Shadow of the Hook

by Erik Schubach

  The girl looked impatient and was shaking her mother's hand, trying to get her to keep walking. The woman looked down and said, “Just a second, Wendy, this looks important.”

  Everything froze as the captain stood and looked at us. “Let me share the story about Captain Hook, terror of the seas.”

  We looked at her, and she seemed so lost and full of sorrow. I buzzed over to her and placed a little hand on her cheek, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath then nodded. When I landed on my girl's shoulder again, the Hook started with a sly smirk. “Once upon a time.”

  Chapter 6

  Wendy

  I shared, “One weekend, my mom had promised me that if I was a good girl and cleaned my room, she'd take me to the zoo.”

  I looked at the two ladies from my world and absently wondered if the things I remembered were still even there. A lot can change in a century. I explained, “Seattle used to have a spectacular zoo, I don't know if they still do after all this time.”

  The dangerous, but cute little dark-haired girl, Amanda, nodded and said, “It's still there.”

  I smiled at that. Maybe one day I'd find the waterways through the Nothing, to sail there. I really missed home, even though everyone I ever knew would be dead and buried by now.

  I continued, “I loved the animals, so of course I agreed with my mom's sly tactic to get me to do my chores. We were going to meet dad there, he was working downtown that weekend but said he'd take a couple hours to have lunch with us at the zoo. He was such a strong man and was always working hard. And my mom was a doctor. Even though I was so young, I was so very proud of them both.”

  I looked at my younger self, and my mom in the suspended memory. Any time I found myself struggling to remember, I was thankful for my new abilities, even though they cost me my hand. I don't know how many times over the years I replayed my memories like this, locked away in my cabin here on the Sea Devil.

  I looked at the television in the window. “It was just over a hundred years ago, back after the Avatars had defeated the demon responsible for the lycan contagion, that I was taken.” I pointed at the headline scrolling on the screen which I hadn't really understood when I was younger. 'The Avatars vanish from the Black Crypt, leaving mankind defenseless against the black arts. Military on high alert.'

  Little Amanda said, holding a finger up, “Ummm... that was like two days ago, not a hundred years. We had to leave the mortal world or the Scales, who are our friends, would have been forced to allow more evil into the world to balance things out.”

  I blinked in shock. Two days? I've been stuck here for decades. I thought everything I knew back home had been lost to time. But... the Voodoo Queen had told me that time is a quagmire in Neverland, all mixed up. Some Lost Boys had been here a day in Neverland but had been missing for hundreds of years in the mortal realm, whereas Nate, the Lost Boy who has been here the longest, has only been here the blink of an eye in the mortal realm in the future.

  If... if I could sail the Nothing and successfully find the mortal world... my parents. They were still alive? I could find them?

  I blinked away my shock when the Robyn fairy added, “We fell off the path to Perchta's garden and found ourselves here in Neverland, where the Lost Boys found us.”

  I nodded in understanding. “There are so many waterways in the Nothing and the Faraway, and they are all perilous, and one can easily lose their way. I have been sailing into the Nothing for decades, trying to find home again, but there are so many realms, I feel I could sail forever and never find it. Some realms aren't much different, but some are living hells. My ship's compass has nothing to lock onto.”

  Robyn buzzed up in front of my face, and my heart lurched at how familiar that was. I can still clearly picture my Tink doing the same. She asked dubiously, “The Lost Boys said that anyone who ventured into the nothing ceased to be, and the memories of them are erased from everyone's minds.”

  I nodded. “That is true, but the Sea Devil is a safe haven, isolated from everything, especially if her captain has the artifact of power. That is why Pan's magic and persuasion are not working on you here. The Devil can withstand the Nothing, and sail all the hidden waterways between realms, and all on board are protected.”

  They looked suitably impressed with my ship, and I swelled with pride. I turned from them, back to the memory around us. Things went back into motion, and I watched as my mother was engrossed in the news report as we stood on the street. “I kept looking down the street to where our car was parked in a parking garage, trying to pull my mother along. She shushed me, telling me that this was important.”

