Straight On Till Morning

by Liz Braswell

  After a moment Wendy recovered from the strange beauty and remembered why she was there. She padded into the street before she could rethink anything and pulled up her hood. “Why didn’t I do this earlier?” she marveled. Sneaking out when she wasn’t supposed to was its own kind of adventure, its own kind of magic. London was beautiful. It felt like she had the whole city to herself except for a stray cat or two.

  Despite never venturing beyond the neighborhood much by herself, she had spent plenty of time with maps, studying them for someday adventures. And as all roads lead to Rome, so too do all the major thoroughfares wind up at the Thames. Names like Vauxhall and Victoria (and Horseferry) sprang from her brain as clearly as if there had been signs in the sky pointing the way.

  Besides Lost Boys and pirates, Wendy had occasionally terrified her brothers with stories about Springheel Jack and the half-animal orphan children with catlike eyes who roamed the streets at night. As the minutes wore on she felt her initial bravery dissipate and terror slowly creep down her neck—along with the fog, which was also somehow finding its way under her coat, chilling her to her core.

  “If I’m not careful I’m liable to catch a terrible head cold! Perhaps that’s really why people don’t adventure out in London at night,” she told herself sternly, chasing away thoughts of crazed, dagger-wielding murderers with a vision of ugly red runny noses and cod-liver oil.

  But was it safer to walk down the middle of the street, far from shadowed corners where villains might lurk? Being exposed out in the open meant she would be more easily seen by police or other do-gooders who would try to escort her home.

  “My mother is sick and requires this one particular tonic that can only be obtained from the chemist across town,” she practiced. “A nasty decoction of elderberries and slippery elm, but it does such wonders for your throat. No one else has it. And do you know how hard it is to call for a cab this time of night? In this part of town? That’s the crime, really.”

  In less time than she imagined it would take, Wendy arrived at a promenade that overlooked the mighty Thames. She had never seen it from that particular angle before or at that time of night. On either bank, windows of all the more important buildings glowed with candles or gas lamps or even electric lights behind their icy panes, little tiny yellow auras that lifted her heart.

  “I do wish I had done this before,” she breathed.

  Maybe if she had, then things wouldn’t have come to this.…

  She bit her lip. A decision had been made; it was time to follow through on it. There was no room for weakness or second thoughts in a hero, and if nothing else, Wendy had to be the hero of her own soul. She found the closest set of stairs down to the river and descended lightly, keeping an eye out for thugs and cutthroats. There was no one around at all—no one visible, anyway—except for a suspicious old man in a broken top hat sucking on a pipe on the opposite bank.

  She stood at the edge of the turgid black waters and waited.

  A breeze rose, curling the little hairs that strayed from Wendy’s chignon. She realized with a start that the air now had the sharp tang of salt. Of the sea. The wispy fog that had seemed to follow her from home was now joined by its big brother, which swept down the river like a swift, dark carriage. Thick tendrils preceded it, scraping this way and that just above the water, as if feeling a clear path for the billows that followed. In a very short time Wendy was once again surrounded by gray. She couldn’t even see the stairs up to the road.

  Everything was still.

  And then, emerging out of the darkness like a wraith, a single yellow light bobbed in the inky distance.

  Slowly and steadily it grew closer.

  Wendy sucked in her breath.

  The light resolved into a lantern hung on a yoke.…

  No, not a yoke—a prow!

  Incredibly, unbelievably, a silent galleon glided down the Thames toward her. Its sails were furled and its masts as thin and bare as the bones of a broken ribcage rotting on some ancient, forgotten battlefield.

  The ship paused improbably in the currents.

  Nothing moved in the foggy night but a single black flag rippling in the salty breeze, its skull and crossbones faded and yellow.

  Wendy forced herself to stand still, waiting, as motionlessly as she could, her heart pounding loudly in her ears. She had made her decision. She had taken an action. These were the results, and she would deal with them.

  “Well, well, well,” came a voice from the deck.

  Then came the measured clops of surprisingly hard and high-heeled boots on the planks, approaching the railing. Wendy gritted her teeth.

