“You’re a quick one,” Hook said, smiling. It was strange to see himself in the face of a child. “But, while you’re here anyway, you might as well indulge me. It’s not often a boy gets to have a chat with the infamous Captain Hook.”
Timothy seemed to give this some consideration, and he scooted back a bit further on the chair, crossing his tiny legs and settling in. “Fine then, figment. What questions have you?”
Hook paused thoughtfully.
“Don’t take too long, pirate. I’m liable to wake up at any time.”
Hook stifled a laugh at the boy’s demeanor. Then, “Mother and Father, how are they?”
“Quite well,” he said, picking at his nails, casual, as though this was all terribly normal. “Mother doesn’t sleep much, but she never has. And Father’s always off on his adventures at sea, you know. Rose is little and annoying.”
“Rose?”
“My sister. She’s more of a pain than anything else.”
“I’ve got a sister…” Hook trailed off, looking out at nothing, trying to suppress the jealousy burning in him. It wasn’t fair to be angry at his parents for replacing him. Of course they had. They’d thought him dead, and what were they to do? But, use whatever logic he might, he could not get rid of the dull pain. His family had built a new family. And he had never replaced them. “Do they talk of me?” he asked, ashamed at the hoarse crack in his voice.
Timothy shrugged. “Sometimes. Not usually. It makes Mother too sad, and Father just gets angry. They talk about you a lot when Mother sits at the piano. She says you were a thousand times better than she ever was.”
Hook smiled. She was speaking the truth. “And you, boy. What of you?”
“What about me?”
“What are you like? What sorts of things do you do?”
He considered this for quite some time, and his face was very thoughtful. He was giving this a great deal more concern than any of Hook’s other questions. Of course he was.
“Well, I’m a dreadful student. Father thinks I’ve got no chance at all of getting into Eton.”
Hook bit his cheek. Eton. He hadn’t thought of that place in a while.
“But it doesn’t matter anyway,” Timothy said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to grow up and be an Eton man.”
“What do you wish to be?”
“A pirate.”
Hook felt a grave melancholy at this, a hard knot in his stomach, and he looked away from the child in his cabin.
“I’d like to be a pirate who’s just as fearsome as you, Captain James Hook.” Admiration and innocent excitement laced his voice, and his eyes brightened when Hook looked back toward him.
“You’re doing a fine job of it already,” Hook said, giving him a little nod. “Your men respect you a great deal.”
Timothy jumped off the chair and stuck out his chin, inspecting all of Hook’s things from the bottoms of his eyes.
“They do, don’t they? They fear me.”
“It seems so.”
“I’m the second-fiercest pirate in the sea, you know,” he said, crossing his arms. Then he turned to look at Hook. “Second only to you.”
The edge of Hook’s mouth ticked up. “I don’t doubt it.”
Despite only having known him for a short time, Hook felt a great kinship with this child; the bonds of brotherhood were able to overcome any difference in lifestyle or reality. So, he was betraying his fierce reputation with uncharacteristic kindness.
“Someday,” the boy said, pulling his little sword from its sheath, “I’ll be even more fearsome than you.”
“I don’t know about all that. I’m rather a tough figure to best.” Hook stood and straightened his hat.
“Have you ever plundered a place?” asked Timothy, cheeks raised and rosy, eyes alight.
“Many.”
“Kissed a wench?”
Hook was taken aback for a moment by the boy’s language, but answered him nonetheless. “More still.”
Timothy paused. “Killed a man?”
Something clenched in his gut, but he answered, “Hundreds.” This may well have been an exaggeration, but the boy would not know the difference.
“How about a boy? Have you ever killed a boy?”
Hook looked away from Timothy then, ignoring the sharp twist of pain in his belly, and stared off into nothingness. “One.”
Timothy shrank back just slightly from Hook. “And what of the one boy? The forever boy?”
Hook darkened and stared intently into Timothy’s face. “Peter Pan?”
