by Andrea Jones
With his barbed arm, the commodore gestured toward the Island. “Capricious as it is, this place is Jill’s homeland.” He too gazed through the window, toward the Neverland and its varied hues— the sand of the bay, the emerald of the woods, white rock at the cliff top, a wisp of auburn adrift above the Clearing, and the shimmer of cerulean tinting the sea to share its light with the sky. The enchanted isle stretched before him, as ever and anon he had viewed it: an infinite array of the shades of its promise.
Hook’s heartbeat felt heavy, and as erratic as the Island. Grimly, he said, “For her, for here, anything is possible.”
CHAPTER 27
Birds of a Feather
“T
his is not the first time the Council of Elders have been called to discuss Rowan Life-Giver, and Lightly of the Air.”
Walking Man sat on a blanket before the council fire, with the scented smoke of apple wood swirling up before him. Across his lap lay a spear, its end ornamented with a cluster of feathers. His gray hair hung loose and limp over his bone-studded breastplate. In the pouches beneath his eyes, he bore the burdens of a lifetime. Today, he bore one care too many.
The seven elders had assembled at the meeting lodge, arranged in a half circle with Walking Man on one end, and the Old One at the other. The Old One stood leaning her bony frame upon her staff. Panther, her son and the father of her grandchildren, sat cross-legged at her other side, patient as he awaited his questioning.
“Your words are true, Brother. It is not the first,” the Old One answered. “The first time, we chose as one to award Rowan and Lightly the distinction of their status of Messengers.”
Walking Man’s voice creaked like an aged tree. “And soon after, we censured them, for their ties to the savages from the sea.”
“How can blood-ties be censured? We merely advised the Messengers to use caution. A young man, and even a grown man,” she placed her hand upon the head of her son, “owes duty to his mother, and respect to his mother’s people.” Demonstrating that respect, Panther disciplined his jovial face to stare straight ahead, and his white-streaked braids lay motionless against his vest as he feigned not to hear the council’s discussion.
“Let us not confuse the matters.” Seeping through the chinks in the meeting lodge, light fell in stripes over Walking Man’s face, like war paint. Walking Man intoned, “Rowan and Lightly do not stand in question this time because of filial links to the mother.” The elder stiffened, as if to heighten his authority. “On this day, we discuss their ties to one another.”
The Old One blinked, slowly. “My son is here at your request. Ask him what you will.”
“Panther,” Walking Man tapped the man’s shoulder with the feathered spear, granting him permission to listen. “Tell the elders how Rowan Life-Giver answered the offer of marriage to your oldest daughter.”
Panther stood, and inclined his head in deference to the council members. White Bear held his place among them, attentive, and he gestured his welcome to Panther. Where the others wore their wrinkles as their badges, the bear claw trophies on his necklace and the scars on his chest marked White Bear’s importance.
Panther began, “I feel honor to stand before the Council of—”
Walking Man cackled. “Soon Panther, you will sit among us.”
The others murmured in disapproval. The Old One waited for silence, then rejoined, “The council choose well to admit not more than one member in a family, and although I journey toward the Spirits, Walking Man, I do not yet tread in the land of Dark Hunting.” She turned her hazy eyes toward her son. “Panther is a mighty warrior with many scalps on his belt, but he has yet to match his mother in wisdom.” She smiled upon him, and he and the others laughed.
The elders adjusted their blankets, and when all had settled once more, the Old One rapped Panther’s arm, to indicate that he should continue.
He resumed his formal posture. “Honor is mine today, Walking Man, and I answer your question. When Rowan replied to the offer of my daughter’s hand, he did so with kindness and nobility. Ayasha feels no insult, and my wife and I feel satisfied.”
“You have told us how he refused her,” the elder said. “Now, tell us why.”
Panther had learned at his mother’s knee. “Can I speak for another man? Is my mouth at one with his mind?”
The elders looked to one another, some nodding, others frowning. White Bear’s iron eyes narrowed in disapproval as Walking Man persisted, “Panther, did Rowan not indicate that he and Lightly would admit no woman to their tepee?”
“No, Walking Man, he did not. He said the opposite. He said that they two would welcome Ayasha, if my daughter and I so decided.”
