Alias Hook

by Lisa Jensen

  I nod. Merely obtaining bait is no guarantee the trap will be sprung; that takes patience, and time to do properly. As long as Pan can’t find me to demand a reckoning, Stella must be kept alive. I must find a way to free her without springing the boy’s trap.

  “Stay here with us tonight, Captain,” Lazuli offers graciously. “We have many empty chambers at the moment. And no more harm will come to her while the boys sleep.”

  By the time we’ve climbed down from the craggy rocks that support the water glass, two warrior guards have surfaced in the pool with a messenger siren from the river. She pulls herself out onto the shale bank with sturdy arms, her pale skin freckled faintly green, with long, wet coils streaked in gold, copper, pewter down her back. She wriggles to Lazuli, hands her some things she’s withdrawn out of a net pouch at her waist. The blue merwife gazes at them only a moment before holding them out to me; with a pang of longing, I recognize Stella’s two soggy moccasins and the pink shell once given her in this very grotto. My hand trembles as I take the shell on its broken thong, hug it to my breast. A feeble spark of an idea fizzes in my brain.

  “Is there a body of water near the boy’s lair?”

  “A freshwater spring,” says Lazuli.

  Pan is not yet aware that I know he’s captured Stella. The boys’ lair and surrounding wood are well fortified against any warlike assault, but Pan will never expect me to come alone, by stealth, without my fighting men, before Pan has even issued his challenge. It’s my only chance to get Stella away before she’s made a sacrifice in the boy’s deadly game. I should go now, this minute, while the boys sleep, were my arms not already thrumming after the day’s rowing. Besides I’d be at a fearful disadvantage, alone, in the dark, with no idea where the boys keep their lair. But others on this island do know. “If she is imprisoned in boy country, I ask only one favor,” I say to the merwife.

  Lazuli sighs. “We cannot guide you there. The wood is an unfriendly place to the waterborn.”

  “But if I blow this shell over that spring, you will hear it?” She nods her head, and I go on. “When I sound a note on this shell, will you and your women sing the boys to sleep? At whatever hour of the day it might be?”

  She is silent, regarding me. The cooing of mothers and mer-babes around the pool grows still. I fancy I can hear an ominous stropping of Mica and her warrior sisters’ shell blades.

  “I will go into the wood unarmed,” I go on stoically. “I have no desire to harm the boy or the Neverland. But I will not leave her there at his mercy.” I draw another breath. “Please help me.”

  “Of course, Captain,” Lazuli agrees.

  * * *

  The grass mats beneath me are surprisingly dry and soft on this bed of kelp arranged for me in a guest chamber of the rock that rings the pool. This is where Stella slept last night, still fitted out for company, although I fear I’ll never sleep in this eerie place, with the sirens’ lullabies wafting round the grotto and the miasma of softly shifting mineral colors above the water. Yet I must have slept, for I’m wakened in the deep of night by a feminine voice gasping and crying out in pain. Past the mouth of my cave, I glimpse blue Lazuli waist-deep out in the pool with a younger female, who is supported by others. A murmuring of hushing, cooing, urging, flutters across the water; a last crescendo of pain gives way to the thin wail of a tiny new creature, flapping a sticky tail and shaking its little fists in the crook of a blue elbow, crying for its mother’s tit.

  I roll over on the mat, plump up the grass under my head, and my fingers brush some small solid, knobby thing. Pulling it out, I recognize one of the Indians’ Dream Flowers, such as Stella fed me once on board the Rouge. They tell you what you need to know, that’s what she told me. Hoping to see the same vision that sent her away from the grotto in such haste, I swallow it down, close my eyes again, and give myself up to Morpheus, here in the heart of the loreleis’ lagoon, on the banks of the birthing pool.

  2

  The chiming of a tiny bell and a rustling in the bushes startle me.

  I had thought myself entirely alone in my garden, among my lavishly blooming irises and green vegetable rows. My head and shoulders draped in a length of gauze to keep off the sun while I work, I’ve even stripped off my hook so as not to damage the delicate blooms; it lies nearby in the crate under a brace of cabbages destined for the Rouge. The boys never come to the garden, it smacks of mundane, worldly things. That’s why this sudden activity in the shrubs that protect this place makes me jump where I kneel.

