The crowd gave a chuckle at the idea of Peter pulling off the hats of drunken men and shoving them against each other, tweaking their noses and dropping items on their unsuspecting heads. Peter sighed, his red hair falling over his forehead.
“But that soon became boring, as it always does, and though I can’t say exactly why, my intuition pulled me over to the dark corner of the island, the place where wicked men go to sneak a peek at bathing mermaids—Miath, The Gray Shore. The Darlings aren’t familiar with Miath, so I’ll quickly explain.” Peter’s gaze narrowed, and a shadow fell across his face as he dipped his chin. “Neverland lore says that if a man lays eyes on a mermaid that he will have good fortune the rest of his days, which we know isn’t true. When a mere mortal sees a mermaid outside of the water, they lose their minds. Jealousy and lust overtake them, and half the time they will fight their companions to the death out of a perceived rivalry for a second look. But as we know here on Pan Island, the world of grown men is full of nothing but blithe idiots. Every year pirates flock to Miath from time to time to try and peek at the mermaids’ beauty.”
Peter shook his head with a barking laugh. “The fools. It doesn’t affect us, does it, boys?”
The boys laughed and clapped, thankful for the youth that saved them. Peter grinned.
“Ah, it’s good to be young! Back to the story—on that fateful day when Hook lost his hand, I decided that I would fly over Miath. When I arrived there, there wasn’t the usual group of drunken pirates, gawking over some of the rocks that lie up the mountain from the mermaids . . .” Peter’s eyes widened, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “No. There was only one man, his broken body lying on the great sea-glass rock that overlooks the Gray Shore. This is Sybella, the rock that the mermaids pulled from the bottom of the depths of the sea. As large as a table and filled with the skulls of their elders, the rock is pure evil.”
Peter got a faraway look in his eyes. “To this day, I will never understand how the man got there. He had been stabbed with a single, thin blade, up through his ribs, and was slowly bleeding to death, his blood turning Sybella a terrible shade of auburn. His body was slowly calcifying, and green sores cracked at his lips, a combination of the salty air and the mermaids’ poison that was slowly seeping up from the rock.”
Peter shook his head.
“I did what I could to save him, but it was too late. I offered to carry him home, but he confided to me that he had no home, that the pirates had been his home, and they had betrayed him. I told him not to speak, to save his energy, but he kept whispering to me . . . three little words.”
The entire room leaned forward as Peter bent over the moon throne, his eyes glittering with excitement. His mouth turned up in a serious smile, and he began whispering it again and again . . .
“‘The Sudden Night . . . The Sudden Night . . . The Sudden Night.’ I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I was sure that he was calling out for death to take him. Those words had no meaning for me, not yet. I stayed beside him as he whispered these words, his body convulsing with each breath. Finally, his eyes went dim, and I saw the life snuffed out of him upon that green glassy rock.” He closed his eyes. “Though he was heavy, I heaved his body off the sea-glass rock, where it would be a haven for Keel cats. It was only then that I saw the message that he had written in blood on the side of the rock. Scrawled in red were the numbers 42 and 73, and he had drawn some strange lines beside them. At first I wondered if these were the amounts of gold he had been promised, or the number of men he had left behind, but no. I remembered that many years ago, I had seen a nautical map, a tool of sailors, and had tossed it into the treasure room. The oceans of Neverland are vast, and pirates often end up circling in its tricky waters. I committed the numbers to memory and flew back to Pan Island. To say that I turned the treasure room upside down is a bit of an understatement.”
He chuckled and took a breath. Wendy shifted, and when she moved, all the little Lost Boys moved with her. Michael clutched possessively to her hand, and she watched as members of the crowd kept their eyes riveted on Peter.
“Finally, at the bottom of a chest, under a bag of dresses, I found this map.”
From his pocket, Peter pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and held it up to the lunar light. The crowd gasped at its beauty, but to Wendy, who had seen many maps, it seemed fairly plain.
“After a few minutes of figuring out how it worked, I learned that 42 and 73 were coordinates.”
He paused for effect.
“And so, like a fool, I decided to fly there by myself. When I reached the coordinates, I kept rechecking the map, thinking that I had done it wrong, because there was nothing there. It was only the Teeth, those sharp white cliffs that rise out of the ocean on Neverland’s east side—you know them well.”
Wendy did remember them from their flight in: uninhabitable, sharp, deadly cliffs that jutted violently out of the surf.
“The water pounds so hard against the base of the Teeth that not even the mermaids dare to venture there. There was not a stitch of anything there, not a person, nor a glint of anything along those rocky crags. Until . . .”
He leapt off the top of the throne and settled down into the seat, his legs crossed, his body floating inches off the chair. Showoff, Wendy thought with a warm smile.
“Until I flew up to the sides of the cliffs, so close that I could brush their razor-sharp edges with my fingertips.”
He trailed his fingers down through the air, and in that dark room, Wendy swore that she could almost feel the jaggedness of the cliffs.
