by Anna Katmore
“Maybe Saturday?” I suggest when I stand again.
Peter nods, but once again he looks like a boy from a different world. Smiling to myself, I shake my head and walk home with the girls.
Chapter 6
NOON HAS PASSED when I wake up in my quarters. My boots are kicked to the corner, my clothes dropped in a bundle on the floor along with my hat on top. Chasing after rainbows starts wearing me out.
I roll onto my back and place one arm behind my head. For a long time, I just stare out the window, the sheets draped halfway up my chest. The sun sneers through the glass from a bright blue sky. It’s another glorious day in Neverland. I can’t remember the last time I felt happy to wake up in the morning. Not any day recently or today either.
With a deep sigh, I rub my hand over my face. I should get up and make plans for tonight—come up with a new idea on how to capture a rainbow. But honestly, I think we’ve tried every possible way there is. And still, we caught none.
Peter’s visit fourteen days ago gave me a new boost of ideas and ways. But failing time and time again, night after night, trampled my hopes. At this point I wonder if I’ll ever see Angel again.
Most likely not.
I don’t even want to get out of bed anymore.
About to drag the sheets over my head and drown in gloom, I roll to the other side when something nailed to the door catches my notice. My attention on the wooden panel, I roll off the bed. Absently, I pick up my pants and put them on, eyes focused on the dagger that’s fixing a picture and a note on the door.
Holding the picture flat against the wood, I work the dagger out. It’s none of my knives, but with the P.P. engraved in the blade, it’s not hard to guess to whom it belongs. “Peter Pan,” I murmur. The bloody bastard. He must have sneaked into my quarters last night while we were on the volcano again. Dead tired when we returned, I barely paid attention to anything in my room, let alone the door. I just wanted to sleep.
I slip the dagger into my belt at my back and take a look at the picture. My heart sets out. On it, there’s the prettiest laughing girl in the arms of my filthy half-brother. I grit my teeth and my throat constricts painfully as I read the note.
Having fun with your girl.
I almost crunch the picture in my hand but, just in time, I stop. It’s the only reminder I have of her. She looks lovely in that picture. Happy. Breathtakingly beautiful. A muscle in my jaw ticks. I run my thumb over her hair and try to remember how it felt. Silky and soft. A strand always fell into her face when she was angry with me.
Now Peter Pan is the one who gets to brush her hair behind her ear. I slam my fist against the door. How is this fair, goddammit? Close to breaking, I trudge to the bed and sink onto the mattress, staring at the picture of the two of them. My vision blurs. I blink a few times, but it’s not getting better.
There’s no use in ignoring the truth. I lost her.
All the hard work with the rainbows, all the trying had been in vain. I’ll never be able to go where she is. Where Peter is. He’ll continue sending me reminders of how happy Angel is with him. And me? Here I am, forever trapped in Neverland. That’s my fate. My doom. I can’t take it any longer. I don’t want to go on like this.
At that moment, I make a decision that allows me to breathe again. It gives me hope to get rid of the pain inside my chest. Very soon. Feeling a little lighter, I light a candle and hold the note from Peter over the flame. It burns and scatters into floating bits of black ash. The picture of Angel stays untouched on my desk.
Shrugging on a clean white shirt, I walk out on deck and find Smee on the bridge.
“Afternoon, Cap’n,” he greets me, but my lips remain closed. I hug him briefly but hard to my chest and clap him on the back.
“Shit, what’s wrong with you?” he blurts when I release him.
“Nothing. Just…you’re a good friend, Jack.”
If I startled him with the hug, I shocked the hell out of him with my last words.
“James—” He frowns at me. “Did you drink too much of the rum last night?”
I give him a tight smile and shake my head. Then I turn on my heel and walk to the extended gangplank. Before I leave the ship, I look back over my shoulder and meet Smee’s confused gaze. “Take over,” I tell him.
It takes an endless time until he finally nods and I know he understands and won’t follow me. Tonight, I want to be alone on top of the volcano.
