Page 78 of Losing Wendy
“Tell me about her. The Fate.” I hate how breathless my voice has gone, how thirsty I am for the story of the being who set my life on a path I couldn’t escape.
Peter’s face goes blank again, and I wonder if I’ve struck a nerve, picked at the crack in the dam of his larger-than-life exterior.
“You have to understand, growing up in the orphanage I did, there wasn’t much to look forward to in life. They’d keep us until we grew up. Reaching adulthood was about as good as having a noose tied around your neck for kids like us. Tossed out on the street without the orphanage to feed us. Most turned to thievery, made the wrong noble angry, and ended up on the wrong side of a noose. I can’t tell you how many of the older boys I saw hangingfrom the juniper tree in the middle of the town square, just weeks after they’d come of age. Growing up was a death sentence,” he says.
“Isn’t it always? At some point, I mean.”
The smile he offers me is almost sad. Almost. “I can’t imagine why you seek out such thoughts.”
I shrug, pulling my overcoat into myself, stroking the furs of my sleeve. “I like to know what to expect, what I should anticipate. Even if it’s pain, it’s not quite as frightening once you get a full view of it. Take it in for what it is.”
“Like me?” Peter says, swiping his hand with a flourish down his lithe body, wrapped head to foot in black leathers.
“No,” I say. “You’re just frightening. Only, in a different way.”
Peter’s eyes light with mischief, but he continues on with his story. “I wanted so badly never to grow up when I was a child. I’d seen death. My…” He blinks quickly, then pivots. “Well, I suppose you don’t have to have too grand of an imagination to figure out why I ended up in an orphanage. I’d seen death wrap its slimy fingers around someone I loved, seen the breath stolen from her sunken mouth. Seen the boys I used to play cards with and make bets with swollen with after-stench in the town square. I figured I’d find my way out of it, if I could.”
I wonder then if such dread of death is worse for the fae. From what I know of the legends, the fae used to be close to immortal, living hundreds of years. Their lifespan was cut short due to a curse a century and a half ago, though the curse only applies to fae born after the curse was enacted. But most of the fae were wiped out in the War, so if there are any with immortal lifespans, they’re likely few in number. I wonder what it’s like knowing your body possesses the capability of living a thousand years, but magic is keeping you from it. It stands to reason that Peter would try to outdo the curse through magic. As a child, he wouldn’t have been able to see that beating the curse, never growing up, would not save him from the cruelty of his society.
“I searched for a Fate, tried to trap one through all the clever means I could devise, but never once was I successful. When I cameof age, I convinced the warden to give me a position on the orphanage’s staff. But then,” he says, his throat going hoarse, “one night, everything changed. The children were asleep, but I was never a good sleeper. Not after years of training my body to stay up all hours of the night, watching for a Fate. I’d given up my search by then, but I heard a draft from the window, and she just…appeared.”
Peter’s eyes go glassy now, his awe still peeking through the surface. “She was hideous and beautiful and hidden in the shadows, but I knew she was one of the Fates. I was so sure she had come for me, after all those years. I called out to her as she approached the bed of one of the boys. It must’ve startled her, because she whipped around, and it was only then I realized she hadn’t come for me at all, but the boy in the bed across from me, still sound asleep. At first I suppose I was jealous, but now that I had her attention, I was sure I could keep it. I was always good at finding and keeping attention,” he says, an affectionate smile for his younger self playing on his face.
“The Sister appeared intrigued that I didn’t cower from her presence and that her sleeping spell had not worked on me. Upon further examination, she realized it was because I had been waiting for her, expecting her, that I was immune to her glamour. I begged her for a chance to prove myself. Promised I’d make any bargain she wished, if only I didn’t have to be thrown out onto the street where I would surely become a bloated corpse. You see, there was talk of a new warden overtaking the facility after unflattering rumors had circulated about the current warden. I wasn’t sure it would be as easy to convince the new warden to keep me on staff.”
“Why not?” I ask.
Peter blinks, then continues on with his story. As if he didn’t hear me at all. “The Sister stared at me a long while and informed me my aspirations were too meager. That they wouldn’t protect me from that which I truly feared. This confused me, but she had already turned back to the boy across from me. I scrambled out of my bed and followed her, watching as she unstoppered a vial of shimmering liquid.”
