“Not so fast!” a voice called out, and I turned to see Raleigh emerging from below. He was pale; it was clear that the sword fight with Teynte had exhausted him, using up any reserve of energy he might have accumulated since his rescue. He had been resting in the sick bay when he heard of my sentence. “He was with me, Captain. He left his post to visit me.”
“Is that true, Cook?” Starkey asked me sternly.
“Aye, Captain,” I answered.
“Why? What was so urgent that you needed to abandon your watch at such a critical hour?”
I did not want to tell my father’s sad story; at best it would elicit sympathy, but would it be enough to commute my sentence?
“I asked him to come,” Raleigh replied before I could speak. “I wanted to thank him once again for saving my life. I wished to give him my blessing.”
Starkey took this in, and considered. “Nevertheless, the boy should not have left his post,” he concluded. “Proceed.” He nodded in Cecco’s direction.
Cecco looped the noose around my neck.
“Please, sir, one word more!” Raleigh called out, and once again the proceedings were halted.
I waited for him to find something eloquent to say, a heartrending plea that would spare my young life.
“Why not burn the boy?” he finally said.
Even the hardened mutineers around me let out a gasp of horror. Cecco muttered an oath (in Italian, of course). (At least I assume it was in Italian.) (And an oath.)
Raleigh continued: “If you are bent on killing the lad, give him the nobility of death by fire. I know you intend to torch the Princess Alice. Why not bind the boy to the mast and let him go down with that ship? A fitting end, perhaps, and a nobler one. He did, after all, fight on our side once he realized his error. Besides, many of the crew, as I can clearly see, are fond of him, and it would spare them the emotional trauma of seeing a child’s neck cruelly snapped and his poor emaciated body picked clean by gulls until what remained rotted to bones.”
His vivid description disturbed me, of course, but was he truly suggesting a substitute death by fire? I could not fathom why the man would turn so cruel, after I had saved his life.
“A Viking death,” Starkey remarked, being an overeducated man, “yes, I like that. Let’s do it.”
And so it was done. I was hauled by Cecco onto the Alice and bound fast to the mast. Pitch was poured over the vessel’s deck, torches were fetched, and a few of my crewmates were allowed to say their farewells to me. “I’ll miss you, Cap’n,” Smee said to me as tears dripped down his ruddy round cheeks. Cecco muttered something in his native tongue, whether a curse or a blessing I could not tell. Starkey told me to die like a Gentleman and make Eton proud. Raleigh was the last, and he kissed me gently on each cheek, and it was while bussing the port-side one that he whispered in my ear, “There’s an island to the northwest. Lower the longboat and make your way there.” He then embraced me tight, his shoulders heaving with seeming emotion as he slipped a knife into my bound hands.
Bloody Pete lit a torch and tossed it onto the pitchy deck, burning his fingers in the process. Black Murphy lit and tossed a second one. As the pitch on the foredeck caught fire and black smoke rose like a dark prayer to heaven, all returned to the Roger. Black Murphy severed the grappling ropes that held the two ships together, and the Roger pushed off.
I began sawing through the ties that bound me to the mast. It was clumsy work, and somewhat bloody, for I sliced my fingers more than once in the process. The fire spread quickly and I had little time. When I finally severed the ropes (and foolishly dropped the knife among them as they fell to my feet), I could see that the Roger remained barely a hundred yards off the Alice’s starboard rail, and so I held back from stepping away from the mast for fear that someone with a spyglass might see me and report my escape to Starkey. Knowing that he would consider my actions a far cry from Fair Play, I was certain he would then aim Long Tom at me and fire away. But as the flames burned higher and closer, I could hold back no longer. I ran to port, where a longboat was kept. Looking over the rail, I beheld with horror that its bottom was stove full of holes—Starkey (or someone) had anticipated Raleigh’s intent, and cut short any possible escape route with a few well-aimed blows. I ran to starboard, concealed as I was now by roiling clouds of black smoke, and found the second longboat in the same condition. I was lost.
