Suddenly, he stopped and grabbed the sleeve of the man nearest him, who happened to be Smee.
“This is it, Smee. I can feel it. We’re nearly atop it.”
“Indeed, Captain. Pan is right close, to be sure.”
Hook turned slowly around, then dropped to his hands and knees, feeling for fungus of unusual temperatures. It smelled like dirt and moisture and rot down there, but he did not care. It was certainly undignified, the captain rooting around in the soil, mussing up his jacket and pants and scuffing his boots nearly beyond repair. But at this juncture, dignity was not Hook’s chief concern.
His slender fingers crept along the ground as he crawled, hook dragging a thin line, splitting the foliage. He held up the hook, signaling his men to stop. Each man in the company froze immediately, even going so far as to halt their breathing. Hook smirked and continued the slow line forward. Then he stopped. Beneath his hand, he felt a warmth that did not fit with the rest of the earth. He rose just slightly, face to face with a rather large mushroom. This was it.
He mouthed a silent command for the men to stay put, then rose slowly from the ground, pushing his hands out at them. Starkey was the first to interpret the gesture, and he began to back away. The rest of the crew followed his lead, until Hook was satisfied. He stood, walked softly over to his line of fellows, and leaned over to Starkey’s ear. He spoke in quick, hushed tones. “We’ll take all of them. I want every Lost Boy in our possession. Until I have Peter on my hook, none goes free.”
“And after you have the Pan?”
“I need them no further. We’ll let them go.”
Starkey nodded.
“Spread the men out. I want them a meter apart. You see those trees over there? That’s where the boys will be coming from. I want no space left unmanned, no chance for escape.”
Starkey stepped back into the crowd and the men dispersed. When they stilled, there was a semi-circle around the trees. For the Lost Boys, there was very little chance of making it out of the night unscathed if they fought. Hook smiled wickedly and drew out his sword, then set his chin upon the round piece of his hook, waiting.
The minutes (or something like minutes) rolled along, the silence threatening to choke him. He cursed it, for the longer they waited, the more he began to doubt himself. But, finally, there was a rustle in one of the trees.
Hook perked up his head and signaled to his men to be silent, and to be ready. Smee shifted his weight nervously, and Jukes lowered his chin, eyes blazing. Then, out of one of the smaller trees, a boy Hook did not recognize descended. He had curly, auburn hair that fairly flashed in the moonlight. Starkey took hold of him, clapping his huge hand over the child’s mouth, and flung him across the circle to Smee, who did the same and held the child captive, but in an almost genial way so that, cushioned against the roundness of the pirate’s belly, the child barely looked frightened.
One by one, the children slid out onto the ground, and the second they hit the earth, each of them was snatched up by one pirate or another. Hook was no longer crouching. He was strutting around the circle, menacing from the blood still on his face, dashing from all the rest of him. He was both greatly anticipating and greatly fearing the arrival of Peter Pan, knowing that his own glorious moment would finally come, and almost wishing it wouldn’t.
At long last, all the boys had vacated their trees, and there was a break in the commotion. The captain drew nearer to the little grove, brandishing his horribly lustrous hook. And when the last person came from the tree, he smiled and reached out and grabbed the child’s arm. But, when he saw the eyes, he drew back.
“A girl,” he said, only just now remembering the girl he had seen at the lagoon.
She stared up at him, eyes wide and unblinking and astonishingly blue. There was a light spray of freckles across her cream face, and her mouth hung open. She was mesmerized by him, just as Tiger Lily had been mesmerized by Peter when she was little, so long ago.
“Who are you, girl?”
The girl just kept staring at his eyes, blonde curls shrinking against her chest.
Smee tossed his boy to another pirate and scampered over.
“It’s his Wendy, Captain.”
He frowned. “His what?”
Smee flashed a somewhat embarrassed smile at the girl, then turned back to Hook. “His Wendy.”
“His Wendy?” Wendy huffed.
Hook ignored her. “Explain to me, Smee.”