The sun has set when I reach the foot of the mountain. It’ll be midnight by the time I get to the top. Fine with me. Why not go down in a firework of rainbows? It fits, doesn’t it?
All the way up, it’s Peter’s scornful face I see. The way he snickers when he got his ultimate revenge. But I don’t want to waste the last moments of my life thinking about him. Shoving the image of my brother away, I pull the sound of Angel’s soft laugh from my memory. That’s better. Thinking of her gives me peace.
Before long, I stand on the very edge of the volcano, looking down into the deep black hole. Tiny sparks of gold glisten far below. I hope the jump will kill me. Neverland and I have been bonded one day too many.
Closing my eyes, I spread my arms out and list forward. My feet leave the ground. Warm wind gushes at my face. I fall.
My only thought is to hold Angel again—until a battering ram hits me straight in the chest and busts the thoughts from my mind altogether. The unexpected power catapults me way back out of the volcano in a high arc. My arms and legs flail in all directions, but it does me no good. An instant later, I land hard on my back, the impact pushing out what little air was left in my lungs. I try to focus on something, anything, but light spots dot my vision. Or maybe it’s the starry sky above me I see. My body feels like it’s broken in two. I close my eyes. Everything fades out.
*
“Good morning, James.”
The soft female voice drifting to me from miles away brings me back from a deep black hole within me. It was cold in there, but the farther I climb up to consciousness, the warmer my body feels.
“It’s time to come back,” the voice tells me, sounding closer this time. Most likely she stands just across the room. But which room is this?
“Where am I?” is what I want to say, but all that comes out of my mouth is a throaty moan. I cough—and immediately regret it. The pain in my chest is excruciating. Reaching to my sternum to ease the ache, my hand touches bare skin. Whoever is talking to me must have taken off my shirt.
“You’re in my house. Tending to your wounds is easier when I have everything at hand.”
Whose house? A distinct note of warm milk and blueberry muffins lingers in the air. The scent reminds me of my early childhood—I haven’t had blueberry muffins in so many years. But it certainly isn’t my mother talking to me. I do remember her voice. And she’s dead.
A cold, wet cloth is pressed to my aching head and ice-cold fingers run from the base of my throat over my right shoulder and down my arm. A tingling chill races through me. “Bre?” I croak.
She chuckles. “Oh yes, Captain. It’s good to see you didn’t lose your mind.”
I draw in a long, slow breath that expands my chest and hurts like hell. “Why am I still alive?” Or am I? According to the pain, I might as well be in hell and the person talking to me could be a deceiver.
“James Hook, you disappoint me.” She clicks her tongue as she lays her hand flat on my stomach. A nauseating sensation comes and goes with that touch. “You’re much stronger than you think. A rainbow won’t kill you.”
“Rainbow?” My eyelids flutter open, but Bre’Shun places her hand over them, sealing them closed.
“No,” she hums. Her cold touch continues to send strange vibes through my body. Right now they concentrate in my skull. She cups my face, skimming her thumbs over my cheekbones. The throbbing I felt in my head since I came to eases and finally disappears. “Now you can,” she tells me.
I open my eyes.
First, there are only blurred colors, mostly shades of brown
and white. But my eyes focus fast. I’m lying on my back, looking at a ceiling that’s made of wooden panels shaping a roof. The bed is placed in a corner, with a white wall to my left. My gaze wanders about the room. The floor is made of stone, and so is the furnace built into the wall. An ironcast pot hangs from a bar over low flames. Steam erupts from that pot as Bre’Shun stirs the contents with a long wooden spoon.
“What’s cooking?” I ask.
She smiles at me over her shoulder. “Medicine. I’m sorry, I couldn’t heal you thoroughly yet. You’d cope with my touch for only so long before icicles start forming on your nose.”
“Yeah.” I chuckle and it hurts. “There’s just something cold about your personality, fairy.”
“Back to joking, pirate? I’m glad you are.” She skims off some of the brew and pours it into a cup. Expecting this to be for me, Bre startles me when she sips it herself. Her eyes focus on mine over the brim of the cup until she downed it all. Then she puts the cup away and comes back to my bedside. “Turn over, James Hook.”
