“What of Peter?” she asked, staring at some dark spot on the cave wall.
“What of him?” said Hook, voice instantly low and angry.
“You would forget him so quickly?”
“Yes,” he said, words just this side of a growl. “Why is that so important to you anyway? Would you?”
“James—”
Hook stood, crossed his arms. “I tire of this.”
Tiger Lily rolled her eyes. “Of what?”
“This,” he said, waving his arm at her. “Even after last night, he’s still here. He’s always here.”
“Stop it, James,” she spat. “I haven’t even laid eyes on Peter for a week—”
“A week?”
“—and last we spoke, he wanted little to do with me anyway.”
Hook frowned. “What?”
Tiger Lily drew her arms tighter around herself and pulled her knees into her chest. “He says I’m growing up.”
“You are,” said Hook, reaching out to touch her, kneeling in the sand, trying very hard not to think of the day he’d heard those very words from Peter.
“For you,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him. “I grew up for you.”
Hook drew in a breath.
“I can’t decide whether I love you or hate you for it, James Hook, but I did, and now here I am.”
His pulse spiked and he laid his hand on her shoulder, running his thumb in little circles on her skin. “You grew up to be with me?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“That can’t be,” he said quietly. “You’d been growing up long before you knew me.”
“Yes,” she said. “Consequences of being the Chief ’s daughter. You grow up quickly, experiences and all that.” She bit her lip. “But I’d stalled, you know. I was quite happy to stay where I was, young, a girl, and then I met you again. And everything changed.”
“Is that—” His voice cracked, and he drew in a deep breath. “Did you come to my room last night because— because you’re too old? Because Peter no longer wishes to be with you?” Vocalizing it at all made him sick to his stomach.
“No,” she said, spinning around to face him, hands at the base of his jaw. “I came to your room last night because I love you.”
His gaze dropped to the floor and then rose to hers. “Then why mention his name the moment I ask you to leave?”
“Because if I’m to leave with you, I need to know that you love me more than you hate him. He dreamt me. If he dies, I’m not—I’m not entirely sure…”
Hook nodded. He knew what she was wondering, for it had crossed his mind as well. If Peter died, would Tiger Lily still live? He reached out and touched her face, pulling it to his.
“I love you more than I long for London, more than I love the Spanish Main, more than I hate Peter Pan.” He kissed her slowly, deeply, and she tangled her fingers in his hair. “Come away with me,” he breathed.
She bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know about it, James.”
“Are you afraid?”
“A bit.”
He paused for a moment, skin buzzing from brushing hers. “Of what? Leaving, or me?”
She let out a breath. “Not you. It’s no small thing you’re asking of me, James. You’re asking me to leave everything I’ve ever known, to abandon my family, my people. I can’t decide it in a night.”
“Then don’t,” Hook said. He twitched his hand toward her and played with her thin fingers absent-mindedly.
“Perhaps you could persuade me,” she said and leaned into him, sliding her arms under his shirt, around his waist. Fingers playing under the waistband of his pants against his bare skin. He breathed in sharply, and his eyes darkened, instantly hungry.
“How so?” he said, sliding his hips toward her, slightly beneath her.
“Well, if you told me how beautiful and wonderful I was and all the things you’d love to give up for me again, all the things you love less than me, I could see myself leaning toward it.”
He smiled deviously and rolled over on top of her, pressing her wrists into the sand.
“Devil woman. Trying to get me to babble unintelligibly and make false promises once again?”
She bit her lip, eyes alight.
“Well, that can be arranged,” he said, and he pressed his hips into her and let his mouth go where it wished and forgot, for a little while, about anything coherent.
THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS WERE CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT of Peter Pan. Hook barely even found himself thinking of the boy, so consumed was he by Tiger Lily. He was shirking his duties as captain, if he was being completely honest with himself. But Starkey was managing things fairly effectively, and he figured that if he and Tiger Lily did leave, Starkey would have to learn to do these things anyway, at least for a while.