To escape the flames I began to climb. As I scampered up ropes toward the crow’s nest, I considered my chances as a swimmer. No land was in sight—Raleigh’s whispered island may have been days away, for all I knew—and my prowess in the water, though quite remarkable for an Englishman, would never keep me afloat for more than several hours. I would be sharks’ food before noon. Still, drowning is a merciful death, or so I’d been told. I decided to cast myself into my salty grave with a last cry of “Floreat Etona!” as my epitaph. I said a prayer: “One moment more, dear Lord, of life and breath and air and hope, before I take the plunge.” I reached the crow’s nest and climbed inside. I prayed to God and to my dear mother, asking both for mercy, for forgiveness. I heard a creak of wood, and looking down I saw that the flames were licking their way through the mast. I prayed to my father, whose spirit was set free in the bloody waters of this ocean’s tide, to cradle me in his arms and make my death a pleasant one. Black smoke rose like the hand of the Reaper, wrapping its fingers around my neck and choking the life from me. The noose, perhaps, would have been swifter, kinder; I could no longer breathe, and as I filled my lungs with the noxious poison, I began to hallucinate. I heard a cock crow, signaling Death, the final hour, the dawn of my New Life. And the next thing I knew, I was in the arms of an angel, and we were flying over the water to heaven.
PART TWO
THE GREAT WHITE FATHER
Chapter Four
Alas, it was no angel. It was (and here I must say his name. Why avoid it? Why use a pseudonym that would fool no one, dear reader, for you know it already, sadly, better than you know my own, which is not and never was Hook) P. Pan.
* * *
I realized I was still alive when we flew no closer to the clouds of heaven (where I hoped my dear parents awaited me) but instead began to descend. Ah no, I thought, what have I done to deserve the fiery pit? Then I noticed that my rescuer was a boy no older than myself, and possibly several years younger. Most astonishing of all—he had no wings! This was no angel, I determined. I panicked, and for a moment I struggled in his arms. But he held me all the tighter, and I realized that giving in to the unknown might be better than plunging hundreds of feet into the ocean.
But how could he hold me, let alone carry me aloft? I was bigger and heavier than he, or so it appeared. Perhaps whatever had given him the gift of flight had also made me weightless, at least so long as he had hold of me. As we flew I studied him more closely.
He appeared to be a boy of twelve or thereabouts. His face was smooth and his cheeks pink with excitement. His hair was curly brown, but it could have been dirt that gave it color, for it was tousled and I could see that he seldom if ever washed it. Nor, from the smell of him, did he wash much else. He smelled of earth, not of fish, a smell that I welcomed after long months at sea. He never cast his eyes (brown with flecks of gold, in contrast to my own periwinkle blue) on me but only on the horizon, as if he were looking for some marker to give him direction. His lips were tight in concentration, so that two dimples dented the port and starboard of his mouth. His nose was dusted with freckles. His eyelashes were quite long, adding something girlish to his visage (though I would never tell him that; he would have murdered me). He was—so far as it is possible for any child to be—beautiful.
He dipped even lower. At this point I turned my gaze from his face and looked ahead. There appeared on the horizon a mountainous island, which rapidly grew closer. The ocean around it was of a turquoise color, and prettier water I have never beheld. Apart from the bright yellow sands edging its beaches, the island was deep green, furred (or so it
seemed) with an emerald jungle. We circled the island once, and as we did so I spotted a lovely lagoon on the far western side, dotted with rocks upon which sea lions (or so I imagined, for I had never seen those mammals in life but only in drawings) lounged. On the high cliffs to the north was what appeared to be a village of tents. Was this our destination? No, for we sailed over it and continued east in the direction from which we had just arrived, then spiraled lower and dove toward the island’s middle, where the wilderness was thickest.
