Part III: What the Thunder Said

 Part III (the end!!) of the Devil In the Wishing Well for the Writer's Digest Science Fiction/Fantasy contest. Probably makes no sense whatsoever alone. The first part is here: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work.php?id=96979 and you can read the second here: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work.php?id=96981

Part III: What the Thunder Said

The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,       

Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends       

Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.       

And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;    

Departed, have left no addresses.  

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept…               

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.   

But at my back in a cold blast I hear         

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

- T.S. Eliot, The Fire Sermon (The Wasteland) 

Boy

            He is not sure how he ended up here, leaning far over the edge of the bridge. The light is harsh, glinting off of thousands of shining windows and shimmering buildings. The river rushes past, some huge, dark snake that roars instead of hisses. The girl told him about it, once, the river Thames that ran through London like blood. He’d said the Never Ocean was better.

            He misses her, the girl, with her fearlessness and her stories. He’s never missed anyone before, never needed to. It’s a dull ache in his chest, like his heart has been scooped out and there’s a raw, empty space left behind. He is full of raw, empty places: the ragged hole in his mouth where the edge of a new tooth is hard against his tongue, and the red line curving around his ribs. It hurts when he touches it, and once his fingers came away smeared with blood.

            Fear is a bitter taste on his tongue.

            He thinks that he is supposed to be dead. That he might be dead. Do dead boys lean over the sides of bridges, their chests sore and empty? Do dead boys grow, teeth coming loose and skin stretched taught over lengthening bones?

            When he asks a girl with beads hung around her neck and flowers woven into her hair if this is what death is, her mouth opens in a perfect ‘o’. She shakes her head. Her eyes are warm brown, and it reminds him of the other girl. The one who scooped out his heart with her little hands.

            She’ll know. She’ll know where they are. After all, she gathered up her brothers and disappeared without a trace, and where would she end up but here? She has to be here.

            Perhaps he will ask her for his heart back. 

Girl

It happens suddenly, the thinning of the air and the tightening of the gap between universes, between dimensions and planets. One moment she is spinning, laughing, hips bumping against hips and careless hands brushing legs. The next she is slipping, stumbling, skin and nylon tearing on a jagged piece of concrete.

She is swearing, her fist pressed to her shin, when she sees him.

He’s sitting on the wall, knees drawn to his chest, and so, so still that for a moment she thinks he is not real. Her body freezes but her blood pounds. Her fingers itch to touch him, feel the beat of his heart and the warmth of his skin, because only then can she be sure he is real. But she is afraid he will disappear the moment she moves. He looks at her like she is the goddess of hope and he wants to pray. It makes her stomach twist with guilt.

“Peter.” She says finally. It feels strange on her lips. Peter. Like she hasn’t said his name in centuries, in eternities. He smiles, a graceless angel in the darkness, and she does not remember him looking so old. She left him a child with duck feather blonde hair, rounded cheeks and sparkling dust smeared like dirt on his face. This boy has that stretched teenage body of someone who has grown very quickly in little time: long limbs and sharp angles, narrow hips and bony wrists. His shirt hangs loose like a second skin.

He is beautiful, in the way that lost things have. She wants to hate him for it.

“How are you here?” she hisses. “You’re not supposed to be here.” She stands there, above him, and reaches out a hand like she might touch him. He slides his shirt up, crumpling it in his hands, to show her the shiny, raw line that curves up toward his chest. It’s so red it could have been drawn in magic marker.

This time, she does touch him. She is gentle, at first, for the warmth of his fragile new skin. But she presses her thumb down, to hear him gasp, to feel him push her away and to see the darkness in his eyes. “It seems you’re human after all, Peter Pan.” She says. He curls his arms around his stomach and says nothing.

So she turns on her heel, because hasn’t he screwed up her life enough?

But he’s calling, “Wait, Wendy, wait!” and shoving through the crowd after her, and oh, she’s twelve years old again, and all she needs to do is take his hand.

When he catches her, his eyes look very blue in a pale, pale face. “Please,” he says, softly, and this is it, the boy and the girl in their little spot of still in an ocean of movement, dangling on the precipice between now and forever. It’s like a picture-book, a fairytale, the reluctant princess and the lost prince, sealing their Happily-Ever-After with a kiss.

But she’s never liked fairytales.

The girl dances back to her brother and his bent wire glasses, standing on the wall like a lord defending his castle. Her cheeks are flushed and her lips are very red, red like kisses, red like candy and sin. Her tights are torn just below the knee.

“What happened?” he asks her, and she climbs up beside him. He shivers, but it is too late in the summer to be cold.

            “Nothing.” She says, and she means everything and nothing at all. He nods, because an eternity with her has taught him nothing if not patience. So if she stands on her toes when she thinks he isn’t watching, if she squints to see the pale shape of a boy in the crowd, well, Wendy’s always liked her secrets.