Alias Hook

by Lisa Jensen

  Pan alights to the deck before me, prodding, jabbing, and I make a few desultory sweeps of my blade to keep him at his distance. I am scarcely fresh after tangling with Nutter, yet I employ a few provocative maneuvers to expand my zone of safety that stop just shy of offense, hopping up onto the foot of the board to protect Stella from any advance. Kestrel sparkles at Pan’s shoulder, eager for me to forswear myself again and attack, earn the death blow from which there will be no resurrection.

  “Two against one,” I point out to Pan, nodding at his fairy accomplice.

  “You wait back there!” he orders her, and Kes has no choice but to obey, zooming off to the boys in a glittering of irritation. But Pan rebounds on me with more purpose, driving me back along the board to the rail, through which the business end of the plank protrudes out over the shark-infested bay, with Stella on it.

  As long as his feet remain on the deck, my strength and swordcraft must prevail; feinting with my hook, I choose my moment and clash my blade against his, checking his advance, pressing him back, buying some room. Coming about, I’ve but a heartbeat to glimpse movement out in the bay. War canoes, half a dozen, perhaps more, gliding silently toward the Rouge from the larboard side. But they make no move to board; there is as yet no battle on deck for them to join. At the center of the lead canoe, Eagle Heart sits erect and silent, watching Pan and me.

  Pan fairly yodels at the sight of them, charges me again and I stumble backward along the board. Falling back, I stop a thrust of his blade with my hook and see his gray eyes suddenly go round at something behind me; the board shudders, then lightens under my feet, as if a weight were taken off it.

  “Stella!” I shriek, swooping wildly behind me with my hook arm, but feeling only empty air.

  “Oh my God, James!”

  Her voice! No splash, no scream of terror, but a cry of unmistakable joy. She lives! My heart surges, even as Pan comes charging along the board after me, little teeth bared, something peculiar in his expression. As I dance backward along the board, my vision of him blurs in a hale of sparkling mist; the pitch of the board unbalances me, my boot skips out over empty air, and suddenly there is naught but blue water below me.

  But impossibly, the water stays where it belongs, far below, while I remain alongside the shivering plank, scrabbling for a purchase, yet as airborne as a gull. A breeze catches the long tails of my coat; I stretch out my hook and my sword for balance, twist round to see Stella beside me, hands spread wide, feet paddling, dark eyes agleam with delight.

  “Look at us!” she cries. “We’re flying!”

  I veer toward her in air as buoyant as seawater, my heart soaring. We lean into the next current together, twirling about each other, as nimble as the loreleis in their pool. We needn’t flap our arms, only glide together, leaving the poor old static, stationary world behind. A flash of lavender-blue darts between us, Piper, trailing her magical dust.

  “Come away now!” urges the little imp. “Captain, your ship is waiting!”

  But twisting about to follow her, my gaze falls to my other ship, my Jolie Rouge; her men huddled together in the waist staring up in bald panic at the witchery they behold, doomed to the misery I endured for centuries, poor fools. Irresistibly, I dive down to perch on the larboard rail.

  “Come with us!” I cry to the men. “You can have homes of your own, families, lives, anything you want! But come now!”

  They all goggle back at me, angry, fearful, oozing mistrust and reproach, while the little boys jeer at them from the foredeck. None makes any move to break out of the pack, not nervous Filcher, nor melancholy Gato, nor Burley, the most sensible of the lot. Young Flax, who ought to have the whole of life before him, Swab, Sticks, even Brassy, all cleave together in defiance, clutching their weapons. Nutter, who has found another sword, moves to the head of the pack to stare me down.

  How long does wisdom take? How much longer will they have to learn it before the boys cut them down? “The world is waiting for you, out there,” I urge them. “All you have to do is grow up!”

  But their former captain taught them well. Suspicion and outrage is their only response. Hook has abandoned them, flown off with the fairies, joined the other side.

  “Let him go, men!” Nutter yelps, waving his sword. “We don’t need Hook! We can win this war without him!”

  And they all cheer, the damned, deluded fools.

