“But the boy was determined to follow in his father’s footsteps, and so he looked everywhere for a way to be rid of his boring flesh-and-blood hand. He considered cutting it off himself but decided against it. It’s a very painful thing to do, after all, and generally ill-advised.
“He asked the butcher, who had a magnificent cleaver and could have taken it off for him in a single blow, but the butcher refused. ‘Don’t be daft,’ the butcher said. ‘Nothing wrong with having two hands. I have two hands, and I do just fine.’
“The boy asked a woodsman, who was chopping wood for his fire one winter morning. But the woodsman didn’t recognize the boy and confused him for an addled beggar. He gave the boy a hunk of bread and a hunk of cheese and sent him on his way.
“Finally, the boy joined the Royal Navy. It was a dangerous life, and he thought surely he would find a way to lose his hand in service to the king. Then they would give him a fine, shining hook, just like his father’s. Which is how I met him.
“My crew and I had arrived in England to free a poor orphan boy from brutal, daily lashings, but on our way to the orphanage, we had the misfortune of running across Hook and his men. A great battle ensued, with excellent form on both sides.”
“Good form! Good form!” the everlost cheered, interrupting for a moment, but Peter only nodded.
“He tried to run me through, but I grabbed him by the wrist just in time.”
“Unhand me, vile creature!” he shouted, so, of course, I obliged him, lopping off his hand with my sword in a single blow. Now, I had no idea how badly he had wanted to be rid of his hand, so I tried to put it back on for him. The entire battle had meant to be in good fun, without any serious injury on either side. But he refused.
“‘Stay away from me,’ he shouted. I tried a second time, extending his hand toward his wrist, which was bleeding fiercely, but he screamed and ran from me, escaping into the city before I could return the limb to its rightful place.
“Now, I am a collector of stories, as I’m sure you know, so I understand that these things must always happen in threes. I stored the hand in Neverland, to preserve it in case he might want it back, and I searched for him for several months until I finally discovered a tavern where he often dined. I fetched the hand from Neverland, approaching him a third and final time, but again he refused my assistance, trying instead to run me through for my trouble.
“That’s how, in the end, I came to understand that he didn’t want me to put it back. I tried three times, and I was refused three times. He got his hook, and I was glad to be the one to finally help him after all those years.”
“Good form!” the everlost all cheered, pounding their mugs on the long table. “Good form!”
Wendy sat in silence for what seemed like a very long time, until she finally asked, “What did you do with it?”
“With what?” Peter asked.
“With the hand,” Wendy clarified.
“Oh, that.” Peter waved his own hand in the air dismissively. “Well, we were in England for a while after that before returning home, so I’m afraid it had begun to stink. In the end, I threw it overboard. It’s just one more way in which a hook is much better than a hand, if you stop to think about it.”
t last, it was time, and those who would carry out the plan assembled on the deck of The Pegasus.
“We fly together!” Hook’s strong baritone carried easily through the night air. If he failed to look any of the everlost in the eye as he said these words, no one blamed him—least of all Peter, who would have forgotten the slight right away even if he had noticed it.
Which he didn’t.
“Mr. Hawke will fly The Pegasus to the crocodile’s swamp, where the everlost will debark to distract the beast, luring it away from the vessel below. Once that has been accomplished, they will continue to engage the creature while we drop a second crew to free the abandoned ship, commandeer its flying trinket, and sail her to safety.
“Once I reach the deck of the abandoned vessel, Mr. Hawke will take command of The Pegasus, raising her to the safety of the skies. When we free the new ship and raise her into the air, the everlost will know that the mission has been successful and shall then disengage, either rejoining The Pegasus or sailing with us on our new vessel, whichever is most expedient.
“It is a simple plan and a good one, and I fully expect it to be successful. If, however, I should not return, Mr. Hawke will become your captain, and you are to follow his command in carrying out the interests of England and the Kingdom of Britain.”
