{"id":58334,"date":"2026-02-02T12:09:59","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T17:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/?p=58334"},"modified":"2026-02-02T12:14:47","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T17:14:47","slug":"mother-darling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/fiction\/mother-darling\/","title":{"rendered":"Mother, Darling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><script>\nfunction showWarning_enUS() {\n    var content_warning_list = document.getElementById(\"content-warning-enUS\");\n\n    if (content_warning_list.style.display === \"none\") {\n        content_warning_list.style.display = \"block\";\n    } else {\n        content_warning_list.style.display = \"none\";\n    }\n}\n<\/script><div lang=\"en-US\" dir=\"ltr\" class=\"content-warning-container-ltr\"><p><strong class=\"content-warning-title\">Content warning:<\/strong><br\/><button onclick=\"showWarning_enUS()\">Show warnings<\/button><\/p><div class=\"content-warning\" id=\"content-warning-enUS\" style=\"display: none;\" ><p>This page contains: <\/p><ul><li>Body transformation<\/li><li> Violence\/combat<\/li><\/ul><\/div><br\/><\/div><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Wendy knew it wouldn\u2019t be long now before her daughter was taken. She had put the idea from her mind as long as she could, but now Jane was days away from turning thirteen.<\/p>\n<p>From the window of the nursery, Wendy saw Jane wobbling her way down Kensington Park Road on a borrowed bicycle, hair unbraided and wild like she\u2019d been flying. Wendy\u2019s throat seized with fear. Was that gold glittering in the girl\u2019s hair? Had the neighbors seen? Was that his laughter that rang out from Kensington Park across the way? Wendy ran into the street and hauled Jane off the contraption and into the house.<\/p>\n<p>The row they got into after was one of the worst ones yet, leaving Wendy\u2019s heart a limp and ragged thing by the end of it.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy had never wanted to move back into 14 Kensington Park Road, with its drafty windows, dilapidated frontage, and earthy reek of fairies, and she\u2019d certainly never wanted to raise Jane there. But her family\u2019s flat had been damaged in the first Zeppelin raid of the War, and her parents had insisted she take over the London house, themselves having retired to the country. Her brother John had fled to the Americas long before the War and her youngest brother Michael was later lost to it. Now, after a decade, with her siblings gone, the economy sunk, and her husband having twice been passed over for promotions, it seemed like the house would remain Wendy\u2019s responsibility, whether she wished it or not. But it was a roof and a hearth and so she had convinced herself that the smell of pixies was simply her imagination.<\/p>\n<p>Her husband had approached the ownership of No. 14 with his usual unbridled enthusiasm. He had long ago promised they\u2019d restore the moldering wallpaper; re-tile the fireplace where she\u2019d once split her lip; and do something about the cellar where she and her brothers had played hide-and-seek, which now nursed two inches of water after a rain. But her husband rarely had a true sense of their accounts and Wendy had known his aspirations for upkeep had the solidity of soap bubbles. So she had long ago taken it upon herself to whitewash the walls, put a cheap, but colorful, wool rug over the broken hearth, and lock the cellar door.<\/p>\n<p>Times had not gotten better. Jane\u2019s birthday was celebrated without fanfare: a small cake, new galoshes, and definitely no bicycle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe will come around,\u201d her husband said, putting a hand over Wendy\u2019s after Jane stormed out. But he was not the seawall that took the pounding of their daughter\u2019s rage. In its wake, Wendy could almost see her own father sitting in the seat Jane had just vacated, going over the accounts her mother had meticulously kept, wheedling over each penny spent on the children. Each small gift commensurate with a cost.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust because you are too hen-hearted to go anywhere, does not mean I am,\u201d Jane had said coldly, before scraping her uneaten birthday cake into the waste bin.<\/p>\n<p>So it came as little surprise that a mere week after Jane\u2019s modest disaster of a birthday, she vanished. The only traces that remained were a cold breath of air from the flung-open window and the unmistakable grave-rot of fairies. The milk of the full moon turned the nursery into a ghost of itself, shimmering with the shadows of all the children who\u2019d flown from it since the last time that window had been opened, Wendy included.<\/p>\n<p>She gripped the windowsill, goose bumps on her bare arms, a mixture of relief and bitterness warring within her. She had guarded against this moment, but still it had come. She resisted the fantasy of doing nothing, of letting Jane fly off into her own mistakes. Or doing something rash, like burning the whole house to the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, Wendy gave herself one, no, two long moments, to hate Peter Pan.<\/p>\n<p>Then she got to work.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Wendy had never told Jane about Peter, and with good reason. She didn\u2019t trust her daughter not to romanticize him the way she once had. At bedtime in that old house, the veil between here and Neverland felt dangerously thin, as if she could turn her head just so and see its beaches and crystal waters out of the corner of her eye.<\/p>\n<p>But Jane\u2019s demand for new and fantastical stories every night had to be met, if Wendy was to have any peace. So she read her the likes of <em>Grimm\u2019s Fairy Tales<\/em> and <em>Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em>. For Jane, the darker the tale, the better.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlice is so foolish,\u201d Jane said, haughtily. \u201cI would never have let the Queen speak to me like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut she was the Queen. Alice was in <em>her<\/em> kingdom,\u201d Wendy said, helpless before her daughter\u2019s imagination.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd if <em>I <\/em>were Queen, I wouldn\u2019t just sit around and play croquet and yell at people. I would go off and have adventures. I might still behead people, though,\u201d Jane said thoughtfully.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, it\u2019s all just a fantasy,\u201d Wendy said, closing the book with a snap.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe.\u201d Jane pulled up the covers. \u201cDidn\u2019t you have adventures as a child, Mum?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wendy froze. Was that a hovering face in the nursery window? No, just her own reflection.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCertainly not,\u201d Wendy said. \u201c<em>Ordinary<\/em> girls don\u2019t go on outlandish adventures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow dull,\u201d Jane sighed, her young eyes full of pity.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid it all really happen?\u201d Michael asked Wendy, just days after she moved back to No. 14. Michael was home on holiday, his schoolbooks spilled unceremoniously across the rug where Wendy cradled a tiny Jane in her arms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid what happen?\u201d she asked, stroking Jane\u2019s hair. The baby was almost asleep in the drowsy afternoon light. She hoped her brother wasn\u2019t asking about the Zeppelin raid. She was still convinced the scent of sulphur and smoke clung to her, though she had washed several times since the bombs fell.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNeverland,\u201d Michael whispered, \u201cthe pirates, Peter, the flying, all that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Yes<\/em>! she wanted to shout, because they hadn\u2019t spoken of it since they were young children, since she\u2019d finally stopped waiting for Peter to come for her. But the baby brother who she\u2019d help raise, who\u2019d flown to Neverland, wasn\u2019t the person sitting before her. This Michael was a young man, tall and broad-chested, trying desperately to grow a mustache. Hadn\u2019t she only just carried him to bed from where he\u2019d fallen asleep in front of the wireless, clutching his bear?<\/p>\n<p>She looked down at Jane. Back inside these walls, Neverland seemed impossibly present, dancing just behind her daughter\u2019s eyelids. She didn\u2019t want her daughter waiting and waiting, as she once had, as Michael apparently still did, for a dream that would never be realized. For a dream that, now viewed through a lens of adulthood, was tinged with nightmare. The world was enough a nightmare as it was.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose were wonderful stories, weren\u2019t they Michael?\u201d she said, and instantly regretted it. The look in his eyes was one of betrayal, of loss. Like something in him had died.<\/p>\n<p>A month later, he packed a rucksack, slipped a note through the mail slot, and joined Kitchener\u2019s Army, to enter what was becoming The Great War. \u201cI may not remember how to fly,\u201d he\u2019d written, \u201cbut I remember how to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>Good sturdy shoes. The bag she\u2019d kept stocked since they\u2019d moved back into this house, containing: a torch, with a set of fresh batteries; needle and thread; bandages; a sharpened kitchen knife wrapped in a dishtowel; a handful of iron nails. She added several fresh packages of biscuits and chocolate, and a light sweater for herself and her daughter. Wendy remembered the chill nights, piled together with the Lost Boys like piglets for warmth. She shuddered.<\/p>\n<p>And finally, she went down and unlocked the cellar. Descending by candlelight, the support beams and dampness put her in mind of the belly of a galleon or a secret cave dripping with bats. Just the kind of dark place fairies liked to lurk, though none were left here now, as far as she could tell. But she knew they\u2019d been here; they\u2019d marked their territory long ago with that dank, fungal smell. And there it was, in the mortar between the bricks: the glimmer of their dust.