“Smee, ye can’t be doin’ such things with those children,” Starkey called.
“Doing what?”
“Playin’ about. It’s not a piratin’ way to behave.”
Smee scoffed. “Playing? I’ve got them shaking in their boots.”
Hook raised an eyebrow. The shaking was from laughter, no doubt. He stole another glance at the group and noted, with curiosity, that Wendy was bound separately and sitting a good deal away from the rest. It reminded him of himself somehow, and he was stirred.
He made his way toward her and pulled up a chair, scraping its worn legs across the deck.
“Good evening, lady.”
“Darling,” she said, and she shivered.
Hook frowned. “What?”
“Lady Darling. Wendy Moira Angela Darling.”
“My apologies.”
She looked at him from the corners of her big eyes then looked away. But because it seemed she could not help herself, she mumbled, “Good evening.”
“Why, my dear, are you sitting so far away from your boys?”
“Because I’m tired. And I’d rather not play in their childish games. I’m not in the mood for them.”
She had a haughty tone of voice, which, if it had come from the mouth of an older woman, would have annoyed Hook greatly. But, because Wendy was a child, he was amused.
He leaned back and crossed his boots. “You don’t fancy Smee?”
“Well, it’s not that I don’t like him. I just don’t believe that now is the time for games and laughing and silliness.” She shifted, and Hook could see that behind her back, she’d withdrawn her little fingers into the sleeves of her frilly nightgown.
“And why not?”
“Because, I expect you’ll try to kill us soon.” Her mouth was flat, her eyes carefully devoid of expression. She was afraid of him too, perhaps. But Hook noticed that she did not avoid his eyes like the rest.
He feigned shock and drew his hook to his breast. “Heaven forbid James Hook would kill a lady in cold blood.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Why not? You’ve heard tales of me murdering women and girls for fun?”
Wendy pursed her lips then looked up at him. “Well, no. I suppose I haven’t.”
Hook smiled, then glanced briefly over her shoulder, at the sea that was blue-black and raging, waves tipped with ice. The sky was growling and seemed ready to cave in on itself.
“I have heard of all the pirates you’ve killed,” she said, ripping his gaze away from the sea and the sky. “And I know of all the places you’ve plundered, and I’ve told Michael and John all about the times you savagely tried to fell Peter Pan.”
Hook’s smile widened. Generally, that smile would have been a comforting thing. But the black clouds and striking lightning and rumbling waves gave it a decidedly different effect.
“Ah. A storyteller, are you?”
She nodded proudly. “I am.”
Hook leaned forward in his chair, exuding villainy, but trying to come off as friendly. It was a tragic endeavor, because it seemed he’d forgotten how. When Tiger Lily had gone, she’d stolen the last childish piece of his heart, and he was left nothing but a knave, trying desperately to bring out something that did not exist anymore.
Wendy, however, gave him a look that cut to his soul. It was a look she should not have given him, not reasonably. It was so out of place with the ice falling from the sky, the terrible roar of the ocean, the frightening, wicked sea, and band of men surrounding her. She stared at him with admiration, not curdled with fear. Just itself, pure and childlike and innocent. He choked and sat back in his chair.
He stared at her as goose bumps rose on his skin and dead, black crackles of the dying trees surrounding the beach fluttered around them. And he noted the brave regality in her face, the blue in her lips, the pure, sweet youth in her eyes. Perhaps Pan was truly dead, and if he was, Hook did not know that he could leave this enchanting little girl to her fate in the Never Woods. Perhaps Neverland would let him go, and he would sail away on the sea, and lead Wendy and the Lost Boys back to London. Then it would be as though none of this fool adventure had ever happened.
He knew enough to know that this was unlikely. Nonetheless, a spark of hope was kindled in him.
“Would you like to know something about your stories, Wendy Darling?” he asked.
She pursed her lips and gave him an appraising look, evaluating him from the tip of his hat down to his boots, and came to rest back on his eyes.
