Straight On Till Morning

by Liz Braswell

  “Or…does it?”

  She frowned, as if puzzled.

  “Everyone knows the story of the time he cut your hand off. So there must have been a time before you had your hook.”

  The captain looked at his hook with something like surprise.

  “It was a long time ago…” he said, almost as if he was having trouble remembering.

  “But it’s still a change.”

  The pirates looked at each other, confused. Even the Lost Boys looked uncertain of where she was going with this. Slightly alone seemed to be concentrating on something else—but the minute wiggles of his shoulders hinted it was probably because he was trying to cut himself free.

  “There have been other changes, too,” she added, trying to think of something else to say. She had lost her train of thought—what else could she mention that would keep Hook interested? Where was she going with this all?

  She began to panic. Maybe she couldn’t pull this off. Maybe she was actually terrible at weaving stories on the spot that captured everyone’s attention.

  “I grow tired of your very obvious delaying tactics, Miss Darling,” Hook growled. “What changes? How do they relate to me?”

  Slightly’s arm spasmed; he had probably just cut his way through the last of his bonds.

  Valentine noticed this movement and frowned, pushing his way forward to look.

  “There are so many…unexpected things…” Wendy babbled, trying to find something that worked. “Not just from children’s imaginations…Never Land itself is making changes.…”

  “I have!” Skipper suddenly stood up—awkwardly, arms behind her back. “I mean, I am a change!”

  Everyone turned to stare at the Lost Boy. She stood terrified and defiant.

  Wendy’s heart nearly broke with gratitude.

  “Skipper, tell them who you are,” she said gently.

  “Explain yourself,” Hook ordered, aiming the pistol at her.

  “I’m a girl.”

  Her giant animal ears were already off, thrown back over her shoulders, making her look more human. There was nothing more she could do—no taking down of her hair, no revealing a corset, no obvious sign to indicate what she said was true.

  “I’m a girl,” she said more loudly, when she saw everyone’s confusion. “I just cut my hair. And stuff.”

  “A Lost Boy who’s a…girl?” Captain Hook said incredulously.

  Zane’s eyes were wide with interest; his face acquired a light that Wendy hadn’t seen in it before.

  “Aye, a girl,” Skipper said a little more defensively, and stuck her chin out.

  “A girl…what?” Ziggy asked.

  Everyone looked at the pirate.

  “What?” he demanded. He pointed at the rest of the Lost Boys. “That one’s a fox, that’s a bear, easy enough to see. What in the bloody deuce are you supposed to be? A girl what?”

  “Ah…a bilby?” Skipper cleared her throat and spoke more forcefully: “A bilby.”

  The pirates looked at her blankly, in silence.

  The Lost Boy grew red and shifted on her feet, now uncomfortable with all the attention.

  “A marsupial. Kind of like a hare, but with a long nose and tail,” Slightly explained helpfully.

  “Oh! You mean like a bandicoot?” Djareth said, recognition dawning on his face.

  “Exactly.”

  “They’re highly endangered, you know,” Screaming Byron told Zane.

  “All right, all right,” Hook said impatiently. “This is certainly a bizarre turn of events, but what has any of this to do with whatever warning you said you were giving me? What has this to do with changes?”

  “The warning is about precisely this; it’s about change, Hook,” Wendy said. “It comes slow to Never Land, but still it comes. A girl Lost Boy, for instance. And surely you’ve heard about the squabbles between Slightly and Peter?”

  “Of course,” Hook said with a sniff, looking exactly like a schoolboy who has been left out of a good gossip but desperately doesn’t want anyone to know. “Who hasn’t?”

  “Well, then it must have confounded you as much as everyone else! The inseparable Lost Boys! Peter’s endlessly brave and loyal crew! With leadership issues! Power struggles! And one of them is a girl!”

  “I still don’t see what this has to do with—”

  “Things are changing, Captain Hook. Never Land is changing. Slowly. It is settling in, aging.

  “And, it is obvious—you are as well.”

  Silence blanketed the ship. The pirates looked aghast.

