Page 19 of The First Lost Boy (The Shadows of Neverland Duet #2)

Devin

Belle’s Journal

This journal reads like a story, not a stream of consciousness. I keep telling myself that this is just the first draft of a story Belle was secretly working on – one that desperately needs work, but a decent enough ideation of a childhood tale, nonetheless.

It’s just fiction. It has to be. But there’s something about her words that seem like they might be rooted in fact, because somehow it feels that way even as I read about things that don’t exist.

Like mermaids.

I flip through a few pages and decide to double back. The mermaid in this book is terrifying.

My toes sink into the wet sand at the edge of the sea. The girl forms a pile of her favorite shells beside me. I encouraged her to play, but I hope she doesn’t expect to bring all these back to the treehouses with us.

She’s the last Lost Girl Ezryn brought to Neverland, and I get a strange feeling when I’m around her. She seems wise beyond her years. She listens to everything and seems to be fitting pieces into a puzzle in her mind. It makes me wonder what she’s heard, what she knows, and what she’s trying to remember despite being without her shadow. Because somehow, she remembers more than Ezryn appreciates.

Even though he doesn’t like it, he finds her ability to remember intriguing. Like she’s the first interesting thing he’s dragged to Neverland in years.

At least a thousand times I’ve considered flying her home.

I still may. She says she remembers her mother and father. Not their names, but the time she spent with them and things that feel and smell like the life she claims Ezryn tore her away from. He promised me she was an orphan, that they all are. He says she’s lying, or that her mind is playing tricks as she forgets and tries to remember. That she’s inventing a fanciful past to replace the bleak one she left behind.

When she looks up at me from the sand, her eyes are guarded. She’s uneasy about me, even though she seems to like my wings.

When I flutter the golden appendages on my back, the little one watches in awe as they move and pulse. I hover in the air next to her and she beams. But like most kids, her attention span is only so long. A few minutes later, she glances over her shoulder at the trees and asks, “When is Peter coming back?”

I hate hearing him called by that name. I can’t bring myself to call him Peter.

He’s not Peter anymore.

He hasn’t been for years. But I also can’t give up all hope that Peter is trapped inside him somewhere. Because if he is, that means there’s hope that one day, when this is all over, he’ll be set free and come back to me.

“He won’t be long,” I answer vaguely. Such replies are enough for most children, but this girl’s brows scrunch like it’s not adequate in the least.

Ezryn doesn’t appreciate my apprehension about this child, or me questioning him, and lately, he’s kept me busy with menial tasks in a pathetic attempt to keep me away from her. But this morning, he needed me to stay with her. Hudson needed his help, and the girl is woefully ignorant of the many dangers of Neverland.

She calls herself Savannah, the name of the city she hasn’t yet forgotten, but will if she lingers here. It’s a tradition for some of the Lost. They carve their true name in a tree when they get here, but soon they forget the etched trunk and letters. When they realize they’re having trouble remembering, they cling to the only things they can. One of those things is typically the name of their home city or town.

They resist being here. They all want to leave and return to the lives Ezryn painted as miserable. He says he takes and keeps their shadows because once they’re on Neverland, they can forget the misery and he doesn’t want them to feel upset by their new surroundings. He says one day, they’ll all come around and stop looking toward the mainland.

But when it’s cut into their skin, how could they not be constantly reminded of the goal to escape?

They may not have a compass, but they’ve drawn a map of scarred flesh onto themselves that might one day lead them close to home, even if they never quite find the way there. Can one ever truly return after so much time has passed and all recollection has faded?

Maybe I should fly them away one by one and take them each to the city they hail from. Perhaps someone would remember and help them. But what kind of life would they lead without their memories? Ezryn will not return their shadows. He wears them like a proud hunter dons the skin of his prey.

He needs them. The shadows. And the Lost.

What would he be without them? What power would he have then?

There’s a splash near Skull Rock, but nothing sits upon the boulder or in its sea-hewn hollows that look like eyes and a gaping maw. I flutter closer to the girl, who seems oblivious to the sound. She hasn’t learned that approaching danger often sounds innocuous. Mermaids frequent this water and love sunbathing on that rock when they’re not plucking the loveliest shells for their troves. They also love the taste of human flesh.

A swish of water…

The flick of a broad tail fin…

A mermaid swims from behind the boulder and glides silently into the shallows.

“Nyin!” The child jumps up and squeals in delight, waving her arms in the air like the creature is her friend.

As the creature moves closer, I study the vibrant coral scales lining the mermaid’s long, slender body, the gills at her throat and spindles along her spine and fins that are as powerful as they are lovely.

Nyin is not the worst of the mermaids, but there is no best among them. They’re driven by hunger and a primal instinct to hunt and kill. They’re all proficient and dangerous, even to pixies, though we are more difficult to catch. And in the rare instances a mermaid manages to catch a pixie, our kind does not meekly give up and accept our fate. Pixies fight back, and the island and sea fight with us.

Nyin nods once to acknowledge me as I place myself between her and the child. The creature stops in the shallows a few arm lengths away, keeping her depthless eyes on me.

I don’t speak the warning, but she understands it all the same. If she tries to take the child, Nyin will meet an abrupt and violent end.

When the girl moves into the lapping water, I stop her with a hand. “Don’t go any deeper. Peter wouldn’t like it.”

Saying his name makes my stomach feel queasy, but the lie does what I need it to as the girl’s eyes flash with fear. She doesn’t argue and stays at my side.

Does Peter know about her connection with the siren?

My stomach sours.

Did he foster it?