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy took out her kitchen knife and chipped flakes of gold fairy dust into an open pouch. When she\u2019d extracted what she could, she sprinkled herself with several large pinches of the stuff. It made her sneeze, the grave-earth smell of it. She wondered if fairy dust went stale, if she\u2019d still remember how to find her way.<\/p>\n<p>Her husband had found her escape bag once. He\u2019d thought she\u2019d intended to leave him, and he\u2019d looked so crestfallen, she had felt compelled to tell him the truth. It was difficult to tell him about Peter, especially since her youngest brother, Michael, had believed in Peter the longest and Michael had been gone for years by then. To conjure up Peter was to conjure up Michael and she could hardly bear to do it. But both boys alighted in her mind as she told her husband about Neverland.<\/p>\n<p>When she finished describing Peter and his home, her capture and escape, her face was wet. She didn\u2019t know who the tears were for. For Peter or Michael? For herself? Either way, for something lost. Wendy saw a strange sort of knowing on her husband\u2019s face\u2014he believed her or believed that <em>she<\/em> believed. After so many years, the story had taken on a kind of timeless madness and she could understand his pity, even as she resented it. But he was softhearted, and so they had forgiven each other. But she\u2019d been sure to hide her preparations after that.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy re-locked the cellar door, just in case.<\/p>\n<p>She checked in on her husband now, his face rumpled with sleep. She hoped he\u2019d forgive her for leaving without him. Of course, he would. She was saving their child, their family, as she always did. She was setting their little world to rights so he could go on sleeping, his face and dreams as innocent as a boy\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>What was more questionable was if he could manage in her absence. He could barely boil an egg and their accounts would, undoubtedly, be overdue upon her return. At least he would have their cook about to make sure he stayed fed, but she was sure he\u2019d go to work, unthinkingly, in unpressed shirts and scuffed shoes. How the secretaries would talk.<\/p>\n<p>No, she couldn\u2019t think like that, not now. She hefted her pack over one shoulder and decided to instead think hard of the seaside. Of sticky toffee pudding. Of her daughter, in a good mood and laughing, amidst glowing red balloons on a previous, easier birthday. Of how her husband had looked at her when she told him she was pregnant. The sweetest thoughts she could summon.<\/p>\n<p>She opened her eyes to find herself bobbing near the ceiling, the feeling of flying both effortless and familiar. Seizing bookshelves and furniture, Wendy pulled her way back to the nursery\u2019s open window. The edge of the world was just starting to brighten with a hemline of pink. She didn\u2019t have much time before her access to the island would begin to unravel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWendy?\u201d It was her husband, rubbing his eyes before they widened at the sight of her hovering in the window, bag slung over one shoulder, moonlight making her a shadow poised to leap.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am going to get Jane,\u201d she said, with as much certainty as she could muster. She waited for him to try to stop her, level guilt at her like a rifle as her father would have done. Instead, he stood, helpless and pale in the moonlight. Her buoyancy faltered. She sighed and swam through the air until she was close enough to kiss him delicately on the head, where his hair was thinning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is little time to explain,\u201d she said, as he looked up at her. Wendy was sinking slowly back to the floor. \u201cBut I won\u2019t let Peter keep her. Leave the casement open. We will be back soon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He saw her struggling in the air and grabbed her hand. But he didn\u2019t pull her down. Instead, he kissed her palm. She rose, her hand pulling away from him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTake care,\u201d he said, watching her regain her position in the window. \u201cAnd come back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wendy knew her husband loved her. But from her view against the ceiling, he merely looked lost. She tamped down the frustration. Love and need were so tangled for her. That was Peter\u2019s doing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course I will,\u201d she said. She sent up a quick, silent prayer for her husband\u2019s continued patience, as well as for her own. \u201cDon\u2019t forget, the window must stay open. Oh, and <em>do<\/em> see the shoeshine boy on your way into the office, won\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She turned toward the second star, twinkling ahead of her. <em>Straight on \u2019til morning<\/em>, she thought. With big spoonfuls of sweet, toffee pudding.<\/p>\n<p>And without looking back, she pushed off.<\/p>\n<p>\u2042<\/p>\n<p>Neverland, for those who have never been, is an odd sort of place. It is an island and also the warm beating heart of a boy, with all the things a boy could dream: jungles and white sand beaches and dangerous riptides, caves and tunnels and secret passageways. Perfect weather and perfect storms. Magic, danger, adventure.<\/p>\n<p>And when Wendy arrived as a young girl, gilded in pixie dust and flying for the first time, she was shot.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, the children Peter collected, the Lost Boys, had blamed the fairies and their trickery. The fairies blamed the boys with their bows and arrows. Either way, it was Wendy who suffered. She hadn\u2019t felt the arrow so much as the fall, the wind rushing up to greet her, stomach lurching with the plummet. She hadn\u2019t had enough breath to scream or pray, only to watch the clouds rise up and up, the stars fading into the blue, waiting for death\u2019s hands to catch her.<\/p>\n<p>But the magic of the island caught her instead, snapping her nightgown taut like a kite. She glided to the forest floor on wings of ragged linen, where Peter\u2019s gaggle of dirty boys crowded her. They realized then that she was not a bird, as they\u2019d suspected, but must certainly have been a gift from Peter: a lady to care for them, make them whole.<\/p>\n<p>The missile had not quite pierced Wendy\u2019s heart, and by the time Peter arrived, the arrow had dissolved into pixie dust and cloud, leaving her merely breathless and bruised. To have avoided death and still be wanted so desperately by these lost children had indeed felt like a kind of gift. They built a house for her from branches and named her \u201cMother\u201d and she had called it love before she\u2019d known any different.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>The trouble began with Michael\u2019s toy sword.<\/p>\n<p>Jane, age seven, emerged from the attic covered in dust, the weapon wielded in one hand with a tarnished silver serving tray in the other, and tore through the house with a blood-curdling war cry. It took Wendy nearly a quarter of an hour to talk their typically unflappable cook out of the pantry, so convinced was she that the house was being attacked by Cossacks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJane, this is not acceptable,\u201d Wendy said, sitting her daughter down. \u201cYou scared Cook half to death. That sword is not an appropriate toy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou said it belonged to Uncle Michael,\u201d Jane insisted. \u201cHe played with it, why can\u2019t I?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour uncle is a soldier,\u201d Wendy said, the unspoken past tense tight in her throat. Michael had played with that sword, screamed at the top of his lungs while lunging at the coat rack in the front hall. No one had taken the sword away then. Nor when he used that same sword in Neverland to slaughter a pirate, before he understood what death really meant. In the protective bubble of Peter\u2019s story, toy swords could be real weapons and good boys always won the battle. But reality proved different.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy keenly felt the double-edge of it, what boys were allowed and girls were not, and the true price of violence. Michael had been told the proper thing was to take up a rifle and run screaming at the enemy. And he had never returned.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to be a soldier too,\u201d Jane declared, stabbing the point of the sword into the floorboards.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnly men are soldiers,\u201d Wendy said. Jane\u2019s eyes went wide.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat, no girls ever?\u201d she protested.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is far too dangerous,\u201d Wendy said, shaking her head. \u201cIt\u2019s not allowed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat isn\u2019t fair!\u201d Jane said, stomping her foot. \u201cI want to fight like Uncle Michael.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUncle Michael is gone,\u201d Wendy snapped. \u201cWar is a great big monster and it swallowed him up. Do you want to be swallowed up too?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jane went silent and pale, the terror in her eyes so palpable Wendy wanted to pluck it from the air and cast it away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s just a game,\u201d Jane said, her eyes tearing up. \u201cThe children at school, they are always playing at battles in the yard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJane,\u201d Wendy said, softly. \u201cThere are some things too real, too close to play at, even as make-believe. Do you understand?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes,\u201d said Jane, shoulders hunched. She turned and walked woodenly to the stairs. But then she\u2019d paused and turned back, her small, fine face hard with determination.