  “Come on, Maestro,” Stella urges behind me, and I launch myself up off the rail to follow. But Pan is now airborne too, his feral smile back in place, coming after us with murderous intent. Without thinking I swoop to cut him off as Stella flies off after Piper, intent on herding him back to the ship, to cover our retreat. A flourish of my sword, more ornamental than martial, sends him sprawling backward in the air, untouched but all askew, and when he bounces up again, his grin is gone. Paddling out of my reach, veering over the braves in their canoes, he points his sword after Stella. “Chief!” he bawls at Eagle Heart. “Shoot her down!”

  But the braves do not stir, except for a single hand raised by their chief. “Not fair, Little Brother,” Eagle Heart calls up to Pan. Lifting his chin toward me, the chief adds, “And that one is yours.”

  He will not join the battle against me. Our pact is sound again, so long as I muster the wit to extract myself without harming the boys. But Pan is still hot for my blood. Circling round me now to cut off my own retreat, he gestures again after Stella and shouts to his Lost Boys, “After her, men!”

  And the venomous little creatures in their furs and skins scramble up after Stella. Even airborne, I can’t stop them all; the power to call off the pack rests with Pan alone. Trusting the swift pattern of Piper’s sparkling trail against the purpling sky to protect Stella a few moments more, I charge after Pan with so wild a cry, his own boys balk in midflight, hiccupping about in the air in some dismay before they clamor off again.

  Pan twirls about to face me, grinning gleefully. But for once I am stronger, faster, cleverer than the boy. I am clumsier in the air, yes, but twice as determined; my reach is longer, my passion fierce. I herd him as far as the main shrouds, spars, and rigging more familiar to me than open air, and when he shoots upward out of long habit to evade me, I follow, pressing the advantage of my size. I feint to his left and he rears back his sword arm too fast; his elbow cracks against the spar and the shock of it rattles the hilt out of his grasp. I let loose my sword as well, flatten my hand to his chest, press his back to the mast, raise my hook. All of the Neverland hangs in the balance; we both know it.

  He wriggles like an upturned insect as I lash his thin arm to the top yard with the curve of my hook. His boys will be in disarray with their leader in such jeopardy. Stella can elude them as long as my dallying with Pan muddles their wits. Already the sky is glooming over with his fury.

  “Codfish!” he sneers, squirming under my grasp, and laughter splutters out of me. That’s all it’s ever been between us, name-calling and baby talk.

  I bend him more firmly to the yard, his arm twisting inside my hook. “I’m not playing this game any more,” I tell him coolly.

  “Yes you will!” he chirps, eyes glittering fire, peering over my shoulder, grinning like a little skull. “Now that your lady is gone!”

  I glance round, see the swarm of Lost Boys coming for Pan and me. The distant smudge of white in the darkening sky that was Stella has vanished.

  “I told you!” crows the boy, growing stronger under my hand, my hook, as I struggle to hold my position. The dust is wearing off, or I’m losing heart. “She doesn’t need you any more, Hook. Good riddance, I say!”

  The old bloodrage stirs inside me, and I draw back my hook, aching to slice him open gullet to craw, longing to see at last the shock of defeat in his insolent gray eyes. Yet I read in them not despair, but another kind of triumph, darker, more smug, more perverse than any he has ever won over me before.

  “To die will be an awfully big adventure!” he taunts me.

  He wants me to
do it! He will forfeit his life, his precious Neverland, the dreams of all the world’s children, for the pleasure of seeing me destroy the fragile humanity it’s taken me two centuries to earn. It will be his ultimate victory. If I give in now, I will never be a man. Not even for a moment.

  “Life is the adventure, Boy. It’s all in how you play it.”

  “Coward!” he spits back at me.

  I flourish my hook as the boys come shrieking nearer, but it’s all for show. The response among the Lost Boys in pandemonium; some are faltering in the air, dropping their weapons, colliding with the shrouds, others shrieking straight for me. But I’ll not fail Stella. I’ll keep them from pursuing her, whatever the cost. She’ll not suffer for me. She’ll forget me as soon as she’s free of the Neverland. It takes what’s left of my strength to do this one last thing for her, but my heart is resolved.

