Page 17 of The First Lost Boy (The Shadows of Neverland Duet #2)

Ava

Shrill screams resonate through the Never Wood like a thousand specters all crying out and begging to be set free, but one is louder, closer. A dark humanoid form soars through the spaces between tree trunks. Belle starts toward the trees and foliage but freezes before breaching the verdant barrier when she sees the overshadowed pixie.

“By the Second Star!” she breathes, clutching her stomach. “What did he do to you?”

Nyin claws across the sand to reach my sister and grabs her ankle, insisting that she listen as she speaks to her. Belle looks positively pallid when the mermaid is through.

“What did she say?” I ask.

“We can’t let them touch us,” she explains, looking at all of us. “Or we’ll become like them.” A frustrated growl tears from her throat. “But the only way to heal them is to touch them. We have to apply pixie dust to their skin.”

Pan almost drove Belle mad when she was on the mainland. What would he do to her if she was under his spell on Neverland? What would become of the entire pixie community? Who would free them if all were his captives?

And what would they do to us, for him ?

The overshadowed pixie swoops closer, dipping out of the trees before diving back in with an ear-splitting shriek. We all duck and edge back toward the water where another, deeper primal warning growl sounds. This one from a crocodile emerging from the shallows. Its armored body flexes as it moves, holding its body high out of the lapping waves.

It pauses to watch a Neverbird that flaps from its perch on a nearby tree. The fowl cries and moves higher into the sky, spilling bright green feathers as it flees the forest, heading straight for Hudson’s ship. Feathers drift down until they gently land on the sea, only to be tumbled and drowned.

Smee lets out an amused chuckle. “It looks like our friends on board are about to have an unexpected guest.”

Nyin moves back toward the sea and snaps at the croc; its head swivels her way as she passes. His focus is on us. It’s easier to grab the weakest among a group than to chase one moving target, especially a mermaid, as he has likely learned a time or two. Her claws could split his belly wide open. And she’d eat every bit of his flesh if he miscalculates his might and underestimates hers.

“Thank you, Nyin!” I yell when she reaches the salt water.

She turns and nods once. “Ay-vah.”

While she only said my name, I heard my friend say, ‘Be careful.’ I know she’ll watch the water and those on the ship for us; a last barrier of fin, teeth, and claw if we fail and they need it.

I start to turn back around and freeze at the soft choking sound my sister makes.

“Ava… don’t make any sudden movements,” Belle carefully whispers. “No. One. Move.”

My heart thunders.

Her slow, careful steps depress the sand as she makes her way toward me. I have no idea what beast is so close that she’s trying not to incite its wrath. It could be a croc we hadn’t noticed slip up behind us. It could be one of the pixies. A Neverbird. It could be Peter.

Though, on second thought, it doesn’t feel like him. Imani is keenly aware of his presence. She’s watching, but since she’s not concerned right now, I feel fractionally better about my present circumstances.

I try to hold still but begin to tremble when I feel cool breath fanning errant wisps of my hair. Not a crocodile, then…

In my periphery, I see a dark shape hovering above me. Tattered wings are nearly silent despite their rips and tears. Belle gingerly approaches. Her palms glow with specks of golden pixie dust. “Cover yourself with the pixie dust,” I say slowly.

Belle takes another step, glancing down at her hands and whispering in irritation. “What do you want me to do, slather it on?”

“Yes.” The overshadowed pixie tries to move in front of me, looking me over, searching for something.

“Close your eyes,” Belle hisses.

I press them closed, only to feel the overshadowed fairy’s nose brush my cheek a second later.

I grind my teeth to keep from screaming. What the hell is it doing?

Suddenly, clawed hands clamp onto my biceps and my eyes fly open. The fairy snaps her teeth at me when my scream escapes anyway. Evidently the sound enrages her, because she flies me a few feet into the air and drops me before coming after me again. The minute the fairy’s feet hit the sand, Belle tackles her, and thank the Second Star, my stubborn sister did what I asked and coated herself in golden, shimmering magic.

There’s no way Peter’s malignant influence can spread to her now, and no way her dust isn’t already healing the pixie.

The pixie dust is like glitter – spreading everywhere. The husk of a fairy twinkles like the Second Star herself. It dances on her sooty forearms, caps the sharp ridges of her cheeks, streams down the tendons of her neck and the rows of ribs cresting her bare stomach, and settles into the valleys that have formed in her atrophied legs. It even glints in every tangled strand of her shadowy hair.

She’s horrifically zombie-like. Cruelly withered and desperate for a taste of the life she once led. Or maybe a bite of the lives of those who are free of Ezryn’s power.

