I had taken my revenge, and I felt terrible.
I played a nasty trick on my father. Was it fair payback for the loss of a hand? Most would say so. Most would say he got his share of the pie. But I had never been so cruel to another human being in my life, and I was not proud.
I felt as I had felt at Eton after Mother died: alone, unwanted, undeserving of anyone’s love.
What hurt the most, I realized on reflection, was Daisy’s betrayal. How could she eat my hand as if it were a fish or a seagull? True, I had eaten her mother. And she was a reptile—consuming meat was part of her nature. But she had devoured the hand so readily. Perhaps dining on my blood from birth had given her a taste for me. It was almost as if she relished it, had been waiting for this five-fingered morsel since hatching.
I knew that the only way to resolve the issue was to confront her directly.
I asked Teynte and Starkey to lower a boat and row me to Long Tom.
Wading onto the beach, I looked around but could see nothing of her. Then, all at once, I heard a ROAR and she hastened toward me, as quick as a seven-hundred-pound crocodile could, from behind the clump of palms on the far side of the island. Had she been lying in wait for my arrival? It seemed so. Was she about to attack me? I braced myself for the slaughter. Was I soon to follow Slinque’s fate and join my father’s watch in her belly? She roared again, and slid to an abrupt halt at my feet. Then she opened her jaws wide, coughed, and spat out my hand.
She had swallowed it—not for sustenance, but for preservation! She had retrieved something of mine that had gone missing, and was waiting for me to visit her in order to proudly return the lost prize!
It was, unfortunately, in a condition that made it unreturnable. Only the stub of the quill remained, and her digestive juices had done their work on the body of the prize, reducing skin and muscle to a black rotting sinewy mush of bone. One thing, however, remained unaffected by her internal acids. The gold of my mother’s wedding ring shone brighter than ever.
I knelt and kissed her snout, thanking her for her thoughtfulness. I picked up the mess, disgusting as it was, and returned with it to the longboat, where Teynte and Starkey were waiting. I wrapped the amputation in my shirttails so, though they undoubtedly smelled the decay, they remained ignorant of the source of the odor. As we rowed back toward the Roger, I surreptitiously removed my mother’s ring and consigned, with little regret, Daisy’s glutinous prize to the sea.
* * *
Once on board I went directly to Father’s Quarters. He was not inside. I opened his sea chest, took out his scythe, and nearly skipping with excitement hurried belowdecks, where I presented sword and ring to Black Murphy. I gave him specific instructions, he took measurements, and went to work at once. I returned topside, and it was then that I discovered Father.
Skylights’s cry alerted me that something was amiss. “Thee! Thee!” he lisped, pointing high. “He’th in the crowth netht!”
Father had climbed the rigging to the top of the mainmast. He was sprinkling an invisible something over himself. “I can fly!” he shouted. “Watch, boy!”
He stepped into the ether. His body weighed nearly nothing. His mind was light as a bubble. Still, the air could not hold him.
* * *
That night Black Murphy presented me with my new hand. Sharp as a razor on its edge, deadly as an arrow at its tip, it had the weight of Father’s scythe and the words To My Eternal Love, bright as gold, inscribed on the arc of its claw. Death and Devotion, melded together.
The crew was gathered on deck when I arrived. I was late. Turley concluded the funeral service, and Father’s body was cast into the sea. Wrapped in a dark cloak, like the villain in some music hall melodrama, I quietly entered behind them—and as the waves swallowed his corpse, I flew to the roof of the Captain’s Quarters and held my new hand high for all to see. “Your captain is dead!” I shouted. “Who shall rule in his place?”
“HOOK!” was the resounding answer. “HOOK! HOOK! HOOK!”
Chapter Ten
Ah, mortality! What a terrible wonderful thing it is! Like a tiger biding its time until the unsuspecting prey draws near, the longer it waits the hungrier it grows. When it pounces, as it did with Father, it strikes with lightning horror. He had no chance to savor his life; he was young forever, and then he wasn’t.