  Peering around my makeshift gauze hood I spy a child, a girl, emerging from the bushes. Her dark, reddish hair is cut short in a bob, long fringe in front over her forehead. She wears the kind of shapeless nightdress the Wendys always wear; the fashions of the nursery do not change much over time.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  Thus she speaks to me: Hook, the terrible, Hook, the nightmare.

  “You take me by surprise.” I surreptitiously shake my shirt sleeve farther down over my stump, under the length of gauze. I hadn’t realized how late it’s grown while I’ve been about my work, shadows are lengthening across the ground, an icy moon already on the rise in the blue sky.

  “I didn’t know anyone was here,” says the girl.

  “No one is,” I promise her.

  She scrutinizes my oddly cloaked figure. “Are you some kind of hermit?”

  I make a noncommittal grunt and return to my work. If she doesn’t recognize me as the terrible Hook, why should I bother to enlighten her?

  “You have a beautiful garden,” she says. “May I help?”

  Not that she waits for my invitation. Everything in the Neverland exists but for their pleasure, as they all assume; she is on her knees prising out clover and dandelions with practiced fingers before I can even respond. Still, it’s a rare enough child who finds pleasure in such things. She goes about it with far more skill and enthusiasm than any dozen of my men.

  “Will they not miss you?” I suggest, as we work together. “The boys?”

  “I’m fed up. All they want to do is wave their swords around and make a lot of noise.”

  “That is the entire point of being a boy,” I suggest, and she giggles artlessly.

  “But it’s so boring!” she goes on. “They never want to do anything else!”

  “So he gave you leave to just … walk away?”

  “I’ve given ’em the slip.” She gives her boyish bobbed hair an expressive little toss. “Peter doesn’t know everything.”

  I steal a glance at her round the edge of my hood. Does he not?

  “I suppose you’re off to join the pirates, then,” I suggest, with an inward sigh. She’s making it so easy, the inevitable next step in the eternal scenario. Too easy. I’d have the playwright flogged for such obviousness.

  “Why?” she snorts. “They’re as useless as the boys. They never even sail anywhere. Have you seen their ship? She’s like the Flying Dutchman. I’ll bet she’s rigged out of … out of cobwebs and rags!”

  And crewed by the damned, I think, as good as ghosts already. From the mouths of babes.

  “I’m looking for the way out,” she tells me.

  “There isn’t any,” I sigh.

  “Well, of course there is,” she says stoutly. “There’s always a way to do anything. You just have to find it.”

  Spoken with the utter confidence of youth. But the little creature has salt, I’ll credit her that much.

  She drops a fistful of long-tailed clover in the gravel path outside the flower plot, sits back, gazes out at the leafy green vegetable rows. Then she peers up at me. “You’ve probably been here a long time. Maybe we can find it together,” she suggests.

  There is a way out of course, for her and the boys; it begins just about now, when the fairies steer one of them into my path and I’m obliged to take her hostage. Another excuse for the boy to come and slaughter us all.

  But what if it doesn’t play out like that? Pan doesn’t know everything, she
says; her being all the way down here, at the end of Pirates Beach, is proof of that. Generally, I find them wandering in the wood.

  A part of me would keep her here talking forever; how long has it been since anyone in this vile place has spoken one single syllable to me unburdened by fear or cunning? At the very least, I might compel her to tell me how she’s managed to slip away from the boys and the fairies’ notice to be out here all alone, unprotected. But the first sour notes of the loreleis’ nightly yowling have already begun, and an unwholesome hot, sulfurous tang is creeping into the air. In a moment or two, the little thing will be asleep, and utterly in my power.

  No more boring games. No more bloodshed over nothing. She has earned her freedom. I can see she gets it.

  I slide out my hand from the folds of gauze. “I’ll wager we can,” I tell her. “Take my hand.”

  She hesitates for an instant, glances at my proffered hand and up toward my hooded face, but then she grins. “It’s a deal!” she chirps, and slides her little fingers round mine. A bracelet of tiny silver charms, one a perfect miniature bell, tinkles on her wrist.