  “Now see here, Miss Darling,” Hook said with a lilt in his voice as if it were all a joke—but his voice was shaky, and he raised the pistol to her.

  “Everyone knows why you started chasing Pan, the youthful, adventurous, dashing young fellow—”

  “It’s because he took my hand! He’s our greatest enemy! Isn’t that right, men?” Hook demanded.

  The pirates muttered and shook their heads.

  “All right,” Hook allowed. “Perhaps he’s my greatest enemy. He’s my nemesis. He’s my final opponent. He’s my—”

  “He’s your youth, Cap’n! Everybody knows it!” the Duke finally exploded.

  “What?” Hook roared. “Not this nonsense again!”

  “He is. Your youth,” Zane said tiredly. “Get it through yer thick skull. You’ve been chasing him all over Never Land and the seas between the worlds because you think you can recapture it. And him.”

  “Stuff and nonsense!” Hook said, shaking himself all over and resettling himself. “He’s an irritation, a thorn in my side, a veritable pain in my—”

  “And when you had your famous confrontation with him, finally,” Wendy interrupted, “he took your hand and fed it to the crocodile. The tick-tock croc, Hook. The one whose very sound puts a thrill of fear up your spine, reminding you of time passing.”

  Hook again glanced involuntarily at his hook.

  “What will Peter take next time?” Wendy asked, stepping closer, speaking more softly. “If you don’t finish him off?”

  The pirates were silent, all eyes fixed on her and their captain.

  (A bouncing glow shot over to another Lost Boy.)

  Peter let out the slightest puff of a groan and twitched.

  Wendy’s shadow must have roused his shadow, but Wendy didn’t dare risk a look over to see.

  “There are people like me, all over the world, telling the story of the deadly Captain Hook and how he is…changing. Bits of him slowly hacked off, going gray, unable to take a single ship or port anymore…Not even wanting to! All he can think about is this one small boy and his island home. This boy. This slip of a thing you wouldn’t have thought twice about making walk the plank and being done with years ago. He’s gotten into your mind and skull, subverting your every thought and happy moment.”

  “It’s true,” Hook moaned. “I haven’t had a moment’s peace since the appearance of Peter Pan.”

  “What has it done to you, Captain?” Wendy whispered.

  “But I have Peter Pan now!” He backed up toward the mast, waving his pistol wildly. “It’s all over. I’ll finish him and get rid of Never Land—then I’ll get it all back. My peace of mind, my life…I can go back to being a real pirate!”

  “But is it too late, I wonder?” Wendy said thoughtfully. “Peter has already used up every moment of your time. Time passes, even in Never Land. You can practically hear the ticktock of the hours as they pass.…Listen.…”

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Everyone on the Jolly Roger grew perfectly silent and strained their ears.

  Tick.

  Tock.

  Hook’s eyes practically rolled up into his head, the whites showing all around.

  Tick

  Tock.

  Tick

  Tock.

  “Yes, that is the sound of time, Hook,” Wendy said. “Ages passing, even here, and taking you with them.…”

  “No. NO!” Hook shriek
ed. “That’s the crocodile! No! He has my hand! He’s coming for the rest of me!”

  “Crocodile, clocks, life, time, it doesn’t matter, Hook. It’s coming for you. Whether or not you kill Peter Pan.”

  The clockwork crocodile surfaced, spines gleaming in the dying scarlet light of the day. It circled the ship, snapping its jaws and slapping its tail.

  Several pirates looked over the side at it and blanched.

  “I really thought it were dead,” T. Jerome Newton whispered.

  “SMEE! IT’S COME FOR ME!” Hook cried, sliding down against the mast until he was crumpled at the base. “SMEE! HELP ME! HELP!”

  Wendy waited, unsure how to deal with a potential rescue.

  None came.

  “Smee…Please…can’t you do something?” Hook moaned, beginning to cry. “Get it away. I have Pan. I won! Get the crocodile away. He can’t get me anymore, really, can he, Smee?”

  Slightly leapt up, throwing his bonds dramatically aside and striking a heroic pose.

  “To arms, men—and Skipper! We must overpower our captors!”

  The Lost Boys leapt up right behind him.