In deifying youth, the Never-Archipelago frees us from the unknown—how marvelous! At the same time it delivers a tedium of predictable sameness. “You will never grow old” promises delight; “You will never be different” sounds like a punishment.
If Peter were to age, I wondered, how old would he become? Would he wither to senility quicker than Father? Would he stand in defiance against Time, cock-crowing his eternal boyhood? Or would he disintegrate to dust in an instant, once the sun melted his frozen youth?
I could not learn the answer until I lured him to London. But how?
Alas, I knew how.
I prepared my hook with the tenderest of temptations. I baited it with children.
* * *
No sooner did I assume the mantle of captain than I ordered the men to set sail in a northwesterly direction. I made some adjustments among the crew: Teynte was now quartermaster (replacing Turley, whom I found too confoundedly dull), and I appointed Gentleman Starkey my first mate (taking the place of Foggerty, who was simply too d—ned Scots). We reached the Never-Isle after three and a half days, and anchored in a cove on the eastern shore.
I decided not to arrive at Peter’s Underground Home by air: not only did I want to conserve my supply of Flying Sand, but I wanted Peter to be forewarned of my arrival—he might be less suspicious that way. I had Black Murphy row me to the beach, and I headed off alone into the jungle.
Things had changed ever so slightly. There was now an atmosphere of—how shall I describe it? Distrust. At one point during my hike I passed Barnaby and his cubs; as soon as they sniffed my presence they were off like a shot.
I don’t believe it was only me that they wished to avoid; I later learned that Tiger Lily’s death had left Panther and his people angry, and out for blood. This led, naturally, to bloodshed, and sadly the most common victims were the animals. True, it may have been my newly sinister self that caused alarm, but whatever the cause there was nothing I could do about it.
I arrived at the Underground Home tree in the late afternoon. “Peter?” I called down his ladder. There was no response. I sat on the ground, leaned my back against the tree trunk, and waited. After about twenty minutes I heard a rustling in the brush: Peter was returning from a visit to the lagoon. He stopped in his tracks at the sight of me and drew his blunt stick in defense.
“Who are you?” he asked, wary.
“You don’t recognize me? I’m not surprised—I’ve grown some. It’s James.”
He squished his face up like he was trying to pry something from his memory. “James?”
“The boy you rescued from the burning ship. We swam with the Mermaids, and I fought Lone Wolf on the savanna.”
His eyes lit up. “James! I haven’t seen you since yesterday! What happened? You’ve—” And then a terribly sad look came over his face. “You’re old.”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Peter. But ever since Tiger Lily died, well, I became a different fellow. I ran away, and Time caught up with me.”
“Who died?” he asked.
“Tiger Lily.”
“Who’s that?”
He had forgotten her completely.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I’ve come back, to play.”
“But I can’t play with you. You’re a man.”
“I’m still a boy at heart.”
“You can’t be. You’re too tall. You have whiskers and everything.”
I rubbed my cheeks—I’d forgotten to shave that morning, and the shadow of a beard (the only shadow I had about me) had made its appearance.
“What’s that?” he asked, curiosity changing the sub
ject for him.
“It’s a hook.”
“That looks like fun. I bet it helps you climb trees and cliffs and things. Where do I get one?”
“You’d have to lose a hand first.”
He looked at one of his hands, as if he were trying to figure out exactly how to lose it.
“Peter,” I interrupted, “if I can’t play with you, who will ?”
He looked back at me, and tears sprang to his eyes.
“I don’t know. Barnaby won’t play anymore and I don’t know why. The lions and tigers won’t even let me pet them and the natives have forbidden me to enter the village. The mermaids are all right but—they’re girls. Did I do something wrong?”
Oh, the stupid innocence of youth.
“I’ll tell you what. I know a place that’s filled with boys, just your age or younger. You could go there, and play all day long and have the best of times. What do you say?”