“She’s wasted away!” Belle cries as she comes to stand beside me, leaving the fairy she tackled in a heap on the ground. A sob breaks free of her chest as she rubs it. “The boy I loved would never have done something so awful to the people he loved. There must be nothing left of him now.”

Imani stirs inside me, but I gently push her back into the dark lake of shadows where she settles again.

I feel her power. Recognize the extent of it. Wonder when she’ll use it against me like Ezryn did Peter.

“Who are they – Ezryn and Imani, I mean?” I ask. Belle must know who they are and where they came from. She was there when the plea was made to her people. She just didn’t realize that the bargain would allow Ezryn to take and take until Peter had nothing left to offer.

Would Imani leave me once she exacted her revenge? Could she go back to her home, or is this coexistence a fate we will both share to whatever end?

Imani surges forward and drags me out of my skin, but this time I keep my head above the water in that dark lake, sharing the space with her. We crouch and inhale deeply, drawing in the shadow Peter cast upon the female pixie laying on the ground before us. It smells and tastes bitter like him. It feels cruel – just like he does.

His darkness is delicious.

It swirls into our hearts where it is eaten. Devoured. Ours .

Hudson crouches beside us. “What will that do to Ava?” he demands. We aren’t sure what he means. He must see our confusion in the slant of our brows. “Will what you just did to the shadow harm her?”

“It would be detrimental to harm my host,” Imani replies.

“What did you do to the shadow?” he demands of her.

“I consumed it,” she answers. I feel her satiation, but he hears it.

Hudson’s head moves back just a tick as he tries to process what she said. His lips form the words, slowly and curiously repeating them back to us. “You… consume shadow.”

We glance at Hudson’s hook, from which an unmistakably familiar, bitter scent wafts… then to Belle, whose golden eyes flare like saucers. She subtly shakes her head, begging me to keep the secret she forged in the silver.

We agree to. For now.

Imani settles back into the lake in Ava’s consciousness, and watches the confrontation unfold as Ava gapes at her sister now that she too knows what secret the one she calls sister has managed to keep hidden – from everyone – for a very long time.

“My god, Belle,” she breathes.

Hudson asks what’s happening.

It’s better for him if he doesn’t know. I admire my host even more for refusing to betray her sister to appease the pirate.

Wraith groans from where he lays near the tree line. I’d forgotten about him. The croc, however, hasn’t. While we’ve been distracted by the overshadowed pixie, the dinosaur skirted us to prowl closer to the incapacitated Lost Boy, hoping for an easy meal.

He would have had one if Bones didn’t rush to help his friend escape the beast.

In a twist of irony and karma, Wraith’s ankle is hurt. He uses Bones as a crutch, limping to a broad tree that he painfully climbs, finally settling in the crook of a limb.

He’s disoriented and confused.

Instead of feeling a sense of justice at his condition, I feel sorry for him. I know how Hudson and his crew view the Lost Boys. To them, they’re traitors. Enemies. But they’re victims of Ezryn all the same, perhaps worse than anyone else because of their proximity. They were subject to his whims and cruelty more than anyone else.

Bones tries to calm him down and explain what’s happening, urging him to stay in the tree. The crocodile seems to be an adequate means of motivating him to do exactly that, especially given his injury.

Belle encourages the pixie laying between us to take slow, deep breaths. We watch in mystified awe as her skin slowly turns from deep gray to a beautiful umber. Her wings shift to the bright yellow of sunflower petals, and her hair to the shade of the plant’s seeds, gray streaked with white. The rips in her wings slowly mend and she flutters them weakly, looking over her shoulder. Her head lolls as she takes us all in, but her attention catches and holds on Belle.

She gingerly sits up, her eyes fastened on my sister.

“Tinkerbell? You’re back? What happened?” The recovering fairy holds out her arms, studying them. Like the stain of Peter’s shadows still lingers there even though Imani… ate them. I’m not sure how to describe what she did any other way.

“Hello, Alette,” my sister primly greets. “I’ve returned. I apologize for staying away so long. It seems many things happened during my absence that need to be set right.”

A scream from another of the still-overshadowed fairies drifts closer. Alette places a hand on her chest. “What is shrieking like that?”

“You don’t remember?” Belle asks.

“Remember what?” The fairy’s eyes glide from Belle, to Smee and Hudson, over to Bones, then to Wraith in the tree, and finally land on me.

“What if I told you that Peter cast his mark over our people and held them deep in the Never Caves, and that he’s using his shadow magic to control them all?” Belle asks her.

The pretty fairy bares her teeth. “I would say that would explain the strange, foggy residue I feel. Who else is free of him?” Alette asks.

