by Andrea Jones
Jill hadn’t caught him. But if she kept searching, she would find him. Or, at least, she’d find his remains.
A thought struck David. He gaped down at the tigress staring up at him with her unforgiving eyes, her striped sides shrinking and expanding with every pant, and David knew he belonged in that cairn of a cavern after all, with flowers marking the mouth of the tomb where this afternoon he lay among bone and sinew— the remnants of his fellows, the other helpless victims.
Victims of a predator. This lethal Island itself.
CHAPTER 8
Idolatry
The tigress spared Jill the effort of searching for David. Jill couldn’t see the boy, but the animal stood at the base of the maple, her large, fierce head turned up to gaze at him. The black tip of her tail curled, and its rigidity told Jill she hadn’t much time. The beast was about to spring.
In silence, Jill crept closer. A strip of David’s white shirt showed between the maple leaves, within striking range of the tiger’s claws. The wind from the west served Jill; she caught the odor of the boy’s clothing and the frowzy taint of the cat, but her own scent flew downwind. At twenty paces, she halted. She braced her legs apart, raised her pistol, and aimed it in both hands. The ring on David’s finger had been swallowed once, when the crocodile devoured Hook’s hand. She swore she’d not allow this creature to ingest it, too.
With what was left of his life, David was praying. His eyes were wide open. He wanted to pray to his god, but all his mind could conceive was what he saw— the bestial face, the green eyes nailing him to his cross. He prayed to his pagan predator instead, begging her to be merciful, to kill him quickly. He felt the sweat pouring from his skin, the warmth of liquid at his crotch where his fear took fluid form. In the humiliation of defeat, David begged his huntress, “Don’t. Don’t hurt me.” If he could have fallen to his knees, he would have done so, to encourage the hot breath to smother his neck, the blades of teeth to strike swiftly. Anything to assuage that ferocity, to submit, to offer Fate her due with a minimum of pain. “Please…please.” He moved his lips in supplication; his voice broke, as it had broken the last time he’d met with a killer.
He’d been braver on his ship that day, the day the Roger attacked. Then he was an extension of his uncle’s authority, a member of ship’s company among officers, facing pirates. Those enemies were men. This threat was Nature herself. David knew he could offer no battle; he had already lost to Nature. He’d been devoured by her, his soul eaten up, that first instant he set eyes on Red-Handed Jill.
The woman he loved.
No: the goddess.
David leaned outward, relaxed his grip on the tree. Serenity evened his features. Welcoming the end now, he gazed into the eyes of hell— the damnation his blasphemy deserved— and, gently, he fell forward.
Peace flew to pieces at the blast of a gun. The jaws of death, open to tear David’s sacrifice, ejected a shriek instead. In a violent twist, the black and yellow beast spun to the side. A spurt of blood from her eye striped David’s face.
The boy hit the ground with his shoulder, blinking to clear the gore away. The blended smells of blood, grass, and gunpowder confused him. Was he in hell, or in heaven after all? No, not heaven, for pain shot through his arm, and worse, a vibration beat through the earth, Mother Earth, as the tiger’s pads pounded— away from him. And David prayed again, horror stitching up the patchwork of his tattered soul, to the only god who might listen, “No…no! Take me! Take me!”
His idol, his Jill, was dropping her pistol, seizing her knife. It sparkled in the sun; quite clearly, David saw the colored jewels glowing below her fist. She bared her teeth, she lowered her jaw. Her eyes flashed before they narrowed, and she waited for the tiger’s lethal bound.
The animal sprang. Her hiss of a growl terrified David. Her long, sleek back mounted up, her hind feet left the ground. The tiger rose upon Jill, her leap reached its zenith, and Jill vanished beneath the mighty frame.
Closing his eyes at the very last moment, David listened: a sickening slice, the sound of rending flesh. His imagination saw Jill’s beauty torn to shreds, her long bright hair matted and mauled— and all because of his cowardice. Gagging on vomit, he awaited her scream.
“Jill!” The shout came hurtling down, as if from the treetops. A male voice, strong, confident, but tinged with care. “Use your bows, men— shoot it!” The hum as arrows stung the air, and a ghastly roar of pain. David opened his eyes.