He lay in his bed, where he’d been spending a significant amount of time as of late, and ran his fingers through Tiger Lily’s hair, scratching her back lightly with his hook.
“James?” Tiger Lily said.
“Aye.”
“I’ll do it.”
His hook froze. “You’ll what?”
“I’ll do it. I’ll go with you.”
He sat up and Tiger Lily did the same, pulling the blanket around her breasts.
“Not to Keelhaul,” she said.
“No. Of course not to Keelhaul.”
“And not to the Never Wastes.”
“No, not there.” Hook felt a great excitement welling up within him, and his smile covered half his face. “We’ll go to an outlier, some place neither of us has ever been.”
She looked pensive for a moment, then smiled, staring up at him from under her eyelashes. Hook grabbed her face and kissed her, then sprang up from the bed.
Tiger Lily slid out of the bed as well and got dressed. “How are we to do this, James?”
“What do you mean?”
Her eyes were bright, and she lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I mean, how are we to get past my father? He’d slit you if he found out we were leaving.”
Hook scoffed. “He would try.”
Tiger Lily rolled her eyes and walked around the bed. “It does not matter. There’s no way for us to cross Neverland without my father finding out about it.”
Hook furrowed his brow, quiet for a short while, and leaned against his desk, considering. “We won’t go through Neverland.”
“What are you proposing, then?”
“We’ll go around it.” His eyes lit up. “Tonight, go back to your camp. Get whatever you need. Tomorrow, at twilight, sneak away to the clearing, the one—”
“I know the one.”
He grinned. “I shall send a couple of my men to get you. Smee and Starkey, I think. They’ll take you to Marooner’s Rock. I will meet you there. And I’ll take you away.”
Tiger Lily pursed her lips and considered. Then, she walked up to Hook and slid her arms up to his neck. “I’ll meet you there. Tomorrow.”
He dropped his hand and hook down to her waist, letting them linger there, enjoying the feel of her hips against him, trying halfheartedly to ignore the heat that flared in his chest.
“Do you have to leave yet?” He closed his lips around her jaw and earlobe and smiled when she sighed. But she pushed him away.
“I have to go, James. My father—I need to give him a proper goodbye.”
“I don’t know that I can wait a full night to see you again. Let me give you a proper goodbye.” He kissed her again, lower, letting his hand trail down across her back.
“Pirate.”
His eyes glittered. “Indeed.”
Tiger Lily ripped herself away from him and pressed her palm against his chest. “I have to leave. I’ll see you at Marooner’s Rock. Tomorrow night.”
Hook grabbed her hand, holding it and feigning sadness until Tiger Lily turned and breezed out the door laughing, leaving him somewhat unsatisfied, but ultimately thrilled. He left his cabin soon after, considering the course he would chart. Starkey nodded
at him as he strode past on the deck.
“Captain.”
“Starkey…” Hook stopped beside his first mate. “I need to speak with you.”
Starkey cocked his head and drew closer, and Hook gestured for him to follow him off the ship.
“What is it, Captain?”
“I’ve a responsibility for you.”
“What is that?”
Hook chewed on his cheek. Then, “I’ve made a decision which I believe will cause…something of a stir. It’s of the utmost importance that you listen to me, for yourself and for the Spanish Main.”
A look of concern flitted over Starkey’s face.
Captain Hook tapped nervously on his leg. “I’m leaving.”
Starkey’s eyebrows shot up. “For how long?”
“I’m not sure.”
Starkey lowered his voice and grabbed Hook by the arm. “Captain, could you try to explain to me what exactly yer sayin’?”
“Tiger Lily,” he said, pulling free of his crewman. “I’m leaving with her. Tomorrow.”
Starkey blinked at him.
“We’re going away. Not forever, but, for a while.”