“Currently, only you and me. All the others are flying between us and his sanctuary, ready to shred us the moment we step into the forest to keep us from reaching him,” Belle answers.

“We’re the only ones?” the revitalized pixie whispers, her voice filled with dread.

“For now,” Belle affirms with a snarl, watching over her shoulder as another shriek rises – closer this time.

Alette’s pixie dust is a deeper hue than Belle’s. It takes her a few moments to stand and push it from her palms, but the island restores her far faster than I thought possible. “Then we should hurry.”

Hudson points his hook between the fairies. “How about the two of you coat us all in that stuff? We’ll be running a gauntlet of angry shadow pixies all the way across the wood. If we have dust, we can help free more than the two of you can on your own.”

Alette puts her nose in the air the same way my sister often does and stiffly asks, “And why should we help you, Hudson?”

Hook just grins. “Because I’m Pan’s greatest enemy. Helping me will send him into a rage, and people who are consumed with anger are blind to everything but the source of it.” He looks at my sister, then at me. “I’ll gladly be the diversion you need.”

The pixie crosses her arms and nods toward my sister. “I’m not so sure you hold that illustrious title anymore.”

Belle beams proudly. “Now, now. He’s still Ezryn’s second greatest adversary, and the first Lost Boy to be dragged here. The first to figure out how his mind worked and how to beat him at his own game. The first to take any amount of power away from him. Ezryn will always hate Hudson.” She stares at his hook for a long moment, and my heart begins to race.

Is she going to tell him? She can’t let Ezryn capture Hudson.

“Then it’s the perfect plan,” Alette decides with a clap. Pixie dust plumes in front of her and she steps into the cloud, where she coats her hair and face with the glowing dust before applying it to the rest of her body. When she’s satisfied, she moves to Smee, who ducks so she can reach his upper body, blushing at her touch.

As the two fairies work to coat the rest of us in the magical healing dust, Belle warns Alette. “You won’t recognize the others when you see them in there. They look positively monstrous. But the dust will restore the dignity and power he’s stripped from them.”

Ezryn will soon face an enraged group of pixies, in addition to mermaids who will shred him if he steps too close to the water since we removed his mark and influence from them.

He can’t fly.

Can’t go near the water.

He’s trapped and he knows it.

When we move to the forest, Belle tags Wraith on the foot. He quickly spreads the dust over his skin for protection. “Thanks,” he rasps.

“Don’t thank us yet,” Hudson warns. “This is far from over.”

When we enter the Never Wood, I assume for several heartbeats that Pan is using his shadows to darken our path, but it’s not him at all.

It’s Imani.

She hums in my chest and the sound resonates through my sternum, thrumming down each rib and spreading until it rattles down my spine, my legs, and finally, into the earth itself. The wind pours off the sea and into the trees, quaking the leaves at first, then intensifying until it rips them sideways and only their silver sides show.

Some leaves can’t withstand the pressure and are torn from the branches that have birthed and cradled them. Some rip apart, their pieces scattering over the island.

There are no clouds overhead. If there had been, Imani would have clawed them away, too. But despite the sand, leaves, and debris being unleashed by her winds, we all see what she’s capable of. I have a feeling it’s only the tip of the iceberg that is her power.

“An eclipse,” Belle whispers beside me, craning her head toward the sky.

Sure enough, the moon moves to sit beside its sister sun and slowly creeps in front of her, carving slivers of it away.

“Do you remember when we watched the last one from the rooftop?” Belle absently asks, her eyes never straying from the cosmic event unnaturally unfolding before us.

My lashes flutter as I try to locate the memory. I know I’ve seen one before, but I can’t recall when or with whom…

Imani shifts within me and gives me the memory I’ve lost. I didn’t have my shadow then, but she was there for it all. She remembers what I don’t, and that thought strikes me like a hammer would an anvil. For a long, terrifying moment, I can barely breathe.

What else will I lose if she leaves me?

But how long will I survive like this if she stays?

“Is Imani shifting the sky?” Belle carefully asks.

In my mind, the Celestial purrs with pride. “Yes.”

Belle nods, but I don’t miss the fear in my sister’s eyes when she looks at me – at us .

It’s dark within the trees and each of us coated in pixie dust is a shimmering beacon. Our unease is as palpable as our determination.

We agree to split up so we can cover more of the woods and restore as many pixies as quickly as possible. Then we can enlist the unencumbered to our cause as we continue pressing toward Ezryn’s haven.

Nyin did this alone when she hunted the vast Never Sea with the remedy that would return the sirens to health and give them back their minds and free will. My mermaid friend is amazing. Failure was not an option, and she refused to accept anything short of success.