“As I flew, I felt a strange, warm air brush my fingertips, so unlike the coolness that radiated off the Teeth. I turned back and followed the warm air upward a dozen feet. There, disguised by a crudely painted whitewood slab, was a . . . a hole.”
The room gasped. A Pip with a jagged scar over his eye leapt to his feet, unable to control his excitement.
“What was in it, Peter? What was it?”
Peter grinned in his direction. “Would you like to know, Will?”
The boy was practically bouncing. “Yes! Yes!”
Peter turned to his adoring crowd.
“Would you all like to know?”
Shrieking pleas filled the Teepee. The boys were practically whipped into a frenzy. John was grinning from ear to ear, looking ridiculous. Only Michael seemed immune to Peter’s charms, as he had fallen asleep on Wendy’s lap. A large pool of drool had formed at the corner of his mouth, one arm outstretched over his head. Wendy looked up with a smile to see Peter’s eyes trained on her, and she felt a flush of pleasure run over her skin. Peter began to walk about the room, his arms stretching wide as he continued the tale.
“I couldn’t imagine what was inside the Teeth. An ancient burial ground? A monster? There was no way I could know, and so, with my sword clutched tightly, I entered. At first it was simply a wide cavern inside, the whitewashed walls of the cliffs surrounding me on every side. Seawater dripped down from several cracks in the wall. I had gone several feet when I heard a strange sort of chirping sound and looked up. Over my head were hundreds of white bats with their illuminated clear eyes, the kind I had seen when flying at night. This was their home, inside giant black nests that lined the walls and ceiling, the veins of the Teeth.”
He gave a grimace.
“I walked a bit quieter after that, to tell you the truth. Those bats creeped me out a bit!”
He bent down to emphasize walking in the tunnel.
“A shallow trail of water trickled at my feet, making its way back to some unknown source. After about a mile or so, the cavern narrowed, and I began to hear a foreign sound—the sound of men. The sounds . . . of pirates.”
The entire room hissed. Peter snapped his fingers, and the noise silenced immediately. He continued.
“It was also the sounds of labor: hammers, nails, clinks and clangs that echoed up through the cavern and out to where I was. Slowly, I crept closer, now on my stomach so as not
to be seen, sliding along like a snake until the cavern opened itself up before me into an enormous white room, carved out of the Teeth themselves. The room, I tell you, was almost as wide as Pan Island, and deeper than any room I’d ever dreamed possible. The natural walls of the cave curved up and met in the middle, a cathedral of whitewashed stone. With fear in my throat, I looked down, and what I saw . . .”
He shook his head sadly, a red lock lingering on his forehead. Wendy’s fingers twitched. She longed to brush it out of his eyes.
“What I saw chilled me to the bone. There were two ships sitting in the water in between the great white walls. Directly in front of me was a ship that I was very familiar with—Hook’s ship, the Jolly Rodger. The Jolly Rodger, that old girl, a relic from another time, creaking in the soft waves that pushed it up and down inside the cave. You wouldn’t have known it then, worn as she was, but the Jolly Rodger was a ship that had carried countless riches. From my perch, I could see the naked mermaid at her bow, a sparkling red gemstone glistening in her forehead, the cherry wood that flanked her sides. And below, the pirates, humming their familiar tune.”
Peter tapped his chest and cleared his throat before letting out a gorgeous lilting tenor that filled the room, his rich sound swelling in the Teepee, filling Wendy. Slowly, gently, he sang:
A-rovin over the sea
Give me a career as a buccaneer
it’s the life of a pirate for me
Then, without a beat, he continued, “They were loading chests off of her deck and onto the white rocks below, a pearl necklace or a gold coin occasionally dropping down into the water with a plop. Honestly, there are probably untold riches in those waters.” The smile on his face became more somber, his voice dropping. “The Jolly Rodger nestled up on one side of the cavern, and behind it a net, separating the ship from the black ribs of what must have once been a gigantic whale. I had to look at it for a few minutes to truly understand what I was seeing, for it was so large: Long timbers stretched out from their arches, the base of the ship. On the sides of the whale ribs were long pieces of wood, each sanded down and painted black, nailed into jagged rows to create the sides of the ship. To the side of the behemoth, all sorts of projects were being undertaken in the flickering light of sea and fire. I saw a man stringing a black net across two harpoons, then latching it to what looked like a rotating platform that was on some sort of rudimentary wheel. Another man was melting metal down for swords. When they were completed, he was mounting them on a long black board that ran the length of the ship. A string was drawn across them and pulled taut. When the man released the string, the swords leapt out vertically, so as to impale someone who was approaching from the water. When I saw that . . . I knew.”
The room was silent as Peter wearily rubbed his face. “I knew what I was seeing, and I knew who had done this. Who would create such a monstrosity? Who could catch and kill a whale of such size, only to make a ship of its bones?”
“Hook,” whispered one of the boys in the front, his face shining in awe at Peter.
“Yes. Hook,” Peter whispered. “Hook and his men were building another ship.”
