The Navigator

by Sky, Erin Michelle; Brown, Steven;

  “I have a ship,” Hook snapped. “Blackheart had stolen another ship and was about to make it fly. We stole it from him and finished the job.”

  “So we have two ships!” Tigerlilja exclaimed. It was the first time Wendy had seen her look even remotely hopeful since they had arrived.

  “I have a ship,” Hook said slowly. “And Pan has a ship. We do not have anything.”

  “But the enemy of our enemy …” Tigerlilja said.

  She left the adage hanging in the air for Hook to finish for himself. At last, he nodded. He didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded.

  “Still, two against five,” Vegard commented.

  “Three,” said Tigerlilja.

  “What? No. Absolutely not.” Vegard flashed her a dark look.

  “With three we’d have a chance!” Tigerlilja stared her brother down.

  “Sorry?” Wendy asked.

  “There’s another ship Blackheart lost,” Tigerlilja explained. “And we know where it is.”

  “He didn’t lose it,” Vegard protested. “He abandoned it. Big difference. We agreed not to go after it.”

  “We agreed when we would have had two against five. Now it could be three against five. We might never have better odds.”

  Vegard scowled but fell silent. Apparently, the matter had been decided. Tigerlilja turned to Hook and spoke again.

  “One of the creatures that Neverland created for Blackheart was too strong-willed for him to control. It looks like a giant crocodile, but it’s far more than that. It’s some kind of demon-spawn, with powerful magic in its own right. It broke free in the hold of one of his ships. The crew grounded the vessel and abandoned it before they could be eaten alive.

  “Blackheart sent a few men back to try to retrieve it, but none of them escaped. The croc never forgets a man once he has his scent. A dark, foggy swamp formed around the entire ship, and the croc lives there now, feeding on anything unfortunate enough to wander into its territory.”

  “How long ago was this?” Hook asked, his eyes narrow.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Tigerlilja told him, “but the ship still seems to be in good shape, as far as we can tell. The croc hasn’t destroyed it. And Neverland has a way of preserving things. You’d never believe how old I am.” She smiled grimly when she said this last bit, but she forged ahead without waiting for a reply. “The ship is still salvageable. If we can retrieve it and use it to fight Blackheart before he gets any stronger, we might actually have a chance. I would gladly pledge my warriors to the cause.”

  Vegard nodded in silent agreement.

  “Why?” Hook demanded, watching both with suspicion. “Why would your men risk their lives for England?”

  “We wouldn’t,” Tigerlilja said simply. “But we would fight to the death for Neverland.”

  n alliance. With Pan. And a Viking woman.

  How had his life come to this?

  Hook stood next to Vegard in the bow of a clan longboat, silently bemoaning his fate. The river, they had been told, was a faster way to return, so they had split up the party between the two boats and were now rowing toward the valley. Hook had refused to be in the same vessel with Pan, but in the end it hadn’t mattered. The flying man was executing loop-the-loops in the clear blue sky.

  “Stop that right now! Are you trying to get us all killed?” Tigerlilja turned her face toward the heavens, yelling at Peter—and several of the tiny fairies that zipped around the Vikings stopped in midair to shake angry, sparking fists in his direction—but Peter paid them no heed.

  “Killed?” Hook was standing next to the clanswoman, and he asked the question calmly. Casually. As though nothing could possibly make the situation any worse, so they might as well add the immediate threat of death to the list.

  “Blackheart watches the skies,” she told him. “I’d rather not attract his attention.”

  “Is he likely to have a ship nearby?” Hook scanned the sky for any sign of Blackheart’s fleet, but he saw only Pan, who was now executing such a large loop through the air that the bottom of it took him all the way down to the river. He sliced through the surface and sped along underwater on his back, surfacing near the other longboat to smile up at Wendy.

  “No. Neverland is vast, and he tends to stay clear of the village. We might not fly, but we can still hold our own in a fight.”

