Alias Hook

by Lisa Jensen

  And never were we more certain of it than the first time we saw them swarming toward us, a cloud of children dressed in leaves and animal skins laughing and shrieking in midair above our ship. The latest tribe of Lost Boys with the Pan in the lead.

  I shall never forget my first sight of him, soaring overhead as I stood my ground amidships, my moonstruck men cowering in disbelief. He was not a very little boy, perhaps eleven or twelve years of age, and yet in possession of a full set of tiny baby teeth, which made his expression eerie. That and the keen light in his gray eyes peering out from under his dirty, tawny hair. Green leafy vines wound over his shoulder and around his middle, over a pelt of ragged fur. He went bare-legged above boots of furry skins, with a short sword at his side and a knife stuck in his boot. In one hand he grasped the musical Pan pipes which gave him his name. He hovered in the air above me, a light like a firefly buzzing about his shoulders, and whooped with delight.

  “Pirates!” he cried, and all the other little boys in skins began to cheer. A dozen perhaps, of all races, gabbling in all tongues, and all as befouled by filth and grime as the blackest Moor among them. “And what is your business in the Neverland?” he demanded of me.

  I gazed up at him coolly, not to be undone by a mere flying boy. A whelp was a whelp to me. “My only business is to leave this place,” I replied. I closed my hand round the hilt of my sword but did not draw it. “You will oblige me by showing me the way.”

  Derisive laughter greeted this remark as he peered at me with unvarnished disdain. “Oh, will I? And who might you be to order me about, dark and sinister man?”

  I made my eyes glinting slits of menace. “I might be the devil.”

  “Or you might be a codfish!” he cawed, not the least daunted, and all the boys took up the chant. “Codfish! Codfish!”

  I had seen too much of Hell to mind the taunting of little boys, but this one had witchy powers I intended to possess. While they were all still bouncing about, I slid my sword out and upward in one swift movement, catching not flesh but a length of vine girdling the boy’s middle. His weight pressed against my sword and I dragged him down through the air so his startled face was opposite mine.

  “They call me Hook,” I seethed at him. “And you are my prisoner. Boy.”

  Even as I spoke, I saw excitement kindling in his gray eyes. He bared his little teeth and strained upward as the air between us began to pulse with uncanny glittering, like a hail of diamonds in a shaft of brilliant sunlight. The firefly light was dancing about us too. The boy began to rise, and my blade rose with him, and even as I gripped with all my strength, my sword was sucked up out of my grasp like a loose spar in a hurricane. With a shout of triumph, he grasped the hilt, slithered the blade out from under the vine he wore, and hurled my fine French cutlass to the deck with disdain.

  “I’m called Pan!” he crowed, as all the other little boys cheered. “And no man is a match for me!” He swooped down toward me. “Next time, Hook, you better fight fair!”

  He blew a shrill bleat on his pipes, peeled off higher into the air, and led the flying boys away past the shrouds and off over the creek in a cloud of chattering laughter.

  My men thought they were bewitched or dreaming. But it’s children all over creation who dream the Neverland into existence because they crave it so much. Such was the powerful force we could not name, the unconscious, uncensored desire of children.

  * * *

  Much has been made of my obsession with the Pan, how I ignored the wise council of my shipmates to leave that place in search of more hospitable waters and fatter prizes elsewhere. How sheer childish obstinacy kept me in the Neverland, determined to have my revenge on the clever boy who’d got the better of me. But there was never any hope of escape from the Neverland. I was under a curse, and what few of my men who’d not had wit enough to die or desert me beforehand were bound to share it with me. We made every attempt we could, yet however far we sailed, neither the pattern of the stars nor the shape of the coastline ever altered. Every current, every breeze, brought us back to the Neverland, where the braves and the beasts and the boys were always waiting.

