There were shelves,and shelves, and shelves packed to the brim and overflowing with books, bottles, baubles, statues, and more. Nothing made sense. It was as if the creator had thrown every possible item into the room with utter disregard for any sense of logic. Every time she turned she saw something new, and whenever she looked back somewhere, what she’d first thought she’d seen was gone.
It was sheer chaos.
And in the middle of it all, was Pan.
This was the child-like form Jo knew, dressed again in one of her ruffled garments. The woman Jo had seen in the glade was gone and that fact brought no small amount of ease. A smile swooped across Pan’s face.
“What do you think of my collection?”
Jo kept her mouth shut. She had nothing to say.
“Oh. . . come now, don’t be like that,” Pan whined softly. “You have to thinksomething. Especially after I showed you so much.”
“What did you show me?” Jo finally asked, her voice almost cracking at the end. She did know, but she wanted to hear Pan say it.
“Truth.”
“Enough of the games,” she snapped. “I know the truth.”
Pan waved a hand through the air and fell backward. The darkness from before crept out of the shadows at her behest. It rose up quickly, solidifying into the shape of a chair before shearing off like a snake shedding its skin—a throne cast in gold in its place.
“Do you knowthetruth?” Pan hummed. “Or do you knowSnow’struth?”
“Don’t waste your breath, you’re not going to turn me from him, or make me suspicious.” Jo knew that he would not keep from her something that would harm her. Not intentionally, at least. And especially not after everything he had shared. If there was more to be said, it was merely because there had not yet been time to say it.
“You reek of him.” Pan scrunched her nose. “I can see his magic clinging to you. It’s so bright, so. . . orderly. Isn’t it suffocating to be wrapped up so tightly?”
“If there’s one thing I want to be wrapped up in, it’s Snow,” Jo retorted. She looked around the room. “Not. . .this.”
The scrunch of Pan’s nose deepened. It hitched her upper lip, drawing it upward and setting it to twitch slightly. The woman-girl narrowed her eyes. “It is not your decision to make, not when you are the embodiment of theft.”
“What theft?”
“The gods feared me—feared us. Before them, there was nothing, only us. Then Light—Zeus, they called him—came like a bolt of lighting into our delicious void. He sparked life, and brought Order to help rule it, and then the rest of them came. They took everything from me, even you.”
Pan stood and Jo took a step back. She suddenly seemed like a dog on a chain, snapping and biting, waiting for the thick rust to finally eat away at the metal and set her free with a snap.
“Theyfearedus. All of them. And it was glorious. Do you not remember? You must, the feeling of that power, the feeling of their fear.” Pan set to pacing as she spoke. “They did the one thing they could do.” She stopped all at once. Her head lolled, as if all the muscles in her neck had gone limp at once. Her eyes gazed across every inch of the room before landing on Jo. “Then Snow, Creation, did the one thing they wouldn’t do. Clever, I’ll give him that. . . But there’s not much longer now until we’re together again.”
Jo wanted to ask more. She wanted to pick apart every little bit of information. But Pan was giving her a waterfall and Jo only had a teacup to try to collect it in. She didn’t have enough time to piece it together and, what’s more, didn’t have the mental fortitude.
Fear ripped through her as she was frozen again, just like in the pool, laid bare under that cat-like stare. Unlike Snow’s penetrating gaze, this was almost brutal. It was as if Pan was forcefully ransacking the contents of her mind. Tearing apart the drawers of memories, throwing them like clothes scattered across the floor and then—
A smile.
“Do you remember our deal?”
“W-what?”
“Our deal.” Pan held out a hand and the room behind her changed into an exact replica of Jo’s hacking set-up in the recreation room. “You promised to show me your magic.”
Jo had all but forgotten. It felt so, so long ago now. “No,” she whispered.
“Now now,” Pan cooed. “Don’t go back on a deal. You wouldn’t do that,hmm?”
“I want to leave.” Jo didn’t know what she’d been looking for, but she’d found more than she ever wanted. “Let me out.”
“You can leave at any time.”
