When I look up, my heart stops. “Mom?”
Chapter
Twenty
“Kelpies are water fae, mischievous ones. They shapeshift, and they have only one goal. To drown you.” She waves a hand at the water, and the kelpie changes into a handsome merman, his golden hair bright as he motions me toward him. “See?”
“Mom, is that really you?” I scramble to my feet, my gaze fixed on the woman floating over the water just ahead of me, her wings beating lazily.
She moves closer and lands on the island. “Your mother is part of Neverland. I thought you’d want to speak with her. But if you’d prefer some other form …” My mother vanishes, and in her place is the Spinner from the Fairy Village. Then she changes into Tiger Lily, then Nessie.
“Wait!” I step back. “Stop. Go back to my mother.”
“As you wish.” The form ripples, and my mother appears again, though now in fae form.
“It’s you.”
“As I said, she is now part of Neverland.”
“You mean she’s dead?” My heart wrenches.
My mother nods. “Long ago. Or maybe far into the future. Time moves strangely here.”
I wipe my cheeks. “It’s not real. You’re not her. Change into something else. Be your real form.”
“My real form?” She steps closer. “Neverland is a world of dreams. Nothing isreal.”
“Be anything else.” I’ve wanted so badly to speak to my mother for so long. But this is different. This is worse because she isn’t really here.
The form shifts into a golden woman in the form of a tree. Her hair is golden leaves, her body tree bark, her eyes a forest green. “Better?” she asks, her voice warm and tinged with cinnamon.
“Yes.” I take a deep breath. “Tell me how to fix you.”
She sways back and forth, as if wind is blowing her this way and that. “I don’t think I can be fixed. The balance I enjoyed for so long is gone.”
“Tell me how to restore it.”
“Maybe it doesn’t need to be restored.” She stops swaying. “Maybe it would be better if Neverland ceased to be. Then I could start fresh. My magic would be untainted.”
“But that would kill everyone on the island.”
She shrugs, a single leaf fluttering down into the water. “Anyone can die a thousand deaths in dreams.”
“I didn’t come here for riddles. I came here for a solution.”
“You came here to make a wish.”
“No.”
“No?” She puts her hands on her barky hips. “Then what do you have in your pocket?”
I furrow my brow. “Why does that matter?”
“Show it to me.”
I pull out the pearl and keep it in my palm. For some reason, I don’t think I can bear to let it out of my possession.
“Mmhmm, I see. So, youdon’twant to wish for James Hook?”