My heart pounds as I hang on every word of Peter’s. My mother never told me this part of the story, but one night I overheard her telling my father she’d had a nightmare that the shadowed woman had come for me. That Mother had consented as she’d pressed a vial, dripping with opal liquid, to my lips. My mother had instantly regretted it, but it had been too late. The potion had already stolen the color from my cheeks, the blood from my lips. I’d gotten the impression that, in reality, before the Fate had offered my mother a bargain to save my life, she’d offered to put me out of my suffering.
When I first read the story of the Sisters in a tattered faerie tale book caked with dust, I imagined it had been the Eldest Sister who had healed me. I’d been young and thought that since the Eldest Sister was obsessed with love, it had to have been her who promised me to her Shadow Keeper. Only after I learned of my mother’s nightmare did my attention shift to the Youngest Sister, who had appeared at my sickbed not to heal me, but to usher me to the grave without pain.
Peter continues. “She lowered it to his mouth, but I defied her, grabbing the vial before the liquid could brush his lips. I knew I had forfeited my life, then. I just expected the Sister to end me with a true death. Never did I anticipate the punishment that ensued, though even then, I didn’t realize it was a punishment.
“She told me I was a fool. That she was a Fate, and she could see that which I could not. Killing the child in his bed, in the middle of a deep slumber from which he would not wake, a full belly and a heart full of bedtime stories—that path would have been a mercy, she told me. She told me she was the most compassionate of her sisters, and that she had seen what their dark hearts had worked for this child. She told me there was a plague within the walls of the orphanage, one that had already infected the boy. A disease that he’d already spread to some of the others.”
I think of the way my parents described the plague to me. Sailors waking in the middle of the night to the sound of scraping metal, thinking someone was unfurling the chains that held the anchor,only to discover it was coming from their bunkmate’s chest. The ill losing limbs to a sickly necrosis.
“The Sister claimed death was a mercy. When she told me what the boy’s future held, my whole body trembled, the vial with it. I couldn’t imagine such a fate for my friend, and I immediately had to run to the latrine and unburden my stomach. She appeared pleased, at first, that I had heard of the pain to befall the boy and been affected by it. Perhaps she felt my reaction justified her perception of mercy. But I couldn’t bear to poison my friend, even knowing the future it would spare him.
“I refused to give the Fate her vial back. Instead, I offered an idea. It wasn’t too hard to come up with, not when it had been part of my dream all along. I asked her if the boy could be cured, his fate changed, but she said it could not. The illness had already taken hold.”
My stomach writhes, my breathing labored. “But he wasn’t showing symptoms yet, was he?” I ask. It doesn’t make sense to me, why the Sister could heal me, but not the boy, when I was a step away from death.
“According to the Sister,” Peter says, “it was about more than just the matter of a plague. The boy’s fate was already woven. Had been rewoven a thousand times and still ended with the same horrific result. The sickness would spread, eventually wiping out the entire village.
“I asked her if his fate would change if he were taken far away, quarantined outside of the village, but she said she’d already tried as much in his tapestry. The boy had to die. All other paths led to the same destination.
“I could feel myself desperately grasping for a solution that would spare his life. So I asked, what if we took him out of the realm? What if we wove him somewhere different, somewhere his fate could not reach him? Perhaps then he’d have a fair chance to recover. This, it seemed, struck a chord with the Fate, and I glimpsed a flash of regret in her shadows. It seemed clear to me she didn’t enjoy bringing swift death upon children, even if sheperceived it to be a mercy. She said it was indeed possible, though it would not guarantee keeping the boy from meeting another miserable fate. Perhaps the same one. But she agreed it increased his chances of a better life. She faded away, and when she returned, it was with a loom and thread. I watched her all night as she wove.
“When the time came to weave the boy in, I stuck out my hand to stop her. She couldn’t very well put him in a tapestry all by himself. That would be the worst torture of all. According to the Sister, this boy wasn’t the only one who had been infected. She’d come to the orphanage intending to take the lives of several boys, but there was a condition for saving them.
“She needed a Shadow Keeper. Someone to watch over not just the boys, but the realm itself. It was experimental, she said, and she was less than confident that this plan would work. So she agreed only under the condition I would become the Shadow Keeper and watch after the boys she planned to weave into the tapestry.”
“So that’s what Neverland is?” I ask. “A tapestry created by a Fate?”
“More or less,” he says, “though it operates differently from the rest of the realms. It was made under a sense of urgency, so if you were to travel across the sea, you’d find a void where the sea ended.”