Tigerlilja, Vegard, and several of their clansmen were also on board, both as local guides and as additional hands, given how depleted Hook’s forces had become in sending so many ships back to England. It was understood, however, that no Englishman would ever be their captain, so they raised no objection to the matter.
And so The Pegasus took off, rising into the sky in Charlie’s capable hands, and soon enough they had left the night behind them, much to everyone’s relief. They followed the river back to the Norsemen’s village and then continued on, until the forested hills gave way to a vast open grassland that reminded Wendy very much of the plains of Africa, or at least what she had read about them and seen in occasional illustrations.
She thought of Tigerlilja’s example of lions in Neverland, and as though the very idea had conjured them, a tremendous herd of antelope that had been grazing among the tall grasses, all but hidden from view, suddenly burst into motion, fleeing from the shadow of the ship overhead.
“Oh!” Wendy exclaimed. “They’re beautiful! Charlie, come see!”
But Charlie didn’t answer, and his eyes never left the sky. As hard as Wendy had to focus when she was flying a ship, the process was even harder for Charlie. She found herself watching him a little sadly, glad he had learned to fly but sorry he was missing all the sights below.
Thomas interrupted her thoughts, joining her at the railing and leaning over the edge, much farther than was probably wise. “Extraordinary!” he exclaimed. “Hippotragus leucophaeus!”
“I’m not familiar with that one, I’m afraid,” Wendy told him. She could have identified most of the larger species of African animals by their scientific names, but she certainly didn’t know every variety of antelope.
“Bluebucks, as they’re more commonly known. From the Cape Colony. Rumors would suggest their numbers have been dwindling, but these don’t seem to be suffering in the least.”
They watched together as the herd flowed along the plains, running and leaping through the tall grass, until it finally veered away toward the right and diminished into the distance.
The grasslands extended on for miles until finally they began to change. Unlike the hard line between the night valley and the blue jungle, this distinction was more subtle, the swamp-like nature of the land emerging gradually. But the closer they got to the croc’s lair, the swampier things became.
The isolated trees that dotted the plains gave way to tall, moss-laden trunks that grew straight out of the muck. Each one grew shoulder to shoulder with the next, eerily smooth, with warped branches that twined around each other—whether reaching out for comfort or trying to choke the life out of its neighbors, Wendy couldn’t say.
Small, unseen creatures plunked into the water or slithered through the hanging foliage, but the thing Wendy noticed above everything else was the ungodly stench of the place. It reeked like death, and the closer they came to the center, the worse it got, as though anything that died here was never quite finished decaying—hanging on to the gruesome tatters of zombified flesh, clinging to the memory of life far longer than anything had a right to.
It gave Wendy the chills, and goose bumps raced up her arms. Everyone else just covered their noses and tried not to retch.
“Captain?” Charlie asked. He had brought the ship closer to the ground as they approached their destination, but now he wondered if he should raise it again, seeking fresh air while they waited to spot the croc.
“Hold steady, Mr. Hawke,” Hook responded immediately. “We’ll never find the beast from up high.”
“We might not find it anyway,” Wendy commented. “We can’t take the ship beneath the canopy. She’ll never fit through. But we can’t see a thing from here.”
It was true. The boughs from which the moss hung were twisted so tightly together that the crew would be lucky to make it through themselves, let alone an entire ship.
“The grounded vessel is below us, more or less,” Tigerlilja told them. “We’re very close. The croc will be nearby.”
Hook grunted. “Then we shall adapt,” he told her. “Pan! Get down there with your men. Find the beast. Send one of your little bell people to tell us when you have him.”
Charming frowned in disapproval, and Tinker Bell, who had been riding on Peter’s shoulder, launched herself toward Hook in a fury. She proceeded to lecture him soundly on the rudeness of speaking down to people—especially people who had been protecting his kind for centuries and practicing the most intricate and complicated of magics while his own ancestors were still building homes out of foraged sticks and mud.