As the elders interpreted Panther's answer, no one spoke. After some moments of suspense, the cool, dry fingers of his mother applied pressure to Panther’s arm, and, keeping his eyes averted from the council, he left the lodge. When his shadow slipped away, the Old One announced, “Other matters wait for our consideration. Hear me, Brothers: since we named the one who was once called Lelaneh as Outcast, our women lack the remedies and medicines the Outcast provided. I advise—”
“We have not finished with the young Messengers—”
“We have finished, Walking Man. The young men do their job diligently. They do the tribe honor.”
“They do defy taboo!”
White Bear broke in, his voice rough but patient. “The council listen, Walking Man. We will hear your proof.”
“Well…” The fire hissed, but Walking Man had no more words.
“Then we pass on.” White Bear turned his attention toward the Old One, and the others followed.
She lifted her staff to thump it on the ground. “Brothers, the time has come to consider recalling our herbalist.”
While the sweet smell of apple wood rose toward the sky, the Council of Elders discussed the Old One’s suggestion. For today, at least, Walking Man had been relieved of a burden.
✽ ✽ ✽
Lean Wolf caught a hint of her exotic fragrance on the wind. Long before he saw her, he knew Red Hand from the Sea was waiting for him.
He was surprised that she wore scent to their secret place, but, as his branch swelled pleasurably against his breechclout, he was not displeased. The mere suggestion of her nearness stimulated his body, as did her zeal to couple with him again. Her early arrival at their trysting place exposed her enthusiasm. His vanity swelled, too, at her impatience to indulge in the searing, sensual rites they shared five nights ago, in his lair.
He did not quicken his pace. Lean Wolf was a creature of the woods, grounded in ways to prevail in its setting. He declined to reveal his presence by haste. Always, he kept surprise on his side. The Silent Hunter held the weapon of stealth. She would never hear him coming.
When he peered through the brush to view the path before his cave, he used all his senses. Red Hand sat upon the rock, inhaling the pure forest air, scented with pine and living green. He smelled the zest of fresh water from the waterfall, a swift arrow’s flight to the west. His wife’s yellow hair fell curling over her shoulders. She wore a forest-green tunic, with gold threading along the collar and cuffs. Fawn-colored trousers hugged her thighs, visible through the slits at the sides of her garment. Her eyes were closed, and her hands moved across the surface of the stone, as if she willed it to roll open of its own accord, the sooner to slip inside and disrobe for her lover. Lean Wolf smiled, but still, his hunter’s instincts warned him to delay. Fiercer prey than his wife may lie in wait for him.
Cautiously, he moved his gaze over her surroundings. He listened for any sound, or lack of sound, that might betray an adversary. Lean Wolf felt a strong inclination toward this woman, but his will to survive was stronger. Her people were his enemies; her chiefs were clever. If she had divulged her ties to him in any way, deliberately or by mistake, his moccasins might even now be stepping toward Dark Hunting grounds.
His lips twisted with irony; death was the very destination to which
he had meant to guide Red-Handed Jill when he finished with her. But that was before he named her Red Hand and succumbed to her lust. Whatever his joining with her offered, though, her lust was the only power to which the Silent Hunter intended to surrender.
He scrutinized the treetops, and listened over the water’s burble for the birds. Here, as everywhere in the woods before twilight, they piped louder and more petulantly, as if to shame wayward ones homeward. A pair of squirrels clattered up a tree, but Lean Wolf spotted nothing unusual within the branches, high or low, nor did he spy Red Hand’s messenger, Lightly, among them. He was certain no pirate prowled this part of the forest to avenge her. No white man moved as noiselessly as Silent Hunter.
Satisfied, Lean Wolf slid from the woods to set his feet upon the gravel of the path. “Red Hand,” he murmured, and she turned to him with her sea-blue gaze and her pearl-white smile. Her eyes ate him up; she stretched out her arms, and, with one last glance around him, he entered her embrace. But his hand encountered steel, and, quickly, he backed from her.
“Why do you carry your knife?” he demanded, his handsome face souring. He himself wore his hunting knife strapped near his knee, and his tomahawk hung in his waistband.
