Even though Peter might have used the compass to trick her, even though he might have brought them all to Neverland just to blow Hook out of the sky, and even though Peter’s ship was already turning broadside and preparing to fire, Wendy didn’t think any of it was true. She didn’t feel like it was true. So she did the one thing she knew how to do—the one thing she had always done when faced with overwhelming odds—she trusted her own heart.
And she ran The Pegasus straight toward Hook’s greatest enemy.
Needless to say, Hook did not like this plan.
“Miss Darling, what are you doing?” he demanded.
“I have a feeling, Captain.”
“You have a feeling? You have a feeling? Are you mad, woman? They’re within firing range!”
“And yet they’re not firing,” Wendy pointed out.
Which was true. Pan’s ship had not fired. Hook stared at the ship, incredulous, and then he smiled—a slow, wicked smile. “Then at least we’ll go down fighting. Mr. Smee! Prepare the cannons!”
Smee whistled the order.
But there was no time left. Or, rather, Wendy made sure there was no time left. She sped toward Pan’s ship as fast as she could.
“Turn us broadside, Mr. Hawke!” Hook ordered.
“I can’t, Captain,” Charlie told him, and he spun the wheel to prove it. “The ship’s rudder isn’t responding anymore.”
“Miss Darling! Turn us broadside!”
“I … I can’t, Captain,” Wendy told him, refusing to meet his gaze.
And by then, they were too close anyway. Several men screamed as they bore down on Pan’s ship, threatening to ram straight into it. But at the last possible moment, Wendy pulled up, just high enough to clear Peter’s sails, and flew over the enemy.
Only then, with The Pegasus safely out of the way, did Pan open fire. And that, as they say, was the end of that. The moment Pan fired on the other everlost ship, Blackheart turned tail and ran.
Wendy brought her own ship to a halt. It seemed safe enough. If Pan had wanted to kill them, he could have done it easily. She wanted to sink to the deck and sleep for a week, but she was still the only thing keeping them in the air. At least coming to a standstill relieved some of the pressure in her pounding head.
She expected Peter to follow Blackheart, caught up in the battle, but, instead, he let the other ship go. He raised a flag of truce, and then a small boarding party lifted off from the everlost deck and headed their way: a brown-haired, blue-eyed everlost man, followed reluctantly by a tiny red dragon.
eter.
Relief flooded through Wendy as she watched him fly between the two ships, executing three spiraling loops along the way.
She had found him. Finally. And he was not her enemy after all.
(Or, rather, he was, she supposed. Because he was still England’s enemy. But he was not her enemy in particular.) He had not tried to sink The Dragon. He had not tried to shoot The Pegasus out of the sky. On the contrary. He had run Blackheart off and saved them all. That simple fact made her feel a lot better than she would have liked to admit.
Especially to Hook, who did not share her sense of relief.
The captain stood ramrod straight. His eyes narrowed, and his jaw clenched rhythmically as he glared at the flying man. Then his good left hand twitched above his holstered pistol, and Wendy found herself terrified all over again. She thought of the winged men Hook had executed after the raid on Blackheart’s cave, and then another everlost flashed through her memory: the one Hook had shot and killed on this very deck.
Peter was close now. So very close. She was about to step forward and shout a warning when her stomach suddenly rose into her throat and the deck dropped out from under her feet.
She was falling. They were all falling.
Wendy looked down in a panic and realized instantly what had happened. She had become so afraid for Peter that she had forgotten all about keeping the ship in the air, and now there was nothing holding it up. Fortunately, they only fell about a yard before Wendy recovered her wits and thought about flying again. Despite a few frightened shouts across the span of the deck, no one appeared to be injured.
“Miss Darling?” Hook inquired. His voice sounded surprisingly calm, as though he were asking whether she would like a scone with her tea rather than why they had fallen several feet toward their death for no apparent reason.