Three men surrounded the slaughter. The black-haired captain stood there in his boots, his sword drawn but useless. The two Indians cocked fresh arrows, their spent darts sagging from the tiger’s side. Jill stretched out behind the animal, rolling on the grass, still clutching her knife.
Blood covered her arm and coated her dagger. David guessed that instead of falling backward, she had dived beneath the tiger as she attacked. The cat, not yet tamed, lumbered around to face her. Lying on the ground, David could see a long, gory gash along her underside, from her forelegs to her groin. Already the slippery insides were spilling out. The men around Jill watched, their eyes wide, unwilling to prod the beast to violence, unable to shoot for fear of hitting Jill.
The animal stumbled, Jill jumped to her feet, and before the tiger could gather to charge, Jill leapt to her back— a flying leap. She grasped the beast’s neck in the crook of her arm and dug her heels in her sides. Locking the head in her elbow, Jill hoisted it high. She grimaced and, swift as thought, slashed her blade across the tiger’s throat. Holding the pose, she waited as the lifeblood poured to the forest floor. The tiger snarled, her whiskers jerked as she wrinkled her snout, and David watched, disbelieving, until, at last, the beast convulsed and collapsed, with Jill still hugging her back. For a moment Jill lay at rest upon her wild, exotic couch. Her left arm, encircling the throat, was pinned beneath the carcass.
Hook rushed to her side and threw down his sword. He knelt in the grass and heaved the head up by the scruff. Jill withdrew, still clutching the dagger. Fresh red blood painted her arm. It splotched her face and spotted her tunic. She looked ferocious, more savage than her tigress, and her eyes as she beheld Captain Hook held a passion David couldn’t identify. Hook returned it with a mixture of pride, adoration, and outrage. David had never fathomed such scope in a man so vile. He was amazed as, with tenderness, the pirate opened Jill’s fingers for her, and removed the knife, lifting her to her feet.
Jill lingered, looking down, triumphant, at her kill. When she turned her gaze upon David, he was on his knees, worshipping. Swaying a little, she walked toward him. Much as he wished to adore her, he dropped his eyes to stare at her bloody feet. She stood before him like a Titan, and took his chin into her hand. She raised his grateful head, and, to David, her wicked eyes reflected the divine.
“Now,” she commanded, her cheeks flushed beneath the bloodstains. “Give me my due.”
She stretched out her scarlet hand. Unhesitating, this time, in the face of Fate, David pulled the bauble from his finger. As he had gifted her with his shamrock that day upon the Unity, today he presented her with the ring. The red of its rubies looked garish next to the ruby of the lifeblood on her palm. She turned to Hook, who had never left her side. Taking his hand, she slid the ring on, to join the other jewels among his fingers. She didn’t flinch at the color she smeared on him, nor did Hook. He merely watched her, tensed as if to catch her if she faltered.
Jill didn’t falter yet. With the grace of an angel, she stooped down to David where he knelt, so that from the bounty of bosom she revealed, beyond the rusty smell of blood, he whiffed her perfume— her foreign, familiar perfume, that together with her nearness stimulated his loins. Placing a firm crimson hand on his cheek, she kissed him full upon the lips.
David tasted the tang of life, Jill’s life, his own life hard-won for him. He accepted the transfer of vigor, reverenced the throbbing in his body, and when the warmth of her lips deserted him, his cheek was damp where she’d stained it. Red-Handed Jill
had touched him, and he would never be untouched again.
Loath to return to his loneliness, to the privation and the treachery of this Island, David prayed to his goddess, “Take me with you.”
She didn’t answer. She spoke to her Indians. “Bind my captive and bring him to the Roger.” Weaving on her feet now, she turned to Hook, and although her agitation grew, her voice lost power with every syllable. “Hook…My first kill.” Her gaze rolled toward the carcass, to the scarlet pool in which it lay. “You know the story. You know…what I’ll do.” She uttered the words hoarsely at the end, gutturally, as if discarding her humanity.
“I know the legend, my love. I will attend you.” With his arms around her, Hook guided her toward the site of her victory, waiting only long enough to direct the natives, “To the Roger— by water. You understand.”