“They call them stories,” Hook said. “They call them pretend. But your make-believe, your games, the little heroes they would drum up for you. Your Peter Pan. They’re all false. A story is just another word for a lie.”
Wendy smiled bravely back at him, a little wrinkle in her small, pointed nose, and her eyes were sad, and much too old. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Peter isn’t everything I tell him to be in my stories. I know very well.”
Hook narrowed his eyes. “Then why do you tell them?”
Wendy glanced back at the Lost Boys, Slightly who was detaining the redhead by smashing the boy’s face into his armpit, the new set of twins, who were both quite small, playing some sort of finger game with each other despite the dark situation. “Little children need things to believe in,” she said, and Hook felt the words like a knife to his throat. His eyelids fluttered for a moment, and he looked away, the thought having only just occurred to him that he’d never had a thing to believe in. Not even Peter Pan.
Wendy’s sugar-sweet voice brought him back to her. “What about you, Captain Hook?”
“What about me?” he said, quiet, chilly breeze letting little pieces of his hair rise and fall around his face.
“Are you real? Are my stories about you a lie?”
He looked at her curiously. “ You, Peter’s Wendy, tell stories about me?”
“Yes,” she said, staring right through him, harder and with less fear than any pirate captain he’d ever faced. “When we play pretend, I’m always you.”
He blinked and lay back, staring up at the cold, whirling, twirling sky.
He did not wish to consider her initial query, either. Was he the man she told stories about? The merciless, cold, murderous pirate captain? Dread of the Never Sea?
Without thinking, without allowing himself to convince him otherwise, he whispered, “I am not a lie, Wendy girl.”
“Good,” Wendy said, and Hook looked down from the sky and frowned. “The captain I play at wouldn’t murder us. Not like this, in cold blood. No, the very soul of Captain James Hook is composed of good form.”
Hook cocked his head, then, and Wendy gave him a little specter of a smile.
For a stupid moment, he very briefly considered untying her, the lot of them. He even felt himself rise to do it. But just then, the thunder crashed so loudly that all the children but Wendy covered their ears.
Hook jumped up from the chair, eyes dark and angry. “Do not manipulate me, Wendy Darling.”
“I’m not,” she said calmly, but her eyes held a spark of fire. “I’m only saying what you already know. If you do this thing, if you murder us all with our hands tied ’round our backs, then you lose. Peter wins, James Hook.”
He slammed his hook into the chair and yanked it back out, sending splinters flying everywhere.
“I hate to disappoint you, my dear. But that is simply not the case.”
Wendy stared at him, eyes steely, too defiant for a girl her age.
Hook’s nostrils flared. “He cannot win if he is dead. Your Pan is dead, Wendy. I killed him myself.”
Wendy shut her eyes and shook her head. Hook rushed over to her, face less than an inch from hers, and set his hook beneath her chin.
“Open your eyes. Look around. Can’t you see the storm?”
Wendy did open her eyes. And when she did, the landscape around them changed. The black of the clouds faded to grey, and then to white. The
sea calmed, until it was glass once again, and the suns beamed brightly in the blue. Vanilla in the air.
“No,” Hook said, releasing the girl’s smiling face.
“No,” he repeated, and he strode across the deck, yanking at his hair.
“No,” he screamed, the peace in the air like an awful racket in his head.
His crewmen scrambled about, drawing their weapons and loading the cannons, sprinting about in a clamor.
“I was finally going to leave, Starkey. I was going to do it.”
Hook’s words were running together, and he was out of breath. Starkey clapped him on the shoulder.
“Ye won’t be doin’ so any time soon, Captain. Pan is alive.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
THE CAPTAIN TAPPED HIS HOOK NERVOUSLY ON THE mast beside him and pulled his jacket around his arms, wishing to shield himself from the abominable warmth.
“Pan is alive. Of course he is. Blast the boy.”
Wendy looked indignant, bringing a scowl to Hook’s countenance.
