Never (Never, #1) (92)

Peter lands next to me on his knees, pressing his fingers into my cheek.

“Quick!” I tell him. “Untie me.”

“Girl.” He stares at me. “There’s blood on you.” He looks over his shoulder at the beast. “You made her bleed.”

Peter stands, and I cry at him. “Untie me, please!” I beg, and he ignores me anyway.

“For that, you will die.”

The minotaur is up on his feet again, running back towards us, and Peter’s back in the air, but this time when he swoops him, he grabs the minotaur by the horns.

The minotaur flails about in the sky as Peter lifts it higher and higher, flying it above the labyrinth, and I’m watching him, sort of furious, sort of in awe-filled disbelief.

And then Peter’s face changes. His gaze goes from the minotaur in his hands to someplace far away, off in the distance.

“Hey, what’s that?” he calls to no one in particular.

“Peter!” I call to him cautiously.

He barely looks at me as he says, “Be right back!”

He drops the minotaur. He plummets, releasing this petrified, grunting wail as he falls somewhere in the labyrinth.

And then Peter flies off.

I stare at the sky, watching him in disbelief, and I’m convinced for probably twenty seconds that this is part of it—part of the game, part of the ruse that I wanted no part of to begin with. But it’s not. It’s just Peter, seeing a shinier thing on the horizon and leaving me to die for it.

The minotaur will be back soon if the fall didn’t kill him, and I don’t suspect that much really could. I wonder for a moment what it will be like to die, and as I’m lying here wondering how he’ll do it, I notice all the skulls tossed away from skeletons around here. Does he chop off heads or pull them off? Both, probably. I’d prefer the chopping, I decide. Not that I suspect that the minotaur will oblige me my preferences, but you’ve got to take control where you can. I think about how I shouldn’t have put away whatever was in the little leather pouch of Jamison. I know it was the snow, but I have a feeling there’s more to it that I’m not remembering at this very moment, but whatever it is, I feel very sure that I shouldn’t have put it away. I think it was important.

And that’s when I remember my boot—or, more importantly, what’s in there.

I manage to bring my arms forward by sitting between them and squirming through—it takes a minute. I might have popped my shoulder in and out of the socket,* but it works. I use my tied hands to reach into my boot and fish out the knife. I cut my ankles free first, then hold the knife between my feet to cut through binds at my wrists, and as the last bit of rope snaps, the minotaur appears—bloodied. His leg looks like it might be broken. He doesn’t seem to care as he runs towards me anyway.

I grab my dagger and dart right into the labyrinth.

It’s huge. The hedges are double my height easily. I run around aimlessly for probably five minutes, and I can feel myself getting somehow closer and closer to the edge of it but farther and farther from the way out.

I hear him getting closer and closer. He thumps his chest, deep and hollow, and grunts, panting.

My body starts to tremble even though I don’t feel that afraid in my mind, which is weird, don’t you think? Trauma is weird.

I back up into the hedge, and he rounds the corner towards me, but as he does, suddenly the hedge grows around me, shielding me.

The minotaur’s looking all over for me—he’s confused. I think he knows I’m here, or at least that I was just a moment ago.

It’s getting closer, head looking left and right. I grip my dagger…wait till he’s right in front of me, standing in front of the part of the hedge that just grew around me, and then he turns his head a bit, and I have a clear shot, so I reach through and stab him in the eye.

I’ve never stabbed anything in the eye before. Actually, I’ve never stabbed anything anywhere before.

There are layers of sounds—all of them grotesque—when I do it. The most obvious one being the sound that he makes, less a groan, more a cry.

As well the sound of a blade piercing an eye and grinding bone as I drive the dagger through. These are sounds I’ve never wanted to know.

The sound of someone crying (I think it’s me) as he tears through the hedges to get to me, and then the hedges wilt back, revealing me to him.

And right when I think I’m definitely, absolutely about to die, even though he only has one eye, the layers of hedges behind me pull back like curtains at the same time as the minotaur falls on his knees in pain.

He stares up at me, my dagger still in his eye.

Then he does something strange.

He pulls it from his own eye, wipes it on his chest, then offers it to me.

I stare at it. It feels like a trick.

When I don’t take it from him, he lays it at my feet.

I stare at it, confused. He kneels there, unmoving, head bowed towards the ground, and it still feels like a trick? Maybe he’s just giving me a head start. Maybe it’s not fun to kill someone when they’re easy to kill. Whatever it is, I take the chance presented to me. I grab the dagger and run through the path the hedges made for me. They close behind me like gates slamming shut, and I fall to the ground when I’m finally out of it.

My breath is jagged. I’m crying, I think? I yell for Peter, but he doesn’t come. I yell for Jamison and Rune, but I’m too far away, I think. I don’t think they’d hear me if I was even on Neverland proper, and I’m somewhere much farther than that.