pixie dust she can conjure and blend into the healing salve, I’m left less than impressed and more than a little irritated that the being I recorded as being Pan’s near equal in power seems like she wouldn’t last more than a second if the two met face-to-face. Even if Tink buried Peter in golden salve, it would do nothing to remedy the darkness slithering within him.

There is no light left in Peter Pan.

Nothing to heal.

Nothing to save or salvage.

There is only rot.

Belle has asked me to trust her. She’s asked me to be patient and allow her time to heal. She’s asked me to believe in her promises. To believe in her .

But how can I?

I made the mistake of doing so once and look where it got us. I’d be a fool to make it again.

Everyone else seems to be placing their faith in the fairy, though. Hence every able body sweating in the blistering, late evening sun in one of two large groups. prying boards from homes and bridges and working to systematically dismantle the town that’s been a haven for so many, while the other group works alongside me and Belle, using reclaimed pieces of wood just as quickly to patch and mend the galleon she raised from the cool depths of the sea.

The formerly sunken ship’s railing isn’t the only piece turned to sponge, as Smee learned the hard way earlier when the deck gave way under his broad feet and sent him splashing into the sodden hull. He’d flung a tiny octopus from his cheek after it dropped on him a second later, then scowled up at us as we howled with laughter.

Belle and I have been busy patching that hole ever since. I carry several of the repurposed planks over to the sharp chasm and position them so we both can reach them. It’s hard not to notice the irritation in her golden eyes as I take my place opposite her, and harder still not to smile because of it.

“I want you to leave my sister alone, Hudson,” Belle snips, claiming a plank and slipping it into place atop the beam and frame that Smee and the rest of the crew spent all morning replacing in this area, before picking up another bent and rusted nail.

I mirror her actions, drawing another nail from the bucket positioned between us. If we work from the outside in, we’ll meet in the middle and the hole will be no more. “I don’t care what you want,” I inform her.

I’ve been clear about my feelings on the matter. Including that Belle’s wants and wishes when it comes to me and her sister don’t matter to me in the least.

She draws back the hammer and drives the bit into the weathered plank. “I mean it.” Belle unflinchingly meets my stare, her grip tightening on the hammer’s handle.

I raise my brows. The fairy does not intimidate me, much to her chagrin. “So do I.” I strike the head of the nail I’m pinching.

She narrows her eyes and returns to her work, and hopefully, to her scheming. If she’s thinking, maybe she’ll keep quiet for a time so we can finish this. We’ve almost patched the Smee-sized hole when Belle’s hammer stops mid-swing.

I wonder what nonsense she’s about to spout when she slants a pointed ear toward town, toward my ship.

“The bell on your ship is ringing,” she says.

Between the chorus of shanties and laughter, the other hammer heads striking true, and the sea and its endless churning, I hear nothing. But I’ve never been happier that a fairy’s hearing is more acute than mine because I’m starving. I sit back on my haunches, eager to head back to see Ava and scrub the salt and sweat from my skin. “Sydney said he would ring it when dinner was ready.”

She sighs and casts a weary glance over the miniscule amount of repairs we’ve made amid the mountain of work it’ll take to make this galleon seaworthy, should her magic continue to prove underwhelming. Through the gap that still parts us, she looks down at those working on the hull below and presses her eyes shut.

Raising the ship from the depths seemed so easy for her, but she did it soon after Ava took the weighty shadows from her and gave her a burst of relief. That manic energy is long gone, and now she’s straining to keep it afloat.

Tension pinches the delicate lines on the fairy’s forehead. She’s been gritting her teeth for hours. Her shoulders sag and with her, so does the vessel. When Milan shouts that she’s taking on water, Belle redoubles her efforts and focuses on keeping it above the waves.

The Italian’s glare falls on me again, though it darts away when he sees me watching him. Suspicion swirls through my heart. He’s been trying to hide his narrowed stares all day and failing miserably at it. Maybe Milan will be the first to suggest we abandon Paris and the townspeople, to tuck tail and rush home.

