Unhooked

by Lisa Maxwell

Whatever the stories may say, not all children grow up. Some lose their lives before their milk teeth. Some run away. Others are taken. Many leap headlong, tempted by a tale of who they might be . . . Never to find that other shore.

But mortal hearts aren’t meant for flight, and human bodies are made to break.

“Are you going to kill me?” His eyes are shadowed, but I can feel his gaze moving slowly down my body, taking in the too-large sweater, the cuffed legs of my pants, and then up again before he finally meets my eyes. “It’s not I who will kill you, lass,” he says softly. “Neverland will do that well enough on its own.”

His attention was like a flame, warming me, even as it threatened to burn.

“Were I you,” he says, turning back almost viciously, cutting off my words, “I’d not put my trust in stories. They tend to pass off lies as the truth and hide the truth in their lies.”

The name strangely enough suits her—beautiful and exotic, just like she is. Not just beautiful, I think as my skin prickles in warning. Dangerous.

On nights such as that one, the boy came to understand that the key to not dying was remembering he was alive. For the world around him was strange, and often it felt like he was dreaming, though wide-awake. So he almost did not trust his eyes when he turned and saw his brother, gray and pale as an apparition, in the dim evening light. . . .

I try to pull away, but he stops me by placing his hand over mine and tucking my arm more securely against his body. He smiles then—a truly breathtaking sort of smile—and the look in his eyes is enough to make my cheeks flush with warmth. I glance away, uncomfortable. There’s something about the way he looks at me that makes me think he sees something in me that no one else ever has. Like I am something whole and strong and important. Being looked at like that—being seen—is something completely new and absolutely intoxicating.

At first I think that she knows a part of me is rooting for the Captain.

Angry tears are burning at my eyes when I hear a scratching from behind me. I turn in time to see a gloved hand grasp the edge of the window, and a moment later a head of night-black hair appears. Then dark eyes meet mine.

They were trapped. Between safety and death. Between what they were and what they might have been. The earth quaked under their feet as fire and brimstone rained down upon them. The boy, clutching his rifle like a talisman, realized then his mistake in believing himself brave. “We’re going to have to move,” his brother told him. “This is just the beginning. . . .”

“You can do this, lass. You stood toe-to-toe with me time and again, and never once flinched. You stepped in front of a madman, your back straight and your shoulders squared against the devil himself as you plead for my life.” Then he lowers his voice, and what he says next is only for me. “You’re more than enough, Gwendolyn.”

The boy who chose to play the villain in order to battle a monster who calls himself a hero.

Since being brought to this world, I’ve come to understand that everything I’ve ever learned about good and evil, about the choices we make and the choices we must live with, have been nothing more than convenient fictions invented by those who have never been confronted by the darkness and actually forced to choose.

By our very nature, humans are heartless things. The Fey, at least can be excused—their world, after all, wasn’t made from memory. We humans, however, select the memories that suit us to remember and forget the rest—the wars, the tragedies, the lost. Neverland might have helped with the forgetting, but it didn’t create it. That we do well enough on our own.