“Yes.”
“I prefer not to speak of Peter Pan.”
Timothy continued anyway, words running into and over one another. “They say he’s your mortal enemy, the only one you can never beat.”
Hook slammed his hand onto his desk. “I prefer not to speak of Peter Pan.”
Timothy flinched a bit and nodded, and then he approached the captain.
“Can I see it?”
“What?”
“Your hook.”
Hook unfastened the cuff from his arm and handed it to Timothy. His brother was at first distracted by Hook’s mangled wrist. It was a sight to behold, and undeniably fascinating if one was an eight-year-old and was drawn to violence. Hook did not try to hide it; he allowed the boy to look.
Hook peered at Timothy, struck by his youth. Had he only been here for eight years? He chewed on his cheek. It felt like a great deal longer than that. And his face suggested that he’d aged more than eight years. Ten, perhaps. Eleven? He blinked rapidly, trying to bury the sudden, intense feeling that he’d been robbed. Of his brother, his sister, of years of his life.
When he tired of the gore, Timothy held out his hand and took the cuff and hook, and Hook jumped, drawn from his introspection by the touch of the boy’s fingers.
Timothy beamed, and set the hook atop his hand. Then, he leapt and danced around the room, yelling out various pirate-like phrases and jabbing at the air with his little sword and the captain’s massive hook.
Hook leaned back against the wall and watched him, filled with pain and peace intertwined. How long ago had that been him? Bouncing and laughing and dreaming of piracy? Forever. It had been forever.
Timothy wound down eventually, and he walked up to the captain and held out the hook. He took it from the boy and put it back on immediately; it was uncomfortable now to be without it.
“I think I’ll be going home soon,” Timothy said, unafraid to look Hook directly in the eyes.
“Yes, you’re looking a bit dim around the edges.”
“Well, I’ve got to wake up for school, you know.”
“Of course.” Hook nodded and wondered if Timothy could see the sadness he felt in every part of him.
“This was a good dream.” Timothy smiled.
“Agreed.”
“Captain?”
“Yes?”
Timothy hesitated. “Are you really and truly my brother?”
He regarded his brother rather mournfully, mouth drawn downward at the corners. “I told you, boy, I do not lie.”
Timothy took several steps closer to him. Then, he looked up into Hook’s tired face and bit his little lip. “I’m awfully glad to have met you. You’re even better than I imagined.”
Hook smiled. “The sentiment is mutual.”
Timothy yawned. “I’m going now.”
Hook stepped past him and pushed open the door, and Timothy walked beside him. At the doorway, Timothy stopped.
“What’s wrong?” asked Hook, cocking his head.
“If you’re really my brother…”
And he threw his small arms around Hook’s middle, wrapping him in an innocent and unabashed hug. Hook laid his hand on the boy’s head, choking back a cry. But, he felt him beginning to fade.
“Go to your ship, Captain,” he said.
Timothy smiled widely at him and tossed his hair out of his face, then made his way across the ship.
Starkey approached
the captain.
“He won’t be walkin’ the plank, sir?”
Hook sighed, watching his brother walk away. “No, Starkey. I’m not in the business of killing children.”
Timothy Hook and his ship of dreams slowly faded into nothingness, and Timothy returned to London, and the Spanish Main returned to the shore.
TWENTY-SIX
JAMES HOOK PACED BACK AND FORTH ACROSS THE deck of the Spanish Main, mumbling to himself under his breath. Lately, he spent a large fraction of his time pacing, as, since he’d returned to the shores of Neverland, his life had consisted of one distressing thing after another. Most of these stresses revolved, unsurprisingly, around Peter Pan.