I grit my teeth before smoothing my voice to ask Belle, “When do you think you’ll be strong enough to restore the ship without all this… effort?”

Her golden eyes hold a warning. “I don’t know.”

“Will you have to stay on it to keep it afloat tonight?” I push.

“Maybe. What does it matter to you?” She takes another nail from the bucket and after a single, precise strike, reaches for another.

At present, her power is little more than a well that quickly runs dry and is too slow to fill.

“Do you think your power will return? All of it?” I press, wondering if she’ll finally be honest – with me as well as herself.

She buries another nail into the wood. “Of course it will!” she chirps. “It was regenerating on Neverland in the scant time I spent on the isle. I just need to spend more time there.”

Neverland is Belle’s home. She was born to the island and its magic. I’m just not sure she’s realized that the Neverland she left is not the Neverland she returned to. In her absence, Pan has spoiled the fruits of the isle in more ways than one.

I’m not sure if she’s optimistic like Smee, or delusional. Because even she can’t hide us from Pan now that he can use the island shadows against us. He will know the moment she, and we, return. And he will strike. Hard and fast.

Peter won’t allow Belle to use the island to grow stronger. He can’t risk that she might destroy him if he did.

“How long do you need to stay on Neverland for your magic to completely heal?”

“Not long,” she replies with a nonchalant shrug that’s too stiff to be genuine.

Not unlike her vague answer. I don’t think Tink has any inkling how long it’ll take for her to become whole again, or maybe she’s wondering if it’s possible.

I’m starting to fear the worst.

If this is all the magic Belle will be able to gather from her home, we need to plan accordingly. Perhaps we should anyway. I need to push her into that line of thought…

“And if you’re wrong?” I challenge.

Her fingers tighten on the hammer’s handle. “Then this ship and the repairs we’re making will become much more vital.”

Annoyed, I shake my head and turn back to the task at hand. Ships, I know. If she can keep it above the waves, we can repair her enough to see us home.

“My magic will return, Hudson.” Her voice is softer. “I’ll make short trips to the isle if I need to, skirt the shore and stay close to the water in case Peter tries anything.” She wipes her brow and sweetly adds, “And while I’m figuring all this out and regaining my magic, working on this ship will keep the townspeople busy.”

“Are you sure about that? They’re getting impatient,” I warn.

“How would you know?” she asks primly, her shoulders tensing again.

“I’ve heard murmurings.”

She rolls her eyes and flings an arm out toward town. “Yet you can’t hear the ship’s bell tolling. Please.”

“He’s ringing it again?” Frowning, I look over my shoulder at my ship. Nothing looks amiss. Maybe Syd just thinks we didn’t hear him since no one entered the skiff and started his way.

Sydney can be impatient.

Belle flashes a cruel, brilliant smile. “Perhaps you should have left more than just Sydney aboard to guard your ship. Maybe the impatient townspeople have commandeered it.”

I grin. “You forget that Sydney wasn’t left to defend her alone. Ava’s also on board.”

The fairy bristles and I’m suddenly glad she’s weakened. “You’re no good for her.”

My grin widens into a bright, genuine smile. “Neither are you.”

“She’s not stepping foot on that island, either. If you want Paris, you can go with me. I’ll get her shadow,” she says.

Ava will certainly balk at being told what to do when it’s her shadow and freedom at stake. “The decision isn’t yours to make. Ava’s not a child. If she wants to go ashore, she’ll go.”

Belle leans close, fixes her golden stare on mine, and seems to try to bore her will into my soul. “I’m serious. Stay away from my sister, Hudson.”

She waits and I nearly laugh at the seriousness pinching her brow. “Are you trying to compel me?” I laugh. “That’s rich, and wholly unwise to try, given your depleted status .”

“Oh, but when I am restored, Hudson, I’ll sweet talk you into waltzing right out of Ava’s life.”

“We’ll see,” I reply, further irritating her.

