Unhooked (31 page)

He deepens the kiss, his lips pressing against mine in a soft slide of warmth, teasing me with the promise of something I feel like I will never reach. He shifts, wrapping his arms around me, pulling me closer into the heat of his body, and I cannot help but respond.

The unnerving softness of his skin, the lean muscle of his arms under my touch. I let my fingers ruffle the short dark hair at the nape of his neck as I kiss him back, pressing myself into him, as though this moment is the only moment. Because I know it is. I kiss him as though I could kiss away our fates. As though I could kiss away all the fear that riots inside me.

Before I'm even close to satisfied, he eases away, leaving me breathless and wanting. “We shouldn't tarry,” he says, his voice as strained and unsteady as I feel.

We don't move away from each other, though. His body is still pressed against mine. He still cups my face gently with his hands, and my arms are still wrapped around his waist. Neither of us speaks as he pulls me closer against him again, and I let him, taking in all I can about this moment.

The future is impossible—I know that. So I settle for what I have—I memorize the steady beat of his heart and concentrate on the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest until the time comes that we can delay no longer.

In that world, the boy learned that boredom could be deadly. No one warned him, but he discovered it just the same. For hours the lads would sit or stand, arms in hand, blades ready in wait. And as they waited, every rustling sound, every shifting of the earth was the enemy. As they waited, their fear grew teeth. . . .

A
RE YOU READY, THEN?” ROWAN steps away from me reluctantly.

The sun has already dipped behind the hills, leaving the air cooler, and without his body against mine, I feel more chilled than ever. “As I'll ever be.”

He eyes me, expectant, but he doesn't rush me.

I settle myself on the ground near the clear pool. In the water, jewel-colored fish swim beneath the surface, and then my focus shifts and I catch a glimpse of my reflection. I look like a stranger. My face is smudged and my short hair is a wild tangle, but my eyes are steady and strong. The girl staring back at me isn't the Gwen from before. Even if she doesn't understand everything she's been through, the girl staring back at me is someone new. Someone I want a chance to know.

When I'm ready, I press my hands to the ground beneath me, feeling the sharp points of the rocky soil. I press with all my weight and all my focus, until my palms ache with the effort. Until the gash in my arm screams in protest. I focus on the way the land beneath me moves, pulsing in its steady, ever-present beat.

Show me.
I direct every ounce of energy I have left into the ground, into the island beneath me.
Show me your Queen so I can free her. Show me so you can be free,
I tell Neverland, but the land beneath my palms pulses steadily, unaware—or maybe just indifferent.

Undeterred, I claw my fingers into the ground until the silty soil of Neverland scrapes beneath my ragged fingernails. My temper spikes hot and acidic in my veins, burning through me with all the anger from all the years I've spent feeling powerless and impotent. All those years being dragged from place to place with my mother, who kept this from me, who never gave me a say. All those towns and all those schools where I never fit. I am
supposed
to fit here.

“Show me,” I demand, heat beginning to pulse through my arms. “Give me my Queen,” I whisper.

The heat in my hands grows, spreads, as I feel the island shudder beneath me, and as something deep inside me answers. The ground shakes in response. Beneath my palms, the soft green ground cover begins to transform, each tiny blade of grass going stiff and still, rippling as it hardens into glasslike shards. The transformation spreads like a wave, climbing over the ground, right up to the edge of the water.

The ground quakes violently, and Rowan pulls me up and into the protection of his arms. “What have you done, lass?”

I look up at him and see again the fear in his eyes. But I'm not afraid. I wanted this. I commanded it. And now I'll see it through to the end.

I lick my parched lips. “We'll find out soon enough, I guess.” All around us, the landscape turns hard and brittle as the ground continues to rumble and shake, and Neverland transforms itself in answer to my call.

The pool beneath the falls starts to churn and bubble, like it's boiling. One by one, the jeweled bodies of the fish rise to the surface, motionless, the once-brilliant colors of their scales fading into a glossy black, like the light within them has gone forever dark. They look like strange floating pebbles now, and are so thick and plentiful that it almost looks like we could walk across the surface of them.