He stared out at the sky, disdaining it wholly. If Pan was truly alive, and it seemed there was no other explanation for the weather, then he would have to use the tools at his disposal to bring him there. Those tools, he knew, were the children.
Were Pan’s Lost Boys, and especially his Wendy, in imminent danger, Peter would know just as soon as he’d known about his flute and his Tiger Lily, and the Spanish Main would call to him like a beacon.
“Starkey,” he said, voice on the edge of apathy, which was where it was the most frightening.
“Aye, Captain.”
Hook felt a drop of guilt in the pit of his stomach when he said, “Bind the children more tightly. Free their legs, but I want the hands behind their backs. There can be no chance that they will fly off. And then, you bring them all to me.”
Starkey nodded, and he made his way to the children, enlisting the help of several of the other pirates. Smee was included in the retying, but this time, the children were not delighted by him. For whatever reason, this gladdened the captain a bit.
When it was done, the pirate marched the captives to the captain, and they stood in a solemn line, looking grim, as though they were being forced to drink castor oil. It was appropriate.
“Six of you will walk the plank today, boys.”
Jukes came to stand beside him and crossed his massive arms, muscles bulging, mouth hard and angry. He’d been nothing but hard and angry since Flintwise had died in the battle with the Indians. Hook nodded at him.
He very intentionally ignored Wendy and tried to ignore the voice in his head that said, “Peter wins. Peter wins. Peter wins.”
Several of the boys puffed up their chests at the claim, but a couple of them slouched and cast their eyes downward. It made Hook rather sad to see the fear in them, particularly in Tootles and Slightly. Slightly had been his friend once, hadn’t he? And Tootles was the small one, the one he still, inexplicably, felt an obligation to protect. But, unless they truly believed it, he had no doubt that Pan would not come.
“I’ve room on my vessel, however, for two cabin boys.”
After he said it, he felt foolish. But he was so guilt-stricken over the looks on the children’s faces that he was compelled to offer them some glimmer of hope. Besides, perhaps the thought of his boys defecting to piracy would be more drawing to Peter than the threat of their deaths.
The boys looked at each other, heads whipping about, dancing with nervous energy.
Hook shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well, hop to, boys. It’s not often that you get an offer such as this from the dreadful Captain Hook.”
Tootles stepped forward, and Hook smiled with relief. Tootles had always been one of his favorites. When the child looked up into his face, Hook realized that Tootles did not recognize him in the slightest. That wiped the smile from him.
“The problem, Mister Captain, is that it doesn’t seem proper to be a pirate. My mother would faint.”
“And who is your mother?”
“Wendy, Mister Captain, sir.”
Slightly piped in. “It’s true. She’d have us for dinner. She’s awfully strict for a mother.”
Slightly didn’t know him either. Had he truly changed so much?
Hook narrowed his eyes and looked back at Wendy, who was smiling softly. She looked older in this light, silhouetted by the blue sky and the light of the suns, and Hook saw her for a moment as the children saw her. She did remind him a bit of his mother back home in England. The hint of a smile, the wisdom behind the eyes, the softness in her face. It was nonsense, of course. Peter had fooled the boys into believing that she was their mother, nothing more. But it was a clever ruse.
He followed her gaze to two boys, two he did not recognize. One was tall and lanky and proud. The other was tiny with delicately angled little features, and he had a mischievous spark in his eye. Hook looked at Wendy out of the corner of his eyes and back to the boys, and he grinned.
“You, boy,” he said, pacing over to stand in front of the little one. He knelt in front of him and lowered his voice. “What’s your name?”
“Michael Darling.”
Darling. A brother of Wendy’s then, no doubt.
The child looked at his feet.
“Michael, can you really tell me you’ve never dreamed of becoming a pirate?”
Michael screwed up his face in the way of little boys and peered up at Hook. “Well, I’ve played at it. I’ve always wanted to be called, to be called…”
“Called what?” Hook said, stooping a bit more, tilting his ear toward the boy.