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNext time, I shall find a better weapon,\u201d Jane said, one hand on the banister. \u201cTo fight the monster. So you will not have to be sad about Uncle Michael any longer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>The morning was raw and the stars were sharp in the inky sky. It was hard going, flying toward Neverland as an adult. Children were smaller and lighter, whereas it took all of Wendy\u2019s concentration to stay above the rooflines. Her sturdy shoes nearly took out a weather vane. It seemed almost impossible that she should slip between the stars and sky to Neverland, as weighed down as she felt, so old and full of feelings more complicated than joy or sorrow. Joy was a weightlessness, a forgetting. Peter was always forgetting. Wendy remembered everything.<\/p>\n<p>So instead, she thought about her daughter, back when things were simpler. That first golden lock of hair falling across her tiny face. How, before her daughter\u2019s birth, it had seemed impossible that there could be room in Wendy\u2019s heart for another soul and then, suddenly, with a cry, a crow, there was a baby, <em>her <\/em>baby, and Wendy had pushed away the terror and discovered a new door inside herself, leading to a bright, freshly aired room she\u2019d never seen before: Jane\u2019s room.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019d only ever been a mother to Lost Boys, before Jane had come along, when she had been little more than a lost girl herself. But when her daughter opened her navy-blue eyes, Wendy felt as if she was being truly seen for the first time, all at once. She felt found.<\/p>\n<p>A change in the light let Wendy know she\u2019d crossed over or through or under and now was in the clear skies above Neverland. Her eyes stung with tears and wind as she slowly sank towards the white sand beaches. She tried to catch an updraft, but seeing this land again, after so much time, was too heavy to keep her aloft.<\/p>\n<p>She bumped down on the shore, the warm waters washing up and over her shoes, soaking her stockings. She took them both off, tying her laces together and hanging the shoes around her neck. She\u2019d meet Peter like she\u2019d found him: barefooted.<\/p>\n<p>But she couldn\u2019t find a way to his hideout, if it was even still where he hid. She walked for what felt like hours, the wet sand molding to the arches of her feet. The beaches here were lined with impenetrable cliffs draped in lush, emerald greenery, glittering with the occasional waterfall. The air was rich with salt and the sun-baked smell of endless summer.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy\u2019s throat ached. She finally leaned over one of the pristine pools to quench her thirst.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAh, Wendybird, didn\u2019t know if I\u2019d see the day,\u201d said a voice, warm and gritty. A voice from her grimmest dreams.<\/p>\n<p>Captain James Hook lounged on the beach, his back against a rock, his dark curls limp on either side of his face. He looked no older than he had when he\u2019d held her captive so many years ago, bait for both Peter Pan and the crocodiles alike. His legs stretched out before him on the beach, his one good hand propping up his other arm, which had a glowing cigar speared on the end of his loathsome hook.<\/p>\n<p>But while he hadn\u2019t aged, Hook himself was not the same. His left leg now ended just before the knee, the pant leg knotted beneath it. And instead of his long, blood-colored coat and gaudy ruffled shirts, which would not have scared her now, surely, he was dressed in the grey wool uniform of a German army officer with the spiked helmet and gold-braided epaulettes. She was put in mind of a poster she had seen in Piccadilly Square: a grotesque drawing of the Kaiser, gnawing on a British soldier\u2019s helmet with a glint in his eye.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCaptain,\u201d she said, keeping any form of quaver out of her voice. \u201cI thought you\u2019d been eaten by a crocodile.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot all of me, not yet,\u201d Hook said, a grin flashing from beneath his mustache. He slapped his good hand against his bad leg. \u201cAnd it\u2019s General now. Can\u2019t be any kind of captain without a ship, and Pan, of course, has scuttled it.\u201d He gestured down the beach where his ship, <em>The Jolly Roger,<\/em> listed and loomed, its prow dug into the white sand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd your crew?\u201d Wendy asked, far more calmly than she felt. He would not be able to chase her at least, but she was waiting for pirates to swarm her from the cliffs or emerge as seaweed-shrouded corpses from the waves. She slipped her hand into her bag and wrapped her fingers around the handle of her kitchen knife. These pirates had taken pleasure in scaring children, in hunting them down, just because they could. But she wasn\u2019t thirteen anymore.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAh, my men, all lost to the waves or the perils of growing ordinary,\u201d Hook mused. He looked her over, bare feet to tousled hair. \u201cThought the waves had taken you as well, but looks like you\u2019ve gone and grown up. That sort of thing should keep you from coming back here. Have you gone and become ordinary too, Miss Darling?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Ordinary<\/em>, like it was a curse. <em>Ordinary<\/em>, like it wasn\u2019t something she\u2019d worked her whole life to achieve. She put on frocks of ordinary, but they could never quite cover the parts of her that burned with the memories of Neverland.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s Mrs. Davies now,\u201d Wendy said, her own voice an echo of her daughter\u2019s imperiousness. \u201cI thought this place never changed. And I wanted to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hook let out a <em>hah<\/em>, his dark curls blowing across his face. \u201cPeter may not change, but his country does. Tiger Lily and her tribe left long ago, as soon as Pan forgot about them. They knew to get out, when they could. Unlike the mermaids who still cling to a manic hope, and the fairies that have infested the <em>Roger<\/em>, randy little creatures. You\u2019d think they\u2019d invented lust, the way they go at it.\u201d He arched an eyebrow at Wendy, but she refused to be baited, even as she felt a hot flush climb her neck.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, you too seem to have been forgotten,\u201d she countered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeter has <em>not<\/em> forgotten me,\u201d Hook said, darkly. \u201cBut a dashing pirate no longer served his games, and so I am a German General until he needs another enemy. Meanwhile,\u201d he said, cocking his hook out to sea, spilling ash on his uniform, \u201cI play my own game, you see, with the mermaids.\u201d Wendy recognized it then, the large outcropping in the water. Marooner\u2019s Rock, where she and Peter had nearly drowned. Mermaid\u2019s Lagoon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe watch one another all day, the merfolk and I, waiting for high tide,\u201d Hook continued. \u201cTo see if this will be the day it\u2019s high enough for them to reach me with their razor teeth. Falling out of Pan\u2019s favor has left them quite mad. And hungry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou look hungry too, Mrs. Davies. It\u2019s a look that tells me you\u2019re after someone.\u201d Hook looked pleased, taking a puff on his cigar. \u201cSomeone who stopped caring about you long ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not here for Peter,\u201d Wendy said hoarsely. \u201cPeter took my daughter. I\u2019m here for her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hook\u2019s laugh was like a gunshot. Sparkling fish scattered in the tide pools around them. Hook\u2019s cackle quickly turned into a hacking cough through the cloud of blue cigar smoke. It smelled like burning leaves and, yes, fairies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, Wendybird,\u201d he said, gasping, his hand splayed across the gold buttons of his uniform, his eyes glittering, \u201cyou\u2019ve finally come back to see what a little shit Pan is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2042<\/p>\n<p>Wendy had just finished telling the Lost Boys their bedtime story: her own imaginings of her happy return home. She could see her brothers forgetting and so she told the story night after night, of the flight home and the glad reunion. It became a kind of spell that she hoped would be cast in its repetition. That maybe having lost their children for a while, her parents would be more thankful for them and the obedient daughter she always tried to be.<\/p>\n<p>But that night, Peter listened in. He groaned and rolled his eyes and made a mockery of her. He proceeded to tell his own story: of the mother he once had who had barred the window and put another little boy in his bed. The Lost Boys all agreed that mothers must be terrible creatures\u2014\u201cyou excepting, of course, Wendy\u201d\u2014and even Wendy\u2019s brothers vigorously agreed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou must let us go home at once,\u201d Wendy said, feeling her grip on her brothers and reality slipping.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh?\u201d Peter had replied. \u201cBut it is not safe for you out there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then above them, where before there had been silence, came the cries of combat and clanging of steel. That was when Wendy knew that he wouldn\u2019t let her leave, not without a fight.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will deal with Peter,\u201d Wendy said. After all, she had done so before. \u201cTell me where he is.\u201d A stiff breeze blew in off the ocean, filling the tattered sails of the <em>Roger<\/em>. Out in the open sea, a flash of iridescent scales. Hook smirked, then gazed up, like a beatific saint.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAtop the cliffs, in the Never Woods, I hear the boys running,\u201d Hook said, closing his eyes. \u201cAnd the sound of cannons and other weapons, fast and deadly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGuns?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAye. The boys have turned it to a battlefield.