  I sighed, seeing me let go of her hand and cross my arms to pout. I asked nobody in particular, “Had I really been that impetuous back then?”

  To my surprise, the old wolf in the child's guise chuckled. “Pretty much all children are. It's all part of testing the limits and all.”

  I cocked my head at her, wondering if it were true, or if that is how children of the cursed were. I had to remind myself that she was not the little girl she appeared, and she sounded much older despite her looks.

  I nodded and pointed at the younger me looked between her mother and the car garage. “That's when he... I saw him. A boy maybe three or four years older than me, dressed in green, a mischievous grin on his face.”

  We watched as my younger self spotted him behind a pole, peeking around and making overt sneaking motions as he slid behind a mailbox, wiggling his eyebrows at me. I had been entranced with the boy's silly antics. He put out one hand and made a running motion with the fingers of his other hand.

  Then he spelled out in the air, Z-O-O, then nodded as he made a beckoning motion with his hand. And to my horror, no matter how many times I see this memory, I looked up at my mother then back to him, and I ran off to him. He offered a hand, and I took it, then we were flying. I remember the exhilarating feeling, filled with excitement, and wonder as air rushed past. I felt... free.

  I pointed out, “That's when I started to panic as I lost track of my mother.” Little me started struggling and telling the boy to bring me back to my mom in the memory.

  We watched as he told me to be quiet and stop struggling. And I struggled even more. He hissed out, “Why doesn't it work here?” Then... then he punched me, and everything went black.

  The image around us blurred and then resolved in the Lost Boy's camp, with all of them gathered around me, poking at my dress and long hair with sticks. Timmy was asking, “What kind of boy is this?”

  I stirred and looked around, and the screaming started. First my high pitched scream, then the boys joined in as they scrambled back from me. I shared, “That's when the Pan flew down from his treehouse and snapped, 'Stop screaming.' Then everyone including me snapped our mouths shut. No matter how much I tried to scream, I couldn't bring myself to do it because it might displease the boy. And that scared me even more.”

  I growled, “And that's when I lost myself.”

  We watched at the Pan circled me. Tinkerbell flew up in a shower of pixie dust and sparks from her anger. She held her arms wide and pleaded, “Leave her alone. You already have enough power.”

  He slapped her aside in an explosion of fairy dust as he told me, “Don't be afraid Wendy. This is your home remember? The Lost Boys are your family, and we have such grand fun. This is where I taught you to fight and to fly, what more can there be? We play and use our imaginations as much as we can together.”

  We saw my eyes glaze over and then a silly grin grew on my face as I shook my head of all I had known. I whispered to the girls, “It had felt as if my old life had been nothing but a Make-Believe. And Neverland was my home. Because it must be, right, the Pan had said so?”

  Tinkerbell flew up to my younger self, sorrow in her eyes as she placed a hand on my cheek, her fairy dust coating me. Then she sat on my shoulder when I smiled and dove at the Lost Boys, tagging one. “Tag, you're it!” Then I flew off, like I had done it a thousand times, the Lost B
oys chasing me giggling and calling out, “Catch the Wendy!”

  I exhaled long and hard as I watched as time sped up. “Over the years, I saw so many Lost Boys grow up. Though Tinkerbell kept sharing with me that they had never aged before the Pan came, that he was draining them of their imaginations until their youth was used up and they couldn't imagine anything anymore so couldn't fly anymore.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Then from there he would just let them go join the other grown-ups... the pirates, or if he were feeling especially cruel, would fly them to the Nothing to erase them from our memories. But Tink always remembered, something about fairy magic.”

  “Time and time again she would tell me, but time after time Peter would tell me Tink was just playing a Make-Believe on me. Him saying it made it so, and I never wanted to upset him. But over the years, Tink's magic had been coating me as she had tried to wake me up and save me from the same fate as the Lost Boys.”