“Well, I’ve heard tell that Peter Pan had got himself a mother, called a Wendy. He’s terribly attached to her, I believe.”
Wendy turned up a corner of her mouth at that.
“Is he?” Hook said, raising a perfectly shaped eyebrow.
“Indeed.”
At this point, Hook was satisfied that Peter would not be vacating the house. He looked back at Wendy and released her arm, taking her by her tiny hand instead. He was resolved to be a gentleman to the lady, even under these circumstances.
“Tie the boys,” he said, and the pirates hopped to, tying rope around each of the boy’s arms and faces and midsections. “Leave the Wendy. She shall remain unharmed.”
The tying went smoothly, he suspected, because Wendy was not putting up much of a fight; she was too intent on staring at him. So the boys were surprisingly unresisting. When it came to Slightly, however, the plan hitched a bit. He was a rotund sort of boy, just as he’d always been, and there was barely enough rope to go around him. Hook pursed his lips. How on earth could a boy get so round when Pan never fed them anything but make-believe food?
Hook narrowed his eyes and looked back at Slightly’s tree. It was decidedly larger than all the rest; it had to be. In fact, the tree was nearly man-sized. Hook whipped his face back to eye Slightly. The boy caught his gaze and paled, eyes as wide as dinner plates.
Hook handed Wendy to Smee without a word and returned to examining Slightly’s tree. None of the others was close to large enough for the captain, but this one, this was no twig. This particular entrance to Pan’s hideout, Hook could almost certainly fit through. Herein was the way to the Pan.
“Take them back to the ship, and leave me be.”
His tone of voice was such that none of his men dared question him. They simply took the strange order and, boys (and girl) in hand, they left. And Captain Hook was alone with the trees and the aggressive blackness in his heart.
THIRTY-FIVE
WHEN THE NIGHT WAS STILL, HOOK REMOVED HIS jacket and hat, leaving himself in nothing but his boots and pants and threadbare linen shirt. His skin was chilled, and so was his blood, but he doubted that came from the weather.
Hook approached Slightly’s tree and ran his fingers over the rough edges, fingernails scraping against the glimmering bark. He stepped with one foot into the tree, crouched, and smiled. It was indeed large enough to accommodate him, though barely so. He shimmied down the hollow trunk, glad that he’d chosen to abandon his hat and jacket aboveground. The splinters in the wood tore at his pants and shirt, fraying them and ripping small holes in the fabric. He continued his decidedly uncomfortable descent, until he landed with a muffled thump on the ground. Hook drew his sword immediately upon exiting the trunk and his eyes darted around the room. He gripped the handle harder and his heart began to crash wildly against his ribcage. Pan was in the room.
There was a small creak from one of the house’s shadowy recesses, and he jumped and held the blade out in front of him. Then, Hook saw him. Peter was lying there, in bed, defenseless, asleep. The candles glowing softly beside the bed gave him a kind of unearthly glow, and Hook’s heart jumped up into his windpipe. The picture of Peter, mouth open, hair frayed and mussed on the pillow, was disgustingly idyllic.
He took a step toward Peter, holding his hook in front of his face, hiding behind it. The closer he got, the more the doubt in him took over, until he was right at the boy’s face, and the uncertainty was overwhelming. He had some difficult breathing as he stared at Peter, taking in the peace on his face, his
small relaxed body, and the hint of sweetness buried beneath the wickedness.
Then, Hook noted the mouth, which was twitched up in a smirk and laced with arrogance. He narrowed his eyes and looked over the rest of the boy once more, the cocky smirk tainting his view. Peter was relaxed, arm and leg both bent in such a way that even his body exuded conceit. That hardened the captain.
It was that easy pride, the unthinking narcissism that had caused Hook to lose everything. The self-centered arrogance had caused Peter to forget that the boy James had wished to go home, had taken his parents, his life, the only woman he’d ever loved.
He drew back his hook, gazing intently at the pulse in the boy’s throat. But his eyes forced him to stop. They would not allow him to pierce the skin or the veins of Peter Pan. It was too brutal, too inhuman, too intentional. And, most of all, he heard his father’s voice admonishing him.