But, of course, all Hook heard was a tirade of jumbled, discordant jingling.
“She’ll do,” he said.
“Now, Tink,” Peter interjected quickly, “don’t be angry. It isn’t an insult to be called a little bell person. Being small has a lot of advantages! You can explore all sorts of places that I can never go. It makes me quite envious, to tell you the truth. And your language is lovely. I wish I could speak it myself, but I don’t have the means. No one can imitate an innisfay. Your people are unique in all the world.”
At this, Tinker Bell seemed mollified. She turned her nose up at Hook and returned to Peter, her hair morphing from red into its habitual golden hue.
“Would you please go find the croc for me and tell me where he is?” Peter asked her. “Don’t get too close, though. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you. But I would appreciate it very much if you would find him. It would be a great service to me.”
Peter delivered this request in the most solemn tones, and with every passing word Tinker Bell’s hair glowed more brightly until it hurt Wendy’s eyes even to look at her. With a tiny, proud trill, Tinker Bell darted to the railing and dove through the foliage. For a brief moment, Wendy followed her light through the leaves, but then even it too was swallowed up by the reek and the darkness, until there was no sign that the tiny innisfay had ever been there at all.
hey waited for what felt like ages—Wendy, Charming, Peter, Thomas, Hook, John, Michael, Tigerlilja, Vegard, and the rest—all lined up at the ship’s railing. They stared into the unfathomable depths below, straining their eyes and ears for any sign of what might be happening. But there was nothing to see. Just trees and moss and more trees in a vast blanket of green and shadow. And all was quiet. Rancid, unfortunately, but quiet.
Until it wasn’t.
The scream was unlike anything Wendy had ever heard. Halfway between a roar and a cry of anguish, it started as a rumbling growl she could feel down to her bones, then rose into a gravelly sort of screech that set her teeth on edge and made her clap her hands over her ears.
“What is that?” she shouted, hardly able to hear her own voice over the cacophony.
“Tinker Bell,” Peter shouted back.
“Tinker Bell? That’s Tinker Bell making that awful racket?”
“No, that’s the demon croc,” Peter yelled with a grin. “But only Tinker Bell could have made it that angry. Time to go!”
He circled one hand over his head to signal the rest of the everlost, and with a grand whoop, he leaped to the railing, jumped off, and spun, so that he ended up facing Wendy. He watched as the rest of his crew did the same, until all seven of them hovered in midair. Then Peter crossed his arms in front of him with his palms pressed flat to his chest, winked, and dropped through the foliage like a stone.
Wendy leaned over the railing and watched, her hands pressed tightly to her ears, as the swamp swallowed him whole. Suddenly, the screaming stopped, followed by a loud crash. The treetop beneath them listed wildly before snapping straight again. One after another, more trees did the same. The swaying proceeded in a line from one tree to the next—a wave through the canopy that moved away from their position much faster than Wendy would have predicted.
“Come and get me, you yellow-bellied excuse for a lizard!” they heard Pan shout. “You’ll never catch me!”
Wendy wanted to chuckle as the sounds faded into the distance, but she turned at that exact moment to find Hook glowering at her.
“Let’s go,” Hook said. They had prepared long ropes for this part of the plan, and now the crew slung them over the side of the flying ship, dropping them through the trees.
As it happened, Wendy had never climbed down a rope over the edge of a flying ship before, but she discovered very early on in the process that she did not care for it. She did not care for it at all. The line was rough and scraped her hands, so she did her best to support most of her weight with her legs, which she wrapped around the rope tightly, clinging on for dear life.
To make matters worse, the rank air of the swamp was hot and humid, making her palms sweat terribly. She had to pause every few moments to wipe her hands on her vest, carefully, one at a time, before she could descend another few feet, only to stop and wipe them off all over again.
At least she could see the ground once she broke through the upper canopy. The ship lay directly below her—a beauty, in Wendy’s opinion. (But, then again, she was partial to ships, so her opinion might have been somewhat biased.) In any event, it was about the same size as The Pegasus and did not seem to be damaged, at least not as far as Wendy could tell. She hoped the same would be true once they could see the hull beneath.