The light-skinned one said, “We understand, Commodore, and we’ll deal with the carcass, too. But what about Jill?”
“You may leave us alone. And alert Mr. Smee.”
“Yes, Sir. We’ll take a canoe, as you say.”
The braves slung their bows on their backs and seized David by the arms. He dragged his feet, reluctant to leave his protectress. Supporting him, the pair marched him down the river. David balked, divining that their destination was the Indian village, then he surrendered in fatigue as the blond one bound his wrists behind him. He’d have to have faith in her. He looked back over his shoulder to see Hook and Jill on their knees by the tigress. Hook, too, was watching Jill, with intensity.
Jill’s eyes closed, her head tilted as if in trance, and her hands worked in the grasses by the kill, circling, conjuring. She might be casting some spell, some arcane charm. In the lengthening distance, her voice rose in long, unintelligible shouts. Twenty paces behind her, a bough of David’s maple tree bent, crippled forever by a boy’s initiation. Next to Jill, the beast lay vanquished.
Once more, David felt the power of enchantment. David’s spirit rose, drawn back by her chanting, to her rites, to Jill, and somehow his body mixed in the mystery, too. His cheek burned hot where she had touched him.
He only hoped she would touch him again. Because, by choice or by guile, David was learning about the magic.
✽ ✽ ✽
The magic was strong, Hook observed. Stronger this time than the last, and rightly so. Then she had merely drawn blood from her enemy. Hook himself had performed the killing, with her consent, when he had ‘murdered’ the girl Wendy— not in cold blood, but hot with passion and purpose, and Red-Handed Jill had sprung to life to take her place. A rite of passage transpired, death and rebirth.
Now Hook knelt with Jill, watching as, crazed with her victory, she plunged again into blood-rage. This conquest— her first kill— affected her strangely. She had understood the process, ordained it, long ago when she spoke the story; Hook understood it of old. This ritual united hunted with hunter, beast and human, breaking the bonds of bodies and melding their spirits. Voice was granted to the speechless, humanity drained from the victor. The song of Jill’s kill echoed through the wood, the paint of its blood swirled around her fingers, creeping down her forearms as she raised her hands in triumph to the skies.
Hook caught her excitement, felt a wave of desire for her surging inside. He lived for victory, and, in this moment, Jill was victory incarnate. Her hair spilled on her shoulders, her color heightened. She was wild and beautiful, like a goddess of the forest. No chaste Diana’s, Jill’s lips were tainted with the taste of experience, her breath as she expelled it thick with the spirit of the animal, making the grasses quiver where it stalked. Earthly and unearthly, Jill had never appeared more seductive.
Hook held himself back, guarding her, respecting her rite yet anticipating the moment when he, too, could partake of it, when he’d indulge his senses in the pleasures of her flesh. He searched her face, past the tangle of her hair, and saw the emerald of the animal’s eyes beyond the sapphire of her own, and in that moment he loved her with a fierceness he had never felt before. More than ever, she was his counterpart— the woman who had brought him into being, who conceived and then healed his maiming, the woman who tore antagonists without qualm. Destroyer and creator, no other mortal could command his heart. She, alone, was Jill.
Yet of her many mysteries, none surrounded the reasons men sought to possess her. Hook realized as he won her from Pan that rivalry must accompany his claim on her. It was a circumstance he’d come to accept, if not to relish. He remembered the look on the new boy’s face, the pup she called David. Hook had watched as, fearful at first, the youth yielded to Jill’s powers. Another set of antlers for her mantel, albeit budding ones. Surely Jill would dismiss the lad, once she’d reaped his worth in service. But who could blame the boy? Hook himself stood transfixed as she butchered a tigress five times her size, not in desperation, not to save her own life, but to preserve this foolish David’s. In one stroke, she’d conquered beast and boy. Sooner or later, those who sought to hold her found that Jill herself was the one who took possession.