The boy did not decrease his speed as we descended; rather we sped toward earth as if he were bent on crashing us both into the jungle. But a few feet above the treetops he somehow slowed, and we gently descended through leaves and lianas to the ground. He landed on his feet, and as soon as he touched dirt he dropped me, as if quite suddenly he could no longer bear my weight. I landed with an “Oof!” He laughed.
“Thank you, kind sir,” I said to him, once I had caught my breath.
“I’m not a sir,” he said, in proper English. “I’m a boy. My name’s Peter. What’s yours?”
“James,” I replied, and as I stood I held out my hand for him to shake. He simply stared at it.
“Are you giving me something?” he asked.
“My hand,” I replied.
He seemed puzzled. “But there’s nothing in it,” he said.
“I’m giving you my hand,” I said again, uncertain how to make my intention clearer. “Please take it.”
“I don’t want it, I have two of my own.”
I thought he was joking, and I laughed.
“Do you think I’m funny?” he asked sternly.
“I think what you said was funny.”
“Was it?” And now he laughed, and soon we both were laughing together.
“I saw your house burning and that you were in trouble. I was playing hide-and-seek with Tink, else I would never have found you. It was her turn to hide, and sometimes she goes quite far away.”
“It wasn’t my house, it was a ship,” I explained, puzzled at his choice of words. “And who is Tink?”
“Oh, you’ll meet her soon enough. She’s very irritating at times, but she’s all I have to play with. Until now.” He grinned, studying me head to toe as if I were his captive. “What is that?” He was pointing at my trousers.
“Trousers,” I answered. It was now I noticed that he was clothed in leaves and mud, with a few seashells dangling from a liana belt that barely served up a modicum of modesty. Had he dressed like that in London, he would have been arrested.
“Trousers? But there’s only one of them,” he observed with grammatical correctness.
“Well,” I said, somewhat at a loss, “there are two legs.”
“Oh” was all he answered.
“Where are we?” I asked, looking around.
“Home,” he said and started walking away from me. I instantly followed.
“Do you have a name for it?”
“Home.”
“I mean, the island.”
“Home.”
“I see.”
“What would you call it?” he asked, stopping and turning to face me.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been any place like this.”
“Never?”
“No. Never.”
“Then it’s Never, to you. Home to me.”
Before I could reply a tremendous ROAR stopped me in my tracks. To starboard, at the foot of a large tree, was an enormous bear standing upright between us and two mewling cubs. Its teeth were long, its claws extended, and it waved its paws at us as if it were deciding how to divide our delicate morsels between itself and its offspring. I stood very still, then began quite carefully to back away. But the boy took a step closer to the monster.
“Peter,” I whispered, “Peter—don’t.”
He ignored me and stepped even closer. The beast watched him. Everything was still. Then the bear leapt on the boy, knocked him onto his back and proceeded to take his head in its jaws in preparation for the final crunch. I turned away, too frightened to watch, but felt myself a terrible coward and so turned back at the last moment, expecting to see the monster’s teeth puncture his skull with a terrible pop. Imagine how surprised I was to see Peter pull from his liana belt a blunt stick, with which he proceeded to stab the bear in its heart. The bear reared back, held one paw to the inflicted wound, then toppled onto its side with a pitiful scream. In a moment all was over, and the two orphaned cubs ran to their late parent (I did not know if it was father or mother) and began to lick its face pathetically, crying so as to break my heart. I felt the tears spring to my eyes—I so identified with these poor young ones—only to turn astonished to a laughing Peter.
“Boy, why are you crying?” he asked.
“I too am an orphan,” I declared, and, before I could thank him for his brave actions in once again saving my life, I heard another ROAR and lo! the bear was back on its feet. Not only does Time stand still in this place, I remember thinking, but the Dead Walk Again! The bear waddled toward Peter, and Peter jumped into its arms, and soon both were rolling in the jungle leaves, Peter laughing and the bear snorting (in what I took to be its form of laughter). The cubs joined in, and after a time (while I watched gaping) Peter broke away and introduced us.
