Lost in the Never Woods(22)

He was still watching her with those startling blue eyes.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she told him. He quickly looked down, but she could just see the corner of his smile.

Carefully, she shifted her weight to her good leg, letting the other drop a bit and relax. Peter worked his fingers between the knots of spirals and gave them a quick tug, and suddenly her leg was free. Wendy’s foot dropped to the wooden floor and she let out a surprised yelp.

As she toppled forward, she snatched Peter’s hand to brace herself. His palm was rough but very warm. Wendy quickly retreated, causing her to lose balance again. She did an odd dance on one foot until she limped free of the ruined cot.

Peter stood and there was a wide grin on his face.

Wendy scowled. “What?”

“That looked funny,” he said with a shrug.

“Shut up.”

He made no effort to hide his amusement. “Does it feel okay?”

“It feels like I got my leg caught in a bear trap,” she said tersely as she put her foot down and tried resting her weight on it. The cuts stung, but there didn’t seem to be any other damage.

But at least she could move now, even if she was seconds away from falling through the half-rotted floorboards. “What are you doing here?” she asked him. She heard the harshness in her own voice begin to slip away.

“Well, I just got you unstuck from the bed springs—”

“No, I mean what are you doing here?”

Peter groaned and tipped his head back. “Not this again.”

Wendy closed her eyes for a moment to rein in her frustration. “I mean,” she started again, “why are you in this old hunting shack?”

Peter glanced around and shrugged his shoulders. “’Cause I’m staying here?” he said slowly, as if to judge whether or not he was answering her question right.

It didn’t make sense. Why on earth would someone willingly decide to stay in a place like this? The woods had at least a dozen hunting shacks tucked into the logging roads. There was no sign of anyone other than Peter being here in the last several years.

“Where are your parents?” she asked. There was no way he was of legal age. He was much older than the magical boy, Peter Pan, that Wendy knew from her stories, but he definitely wasn’t eighteen.

“Haven’t got any.” He said it so simply, and with such lack of importance, that it took a moment for it to register.

He didn’t have any parents? So he was an orphan? Was he homeless?

“Are—are there other people in the woods?”

He shrugged. “Not that I’ve seen.”

“So what are you doing in the woods?” Wendy swallowed past a lump in her throat. A question was bubbling up that she needed to ask, but she was frightened of the answer. “Did someone … bring you here? Were you kidnapped?”

But Peter laughed. “What? No! Jeez, what is it with you and kidnapping?”

And the frustration was back.

“If that’s not it, then what are you doing here?” Wendy snapped. “Why were you in the middle of the road? Why did you come to my house?”

“Because…” His eyes dropped to the floor. “I need your help.”

“What do you need my help with?” Wendy asked slowly. A chill ran across her skin. The flame of the oil lantern flickered behind the dirty glass.

Peter frowned. “I need you to help me find my shadow.”

Wendy stared at him.

Again, he had said it so simply, as if this weren’t a completely bizarre thing to say to her. She forced a laugh, not knowing how else to respond.

Seriously? Was he messing with her? “Uh, did you try looking on the floor?”

Peter tipped his head to the side, an eyebrow cocked like that was a ridiculous question. “You’re kidding, right?”

Wendy let out a huff and rolled her eyes. “It’s right th—”

She pointed to the floor where his shadow was. Or rather, where his shadow was supposed to be.

The ground below him had no shadow. It was just his feet—his very dirty, bare feet—and then the weather-worn planks. It was such a small thing to be so very wrong to the point that it was unsettling. It was like a Photoshop fail, but in person.

“That’s not—” Wendy glanced up and Peter looked expectant. Her eyes went to the walls around them, searching for some indication, some smudge in the firelight that indicated Peter’s shadow, but there was nothing.

Wendy examined her own shadow. It flickered and shifted below her, mimicking her movement across the wall.

Her shadow was there, but where was his?

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Wendy fixed Peter with a glare. Surely, this was some kind of weird trick. “That’s not possible.”

“I told you so,” Peter said. He just stood there, looking infuriatingly placid.

“How did you do that?” she demanded. “You have to have a shadow—everything has a shadow!” Not in the dark, of course, but there was enough firelight in the shack for her to have one, and the cots, and the small pile of firewood in the corner.

“It must be a trick of the light or something,” Wendy tried to reason with herself. She could probably search shadow magic tricks on YouTube and find an explanation. Wendy stepped closer to him, thinking maybe he was just standing in the perfect spot for all the light to bounce off him and not create a shadow—she wasn’t entirely sure how that worked.