\u201d He patted the sand next to him, an invitation. \u201cWendy, you were right to come to me. Neverland is a terrible place for us grown-ups.\u201d He shuddered. \u201cYou\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The man looked wet and miserable, like a dog missing the warmth of its master\u2019s hearth. She remembered a younger James Hook, one with fire in his eyes, so desperate for love he\u2019d commanded her, a child, to be his mother. Those eyes, once the bright, baby blue of forget-me-nots, were now the color of the lagoon, a watery blue-grey. And she could see clearly now, in a way she\u2019d only suspected then, that Hook was what happened when Lost Boys were allowed to grow up this side of the second star.<\/p>\n<p>She could see in Hook\u2019s face the boy he might have been, once: beautiful, heartless, self-important, just like Peter. Except in adults, that same heartlessness lost any pretense of innocence; it was callous, malicious. Irredeemable.<\/p>\n<p>Would she have become like this horrible man, had she not had the prudence to escape, to flee? She thought back to her younger self, imagined her childish weaknesses and assumptions magnified. Would she have become a villain, a harpy fixated on the rigid sort of mothering brewed from fairy tales, resentment, and a child\u2019s distortion of adulthood? Or something more akin to the mermaids: a monstrous open maw, hungering for whatever scraps of love, attention, or praise a child deigned to offer her?<\/p>\n<p>Those would-have-been-Wendys flanked her now, watching Hook pitilessly. They thought they understood motherhood and motherlessness, a distillation of her parents\u2019 example and Peter\u2019s rejection. A world made simple, cruel, and grossly deficient.<\/p>\n<p>But they did not have a daughter. They did not have Jane.<\/p>\n<p>So Wendy did not sit on the sea-darkened sand. Instead, she dug out her bag of salvaged pixie dust. There was barely a teaspoon\u2019s worth left at the bottom. If she had to get up the cliffs or fly further inland to find Jane and have any hope of getting home, the help she needed was from the fairies, not this washed-up pirate. She\u2019d have to board <em>The Jolly Roger<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t come for you,\u201d Wendy said to James Hook, setting her shoulders back. She sprinkled herself with two more large pinches of the heady dust.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou need me,\u201d Hook snarled, \u201cand you\u2019re not the only one with unfinished business with Pan.\u201d He seized her ankle with his one good hand. In that moment, the other-possible-Wendys collapsed into one: the girl she\u2019d been at thirteen, bound and shivering in her nightgown, forced to watch Michael walk the plank.<\/p>\n<p>But there were no more pirates and she was no longer a little girl. And Wendy had not stayed behind, to curdle into someone like James Hook. She\u2019d gone back to the Mainland, to the real world, and grown up, for better or worse. She\u2019d had a daughter of her own, who was more terrifying, at times, than this man had ever been. In fact, if there was one thing Wendy had gotten better at with age, with motherhood, it was this:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d she said firmly, removing Hook\u2019s hand from her ankle. She turned and walked away from him down the beach, figments of those almost-Wendys winking out behind her.<\/p>\n<p>\u2042<\/p>\n<p>Once, Peter and Wendy had been trapped on the spit of stone that was Marooner\u2019s Rock out in Mermaid\u2019s Lagoon. The evil Captain had speared Peter with his hook before fleeing the even sharper teeth of a crocodile. The tide was coming in and drops of Peter\u2019s blood bloomed in the water. They lay on the rock panting in the thick, oncoming dusk.<\/p>\n<p>Then a mermaid seized her by the ankles and tried to pull Wendy under. She\u2019d screamed and Peter had dragged her back out of the surf. But the tidewaters of the lagoon had risen to Wendy\u2019s waist by then, the water an icy blade of terror sawing at her belly. She and Peter were too tired to swim or fly to safety.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you mean we shall both be drowned?\u201d she\u2019d asked. Peter\u2019s eyes were bright with a keen fervor, which should have been proof enough that these calamities had all been his intention, from his grievous injury to the rising tide. But Wendy had only been able to stare, frozen, toward the inescapable tidal wave of her own mortality, the cold ocean gripping her ribs.<\/p>\n<p>Then, as if a miracle, Michael\u2019s magical kite had drifted by and Peter had bound Wendy to it, sending her soaring for the shoreline. She had no control of the flight, nor her destination, but thought it gallant, him securing her rescue before his own. That\u2019s what it meant to be a hero, surely.<\/p>\n<p>But Peter did not save himself; a mother did. From across the lagoon, a lone Neverbird had paddled her nest to the boy so he could sail it to safety. Peter had once told Wendy not to disturb the mother Neverbird\u2019s floating nest, though sometimes he took the liberty of skipping stones across the water, trying to land them in it, to the bird\u2019s great dismay. But here she was giving her nest up to Peter, even as her eggs lay cupped inside, warm and vulnerable, though there wasn\u2019t room for Peter and the eggs both.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy had watched from her buffeted perch, a cold fear tumbling in her stomach as the Neverbird covered her face with her lovely, white wings. They both knew Peter cared only for himself. And still the Neverbird had given him her nest with its precious eggs. Why? What was it about being a mother that made sacrifice so implicit? Did the Neverbird feel obligated to return Peter\u2019s protection? Or was it simply that, as on the Mainland, all creatures, especially females, contorted themselves to accommodate the needs of boys before themselves?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne girl is more use than twenty boys,\u201d Peter had told Wendy to get her to come to Neverland. He\u2019d held out his hand and she had taken it. She had thought it the finest of flattery but had never thought to ask: more useful to whom? And for what purpose?<\/p>\n<p>Peter saved the eggs after all and everyone applauded him, none louder than the Neverbird herself. For doing the right thing when he so easily could have done wrong and not been faulted for it.<\/p>\n<p><em>*<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The<\/em><em> Jolly Roger <\/em>looked like a beached whale, pale and huge against the tropical blue sky. Wendy tried to shake off Hook\u2019s curses echoing off the cliffs behind her and the stuttering of dread behind her heart and set her sights on the <em>Roger<\/em>\u2019s bleached hull.<\/p>\n<p>As she drew closer<em>,<\/em> she began to feel a kind of vibration. A hiss. She soon realized the sound was the sand beneath the bow of the ship, buzzing and hopping against the aged wood as the whole ship shuddered. Wendy\u2019s face grew crimson. Fairies might not be human, but they were creatures, and she couldn\u2019t begrudge them their needs.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone had needs. But only some were allowed to act.<\/p>\n<p>To board the ship, Wendy closed her eyes and tried to remember joy. It finally came to her: an anniversary, their first one, where her newly minted husband bought her a peacock-blue scarf. The blossoming warmth of such a perfect gift. The eagerness of their lovemaking beneath the skylight of their first home together, that tiny loft with a just-fashionable-enough address.<\/p>\n<p>When she opened her eyes, Wendy was hovering near the crow\u2019s nest of the ship, the ocean spread beneath her like cerulean silk. She almost wished her husband was here to see the crystal blue waters, the winking, rainbow coral beneath the waves.<\/p>\n<p>Almost.<\/p>\n<p>That anniversary had been Before. Before Jane. Before the apocalyptic Zeppelin raid that had set fire to her little life. Before she\u2019d had to move back into the home where her abductor could find her. Before her husband\u2019s tenderness had turned tedious.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy stumbled down onto the deck of <em>The Jolly Roger, <\/em>scraping her hands on the splintering wood, the grief of homecoming hanging like weights around her neck. All about her were tangles of light, tumbling through the air like illuminated puffs of dandelion seed.<\/p>\n<p>Fairies.<\/p>\n<p>She could feel their frenzy through the deck, up through her hands and knees. A trembling desire bloomed between her legs. She pressed them together, but that only intensified the sensation, an arc of pleasure straight up her abdomen. No, no, she could not allow herself to be controlled by desires, certainly not now and not in Neverland. That was what had honed Peter into a needle of misfortune: pure desire. And she would not allow herself to be anything like Peter Pan.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy staggered to her feet. She was suddenly conscious of her body, the size and breadth of herself, standing among the tiny, pulsating fairy forms. The boat smelled of trees turned to soil and the rot beneath. Of sludge and saltwater. Despite the blinding sunlight, Wendy couldn\u2019t help feeling like she\u2019d stumbled into a dank marsh or a dark wood. Or a party gone sour.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m looking for my daughter,\u201d Wendy said to the lights, her voice ragged. \u201cHer name is Jane. Peter has her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It took a moment for the glowing gyrations to slow and stop and stare at her, shifting swiftly from magical to menacing. They closed in on her, their drone like a swarm of wasps. Wendy dug down to the bottom of her bag and came up with the handful of nails she\u2019d packed. She wielded them at the fairies like a shield. They flowed away from the iron, cursing at her in wind-chime and sleigh-bell voices.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t want to hurt you, but I need to find her. And to do that, I need dust.\u201d She tried to hold steady, despite the air humming with hundreds of wings.