In the couple of weeks since they’d left Keelhaul, Hook had lost a score of pirates to the boy. Peter’s preoccupation with pirates and dreamers thereof had helped him in this matter, replenishing his crew as new pirates appeared every now and then, but it was distressing nonetheless. Peter had taken to sneaking aboard Hook’s ship in the middle of the night, and in the morning another crewman would be always lying somewhere, dead. It was endlessly frustrating, and generally resulted in Hook losing hours and hours of sleep. This was all besides the endless onslaught of thoughts of his brother—staying up nights just hoping to see him again, wondering if he would bring Rose. Wondering if, since Timothy was obviously a Dreamer, Pan was going after Timothy next. Hook never did see his brother. He just lost sleep.
His hair was long and disheveled, and he had dark circles under his eyes. Thankfully, those things did something to draw attention away from the shadow of whiskers across his chin and above his lip. He needed sleep desperately, but that was one luxury he was unlikely to get any time soon. So he paced back and forth, rabid, in the cage that was the Spanish Main. After that had accomplished a significant amount of nothing, he decided to settle for a short leave of the prison.
He stopped at the ship’s forecastle and called, “Starkey!”
“Aye, Captain.” Starkey was beside him in a blink.
“I’m thinking of heading off the Main for a bit.”
Starkey’s face drained a bit of its color, but he made no vocal protest. “Aye, Sir.”
Hook leaned over the bow and stared out over the sea, tapping his hook against the wood. Starkey had hesitated; of course he had. Leaving the ship for any amount of time at this juncture was terribly irresponsible.
“You think it unwise?” Hook said, looking over at Starkey.
Starkey sighed. “Captain, we’re losing men right and left. If Pan were to come aboard and ye weren’t here, well, I shudder to think what’d happen.”
Hook chewed on this thought for a while, staring back over the deep and churning sea. It was the one he’d been wrestling with for days. How could he, the captain of this vessel, take any sort of leave while they were essentially under constant attack? It was foolish and selfish, but his nerves were fraying rapidly. He’d barely eaten the last several days, or run a comb through his hair.
He tapped the ship’s railing with his hook, clenching his jaw, considering.
“Pan doesn’t generally attack at twilight.”
“That’s true, sir. He waits until the middle of the night, and then he kills the man on watch.”
Hook cocked his head and peered at Starkey. “Would it be such an uncaptainly thing of me to leave for just a short while, then?”
Hook knew, of course, what Starkey would say before he said it, and that it would be in conflict with what he wanted to say. But he asked anyway, wanting fervently for someone to give him blessing to go, however false that blessing would be.
Starkey opened his mouth and closed it again, biting off his words. Then he said simply, “Of course not, sir.”
Hook looked back out over the shadowy blue waves then, and he bowed his head, resting it in the crook of his elbow. His shoulders slumped and he leaned there for quite some time, quiet, utterly exhausted.
“Don’t humor me,” he said, voice muffled by his arms. “I’d be a fool of a captain if I left. You know it as well as I.”
“Well, just look at ye, though. Ye look like half a ghost, pacin’ around here at all hours of the night. What kind of a captain are you in this state, anyway?”
Hook straightened, clinging to Starkey’s words, however patronizing was the root of them. In an instant, his eyes looked just a tad less hollow, and the color of his skin less pale.
“I’m not sure about it.” As he said this, though, he was already making his way slowly to the ship’s exit.
“Go, Captain. I’ll hold things down around here.”
“I won’t be gone long.”
Starkey hesitated, unconsciously reached for his gun and brushed his fingers over it. “You’ll be back before nightfall?”
“Of course.”
Without allowing himself to reconsider, Hook left the boat, pausing for a moment to feel the sand against his boots. The gentle wind whispered through the space between his back and his jacket, but it wasn’t chilly; it was comforting. The forest was green and lovely and, for once, wholly inviting. And the little nymphs were back to lighting up the sea, one of the few advantages to having Peter back in Neverland—the weather and the island itself.
He let his feet lead him where they would and paid no heed to the destination before him.
He walked for quite some time, a great deal farther than he’d intended. When he stopped, just before him was the river, ribbons of red and orange and blue gurgling and spilling over the rocks. This was the river that signified the border of the Indian lands. Tiger Lily.