  Captain Hook leaned over and grinned at her.

  He was exactly and precisely the way she had imagined—remembered—him. Long, black, ridiculous curling locks. Probably a wig. Long face, clear of the dissolution of rum but ruined by the joint devils of villainy and insanity. He obviously thought himself a duke in a red-and-gold coat, prim breeches, and mostly spotless stockings. A feather stuck out of his oversized hat; a Jacobean collar throttled his neck. Above his smile was a mustache waxed and styled to within an inch of its—probably dyed—life.

  Yet Wendy gulped.

  Seeing him was different from imagining—remembering—him. He looked utterly absurd, and that was exactly what made him terrifying.

  “Ah, Miss Darling. How are you on this fine night?” he called, saluting her with his hook, sharp and golden, the only thing that glittered in the dim light of the solitary lantern.

  “Very well, thank you!” Wendy shouted back. Manners stepped in, bless them, when the mind scrambled away to hide. “And you?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t be better, thank you for asking,” he answered with an oily smile. “That is, assuming you have brought what you said you would.”

  “I have it. I have Peter Pan’s shadow here.” She took out the satchel and showed it to him.

  “Oh, excellent, excellent girl.”

  Any pretense at politeness, any mockery he exhibited, disappeared entirely as visceral excitement took over. The greed on his face was both reassuring and nauseating. He rubbed his hand and hook together with tangible glee.

  “Do we have a deal?” Wendy asked, clearly and loudly.

  “Yes, yes, of course. Passage to Never Land. In return for one shadow.”

  “And home again,” Wendy pressed. “When I wish to return.”

  “And passage home again,” Hook said impatiently. “Yes, yes. As for when you wish to return, that can be a tricky business. Getting here…without pixie magic or flight…is an uncertain thing. My crew wasn’t too keen on the idea to begin with.”

  “That was the deal. Never Land and home again,” Wendy said, pulling the satchel away from his view and making as if to put it back in her coat.

  “Of course, of course,” Hook said desperately, eyes never leaving the satchel. “Never Land and home again. Without question. Just be aware that we are not some sort of ferry service, Miss Darling. We are pirates. With limited magical means. You cannot on a whim decide you’ve missed Mummy and Daddy long enough and expect to be transported instantly. These things take time.”

  “All right, I will take that into due consideration,” Wendy said. “Otherwise, promise?”

  “Oh, I promise.”

  “Swear…swear by the pirates’ code!”

  Hook looked exasperated.

  Wendy put her hands on her hips.

  She knew about boys trying to sneak out of promises. She had two younger brothers. You had to be very specific with your orders and wishes, or they were as wily and untrustworthy as evil genies. And what was a pirate, really, but a boy grown, with a real sword and a mustache?

  “Swear it,” she repeated.

  She could have sworn she heard muffled laughter from behind him on the deck.

  Hook sighed.

  “All right, all right. I swear on the pirates’ code: I, Captain Hook, promise that in return for Peter Pan’s shadow I shall grant Wendy Darling
passage to Never Land and home—when circumstances allow it.”

  “All right then,” Wendy said, trying to sound surer than she felt. She had just won a battle of wits with a pirate, just like in a story. Why didn’t she feel triumphant?

  “Come on, men, let’s welcome our passenger aboard!” Hook grinned again at her, a smile that narrowed to points at the corners of his mouth that were as sharp as those at the ends of his mustache, as the end of his hook.

  There was a thumping and pounding on the deck. A rope ladder unrolled over the side, bumping and bouncing on its way down, the last step landing neatly at Wendy’s feet.

  She took a deep breath, set her jaw, and climbed up.

  As might have been guessed from the preceding pages, Wendy hadn’t much experience interacting with the world at large; that is, people who weren’t her family, shopkeepers, neighbors, or other audience members at the theater. Yet despite this innocence she had an immediate sense that perhaps these pirates were not the nicest people to be left alone with. It was one thing to tell tales of swashbuckling battles and the backstory behind the bosun with the eye patch—and quite another to actually be in their midst.