<\/p>\n<p>One glowing speck drew away from the crowd and flew close, right up to her face. She flinched, involuntarily. It touched her lower lip and Wendy let out a small gasp. So close, the fairy smelled like the compost spread beneath the lilacs, rich and sultry. Wendy could just make out the curve of the fairy's body inside its glow, wings a hummingbird blur. She swallowed. The fairy circled her slowly, then chimed at her.<\/p>\n<p><em>What would she give them? <\/em>Oh what wouldn\u2019t she give them. She dug in her bag and offered up biscuits and chocolate. The wall of fairies jangled and twinkled at her, laughing. No, they didn\u2019t want anything sweet.<\/p>\n<p><em>Her bitterness<\/em>. They would take it from her, in exchange for the dust and directions. Fairies were so small they could only feel one thing at a time. Lust had been a lovely distraction, but they were ready for something fresh, jagged. There weren\u2019t many newcomers to Neverland. And the fairies were hungry too.<\/p>\n<p>Bitterness should be an easy feeling to give up. But her bitterness drove her, got her here, got her up every morning. It had carved her jaded heart into a weapon. Without the bitterness, what was left?<\/p>\n<p>Wendy was afraid to find out. But she said yes anyway.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>It was months before Wendy heard from Michael, after he\u2019d run off to enlist. The first telegram she received said he\u2019d be home on leave for a week, come Saturday. Her parents came in from the countryside and they went together to the train station.<\/p>\n<p>But when the train pulled up and the soldiers poured out through clouds of steam and oil smoke, she couldn\u2019t find her brother. Just a forest of brown uniforms that made all the young men look the same. Private Michael Darling, who eventually emerged before them, bore scant resemblance to the boy who had joined up. He was taller, his mustache a cruel hook across his upper lip, grey eyes struggling to focus, as if he had cataracts like their father. Like he was peering through a fog.<\/p>\n<p>Their mother flung her arms around Michael, leaving Father unmoored in the sea of disembarking passengers, shouting \u201cWhat, what? Is the boy here?\u201d Wendy gently guided him to her brother, whose face was a rictus of distress, clutching his rucksack as he had once gripped his stuffed bear after a nightmare. Wendy had almost thought to bring that worn, old toy. She was glad she hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>At 14 Kensington Park, she had Cook prepare Michael\u2019s favorite meals and put fresh, butter-white daffodils in his room. But he stared at everything as if it was alien. Wendy knew that feeling intimately. When she\u2019d brought Jane home for the first time, her sense of space and time had been recalibrated. Hours crawled by, days blinked away, everything was experienced through a new level of attention. She saw it in the way Michael moved through the old house. Like a wild animal, feeling out the confines of its cage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStop,\u201d he finally snapped at her. \u201cStop following me around everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just,\u201d she\u2019d stammered, \u201cI want to make sure you\u2019re alright. You haven\u2019t been yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been to war, Wendy. I am every ounce of myself. There is nothing wrong with <em>me<\/em>. It is the rest of the world that tilts towards madness. Gliding along above as if nothing were wrong, while darkness lurks beneath.\u201d He stared into his cup of now-cold tea in the lemon light of the sitting room.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI understand \u2026\u201d Wendy began, reaching for him, but Michael slammed the cup down so hard tea sloshed over his hands onto the pristine tablecloth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMichael, you will wake the baby,\u201d Wendy hissed, tucking her shaking hands beneath her arms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet her wake,\u201d Michael said, his voice strangled. \u201cShe has that liberty, to wake safe in her bed. When I return to the front, that is not a luxury I shall have.\u201d He lifted the half-empty tea cup to his lips, hands trembling. \u201cDo not presume to know what war is like, Wendy. <em>You<\/em> are safe because I do know, and you do not.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you forget why I live beneath this roof?\u201d Wendy lashed back. \u201cHad I been asleep when the incendiaries dropped, I would not be here to serve you tea. I know something of war.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy do you think I volunteered?\u201d Michael snapped, too loud. Far at the top of the house, in the nursery, baby Jane began to wail. Michael put his head down, hands gripping his hair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, Michael,\u201d Wendy said, softly. She sat down beside him at the table, but he launched away from her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is not for you to try to protect <em>me<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As if caring for her baby brother was something she could ever halt or harness. It was a reflex, not a service. She had certainly never expected gratitude for the ways she had kept him safe as he grew up: from their father\u2019s harshest demands, from schoolyard bullies, from Peter Pan. And neither his height nor uniform, she felt, acquitted her of that responsibility for him as her youngest brother.<\/p>\n<p>Above them, Jane\u2019s howls increased to the keen of an air siren. Michael winced, knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the table.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan\u2019t you make her stop?\u201d he said, through gritted teeth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course, I will see to her,\u201d Wendy said, standing to clear away his dishes, biting her tongue against any recriminations. Maybe that was the problem. She had given her life to service, been expected to, and never thought to seek or receive gratitude. He had chosen service, without knowing the weight of its ungracious obligations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou are right, Michael. You do protect us. Thank you,\u201d she said, hoping to assuage his feeling. But he looked at her with such disgust that she immediately turned and fled. In the nursery, she tried to soothe Jane, but it was impossible when she herself was so discomfited. She had tried so hard to protect Michael, but through her diligent care, she had held from him any lessons of responsibility by taking them upon herself. Now her brother had been forced to learn those lessons on his own, in blood and bullets.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>As one war ended, another was just beginning. Jane had been a sweet baby, reminding Wendy much of Michael in that respect, but even as Armistice was declared, Jane\u2019s willfulness became clear and she and Wendy began to engage in an endless series of their own battles.<\/p>\n<p>Nannies deemed Jane too difficult, too inconstant to be reformed. Wendy wished they could see the Jane she knew was tangled inside all that want and demand: a brave, sensitive child who struggled to conform to the needs of others because she did not know how and nor see a reason to. Wendy knew what it felt like not to fit. She had tried to make herself into the expected shape and form: demure woman, obedient wife, doting mother. And Jane absolutely undid her.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy had picked out a new dress for Jane, that had been her first error. She\u2019d hoped it would be a peace offering. The fabric reminded her of one of her own mother\u2019s dresses and how protected she\u2019d felt, pressed against her mother\u2019s emerald skirt. But the safety of such a dress was her comfort, not Jane\u2019s. Her attempt at parlay met a blockade.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou didn\u2019t even consult me,\u201d Jane said, \u201con the dress or even whether I want to go to this beastly party.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is the company Christmas party,\u201d Wendy said sternly, exasperated. \u201cThe affair is for families. It would look poorly for your father to show up without his.\u201d Her husband seemed content to be passed over for promotions, but Wendy was not. She hoped to appeal to his employer\u2019s better nature by showing off a charming wife and daughter in need of provision.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have no interest in eating Christmas pudding with Father\u2019s colleagues and their dull children. I will stay here, I can look after myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wendy\u2019s own father never missed an opportunity to tell her she coddled Jane too much, gave in too easily to her whims. Wendy knew all about whims, had worked hard over the years to scrub herself clean of them. The dress had been a setback. She was paying for that now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou will do no such thing,\u201d Wendy said, gripping the dress. \u201cWe are all going to the f\u00eate and you will look splendid in this dress. You love green.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe dress is hideous,\u201d said Jane, folding her arms. \u201cYou cannot make me wear it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI purchased this dress for you at great expense,\u201d Wendy said, slowly, deliberately. \u201cI would\u2019ve been more than grateful to wear a dress this fine at your age. Any young girl would be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, give it to some other girl, then,\u201d Jane said. With that, she snatched up the dress, stormed over to the window, and before Wendy could reach her, opened the casement and flung the garment out into the wintery night. It fluttered, like a child trying to take flight, before landing in the snow far below.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy slapped her daughter.<\/p>\n<p>She hit Jane hard across the face, just as the girl was turning toward her mother triumphantly. Jane staggered back, cheeks red with shock and fear. Wendy felt something in her rear up, like she was leading the charge against a band of pirates. It felt ugly. And right.