“James, that’s brilliant! Where? Let’s go now!”
“We have to wait until nightfall. And we’ll need to fly. Do you have enough Sand for both of us to travel a long, long way?”
“Tink does. She has tons of it.”
“Ask her if we can take some.”
“She won’t mind. She won’t even miss it.”
He entered the tree and slid down his ladder, out of sight. I moved to my old entrance, and could barely fit. It took some maneuvering, but eventually I arrived at the bottom. Peter was preparing a pipe and asked me if I wished to share.
“No, thank you, Peter, I don’t do that anymore. I only smoke cigars since I’ve grown up.”
“But they stink!”
“Yes, they do. That’s why I like them.”
He found that very funny, and I laughed along with him.
* * *
The remarkable thing about revenge is that it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it really is. There’s no false altruism involved, no lessons to be taught, no fortune to be gained, and, more often than not, it has terrible consequences for those who seek it out. It’s a complete mystery to me why it is so attractive. Yet it is. I admit it. I was drawn to it as if it were a lovely lady (as it sometimes is).
* * *
We stood on the beach waiting for the stars to pop out. As soon as the Liana appeared we peppered ourselves with Sand. I wanted to ensure that we would not be separated, and so just before we launched I reached out my hand to take his. He pulled back at once. “You must not touch me!” he exclaimed. “No one must ever touch me!” Peter, who had been so tactile when we first met, had indeed changed: was it because, when last we were together, I struck him repeatedly and then tried to stab him? Was he like this now with everyone, both human and animal? Had I asked him for a reason, I knew he would say that he had always been this way, and so I said nothing.
I pointed the star out to Peter to show him the way. “We head in that general direction and continue straight on till morning,” I explained. But we arrived in London long before morning dawned, and as we circled the Kensington Gardens I pointed out the Round Pond and told him that, if he were to wait here long enough, dozens of boys would appear.
He swooped down on it without even a word of thanks. As he alighted on a park bench I waved my farewell and headed back to the Never-Isle and the Roger. I had no idea whether or not I would see him again. Once the sun nipped the tips of the treetops, Peter would begin to grow.
What I failed to reckon on was his impatience. I told him to wait, and the one thing that boys cannot do is wait.
He began to explore, I later learned, and his explorations took him into Holland Park, where he found an open bedroom window and a sleepless boy who said that his name was Tootles. Peter asked him if he wanted to play and Tootles said he did, and so Peter peppered him with Sand and flew him back to the Never-Isle.
Tootles was the first but not the final abduction. Nibs and Slightly and Curly and the Twins soon followed, and Peter made up some story about their falling out of their perambulators in order to justify his criminal behavior. Nobody minded except their parents, I expect, who grieved and worried and may have even taken to drink or divorce as a result of the disappearances. I like to think that some of the boys could have been orphans, or victims of frequent whippings at the hands of stepfathers who did not want them, and thus Peter’s thievery was something of a rescue. I like to think that, but I very much doubt it.
And the worst part of it was, of course, that Peter always flew to London and back before daylight. The sun never touched him, and so he remained as carefree and heartless as ever.
* * *
What I needed, I realized now, was something to keep Peter in London for at least a day. I needed a temptation, a lure beyond the realm of “playmate.” It was then that I came up with a second scheme, which was perhaps the most terrible mistake of my life.
Those of you familiar with the Scotsman’s tale may recall an incident involving a cake cooked by the pirates and given to the boys so that they might eat it and die from sugar consumption. Now anyone with any knowledge of the kitchen, or better yet anyone with small children about them, knows very well that sugar will not kill, at least not in the same way that a nice dose of strychnine will. Even I, blessed with no culinary talent whatsoever and, sadly, no children to my name, know this much: what sugar will do is make the child who eats enough of it wildly insane for a brief period of time, after which that child will collapse into a sleep so deep that the world’s end will not wake him. The Scotsman, as usual, got it all wrong, first by placing that incident after the arrival of Wendy, and second by saying that I did not succeed in my sugar poisoning.