  We rise together, and I lead her some little ways down the bank to where my skiff bobbles placidly in the reeds.

  “You have a boat!” she cries eagerly. “I love boats!”

  This surprises a grin out of me. “So do I.”

  I hand her in over the thwarts, but it’s just a formality; she knows exactly where to step and how to balance so as not to tip the boat. She steps down to the bottom, and in the act of seating herself on the thwart, turns to beam a radiant smile at me. In the next instant, she sinks all the way into the bottom, enchanted to sleep.

  I watch for another long moment, to see she does not wake again, then trudge back up the bank to where I left my hook, near the cabbage bed. I’ll need it for rowing.

  * * *

  Purple dusk is falling in earnest now, the moon high, white, and full, as I row the skiff out of the reeds at the mouth of Kidd Creek. Heeling about, I can see the lumpen silhouette of the Rouge out in the bay. It will be long, arduous work, pulling all the way to Indian Beach at the north end of the island, and yet I feel strangely elated. Not merely the rare pleasure of thwarting the boy at one of his games, but something more; I might call it a lessening of the tension that always oppresses me here, a momentary relief of my usual misery. It’s a heady feeling.

  I glance over my shoulder to see that the child still slumbers peacefully in the bottom of the boat. I have set my gauze all round her to cushion her from the hard, damp wood. I hope the rowing doesn’t take all night; I would hate for her to wake and know me for who I am.

  “Can’t we get there a little faster?” I mutter aloud to myself, as if there were anyone else to hear.

  And seemingly in the next heartbeat, I find myself, dazed and disoriented, clutching the oars, my skiff positioned near the shoals off Indian Beach. It takes a moment to get my bearings, but I am more eager now than ever to be about my task and be gone again. The braves guard their beach at all hours, but I am not a war party, and so I forge on, paddle into the shallows, then climb out and haul the skiff up onto the beach.

  I can feel watchful eyes on me, so I hasten to reach into the boat and lift out the sleeping child, still swaddled in her nest of gauze. I carry her a little way up the beach to where the sand is soft and powdery and set her down. She rolls over with a soft, audible sigh, and I tuck the gauze more snugly round her and step back. There is no need to speak to the stealthy sentinels watching me; it has ever been the duty of the tribes to take charge of the children who are ready to go home and escort them to their fairy guides.

  And so with a glance all round the craggy bluffs that surround the beach, and the merest nod of my head, I turn to march back down the shore, and shove my boat back into the water. Climbing in, I paddle carefully through the shoals for deeper water without a backward glance, but alert for any sounds of pursuit. But no one follows. And as I heel about for southward in the open water of the bay, a sense of elation grips me once more, greater than the triumph of a victory, a surge of something like hope that I have never felt before in this place.

  Until the night goes eerily dark and I glance up to see the brilliant moon gone as red as a pulsing heart. I can scarce keep hold of my oars. What cataclysm can this portend? A red eclipse, common enough in the old world, but a rarity here. Only once before have I ever seen its like in the Neverland.

  It was on the night Bill Jukes died.

  And I am back aboard the Rouge, taking a brace of bottles straight to my bed, intent on burning away this troubling memory for good.

  No daylight leaks into the merwives’ grotto, but I come awake to the sounds of quickening activity round the pool that suggest morning—a clattering of shell goblets on coral trenchers, the animated cooing of infants, a soft hum of female voices. Yet my dream vision clings to me like the persistent tang of smoke after a bonfire. I am all but trembling with it: the pealing bell, the garden, a companion I could never name, a fleeting bond of friendship I have longed for ever since. Not a dream at all, but a memory.

  Something called her back to the Neverland, she said. Was it me?

  3

  The new day is bright and blue with foreboding, as I row down the creek in shirtsleeves, under my black hat. A pod of loreleis accompanied me all the way to the juncture of Kidd Creek, opening a swift channel for my boat. But the creek flows into the bay, and from here I make my journey alone. One person on this island has the knowledge of boy country I seek, and it will take some time to row myself to Indian Beach. But evidently, I have done it before. Stella dared to ask for the Indians’ help, and she received it. Can I do any less on her behalf?