  The pirates…

  Did nothing.

  “Don’t bother,” Zane said, sighing. “I think, as they say, we’re done here.”

  “What?” Slightly asked, taken aback—and not a little disappointed.

  “It’s over, Lost Boys. You won. All right? Is that what you want to hear?” Zane looked at his captain and shook his head sadly.

  The clockwork crocodile had taken a turn closer to the boat and its ticking grew louder. Hook buried his head, whimpering into his knees, continued calling for Mr. Smee. Wendy reached over and gently took the pistol out of his grip. He didn’t even try to resist.

  “Who is this Smee I keep hearing about?” she asked curiously.

  “There is no Smee,” Djareth spat. “Didn’t you get that, love?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Aye, no Smee at all,” Zane said, patting Hook on the shoulder. “Never has been. There’ve been others—that giant rabbit, Barney…Remember that one, mates?”

  “Aye, that was right cuckoo, that one.” Ziggy nodded sagely.

  “Oh…my. I thought Mr. Smee was like…a first mate, or yeoman, or cabin boy, or something,” Wendy said in wonder. “I did think it was odd I was never properly introduced.”

  “Our old captain here hasn’t been right for years…maybe he never was.” Zane shrugged. “Thanks to Peter Pan, or not. Anyway, you’ve won. We were on the point of mutiny anyway, if you want to know.”

  They made a strange pair: the crumpled, pale Peter, whose eyelids were just beginning to flutter, hat tipped back—and next to him his nemesis, hunched over, shivering, black wig askew.

  “This raises a lot more questions about Never Land,” Wendy murmured.

  Slightly had directed the Lost Boys over to the golden cage. The moment the knobs were all reset and the gate swung open, the two shadows shot out together like captive birds set free.

  Wendy watched the shadows, now elongated by the low, failing red light, enjoying their last moments that day together hand in hand, swooping and soaring over the water before merging into the dusk.

  She smiled, lost in thoughts of other possibilities, other stories: where she was younger, Tinker Bell didn’t mind, and she and Peter wound up together.

  In reality, Tinker Bell nervously hovered over Peter. He rubbed a hand over his brow and tried to sit up.

  “Wha-what happened?” he asked, somehow sounding both imperious and demanding despite the weakness of his voice.

  “We won!” Slightly said, kneeling down to pat his hand. “All thanks to Wendy here, and Tink, and this brave fellow, Thorn.”

  Thorn bobbed demurely next to Wendy.

  “But where’s my shadow?” Peter asked, looking around. “I still don’t have it!”

  “He will be back, I promise,” Wendy said. “He’s just taking a little jaunt. But he has a good keeper this time. Shadows have their own minds in Never Land, and deserve some freedom, I think.”

  “Well, then, it doesn’t seem like a victory to me,” Peter Pan said peevishly. “The whole point was to get my shadow back.”

  Tinker Bell’s eyes widened. She flew in close and pinched his cheek.

  And save Never Land, you acorn!

  “Aw, I’m just kidding, Tink,” Peter said, waving her away and laughing. “I couldn’t have asked for a better rescue. You all did amazing without me. I guess I taught you really well.”

  Wendy rolled her eyes. Tinker Bell gave Peter a kiss on the nose. Slightly laughed and bumped knuckles with him.

  “You think you’ve won,” Hook whispered. “All of you standing around congratulating yourselves on a job well done. Well, you haven’t won. Peter was supposed to watch all of you die. Everyone and everything he loves. But if I can’t have Pan, no one can. Time comes for everyone, eh, Wendy? Tick…tock…Boom!”

  He lapsed into a fit of psychotic giggles.

  “What do you mean, exactly?” Wendy asked softly, addressing the captain the way she used to her great uncle.

  “Goodbye, dear,” Hook hissed. “You’d be safer if you had stayed in London. Safe as houses. Here you’ll be quite exploded.”

  It sounds like an incendiary, Thorn jingled.

  “It’s a bomb!” Peter Pan exclaimed, standing up. Color was coming back into his face. “That’s how he’s going to destroy Never Land! He tried to blow up the hideout once—remember? It was attached to a clock!”