The descent proceeded uneventfully, and it was not until Wendy had almost reached the bottom of the rope that everything started to go horribly, terrifyingly wrong.
Hook, you see, reached the deck of the ship just before Wendy, and the moment his feet touched the deck, a chill raced through Wendy’s entire body. Suddenly, she was freezing cold, despite the heat of the swamp, and something made her turn toward the right, peering into the depths of the swamp, even though nothing at all seemed to be out of the ordinary.
“It’s coming,” she whispered.
“What’s that?” Hook asked, entirely unconcerned.
“It’s coming!” she shouted. “It knows we’re here!” She let go of the rope and dropped the last few feet to the deck. “Charming, find me the ship’s trinket! Hurry!”
“Miss Darling,” Hook said, looking confused, “it can’t possibly know that. You can’t possibly know that.”
But even while he was speaking, John and Michael had already exchanged a look that said, “When have we ever known Wendy to be wrong about magic? And even if she could be wrong, wouldn’t it be smarter to act now and discover later that there was no need for it, rather than the other way around?”
“Find the anchor!” John shouted. “Free the ship! Guards, to arms!”
The men all looked to Hook, surprised that anyone else was barking orders at them in such a commanding way. Hook, in turn, stared in surprise at John, who looked right back at him with such an intense look of pleading in his eyes that Hook eventually nodded. The orders were strictly according to plan, after all, and hurrying seemed like a good idea, even if Wendy was just responding to her feminine sensitivities.
Which, in a way, she was. But not in the way Hook believed.
In fact, Hook had a terrible habit of forgetting why they had brought Wendy along in the first place—why she had been employed by the Home Office, why she had been such an important part of the goings-on in both Dover and Hertfordshire, and why she had ultimately earned a position on Hook’s crew.
Wendy was highly sensitive to magic.
And the croc, as Tigerlilja had told them, was a creature of an intensely magical nature—a hideously
dark magic, to be sure, but magic nonetheless. So Wendy could feel it. She knew exactly where it was, and the moment Hook’s feet had touched the deck, she had felt it turn back toward them. Even now, it was crashing through the swamplands at an alarming rate. They couldn’t hear it yet, but by the time they could, it would be too late. Wendy knew all this, and, fortunately for everyone involved, John and Michael trusted her.
So John mustered the designated guards, making sure their muskets were at the ready, loaded with silver bullets and gunpowder, while Michael led a team in hauling up the abandoned lines and preparing for flight. And all the while, Hook stood on deck looking suitably commanding, even though he was doing nothing in particular to move the job along.
Not, that is, until Peter appeared by the side of the ship.
“Pan!” Hook shouted. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be distracting that croc!”
“I was,” Pan said, shrugging in midair, “but it doesn’t want to play anymore.”
“What?”
“That’s what I came back to tell you,” Peter said. “It won’t follow us anymore. It’s heading straight back here. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear one of you has been here before. It’s acting like it has your scent.”
Wendy stared at Peter. “No,” she said.
“What?” Peter asked.
“Peter,” she said slowly. “I need you to think for a moment, all right? This is very important. Where …?” Her voice trailed off. She stared at Hook. And then she stared at Peter. She knew exactly what had happened. Peter had thrown Hook’s hand away in this swamp. The croc’s swamp. And now it was coming back for Hook. But she also realized that, under the circumstances, it was probably best not to let Hook know that.
“Never mind,” she said, to which Peter just shrugged. “Charming,” she called out. “Charming! I need that trinket! Now!”
The innisfay darted out of the bowels of the ship, carrying what looked to Wendy like the knucklebone of a sheep. It surprised her, since it was the first trinket she had seen that was not made of metal, but as soon as she took it in her hand, it warmed to her touch.
The Navigator Page 20