“Bad form, James.”
Hook bit his lower lip, teeth raking over it harshly. The incarnation of his father was right, though he hated to admit it. Killing a boy or a man while he was sleeping was the epitome of bad form.
It was a quandary, to be sure. He could not slay the boy while he was unconscious. If he did that, he would be letting go of every thread of Eton man left in him, and he was unwilling to kill that man completely.
The obvious solution, then, was to wake Pan and then duel him. But in his heart he knew that if he chose to do the honorable thing and wake him, it would be no different from committing suicide.
Suicide. Hook cocked his head, and his thoughts turned to a third option, one he could not believe he hadn’t thought of already. He set his sword down gently and reached into his jacket pocket, closing his fingers around the vial. This was it, the way to marry his honor with his desire to live.
There was a little cup on Peter’s bedside table, and it was filled with something Hook did not recognize. He left the cup on the table then knelt beside it, jumping when Pan jerked in his sleep. Hook held his breath. After several seconds, he let it out again and returned to the task at hand.
He held the vial in one hand, and with his hook, he pierced the cork in the top of it and slid it out. He felt uneasy just being this close to the open vessel, and his hand trembled just a bit. Despite the heat that scattered from his cheeks to his neck, begging for him to stop, he pressed forward and tipped the glass. Five fat drops fell from the vial into the cup, spreading out, discoloring the liquid just slightly.
He was sure, despite the attempt not to think about it, that he’d just descended into a level of villainy he’d never wanted to know, at least not so intimately. But the deed was done.
He clawed his way up the tree, and reached the top, skin burning from splinters, conscience burning from something else entirely. The cold did nothing to soothe either. He draped his jacket across his back and set his hat atop his head, brim shadowing his brooding face, and he walked off into the night.
Neverland seemed less confused, now, less frenetic. The leaves were slow, along with the stars. And the forest was dark, but at least now it was committed to it—deep and black and decisive. The world was just sort of holding its breath.
Alone with his thoughts, he wondered if Pan would drink the poison upon waking, or if he would disregard it entirely. And if he did drink it at all, would he even die, or would Neverland cook him up an antidote? Could Peter even be killed?
As was nearly always the case with Hook, there were two sides of him dueling on the issue. One said that no, Neverland belonged to Peter and loved him, and Peter was the beating heart of the place. Since Neverland could never really be destroyed, neither could its heart. But, the other side concluded that Peter, though certainly fantastical and imbued with defense beyond reason, was but a boy, and could be killed like any other boy. Somehow, Hook believed both.
When he came to the clearing he and Tiger Lily had claimed for their own, he lost his breath instantly. He hadn’t intended to go there.
He snarled and pressed on through the meadow without bothering to stop.
“Will he drink that poison? Will he die tonight?” Hook muttered aloud, evidence that he was beginning to lose it completely. No sooner had he said it than he heard a faint tinkling of bells. He stopped and looked up.
There was a little light bobbing overhead, and it tinkled again. Blasted fairies; he never had been able to interpret the language. He shooed the thing away and continued on toward the Main, keeping his mumblings to himself.
When the ship entered his view, no smile played on his lips. Aboard the vessel, he knew, was a group of children. A group he’d no idea how to handle. It depended greatly on Pan, whether he was alive or dead. He supposed he had no choice but to wait it out.
Tonight sometime, or tomorrow morning, all of Neverland would be in its usual state, or it would be mourning the death of Peter Pan.
THIRTY-SIX
HOOK FLIPPED A DOUBLOON OVER AND OVER ACROSS his hook, staring darkly out the window. In the night, it was difficult to make out the weather. It did not feel especially cold or especially warm, and it simply looked black. No hint of Pan’s being, well or otherwise.
If Pan were to die, he’d decided to release the children. No question lingered in Hook’s mind on that anymore. Granted, that left a score of children out in the Neverwoods without a Pan to lead them, but it was preferable to death. If the boy were to live, therein lay the problem.