  “Oh, that was a good adventure, that one,” one of the pirates said with nostalgia. “That one almost worked.”

  “There was a clock in the chart room,” Zane said. “And powder. Makes sense.”

  “A bomb to blow up all of Never Land?” Wendy demanded. “It would have to be huge! Where is this bomb, Hook?”

  “I’ll never tell—never,” Hook said, holding a finger up to his lips. “We’ll all go together!”

  “We’ve got to find it. All of us,” Slightly said. “Right now. Who knows when he set it to go off?”

  “We’ll set sail right now and search the coastlines,” Zane said grimly. “With the right wind, we can make quick work of all the perimeters.”

  “I’ll check the most explody places,” Peter Pan said. “The volcanoes and the geysers. Those would be great places to hide a bomb.”

  I’ll rally the fairies, Thorn said.

  Yes, yes! Tinker Bell jingled. We can cover all of the jungles if we spread out.

  “We’ll take the caves around the mountains,” Slightly offered. “And the tunnels, all the places underground where it’s possible to hide a giant bomb.”

  Wendy watched the unlikely group before her—Lost Boys and pirates, fairies and shadows—work together to excitedly plan how they were going to save the world.

  She cleared her throat.

  “Gentlemen!” she shouted.

  Everyone stopped talking.

  “And ladies,” she added. “And those who haven’t made a decision one way or the other, or have chosen not to choose. This is Captain Hook we’re talking about here. A pirate. He is not exactly over-imbued with imagination, or unpredictable. No disrespect intended.”

  Slightly, Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Thorn, and Zane looked at each other, a little chagrined.

  “Skull Island,” they all said or jingled at the same time.

  “We just stopped there afore coming here,” Zane added, scratching his head. “For something or other secretive.”

  “Really,” Wendy said, crossing her arms and shaking her head. “The deuce you say.”

  “That’s where the bomb is!” Peter Pan cried. “I’ll go at once!”

  I’m going with you! Tinker Bell jingled.

  “And me as well,” Wendy said. She turned to Thorn. “You should come, too, since you know about these kinds of things.”

  I don’t think I’m needed right now, he said with a wise smile. Or wanted. I’ll still
rally the fairies—just in case. Go save Never Land, Wendy.

  “All right…” She wanted to lean over and kiss him—on the cheek, of course. She had a feeling they might not see each other after this. But however overwhelming the urge, she was afraid it would terrify him. So she kissed her hand and blew it at him gently instead.

  At first he looked surprised at the gesture—and then he grinned.

  I will see you again someday, Windy Wendy. If not in Never Land or London, then somewhere else heroes go.

  Wendy sighed and looked away. Tinker Bell was giving her the side-eye.

  “What? Mind your business.”

  The little fairy grinned wickedly, and the three leapt up into the sky.

  “There it is!” Peter cried.

  As clear as a print in a child’s book, there was the tiny island: a gray stone skull rising out of the sea as if the rest of a giant gray skeleton lurked in the depths below it. While the formation couldn’t possibly have been natural—nothing in Never Land was strictly natural—perhaps it arose organically, having felt a need in stories for a spooky landmark. Or maybe it was built and carved by ancient peoples who never truly existed, only appearing in convenient side notes to explain how the island came about. Whatever the case, pirates needed it, and here it was.…

  Although it was a bit different from when Wendy had told her own stories of Never Land to Michael and John. The eye sockets, nose, and mouth, previously open and accessible to boats, mermaids, and pirates (and seagulls and ravens picking the bones of those murdered there) were all sealed up. Quickly and sloppily, in true pirate fashion. Boards crisscrossed the sockets with no plan or finesse. Half-hammered nails stuck out. Bricks and stones were piled up in awkward slants to fill in gaps. Cement or spackle had been slapped on the edges like a poor plumber’s job.

  “He’s closed off all the entryways!” Peter said in dismay, pulling up to a stop in midair.

  Tinker Bell flitted back and forth worriedly.

  Wendy wasn’t quite skilled enough to do either of those things, so she had to content herself with drifting to and fro over as narrow an area as she could manage.