  I took a deep breath. “Under the Pan's influence, I hadn't even realized that none of the Lost Boys who had been here when I first arrived were still with us, they had either been sent away, being of no use to Pan or were fed to the hungry Nothing.”

  I rubbed my stump, my sacrifice, and then shared, “I was aging too, just more slowly. Tink said there was something about girls, that we had more potential for imagination, and that the Pan had feasted upon it, him wanting to go back to the mortal realm to get more girls once I was used up.”

  “I had been on the cusp of becoming a grown up when Tinkerbell's accumulated magics had become strong enough inside me to clear the fog and lessen the influence that the Pan had over me for me to see the truth of it all.”

  I fought back the tears as I watched the scene play before our eyes. “The months of planning my escape, and us saving the Lost Boys, of Tink and I falling for each other. She was my hero, and I loved her beyond words. It wasn't long after that when we finally spoke the words, professing our love.”

  The women of my world were watching events unfold as the memories swirled around us. They looked almost mesmerized.

  We watched as I pretended that the Pan still held sway over me as we schemed. I said, “When it was time to put our plan to task, we gathered the Lost Boys around us. I was so saddened that I had seen so many come and go. Nate was the oldest of the new batch, and was getting older by the day.”

  I stepped around the projection of the campfire at the base of the trees, to look at my Tinkerbell as she sat on my teenaged shoulder, god she was beautiful. I continued as I closed my eyes from the pain the hole in my heart was where my girl lived, “I convinced him and the others that Tink and I had come up with a new game. A grand game of hide and seek from the Pan. As we all flew off in the middle of the night, he had known somehow.”

  I ground out, “He had been waiting, there in the sky. And he told the Lost Boys to capture Tink and me. We ran. We flew faster and ran harder than we ever had. We lost them all. And just when we thought we had lost them all in the jungle behind the volcano on Smoky Island...”

  We watched as the Pan flew out of nowhere, capturing my Tinkerbell in a glass jar. I fought him, but he was so strong. I said with a tinge of fear in my tone, “I saw him for what he was just then when he grabbed my arm with an iron grip and started flying us, kicking and screaming back to the treehouses.”

  I shivered as I saw it happening all over again, the Pan transformed into some half man, half crocodile creature with glowing red eyes... stinking of sulfur as he said in a voice that sounded like a thousand tortured voices, and the sound of pipes playing, “You will forget this happened, you will never try this again.”

  I was starting to nod as his power tried to attach itself to me. It was ten times stronger than it had been before, but just as it was starting to take hold, his magic slid off of the coating of fairy magic that had taken Tink years to cover me with.

  A tear rolled down my cheek as I watched the fog lift from my eyes as I dangled in the Pan monster's grip. My younger self looked at Tinkerbell in desperation, sorrow, and love. I said the words with myself, the memory of it feeling like just yesterday, “I'm sorry, Tink. I'll come for you.”

  Then I grabbed the blade from the Pan's belt and in one violent motion, and all the imagination I could muster... I cut my own arm off, just below his hand, and I fell to the sea below.

  The projection faded away as the pinging tone faded away. I rubbed my stump. The price of my freedom then grabbed my hook and shoved it over the stump, feeling the power infused in it coursing through my body, causing the hole in my soul to burn.

  I inhaled then looked at the two women, they were just staring at the place in the air where the projection had been, tears rimming their eyes. Amanda looking almost lost, and I knew she wasn't the child she seemed, but I just wanted to hold her and tell her it was ok.

  They turned to me, and I saw the sorrow and empathy there turn into something harder, and I realized I was feeling before I heard the growl coming from the girl. Robyn laying her tiny hand on Amanda's face to console her as the little wolf girl said, “We need to kick that mother fucker's ass.”

  I couldn't help chuckling at how cute her determined face was, and hearing a little one using such profanity.

  I held a hand up to placate her when she growled at me next. Then I said, “So the past ninety years or so, I've sailed the seas aboard the Sea Devil. Saving Lost Boys who have grown up and were discarded by the Pan. Teaching them how to imagine and to play again, amassing that power in the artifact, my Hook. So that one day, I'll have the power to confront Pan and rescue Tink, then send that bastard to the hell he deserves.”