Suddenly, Tink’s eyes unfocus. The hammer’s handle slips from her hand and the heavy head thuds onto the deck. She abruptly pushes up to stand, her chest heaving. “Sydney is screaming for help.”

While Belle races to the galleon’s bow to get a better look, I call the skiff and start down the rope ladder. The small boat bobs beneath me before I reach the bottom rung. I drop into the narrow hull, balancing as the boat rocks. As soon as she’s steady, I put my boot out, already shoving off.

Sydney never shouts.

And he wouldn’t scream for help or keep ringing the bell unless something was very, very wrong.

Tinkerbell backs away from the rail. The next thing I know, she’s leaping into the skiff with me, rocking us sideways. The sea spills into the shallow bottom until the skiff rights itself. I push her onto the bench across from mine.

I can hear the bell between Sydney’s cries now. “Is he saying anything else?”

“The bell and sea drown his words,” she replies, nearly vibrating with worry.

Nervousness floods my veins. I encourage the skiff to move faster. It does, but not fast enough for my liking, or Belle’s.

Belle tightly grips the side of the small boat, leaning over precariously close to the water. Color leaches from her clenched fingers and haunted cheeks. Her stare meets mine. “Hudson… I smell blood in the water, but much more of it wafts from the direction of your ship.”

A stone sinks into the pit of my stomach. Belle’s pallor turns a sickly shade of gray.

She looks at me. “Maybe he cut himself preparing dinner.” Her hope is as thready as her voice.

“Captain, hurry!” Sydney’s voice finally carries clearly. Dread slithers into my bones as he frantically waves. He points at the expanse of water between us and him…

Only then do I realize that Sydney must see or know something that we do not.

Belle’s senses flare again, as they had aboard the galleon when she heard the bell and Sydney’s shouts before anyone else. She meets my eye, her chest heaving as she drags her hand through the waves, telling the skiff to stop in the middle of the Never Sea.

We slow, then bob adrift as the fairy leans, slowly rocking the boat until even more sea water spills into the small hull, covering our feet to the ankle and weighing the skiff down.

“Belle!” I shout, tugging at her arm so she doesn’t sink us. Fear claws its way into my throat. There is only one reason I can think of why Belle would stop when all she wants is to reach my ship.

Something hunts us, and our motion is drawing it nearer to the ship and Ava.

“Do you sense a siren?” I keep my words quiet. “Or a beast?”

“ Something is rising from the sea bottom,” Belle tightly answers. She grips the skiff’s side and waits. “But I don’t know what it is yet.”

I slowly twist back and forth to spot spine or tentacle – for a glimmer of what stalks us beneath the waves when Belle’s gasp raises the hair on my arms.

A woman’s lifeless body emerges beside us, bobbing at the surface with her back to the fading hues of the evening sky.

For a moment, time stops.

My lips part as I take in her long dark hair, spreading from her crown like the spindly legs of a starfish, heading toward its next meal. Her blanched, listless arms move with the current, but her hands plunge deeper, as if she lost something below – something that even in death she doesn’t wish to part with.

She looks like…

“Ava?” Belle shrills as tears flood her eyes. We rock sideways as Belle dives for the woman who’s just out of reach.

For a long, frightful moment, I can only stare.

Only exist.

Wondering if this is real.

If this is her.

If she’s gone.

The woman looks like Ava at first glance, but at the second, doesn’t. The skin on her back and neck is too ghastly, like she hasn’t seen the sun often enough. The tone of her hair, though it’s wet, is too dark.

Something has clawed the clothes right off this woman’s back, clothes Ava wasn’t wearing when I left her in my quarters. Whatever attacked her tore the hide off her ribs and spine in places. But no shadowed wound lays amid the damaged flesh.

Would Pan’s mark disappear when her soul broke free?

“It’s not her,” I rasp. Belle’s golden eyes angrily lift to mine in question, as if to ask what I would know of it – of her sister. “There’s no shadow in her skin. It’s not Ava.”

