Unhooked(69)

I was so scared of what had happened in the forest—the way the darkness had tempted me away from the path and into the unknown. So I did what my mom commanded. I locked the memory of that night down deep, and I never let myself think about what happened after that.

But I can’t say any of that aloud. Not yet. And he doesn’t ask me for it. Instead, he sits in the silence with me, and after a long while, he speaks softly, close to my ear. “There’s no shame in being afraid, lass. I know a bit about dreams, myself.”

I don’t know how to tell him that what I’d experienced wasn’t simply a dream, so I don’t say anything at first. I just watch the fire flicker, listening to the scuttling stir of monsters in the darkness beyond the safety of its glow. I think of the way Rowan was when I found him in the tunnels. I remember the wailing screams I heard almost every night I spent on his ship, and I understand then, I am not alone in fearing the secrets the darkness can reveal.

“Will you tell me?” I whisper, hoping his words can push away the memory of my own horrors.

He’s silent for a long moment, as though gathering his strength, and when he speaks, his voice comes out not as the steady cadence of a tale well told, but as the uneasy whisper of a man confessing. “It’s not always the same,” he says. “Sometimes I dream of before, sometimes of after, but most often, I dream of the night it happened.” He stops then, silent and still, and I think for a moment that he will not—maybe he cannot—go on.

But the memories I’ve unearthed have made me selfish. I need to feel less alone. I need to know I am not the only one carrying the impossible weight of memory this night. “The night what happened?” I ask, pushing him more than I have any right to.

“The night I killed my brother.”





But then the sky went red with hellfire.

And his brother was there, screaming something the boy could not hear.

And then he was not.





Chapter 31


THE WAY HIS VOICE BREAKS at the word brother makes my heart ache for him. I wait, watching the fire flicker before me, taking some comfort in the warmth of his body against me, trying to offer him some comfort in return. I’m not sure, though, if I want him to speak anymore or to stay silent.

“My whole life, all I wanted in the world was to be like my older brother, Michael. When the war started, we were both too young to go, but we followed the battles and the news like it was the grandest of adventures.”

His words are not what I expected, and I’m confused. “Which war?” I ask, trying to catch the thread of his tale before it spins away from me in the night.

“The Great War, of course. What other would there be?” he said, his brow creased in confusion.

When I do the math in my head, my vision swims. World War I was a hundred years ago, but Rowan doesn’t look older than twenty. I hadn’t even considered that time in Neverland could be different than time in my own world. How long had we been gone already? Weeks? Years? The idea sends a shiver of ice through me not even the fire roaring before me can melt.

“There have been plenty,” I say weakly.

“They promised our sacrifice would be the last.” Rowan pauses, as though gathering his courage with his words. “I should have expected that would be a lie as well,” he says darkly. Then he releases me and sets to work adding more debris to the fire. He is careful not to look at me as he speaks.

“The day Michael turned eighteen, he enlisted, of course. I was so bloody jealous of him the day he left. My mam was crying her eyes out, but Michael’s smile lit his whole face. I didn’t see him again for almost a year, when he was on leave. He looked so completely different—my Michael and yet not. There he was in his starched uniform, all gleaming with the bits and bobs he’d won for doing what soldiers do. When my time with him was over, he put me on the train for home, but I didn’t go. I found myself in a recruitment office, telling the man behind the desk I was nineteen years old. I could tell he didn’t believe me, but it didn’t matter. He took my name, and I signed the paper, and it was done.”

“How old were you really?”

He glances back at me. “That was the spring of ’17. I’d just turned sixteen the month before.”

Sixteen—he looked older than that now, but not nearly as old as he should have looked. “And they took you? Without any proof?”

“And why wouldn’t they? They needed men, and I was close enough.” His eyes turn back to the fire, and I know he is there, reliving his brother’s death again. “I never imagined it could be like that. They’d told us tales of blood and glory, of adventure and honor. And we went willingly, rushing toward our fates.” As he studies the fire, his mouth turns up, a wry smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “You’d think I would have seen Pan’s tale for the lie it was sooner.”

I don’t know what to say to him, so I don’t speak. I simply sit as witness to the story he tells.

“Michael thought he had to take care of me.” He huffs out a rough laugh. “He probably did at that. But it was my fault he went on that patrol the night it happened. I was angry at him for trying to mother me, so I volunteered. I was so convinced I was ready to be a man. So bloody convinced of my own bravery. Of course he volunteered as well.”