  Although she wore the same casual clothing as she had in the longhouse, she carried a bow with her on the longboat and had a quiver of arrows strapped to her back. In the blink of an eye, she knocked an arrow to the bow and whistled two quick notes. The closest of the tiny fairies darted in to grab the arrow just before Tigerlilja let it fly. The missile thudded into the trunk of a tree near the shoreline, and a small fireball exploded around it, presumably thanks to the fairy.

  It was one of the fastest, most efficient shots Hook had ever seen. He barely had time to react before the rest of Tigerlilja’s clansmen in both boats had stowed their oars and risen to their feet, bows in hand and arrows at the ready, scanning for danger. Tigerlilja gestured twice with her fingers splayed wide, palm flat to the ground, and they all turned and sat in the same moment, picking up their oars again.

  “Impressive,” Hook said, which was high praise indeed.

  “It’s enough to keep Blackheart from attacking us directly. After all, we’re not really in his way. Or, at least, we haven’t been. But it’s no defense against cannons,” she replied gravely.

  “Still,” Hook told her, “I’ve seen British platoons that weren’t as well trained. If Blackheart’s ships leave you alone, where’s the threat?”

  “The fairies,” she said simply. “They’re a proud people, and their favorite thing to do in all the world is brag to each other. So all the goings-on of Neverland spread from one to the next like wildfire. Our tiny elementals tend to stay with us, and Tinker Bell is fiercely loyal to Peter, but the innisfay are everywhere. If they see Peter in the sky, they’ll investigate. And then Blackheart will hear about it. He’ll know you’re here. And that you’ve met with us.”

  “Putting your village in danger,” Hook realized.

  “Yes.”

  Hook watched in silence as Peter took off into the sky again. The everlost was out of control. Even if Hook put their past aside—which he could only just barely do, even for the sake of his own hypothetical musings—Pan could still destroy the alliance before it had even begun. And if they survived long enough to salvage this croc ship and put some kind of war plan in place, how in all the heavens were they supposed to count on that idiot in the heat of battle? He’d be throwing verbal taunts against cannon fire.

  For a moment, Hook indulged himself in the fond image of Pan hurling an insult at Blackheart’s warship only to have that smirk wiped off his face by a cannonball to the gut.

  A small smile played across Hook’s lips, and his hair danced joyfully in the light breeze, but then his expression fell, his hopes dashed to the proverbial rocks by reality. He needed Pan. Needed him. For his ship and his crew. But not like this. Not this impish, undisciplined boy who couldn’t focus on anything serious to save his life.

  Or, at least, anything except Wendy.

  Hook watched as Peter flew back toward the woman, circling her and laughing before flying high into the sky.

  Wendy. Of course. She could control him. He didn’t like to admit it, not even to himself, but of all his crew that remained, she stood second only to Charlie—not just in rank, but in his trust. She had proven her competence and dedication under fire. She had saved the ship in the heat of battle. She was clever. Resourceful. And Pan listened to her. No, more than that, Pan lived to please her. Even a fool could see that. She was everything Hook could ask for in a British presence on Pan’s ship. She could bring Pan under control and make sure the ship carried out its mission.

  But she was also the only one who could fly The Pegasus.

  By solving one problem, he would only create a new one. Unless … unless she could teac
h someone else?

  He thought of himself, but only for a moment. He couldn’t spend all his concentration on flying the ship. He needed to orchestrate the battle. Command the men. Besides which, he couldn’t allow his crew to see him struggling under the tutelage of a woman. It would undermine his authority, and he had not risen through the ranks by allowing the seeds of mutiny to be sown among his crew.

  No, it had to be someone else. And the first answer was obvious.

  Charlie.

  He was her childhood friend and one of the few men on the ship who would take her instruction. The young man had been the ship’s navigator before Wendy arrived. Mr. Hawke would merely be returning to his post, a fact that might even help with the men, some of whom were already grumbling about a woman navigator and what the Royal Navy was coming to.