  Captain Hook presented his men with a flourish. They stood neither in neat rows nor at attention—with very little respect at all, actually—and beheld Wendy far too boldly for her liking. One skinny chap with large gold earrings who slouched provocatively to one side actually gave her an appalling wink.

  Their clothes were not the bright primary colors of nursery room imagination; they were salt-faded and dull. Their faces weren’t merely unshorn and artfully streaked with a daub of tar; they were grubby. All shades of skin were dulled with not enough washing. Wendy found her hands twitching, the urge to grab a cloth and scrub them almost overwhelming all other thoughts.

  “Men, this is Wendy Darling. Wendy, this is me crew. Crew, she is a guest aboard the Jolly Roger and I expect you swabs to treat her as such.”

  “It’s bad luck to have a woman aboard,” one large old pirate with a red bandanna growled. “Worse than a cat. Brings storms and swells.”

  “Oh…I think it’s the best sort of luck to have a lass on deck.” A man with one eye and a loathsome leer grinned at her disgustingly.

  “If any one of you touches her,” Captain Hook said with a very false smile, “you’ll be feeding the sharks before you can draw your next breath.” He leaned on his heels and put his hands on his hips, a movement that threw his splendid jacket back and revealed the twin pistols that were holstered elegantly on his hips.

  This made Wendy feel a lot calmer but a little vexed. What if the pirate was saving her life, or wanted to arm wrestle? What then?

  “This whole thing is a bloody waste of time,” a third pirate scoffed. “We should be out attacking ships, looting gold, and plundering treasure!”

  “And so we shall. But in the meantime, she has given me something more valuable than all the gold in Never Land,” Hook said airily. “Peter Pan’s shadow!”

  He unfurled the poor limpid thing and flapped it out to show them. The shadow hung limply from its neck where the pirate held it, struggling only a little.

  The pirates looked mostly unhappy at the sight, a smidgen angry, and not just a little uncomfortable. Seeing a shadow hanging there apart from its owner was unnatural and might make the heartiest and blackest soul shiver, but even Wendy could see there was more to it than that.

  “And what will that get us?” demanded an orange-haired lout with a northern European accent.

  “Why, it will get us P—” Hook paused with a not-very-subtle side-eye at Wendy. “It will get us something we’ve always wanted. Well, something I have always wanted. And I am your captain. So it’s what you want, too—or at least it’s in your best interests to want it. And when I have it, we will be done with Never Land and all its silliness forever, and there will be only plundering and loot from here on out. All right?”

  There were muttered grumbles of grudging assent.

  “For now, I’m putting the shadow in safekeeping, in the trusted hands of Mr. Smee.”

  At this the pirates looked even more uncomfortable—and disgusted. Possibly resigned. They threw up their hands and slowly dispersed, growling and unsatisfied and muttering curses.

  “So there you are, my dear,” Captain Hook said, bowing to her. “A loathsome lot, to be sure, but you’re safe among them while we’re on our way to Never Land.”

  “What time shall we get there, if you please?” Wendy asked politely.

  “We don’t deal with time or clocks or watches on the Jolly Roger, Miss Darling. Except for figuring latitude and longitude. Pirates are free from such civilizing constraints and demonic inventions of man. We have none of those infernal contraptions on this ship, I can tell you.”

  Wendy narrowed her eyes. What a strange thing to say—and there was a strange look behind his bluster. Fear? Could it possibly have been fear? He was afraid of something. Something he wasn’t telling her.

  “All right, well…Approximately how long will it take to get there? Surely pirates aren’t entirely free from the passage of time, what with meals and sleep and the like.”

  “Oh, you’re a very clever girl, aren’t you, Miss Darling? Well, these things aren’t precise, but it shouldn’t be more than a day or so.”

  “And how are we to get there?”

  Captain Hook gave her a knowing smile. “I suppose if you were with Peter Pan he would say something like oh, second star on the left, et cetera, et cetera. And you would fly through the sky, straight to the island of your dreams.