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou will go out,\u201d Wendy said, \u201cand you will fetch that dress. You will hang it in the kitchen to dry. Then next week, when we go to the party at the very fine home of your father\u2019s employer, you will wear that dress with your good black shoes. And there will be no more protests, do you understand?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jane did not respond, just gave Wendy the same look Michael had when she\u2019d denied their past with Peter Pan. The truth sank in, then. Her daughter might love her again after this, but things would always be different between them. In her anger, she had shown weakness. A crack in her defenses.<\/p>\n<p>Just wide enough for Peter to slip in.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>Wendy woke up hacking as she accidentally inhaled a breath of fairy spores. They coated her mouth and tongue. She looked down to find she was covered all over in cold mud and a tingling, shimmering miasma of pixie dust.<\/p>\n<p>The woods she\u2019d been dropped in were leafless and mud filled; nothing like the adventure-laced enchanted forest she remembered from her youth. Despite the bright light of the beach, the air here was dim, oppressive. There was the plaintive sound of birds and wind, but nothing that made her want to venture deeper in.<\/p>\n<p>She pulled her bag out of the mud and found it full of shifting, sparkling dunes of dust.<\/p>\n<p>Well, the fairies had wanted all her bitterness and they\u2019d repaid her in kind. She sat now, seeking out the splintered places inside herself to see what remained. There was still pity and sorrow, even anger, ripe and bright. But all that had been bitter was now brittle.<\/p>\n<p>Which wouldn\u2019t get her daughter back.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>ratatat <\/em>of guns echoed among the bare trees.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJane?\u201d Wendy called, trying to move through the thick mud. She grabbed a tree trunk to steady herself. \u201cPeter?\u201d The woods went quiet around her.<\/p>\n<p>Then from behind the trees emerged soldiers, sepia-toned and mudslick, helmets pulled low,\u00a0guns out. Pixie dust spilled from her bag until she found the handle of her kitchen knife.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStay back!\u201d Wendy shouted, sweeping the blade in wide arcs. The infantrymen drew closer. Their features seemed to shift as they stepped in and out of the shadows. Was that one Michael? The wry smile seemed familiar. They were all young, nothing more than boys. There were too many of them. She couldn\u2019t save them all.<\/p>\n<p>If they even wanted to be saved.<\/p>\n<p>Something exploded beside her ear, and she screamed. One of the soldiers burst apart, as if he was made of mist or sand, a shattered reflection and shower of pixie dust. Wendy dropped to a crouch, covering her ears. More gunshots, more shattered ghosts. She turned around.<\/p>\n<p>A beam of sunlight suffused the haze of the woods, illuminating Peter Pan. He looked exactly as he had when he\u2019d stolen her away, except dressed in an officer\u2019s uniform, his cap cocked jauntily across his brow. He grinned at her, balancing a rifle against one hip, its bayonet glinting in the weak light.<\/p>\n<p>The thirteen-year-old girl inside her felt a stab of want that took her breath away. The thirty-five-year-old woman she was in this moment expected the jagged stab of bitter loathing she\u2019d cultivated in the years since. Instead, her heart broke a little, seeing him, and she thought, <em>Mercy, he really is just a child.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Peter held the gun casually, his face full of bemused curiosity. Not an ounce of recognition, an absence both crushing and a relief.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHullo,\u201d Peter said, with a taunting grin. \u201cFriend or foe?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Both<\/em>, she wanted to say. What was this hook that made her feel as if she needed to earn his admiration? She was old enough to <em>actually<\/em> be his mother. There was no reason to try to please him. She shivered, shuddered, couldn\u2019t seem to get warm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s me, Wendy,\u201d she said. Peter had nothing but disdain for grown-ups. After the poor state of James Hook\u2014who, in truth, deserved it\u2014she wondered if she wasn\u2019t making a mistake in telling him the truth. Pretending was always easier. He had taught her that.<\/p>\n<p>Peter Pan tipped his head. \u201cWendy? What\u2019s a Wendy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>When Wendy received word that Michael was missing-in-action, she left baby Jane in the cook\u2019s flour-coated arms and went straight to Kensington Gardens, hoping for some sign of Peter Pan. She knew it was Peter\u2019s favorite place to steal away children, so she usually avoided it, but Wendy felt certain that if she found him, he could find Michael. But Kensington Gardens had been transformed into its own war zone. Lush lawns had been overturned for soldiers to practice digging trenches: long, deep brown scars in the earth where the roses used to be. Sandbags piled to her shoulder, lined with curls of barbed wire. She could almost see her little brother, curled around a cigarette in the mud of the trench, grinning up at her. Or was that Peter\u2019s grin she was imagining on her missing brother\u2019s face? It began to rain. She stood there staring at the washed-out trench until a soldier she didn\u2019t know came by and guided her back to the street.<\/p>\n<p>Though she had written him off long ago, Peter\u2019s absence was a bitter sting. She had hoped he would step in again, as a hero, preserve her brother as she could not. But that was a fool\u2019s thinking; she knew the truth of Peter and his bravado. It was stolen, like so much else.<\/p>\n<p>Still, Wendy left the window open for weeks afterward. There was nothing but a damp, cold draft.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>Peter marched Wendy, at gunpoint, to his new hideout. It loomed out of the fog, a large wooden fort surrounded by barbed wire.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat have you done with Jane?\u201d she demanded.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSilence, prisoner!\u201d he said, \u201cOr you\u2019ll feel the cold steel of my bayonet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More gunfire spat from the forest behind them. Ghost soldiers, shifting from the woods, too many to count. Peter turned to meet them, a feral glint in his eye. Wendy dropped to the ground again, just as a hailstorm of bullets turned the phantoms into explosions of sparks and smoke. The deafening clatter continued until there was nothing of the soldiers but winking dust. Wendy ventured a glance at the fort and there, on the parapet, straddling a machine gun, was her Jane, still in her pale yellow nightgown, hair a wild conflagration. She was beautiful and fierce and looked, dangerously, right at home.<\/p>\n<p>Peter crowed with pleasure. \u201cOur latest recruit to Pan\u2019s Army is a fair shot!\u201d From the fort came cheers and whoops. Peter gestured for Jane to join him. She came down through the gate in a pair of army boots, a rifle cradled in one arm. She stopped when she saw Wendy, a frown tracing her lovely face.<\/p>\n<p>Peter slapped Jane on the shoulder. \u201cThatta boy,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m putting you in charge of our first POW.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jane shot Peter a glare that Wendy knew too well. \u201cI\u2019m not a boy, I keep telling you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Peter looked quizzical. \u201cWell, what are you, then?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA girl,\u201d Jane said, lifting her chin and her gun.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh,\u201d Peter said, carelessly. \u201cGirls can\u2019t be soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou said I could do what I pleased here,\u201d Jane insisted.<\/p>\n<p>Peter weighed his gun in his hands. \u201cGirls are far too clever to be soldiers,\u201d he finally decided, with a definitive nod. \u201cNo, you\u2019re to be a nurse. Every platoon needs a nurse. You\u2019ll take care of our injuries and make us take our medicine and tell us stories to cheer us during difficult nights in the trenches.\u201d His face grew solemn, contemplating, surely, other people\u2019s sacrifices in those battles rather than his own.<\/p>\n<p>Like heat rising off her, a distortion marred the air around Jane, and quite suddenly she was no longer in a nightgown, but in a nurse\u2019s uniform, stark white, with a crisp white cap and red cross. Jane looked down at herself, eyes wide, gun still gripped tight. She plucked at the fabric. Solid. Starched.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow you look the part,\u201d Peter said, his grin like a mouth full of pearls.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy had a horrifying vision of Jane trapped here like James Hook, caught in awful tempers even as an old woman, snared in the shadow of Peter\u2019s waning attention.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJane does not belong to you, for you to do with as you please,\u201d Wendy spoke up, trying to draw the boy\u2019s focus, though she knew it would draw Jane\u2019s ire. \u201cShe\u2019s my daughter. She must come home with me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat is a \u2018daughter,\u2019\u201d Peter said, wrinkling his nose.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t belong to anyone!\u201d Jane shouted, tearing off the nurse\u2019s cap and throwing it into the trees.<\/p>\n<p><em>I made you!<\/em> Wendy wanted to cry out, to wrap her arms around her precious, ferocious child. Shouldn\u2019t that give her some power, some control over Jane and her choices? But it never seemed to. She held her breath and counted the buttons on Peter\u2019s uniform, letting her fears unspool.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA daughter is a person, Peter.