Page 6 of Caging Darling

Peter must have returned last night. Pressed the faerie dust to my lips. I bet I melted into his touch. I don’t sense him in bed, but that doesn’t shock me. He used to hold me close in the mornings, cling to me like he thought letting go of me would cause my bones to come undone. Like I’d just unravel before him.

Peter has been restless as of late.

It’s strange. Missing his touch this morning. Missing his chest pressed to my back, his sturdy legs framing mine.

It’s not real. I know that.

I don’t particularly care.

There was a time when I would have fought the pleasure that snakes through my skin when he puts his hands on me. A time when I would have fortified my mind against his allure.

But the Mating Mark is strong, the bargain even stronger.

And it’s not as if there’s anyone around to help me resist.

I can remember the words John would have uttered, his warnings against Peter. But I can’t remember his voice anymore.

“It’s time to wake up,” Michael says again, shaking me by the shoulder this time. If I know my brother at all, the next attempt to get me out of bed will be an innocent placement of his feet directly on my stomach as he tries to balance standing on top of me.

I debate whether it would be worth it to wait him out, but my brother is nothing if not persistent. So I groan and rub at my temples, grabbing Michael’s hand. This serves the dual purpose of removing it from my shoulder while also keeping him from pinching me. I give his hand a little squeeze.

“Good morning, Wendy Darling.” Michael’s practically singing with delight that his attempts to wake me have been successful. The hammer still thuds against my temple, willing me to go back to sleep, back to the only true reprieve from my grim reality.

But I still have a brother who lives, so I shrug the knit blanket off and drag myself up and over to the side of the bed.

Michael’s other hand finds mine. He twines his fingers through mine and tugs, leading me stumbling over to the little village of toys he’s arranged neatly on the floor. Benjamin’s been busy at work whittling Michael new toys. I think every time he hears Michael call out for John, he whips his blade out and starts on a new one.

“John wants to play too,” says Michael, dragging me to the floor to sit cross-legged next to him as he rearranges his toysfor what I imagine is not the first time this morning. Still hazy-eyed, I scan the arrangement today for any new patterns, but find none.

My eyes are heavy as lead. There was a time when I was good at playing with Michael. A time I could enter his little world and sit with him in it.

Now I don’t know what to say. Which toys to pick up. How to reach him. My mind is sluggish, run dry of ideas. There’s just an empty nothingness, the knowledge that John is dead, and the faint craving for faerie dust on the back of my tongue that will compete for my attention with increasing intensity until Peter gives me my next dose.

I’ve almost succumbed to my eyes’ desire to shut when I glimpse a new toy among Michael’s collection. No, not a toy. A stick he must have gathered from outside the Den. Probably on a walk with Victor. He’s stuck it into the ground and tied a string to the top of it, and at the end of the string…

My vision blacks, and when it returns to me, it’s speckled and spotted.

There’s a carving of a boy hanging from the string.

My stomach churns, the vision of John’s corpse swaying from the reaping tree returning to my mind as vividly as if it’s in front of me, not a distant memory from nine months ago.

I can’t remember my brother’s voice, but I can remember the clammy touch of his skin, the bruises on his pale neck, the emptiness in his eyes. The crunch of his glasses against my feet.

I’d hoped Michael had forgotten.

That was foolish of me.

Anger writhes up within me. The urge to swipe my hand across Michael’s toys like a petulant child who knows she’s about to lose at a board game washes over me, but I’m too tired to act on it.

Besides, my brother doesn’t know any better. Or maybe he does, and this is just his way of processing what happened to John. His way of communicating what he can’t find the words for.

Michael builds models commemorating our brother’s death. I just do my best to drown out his memory altogether.

My hands find Michael’s dusty hair, and I scratch his scalp, right behind his ears. He shrugs his shoulders, but not in an attempt to push me away.

“I love you, Michael,” I whisper.

“Wendy Darling is sleeping,” he answers back.

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