  Pan’s mean little face suddenly wavers and blurs in a hailstorm of sparkling gossamer stuff raining on me from above. Fairy dust, handfuls of it! I’m sneezing and spitting as arms close round me, dragging me aloft. Shaking the stuff out of my eyes, I see the mast and the yard and the boys some distance below, while Stella hauls me into the sky.

  “I’m not leaving without you, James!” she exclaims. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

  My heart surges up, and we both rise with it. She leads the way, lacing her fingers tightly through mine as we fly westward, away from the first pale blush of moonlight staining the eastern fog bank.

  Then, impossibly, some obstruction catches hold of my foot, jerking me so violently in the air I lose hold of Stella’s hand. Flailing for balance, I look down to see Pan grasping my boot with both hands, Lost Boys stretched out below him like the tail of a kite, each one grasping the foot of the boy above. It’s like the weight of an anchor upon me, the lot of them pulling together. I can’t shake them off. Stella’s hands close again round mine, pulling with all her strength to pry me loose. I feel I’m being rent in two.

  “You’re mine, Hook!” the boy shrieks up at me, face crimson, beneath his tawny mop of hair, his savage little teeth bared.

  I strive upward, dragging my preposterous anchor of children, but I can’t get free of them. My joints complain, knee, hip, shoulder grinding in their sockets, overstretched muscles aching; I am no longer a young man.

  Stella lets go of my hand, and swoops past me toward the boy. He snickers up at her, raising one arm to defend himself, his other still wound tight round my boot. The other boys, united in strength once more behind their leader, are passing a sword up to him, hand over hand, up the chain of their bodies. In a moment his empty hand will hold another weapon. Stella shifts about and I see her knife drawn, the one I gave her to cut vines in the wood. God’s life, she will never kill a child! But she might yet free us both.

  She might use her blade on me.

  What did the imp queen promise me? The thing I most desire. Death was all I wanted once, and now it lies within Stella’s power. A twist of the blade, as I once did for old Bill Jukes. She won’t let me suffer, I know. To die in the arms of someone who loves me, a better death than I deserve. Pray to all things sacred in this benighted place that she has the courage, the compassion to do it before the boy rearms to have his sport with me. Release me, my fallen angel. Release yourself, and live. And Stella’s free hand darts up to grasp mine as she makes her choice and presses her blade home.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  MORTAL MAGIC

  I feel nothing. Nor does the Pan bleed from the flat of Stella’s blade under his chin, as she gently lifts his face toward hers. Contempt and triumph glitter in his upturned eyes, certain that no silly lady, no mother, will ever hurt him, certain the day is his.

  But she moves nearer, her face very close to his, her eyes bold, her lips suggestively parted, a pink rosebud of tongue visible between them. By God’s sacred cods, she’s going to kiss the little whelp!

  His smug expression gives way to stark horror; he may not know what a kiss is called, but like all little boys, he knows to fear it. That way lies madness, sorrow, pain; that way lies life with all its consequences, terrible and glorious. He reels away from her with a panicked cry, loosing his grip on my boot, and I shake him off as Stella rights herself and veers back to me. All the little boys flounder about, shrieking, as we soar into the sky, Stella and I. She grasps my hand again, flushed and grinning, her dark eyes shining. I gladly take the kiss from her the boy refused, and another meant just for me, as heady as roses and oceans of wine. It tastes of freedom. It tastes of life.

  Pan and his Lost Boys clamor about in confusion far below. Angry black thunderclouds are scuttling in over the island, but Stella and I speed after Piper, away from the island, away from the rising doubloon of a moon, straight on for freedom—for whatever few moments remain for us to cherish it.

  * * *

  The fog bank encircling the Bay of Neverland is as cold and dense as ever, but Piper’s steady light points the way. I’ve no idea how the boundaries of the dreampath are defined, but Stella keeps me close. I know not how long we are cocooned within the fog, whether time is speeding or crawling. But it’s black night when at last we reach the outer edge of the fog bank, where Le Reve is waiting on the water, her lamps lit, eager to be off.

