Neverland

The Tide of Lost Things
The ocean off Blackwood Bay didn't swallow secrets; it hoarded them.

Maeve stood on the razor edge of the jagged salt-cliffs, her worn brass lantern casting a fragile, pale halo into the midnight mist. Below, the water crashed against the dark granite rocks with a sound like grinding teeth, spraying fine sea salt that stung her cheeks and clung to her dark hair.

She wasn't supposed to be out past the shore lamps. Everyone born in Blackwood knew the old rules, whispered by elders and scratched into the doorframes of every cottage along the coast:

Never follow a whistling wind after dark.

Keep your iron trinkets close to your skin.

If you see a boy standing on the water without a shadow, turn back immediately.

"Jamie?" she called out, her breath blooming into heavy gray vapor against the freeze.

No answer-only the distant, rhythmic tap of salt spray against the stone and the hollow groaning of the tide.

Then she saw it. Floating just beyond the white churn of the surf line was a small wooden toy ship carved from dark oak, its tiny canvas sails tattered and gleaming with a strange, iridescent silver dust. It was Jamie's ship-the one he had spent all last summer carving on the front porch, his small hands carefully sanding down the hull.

Maeve dropped to her knees at the cliff's wet brink, lowering her lantern over the abyss. The swinging beam caught something else lingering in the unnatural fog-a high silhouette standing impossibly tall upon the crest of a rising wave.

His hair was dark, tossed wild by an invisible wind that didn't touch the rest of the stagnant bay. He wore a heavy leather jacket stitched together from frayed navy cloth, and around his neck hung a pendulum made of a polished, hollowed-out bone.

He tilted his head toward Maeve, his eyes catching the lantern light like those of a nocturnal predator. When he smiled, it was neither warm nor friendly. It was the sharp, hollow smile of someone who had forgotten w