  The fairy who reminded me so much of Tink, flew up, pain, compassion, and understanding in her eyes, and she just placed a hand on my cheek as the little one stepped up and took my hand to give it a reassuring squeeze. I looked at them, then nodded. I had found some kindred spirits, and now, more than ever, I believed that it just might be possible to take on the Pan.

  Chapter 7

  Voodoo Queen

  I blinked back tears after witnessing Wendy's memories, as they played out before us. She had lost her family, then herself to this creature pretending to be a boy. She had sacrificed everything, sacrificed love, to try to save the Lost Boys. She could have just run with Tinkerbell at any time. It was her compassion that cost her her hand and her love.

  I buzzed over to her and placed a hand on her wet cheek to let her know she was not alone in this. Then I smiled down to see my Mandywolf come over to hold her hand to let her know that after what we saw, we stood with her.

  I shook my head. Yet another enemy not being what she seems. I fell in love with the last one, and she is my mate now. And we would help Wendy to save hers too... if Tink was still alive.

  I asked as I pulled back my hand and flew back a bit so she could see me better, “You've sailed the Sea Devil for all these decades. Where did it come from, and... your hook?”

  She chuckled at that and stepped over to a couch that was anchored along one wall and sat, And I snorted when she picked Amanda up and sat her on her lap. When my girl growled as Wendy played with her hair as she looked to be thinking about how to explain, she looked down and then blushed in embarrassment, “I'm sorry, it's just hard to remember you're not a little girl.”

  Mandywolf growled again and looked at the couch beside her, then she smirked and shrugged. “It's ok, it looks like you could use a little human contact just now, after reliving that.”

  This is why I love my mate. She acts the rough and tumble brigand all the time, but underneath all that bravado, which she can back up, by the way, lies a heart of gold which is capable of such compassion and empathy. It is what drives her to always do the right thing, even if it is the hard thing.

  So my girl made a silly face, rocked her head, and just sat there. I have to say that it made me grin, as they looked almost like a mother with her daughter on her lap. I could see it clearly in my head. Wendy smiled at her then looked up to m
e as I landed on Mandy's knee. “That starts with the mermaids.”

  My wings buzzed, sparkling dust sifting down from them as I said in earnest, “I've met them. I owe them a boon.”

  She chuckled at that and nodded her head, “Don't we all?”

  Then she sighed and shared, “I don't remember anything after the bright pain from severing my hand had been too much for me and I passed out. I woke up on the waves. The mermaids were swimming me somewhere I had never been. The Sea Hag's island, the Grotto, was off limits, just like the Magistrate's with his troops on Hangman's Island. We never broke the Pan's rules, as it never crossed our minds.”

  She gave us an ironic look as she absently started braiding Mandy's hair into a ponytail deftly with her hand and hook. “I almost panicked because it was against the rules, which made me realize how much of his will he had dominated us with. When I asked, the mermaids said that they were hungry and wanted to eat me, but they had a deal with the Voodoo Queen, the Sea Hag. That if a Wendy ever fell and hit the sky, they were to bring them to her.”

  With a sly grin, she said, “I made the mistake of thanking them when they deposited me on the beach at the Grotto. That to them was an acknowledgement of a debt. So that was the first of many boons I have owed them over the years. They say I pay my debts by leaving the dead to the sea.” She shuddered knowing just as well as I did, what they did with the dead. Good, she wasn't naive.

  She looked at her hook. “I was still in a bit of shock, and couldn't conjure up a happy thought to fly yet. So I stumbled into the jungle on a path. I was terrified of the stories I had heard of the Sea Hag. But most of those we heard from Pan or Pirates who lacked the imagination to tell the truth from reality.”

  She paused and shared, “That's what happens, once their imaginations are consumed by the Pan, everything is quite literal for them as they can't imagine anything else. It's an abomination.”