“This is James,” he said to the bear. “He’s my new friend.”
The bear waddled toward me, and I backed away.
“Why are you afraid?” Peter asked me.
“It tried to kill you. And you killed it !”
“Oh, it’s just a game we play. Today it was my turn to win. Tomorrow it will be Barnaby’s. Yesterday he pretended to gnaw off my leg and feed it to the children. Brilliant! Come along.” And before I could react he continued farther into the jungle. Barnaby snorted his farewell (or so I took it to mean), and I followed my new friend.
In a few minutes we arrived at a large deciduous tree, which towered above all the others. It was covered in pink and yellow blossoms, and seemed quite out of place in the middle of a jungle. Peter pulled aside a bush nestled against its base to reveal a large hole in its trunk. He stepped into the hole, and I moved to follow. “No, this is mine,” he said. He pointed to another bush. “That can be yours.” He disappeared.
I pulled aside this second bush and discovered another large hole. I carefully stepped inside and found my foot on the top rung of what I soon learned was a ladder. Gingerly I descended. Reaching the bottom rung, I turned and beheld an oddly shaped room, tangled in roots and rocks and lit with burning candles. “Welcome,” said Peter, for he had already arrived. From a tabletop made of a stump he picked up a clay pipe and instantly lit its contents from a nearby candle. He took a puff and handed it to me. I put it to my mouth and inhaled, then exhaled quite suddenly, coughing.
“You have to hold your breath. Let the smoke do its work,” he instructed. I took another puff and held the smoke inside for as long as possible. “This is remarkable,” I said, exhaling while looking around at his underground abode. “Did you dig this yourself?” I offered him back the pipe, and he took another puff before speaking.
“No, I had help,” he answered, but offered no further explanation.
“But where did you get the candles?”
“A house landed on the beach yesterday,” he said, “like the one you were burning in but smaller. It was filled with candles.”
“Yesterday?” I asked, incredulous.
“I think so” was his evasive answer. I soon learned that all past events happened “yesterday” for him, just as the only future before us—whether it was seconds or years ahead—was “tomorrow.”
The tobacco we smoked was quite sharp, but held a lovely herbal aroma, and its effects grew on me quickly. I admit I rather liked it. “What is this tobacco? It’s lovely. Where’d you get it?” I asked.
“Panther gave it to me. In exchange for a favor or something. They smoke it all the time.”
The name Panther reminded me of the scribbling I’d found
on the eye-socket wall on Starkland.
“Who’s Panther?” I asked.
“You’ll meet him,” he replied. “Tomorrow.”
It was then that I felt a stirring in my trouser pocket. I reached in and pulled out Daisy, who was only now waking, having slept through the attack of the Alice, my imprisonment and trial, and ultimately my rescue. “Oh. This is Daisy,” I said, holding her out toward Peter in the palm of my hand.
He recoiled in terror.
“Put it away, put it away!” he screamed.
“She won’t harm you, she’s so small she couldn’t hurt you even if she wished to. She’s safer than Barnaby.”
“Put it away!”
I held her to my face, kissed the top of her head (she nipped at my lip), and slipped her back inside my pocket.
“Where’d it come from?” he asked, calming somewhat once she was out of sight.
“I hatched her. I don’t know if she’s a ‘her,’ I’ve only guessed.”
“I mean now. Where’d she come from now?” he asked again. “Are you a magician? Panther’s brother is, but not as good as you.”
“What? No. I’m not a magician. She was in my pocket.”
“What’s ‘pocket’?”
I looked again at his skimpy costume. “You don’t have them, do you?” I stood to show him mine and buried my hand in my starboard one.
He screamed. “Where’d your hand go?”
“It’s right here,” I said, pulling it out again.
“How’d you make it disappear?”
“I put it in my pocket. Like the one I keep Daisy in.” I “disappeared” my hand again.
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