Then, all at once, everything falls completely silent. The land goes absolutely motionless beneath our feet. The plants don't shift and change, and the surface of the water goes as still as glass.

Rowan releases me enough to draw his sword from its sheath. We wait for what will come next, holding our breath against hope, but nothing happens.

“Well, that was—”

An earsplitting crack shatters the eerie silence and drowns out the rest of what Rowan says. His arm tightens around me as the hilly land echoes with the reverberations of the noise, but otherwise, the world is still completely motionless and quiet.

Afraid to move, we both search for some indication of what caused the sound, but at first nothing seems different. Then I see what is happening.

“The falls,” I whisper.

They aren't coursing as they once did. Instead, the water level is steadily dropping, exposing jagged steps in the rock as it drains away. As the last bit of water trickles down, it reveals a dark crack splitting the mountain in two. As we watch, the fissure steadily grows, traveling down the center of the rock, like the dark lines traveled across the skin of the boy on the ship.

The island rumbles again as the rock behind the falls begins to move apart, cleaving into two halves and exposing a dark crevasse. The remaining water of the falls drains into the yawning hole in the mountain, and the water left in the clear pool beneath the falls is also draining away, running back into the place where the island split itself apart.

Rowan's arms are still tight and protective around me as we watch, until all that's left is the dark, muddy bed of the lake and a wide, deep wound in the land.

I stare at the gaping fissure, horrified and awed by what I've managed to do. “Do you think that's it?”

“There's only one way to be certain.” He releases me and offers his hand. “If you're ready?”

I'm not. I thought I was, but just looking at the dark gash in the rock makes my skin prickle in warning. Still, this is what we have come here for. This is what I demanded, and if Neverland answered my call, we need to see what it's trying to show us.

I take his offered hand, and Rowan leads the way out into the mucky basin of the falls. We avoid the gaping crack that runs down its middle as we make our way across it, toward where water had once cascaded down the mountain. Toward the place where the island has opened itself to us.

The ground of the lake bed is soft, but the brittle bodies of fish crackle beneath our booted feet when we step on them, popping and snapping as we go. Each tiny body I destroy seems like another threat, and another reminder of what we stand to lose.

When we reach the other side, the bare, wet cliffs loom above us as the dark split in the rock dares us to enter. Water still drips from the edges of the dark stone in an uneven rhythm

“It could be a trap,” I say as I peer into the dark cave.

“This whole bloody world's a trap.” Rowan never takes his eyes from the newly formed opening before us. “We're going to be needing some light, I think.”

It takes him only a moment to find a branch thick enough and strong enough to serve as a torch. He takes his shirt off from beneath his coat and wraps it around the branch. With the tip of his metal finger, he manages to get enough of a spark on one of the drier surfaces to light the makeshift torch. Then he looks at me, nervous anticipation glinting in his eyes. He doesn't like this any more than I do, but he wants it to be true just as much.

“Let's be getting on with it, shall we?”

I give him a tight nod and follow his lead into the gaping jaws of the cavern.

Once we're inside, the air is immediately cooler. We hesitate, both of us waiting and listening for the unmistakable sound of the Dark Ones. But the cavern is silent. There is no scent of moldering leaves, no rustling of far-off wind. The air is thick and wet around us, but it is not dangerous—not yet, at least.

This is no normal tunnel, though—the walls are not the smoothly hewed stone of Pan's fortress. The walls here are all sharp edges and jutting corners that tell of the violence that created them. We don't speak as we walk, but my hand slides into his as we make our way deeper into the heart of the island.

Deeper into the mountain, the tunnel grows even narrower. It's all unexpected switchbacks and hairpin turns that make me feel like we're going in circles, spiraling farther and farther into the heart of Neverland. My skin prickles with the certainty that at any moment the rock will once again begin to vibrate and rumble, crushing us beneath its weight. But the island remains disconcertingly quiet. The rock around us remains cold and dead.