  It was foolishness, grown men fighting little boys. My men never took it seriously until one of their fellows had his bowels stove in by a blade wielded with boyish delight. After that, they took better care defending themselves, but it was never an even match; the boys were fleet and ferocious as mosquitoes in the air, doling out death on a whim. Between battles, my men were glad enough to give themselves over to drink, for the Pan called on the enchantment of that place to see our rum casks ever replenished. Drink made them even more likely to get themselves killed in battle or do some fatal injury to themselves. Or risk my wrath, which grew hotter with every tedious new day.

  I would have given the boy anything, done anything he asked to purchase our escape. But our presence was all he wanted, a party of bloodthirsty pirates to make his fantasy complete. Along with my eternal humiliation, which he came to crave above all things. My crew diminished, along with our memories of the world we’d left behind, our wits as befouled by rum and torpor as the stinking hull of the Jolie Rouge, rotting so long at anchor in the bay.

  Silver strands glinted in my dark hair and beard when I looked in my glass. The aches and pains from a lifetime at sea, so long ignored in violent action, began to make themselves felt. I was as twitchy from inactivity as I’d been in the French prison, or during my time chained in the filthy barracoons of Cape Coast. So I hit upon a proposition I believed Pan could never resist: I would invite him to join my company of brigands. I hadn’t any notion of holding to the bargain for long. But once taken into my crew, I was certain he would long to sail off in search of real ships to plunder, and that would take us out of the Neverland at last.

  He came aboard alone, without the usual company of boys in his wake. He had a lot of cheek to come unarmed, although we both knew he could fly away at any moment.

  “Well, Hook,” he hailed me saucily, “have you more favors to beg of me?”

  “Indeed no, I’ve one to grant you,” I sallied back.

  He cackled like a little crow. “What do you have that I’d want?”

  I told him, gratified to see the greed for adventure in his eyes. But he shuttered his greed and peered at me with suspicion.

  “Why?” he demanded. “Why me?”

  “You have proven yourself a worthy adversary, Pan,” I responded silkily. I had treated with the likes of Edward Low and Black Bart Roberts in my day; I knew how to coo and flatter. “You would be an ornament to our enterprise. Surely you’ve heard the stories of pirate captains granting their most valiant opponents a place in their crew?”

  “Only when the pirates win the battle,” he piped up. “You have to beat me first!”

  “No need for another battle if we are on the same side,” I reasoned. “Besides, I have had plenty of opportunity to judge your … skill and cleverness.” I fair choked on the words.

  That mollified him for the moment, long enough for me to produce a rolled up parchment from my coat pocket. I had labored all day to limn the word “Articles” across the top, with all due flourishes, and to write out some nonsense about ship’s rules and the reckoning of plunder against the most gruesome injuries I could imagine, the sort of stuff that would appeal to a boy. In truth, I’d rarely bothered with such niceties; my men were bound to me by fear and greed and malice for as long as there was profit in it. But such things were much in fashion in other crews, and the stories always made a fuss over the fabled pirate articles. So I spread out the parchment on a barrelhead for his perusal. I’d had my men scrawl their names or their marks in a column with an empty space at the bottom. All very official looking.

  “It’s a great and solemn honor to be sworn in,” I went on, raising my right hand. Pan was fond of ceremony. “But first you must sign the Articles, my bully, and we shall be in business.”

  He leaned his elbows on the barrel, squinting down the paper, then up a
t me. “Do I get to sign in blood?” he asked eagerly.

  I inclined my head, swallowing a smile. “If you like.” I produced a sharpened quill from my other pocket, gingerly testing its point against my forefinger. He returned his gaze to the paper, scowling in perplexity. And it occurred to me that my calligraphic efforts had been wasted; the boy could not read. Small wonder he needed the Wendys to tell him stories. “There,” I added helpfully, placing the nib of the quill upon the empty space.

  “Is that where it says Captain Pan?”

  “Captain Pan?” I gaped at him.

  His gaze darted up to me. “I get to be the captain,” he barked. “I’m the one who always wins.”

