“You don’t die when you do the spell,” she tells me unceremoniously.
Jem rolls his eyes. “There are other ways.”
I lift my brows. “And they are…？”
Jem opens his mouth to say something, but his mother cuts him off. “A shortcut to something you should just figure out in due time,” she says sagely, and though I can’t be entirely sure because I was still avoiding his gaze, I suspect that his eyes and mine both rolled. “Souls aren’t to be trifled with.” She gives us warning eyes. “They’re too delicate and impossible to untangle.”
“How do they get tangled?” I frown and then pause. “Do you mean literally tangled as though they’re a literal thing?”
She eyes me like I’m some sort of terrible dope. “They are of course, a literal thing.”
“Inside us!” I stare at her. “Like an organ we don’t know about on Earth yet?”
And then she erupts in laughter.
Jamison tosses her a look. “Mum—”
“Sorry.” She shakes her head and gets a hold of herself, trying to make her face look actually sorry and not just amused. “No, darling, not like an organ inside you.”
I give her a tiny glare for laughing at me but only a tiny one because she’s magic and I don’t want her to hex me, and also I think I love her.
“Where then?”
“The Cave of Souls,” she says like it’s the most obvious thing on the planet. “It’s remarkable down there, but”—she pauses thoughtfully—“souls themselves are remarkable. Delicate but amenable. I’ve never had the chance to see one be tied, but my mother did long ago, and she said it kind of smells of strawberries when it does.”
“And that’s what Ban did?” Jem asks. “Tried to tie their souls together?”
Itheelia nods.
“And they weren’t fated?” I ask.
“Evidently not.” She shrugs. “See, Ban needed to be linked to Vee, needed the tether to control her, but soul magic is a different kind of magic. It’s pure, doesn’t like to be manipulated. It just won’t be.”
Jem blinks a few times, shaking his head. “Fuck.”
“And the baby?” I ask quietly. “You said they had a baby.”
“The baby.” Itheelia looks from her son and over to me, where her eyes settle. “Well, he grew up. Handsome little thing, charming, just like his mother. I think he’s a friend of yours.”
“Oh my god.” I blink.
She nods. “The fairies found him, raised him.”
My mouth gapes.
“What the fuck, Mum?” Jamison pulls back. “How long have ye been sitting on thon one for?”
Itheelia’s mouth pinches. “A while.”
Jamison’s on his feet now, shaking his head, pacing. “Why d?dnae y’take him in?”
“I didn’t want a child.” She shrugs, then adds quickly as an afterthought, “At the time! That and I didn’t think the legend was true.” She lifts her shoulders like she’s innocent. “And then Peter grew a little, and I began to become afraid that it was.” She looks over at me. “You know how the land behaves around him.”
“Is it true,” I start, and I feel guilty as I do, as though the question I’m about to ask is a sign of me doubting him, “that he doesn’t age because of the fountain of youth?”
Itheelia nods. “It was the fairies at first; they used to give him water from it. They thought if they kept him small, they could control him more easily.”
I frown. “Could they?”
“Well.” Itheelia gives me a delicate, albeit long look. “He’s not a normal boy.”
“Does he ken?” Hook asks, looking from me to his mum.
I shake my head, and Itheelia gives me a pointed look.
“Nor should he.”
I shake my head at her a bit. “He has no idea where he’s come from.”
She nods. “For good reason.”
“He thinks his mother abandoned him—that no one wants him—”
Jamison shifts uncomfortably on his feet, but my mind is reeling, and I think you can see it on my face because Itheelia looks at me and then at the clock on her wall. “Time to go, I think.” She gives me a look—maternal, eyebrows up. “You won’t tell him?”
I swallow and sigh. “Do you not think that—”
“More than think, I know,” she says, eyes firm, “that the boy knowing would bring no good. Not to him, not to you, not to the land.” She pauses, lets it all hang there heavy. “You mustn’t tell him, Daphne.”