Chapter one: Jim

It was quiet enough that she could hear her footsteps, each one in turn as her moccasins shuffled across the snow packed ground. Her breath came out in billowing, silver clouds from between her chapped lips and she knew that she had to stop the way her heart hammered madly in her chest; threatening to burst through bone and blood and flitter away just as all the fairies had done years prior. Neverwood had grown quieter since they had left with the last of the laughter and took with them everything good, she wanted to blame him, she really did, but that seemed moot; he had been gone for years before the fairies decided to scatter and join the stars lodged in the firmament between worlds. She glances upward, black flint eyes cold and emotionless before one scarred hand grabs at the deerskin hood to yank it up over her head in order to shield her from the sky blinking warily down on her. Bitterness burned in her stomach, made her sick enough that she gags and sputters and coughs for a moment – there is a shiver that runs down her spine as she glares down at the snow, at the red and orange leaves tangled beneath and she remembers too many things that seize up her lungs.

There was nothing left, in her opinion, nothing but loneliness in every square inch of the world since he had left them those many years ago; how many she was not exactly sure, it felt like a lifetime when she sat in the darkness of her hut with no one left to keep her company. The Piccaninny Tribe had died out through war and famine and plague, she was all that remained, known as the Skeleton Queen to what was left of her kin in the southern and northern tribes; those lucky few who had managed to endure through the onslaught of the past several years. It seemed funny that time was so relevant to her now, when it used to be nothing more than a silly notion brought from another world – she smiles, the rarest curl of her broad mouth that makes the skin around her eyes wrinkle. Slowly snowflakes begin to flutter around her, catching on her bronze cheeks and dark eyelashes and she blinks as she stretches her long fingers out to let flakes land on the pads of her fingers; they instantly melt, she laughs. It is an altogether strange sound, she thinks, to hear that laugh when there is so much that caused her pain; when her entire life had been spent waiting for him in war and grief and sadness.

"Tiger Lilly," whispers a voice and she closes her hand into a fist that drops limply at her side before whirling around to peer darkly at a boy standing a few yards away. He watches her keenly with bright blue eyes and a mop of sandy hair, his face is sharp as he tilts his chin down – he is thin for his age, which she assumes is somewhere between fourteen or fifteen, and he is dressed in rather plain clothes that are too tight for him. His trousers are rolled up at the hem with a button down tucked into the waist; the suspenders appear to pinch him because whenever he moves there is a sort of half-grimace on his pale face and he wears no shoes on his feet.

Tiger Lilly watches him as he comes closer, surveying the wiry muscles beneath the fabric of his shirt and how he seems taller; the curve of his jaw less feminine than before. She blinks incredulously at him for a moment as she crosses her arms over her chest, feels the biting wind on her cheeks and against her mouth and this lets her know she is not dreaming – that he is standing there across from her in the dark woods with the trees like bare bones rattling and the snow falling softly around them. He seems to stare at her in a strange, uneven way that makes her skin tingle and her eyes flutter. "Jim? Is that you? You look – you look so different."

He does not say anything at first simply ducks his head and blushes; he had always been shy, always the more humble out of the Lost Boys and Tiger Lilly had admired him for that. Finally he lifts his cool eyes back up to her and there is a charming smile on his mouth, which Tiger Lilly suddenly decides is an attractive mouth. "Yes, it's me, who else would it be?" He says softly as he reaches up a slender hand to tuck hair behind his ears and there is a moment where he seems to roll his shoulders forward as if to protect himself from her. Tiger Lilly scrunches her pugged nose at his mild sarcasm, rocking back on her heels to show her disproval for everything that he is; that he has become because not days prior he had been so terribly young and perfect. Now he was this, whatever this was, and she felt he had been ruined beyond all measure.

Carefully she extends a leathery hand out to grab him by an ear, which sends him doubling over with a howl as he swats her wrist. Tiger Lilly does not flinch at his touch, every stinging slap only makes her grasp that much harder until his face is nearly touching the snow. "What news have they gathered and why was it so important as to bring me down from the Red Skull Mountains this early?" Her voice is deep and raspy and not quite as girlish as it had once been, she is a different Tiger Lilly than what some inhabitants would remember her to be – not this boy who would only know her as this husk. He would not remember when she was young and beautiful with bright red feathers in her long hair, how she had been the envy of every squaw and every brave had wanted her hand in marriage.

Jim howls once more as he writhes to her touch, his knees are partially buckled and his hips slung back so that he resembles a contortionist out of one of those stories in the Black Book kept in the Underground library; he had been told that they were stories from Mother Wendy decades ago. He often wondered what it might be like to have a mother, he does not remember his own nor how he had gotten to Never-land in the first place – Tiger Lilly told him it was by chance that he had come here and that he should not question good things lest he wanted them to go away. Jim had never asked again, at least not out loud where everyone could hear him. "Ouch, ouch," he gurgles, "Woodlyn said he received confirmation from the radio yesterday that it was true; secure; whatever they call it!"

With that Tiger Lilly releases the boy, who straightens his spine and rubs his ear between two fingers with a sort of hard edged look on his face that she barely even notices. Instead, she pushes back the hood on her head and looks back up at the sky above them – the snow has stopped, for now, and the stars twinkle impishly between the dark clouds. It had been months since she had even thought about that old radio in the Underground, she had known the Lost Boys had been working on it, figuring it out piece by piece but she had no idea that they had actually fixed it – were using it. The last time she had saw it was when he had brought it from London and showed them how to use the dials, he promised it would tell them stories while he was gone but all they ever received was static; this sort of guttural, grinding noise that only set her teeth on edge. So she had stopped coming to listen in hopes it would someday work and now that she has found that it does, well, she feels that familiar drumming in her chest; the kind that makes her place a hand over her heart and clutch the furs tightly as if they were a lifeline to pull her out from nostalgia.

"Jim, take me to Woodlyn." Her words are breathy and light and she looks at him over her shoulder, noticing the bull-elk just adjacent to their left as he sniffs idly at the snow; his antlers are proud and wide and tangled with ivy that has since died in the cold temperatures. She looks at the animal and he lifts his head, tilts it so that one of his dark eyes catches hers and they stare at one another for the longest moment in the dark – she remembers what it was like to hunt and to chase and now it was starting all over again. Her eyes snap away from the elk and the creature trots over the bank into the valley, his sudden bugle causing Jim to jump before he shakes his head – pushes hair and snow from his face in a relieved sort of way that makes his shoulders sag.

For a moment he looks at her and she looks at him and then he holds out a pale hand, he takes her darker one, entwining their awkward fingers together – and they run far and fast and desperate through the snowy Neverwood.