  “Alas, my lady, pixie dust and good magic are rather out of a pirate’s reach. We had to go a different route, and it nearly cost poor Major Thomas his life. Possibly his soul. It was a bit unclear. Anyway, he’s a useless lubber and prone to grog. Not much of a loss there.”

  Wendy’s eyes widened and her hand went to her mouth in dismay, but Hook was already touching his hat to her and spinning away, chuckling over the shadow he held.

  Now alone, she looked around the deck nervously. There were no benches or chaise lounges as on a proper transport vessel. Because of the lateness—or the earliness—of the hour, the pirates mostly went belowdecks to their bunks. None of those remaining seemed particularly happy about the strange motion of the ship, gliding along without oars or sails or any human help at all. They occupied themselves with other pirate-y pursuits: five-finger fillet on an upturned barrel, surreptitious sips from leather flasks, shouting over a game that involved rolling with what looked very much like knucklebones instead of dice.

  (And how were those come by? Wendy wondered.)

  She fidgeted with her fingers a bit the way she did at parties, and then decided that the dice throwers seemed the least dangerous.

  “My, those are certainly unique implements you’re playing with,” she ventured.

  The pirates just grunted.

  “Of course, I don’t approve of gambling at all, but Father has a lovely pair of dice that he keeps with his jewelry. They’re not…bones. At least, I don’t think so. I believe they’re ivory. Although I suppose that’s basically a sort of bone, isn’t it?”

  The pirates frowned and tried to ignore her.

  “They have real pips on them, carved and painted. They really are quite lovely. Of course, I am against gambling, and so is Mother. It’s not a proper occupation for anyone, even men. But his dice are quite pretty and nice to hold, and they warm up in your hand so. And how do you know which side yours land on? Without pips?”

  The pirates stopped their game entirely and stared up at her in exasperation.

  “Well, I’ve never played before,” she said, a little defensively. “I’m not asking you to teach me. I’m just wondering. I should have to say no if you asked me, wouldn’t I? Seeing as gambling and games of chance are immoral. So please, I’d rather you didn’t ask.”

  “Weren’t going to,” one of the pirates grumbled. And with that, he swept the dice up into his bag an
d left her alone with the other players, who gave her nasty looks before they, too, retreated.

  Wendy wilted. Life aboard the pirate ship was actually surprisingly similar to a fancy party, the type she hated. With dressed-up girls and boys and men and women and tea and tiny sandwiches and aspic and someone showing off on the piano. No one wanted to talk to her at those gatherings, either. It was like Christmas all over again.

  She wandered forlornly across the deck and looked out over the railing.

  The sky was blank. Fog surrounded the ship and there was no more breeze. It was as if they had reached the middle of the night, the middle of nowhere. Everything stood still except for a few tendrils of Wendy’s hair and the black flag. She shivered, pulling her coat more closely around her. She didn’t want to be alone. But the five-finger fillet players looked…dangerous.

  And then Wendy saw salvation.

  A lone pirate was sitting cross-legged on the deck, looking squint-eyed and studious, pulling at a string on his pants.

  He was sewing!

  Wendy brightened like the sun. Now there was a subject she could feel confident about.

  She walked up to the fellow and watched for a moment as he ineffectually stabbed a giant needle into a piece of cloth that he held awkwardly in place on his pants, trying to cover a hole.

  “Excuse me, if you don’t mind me saying, but I’m afraid you’re doing that entirely wrong,” Wendy said politely.

  The pirate looked up at her, one eye still squinted. She wondered if it was a permanent affliction.

  “Well, I ain’t got me a seamstress to fix up my fancy pants now, do I?” He cackled. “‘What Mother can’t do, sons must makes do,’ as they say.”

  “Ah—I don’t know about that,” Wendy said, trying to work the words out in her head and failing. “But if you’ll hand it to me, I’ll have a go.”

  The pirate’s eyes widened. Without a second thought, he shoved the whole mess over to her, including his pants—which, as his brightly striped knickers attested, he had apparently not been wearing.