I did, dear reader, I most assuredly did.
Jukes baked a lovely apple cake, mixing the fruit with as much molasses and brown sugar as we could spare. To tell the truth, I don’t believe there was much flour in the cake at all; it was mostly sweetness held together by a few slices of apple. I placed it early one morning in the vicinity of the tree, hoping the boys would discover it before any flies did. Nibs exited the Underground Home to relieve himself and nearly stumbled over the prize. He swiped one finger across the top of it to taste; he fancied that if it was poisonous he would die a hero never to be forgotten, and if it was just a cake he would have a little bit of it all to himself before having to share it with the others. Well, he found it delicious, sounded an immediate alarm, and before long the cake was happily settling into the stomachs of all the other boys, including Peter.
The next few hours found them running around creating all sorts of havoc on the island, fueled as they were by sugary energy. They shimmied up the palm trees and commenced to swing from the hanging lianas; they ran to the savanna and pulled all the lions’ tails before scampering back into the bushes; they tried to fly without the help of any Sand, but their attempts mostly involved jumping off stumps and flapping their arms, so no one was injured. At length, once they were well exercised, they simply collapsed around the base of the Underground Home tree without even bothering to descend to their beds, and became like ones dead.
I had retired to the ship and returned just before noon to find them all quite unconscious. I even kicked the Twins none too gently to see if they would awake; their snores continued unabated. I moved directly to Peter.
He was lying half in and half out of his tree hole, his head and upper arms draped over the top rung of the ladder while his feet dragged in the dust. It was his feet that I wanted, or rather what they held. I knelt before him, seized an ankle, and lay the sharp edge of my claw against his starboard sole. I cut.
I needed to move quickly, I realized, lest he awake from the pain; but the pain, if there was any, he slept through. He had attached the prize, as I mentioned earlier, with some sort of tree sap, and though it was well stuck, its removal involved just as much pulling and yanking as it did cutting. At one point I had to seize the prize with my teeth, arcing backward with all my might while at the same time holding his foot with my good hand and sawin
g away with the other. The sap stretched like a band of rubber, and as soon as I cut it from Peter’s foot my prize slapped me in the face and stuck. Once I managed to pull it free, it adhered to my hand, and then to my hook, and then to my trouser leg, so that it took as much effort to untangle myself from its clutches as it did to remove it from Peter.
Nevertheless, in the end, it was mine again. It even smelled of me, of my boyhood and my London home. My shadow brought with it so many wonderful, terrible memories. I would have embraced it, if I could.
I returned to the ship and spread it out on the floor of my cabin in order to remove any trace of sap. Once I had succeeded (with a mixture of turpentine and water), I stood back to survey the whole. Inexplicably I began to cry. There he was, the boy I used to be, fully equipped with two hands. The shadow-hand was smaller, of course, than the one that had been removed, and in some ways less practical than the claw I had now. But it could never be mine again, no more than the shadow could be mine: I had outgrown them both.
* * *
I wasted no time and flew that very night. It was 1896 in London now, and as soon as the sun struck the Thames, I began to age five more years. I didn’t care; I had a mission, and I could not complete it alone. I needed an accomplice, but I wasn’t sure how to go about recruiting her.
I waited until George had left for the office before I rang the bell. Mary answered, infant in arm. His name was Michael, she told me after giving me a warm, welcoming embrace. Wendy and Jack were both at school, he attending my Wilkinson’s alma mater, and Wendy well placed in an excellent school for girls. I was sorry to miss them, I said, but I had come on other matters. Mary looked concerned. “Is everything all right, James?” she asked.
“Not really. Is there someplace where we can talk?”
She ushered me into the drawing room. Their maid, Liza, brought us morning tea and left with the baby, and as soon as we were alone I got to the point at once.
“Do you know what this is?” I asked her as I unrolled the prize.
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