Nyin speaks to the child, who doesn’t seem to understand her, but the child prattles on about how pretty the shells she’s collected are, which ones are her favorites, and how Peter promised to show her a Neverbird nest later today.

Ezryn has no qualms putting the child in many kinds of danger.

First Nyin, next a Neverbird? There is one unoccupied nest I know of, but it won’t stay vacant for long, and he knows it.

“Had-no,” Nyin says, her dark eyes on mine. She juts her sharp chin at the child.

Shadow? I look around the girl, but I don’t see anything on the ground.

Ezryn took her shadow. He hasn’t used it to travel to the mainland, surprisingly, but he has it, tucked into the silver thimble Wendy Darling gave him. It never leaks or escapes because he sealed it in place. He keeps it in his pocket so he’ll have it the moment he decides to leave for the mainland.

But I’m not sure what Nyin is trying to convey. The girl’s shadow is with Ezryn. Not here with her. “ He has it.”

Nyin grits her teeth in aggravation and tells me that she feels a shadow resting inside the child.

I study the girl further, seeing nothing amiss. Nothing unusual, despite the strange feeling I get when I’m near her. When she watches and seems far older than her years.

“Are you sure?” I ask. How does she know? How does she see it when I can’t?

A small hand tugs at the hem of my dress. “What’s she saying?” Savannah asks innocently. She understands that something is passing between the mermaid and me – something that has to do with her.

Nyin tells me to speak the name Ezryn fears most. Then she juts her sharp chin at the girl again. Faced by her confident dare, I start to wonder, and with that wonder comes a rush of worry. If she’s lying, it won’t matter, but what if she’s not?

My heart pounds as my feet find the sea, the wet sand that buries them so beautifully and slowly I barely notice as I crouch beside the girl. Her eyes are a clear, vibrant gray. “Savannah? Does the name Imani mean anything to you?”

Her breathing turns ragged. Slowly, like smoke billowing across the ceiling in a home, her eyes darken until shadow swallows even the whites of them. I swallow thickly and stare at the Celestial we’ve taken such care to keep Ezryn from…

The Celestial fairy begins to recede as quickly as she surfaced.

“Does he know?” I swivel to ask Nyin.

She slowly shakes her head.

I narrow my eyes. She saw it the moment she saw the child, no doubt. Mermaids can sense things we can’t. It’s how they choose their prey. They won’t take someone with malady in the body. “Why didn’t you tell him?” I demand.

Nyin gnashes her teeth at me and turns, ready to swim away.

“What will she do to him?” I call out, stopping her before she dives beneath the waves. I’m asking about Ezryn, yes, but also about Peter.

The child’s eyes are clear again. Her breathing is calm. Imani must not have been in her form very long. She’s not strong enough to surface for any length of time yet, but like a terrible storm, she will grow and strengthen. And before anyone knows she’s capable of it, she’ll strike.

What an unsuspecting form to take…

Unless you knew he was collecting children and set a very precise trap.

Stars see everything and forget nothing.

It’s how she knew. It’s how the child doesn’t forget like all the others. Imani is the most powerful of the Celestial fairies.

“She will kill Ezryn,” Nyin says in the mermaid tongue.

“Will she kill Peter, too?”

Nyin’s eyes narrow. “I can’t say for certain, but she did not abandon all that she is to leave anything to doubt, Pixie.”

The moment Nyin mentions Ezryn, the Celestial resurfaces. The child’s eyes turn to obsidian and her tiny hands curl into fists. “Where is he?” Imani knows he’s within reach, but she doesn’t know what body he’s occupying yet. Perhaps she hasn’t been conscious for long enough periods to work it out.

“He’s in an innocent fairy’s body,” I answer carefully. “Will you harm it when you seek your revenge?”

The girl is back in a heartbeat and Imani sinks back into her form.

It doesn’t matter how she would have answered my question. I cannot trust the Celestial fairies. Ezryn is proof of that.

My heart pounds.

I thought this is what I wanted, but I’ve made a terrible mistake.

I’m the one who found the way through the curse and sent him to the mainland to feed. Ezryn was starving and wouldn’t have lasted. His death would have killed Peter. But regardless of why I did it, I’m the reason she found him. And while I want Ezryn gone, I cannot risk Peter’s life.

I must save him from Imani.

Nyin chatters a goodbye to the girl, turns her long, slender form, and splashes into deeper water, disappearing beneath the shimmering sea. That’s when shadows creep across the beach despite the clear day and Peter Pan steps out of the Never Wood. I must call him Peter now. I can’t let Imani know who Ezryn rests within.

The child brightens when she sees him, forgetting what just transpired – for now, at least.

“How was Nyin today?” he asks her as he approaches.

My hands tremble as I consider what the girl might remember about what just happened. About what she might say. But I could embrace her when she asks the last thing he expects to hear. “When are you taking me home?”

His easy smile falls. “I’ve changed my mind about taking you to see a Neverbird nest. Perhaps you’d like to visit Hudson instead. He’s in the cages.”

The girl looks frightened. He wouldn’t toss her in with Hudson. Would he?

My brows furrow. “Why is he caged?”

Peter crouches to pick up a shell, running a thumb over its scored surface. “Because he’s been actively leading a mutiny against me.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” I ask.

His smile could cut my skin to ribbons. “Yes, but actions still have consequences.”

Peter has no idea what a dangerous game he’s playing, or that Savannah is the most dangerous player on the board. I need to take her far away from Neverland. Away from Peter, until I’m sure she won’t accidentally kill him when she rips Ezryn from his body.

Because that malevolent thing inside this child plans to do just that.