“Unless he took it back!” she roars.

“It’s not her!” I shout, adrenaline and fear pushing me to a breaking point. “Look more closely. That’s not Ava.”

Tinkerbell takes a moment to study the woman.

Her hair.

Her pallor.

Even the knobs of her spine.

The pixie releases a shuddering breath. “You’re right. It’s not her.”

The question then becomes, who is she? And what happened to her?

Something killed this woman. Something in the water. Something that may want to feast on us as well.

Nyin, the once-corrupted mermaid that Ava freed and later healed, emerges from the water mere feet away, trembling the Never Sea with her fury. Her chest heaves and the ocean surrounding her follows suit. Teal blood seeps from gashes in her face, shoulders, and chest where scales have been raked away.

I’ve always wondered what she’d do to me, given the chance. I did have her pinned to my ship as a makeshift figurehead after she killed one of my crewmen. Her eyes remind me that she’s no fan of mine. However, she’s a fan of Ava’s. That Ava cares for me is the only thing stopping her from stripping my skin and muscle and feasting. I see it in the corner of her eyes; the revenge she can see as well as taste.

“Did you do this?” I venture. “Who is she?” My hook scars the skiff’s side as I lean over to see the woman who is drifting slowly away. The mermaid is so focused on the corpse she barely registers us in front of her. “Who. Is. She, Nyin?”

The mermaid’s eyes sharpen and meet mine. Her clawed fingers grip the back of the dead woman’s neck. She wrenches the deceased back so we can see her features, the most distinguishing of which are her lips – or what’s left of them.

I let out a breath.

It’s Wendy Darling.

And then my muscles tighten once more.

Why did Nyin kill Wendy?

The mermaid hurls Wendy several feet into the air and the body lands with a loud slap against the surface. Foam explodes around her, the sea beginning to settle again in the next breath.

Nyin points toward the ship, her bottom lip quivering as if she might cry. And then… a teal tear carves down her restored cheek and rejoins the sea.

“Wendy hurt Ava?” Belle asks, listening as Nyin describes what happened.

The mermaid’s tone begins fast then slows, until she can’t seem to speak and begins to sob. She points to the ship, then the sea… as if someone went from the former into the latter.

Belle clutches her stomach like she might be sick. She slowly shakes her head, her breathing becoming more and more labored the longer Nyin speaks. Then, the mermaid stops speaking…

The wind fades, then dies. And so does the warmth in Belle’s golden eyes. “No!” she cries.

Gulls that had left my ship and were flying toward us with their wings caught on the sea breeze halt midflight and tumble from the sky, splashing into the ocean’s foaming, insatiable mouth.

The ocean stills.

All is silent for a few terrible seconds.

Until Belle pierces the calm with an inhuman wail.

She curls in on herself and tears at her hair, her keening so monstrous, goosebumps flare on every inch of my skin. I begin to shiver and can’t stop.

The sky that had been clear and bright moments ago fills with thick, gray clouds. Forks of lightning stab the Never Sea.

The dead wind roars back to life, pushing our little boat sideways so hard, it nearly capsizes under the weight of too much water.

The deeply-elusive well of Belle’s magic spills over. Her fury could uproot trees, tear down mountains boulder by boulder, and pour earth and sky toward the one who caused this pain.

Where has this power been hiding, and how do I keep her from killing us before I know what’s going on and figure out a way to fix it?

I kneel in the drenched hull beside Belle. Taking her bicep in my hand and digging my hook into the skiff’s wooden edge, I beg. “What did Nyin say?”

Hysterical sobs claw from her throat as she holds her chest. Her heart. She shakes her head, covers her ears, and screams. Pulling her into my arms does nothing to comfort her. Belle only grips my shirt and clings to me like a lifeline. I’m taken aback, because the Tinkerbell I knew never would have needed one.

There’s only one reason I can think of that she would now: Ava .