“Is your wife such a fool as to enter the wood with no weapon?”
He grinned then, and plucked her off the rock into his arms. “You carried no weapon to our first meeting, yet you managed almost to murder me.”
Red Hand smiled, too, and held him to her breast. “Perhaps this time I shall succeed.” She wove her fingers into his hair and pulled him down to kiss her. As he pressed into her warm, loving lips, the few doubts Lean Wolf had harbored burned up in her passion. Once again, every nerve in his body ignited with excitement. Still, his senses remained alert to any change in his surroundings.
“Husband,” she said, when at last she let him free. “I had to wait these lengthy days, to be sure no one suspects us.”
“What did you tell your devil men, to explain where you were on the night of our wedding?” A surge of affection rushed through him as he indulged her dream of marriage. The idea was both absurd and gratifying, and, as he humored her, he delighted in the fantasy. Besides, he could find no danger in their ceremony. It struck him suddenly, then, that he had not sought Raven in days. Already he thought of Red Hand as his spouse. Ever since their coupling, had he not called her ‘wife’ in his mind? Never one to feel too tightly tied by marriage, Lean Wolf was further amazed. As on that night in the cavern, she continued to practice some witchery upon him. A spirit woman she was, with her magic.
“Each of my lovers believed I was with the other,” she answered, and her eyes sparkled with mischief, like sunlight on the Mermaids’ Lagoon. “This evening, I left them both wondering.”
Oddly, Lean Wolf felt a pang of jealousy. He asked, with a hope that his words might come true, “Perhaps they will kill one another?”
“Oh, no. The commodore and the captain are too concerned for their treasure. They understand that despite their animosity, when they work together, they reap rich rewards.”
“It is not my way. But it is a way we can use to outsmart them. Come, let us find privacy.” He released her, and hunkered down before the boulder. Flexing his arms, he prepared for the effort of opening his cave. He felt Red Hand lay her blood-red palm on his shoulder, and in his imagination the crimson color flared elsewhere on his body. Anticipation spurred his might. His throat went tight, the stone budged, then it rolled. He scarcely felt the effort; it meant nothing to him. But he still felt the touch of his wife.
He held out his hand to assist her through the entrance. As she grasped it and knelt down, they heard the sharp, piercing cry of a hawk. Jill whipped around to search the sky. “That’s Lightly’s signal.”
Lean Wolf jumped up, yanking his weapon from his waist. Among the treetops, Lightly flew their way, hailing them. As he touched down to earth, Red Hand seized him.
“Was I followed?”
“Not directly, but a party of pirates are hunting game, and now they’re tracking your perfume.”
Boots became audible, crushing the underbrush. Weapons jingled, and a shot popped in the distance, followed by a cheer from a number of men.
Lean Wolf commanded, “Quickly, boy, they know you. Lead them away from here.” The singed scent of gunpowder came to his nostrils.
Lightly looked to his mother. “Jill, they know you’re about.”
“You must have no truck with them,” she said, “They are drunken, they may shoot you.” She turned to Lean Wolf, her eyes earnest as she gripped his arm. She slipped her fingers under the orange kerchief she had tied there, and his makeshift marriage bracelet tightened. “I am sorry,” she said. She spoke with urgency, but no fear. “My perfume is all over you. You are in danger, too, if they hunt me.” She kissed him, imparting the fervency of her feeling. “Hide yourself, Husband. I will send word.”
Before he could restrain her, she and her son ran up the path, light as songbirds. Spreading her arms, Red Hand gave a twist of her shoulders and lent her body to the air. It was the most graceful, elegant motion Lean Wolf ever witnessed a woman perform. Red Hand’s hair flowed behind her, her green garment rippled in the wind. She looked back, to send a kiss flying, too, then vanished beneath the covering of trees.
Lean Wolf was infused with loss, with disappointment, the same feelings he suffered as a younger man, when that mermaid evaded him. Yet his primary emotion was confusion. How had his pleasure eluded him? He had caged the yellow bird. He had spoken her pledge. And yet there she went, winging away from him. His confusion distorted, then, into anger. If not for Lightly’s interference, Red Hand from the Sea would be sheltering here, with her husband.