And the men she had married— Hook discounted them, too. They were serpents in his paradise. They were nothing more than tempters, arrogant fools believing they could domesticate her, two who walked knowingly into her snare, there to languish in suffering. True marriage, Hook reflected, took place in the woods in sacraments like this one, or upon the font of the sea, in rites of passage, blood ritual, magical transference such as only he, who inhabited her soul, could share with her. Hook and Jill were joined with unbreakable bonds, yet those bonds were as flexible as the willow boughs that trailed in the river nearby. He and Jill were as united as a man and a woman could be.
But now he saw her weakening. Her shouts died, her shoulders drooped, and, still kneeling with her, Hook supported her. While her body lost tension, she raised her bloody hands as if in wonder. The green of her pupils flickered out and, dark blue once more, her eyes searched for his. But as he hooked her hair to draw it from her face, she became distracted, focusing on his claw instead. It was a weapon, and in her madness it became the object that she craved. Within his arm, her body tensed again.
The night Jill came to life, the night she’d stained her hand, he hadn’t worn the hook; in primal lust, she’d lunged for his knife, easily held above her reach. Now, though, in her blood-drunk delirium, she seized his wooden wrist, unknowing or uncaring of the danger. This moment, Hook knew, was the most lethal time, as the huntress forgot what she’d achieved and shifted her obsession. Incapable of reason, she struggled to command the hook, drawing its shining, sharpened point too near to her flesh.
He had promised to attend her; his duty lay in keeping her safe from herself. Nevertheless, he couldn’t remove his hook. To do so required that he shed or shred his shirt, impossible while she clung to his wrist. Nor would it be wise to denude himself of his most potent defense. Hidden hazards lurked within the Neverland.
As quickly as his single hand allowed, he unbuckled his belt. Straining to keep control, he held the hook upright and out of contact with her body, his one arm braced against her two. But, as she fastened on this mania, Jill’s strength rebounded as if she were her tigress, risen from the slaughter and reawakened to life. Hook could swear he heard the animal purring, deep in her throat. The sound of her power stirred him, even as he fought to subdue her.
He flung the belt over her wrists, he tried and failed to thread its end through the buckle. They tussled, and the effort to protect her from the claw caused his fingers to bungle. He tried again, and again, until he managed to pass the belt through the hasp. Then he yanked its loop tight, cinching her hands together. He regretted that he must burn her with the leather’s binding as, with a twist of his wrist and a pull on the belt, he drew his arm from Jill’s grasp. Exhaling in relief, he found footing to stand. He wound the belt short around his knuckles, then he hauled her up with him, and lowered the hook from her greedy view. Stimulated the more by this struggle for dominance, Jill’s lover fought his own c
ompulsion, too, a burgeoning impatience to take her. But the time was not right. A kiss was all he might risk right now, and he bent to her, burning like the leather on her flesh, to take her mouth within his own.
The verdure surrounding them felt sultry as a jungle, and the air rang with cicada song. The huntress’ eyelids were heavy with wanting. As he came to her, she opened her lips to snatch at his, to devour him in a kiss both aggressive and agreeable. Close by, the river raged into froth, as unsettled as Jill’s disposition. They mustn’t linger here. Possessed by gods, they were only mortals, and danger walked in these woods. Hook resisted the drive to lay her down and love her, forced himself to pull away from her instead. He soothed her, “Soon, my love. Soon.” With only one hand, and that one obliged to hold her, he left their weapons where they lay near the carcass, and led her on her tether toward the water.
One more ritual to perform, and then he could fly her to safety.
He paused and lifted his head, listening; was that noise the throb of Indian drums, or just the pounding of the water? Jill took advantage of his hesitation to lunge for the hook again, and he lurched away and tightened the belt. With the help of his teeth, he tied it in a knot below the buckle so that she could not escape him if he slackened his grip. He moved more quickly now, dragging her to the river, hoping to the Powers that her magic might last, if only a little while longer.
✽ ✽ ✽
“Grandmother! Come quickly!” The black-lashed girl ran to her grandmother, to lay her hands in her lap. “Rowan and Lightly have brought us a captive! Oh, Grandmother, Rowan looks so brave.”
“Cease this chatter, girl. Take me to them.” Stiffly, the Old One accepted her staff from her granddaughter and rose on the arm of the girl. Before setting foot from her blanket, she took care to straighten. Tilting her face to the sun, she let its rays fortify her frailness with heat.