But somehow going to my childhood home with the plot of breaking into the vault and stealing back my wings feels like a betrayal. That it’s more proof that our sister was right in banishing us.
That I cannot be trusted.
Can it be fixed? This rift between us? Can I have my little sister back?
I wish Nana were here to guide me. Sometimes she told us to get our heads out of our asses and just do what needed doing. But other times she would sit us down and make us braid sweet grass while she told us old stories or myths of the gods. Bash loved the story of Blue Jay, the trickster god, and Asteria, the goddess of falling stars. I loved them all because I loved listening to Nana tell them.
Right now, I could use some of her sage wisdom. But I would settle for her presence even if she was silent.
To Bash I say, I’m going to Nana’s grave.
He frowns at me. It’s been a while since we’ve been there, but he nods and says, I’ll come too.
“We’re going for a walk to clear our heads,” I tell Winnie and Vane.
“Don’t get too close to the fae territory,” Vane warns.
As if we would risk running into Tinker Bell now.
Just the thought of our mother being resurrected from the dead drives a cold shiver down my spine.
My brother and I are silent as we leave the treehouse and wind our way through the woods, following our favorite foot trails that we usually reserve for running. Our pace is steady but not rushed. After all, we’re off to see a dead woman, and she will wait.
As we leave Pan’s territory, the sense of danger is heightened and my heart picks up, thumping beneath my ribs. Nana is buried in the graveyard reserved only for the royal line, so there’s no reason to worry about running into someone.
Somehow, I’m still on edge.
When we come to the line between forest and meadow, Bash and I stop.
Snow falls in lazy flakes, coating the meadow in a blanket of white. Bash and I aren’t dressed for the cold, just t-shirts and pants we threw on before we left, but the cold has yet to touch me.
I think I’m burning too hot with anger and frustration.
I’m sure the alcohol helps too.
I take a step forward and the snow melts beneath my step, leaving a perfect imprint of where I’ve been.
Bash puts his hand on my forearm, stilling me.
He cocks his head toward the rolling land. There are several grave markers, many of them crude stone carved with symbols and names. They dot the landscape in rows, so at first I don’t see the figure at the far back where Nana’s grave lays.
I glance at my twin.
The figure has wings the color of an abalone shell.
Our dear sister.
Dare we? I ask my twin.
His eyes scan the landscape. I check the skyline. The snow is making it more difficult to see at a distance, but the world is hushed and I don’t hear the buzzing of wings.
Bash gives me a nod and steps forward with me.
We leave the safety of the woods and make our way up the hill. There is no fence. No sign to indicate the fae burial grounds. Just the rows of markers that honor the dead.
The oldest royals were buried closest to the forest where the ground is more level, the plots much easier to delineate.
The graveyard grows younger the further back we go and the further back we go, the more I can hear the burbling of the Mysterious River on the other side of the hills. Bash and I spent many afternoons floating down the river back to the fae palace, our skin pruning, our faces baked by the sun. The fae that worked in the infirmary created a salve for protection from the sun, but Bash and I never used it. And Nana would knock us with her favorite wooden spoon when we came back burnt.
The wind cuts in, swirling snowflakes around us as we climb the shallow hill and finally come up on our closest ancestors’ burial grounds.
Tilly’s back is to us, but I know she senses us.
She’s standing in front of Nana’s grave, hands hanging limply at her side. She’s not in her usual royal wear. No finery or jewels or crowns.
Just a girl with her hair down, mourning a grandmother who has long since passed, a cloak clasped around her neck, the long train shifting with the whims of the wind.
Where the fuck do you start when there is so much to say?
“What did you do, Til?” I ask.
Her shoulders sag and she turns to us. It’s clear she’s been crying. Her cheeks are still wet and her eyes rimmed in red, but she’s managed to stop new ones from spilling.
Instead, they glitter in her eyes.
She takes in a deep breath. “I did what needed to be done.” There is no tremor in her voice. No doubt or resistance. But I know my little sister. She also learned Stoicism from Nana, but Tilly always took it much further and embodied the word.
If she shows no emotion and wears her determination like armor, she will be stronger. No one can hurt her.
How utterly alone she must feel.
How heartbreaking that is.
Bash and I did what we thought needed doing to protect Tilly, but I think we somehow made her even more vulnerable.
There were better ways to care for her. We were too blinded by our own self-interests to see clearly.
“How did you bring her back?” Bash breaks away from me, edging around our family’s burial plot.
I know what he’s doing. He’s boxing Tilly in while getting a better vantage point for the meadow down below. Just in case someone decides to ambush us.
Tilly levels her shoulders and grabs a length of her cloak, readjusting the thick fabric so it doesn’t trip up her feet. Smart move, little sister.
“I made an offering to the lagoon,” she admits, her chin held high.
Bash and I meet eyes across the open land between us. We don’t have to speak to know what the other is thinking.
Not surprised by this news. Still surprised by her stupidity.
After all, our father was already on death’s door when we killed him because he went into the lagoon looking for revenge.
“What did you give it?” I ask her, examining what I can see of her. Did she cut off an arm? No. A finger? Something else I can’t see?
The thought of my sister giving up something important for the resurrection of our wicked mother makes my stomach sour.
“What did you ask it for?” Bash edges around Nana’s grave. Tilly fidgets with her cloak and takes a step back, trying to stop him from getting behind her.
Her jaw flexes as she grits her teeth. “For a way to defeat Peter Pan once and for all.”
The cold finally hits me and I shiver.
I think Peter Pan now has a great many weaknesses. Darling is his biggest. Then Vane. Maybe even Bash and me.
Those weaknesses are inroads through his defenses.
But I think my mother is one of his weaknesses too. A different kind.
She is a blade that has always cut when he needed someone to cause another to bleed.
Now the blade has been turned on him, and I don’t know if he knows how to dodge its sharp edge.
There was always a little part of me that thought the way he killed my mother was a coward’s way out, speaking the words that should never be spoken to a fairy.
He did it because it was the only way he could cut her without also cutting himself.
Tinker Bell is also Peter Pan’s weakness because I think deep down her betrayal of him is one of his deepest wounds. One that has yet to heal.
When his own weapon turned on him, it broke his fucking heart.