Wendy, Darling Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Leave us a Review

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1: Darling

  2: Never, Never

  3: Second Star to The Right

  4: Lost Boys

  5: Straight On ’Til Morning

  6: Hide and Seek

  7: Let’s Play War

  8: The Hunt

  9: The Frozen Girl

  10: Make Believe

  11: The Forbidden Path

  12: Peter’s Secret

  13: Here be Monsters

  14: Shadow Play

  15: Home

  Acknowledgments

  “This book hooked me immediately with Wendy’s voice and rage and longing… what Wise does with the Peter Pan mythos here is nothing short of astonishing”

  Sam J. Miller, Nebula Award-winning author of Blackfish City

  “A dark and delightful retelling of Peter Pan. Wendy, Darling is a gorgeous achievement, and one you don’t want to miss”

  Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens

  “Wendy, Darling is a daring, gothic re-envisioning of everything we think we know – and an important, vivid adventure”

  Fran Wilde, two-time Nebula award-winning, World Fantasy finalist author of Updraft

  “Richly imagined, surprisingly dark, and heartbreakingly beautiful, this daring reimagining doesn’t only revisit the myth, it brings it up to date”

  Marian Womack, author of The Swimmers

  “The horror-tinged feminist Peter Pan retelling I never knew I needed… a brilliant re-imagining of a classic boy’s club story”

  Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, author of ‘Mantles’

  “A gorgeously imagined journey into the unfathomable depths of childhood myth”

  Kelly Robson, author of Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach

  “Neverland is more nightmare than dream… This rich tale of memory and magic is sure to resonate with fans of reimagined children’s stories”

  Publishers Weekly

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  Wendy, Darling

  Print edition ISBN: 9781789096811

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781789096828

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  www.titanbooks.com

  First edition June 2021

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  © A.C. Wise 2021. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  For everyone who has ever dreamed of flying

  DARLING

  LONDON 1931

  There is a boy outside her daughter’s window.

  Wendy feels it, like a trickle of starlight whispering in through a gap, a change in the very pressure and composition of the air. She knows, as sure as her own blood and bones, and the knowledge sends her running. Her hairbrush clatters to the floor in her wake; her bare feet fly over carpeted runners and slap wooden floorboards, past her husband’s room and to her daughter’s door.

  It is not just any boy, it’s the boy. Peter.

  Every inch of her skin wakes and crawls; the fine hairs all along the back of her neck stand on end—the storm secreted between her bones for years finally breaking wide. Peter. Here. Now. After so long.

  She wants to shout, but she doesn’t know what words, and as Wendy skids to a halt, her teeth are bared. It isn’t a grimace or a smile, but a kind of animal breathing, panicked and wild.

  Jane’s door stands open a crack. A sliver of moonlight— unnaturally bright, as if carried to London from Neverland— spills across the floor. It touches Wendy’s toes as she peers through the gap, unable for a moment to step inside.

  Even though she’s still, her pulse runs rabbit-quick. Backlit against that too-bright light is the familiar silhouette: a slender boy with his fists planted on his hips, chest puffed out and chin tipped up, his hair wild. There is no mistaking Peter as he hovers just beyond the second-floor window. She blinks, and the image remains, not vanishing like every other dream stretched between now and then. Between the girl she was and the woman she’s become.

  Of course, Wendy thinks, because this may not be the house she grew up in, but it’s still her home. Of course he would find her, and of course he would find her now. Bitterness chases the thought—here and now, after so long.

  At the same time, she thinks no, no, please no, but too-long fingers already tap the glass. Without waiting for her say-so, the window swings wide. Peter enters, and Wendy’s heart swoops first, then falls and falls and falls.

  Once invited, always welcome—that’s his way.

  Peter doesn’t notice Wendy as she pushes the hall door open all the way. He flies a circle around the ceiling, and she wills her daughter to stay asleep, wills her tongue to uncurl from the roof of her mouth. Her legs tremble, holding her on the threshold, wanting to fold and drop her to the floor. It’s such an easy thing for him to enter, and yet her own body betrays her, refusing to take one step into her daughter’s room, in her own house.

  It’s unfair. Everything about Peter always was, and it hasn’t changed. After years of her wanting and waiting, lying and hoping, he’s finally here.

  And he isn’t here for her.

  Peter lands at the foot of Jane’s bed. The covers barely dimple under his weight, a boy in form, but hollow all the way through. Maybe it’s the motion, or the light spearing in from the hall behind Wendy, but Jane half-wakes, rubbing at her eyes. A shout of warning locks in Wendy’s throat.

  “Wendy,” Peter says.

  Hearing him say her name, Wendy is a child again, toes lifting from the ground, taking flight, about to set off on a grand and delicious adventure. Except he’s not looking at her, he’s looking at Jane. Wendy bites the inside of her cheek, bites down in place of a scream. Does he have any idea how long it’s been? Swallowing the red-salt taste of her blood finally unlocks her throat.