\u201d Wendy did not look at Jane as she spoke. \u201cOne with her own intelligence and wit, strength and cleverness. One that has a mother who cares for her very much and wants to see her safe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, you have come to speak to me about Mothers,\u201d Peter scoffed. \u201cNasty things. Make you wash behind your ears, go to bed at night, and take lessons during the day. They don\u2019t let you run through the woods or howl at the moon or fight to the death. Mothers only try to make perfect little children with spit-slicked hair who say please and thank you but never have an original thought. It is <em>mothers<\/em>,\u201d he said, spitting out the word, \u201cthat turn children into adults.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was supposed to be a taunt, but Wendy would not have it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat did he promise you, Jane?\u201d she said, keeping her eyes on Peter. \u201cNever having to grow up?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd flying,\u201d said Jane, excitement creeping into her voice. \u201cHeroic battles. Adventure. <em>Freedom<\/em>.\u201d She hefted the gun. \u201cAll the things you will not allow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChildren are not meant to <em>stay<\/em> children. Not forever,\u201d Wendy said, this time with eyes only for Jane. \u201cThere is so much more to the world than what children can reach. There is plenty of adventure to be had.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut children see all that is <em>worth<\/em> seeing,\u201d Peter said. He slung his gun over his back, adjusted his cap. \u201cCome, Nurse, this conversation grows dull. Let us go inside and find a proper place for our prisoner.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI told you, I\u2019m not\u2014\u201d Jane began.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome home, Jane. I will keep you safe,\u201d Wendy cut in. \u201cHere you will only ever be what fits Peter\u2019s story.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd whose story must I fit at home, Mother?\u201d Jane said, brushing hair out of her face. \u201cFor it certainly isn\u2019t my own.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The words were Wendy\u2019s slap, wielded with precision. Jane was right. The world they had left was no more kind to girls than Neverland, especially for fighters like Jane. What safety could she promise her daughter that would be any different? There was safety and a future behind the walls of a house, in the arms of a husband, at the bedside of one\u2019s children. Wendy wanted to wrap her child in the safest story she knew. One in which Jane would, no doubt, suffocate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNeverland may feel like an adventure, but stay here long and it becomes a prison,\u201d Wendy insisted. \u201cPeter hasn\u2019t told you about what he has done to the pirates, to the mermaids. He is playing war, but what is real and what is illusion make no difference to him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t die for real in Neverland,\u201d Jane scoffed, her eyes flicking to Peter. \u201cThis is a land of wishes, is it not?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven wishes have consequences,\u201d Wendy said softly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI kill things all the time. It is no great task. If I want someone to stay dead, they do,\u201d Peter said, haughtily. He examined Wendy, as if choosing a proper target. \u201cMothers are no longer allowed in Neverland. Didn\u2019t my boys shoot down one of your kind before? Yes, but you were a bird, were you not?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wendy\u2019s shoulders seized and it was as if her back had been sliced open by a bayonet. She fell to one knee and must have made a sound too, because Jane was in front of her, small hands pressed to Wendy\u2019s face, saying <em>Mum? Mummy?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Then Wendy\u2019s shoulder blades unfurled into two great white wings, like that of a Neverbird. She grunted beneath the awkward mass of them. <em>Neverland is a terrible place for grown-ups.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>She forced herself to her feet, struggling for balance and trying to ignore the horror of the weighty appendages. She had sworn she would not let Neverland trap her again but here it had her in its grip.<\/p>\n<p>Jane backed away, hands over her mouth. \u201cPeter, what have you done?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The boy merely shrugged. \u201cGrown-ups are not good for much else, Nurse. Especially Mothers. If you do not wish to become what a Mother would make of you, she abandons you. <em>Replaces you<\/em>.\u201d Peter\u2019s eyes narrowed. \u201cThat is what my mother did to me and no doubt what this one would do to you. This way, I make grown-ups as <em>I<\/em> will them. She will make for a great quarry, far more interesting than a prisoner.\u201d He slung one arm over Jane\u2019s shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo!\u201d Jane pushed Peter away, her face blotchy with held-back tears. \u201cYou cannot make us into someone else!\u201d Jane gripped the front of her crisp, white uniform, as if to tear it asunder. Instead, Wendy saw, she was summoning the same distortion Peter had used to dress them both. The space around Jane struggled in and out of focus. The nurse uniform blurred into the brown fatigues of a British soldier, then flickered, for a gut-sinking moment, into the emerald green Christmas dress, a jewel in the dim woods. Then the nurse uniform, and back again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNurse,\u201d Peter said, taking a conciliatory step towards Jane, but Wendy lumbered forward and put her arms and wings out between them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe is my daughter,\u201d Wendy said to Peter, loud enough that Jane could hear. \u201cBut she is wholly her own person. And she is choosing a course different from either of ours.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGet out of my way, <em>Mother<\/em>,\u201d Peter mocked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d Wendy said, arms crossed, wings outspread. \u201cI am not your mother. I am Jane\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With a final pulse, the haze around Jane coalesced into her yellow nightgown and, on her feet, the hated birthday galoshes. The rifle she had dropped dissipated into pixie dust, but with a look of intense concentration, Jane caused the dust to amass into a new shape. She picked up the sword and stepped between Peter and Wendy. No fear, no bitterness, all Wendy saw on her daughter\u2019s face was righteous anger. And for a shining moment, Wendy dared to hope.<\/p>\n<p>\u2042<\/p>\n<p>The final time Wendy went to Neverland, she had been sure Peter had forgotten about her like he had everything else. Even so, she wore the same nightgown as the night they\u2019d first met, though she\u2019d had to add a panel to the back and several inches to the hemline to make sure it continued to fit. She had felt indecent sitting there, sixteen, waiting for a little boy to come steal her away. She was so nervous she had risked taking a bit of bourbon from her father\u2019s decanter, seeking calm in the liquor\u2019s smooth, smoky burn. Michael had sat up with her, but even he had curled up on the rug and fallen asleep. It was long past midnight and she\u2019d all but drifted off herself when Peter\u2019s shadow fell across the windowpane.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWendy,\u201d he crowed, \u201ccome with me! Spring is here!\u201d And she\u2019d been so flush with joy to see he wasn\u2019t a dream that she\u2019d taken his hand again and together they\u2019d hurtled into the sky.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s good to have you back, Mother,\u201d he said, twisting in the air. The comment felt barbed somehow, though she tried to ignore it. Wasn\u2019t that why she kept returning, to care for Peter and these boys? Wasn\u2019t motherhood what she\u2019d always wanted? The pain of it stuck in her chest, long after they landed and burrowed their way into Peter\u2019s hideout.<\/p>\n<p>It didn\u2019t occur to her until much later, when her arms were elbow deep in wash water, scrubbing clothes while Peter was off hunting wolves, that what had started as a game for them both, was now only a game to him. She took her role seriously and he did not. What was she hoping for, a future with Peter? There would always be the washing and dirty noses, meals to prepare and floors to sweep, and never once would Peter show an ounce of caring. He only needed her as much (and as long) as he was entertained by her.<\/p>\n<p>The dirty clothes sank to the bottom of the wash bin.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019d stared down at her hands, pruned like that of an old woman. Was this motherhood, held out like a prize, but wielded as a blunt instrument?<\/p>\n<p>Peter, she was learning, was incapable of feeling. That fact seemed to have no effect on the clenched-fist feeling in her pelvis when they flew together, fingers brushing against the clouds and one another, wind rushing cold up her gown. She was growing up and he was not. She had held so tightly to her own childhood that she had only just begun to untangle the idea that there was more than one kind of love. And that while society considered motherhood a virtue, mothers themselves held little value.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe the truth was she clung to the role of mother, of Peter\u2019s caretaker, because it seemed the only way she could get him to care for <em>her<\/em>. But Peter cared only for himself. He had no use for her, even as she felt ill-used.<\/p>\n<p>When she\u2019d returned home, she\u2019d locked the nursery window and shoved her old nightgown in the waste bin. She\u2019d stared ferociously at her naked skin in the long mirror in the hall, willing herself to see her own future, however it would emerge, resolving it would not involve Peter Pan in the slightest.<\/p>\n<p>But she didn\u2019t recognize the person she saw there, a girl with a woman\u2019s body, who couldn\u2019t admit how much of her childhood she had given to a dream that wasn\u2019t hers.