Smee curves west with Alette, Bones and Belle take a northern route, and Hudson and I start down a western path.

Nyin stays at the shore, swimming back and forth as she calls to her kind, casting a ferocious net of glittering scales and powerful tails, of sharp claws and serrated teeth that crave the flavor of revenge.

Wraith remains in the tree, refusing to hobble to the water even with Bones’s help. He doesn’t want to go with the sirens or join Ash and Shorty on the ship. Before we left, he winced, gritted his teeth against the radiating pain in his ankle, and told us to go on and not worry about him.

Belle and I discussed healing him, but we decided it isn’t wise. Not yet anyway. His injured ankle is the only reason I feel comfortable leaving him behind us. Belle told me she wouldn’t put it past him to lash out at us from behind. I’m not sure why he hates me so much, but know that he does and that I trust my sister enough to leave him behind. Even if there’s a risk we won’t make it back to help him again.

At first, Hudson and I can still see the other pairs, but that moment is fleeting. When we round a bend, an overshadowed pixie is standing on the path. He snarls when he spots us, spittle flying from his too-thin lips.

“Get behind me, Lifeguard,” Hudson orders, pushing in front of me. But I can’t see over his shoulder.

I push onto my tiptoes and crane my neck. “I can’t see!”

“You don’t need to see,” he quietly tells me, keeping his attention on the fairy. The muscles in his broad back tighten as he stops and holds his hook protectively in front of me. I grip it and a gasp rips from my throat.

Suddenly, I’m back in the dark lake, floating on my back, but this time, something comes with me. I hold the writhing wisp of shadow in my hand.

“Imani!” My voice bounces off the gray sky and resounds over the water until it sounds like a thousand of me shouting the same question. “Tell me you didn’t just eat this shadow. That I didn’t just take it and feed it to you!”

I feel us smile. Feel her laugh. Know she did. That I did.

You’ve got to be kidding!

The shadow I just stole is nothing like Hudson’s. There’s no comforting, salty air scent. No cunning thoughts that ultimately protect. There’s no loyalty to his crew of friends.

This shadow is poisonous, curving vines and fresh cut grass. In it, lies the sound of a trickling stream and the feel of rough bark underfoot. The flutter of heart and wing. Warm sunlight cutting through trees to tickle the loamy ground. There’s happiness when he sees the color gold.

Imani just took Peter Pan’s shadow…from where Belle hid it away in Hudson’s hook. And she ate it.

That was Belle’s greatest secret. As his betrothed, she was charged with taking and keeping Peter’s shadow safe – even from him – after the deal was made with the Celestial fairy. She couldn’t leave Neverland with it or trust another soul with the responsibility of keeping it hidden and safe when she dragged me home, so she hid Pan’s shadow in Ezryn’s second greatest enemy before leaving with his first – me .

But that’s not the only shadow here… The entire lake, I realize, is a horde of them. These shadows aren’t placid or at rest. They churn, bucking beneath the surface and morphing it into choppy waves and eager currents. I extend my hands, afraid to confirm what I fear, closing my eyes tightly when shadowed vines coil around my wrists and inch up my forearms.

At some point, Imani consumed my shadow, too. Or whatever portion Peter allowed me to retain, to help me remember the false memories he tried to plant and nurture within me.

I feel her receding, but she holds me in the lake with the shadows. I strain against her pressure and fight as she tries to push me under. If I drown, I know I won’t emerge again.

And then she’s there, walking on the shadowed surface toward me. A shadowed, willowy figure with obsidian eyes that catch every glint of light and swallow it.

“What are you?” I breathe. “You’re no star.”

“I was one.”

Was? “There’s no light in you.”

Imani smiles, but it’s as sharp as the edge of one of Bones’s knives. “I abandoned my essence to the sky to come here.” She looks up as if she might see a glimmering remnant of herself above. But there’s nothing in here but a sea of shadows below and charcoal gray above.

Can she see what she gave up when she peers through my eyes? Is that her punishment for shirking her responsibility to pursue revenge?

My vines stretch over my elbows and creep onto my biceps, shoulders, and across my chest and throat. They weave into my hair. “Why did you give everything up for him? He’s not worth it.”

Her gaze sharpens. “Ensuring he never hurts another of our kind is . Emryn killed my mother, the First Star. I vowed when I found her body and learned of his treachery, that I would make him wish he was never born.” Her fury plunges the shadows into a frenzy. “And make it so he could never harm another of our kind.”

A shiver slithers up my spine. “Why did he do it?”