  “Peter. I’m here.” It isn’t the shout she wishes, only a half-whispered and ragged thing.

  Peter turns, his eyes bright as the moonlight behind him. They narrow. Suspicion first, then a frown.

  “Liar,” he says, bold and sure. “You’re not Wendy.”

  He makes as if to point at Jane, evidence, but Wendy’s answer stops him.

  “I am.” Does he hear the quaver, as much as she tries to hold her voice steady?

  She should call Ned, her husband, downstairs in his study, either so absorbed in his books or asleep over them as to be oblivious to her flight down the hall. It is what a sensible person would do. There’s an intruder in their home, in their daughter’s room. Jane is in danger. Wendy swallows, facing Peter alone.


  “It’s me, Peter. I grew up.”

  Peter’s expression turns into a sneer, Jane forgotten, all his attention on Wendy now. Jane looks in confusion between them. Wendy wants to tell her daughter to run. She wants to tell her to go back to sleep; it’s only a dream. But the mocking edge in Peter’s voice needles her, pulling her focus away.

  “What’d you go do that for?”

  Wendy’s skin prickles again, hot and cold. The set of his mouth, arrogant as ever, the flicker-brightness of his eyes daring her to adventure, daring her to defy his word-as-law.

  “It happens.” Wendy’s voice steadies, anger edging out fear. “To most of us, at least.”

  Peter. Here. Real. Not a wild dream held as armor against the world. The years unspool around her as Wendy finally manages to step fully into her daughter’s room. And that armor, polished and patched and fastened tight over the years, cracks. For a terrible moment, Jane is forgotten. Wendy is a creature made all of want, aching for the cold expression to melt from Peter’s face, aching for her friend to take her hand and ask her to fly away with him.

  But his hand remains planted firmly on his hip, chin tilted so he can look down at her from his perch on the bed. Wendy takes a second step, and her armor is back in place. She takes a third step, and anger churns stronger than desire—dark water trapped beneath a thick layer of ice.

  Wendy clamps her arms by her side, refusing to let one turn traitor and reach toward Peter. She is no longer the heartbroken girl left behind. She is what she has made of herself over the years. She held onto the truth, even when Michael and John forgot. She survived being put away for her delusions, survived the injections, calmatives, and water cures meant to save her from herself. She fought, never stopped fighting; she refused to let Neverland go.

  It’s been eleven years since St. Bernadette’s, with its iron fences and high walls, full of frowning nurses and cruel attendants. A place meant to make her better, to cure her, though Wendy knows she was never sick at all. And here is the proof, standing before her, on the end of her daughter’s bed.

  Wendy straightens, hardening the line of her jaw, and meets Peter’s eye. In the last eleven years she’s built a life for herself, for her husband and her daughter. She is not that lost and aching girl, and Peter has no power over the Wendy she’s become.

  “Peter—” Wendy hears her own voice, stern, admonishing. The voice of a mother, but not the kind Peter ever wanted her to be.

  Before she can get any farther, Peter shakes his head, a single sharp motion, dislodging her words like a buzzing gnat circling him. His expression is simultaneously bored and annoyed.

  “You’re no fun.” He spins as he says it, a fluid, elegant motion. Peter blurs, and Wendy thinks he’s about to leave, but instead he seizes Jane’s hand. “Never mind. I’ll take this Wendy instead.”

  Peter leaps, yanking Jane into the air. Jane lets out a startled cry, and Wendy echoes it—a truncated burst of sound. She isn’t quick enough to close the space between them as Peter dives for the window, Jane in tow. Instead, Wendy falls forward, bashing her knee painfully and catching herself on the window sill.

  Wendy’s fingertips brush Jane’s heel and close on empty air. Peter spirals into the night, a cock’s crow trailing in his wake, so familiar, so terrible it overwhelms her. Wendy doesn’t hear if her daughter calls for her; the only sound in the world is the ringing echo of Peter’s call as two child-sized figures disappear against a field of stars.

  LONDON 1917

  “What is this place?” Wendy asks as the hired car comes to a halt outside a massive iron gate surrounded by a dense green hedge too tall to see over.

  Visible through the gate, a long path of crushed stone leads to an imposing building, brick facade and blank-eyed windows glaring out at them. John sighs, his voice tight.

  “This is St. Bernadette’s, Wendy.”

  John doesn’t wait for the driver. He opens his door and circles to open Wendy’s as well, taking her arm either to help her or keep her from running away.

  “We spoke about this, and Dr. Harrington, remember? He’s going to help you get well.”

  Wendy bites the inside of her cheek; of course she remembers. Her brothers are the forgetful ones; all she can do is remember. But the bitter, petty part of her wants to make this as difficult as possible for John. She wants to make him explain it over and over again, how he plans to leave her here, wash his hands of his mad sister. What would their parents think? If Mama and Papa had never boarded that cursed ship, the one meant to be unsinkable until it met an iceberg, would they allow John and Michael to treat her this way? She’s thrown that very question at him more than once, watching his face crumple and taking delight in it. Yet, through it all, her brother’s resolve hasn’t wavered.