It’s never a good idea to question one of the fairies, but with all the pain and prospect of getting frozen by her hands again, an odd reluctance creeps over me.
“Come on,” she urges me in a friendly way like she was talking to a child. The mattress sinks as she lowers herself next to me. “You want this done as long as the medicine is still fresh in my veins.”
Moaning from the pain, I roll on my stomach. “So you’re what? The conduit for the thing you just drank?”
“One could put it that way.” She pulls the covers down to my waist and places her thrilling cold palms over my kidneys. In a slow caress they move up and run in wide circles over the back of my ribcage. “If I gave you the medicine to drink instead of letting the power flow into you through myself, you’d be forever happy, all knowing, and unbreakable.” A short pause, and she laughs. “But that would be cheating on life, wouldn’t it?”
Right now, I wouldn’t mind some cheating, especially concerning the unbreakable part. But then I’m happy with whatever Bre’s doing to me. The pain eases. I can breathe, cough and talk again without feeling like a swordfish is stuck in my chest.
She continues massaging the spot between my shoulder blades until a sigh of pleasure escapes me. “Damn, you’re doing some good magic there,” I groan.
Bre laughs and stops the kneading. “That last part was just to loosen you up, James Hook. Way too much tension here.” She pinches the base of my neck.
I rub that spot as I turn around again and sit up in bed. Only now I take in the rest of the room—or maybe it wasn’t there before, like so often in the past. A heavy wooden door is built into the wall next to the bed, and across from it warm daylight flows in through a square window that begs for some cleaning. Flowerpots in various sizes stand on and beneath the window sill, and even though the window is closed, butterflies and bees busy themselves in the jungle of colorful wild flowers inside.
But the strangest thing is the mechanic structure placed next to the stone fireplace. It’s as tall as Bre’Shun, made completely of wood, with cogwheels that connect to a tiny replica of a ship’s helm. Bre grips the handles and spins the wheel three times in one direction. Clamps on both sides of the construction hold what looks to be my shirt in the middle. Only it’s not white anymore but shimmers in all colors of—
“The rainbow,” Bre finishes my thought and gives me one of her typical omniscient looks that come with her smiles. “You finally captured one.”
“I did?”
The more she turns the wheel, the tighter my shirt is twisted between the clamps and something similar to sparkling liquid is wrung from it. A bucket beneath the construction collects the mysterious stuff.
“Well, it might have caught you first when you threw yourself from the edge of the volcano, but that it soaked into your clothes is what counts in the end. Which reminds me…would you care to give me your pants, too? I wasn’t sure if it was okay to strip you naked, so I decided to leave the leathers on you.”
Lifting the covers, I peer underneath. My pants glow in shades of blue and violet from the waist down to the middle of my thighs. The rest is the dark rough leather it should be. “So, um, you want me to walk back to my ship in the nude?”
“Oh no, silly, of course not. It’ll be a trade-off, like always.” She winks one warm, turquoise eye at me. “Where you go you need different clothes.”
“Where do I go?”
Her mouth curves up even wider. “London?”
I almost swallow my tongue. Angel. Her face, her laugh, her growl when she’s angry—it all rushes over me, leaving me breathless. “I can see her again?”
Bre’Shun nods. “It is time, Captain.” She wrings my shirt some more. “You brought me the last ingredient for the potion, now I will keep my part of the deal. I shall have the charm ready for you in a few minutes.”
I get up, walk toward her, and dip a finger into the multicolored, glistening slime in the bucket. “So that’s the stuff big wishes are made of?”
“Not everyone’s wish. Only yours.” She takes my hand and gently wipes my finger with the skirt of her dark red dress. “Rainbow essence is a powerful matter,” she explains in her ever patient tone. “Unless you’re comfortable with turning into a unicorn over night, I suggest you don’t stick your hand in it again.”
Her amused laugh while I shudder feels totally out of place. I’ll certainly heed her warning. “How’s that crazy stuff getting me to London?”