  Stella and I alight on the cabin top, solid decking under our feet, real, not make-believe. Not a dream. Even Piper flutters down to the starboard rail to rest; a rhythmic pulse of light tolls her breathing.

  “Odd, I never think of fairies tiring,” I tease the little thing.

  Stella takes my arm. “I could’ve flown all night,” she lies.

  I turn to her with the besotted grin of a man half my age, when cold panic squeezes my heart. How much longer will I look at Stella and see the face I love? Her expression sobers at once.

  “James…”

  “My Stella Rose,” I whisper, pulling her to me. In another breath, I might not know her face. How soon before I become again the empty husk of a man I was before the Neverland, before Stella, the raging fool I was when Proserpina cast her spell over me? Seconds tick by; in which one will Stella’s vivid dark eyes and tilted smile mean nothing to me? In which one will my heart revert again to a cold, dead stump? Stella’s arms creep inside my coat, circle tightly round me. In the next heartbeat we may each find ourselves clinging to a stranger and wondering why.

  Piper bounds up, buzzes over to us. “It won’t happen yet,” she assures us. “When you are ready, I will glimmersail you and your ship off on your journey. You won’t forget until I am gone.”

  “Then please don’t rush off before I’ve offered you my thanks,” I rejoin smoothly. Stella and I dare to unclench. “That dust you brought us saved our lives.”

  “Fairy dust is no use on its own,” the little imp chides me.

  “But, how could we fly?”

  “Mortal magic,” she shrugs again, and wafts over to the binnacle to admire her sparkling trail in the glass. I frown at Stella, who looks as mystified as I. Piper darts back to me and thumps a tiny hand on my chest. “Mortal magic,” she repeats. “To fly without wings. Part of the mystery the Sisterhood will never understand.”

  “You can’t mean love!” Stella exclaims. BellaAeola told us in no uncertain terms what she thought of mortal love.

  “The boys don’t love,” I snort.

  “But they do!” says Piper. “They love their life, their tribe, their leader, their youth. They love to win their games. Nothing constrains them. They expect to be delighted every moment of every day in the dream world they’ve made; in such an intensity of joy, all that’s needed is fairy dust to fly at will.”

  “Then why are the Neverland skies not raining Indians and loreleis?” I wonder. “Surely they love each other no less than Stella and me.”

  “The Indians and merwives do not ask for dust,” Piper shrugs. “They find joy enough in the worlds they inhabit, the earth, the water. It is all the magic they need. But for boys and Wendys, it’s the dre
am itself, the powerful dreaming of childhood, that gives them joy. Fear, anger, and disappointment weigh them down.”

  “As my men are weighed down,” I murmur. As I was myself for so long, too fearful, too angry to embrace the magic of the place and its marvelous creatures. “And Pan has never felt these things?”

  “Some part of him suspects he has,” the fairy sighs. “He has suffered many losses, far, far more than you have, Captain. He has been there so much longer. He cries over them sometimes in his sleep.”

  “I have heard him.”

  “But we take very great pains to charm him anew every day,” Piper goes on. “This is where Kes is so valuable, soothing him, stoking up his humors, chasing away the darkness, because she is so devoted. Should he ever understand the magnitude of his sorrows, it would unleash a torrent of despair that would swamp the Neverland and all who live there.”

  And for the first time ever in my life, I feel a renegade tremor of empathy for the poor little bastard. Is he as trapped as I was in his eternity of childhood? Does he never long to escape? Never, ever? “What happens if Pan grows up?” I ask her.

  “He never grows up. The children of the world need a champion to stand up to the grown-ups and win—even if it’s only in a dream. That is the bargain he made for his eternal youth, once upon a time, a little motherless child full of outrage at the unfair grown-up world. That is the price of his rule in this place of dreams.” Piper tilts her head thoughtfully at me. “Your own dream became overpowering, Captain. It outgrew the Neverland, stretched toward something more important than Peter, something that excluded him. He couldn’t bear it, that he was no longer the focus of your life.”