As if grief could ever be merely.
She recognized all four of them, of course, and knew their names. But she did not allow herself to speak those names, or even to think them. It would have felt as if she welcomed them back to her dreams, and they were not welcome at all.
“You forgot us, Wendy. You promised you never would.”
She nestled her cheek deeper into her pillow, feathers poking her skin through the fabric.
“I never did,” she whispered, her skin dampening. Too hot beneath the covers. “You were only in my mind, you see. I haven’t forgotten, but my parents and Doctor Goss told me I must persuade my eyes not to see you if you should appear again.”
“Have you missed us, then?”
Wendy swallowed. A shudder went through her. She had not.
“As I’m dreaming, I suppose it’s all right that I’m seeing you now.”
The Lost Boys glanced at one another with a shared, humorless sort of laugh. More a sniff than a laugh, really. A disapproving sniff.
The moonlight passed right through them.
The nearest of them – he of the grim eyes – slid closer to her.
“You were meant to be our mother,” he said.
Wendy couldn’t breathe. She pressed herself backward, away from them. It was their eyes that ignited a terror within her, those pleading eyes. She closed her own.
“Wake up, Wendy,” she whispered to herself. “Please wake up.”
“Don’t you remember?” the grim-eyed one asked, and her lids fluttered open to find herself still dreaming.
“Please remember,” said another, a lithe little boy with a pouting mouth and eyes on the verge of tears.
“No,” she whispered.
The hook. Soft flesh against her own. The pain. Blood in the water.
Her body trembled as images rushed into her mind and were driven back, shuttered in dark closets, buried in shallow graves.
“Stay away,” she whispered. “Please. My life is all ahead of me.”
She did not know if she spoke to the Lost Boys or to those images.
“My fiancé is a good man. Perhaps when we are wed, we can take one or two of you in. He is kind, you see. Not like—”
A door slammed in her mind.
“Like who, Wendy?”
Hook, she thought. My James.
“No!” she screamed, hurling back her bedcovers and leaping from the bed, hot tears springing to her eyes. “Leave me, damn you! Leave me to my life!”
Fingers curved into claws, she leapt at the nearest of them. Passing through him, chill gooseflesh rippling across her skin, she fell to the rug and curled up into herself, a mess of sobs.
In the moonlight, she lay just out of reach of the fluttering curtains and cried herself into the sweet oblivious depths of slumber.
When she woke in the early dawn, aching and chilled to the bone, she crept back beneath her bedclothes for warmth and comfort and told herself that there would never be another night when she needed to fear bad dreams. For the rest of her life she would wake in the morning with Jasper beside her and he would hold her and kiss her until the last of sleep’s shadows retreated.
The sun rose to a clear blue morning.
No trace of fog.
* * *
The world only began to feel completely real to Wendy again when the carriage drew to a halt in front of the church. Flowers had been arranged over the door and on the steps, and the beauty of the moment made her breath catch in her throat. A smile spread across her lips and bubbled into laughter and she turned toward her grumpy banker of a father and saw that he was smiling as well – beaming, in fact – and his eyes were damp with love for her, and with pride.
“Never thought you’d see the day, did you, Father?” Wendy teased. George Darling cleared his throat to compose himself. “There were times,” he allowed. “But here we are, my dear. Here. We. Are.”
He took a deep breath and stepped out of the carriage, itself also festooned with arrangements donated by friends of Wendy’s mother who were part of the committee behind the Chelsea Flower Show. A pair of ushers emerged from the church, but Wendy’s father waved them back and offered his own hand to guide her down the carriage steps.
George stepped back. He’d never been sentimental, and now he seemed to fight against whatever emotions welled within him. Amongst those she expected, Wendy saw a flicker of uneasiness.
“You look beautiful,” he told her.
Wendy knew it was true. She seldom indulged in outright vanity, but on her wedding day, and in this dress… well, she would forgive herself. Cream-white satin, trimmed in simple lace, it had been one of the very first she had laid eyes upon and she had loved it straight away. Cut low at the neck, with sleeves to the elbows, it had a simple elegance reflected in the simplicity of the veil and the short train. Her father helped gather her train, spread it out behind her, and took her hand as they faced the church.
“Miss Darling,” said one of the ushers, whose name she’d suddenly forgotten. She felt horrible, but it seemed that her thoughts were a jumble.
“I’m about to be married,” she said, just to hear the words aloud.
“You are, my dear,” George agreed. “Everyone is waiting.”
The forgotten usher handed her a wreath of orange blossoms and then the other one opened the church door, and moments later Wendy found herself escorted down the aisle by her grumpy-turned-doting father. A trumpet played and then the organ, and all faces turned toward her, so that she saw all of them and none of them at the same time. She smelled the flowers and her heart thundered and she began to feel dizzy and swayed a bit.
“Wendy,” her father whispered to her, his grip tightening on her arm. “Are you all right?”
Ahead, at the end of the aisle, the bridesmaids and ushers had spread out to either side. The vicar stood on the altar, dignified and serious. Her mother sat in the front row, her brother John stood amongst the ushers. And there was Jasper, so dapper in his morning coat, his black hair gleaming, his blue eyes smiling.
She no longer felt dizzy. Only safe and sure.
Until the little boy darted out from behind a column – the little boy with grim eyes.
“Stop this!” he shouted. “You must stop!”
Wendy staggered, a terrible pain in her belly as if she were being torn apart inside. She gasped and then covered her mouth, glancing about through the mesh of her veil, certain her friends and relations would think her mad – again. They would think her mad again.
But their eyes were not on her. Those in attendance were staring at the little boy in his ragged clothes, and when the second boy ran in from the door to the sacristy and the vicar shouted at him, furious at the intrusion, Wendy at last understood.
The vicar could see the boys.
They could all see.
“Out of here, you little scoundrels!” the vicar shouted. “I won’t allow you to ruin the day—”
The grim-eyed boy stood before Jasper, who could only stare in half-amused astonishment. That sweetness was simply Jasper’s nature, that indulgence where any other bridegroom would have been furious.
The third boy stepped from the shadows at the back of the altar as if he had been there all along. And, of course, he must have been.
“No, no, no,” Wendy said, backing away, tearing her arm from her father’s grip. She forced her eyes closed, because they couldn’t be here. Couldn’t be real.