Michael leaned in very close to the captain, so his voice was only a whisper. “Red-Handed Jack.”
Hook raised his eyebrows and stood then set his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “Red-Handed Jack. I truly believe I’ve never heard a fiercer name for a pirate.”
It beat Captain Bloodheart. That was for certain.
Michael smiled, though he looked a bit bashful. And he turned to the boy beside him, who looked deep in thought.
“What would my name be?” said the taller boy.
“What’s your name now?”
“John Darling. But I won’t be known as the pirate Darling.”
Another brother. Hook scraped his teeth across his lower lip. Starkey saw his hesitation and stepped forward. “We’ve been sorely needin’ a Blackbeard Joe.”
“You haven’t got one already?” said John.
“No. We’re fresh out.”
John looked content with this and nodded.
“Boys!” came the shriek from Wendy. Both brothers jumped out of their skins. “How can you consider it? Think for a moment. You know what our real mother would say, don’t you? If you became pirates? You’re not fiends. I know it.”
John and Michael both stepped back at once and hung their heads.
“You’d truly choose to die rather than sail under my flag?”
The brothers peeked up at him, eyes large and woeful, then looked over at Wendy.
“Of course they will,” she piped in. “They will die like English gentlemen. With good form.”
She locked eyes with Hook, and he was struck again at how like his mother she seemed. He stared at her until the shame welled up in his gut, and he could take it no longer. Hook looked away from the group and out at the bright, calm sea. Pan had not yet come. He frowned. How was it that he wasn’t here yet, with all his boys so close to meeting their deaths? Pan had always been cavalier about death anyway, and perhaps Hook’s plan would fail and Peter would never show up. He sighed, and then turned back to his crew. The plan was in motion. Despite his misgivings, there was no stopping it now.
“Set up the plank,” he ordered to Thatcher. Thatcher and Cecco disappeared below deck and Hook surveyed the waters. He felt a vague stirring in himself when he gazed upon the faces of the children. None looked at him; all their eyes were fixed upon the plank. Their faces had all drained of color, and Hook wondered if his had a
s well. Pan was still out, gallivanting in Neverland. Of course he was. And very soon, Hook would be forced to send eight children hurtling into the ocean.
Cecco and Thatcher hoisted the rough plank between them and brought it out to the edge of the ship. They secured it slowly, or it seemed slow to Hook. There were several moments wherein both Hook and the Lost Boys shared looks of terror, the boys because they knew they would soon meet their doom, and Hook because he was dreading that he would have to be the one to introduce them.
Hook removed his hat and shivered, then looked away. The suns beat down upon him, warming his head until it burned. It was getting warmer. Did that mean that Pan was getting closer? Or did it mean that he was distracting himself with some happy adventure? Hook made an exasperated noise. It was impossible to know.
“Captain?” Thatcher said.
In Hook’s voice was a great weariness when he answered, “Aye.”
“The plank is ready.”
Hook did not answer. He ran his hand through his hair, releasing several tangles from it, and stood slowly up. He put his hat back atop his head and tipped it at a rakish angle, still turned away from the solemn little crew. He polished his hook on his jacket until it gleamed. When he knew he could stall no longer, he turned around, looking more elegant and more menacing than any of the crew had ever seen him, and he looked one by one over the children.
“Which of you desires to lead the band?”
Not a child raised his hand. Hook met the eyes of the tallest one, John. How had he not been killed yet? He was nearly as tall as Peter. It didn’t matter much, did it? Strange thoughts go through a man’s head in the instant before he does something despicable.
“You there. Blackbeard Joe,” he said, sneering.
John looked up at him, eyes shining with fear, but face stubborn and collected. An Eton man, that one. Or at least with the heart of one.
“You may have the honor of walking first.”
John drew in a breath then stood, struggling to get fully upright, being that his hands were still bound. His skinny legs wobbled, and everyone could see it. Hook felt a great pang in him as John approached the plank. Where was Peter? Was he truly going to force him to send a child into the ocean?
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