  “But my boy,” I struggled to recompose myself, “there is a world of ships to plunder out there. You may captain any one you—”

  “Out there?” he cried, eyes widening at me. “You mean to trick me, Hook! You want to go out there! You want to run away! It’s a foul trick!” he bellowed, and a cloud of Lost Boys swarmed up over the wales and flew to us, brandishing their weapons. My men had been sent below so as not to alarm the boy, and that is how I came to be surrounded by angry swords and buck knives with only a quill clutched in my sword hand.

  There must have been a dozen of them, devilling and poking at me. I swatted at them like insects, but they were much bigger and heavier, and they were armed. Half of them fell on my flailing arm as I roared for my men. Pan had a grip on my other hand; he’d shaken out the quill and was waving my hand like a prize.

  “By this hand you would have sworn falsely to me!” he cried. “You would have tricked me out there, made me grow big, made me grow up! But I will never live in the grown-up world.” He drew a raspy breath, and I saw more malice in his glittering eyes than I’d ever seen in any pirate. “And neither will you! Never ever! And this is so you won’t forget!”

  Three of the little beggars pinned my hand to the barrelhead, while another who’d been flitting all over the deck brought something back to the Pan. I couldn’t see what it was, for all the boys shrieking in my ears and cuffing me about the face as I tried to duck and bob. It wasn’t until he brandished it over his head that I recognized one of our boarding axes.

  It took both his hands to manage it. I saw the downward course of the heavy blade and I struggled desperately, lunging and writhing, but my limbs were sandbagged with squirming bodies, and I could not twist away.

  The pain was exquisite, a perfection of white-hot agony so consuming, I couldn’t hear my own shriek for the thundering in my head. The children were all shrieking too, giddy in their triumph and whooping as the ax came down again. Of course, he couldn’t do it all at once. Flesh and bone are more resistant than you think; the blade was old, and he was not experienced. It took several good whacks to break down the skin and pulp and sever the bone within.

  There was no need to restrain me after that. I’ve heard of Blackbeard fighting on and on with blades and pistol balls twisting in his vitals, but it was not like that for me. I sank to my knees, stupid with pain, clinging to the barrel for support, watching red blood spurting out of my pulpy wrist like wine out of a spigot, as the boys jeered gaily all around me. My fingers were still clutching wildly, I could feel them, but the hand to which they were attached was already gone. Pan flew to the side with it, dripping blood across the deck, and held it aloft like a trophy. At the rail, he paused and whistled. I shall never forget it. He whistled, and the crocodile came splashing up under the hull for its treat.

  Pan lighted upon the rail, still grasping his grisly prize, and turned back to me. “I win again, Hook!” he cried. “I’m the true captain of the Neverland!” He dropped my bloody hand over the side, and the boys all cheered, yet for all their din, I heard the greedy snap of reptilian jaws.

  It was like an afterword in a tedious book by the time my men mustered themselves on deck to chase off the boys with Long Tom. I don’t remember much about it. I was slumped against a pile of cordage, my arm cradled in my lap, watching blood soak through my breeches and into the deck, until blessed oblivion gaped open before me like a great black welcoming sea.

  The shock of it was not so much that I had been overmatched by little boys. I have seen green youths scarcely older than the Pan battle ferociously for their lives on the bloody deck of a prize ship. No, it was the glee with which they did it, the jeering, jabbering Lost Boys. We were not in a battle. No lives were at stake. They mutilated me for the sport of it. For the fun.

  That is what it is to be a boy.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE FALLEN

  I awake to daylight, stiff-jointed and sore where I’ve slumped in sleep over my voiceless harpsichord. A sullen drumbeat in my temples reminds me of my last fruitless interview with Parrish. Even if she were once a Wendy, she has no memory of it. Would that I were so fortunate; my memories have come back with alarming clarity, and I go above, eager to purge their bitter taste from my mind.

  It was foolish to believe that Parrish would ever lead me to the boys, even if she knew the way. She is not so easily maneuvered as my men, and I dare not lose her confidence again: whatever called her here in defiance of the boy’s wishes is a power to be reckoned with. Surely it is well within my best interests to keep her under my protection, until whatever it is that wants her can claim her.