“James Hook?” came a sweet voice from across the river.
He choked. “Tiger Lily?”
She hopped easily across the stream and stood in front of him. She looked harder than he remembered, her long, angular face a bit older, but that could very well have been the shadows on her face and the daggers her eyes were shooting at him. Her fists were clenched at her sides, and she was practically vibrating everywhere. Hook was compelled to take a step backward.
“Where have you been?”
He frowned. “I—Why? Have you been looking for me?”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she made a noise that sounded like a laugh, but almost certainly wasn’t. “Of course I have.”
Hook scraped his teeth across his lip. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, you’re in good company.”
Tiger Lily crossed her arms, and Hook stepped forward and threw his hand and hook into the air. “Tiger Lily, last time we saw each other, I gored you. You left. What more could you possibly want to say to me?”
She coughed out an irritated breath, and Hook was torn between wanting to back away for his safety, and wanting to get closer for his sanity.
“Of course I left, James, you dolt,” she spat. “You stabbed me. I needed medical attention. Would you have preferred I’d stayed and bled out on your floor?”
Hook fumbled for something to say. Unfortunately, though he’d rehearsed his piece in this conversation many times, at no point had he prepared a response for this reaction.
“I—I had no idea. I thought…” His general eloquence was reduced to inelegant sentence fragments. It was impossible to think clearly around the woman.
“Thought what, exactly?” Tiger Lily uncrossed her arms and let them dangle at her sides.
He fiddled with his hook, staring down at it, then back up at her, forgetting to breathe just for a second when her beautiful, angry eyes flashed at him. “I thought you were through with me.”
She shook her head and looked up at the sky. Then, she turned away from him, digging her heels into the ground. “You’re a fool, James Hook.”
Hook reached his hand out to her, this close to touching her, then drew it back. He was at an absolute loss, and found that he was in something of a panic.
“Tiger Lily, I am truly sorry,” he said, the deepest kind of fear washing over him.
She did not turn, and he stood, breaths shallow, staring at
her back in the clearing. He could feel the space between them like it was solid. Electric, tempting him to cross it, terrifying him into staying put. This was ridiculous. Managing a crew of pirates, he did with ease. But managing a woman was something else entirely.
“Where have you been?” she said quietly, back still turned to him.
Hook blew out a breath. He would not lie to her. “Keelhaul.”
Tiger Lily spun around and jealousy flashed across her face. She took several long steps toward him, nostrils flaring. “Keelhaul?”
“Indeed.”
Her voice lowered, and she stared up at him, inches from his face, eyes wide and unblinking and pensive. “You’ve finally done it, then.”
“Done what?” Hook’s pulse jumped, skin hot with the nearness of her. He stepped just an inch closer to her, and she stood her ground.
“Become a pirate.”
He paused, then said, voice rough, “I have always been a pirate.”
Tiger Lily shifted so that her chest was almost touching his and looked into his eyes, lips parting. He was overcome with the need to taste them. But suddenly, she turned away from him and cocked her head. She was staring at something through the trees, something that Hook could not see. Hook let out a breath, shoulders relaxing when she moved away.
“Do you hear that?” she whispered.
“Hear what?”
She did not answer. She simply walked toward the sound that Hook couldn’t hear, and he could do nothing but follow her. It wasn’t long before Hook picked it up as well. The sound was haunting and beautiful, like nothing else he’d ever heard. He knew in a beat that it was the mermaids.
The lagoon was quite a ways away, too far away for their voices to reasonably carry, but mermaids had a way of doing impossible things, Hook had found. Their voices were ethereal and smooth, like they came from the spirits of bells.
Tiger Lily walked slowly and sat in the silvery blue leaves, wrapping her arms around her knees. Then, she closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the sky, entranced and smiling softly. His breath caught when he saw her that way, and he stopped walking.
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