Most of him expected Peter to survive. He doubted the boy could truly be felled by poison, no matter how deadly it was. Something would conspire with some other dreadful thing to save the boy, he was sure of it. And so, though he did not wish to, he was forced to consider what happened when Pan flitted up to his boat. If Pan flitted up to his boat.
Perhaps the way to bait him was to threaten the deaths of his Lost Boys. He was sure Pan would know if the boys were in danger. More likely than not, Pan would appear before he had to lay a hook on any of them. Hook bit the inside of his cheek and pondered.
Then, he gazed once again out the window. The air was gloomy, and there was a light coating of ice on the edges of the glass. Gloom. Ice. He leapt up, letting the doubloon fall to the floor.
The cold and the dark outside could only mean one thing.
Pan was dead.
Hook burst out of his cabin, grinning into the biting wind. It stung his face and his hands and every bit of him that was uncovered. He splayed his fingers and threw out his arms, basking in the delicious cold. Tiny grey snowflakes started to fall, swirling around in the wind, resting in his hair, and he laughed out loud.
It was a dark, pained sort of laugh, the kind that makes listeners question whether it is truly a laugh. And in the black of the night, it was even harder to tell. The laughing devolved into something even more insane than it already was, and slowly, each head on the boat turned toward Hook.
“Captain?” Smee said, toddling up to him.
Hook’s laughter faded out until it was nothing more than a spark of absurdity in his eyes.
“Are you all right, sir?”
Hook glanced around, at the grey-brown leaves on the trees that had shriveled into themselves, and ran his tongue over his teeth, tasting in the air nothing at all. “Of course I’m all right, Smee. I am marvelous, wonderful, spectacular. You’re standing outside with me, aren’t you?”
“Well, I, yes. I am,” Smee blustered.
“Then you know. I am quite, quite all right.” He smiled widely with his teeth, little dimples from his boyhood showing.
Smee frowned, cheeks rosy from the cold, and possibly from embarrassment that he somehow didn’t know. Smee walked off, stopping beside the pile of children, who had the ropes still tied around them to prevent them flying away. The tying, however, was rather abysmal—loose and drapey and hardly knotted. Hook wondered for a moment how all of them hadn’t wriggled out yet. Several had freed most of their body parts.
The smallest one, whom Hook recognized as Tootles, reached out and grabbed Smee’s shirttail,
and one Hook did not recognize grabbed Smee’s spectacles and put them on his own face, magnifying his little eyes. Smee hopped back and nearly fell over, sending the little captives into fits of laughter. Hook shook his head.
The interaction betwixt Smee and the children did pierce Hook in the heart a bit, and gave him a hollow feeling. Smee was flashing his blade about, trying to look menacing. Generally, the children would all shriek and shrink back when he did, but it was in the way children shrink back from frightening stories and beg their parents to tell them again.
Hook felt a great disquiet, watching all of them. When any of them dared to glance his way, it was with the same look on their faces that came over his when he saw the crocodile. Was that was he was now? A predator? When was it, he wondered, that the last piece of childhood had fled from him entirely?
None of the boys, including those he’d once called his friends, would look him in the eye now. With that last little glimmer of innocence snuffed out, he reckoned, there was nothing left for any of the children to love.
“No little children love me,” he said quietly, to himself.
“What was that, Captain?” Starkey asked, approaching him with two rums in hand.
Hook took one from him and brought the glittering goblet to his lips, closing his eyes as the spice warmed his mind.
“Nothing, Starkey. Nothing of any consequence.”
Starkey said nothing. But he watched the captain watching the children, and Hook thought that Starkey was more perceptive than he let on. It was not so much the play that bothered Hook, or the fact that they seemed to be inexplicably enjoying Smee’s company. It was the innocence, that elusive trait he’d lost so long ago. Without an ounce of boyhood left, children were bound to hate him, and he was bound to become the villain, no matter which story he chose to be a part of. He tilted his head back and drained the cup in a single motion, then looked away.
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