“I apologize, Captain,” she began. “I—” But then she noticed that Hook’s good left hand was no longer twitching above his pistol, and that gave her an idea. She had been about to say that she had everything under control, but instead she said this: “I’m getting tired. Flying takes a lot of concentration, and I don’t know how much more I can take.”
The implication, of course, was that it would be best not to give her a fright. And although she had no intention of letting them all plummet to their deaths, not even if Peter were to be shot right before her eyes, what she said was still true enough. She was tired all the way down to her bones. She needed a safe place to set the ship down, and then she needed to sleep for a very long time.
She expected to be met by a flash of annoyance, that habitual condescension that flitted across Hook’s eyes whenever he felt burdened by her “feminine limitations.” But, instead, his expression softened, and he said, very quietly, so that only she could hear him, “You saved all our lives, Miss Darling, and, thanks to you, England now has a flying ship—and a fighting chance. Can you keep her in the air a bit longer? We’ll find somewhere safe to set her down.”
“Aye, Captain,” she told him, and she cocked her head slightly to the left, staring at him in surprise. For one brief moment she thought that his forget-me-not eyes had never looked quite so blue as they did here, set against the sky of Neverland. But then he nodded and turned away.
“Hold your fire!” he shouted. “Hold your fire!”
Smee whistled the command, and a dozen muskets that had been aimed at Peter’s chest were reluctantly lowered as the everlost touched down right in front of Wendy. He ignored Hook altogether and beamed at her with his usual smile—the wide, innocent smile that always took her breath away—and then he bowed deeply, his hawk-like wings fanning out behind him.
If Wendy had been anyone else, and if Peter had been anyone else, she might have expected him to welcome her to Neverland or to ask politely how she had been after all this time. But Wendy was Wendy, and Peter was Peter, so what he said to her in greeting did not surprise her in the least.
“Hello, the Wendy. Did you see how I saved you at the last possible moment? You must admit, it was very clever.”
Wendy’s eyes danced, and it was all she could do not to laugh out loud and throw her arms around him, wings and all. He was clever, but he was not cunning. He was not devious. He never had been. And seeing him here, standing in front of her once again, she could hardly imagine that she had ever doubted him.
Nonetheless, she maintained her composure and managed to answer with just the smallest of smiles, and with all the solemnity in her tone that the moment clearly deserved.
“Why, yes, I did,” she said. “Thank you, Peter. I thought you were very clever indeed.”
“Ha!” Peter exclaimed, dancing a little on the balls of his feet. “I knew you would! Tink said you wouldn’t. But I told her she was wrong about you.” The little red dragon that had landed on his shoulder turned an even deeper shade of red and jingled loudly in his ear. “That’s enough,” he scolded the tiny thing. “You must apologize at once!”
Tinker Bell jingled again, but with significantly less enthusiasm.
Peter cocked his head back and turned it as far as he could so he could address the dragon sitting on his shoulder. “That was a terrible apology,” he told her. “You didn’t mean it at all. Look at you. You’re just as red as before.”
“I’m sorry,” Wendy interrupted, “but what is she apologizing for, exactly?”
Peter answered without looking away from Tinker Bell. “She
was following you. She was supposed to tell me when you reached the island with the portal. Then I was going to come get you and fly you through it. It was a very clever plan, but Tinker Bell didn’t tell me when you got there.” He said this last in a firm sort of tone that left no question how he felt about the matter, and Tinker Bell finally shimmered into a desultory shade of blue.
Only then did Peter turn to face Wendy. “At least you found your own way, which was very clever of you, too. I’ve always known you were clever. Perhaps even as clever as I am. How did you do it?”
Wendy smiled. He always had known she was clever. From their very first sword fight, the moment he realized she had tricked him. She hadn’t had to prove it over and over again. Not like she had with John and Michael and even Hook, who was only just now beginning to acknowledge her capabilities. Peter had seen it and accepted it from the very beginning.