  Ideally, Hook mused, they would needed at least one more—a man to fly the croc ship. Perhaps the lieutenant or sergeant of Wendy’s own platoon might show some affinity for flying. They were the only other men on board who would listen to her and held enough rank to be trusted with an entire ship. If they couldn’t do it, he would leave the croc vessel to the Vikings and pray for the best.

  He already had a feeling that their fleet was going to consist of himself; Peter Pan (his mortal enemy, held in check by a woman); and a female Viking commander. Together, they would save England, or by God he would die trying.

  Because if he failed, he didn’t want to live to hear what they would say about him in London.

  emember,” Wendy said to John, “don’t think about moving the ship. Just think about moving yourself. The ship will move with you. Up, but only a little, and not very quickly. That part’s important.”

  “Is it? Because the bit about not letting us plummet to our collective death seems like the important thing to me,” John grumbled.

  Wendy only smiled. “You can do it,” she told him. “I believe in you.”

  They stood together at the helm of The Pegasus, the repairs to the keel having been completed in record time. Hook stood on deck next to Michael, several yards away—partly to watch the proceedings, partly as a silent show of faith, and partly to make sure the rest of the crew didn’t get out of line.

  Most of the men stood safely on the ground, well away from the ship’s berth, crowded around the ale kegs that Smee had “protected” by having them hauled out of the galley and off the ship altogether.

  “Let’s see it then!” Smee shouted up at them. “Fly, little pigeon!”

  The men around him erupted into a chorus of cooing noises, and then a tiny golden pigeon burst out of the trees nearby, heading straight for the ship. The men pointed and cooed even more loudly.

  “Knows its own kind, it does!” Smee shouted, and the men laughed in approval.

  The pigeon—who was Tinker Bell, of course—circled John’s head twice, mocking him in dulcet tones, until Charming turned into a little red hawk and chased her off.

  Hook glared at the men severely, and they quieted—at least for the most part. But the moonlight made it hard to tell one man among the crew from another, and this made them braver than they might have been otherwise. Every so often, a barely audible warble floated up through the night, followed by a new round of muted chuckles.

  John pretended not to hear them. He frowned a little, holding the coin tightly in the palm of his hand, and everyone on the deck fell still. “I think …” he said quietly, and then, “almost …” at which Wendy held her breath, her eyes flashing with excitement, and then, finally …

  “No. No, I can’t do it,” John pronounced. He dropped his hand down to his side, puffed out his cheeks, and expelled a huge breath in frustration.

  “Perhaps,” Hook commented dryly, “you don’t have the proper motivation. Take us up, Miss Darling.”

  “Captain?” she asked. “But—”

  “Take us up,” he snapped. In truth, his motivation had nothing to do with her lessons. He just wanted to get the ship off the ground—both to prevent the rest of the men from watching and to remind them of Wendy’s skill.

  John handed her the coin, and as soon as she closed her hand around it, the familiar hum of magic surged against her palm, ready to respond to her command.

  Up, she thought, and up they went, moving about as fast as the average crew member could run.

  “That’s enough,” Hook finally told her, once they were well out of range of the jeers below. They were quite high now, in fact, having risen about halfway up the mountainside. The wind was stronger here, but Wendy barely felt the pull of it—the sails remained furled for the purpose of their experiments, with no men in the rigging. “Now, let’s try it again. Miss Darling, if you please.”

  Wendy’s eyes opened wide, and her eyebrows rose to their fullest height in protest. “But, Captain, the coin becomes quite animated during flight,” she tried to explain. “If I open my hand, we’ll risk it jumping out altogether. Not to mention that we’re very high up.”

  Michael, who was standing close to the railing, leaned closer to glance over the edge and then slowly leaned away again. Charming perched nearby, still in the form of a hawk, his talons gripping the polished and oiled wood, and the two of them shared a look that said, quite clearly, “This seems like a very bad idea.”

