she’d thought were just dreams, because they were impossible, weren’t they? But so was not having a shadow. And he did know her brothers. What else did he know? What else did he remember that Wendy didn’t?
Wendy felt like she’d been dropped into freezing-cold water. Her skin tingled and she was dangerously lightheaded.
“Wendy?” Peter’s voice called her back and she forced herself to focus on it, to ground herself back in reality. At some point, he’d moved closer. Peter watched her warily, his eyebrows pulled together and hands held out like he was readying himself to catch her. “Are you okay? You don’t look so good…”
Wendy dragged her hand across her sweaty forehead. The shack suddenly felt uncomfortably hot, suffocating. This was too much to process at once. “Please take me home now.”
“But—”
“Please?” She hated how pathetic she sounded and how her eyes were starting to prickle. She needed to get out of the woods. She needed to go home. “We can sort all this out—this shadow stuff or whatever—but I really need to go home first.” Wendy knew she wasn’t being very truthful, but right now she’d have said anything to get out of that shack.
Peter paused and for a second she feared he would object. She could see him thinking and watched as the muscle in his jaw worked anxiously. But then he nodded. “Yeah, okay.” He crossed the room and opened the warped wooden door.
Outside, Wendy saw a small clearing in the light that spilled from the shack. Beyond that, everything was swallowed up by the darkness of the woods.
Wendy’s body stiffened in the doorway.
“Are you all right?” Peter asked.
She could feel him just behind her shoulder.
Wendy wrung her sweaty hands together and nodded. “Y-yes, I’m fine. Just a little afraid of the … dark.” It was only half a lie. She was afraid of the woods, but especially afraid of them at night.
Peter laughed. It came so easily to him.
“That’s a strange thing to be scared of.” He grabbed the lantern from a hook on the wall and pressed it into her hand. “There,” he said, chin tilted proudly. “Problem solved.”
Wendy gripped the metal handle. “Right.”
Peter hopped through the doorway and leisurely strolled toward the woods.
Begrudgingly, Wendy followed.
“Since when are you afraid of the dark, anyway?” Peter asked, glancing back at her over his shoulder.
Wendy almost stopped, wanting to pull back from the familiar way he kept talking to her. He stared at her, so open and unabashed. Meanwhile, her own cheeks felt hot under his gaze.
Wendy’s hands shook so fiercely that the metal handle of the lantern clattered. Peter frowned at it. She gripped it tighter in an attempt to stop the shaking. The strain made the dry, cracked skin of her knuckles sting.
Peter continued leading the way through the woods. His bare feet easily traversed rocks and tree roots. “I mean, lions, quicksand, nasty-tasting medicine: Those are all valid things to be afraid of,” he said, leaping onto a fallen tree, his arms out at his sides as he walked along it. He seemed perfectly at home. “But the dark?” he asked. Peter jumped down and fell back into step next to Wendy. “Really?” There was a teasing note in his voice as he ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch.
Wendy only needed to dip her head a bit to clear the same branch.
She scowled at him. Her sense of pride tried to bubble its way to the surface through the sour fear in her belly. “I’m not afraid of the dark,” Wendy said, correcting her previous statement. “I’m cautious of what’s in the dark that I can’t see.” She lifted the lantern a bit higher in an attempt to get a better view of the woods ahead. Her shadow caught her eye as it walked along the tree to their right, unaccompanied. Peter’s shadow was still nowhere in sight. It was just so … odd. “Something that could hurt me,” she mumbled, more to herself than Peter. The cut on her leg ached, and it was hard to keep branches and leaves in the underbrush from slapping it.
Peter stopped walking and stared at her for a moment, his head tilted to the side. It reminded her of her old dog, Nana, when Wendy used to speak to her—confused and trying to understand. It was an innocent and kind of stupid expression. Despite present circumstances, Wendy felt a laugh rise in her throat.
But then Peter started walking again. “I think people are more frightening than