She was about to reply when Hook stepped forward and scowled (whether because of Peter himself or because of the way Wendy was suddenly smiling at him is anyone’s guess.)
“You signaled for a truce. Did you come aboard to discuss anything of importance, or merely to tell us how clever you are?” Hook demanded.
“It’s only the truth,” Peter replied, very matter-of-factly. “I am clever. Not that you’ve ever bothered to notice.” He frowned at Hook in profound disappointment, but then the moment passed and he turned back to Wendy, smiling broadly. “But, as it happens, there is something else. The Wendy, I came to ask you something.”
He paused and frowned again, but just a little—the sort of frown that said he was trying to work something out—and then he started to mumble. “This isn’t how it’s done, is it? When a man asks a woman something important. I’ve seen it done before. How does it go? Oh, right! Yes, I have it now.”
He lowered himself to one knee, and then he stared up into Wendy’s eyes. “The Wendy,” he said, “would you please do me the honor of being my navigator?”
hat?” For one brief moment, Wendy had thought Peter was about to ask her something else entirely, and the mere thought of it had filled her with—well, perhaps with just the tiniest hint of a thrill at first, followed by a profound wave of terror. Then she had realized her mistake—that that was not what he was asking, and she had felt a tremendous surge of relief, trimmed with perhaps just the smallest hint of disappointment, which led in turn to a wave of embarrassment that left her blushing for all the wrong reasons.
The whole experience had lasted barely a moment, but it left her feeling thoroughly befuddled. “What?” was all she could come up with to say.
As it happened, Hook said the exact same thing in the exact same moment, although in a very different tone and for very different reasons. His “what” sounded more like this: “WHAT?”
Wendy and Peter both turned to stare at him.
“She cannot,” Hook declared. His voice was much quieter now, but he sounded decidedly firm on the subject.
Although he couldn’t help but recognize the irony.
If anyone had told him, back when he first met her, that this woman would soon be serving on his ship in even the lowest, most limited capacity, he would have laughed them right out of London. Now, she was the only member of the crew who he knew for certain could keep his flying ship in the air. He had to keep her, at any cost.
“Why not?” Peter asked. He remained poised in front of Wendy on one knee, showing no sign of rising. “She’s an excellent navigator. She’s proven it. She found her way here, after all, which isn’t easy. Not even with a kiss, although she did a very good job in procuring it.”
Hook’s eyes widened, then narrowed, then snapped to Wendy, demanding an explanation.
“It isn’t what you think,” she blurted out. “Or, rather, it isn’t what he thinks. I … argh!” She expelled her breath in a mild burst of exasperation. She held up her fist but couldn’t open it for fear that the coin within might leap away. “The trinket that’s tied to the dust. The one that flies his ship. He calls it a kiss.”
“Because that’s what it is,” Peter insisted.
Wendy sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and met Hook’s gaze, wiggling her fist subtly back and forth in the air.
“Yes … well … be that as it may,” Hook replied slowly, “Miss Darling’s competence is not in question. In fact, far from it. She cannot serve as your navigator because she is already serving England as the navigator of The Pegasus.”
Charlie, who was still at the helm, raised both eyebrows and glanced at Hook out of the corner of his eye. In fact, every crewman who had been close enough to hear the sudden pronouncement did the exact same thing, each of them glancing at Hook while trying studiously not to look as though they were looking.
Hook did his best not to sigh. This was exactly what he had been trying to avoid. Everyone knew she had been acting as the ship’s navigator, but he had never given her the official rank and title. Now, he had acknowledged the woman’s position in front of his crew, and any special accommodations he made for her from this moment forward would be seen as a weakness. A crack in the discipline of his ship. An invitation to the kind of grumbling that could eventually lead to mutiny.
Well, he wasn’t about to let anyone think she would be getting special treatment. Not from him.
“Besides which,” he added, addressing Pan but knowing full well that Wendy could hear every word, “you are an enemy of the crown. If she were to join your crew, it would be an act of treason.”
