I press my lips together, twisting them into a twisted smile. “Best of luck,” I tell Naia. Not that she needs it. She has her legs, she has her prince, and she has a happy ending. Which all in all is more than I ever got.
I have trauma from morphing into another species, a locked-up pirate, and a home I thought I hated but I’m fighting to get back to anyway. I suppose that if this whole ordeal has taught me anything it’s that I don’t hate my life, it’s just that I’m burnt out.
Maybe I should have been a bit more like James and viewed this as a vacation and tried to enjoy myself more. I finger the bracelet as I slip down the halls.
Maybe once we get home, James and I ought to take a trip together, one that really is a vacation. That way we can relax and recover from this whole ordeal together.
I draw up short at that thought, and it’s a good thing too because a guard rounds the corner up ahead. I quickly duck behind a column.
However, my mind isn’t in the game. Instead it’s racing with thoughts of James and me in the modern world. Wait, what would that make us?
I feel like we are a bit more than coworkers, but are we quite friends? I think about James risking his hand to save my life and buying me a souvenir. Friend doesn’t seem to be the right word for it either. I give my head a sharp shakeas the guard disappears down the hallway to Naia’s room. Nope, I don’t have time to think about this right now.
I take a note out of James’s book and stuff these thoughts into a box to return to later. One thing, at least, is certain: James and I are nowsomething. We have been through too much together to not be. Once we have lived through this, we can discuss the specifics.
As I walk, I realize that I don’t know where the dungeons are. I’m just taking turns at random, hoping that if I came up with the rest of this world, I’ll be able to find the dungeon on instinct like somehow its location is buried deep in my subconscious. So, I let my feet guide me.
I duck down one hall because it is dark and another because it feels a bit more dank. Soon enough, I find myself in a long, dimly lit hallway. It has no outlet, save for a single closed wooden door at the very end that just screamsdungeon. A guard sits on a chair outside the doorway, wearing a tabard and chainmail and one of those shiny medieval-looking helmets that obscure the face.
I suppose, it was asking for too much to hope that the dungeon was unguarded.
If I were Moira, I would have the siren’s song I took from Naia. In fact, by this point in the plot she had used it to enthrall Frederick and take him with her. Naia had followed,finally beginning to suspect her cousin (only after trading her soul, though, silly girl).
That way all four of the key characters of the plot were in the dungeon at the beginning of the climax so that they could all be transported to Neverland.
But the plot has changed. I don’t have the siren’s song. I threw it off the dock. Frederick, for all I know, is sleeping soundly in his bed, and Naia has her soul still intact.
Yet, one key thing is the same. James is locked in the dungeon, and I have to rescue him before Peter Pan gets here.
When I first read the story of Peter Pan, I was enthralled by the boy who never grew up, but as I grew older and reread my favorite tale, I found it to be far darker than I’d imagined. It had almost seemed as though Neverland was a sort of purgatory where Wendy and her brother’s souls were kept as they fought for their life against some illness. They got better and so were able to escape Neverland.
But the same could not be said for the lost boys.
Macabre, I know, but I suppose that’s just the type of person I am. My other favorite story growing up was a tale about a girl turning into sea foam at the end. It’s no wonder that Moira and Hook’s story took such a dark turn, especially when I made Peter Pan a bit more like the character I experienced the last time I read the tale.
Still, it leaves me with the problem of what I’m going to do about the guard in the hallway. I don’t have the siren’s song anymore, and without it or her potions, Moira was always powerless. It was part of what drove her to seek revenge that feeling of powerlessness.
I put my chin up, throw back my shoulders, and stride forward. “I hope you know who I am,” I say in my most authoritative tone, trying to draw on my inner Moira—if she exists at all.
The guard stares at me silently.
I flip my hair over my shoulder. “I’m the prince’s special guest and I demand to have words with the man who would dare to harm my cousin.”
The guard continues to stare, and for a second, I think that’s it, game over. I’m not getting into the dungeon, but then he jerks his head toward the door. “Watch your step, the stairs are steep.”
With that, I’m free to proceed. I kind of don’t want to. I know that if I go down the stairs, I’m just moving closer to the end of the script and my inevitable death.
If I run now, I might just live. I’d have to resign myself to living life in this world. I could be a fisher woman, or try to pick up alchemy with my inner-Moira as my guide. I would miss modern conveniences, but I could probablylive a good life. After all, I’m used to having to grind to eke out an existence.
I’d be alive, but it would come at the price of having to leave James behind to rot in this dungeon at the mercy of Peter Pan, and if not Peter Pan then in the very least an enraged Prince Frederick.
I already know I can’t do that. Life isn’t worth it if I abandon James in order to live it.
I take a deep breath and enter the dungeon.