  “Miss Darling,” Hook said (whether he failed to notice their opinion or simply ignored it is impossible to say), “how does a baby bird learn to fly?”

  “It leaps from the nest,” Wendy admitted, but then she added, rather hastily, “when it knows it’s ready.”

  “And how can it know until it tries?” Hook asked. “I would posit that it becomes ready in the moment it comes face to face with its own mortality. With this as our working hypothesis, Miss Darling, hand the coin to the lieutenant.”

  She hesitated a moment longer, but Hook’s gaze held steady, and she knew he would not reconsider. She squared her shoulders, trying to look confident, and turned to John.

  “You can do it,” she said gently. “The coin will try to get away from you, but it isn’t strong, just insistent. Hold on tight and you’ll be fine. Put your hand over mine, and get ready to close your fist around it.”

  John gulped and nodded mutely. Wendy held out her fist, palm up, and John covered it with his hand.

  “Are you ready?” Wendy asked.

  John gulped again and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, exhaled it, opened his eyes, and said, “Ready.”

  The moment Wendy opened her hand, the coin jumped away from her, just as she had expected, but John’s hand was waiting for it. He closed his fist around it, and then the ship fell out from under them.

  Fortunately, gravity seemed to work the same way in Neverland that it does everywhere else, so they remained with the ship, but they were not so much standing on it as they were falling with it, which is not at all the same thing. When one is standing on something, that something is pushing back against the soles of the feet—a sturdy platform upon which one can faithfully rely. When one is falling with something, one is still very much falling, despite the illusion of stability beneath, and any wrong sort of bump or shove will end that illusion immediately.

  This is exactly what happened to John.

  In his surprise, he stumbled, so instead of falling in a dignified manner like the others, with his feet beneath him, he ended up tumbling through the air, and before he knew it he was completely upside down, his hands now where his feet had been. If John had started out this entire business in a panic, his new circumstances only made things worse, and he scrabbled uselessly at the deck, trying to grab hold of it.

  Which, sadly, meant that he let go of the coin.

  So there they were—the ship, Captain Hook, John, Michael, Wendy, and the coin—all falling together and yet each of them now falling alone, without the simple benefit of the earth that had always connected them to each other. Realizing his mistake, John tried to reach for the coin, but in his panicked state he only knocked it farther away, so that none of th
em had any chance to reach it.

  None of them, that is, except Charming.

  The innisfay, still in the shape of a hawk, was not falling. He was clinging to the rail with his sharp hawk talons and taking in the entire situation with his sharp hawk eyes. So when John knocked the coin out of reach, Charming leaped off the railing and sped toward it, grabbed it in his claws, and delivered it to Wendy in the nick of time.

  She had just enough time to slow their descent safely without smashing into the valley below, and she settled the ship into its cradle as though she did this sort of thing every day, although her legs were shaking so badly she had to sit down for a moment once they had landed.

  “With your permission, Captain,” she said, “I think I’ve had enough flying for today.”

  Hook merely nodded his agreement. If he chose to avoid his quarters for the next several hours, napping instead in a hammock strung tightly between two trees, no one said a word.

  lying lessons proceeded more cautiously after that, beginning always from the safety of the ground, but the men no longer laughed. The sight of their beloved ship falling toward them like a stone had been sobering. Now they watched from farther away, standing beneath the pines in small, silent clusters.

  The tension seemed far worse to Wendy than their ridicule, and she could tell Michael felt it, too. She had been so sure he would be able to do it—to lift the ship into the heavens and fly beneath the stars—but throughout several long hours, the vessel showed no sign of moving at all.

  “Enough,” Hook finally muttered. “Everyone rest. Eat something. Not that you can tell when it’s time to do either in this Godforsaken darkness.”

  Wendy had never been one for brooding, but in her heart of hearts, she was beginning to agree. It was exhausting never to see the sun. Unsettling. She wished she could hold these flying lessons in the light of day, where the men would be at their best. She hadn’t spent this much time beneath the night sky since …