Wendy’s left eyebrow, which had remained eerily quiet throughout the entire journey from England—through everlost attacks and mystical fogs and mountain treks and clandestine raids—now stretched, awakening from its long slumber, and arched itself to its full height. When one small corner flicked upward in the barest hint of triumph, Hook felt such a sinking in the pit of his stomach that his eyes glanced to the horizon, checking to see whether The Pegasus had begun to fall again.
“Well,” Wendy said lightly, “that might be true, I suppose, if I were an actual member of the Royal Navy. That is to say, if I were not merely attached to the regiment, but were a true naval officer. A true, commissioned naval officer.”
Wendy’s right eyebrow, which only just now had come to understand what was happening, raised itself in full unity with the left, and together they offered up a silent challenge—a challenge that left Hook no choice.
He set his lips in a tight line, but then he nodded, subtly, and Wendy smiled. But only for a moment. Then she turned to Peter with a look of sincere regret—a look so sincere that Hook understood how sorely tempted she had been by the offer, and how close he had come to losing her.
“I’m truly sorry, Peter,” she said softly, “but I must honor my commission, and my position as the navigator of The Pegasus, until such time as I am at liberty to leave the king’s service. But perhaps we might assist each other in some other way. Tell me, why did your men attack us? And why did they run from you?”
“Oh, those aren’t my men. That was Blackheart. He doesn’t understand the game.”
“The game?” Wendy asked.
“The raiding game. Gathering flour and sugar and stories for the things they miss. Blackheart doesn’t play with us anymore.”
“What do you mean? That he doesn’t play anymore?”
“He doesn’t like games,” Peter said. “He only likes fighting if it’s real.” His expression fell, so briefly that neither Hook nor Wendy could be sure they had seen it change at all, and then his smile returned, as bright as ever. “The Wendy,” he said, “you must be my navigator. How can I convince you?”
If there was any moment during the entire exchange in which Hook was most tempted to shoot the everlost and be done with it, this was that moment. But as badly as he wanted to kill Peter Pan, they were flying through enemy territory, and he needed information even more. If Pan was willing to tell Wendy what they needed to know, then he was too valuable alive, at least for now.
B
esides which, Hook could see the subtle signs of fatigue wearing on his navigator, no matter how hard she struggled not to let them show. Her eyelids were starting to droop, her shoulders had lost their usual square defiance, and she kept pressing one hand to her head, massaging her right temple.
They needed a safe place to land—a refuge where she could rest. Even if he had to procure it from the man he hated most in all the world.
“Before you convince her, you must convince me,” Hook replied coldly. “I am her captain. If you can prove to me that she is of more use to the king’s service aboard your own vessel, as an emissary to the crown, then, perhaps, I might permit it. But first—”
“Yes!” Peter blurted out, and he leaped to his feet. “An emissary and a navigator and a storyteller and a Wendy. She could be all four things to us at once! That’s a brilliant idea!”
“But first,” Hook repeated, even more firmly, “we need information. And a safe haven, from which to plan our … our joint operation.”
It hurt him to say the words, even as a ruse, but he managed to spit them out nonetheless.
“It is a fair request,” Peter agreed. “I know a place where you will be safe. And I will take you to someone who can answer your questions. You’ll like her. She blames me for everything.” A tiny smile played across Wendy’s lips, but it disappeared before either Hook or Peter could catch it. “Follow our ship, and I’ll show you where you can hide. But follow us exactly. You don’t want to attract Snaggleclaw’s attention. He might be old, but he could still rip you to shreds.”
“Snaggleclaw?” Wendy asked.
“You’ll be all right,” Peter assured her. “What you did, flying straight at us and then up and over just in time? Why, I don’t think anyone but me could have done better!” And then he added, his tone exceedingly gentle, “Even then, only just a little better. And I’ve been flying a very long time.”
The Navigator Page 14