  Yesterday’s high foolery has given way to a more apprehensive atmosphere on deck. The men must have heard Parrish and myself cackling away in our cups last night. I set them to scrubbing away the gore from yesterday’s skinning and plucking session, and cheer them up with the order to sand all the decks for action. Up on the fo’c’sle deck, I find that some of the timber we cut from those dead trees in the wood has proven too dry and brittle in the intensity of the Neverland sun, cracking round the nails and splitting from the barricade frames. Sticks had to rip out several useless pieces yesterday and replace them, and today he’s got Flax helping him to nail crosspieces across the vertical timbers to better hold the contrivance in place before it can be removed to the quarterdeck.

  After a fortifying tankard of my steward’s black death, I plunge into the bowels of the hold with Nutter and Jesse to see sufficient quantities of grapeshot and powder tamped into breeches to be ready for Long Tom. Peering about in the gloom for other useful occupations to put them to, I spy in the deepest shadows an ancient, cobwebby trunk taken from a lady passenger of quality on one of our last voyages back in the world. It strikes me this might amuse Parrish, and I order Filcher to have taken in to her cabin. I expect the effects of last night’s conviviality will keep her below this morning, but it’s best to keep her occupied and out of the way today, while I decide what use can be made of her.

  * * *

  But there she reclines on her bunk in her usual shirt and trousers when I look in on her at midday, poring over a small, leather-bound volume.

  “Captain,” she smiles, sitting up. “Thank you for last night. It was lovely—I think.” she makes a wry mouth. “I hope I didn’t embarrass myself too badly.”

  “Not that I should have noticed,” I remind her, and her mouth tilts up again. Her hair is unpinned this morning, her feet bare under rolled-up trouser cuffs. “Did you not receive the gift I sent you?” I go on, as if the old trunk were not standing open on a crate at the foot of her bunk.

  “I did indeed, Captain,” she says eagerly. “Such beautiful antiques! How thoughtful of you to show them to me! The historian in me thanks you.”

  “But not the woman?” Her bright smile wavers. “Damnation, Parrish, I never thought I’d have to explain to a woman what clothing is for.”

  “Stella,” she laughs.

  “What?”

  “My name. I was only ‘Parrish’ in service. My name is Stella.”

  I gaze at her. “A fallen star.”

  Her mouth tilts up again. “You remember your Latin, Captain.”

  “I ought to, it was pummeled into me soundly enough.”

  “But they are much too fine for
me to wear,” she goes on, nodding toward the trunk. “Besides, gowns of that fashion require, ah, certain undergarments and a battalion of ladies’ maids to get into them.”

  “Well, do what you will with them,” I say airily, “they are of no use to me.” I nod at the book she’s put aside, gilded letters etched upon a wine-dark cover: Paradise Lost. “That is not one of mine.”

  “I found it in there,” she replies, nodding again to the trunk.

  “No doubt it was thought an improving tract for a young lady on the voyage home,” I observe.

  “It would certainly improve me,” Parrish laughs. “This book would be worth a fortune in my world, among the antiquarians.”

  “I regret my hospitality is so poor you must resort to Milton.”

  “Oh, no, I’m enjoying it!” she grins again. “I haven’t read it since school. It’s quite the heroic ballad.”

  I frown. “Unless I misrecall, the topic is the Fall of Mankind.”

  “Well, yes. But, he’s made Satan a rather a dashing figure, witty and resourceful. In my world we’d call him a hero with a tragic flaw.”

  “Well, he is Satan,” I point out.

  “He was an angel once,” Parrish rejoins stoutly.

  “But that was long ago, before his fall. Now his only choices are infinite wrath and infinite despair. ‘Which way I fly is Hell. My self am Hell,’” I recite from the musty bowels of memory.

  “His problem isn’t his badness, it’s his ego,” says Parrish. “Repentance and remorse are weaknesses to him. He doesn’t know how to seek forgiveness. He’s stuck.”

  I stand agape at her subversive notions.

  “He only embraces Evil because he believes Goodness is denied him,” she persists. “‘Farewell hope, and with hope, farewell fear.’”