<\/p>\n<p>*<\/p>\n<p>Among the darkening trees, Peter stared down Jane\u2019s blade with a rueful smile. \u201cAre we to fight, then? I never lose, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His expression belied a child who had never been denied anything, had never been held to consequence. But Wendy could not hold to the sour feeling that he deserved Jane\u2019s blade. Instead she felt a pang of grief for the boy, even as he leveled his bayonet at them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe just wish to leave,\u201d Wendy said calmly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut this one does not wish to,\u201d Peter said, cocking his head at Jane. \u201cLook at her, ready to do battle. \u201d<\/p>\n<p>And with that, he lunged, his bayonet a white flash.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy screamed, but she couldn\u2019t hear herself over the sudden report of a rifle and a violent clang of steel.<\/p>\n<p>Jane had caught Peter\u2019s blade with her own, both hands on the hilt, pressing him back. But Peter\u2019s strength was slackening. He looked down in shock where red was blossoming around a bullet wound on his right shoulder. With a shove, Jane pushed him away and then Jane ran to her mother\u2019s arms. They had both almost died, quite possibly, but for once, Jane needed her and Wendy was embarrassed at her own elation.<\/p>\n<p>Peter collapsed to the ground dramatically, one hand flung across his brow. \u201cNurse,\u201d Peter cried, reaching for Jane. \u201cNurse, I\u2019ve been shot! Save me!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Behind Peter near the fort, there stood a ghostly soldier between the twilit trees, just now lowering his rifle. It was Michael, it had to be. Same eyes, same baby face beneath his mustache, his rage at the world in the shape of a gun. But upon catching her eye and seeing Jane in her arms, he lowered his weapon, anger softening. He gave her a sad smile and mouthed one word:<\/p>\n<p><em>Fly.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Lost Boys burst from Peter\u2019s fort to help their fallen leader. They were all so small, dirty feet and ears, ill-fitting uniforms. Child soldiers. Peter winced and groaned and assured them all they could go on without him. Then he pointed at Wendy. \u201cOur nurse has been kidnapped by the Mother Bird! Get \u2019er boys! Take no quarter!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But around them, the woods were filling with more ghost soldiers, winking into existence between the brown trees. Now a single pursuit had become an ambush. With cries of \u201cFor Peter!\u201d and \u201cHuzzah!\u201d, the warrior children stormed toward Wendy and Jane and the ghost soldiers flowed up to meet them. There was the clash of gun and steel. Michael met Wendy\u2019s eyes once again across the battle.<\/p>\n<p><em>Fly<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Of course. Wendy scooped dust from her bag and Jane into her arms. Someone grabbed hold of one of her wings, tearing out feathers, and through the pain and the overpowering must of pixie dust, she thought: <em>Jane is with me. We girls can rescue ourselves.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>With that, Wendy shot up into the sky, breaking through the forest canopy and into the clear dusk air above Neverland, pixie dust trailing behind them like the tail of a comet, bullets and cries following in their wake. The sun spilled firelight across the water and the moon hovered low over the white-washed beaches, impossibly large and the color of old bone. She spread her wings, and the wind caught her too, lifted them higher and higher, like a kite, towards the first stars of the evening.<\/p>\n<p>Behind them, rising from the Never Woods, came the eerie throbbing that still haunted Wendy\u2019s dreams: a Zeppelin\u2019s engine. It loomed up behind them, impossibly large, blotting out the stars. From the gondola beneath its enormous, bullet-shaped hull came the clattering of a machine gun. The bullets tore through Wendy\u2019s wings, rending flesh and bone, and she cried out as her wings disintegrated into feathers and fairy dust. They fell, the cold sea rushing up at them.<\/p>\n<p>She did not trust the magic of Neverland to catch her this time. She was on her own.<\/p>\n<p>No. She had Jane.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHold on!\u201d Wendy cried to her daughter, who tightened her cold arms around her mother\u2019s neck. Wendy reached for something happy, even pleasant, anything to keep them aloft. <em>Being a mother<\/em>. It was her happiest self and also the most agonizing, but in this moment those feelings were inseparable. <em>Being Jane\u2019s mother<\/em>. A thrill pulsed through her, the pixie dust fueled by her joy mid-tumble and they rode it back up, curving back towards the night sky, the airship\u2019s machine gun shredding the clouds behind them. She did not need to see him to know that it was Peter smirking behind the trigger.<\/p>\n<p>Then, from the beaches, came a loud boom. The Zeppelin shuddered and began to turn broadside. Below, Wendy saw <em>The Jolly Roger<\/em> lit as if for a Christmas party, pulsing with fairy light, and at the helm, James Hook, curls blowing in the wind, aiming the pirate ship\u2019s large cannon up at them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPan!\u201d the Pirate-General roared, \u201cwe aren\u2019t finished yet!\u201d And as fire hurtled at them from above and below, Wendy flew faster and faster, on and on toward the second star until that mad island was barely a shadow behind them.<\/p>\n<p>The night sky deepened to black and blue. Wendy and Jane flew onward, the second star staring at them, distant and unblinking. They had been flying for hours, hadn\u2019t they? Now the sky was almost black and Wendy\u2019s hands were ice. She worried Jane would fall from her numb arms, plummet into the sea. Just a little further.<\/p>\n<p>The star shone on, no closer, but now it multiplied, wavered. The sky was filled with constellations, or was it a reflection? Were they flying towards the sky or plunging into the sea?<\/p>\n<p>No, it was the lights of London in the distance, the Mainland spreading out beneath them, a lamp-lit tapestry. They were going to make it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMum?\u201d Jane said softly, gripping her mother\u2019s sweater. \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d Wendy said, her body flushing with relief at Jane\u2019s voice. \u201cNo, darling, you may grow up at your own pace.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut Peter \u2026\u201d Jane\u2019s voice trailed off.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeter is of no consequence,\u201d Wendy said. She clutched Jane close with one arm and reached into her bag, then smeared pixie dust along her daughter\u2019s back.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThink lovely, wonderful thoughts,\u201d she whispered in her daughter\u2019s ear. And let her go.<\/p>\n<p>Jane gasped and dipped for a moment, reaching for her mother. Wendy stayed beside her, pacing her, but did not offer a hand. It took Jane a moment of bobbing alone in the night air before she spread her arms and let out a whoop of joy, diving away into a loop through the midnight sky. She did not look like a child anymore, hardly. She looked like a young woman. And Wendy knew Peter would not come for her again.<\/p>\n<p>Time had its role in growing up to be sure. But so did mothers, who lay the path before their children. She had not served her brother in trying to carry him along it. She had only served Peter, who desired all paths to lead back to him.<\/p>\n<p>In the distance, Wendy heard the deep tones of Big Ben calling out over the city as they approached, its clockface as bright as the moon. It wouldn\u2019t be long now. She closed her eyes, letting the night wind fill her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMust we leave?\u201d Michael had asked plaintively when they\u2019d fled Neverland all those moons ago. His hand had been so small and cold inside her own. \u201cDidn\u2019t you see that pirate I killed? I would make a grand pirate, wouldn\u2019t I, Wendy?\u201d She had had the sense then to simply smile, to let him linger in his fantasies. Had they been so different from her own? To be praised? To feel alive?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are almost home now, Michael. There, do you see it? Number fourteen?\u201d Wendy had said, pointing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t hardly remember it,\u201d Michael had replied, squinting against the wind. \u201cAre you truly not my mother?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wendy opened her eyes to find Jane was flying beside her again, framed by the night sky. She released her thoughts of Michael and instead took the warm hand of her smiling daughter. Michael didn\u2019t get to come home. He would keep flying, wherever he was. She hoped he was free, even if it meant he\u2019d never land.<\/p>\n<p>Tears streamed from Wendy\u2019s eyes, as she and Jane swooped down through the clouds. The wind they rode in on whipped through the trees and gardens of Kensington Park, the lamplights flickering as they coasted to where a lit window had been left open for them both.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Fiction Editor: <a href=\"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/masthead\/\">Joyce Chng<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Copy Editor: <a href=\"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/masthead\/\">The Copyediting Department<\/a>.<\/p>\n<br class=\"clear_both\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wendy knew it wouldn\u2019t be long now before her daughter was taken. She had put the idea from her mind as long as she could, but now Jane was days away from turning thirteen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[719,730,585,1285,1284],"class_list":["post-58334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-content-warning","tag-no-content-warning","tag-novelette","tag-peter-pan","tag-wendy"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p82q22-faS","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58334"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58521,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58334\/revisions\/58521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}