  Lines gather around John’s mouth, the same expression he wore as a child, always trying to be so serious and grown up. Only in Neverland had Wendy ever seen him truly be a little boy. Playing follow the leader, chasing Peter through the treetops, flying. Why would he ever want to forget that and leave it behind?

  She studies John in profile as they approach the gate, the way the sun highlights the proud line of his nose, the firm set of his jaw, catching in his glasses and erasing his eyes. His poor vision had kept him from the war, but so many other burdens—herself included—had fallen on him instead. He’s still young, twenty-one, and just barely a man now, but already his shoulders stoop, carrying the weight of years of a man twice his age.

  He must feel her watching, but he doesn’t look her way. The ache in Wendy’s chest is replaced by the first edging-in of panic. John truly means to go through with this; he means to have her committed.

  She pushes the trapped-bird flutter down as the gate clanks open, guided by a man in a white uniform, his expression stoic. John looks briefly pained, and for a moment, Wendy considers relenting. At least he had the decency to see her imprisoned in person. Michael refused to accompany her. But why would he? The way she treated him was the final straw that forced John’s hand. She screamed at her baby brother, she hurt him when he was already so fragile after coming home from the war, broken in body and broken in soul. John had no choice—he’s sending her away for her own protection, and even more so for Michael’s.

  Wendy looks away from her brother, from the man in white, her throat suddenly thick. If she keeps looking at John she will break, and she’s determined to be jailed with her head held high.

  She focuses on the grounds to distract herself. Once upon a time, this place would have been a fine country estate, and it still looks the part. On either side of the path, emerald-bright lawns stretch away to the iron-laced hedges in front, and high stone walls on the three other sides. There are flower beds and shade-giving trees, croquet hoops staked into the grass, and small groupings of tables and chairs. It’s almost idyllic. Here, she could forget the rest of the world is at war. She could—if she were to allow herself—forget that St. Bernadette’s is a cage, but that’s something she never intends to do.

  Despite her best efforts, panic spreads, blood beneath the skin turning to a bruise. Should she try one more time to explain herself? If she lies convincingly enough, perhaps John will let her stay home and help with Michael. His leg still pains him, a lingering effect of the shrapnel that tore it apart, but the dreams are worse. Wendy and John have both woken to the sounds of Michael’s troubled sleep, believing himself back in the trenches, or in the base hospital awaiting another surgery before finally being sent home. If she could encourage him in his therapy, and be there to soothe the memories and vision away, maybe Michael himself would even forgive her in time.

  But, no, she’s out of chances. John and Michael may not see it, but she did try. And she failed. After their parents’ deaths, she tried to be a mother, keep everyone fed and clothed. A disinterested uncle had come to stay with them, a guardian in name only. Their mother’s brother, a man Wendy had met only once as a very young child. He had done only the bare minimum required
of him to look after their welfare; all else had fallen to Wendy, John, and Michael themselves. John, always so serious, had done his best to become the man of the house, taking all the responsibility onto his shoulders that he could, losing even more of his childhood in the process. If any bit of Neverland had remained in his mind, it vanished then. So young, and yet too old for silly stories and games, for make-believe.

  None of them had taken time for grief. It hadn’t been afforded to them. Their uncle certainly had no interest in giving space to their sorrow; any display of emotion at all was considered unseemly. Then Michael had gone to war and come home broken. And the silences that stretched between her and John, between all of them, had grown worse.

  She should have kept to those silences, but the truth came bursting out. Watching her brothers suffer—John with the weight of the world on his shoulders, Michael with his eyes full of ghosts—Wendy couldn’t hold her tongue. With John of age to truly become the man of the house, and their uncle finally gone, she’d wanted to remind them of happier times, or so she’d told herself. Only instead of speaking reasonably, she’d shouted. Lashing out, insisting they see the world her way, refusing to listen. The more they’d resisted her, the more she’d kept on shouting. Until she couldn’t see her way clear to stopping, couldn’t find her way back home to common ground.

  Anger became her habit, Neverland her defense. The more they’d tried to draw her out, the further she’d retreated into their shared past, to save herself from their denial, to save Neverland itself, as determined to remember it as John and Michael were to forget. No, John might as well ask her to cut off a limb; she wouldn’t be able to do that either. She cannot, and will not, deny Neverland. Even now.

  Wendy stiffens as Dr. Harrington, impeccably dressed as always, walks down the path to join them. She keeps her gaze on his polished shoes, timing her breath to his steps. White stone crunches beneath his soles; his watch chain bounces, glittering with his motion. Anything to avoid looking into his eyes, into the face of the man who will be her jailor for who knows how long.