If Ava were in trouble, if she was hurt, Belle would be rushing us to her. But she’s not. She’s still here, like there is nothing she can do and nothing to be done. Like nothing matters now.

Nyin swims behind the skiff and pushes us steadily toward my ship.

“She can’t be gone,” I say to myself as a strange numbness unfolds over the darkness writhing in my chest. “She can’t be.”

Belle’s shoulders tense beneath my hand like she’s bracing against my words, or worse, against the reality that slowly seeps into my cold bones.

Sydney paces where he waits on the dock. He pulls Belle out of the skiff and starts to carry her toward the gangplank when the fairy roars so loud that he drops her. She lands on her feet as he staggers backward, and Belle pushes past him and races onto the ship where she slams the doors of my cabin so hard the glass set within the wood shatters. Glittering shards crash onto the deck.

Nyin drags herself onto the dock, then angrily claws her way up the ramp.

“Hudson, I…”

Words leave Sydney as he and I follow the mermaid aboard, stopping at the edge of a broad swath of crimson-stained deck boards. I take in the volume of blood and the desperate handprints left behind.

Guilt takes my heart in its fist and squeezes, wringing until little is left of me, because I wasn’t here when she needed me most.

Sydney wrings his akubra. His hands, lips, and body tremble. “Ava found me below deck. She’d woken alone and was looking for you or Belle. I told her that you were on the other ship, working on repairs.” He takes a shuddering breath and rakes a quivering hand through his pale, bedraggled hair.

“She thanked me and went on her way. I…I didn’t know she was in danger until I heard a loud thump from above.” His voice breaks on the word. “I went up to see what made the sound and found her laying here,” he pointed to the crimson boards, “clutching her stomach. She was bleeding. I don’t know what happened to her. She said she needed Belle. To heal her, I suppose. I rang the bell and shouted for you all, but by the time I ran back to check on her, this one,” he points to Nyin, “had dragged her off the ship and into the water.

“At first, I thought the siren was going to take her under, but she kept Ava’s head above the water and swam her toward the galleon. She was trying to take her to you. But then a pod of sirens attacked. Came up from under the water. Nyin fought three or maybe four by herself. Killed them all, I think. But one caught hold of Ava and dragged her into the deep.”

He blows out a panicked breath and nods toward Nyin again. “She went looking for her but never brought her up. I don’t think she can find her.” Sydney stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I kept yelling and ringing the bell. I didn’t know what else to do. I should’ve jumped into the water to help.”

Nyin snaps her teeth together at him, reminding him that he would’ve been eaten if he had. She looks toward my quarters as if she can sense Belle within them, then climbs onto the rail and perches atop it, scanning the sea like she might be able to see through the water, into the depths. As if she can’t understand where Ava could have been taken.

“Did you look for her?” I ask the mermaid.

Nyin slowly nods.

“And you don’t scent her anywhere?” Mermaids have an uncanny sense of smell in the water. If Ava was bleeding, she should be able to track the trail of blood…

A mournful shake of her head, and then Nyin turns her back to me, flips her coral-scaled tail over the railing, and slips into the narrow stretch of Never Sea between the ship and dock.

Just then, a bright red feather falls onto the blood-stained deck, vibrant red on deep crimson. A parrot settles onto a nearby lantern, nearly knocking it from its hook before the iron and glass stop swaying. I curse the fools in town who kept them as pets and swipe at the bird with my hook. “Be gone!”

It flaps its wings, offended, and hovers just out of reach. Then the parrot opens its beak and says, “You’re better off dead than his , Ava.”

Is that what Wendy said to her? Are those the last words Ava heard?

The worst thing is… I don’t know if Wendy was referring to Pan, or me.

I slowly step toward the creature, intent on capturing it, but the bird senses my intention and flies toward the home it made in town.

Sydney uncomfortably shifts his weight and looks over his shoulder toward my quarters where the sounds of Belle’s despair drown out the surging tides. He apologizes again, still wringing his hat.