Finally the tunnel opens, flaring out to reveal a large roomlike cavern that is a dead end. The ceiling is higher here, and it glows like a miniature night sky. Rowan notices the strange starlike lights at the same time I do and raises the torch higher so we can make out what's causing the effect. Dark crystals embedded into the rock glow like tiny false stars, but they aren't randomly scattered. There is a pattern to them, like tiny constellations.

Familiar
constellations. The crystals in the ceiling form lines and angles that remind me of the runes on my mother's stones. The runes carved into Pan's skin.

“This is it,” I whisper, afraid to disrupt the silence around us by speaking too loudly.

Rowan's face is all grim concentration as he raises the torch from one side of the room to another, searching for some sign that I'm right. “It's a dead end, Gwendolyn. There's nothing here save some bits of rock and more dampness.”

My heart sinks, because he's right—this
is
a dead end. I don't know what I expected to find, but there is nothing in this chamber but the glittering constellations above us and the silent rock surrounding us. Still, I can hear the sound of water rushing somewhere not so far off, and air is moving through the passage. It can't be a
complete
dead-end.

“Look at the ceiling. This is it.” I can't shake the sense that the Queen is here . . . somewhere.

I let go of Rowan's hand and step away from him, beyond the light of his torch and to the smooth walls of the cavern. These walls aren't damp, and when I press my hands to them, they feel almost warm. If I focus, I can feel the heartbeat of the island racing at a dizzying speed, faster than I've ever felt it before. But it's softer than I've ever felt it too, as though it's buried somewhere deep below.

Show me.
I channel the demand—not the request—through myself, into the rock. Rowan stands near me again, the heat of his torch warming my face as I concentrate on speaking to, listening to the world beneath my hands.

As I'm listening, my heart beating in time to the distant pulse of Neverland, I hear a noise in the darkness of the cavern behind me. A sharp plinking sound, like a penny striking a table, and the echo of the sound rings in the silence.

“What was that?” Rowan whispers, holding his flame aloft.

I don't let myself look. I don't let myself do anything but focus on the feel of the stone beneath my hand, on my desire to see the Queen. I allow myself to let go of all my fear, all my misgivings, and to
want
.

To free her.

To free all of us, because if we can do this, I can go home—I can get Olivia home. If I can do this, I can make everything right.

But a voice inside me whispers,
Not everything
.

The heat building beneath my hands falters, and for a moment all I feel is the coolness of the rock and the certainty that I can't save him—No matter what I do, I won't be able to save the boy beside me.

I shove that thought out of my head. I won't let myself be distracted. Not even for Rowan.

Plink.
The sound comes again, and again it echoes.
Plink, plink.

“It's the ceiling,” Rowan tells me. He holds up the torch again, and in its flickering light, I see what he means. The glittering crystals in the ceiling are falling one by one, a solid, steady shower of stone. “Get back,” he says, pushing me against the wall as more fall.

Rowan covers me with his body as the noises steadily increase, rising in speed and volume, but still I concentrate on my task, calling to the world. Asking Neverland to heed my desire. As the crystals fall like dying stars, they throw debris into the air around us. I can smell the metallic, almost mineral scent of the dust they kick up from the floor when they land. I can taste it—the heart of Neverland coats my tongue with its bitter taste.

Then the falling crystals slow until, finally, the cavern is quiet. Nothing else tumbles from the ceiling, and after a long moment we right ourselves and shake the dust from our hair.

“What was that?” I look up at the ceiling, thankful it hasn't collapsed completely, but it's pockmarked now and no longer flickers with diamondlike shards.

I start to step toward the center of the room, trying to figure out if anything else has happened, but my foot falters when the ground beneath it crumbles away. Where once there was flat, solid rock, the ground is now carved out into a deep crater. The floor is gone, and in its place a narrow path winds down, spiraling into the center, and in the center of that crater someone or something is huddled, a clumped mass of dirty rags that seems to be moving.