“This is mad, sir. Do ye know what’ll happen to the men if ye leave? We did nothing without you. Nothing. And you’ve riled up every pirate in the Never Sea against the Main, not even countin’ Peter Pan. If ye leave…”
“Starkey, do not attempt to convince me to stay. It will not be effective. I’m going, and you and Smee are going to assist me.”
Starkey shook his head, hands curling into fists at his sides. “Yer Captain Hook, sir. Ye can’t abandon yer own ship.”
“Do not question me,” Hook warned, flattening his mouth into something grim and edged with a threat. “Until tomorrow, I am still your captain.”
Starkey turned away from him.
“While I’m on my leave, I bequeath the Main to you.”
Starkey turned back toward him, questioning.
“You were charged with running the Spanish Main before I came to Neverland, and you will do an adequate job of it once I’m gone.”
“Sir, I don’t—”
“I’m uninterested in protests. Go back to the ship.”
Starkey closed his mouth into an expressionless line and walked heavily toward the Spanish Main.
Hook stared out at the waves. The sea was all salt and foam and possibilities. He pushed away the slight guilt that accosted him as he stood there. It wasn’t forever. The men would survive for a little while without him.
Nonetheless, when he boarded the ship, several of his men glowered at him, while others just looked on, jaws hanging open. He felt a heavy queasiness in his gut. The faces of Jukes and Smee, particularly, needled at him. And so Hook looked straight ahead, trying to black out the stunned faces of his men, and focused only on getting to his cabin. He opened the door and slammed it behind him.
THIRTY-ONE
THE SHIP WAS QUIET AS HOOK LAY BACK ON HIS BED, staring at the ceiling. There was a creak at the door and it opened slowly, letting in a sliver of bright light. Hook jumped, sitting up.
“Captain?” came a little voice, one that pierced Hook’s heart.
“Yes, Smee?”
Starkey followed behind Smee, looking at the floor. Hook could feel the man’s anger and hurt. That, he knew, was what was rendering Smee incapable of speech. That didn’t matter. It didn’t.
Smee sighed. “We were, eh, just leaving. To go get the princess.”
Hook nodded, coughed. “Yes. Good. Well.”
Smee looked back up at him and opened his mouth, like perhaps he was going to say something. But the words were lost in his throat and he snapped it shut again, then waddled out of the cabin as quickly as he could. Hook swore his kind, warm eyes were shining when he left.
Starkey, for his part, twitched his nose and locked his jaw, turned stoically on his heel, and shut the door behind him, without so much as a second look or word.
Hook stared at the closed door for a while, utterly torn. He gazed at his cabin, touching every piece of furniture there one last time, fingertips lingering too long on everything. His golden wine goblet, the smooth dark wood of his desk, the walls even. He was thrilled at the prospect of sailing away with Tiger Lily, but the thought that this was the last time he would see the Spanish Main in who knew how long left him with a profound sense of sadness, as though he was leaving one of his children and did not know when he would return.
He sat there, inhaling the sweet smell of cedar, for some time. But as the suns began to sink and the room became cloaked in shadow, he stood, gave the cabin one final appraising look, tipped his hat to it, and left.
Hook boarded the small boat he would take to the lagoon, slowly bobbing toward it on the waves. He felt nearly naked in the tiny dinghy, as though he was floating along with nothing around him.
The waves carried him gently to the lagoon, and as he neared the place, his pulse quickened. He drew in a deep breath and stared into the darkness as his boat drifted into the mermaids’ cave. It was dark and cold and moisture hung in the air, clinging to his skin.
The cave ended soon enough, and Hook’s boat emerged on the other side. It was not a great deal lighter outside the cave, but he was able to see out there, which was quite an improvement. What he saw, however, was not what alarmed him. It was what he did not see. What was conspicuously absent from the lagoon, and from the giant rock in its center, was Tiger Lily.
When his boat reached Starkey and Smee’s dinghy, he searched quickly for any possibility that she may have been hiding there. But it was clear that she was nowhere.