At that precise moment, the other fairy sister bursts through the door—not bothering to open it actually. “Did somebody say my name?”
Said crazy? I did. Biting my tongue, I take a step back, not to give her any reason to walk through me like she tends to walk through doors.
Remona swipes her long silvery hair over her shoulder and tilts her head at me. “I heard that, Captain. You’re lucky I like you.” She grins and pinches my cheek. Then she hands a jar the size of a foot filled with white sand over to her sister.
Bre unscrews the top. “Go for it,” she tells Remona.
The crazy one out of the fairies erupts in hiccups of giggles as she scoops rainbow essence with her cupped hands into the glass jar.
I lock gazes with Bre’Shun over Remona’s shoulder and mouth, “Does she know about the unicorns?”
Throwing her head back, Bre laughs. “It’s in fact why she’s been dying for you to bring the rainbow. She’s going to have the best week of her life.”
Remona pours some of the essence over herself, which results in multihued strands of violet and yellow appearing in her hair. “Oh, it will be so good!”
There’s no more essence left in the bucket, but Bre is obviously content with the amount of rainbow slime in the jar. She seals the lid and shakes it until the sand takes on its bright colors. When she opens the lid once again, a bluish cloud puffs out. The sand turns gold and specks of light sparkle in it. She hands me the jar.
I lift one brow. “Pixie dust?”
“Pixie dust.” She nods. “A little altered. If you strew this powder on your ship, it will take you away from Neverland.”
I wonder if I can—
“Yes, you can touch it,” Bre cuts my thought short. “No turning into a unicorn.” Then she explains, “When you’ve finished the dusting, eat a beckon bean.” She quirks her brows. “You do have one left, don’t you?”
I reach inside my pocket and fish out the last bean. The day that Peter stole one of them, I had the entire crew searching for the other until it was safely returned to me.
“Good,” Bre’Shun says. “Eat it when you’re ready to go. The ship will follow your course then, no matter where.”
Good to know, since my suspicion is that we’ll have to fly into the sky for getting to Angel.
“But beware, Captain.” The fairy’s voice loses all the friendliness the next instant. “You must only anchor in Angel’s world at night. The land you’re going to can be unfriendly at times. Don�
�t expose the ship to any person’s eyes. Clouds will shroud it in the dark, but you must return to the sky before daylight breaks each morning.”
Okay, I’ll manage that somehow.
Remona searches my face as though she can read my mind—which she probably can. “It is your ship, Captain Hook. It will only follow your lead. Don’t leave it to anyone else during the day, or you won’t find back to it.”
“Fine. So I have the nights to find Angel and win her back.”
“You have the nights, yes.” Bre’Shun scrunches her face, sending a shiver of foreboding down my spine. “Three of them exactly.”
“What? Only three?” But that’s far too little time with Angel.
“It’s a faraway place you’re headed to. One third of the bottle’s contents will get you there. You have to dust the ship again as soon as you feel the Jolly Roger sinking of her own accord. One third will keep her going for one day exactly. The Jolly Roger will return to Neverland at the end of the third night, and you have to be onboard.” At my obvious glaring, Bre heaves a sigh. “I’m warning you, James Hook, there’s no way around that condition.”
“All right,” I mumble after a long pause. “Guess three nights is better than nothing.”
Remona pats my shoulder. “Be yourself, Captain, and it will be enough.” There might be a hint buried in her dry reply, but if there is, I don’t get it. Then she steps up to me and runs the nail of her long cold finger from my navel to the waistband of my pants. Hooking her finger in it, she winks and pulls at it slightly. “We will get that too, won’t we?”
I roll my eyes as I nod, which sends her out of the room on a happy skip.
My next question is addressed to Bre. “You said you had other clothes for me?”
“Right here.” She smiles again and taps her fingers on a white wooden chest that appears next to her on the floor.
This doesn’t surprise me, I keep telling myself.
“I’ll leave you to yourself for a moment. Put your pants over there.” She nods at the board at the end of the bed. “And when you’re ready, knock on the top of the chest three times. Knock like you mean it. You shall then find the right clothes inside.”