  The pink shell whistle, on a new thong, lies against my chest under my shirt. Stella’s moccasins sit in the bottom of the boat. I pause my rowing, reach down to tuck them more securely astern. And doing so, I notice some crumpled white thing, soaked with bilgewater, also stowed under the stern. Memory stirs; I draw in my oars and lift it out of the bottom. It’s an old shirt, and as I unroll it, its contents spark in the sun: a pair of crystal goblets. I smuggled them off the Rouge, millennia ago, only to be forgotten when I found Stella gone. Remarkably, they are undamaged, sturdy stems supporting inverted bell-shaped bowls.

  What did Stella say about bells and fairies?

  Only Pan and the imps know the way out, I said so myself. Stella risked all to try to contact them, and my refusal to listen, to even consider her plan, has put Stella in unspeakable danger. What did Lazuli say about conquering fear? And so I screw up my vitals, clamp hold of what remains of my sanity, and chime the two delicate rims together.

  * * *

  It might be no more than a speck of sunlight off the water, but for the way it speeds toward me out of the thin air. Instinctively, I draw back, close my eyes against another scorching, raise my hand to ward off the corrosive terror of fairy language, but a scent reaches me first, along the breeze. Sulfur and allspice. I have smelled it before, aboard the Rouge, I remember now. Seize your chance.

  Opening my eyes, I see her hovering before me, perhaps an armspan away. Her wings buzz too quickly to be seen, her person but a blur of lavender-blue and dark hair. She is not the queen, nor is she Pan’s belligerent imp, with the fair hair and greenish habit. This one makes a formal movement of her head while the insane scree of her speech peppers the air. With a tremendous effort, I unclench my ears, allow the tiny peals of sound bubbling through my head to resolve themselves into words.

  “Captain Hook,” she flutes at me.

  “Thank you for coming,” I whisper. “Madam…?”

  “Call me Piper,” she says, with another little nod. “Thank you for inviting me. I thought you never would.”

  She hovers there, and I grope in the pocket of my coat across the thwart for my spectacles to see her more clearly. The rags she wears are the color of morning glories; strands of dry beach grass knot up her glossy black hair into fanciful loops and swir
ls. She peers curiously back at me.

  “You once spoke to me about a chance,” I hazard.

  “Twice,” she corrects me.

  My throat constricts to recall how I chased her around Stella’s cabin, too afraid to listen. “The woman you spoke to on my ship that day. She is in grave danger.”

  “I know she is,” the imp replies.

  I suck in breath, all but crushing the goblet still clutched in my hand. “I must find her, free her, somehow. I will do whatever you ask, give you anything I have, if you will help me.”

  Piper regards me in a curious manner. “You have only to ask me, Captain,” she says serenely. “How may the Sisterhood help you?”

  “Sisterhood?” I echo, glancing about fearfully for an onslaught of tiny, scintilescent beings.

  “The Sisterhood of the Bells,” the imp explains. “We are the order of fairies pledged to stand guard in the Neverland. We are sworn to protect the mortals here.”

  “The boys, you mean.”

  “Every mortal,” she corrects me. “Every mother, child, brave, and elder in the First Tribes. Every merwoman and infant in the lagoon. Every boy and girl Peter brings here, Sisterhood guards attend them all. That is the bargain by which the Sisterhood and all of our race earns the right to live in this place. We protect the innocent.”

  “Stella, my friend, is innocent,” I point out. “Cannot the fairies, your sisters, protect her until I—”

  But the little creature is shaking her head sadly. “She is innocent no more, not as she was when she first arrived. It is no longer a matter of urgency to the Neverland if her blood is shed.”

  “But … why?” I sputter. “She has harmed no one!”

  “There are many ways to lose one’s innocence, Captain.”

  The goblet has slid from my fingers. “But she does not deserve to be murdered.”

  “No, but fairies cannot interfere with the boys,” the imp sighs. “We can urge and suggest, but we cannot prevent them doing what they please.”

  “I ask for no one to act against the boys,” I tell her. “I am going there without weapons, myself. I will ask Chief Eagle Heart to show me the way.”