She straightens like she’s afraid she might cave to the pain of reliving the past. “Ezryn has always envied power. He realized quite by chance that by consuming the light of other Celestial fairies, he could collect their power. In secret, he began to prey on us one by one, but the average fairy didn’t have the substantial power he craved, and what he took from them soon waned. So he lured my mother, the most powerful among our kind, to him by offering to assist her in finding the one responsible for the slayings.”

What a psychopath…

“As she died, she cursed him. She stripped him of his starlight and banished him from our realm. What she did not expect, was what would happen when he fell to earth. He was not left powerless. And what influence he once had over light, now worked to influence shadow. With his shadows, he hid from me. So, I became the only thing that consumes shadow.”

My brows knit as I swallow thickly, wondering what could be worse than him.

“A black hole is not picky in what it takes, because it feeds on everything and leaves nothing,” she seethes.

I feel sorry for her. I understand why she did it, but I wonder if giving all that up was worth what she became in the end.

Imani straightens. “To answer the question you’ve been asking yourself, I will remove Ezryn from your pixie friend and from this earth. And then I will leave you.”

“What about my shadow? I need it to leave this place.”

She smiles but I see no teeth, only a gaping, dark void. “I will obliterate the pixie’s protection line and every unfortunate anomaly that Ezryn’s presence here caused. You will be able to travel wherever you’d wish when I’m through.”

I shake my head and try to quell my rising frustration. “But you didn’t answer me. Will I have my shadow back? I’ll still need it – to remember.”

Belle won’t bring me back home again, and she won’t stay with me to make sure I don’t forget who I am. Neverland is where she belongs.

When she took me away from Peter, Belle had to care for me so she could keep me close and stop Imani from killing her betrothed. But when Ezryn is finally removed from him, she’ll have her home and family back. The future she was promised will spread out before her, full of endless potential and possibilities.

And I don’t want to be a burden on anyone or locked away and forgotten, Lost for the rest of my days.

Imani is careful with her words. “I don’t know what will become of your shadow once I depart from you. It belongs to both of us now, but when I leave you, I imagine it will either cling to your form or it will remain mine. I give you my word to try and leave it behind with you. That’s the most I can do.”

My throat clogs with emotion as I nod and silently offer her my thanks. “Why did the pixies ever agree to help him?” I ask, wondering if she even knows the answer.

Her eyes flash. “Ezryn is a skilled liar, but I imagine the pixies knew they couldn’t fight and win against a Celestial fairy. We are the most powerful fairies in existence. Ezryn would have razed Neverland if they didn’t comply with his demands. The pixies had little choice in any of this.”

A thought soured my stomach. “He was excited when he found me because he thought I was a Celestial… Why wasn’t he worried it might be you?”

Stubborn pride shines in Imani’s eyes. “I imagine Ezryn would have difficulty understanding why anyone would give up such status and power as I did to find him.” She offers a cruel smile. “I was also very patient. I knew he had fallen to Earth, so I watched for him and waited until he finally emerged. At that point, Ezryn likely thought he was safe from me. It’s why he felt comfortable enough to leave Neverland for the short trips he took to the mainland, which was how I was able to finally locate him. He was likely desperate and starving when he left the protection of this island and the pixies on it. My mother made it so he couldn’t consume light, but she didn’t remove his craving for it. It was a cruel parting gift, if you will.”

I’m sorry I asked.

Her attention swings skyward again. “Hudson has subdued the pixie, and after all the unfruitful exertion of fighting you for room in this flesh, I’m positively famished.”

Before I can blink, she rushes back into my skin.

My shadow, twisted into familiar creeping vines, releases me and blurs back into the others, resettling into the calm lake that surrounds me.

I wonder if Imani made them this way because she thought my love of water might keep me calm. Or perhaps she’d used my vines to restrain me so she could prove she was in control of them – of me . That she can do as she wishes with my shadow on her way out if I don’t fall in line.

A minute later, a gray mist slithers overhead before it blends into the sea of shadows I float in. I close my eyes and meld with Imani, sharing my body, mind, and senses with her.

We feel so much better after taking another thing from Ezryn. Soon, we’ll have freed all the pixies from his influence.

He already knows we’re coming for him. He already knows there’s no place to run and hide away again. He already knows his end is near.

We watch as the pixie’s skin transforms from ash to mocha, his wings turn to a deep burgundy, and his eyes fade to pale silver, like sharp shards of a mirror. Hudson tells the pixie what Ezryn did and uses his name, explaining that Peter has been overwhelmed by the Celestial’s presence.

We don’t like the way the captain’s eyes slide accusingly to us. Or how he seems to be calculating a way to get rid of us. We’ve already said we wouldn’t harm our host or overstay our welcome, but he seems to think we already have.

We’re not sure if Hudson is an ally or an adversary now.