Another shot barked out, closer this time, and Lean Wolf tossed his tomahawk in his cave and slithered after. He flung his rope around the stone, and heaved to roll it closed. Breathing heavily, he sat on the shale of the cave floor, his eyes adjusting to the dim, greenish light. Soon he rose up again, and started prowling his lair.
Lean Wolf was a creature of the woods, grounded in its ways. Always, the Silent Hunter held the gift of stealth. It occurred to him that, just as she declared at their joining, in choosing Red Hand he had made a fitting match. Like the knives they both carried, his wife held that weapon, too— the weapon of surprise.
With her scent on his skin, he knelt before the wall and dipped his forefinger in a pot of ochre. Painting one stripe on the wall, in line with five others, he wondered how many more he must render there, before he would have her again. Her smell on his flesh made him wild.
Frustrated, he drew an image, too. When he banged the paint pot down, two figures of men marked the wall. They stretched horizontal, to signify flight, and faced away from the village. The symbol of taboo marked their backs. They were chased by a shower of arrows.
Lean Wolf wiped the paint from his hands and reclined on the furs of his pallet. Among the intrigues he formed as he waited there with his angry gaze on the phosphorous glow, those for Rowan and his ‘friend,’ Lightly, took precedence.
✽ ✽ ✽
As twilight touched the treetops, an eagle perched among them. He looked down to eye Nibs the Knife, Tom Tootles, Mr. Smee, and Mr. Yulunga, all laughing and swaggering as they traipsed through the woodland. They passed flasks back and forth, and the odor of alcohol trailed them. Crunching their boots on the gravel path, they headed away from the waterfall. The party carried no deer nor fowl, but Smee could be seen to hold a pistol, still smoking.
Wary of the verdant surroundings, Smee peered over his spectacles. The men marched in the direction Jill had flown but, rather than returning to the ships, the ‘hunters’ aimed to end their junket at the Clearing. The pirates tramped until they gained distance between themselves and the caves. Smee noted the landmarks and signaled, and the men paused in their journey.
“Hush, now,” Smee murmured. With the eerie feel of being watched, they listened. They waited. Then, at the corner
of his eye, Smee caught a movement in the forest. The other men stiffened in alert.
Something was there, and then it wasn’t. Smee felt the hairs rise up on his head.
He blinked to clear his vision, then stared again. “Scuttle me!” he whispered under his breath, and uttered, “If those two Indians aren’t magicians…” Smee thrust his warm gun next to another in his belt and, tentatively, stepped forward.
Separating from the background, a lone figure became visible. A permutation of beast and of tree, it was nothing these men had ever laid eyes on before, even here in the Neverland. All the stories Jill had told them converged in their minds, but this tale was a new one, as yet untold.
The creature seemed to walk upright, but didn’t look human. Its legs were strapped with leather, the color of tree bark. The upper body was molded of mud, striped in various shades. The texture of bird’s nest, its hair was smeared with clay the hue of twigs, plaited to dangle and interwoven with vines. Where the lowest part of this thing touched the forest floor, a pair of leafy clusters materialized, in lieu of feet. It moved with the gentle susurrus of wind through a sapling, approaching with its head cast down, and only when it raised up to confront the men did they register a color not conceivable on a tree.
Collectively, the pirates dropped their shoulders to sigh in relief. None dared to speak. They gaped at the apparition one long, final time, then Nibs, Tom, and Yulunga surrounded Smee and the beast, turning their backs on the two of them to stand guard with their hands on their weapons.
“You put the fear o’ Hades in, me, so you did.” Smee searched for a spot on which to focus. The jewel-blue eyes of their commodore pierced through his camouflage.
Hook’s voice seeped like sap from the tree he counterfeited. “I do hope you have ordered the bathwater.”
“Aye, aye, Sir, ’tis all in readiness. Seeing as you left your hook at home, shall I send your sons to fly along with you now, as escorts?”
“Mr. Smee, from your own reaction, I see that no being will wish to approach me. And I am armed.” With his only hand, he reached behind his back to draw a long, wicked knife from its strapping. “Take these men and move on to the Clearing, and watch over the women. While Jill believes the Silent Hunter will resist calling there, mine is a more cautious nature.”