Unhooked(34)
Instead he leans in close, like he wants to tell me a secret. “Welcome to Neverland, Gwendolyn.”
How long ago was it that the Captain gave me those same words, not as a gift as Pan offers them, but as a threat, a warning? It feels so much longer than a handful of days. And with my memories of the time before so hazy, it’s hard to imagine I even had a life before my captivity on the Captain’s ship or before I was brought to this world.
I take a deep breath to steady myself and use the opportunity to look around. We are in the center of a wide, level valley. On one end, across a smooth, clear lake, water glints in the morning light as it cascades from a steep rise of rose-colored rock. And anchoring that rock is a towering waterfall that’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. The falls remind me of the tumbled tiers of a wedding cake and each step throws up clouds of mist that shimmer in the soft light. It’s like watching a living prism, the rainbows within the mist shifting and dancing over the many pools.
The Captain had tried to explain that we were no longer in the human world. After all I saw on his ship, after all I experienced, I came to believe him, but now, standing here in this place in the very heart of the island, my heart understands the truth. “This really is Neverland,” I say with a kind of strangled awe. And if this is Neverland, how much more could be true?
Pan takes me by the hand and leads me forward, closer to the edge of the mirrorlike surface of the lake. “Welcome home, Gwendolyn, my dear.”
Home.
A feeling of joy crashes through me, and for a moment I can’t help but accept the absolute rightness of his words. A longing wells inside me so startling, so complete, it shocks me.
Because this place isn’t my home. And I can’t let Neverland become my home. But there is something about the land around me that pulls at me. Calls to me in a way I cannot remember ever having felt before.
Covering my reaction the best I can, I gently pull my hand away from his grip and touch the stones at my wrist, forcing myself to remember my life from before. But the memories that surface are hazy and indistinct. And they aren’t easy or comforting.
I can’t seem to envision any of the places I’ve lived, but I can remember the overwhelming feeling of rootlessness, of being unsettled and out of place time and again. Of knowing that each move we made was only a stop—a pause that let me settle just long enough to almost get comfortable before I’d be uprooted again. But I don’t remember any of those stops ever really feeling like a home.
Even through the murkiness of my memory, I know I’ve never had a place that truly felt like my own. But as I open my eyes again and take in the beauty around me, Pan’s words of welcome echoing in my head, there is a traitorous part of me that wonders whether this could be the home I’ve been looking for. With all this beauty around me and the almost comforting pulse of the island beneath my feet, a voice deep inside me whispers, Would it really be so bad?
I step back from Pan, unsettled by how easily I almost let myself give in. The Captain had warned me about this—he’d told me Neverland would tempt me to betray everything I once knew. I hadn’t understood . . . not really. But maybe now I’m starting to.
I can’t forget who I am and where I need to get back to. I won’t let myself be taken in by this world again.
“Gwendolyn?” Pan asks, his voice filled with concern. When I don’t answer, he lifts my chin gently. “Are you well?”
I give a slight nod. “I’m fine,” I tell him, finally forcing myself to meet his eyes.
Safe on the ground and with the morning sun finally lighting the world, I take my first real look at him. He certainly doesn’t seem like any Peter Pan I’ve ever seen. He’s no child, for one. He’s taller than the Captain, but he looks about the same age—Pan, too, is maybe a couple of years older than I am. Though the barest hint of light stubble lines his jaw, his face is missing the worn, exhausted quality I now realize was the Captain’s defining feature.
His white-blond hair stands on end in an artful disarray that gives the impression he’s constantly in flight, like the wind itself can’t keep its greedy fingers out of those unruly locks. Just as I’d suspected back on the ship, he’s beautiful. But I see now that he has a hint of darkness to him, a suggestion of danger that doesn’t so much warn you away as make you want to lean closer, to learn his secrets.
He’s wearing the same tight, jaggedly stitched pants as Fiona and a high-necked vest that exposes the well-defined muscles in his bare arms and chest. The pale skin over his collarbone and around each bicep and wrist is adorned with bloodred tattoos that remind me of something.
It takes a second for the memory to bubble up, murky and indistinct as all the others, and then I realize where I’ve seen markings like Pan’s tattoos before—they’re similar to the rune stones my mom has always made and collected.
That recognition helps me remember her a little more clearly—every time we moved, she would take her collection of small, smooth pebbles and line our new windowsills with them. In every new place we went, she found another stone and painstakingly carved a crooked symbol into its surface. She’d wrap each stone carefully and keep them with her until she could set them out on the next window. My mom always said the runes she used were old Celtic symbols for protection—
I reach out without thinking, and touch one of the red markings that adorns the skin below Pan’s collarbone. The red lines aren’t smooth like a tattoo should be. They’re raised, ever so slightly. They’re not just tattoos, I realize. They’re scars. Someone carved these symbols into his skin.