“Where is she?” His voice echoed over the water. Smee and Starkey both stared at him as though he’d gone insane.
“Where is Tiger Lily?” he asked again, trembling in his voice.
“Captain?” Smee said, shaking as well, but for a wholly different reason than Hook.
“Where is she?” he roared, his face a disturbing shade of crimson.
“We let her go, of course.”
Hook had no reaction stored away for this particular statement. He stood there stupidly for a moment. Then: “Let her go? What do you mean, you let her go?”
A terrible fear seeped into his stomach, leaking out to every part of his body. She’d not come? She had truly changed her mind. This was not happening. He refused to believe it.
“It was you, sir,” Smee said, brow furrowed, voiced pitched high. “You told us.”
“I told you what?” Hook’s voice, on the other hand, was terribly low, and full of menace.
“You said for us to release the woman.”
The statement hung there between them for a moment, accompanied by the low sloshing of the water against the boats, and Hook’s mouth hung open.
“Release her? She was not a captive, you fools. What would have possessed me to say such a thing?” His eyes darted around and he threw his hook up in the air. “I will not hesitate to strike you here and now, Smee. Where is the woman?”
Starkey moved forward. “She’s not here, Captain. I swear on Davy Jones we heard you say to let her go. She swam off.”
“You’re both mad.”
He ran his hand through his hair, hard, nearly yanking some of it out. He was shaking everywhere. Why had he allowed them to escort her at all? He was a coward. He should have taken her himself and braved the idea of an Indian assault on the trek. What had she thought? That he’d changed his mind? Fear overcame him completely; he found he could not breathe at the thought of losing her.
Then, he heard a voice cut through the terrible stillness.
“No madness in your men, sir. Only in you. You truly believe that you are the mighty Captain Hook?”
Hook’s head shot up. The voice was a remarkable replica of his.
“Who do you say you are, stranger?”
“I am Hook, Captain of the Spanish Main, and the fiercest pirate to ever sail the seas!”
There was something off in the particular ti
mbre of the voice, something that made Hook’s hair stand on end. But he could not place it.
“If you are Hook,” the captain said, voice even, “pray tell, who am I?”
The voice laughed, full of wickedness and spite and youth. “You, sir, are a codfish!”
Hook’s eyes narrowed, and he scowled deeply. The title was an all too familiar one.
“And you.” His voice lowered until it was dark and horribly cordial. “Do you masquerade as another?”
“Sometimes.”
Hook felt a sinister sort of satisfaction in his gut. How long ago was it that he had been a child, throat crushed beneath the heel of Pan’s hand? He’d fooled Peter then into believing he was special and brilliant, and that he, Hook, was nothing but a naïve child.
Just as he would fool him now.
The issue with arrogance, it seemed, was that sometimes, someone was cleverer than you.
“Are you animal?”
“No.”
Hook spun slowly around the lagoon, searching for the place the voice had come from.
“Vegetable?” He tried not to breathe, needing to hear every decibel of the response.
“No, no.”
“Mineral?”
“You’re not a whiz at this game, are you?”
Smee shifted uncomfortably in the other dinghy, and Hook closed his eyes, trying to shut out the sloshing from the little boat behind him.
Ah. There was the direction from whence it came.
Hook turned his head, fear and satisfaction and adrenaline twisting together in him, just as it had when he was a child at Peter’s spectacular failure of a Thinning. The feeling was almost delicious.
“Are you a man?”
The voice lost a bit of its camouflage, and cried out, “No!”
Hook grinned. The location was narrowing. “Boy?”
“Yes. Wonderful, marvelous, clever boy!”
“Ah.”
“You’ll never guess, pirate.”
“Alas, you’re likely right.” Hook was staring at the spot he’d picked for the boy, and his eyes were cold and black, like marbles.
“Then, I will tell you. I am Peter Pan!”
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