He took a deep breath in, looking disturbed at the memory. “I didn’t see it at the time for what it was. Hook has easily a dozen ships in his employ—what was another one? Still, I was fascinated. I watched the pirates for hours before I saw him. My lifelong enemy. Hook, striding up from somewhere below, his black boots clicking over the white stone, his navy blue jacket adorned with gold and silver medals, his famous sword always clutched tightly in his left hand. From my hiding spot, I could see the perpetual scowl on his worn face, those beady eyes that see malice in everyone and everything, his short-cropped gray hair. He was barking orders at his men, beating some when necessary, throwing one man into the frothy sea when he wasn’t working fast enough. I watched him command the men to work harder, faster—a brutal slave driver. The look of greed and murder on his face was unmistakable, that famous sneer ticking as he walked along, always at that clipped pace, tick-tock, tick-tock. When he was directly underneath me, I pushed myself back up against the wall, my heart beating loudly in my chest. Hook looked around as if he could smell me, his lips curling up against that hideous face. He paused for a moment, blinked, and then kept walking, whistling his signature tune.”
Peter shook his head with a laugh.
“That’s when I, Peter Pan, made a colossal mistake. Lying on my stomach, I pulled myself back to the ledge and looked over, and when I did, I saw Hook’s steely eyes bearing right into mine.”
The room gasped, along with Wendy, whose heart was hammering, despite her attempts to quiet it. His story had captured her.
“The crafty bugger had just pretended to walk away. With a shout, he alerted everyone to my presence, and within seconds there were pirates swarming up the rocks toward where I was. Hook was among them, scaling the rocks, angry spittle flying from his mouth. I leapt out into the air above his head, barely fast enough—he caught hold of my tunic, and he came out into the air with me. I beat down at him with my sword, and he beat up at me with his, neither of us able to get a formidable strike. His weight was dragging me down, and I do believe that in that moment, I was saved by my tunic ripping. Hook tumbled down into the shallow water, and I surged upward. He climbed out of the water, screaming at the remaining pirates below, and they scattered for their weapons.
“From the air, I looked down upon the two ships and knew what I had to do, even though it might cost me my life. I had an opportunity that I would never have again. The ships were contained, not out on the ocean. Destroying the ships would ensure that you, my Lost Boys, would stay safe from harm, at least for a little while. My head spun as I looked down at the cavern. How could I destroy them with pirates swarming over the bows like ants? I certainly couldn’t hack away at them with an axe. I flew as high as I possibly could, my head scraping the top of the cavern. The towering cavern ended in a haphazard stack of rocks and white dust where the pirates had blown their way in. That’s when I spotted it: there was a low flame crackling on the side of one of the rocks, three forgotten fish cooking on top of it, their tails seared black. I careened down toward the flame, the cool sea air washing over my face.
“Hook screamed again, and then pirates were all clamoring down the rocks, each one with a sword drawn and his black teeth bared in my direction. To reach the fire, I had to fly dangerously low, well within the reach of Hook’s henchmen. I took out the first one with a strike to the upper shoulder. He went down screaming onto the white rocks.”
Peter was now pantomiming his performance, leaping and thrusting his sword out at invisible foes.
“The second and the third tried to cut at my chest, but I leapt behind them and slashed the backs of their knees open, ensuring that they would never walk again.”
He chuckled.
“One grabbed my leg, and so I flew upward until he lost his grip. Sadly, I don’t think that man lived much longer after that.”
The room erupted with laughter, and Wendy found herself frowning. Death was hardly an amusing subject. Peter continued, leaping and flipping in the air, his sword flashing so fast that Wendy could barely make out the golden blade.
“I catapulted over their heads and grabbed a log from the flaming fire, waving them back. There were so many of them now, dozens around me, and I knew I had mere seconds to do what I needed to do. I leapt up into the air again. Unfortunately, an arrow pierced my shoulder here . . .” he pointed near the collar of his tunic, “and I was sent hurtling downward. I hit the black ribs of the ship and rolled a few paces. With a scream, I yanked the arrow out of my shoulder and looked around for my flaming log. It had landed right next to me and was flickering weakly. I crawled toward the flame, blood pouring from my shoulder, one hand over another, dragging myself toward it, thinking only of protecting the Lost Boys.”
At this point, no one in the room was breathing, aside from Oxley, who Wendy noticed was looking mildly bored.
&nb
sp; “I reached the flaming log and pushed myself up to my feet. Hook stood before me, the fire illuminating the murderous rage in his eyes. His sword hand was trembling, a smile on his face. Then he spoke.”
Peter dropped his voice to imitate the pirate captain. “‘I swear on the grave of my father—I live to see you buried, Peter Pan.’ My sword was still in my belt, and I knew that if I reached for it, Hook would kill me. He may be many despicable things, but Hook has always been an excellent swordsman. In that moment, time seemed to stop. I looked deep into his eyes and flung the burning timber onto the deck of the Jolly Rodger. As luck would have it, it hit some empty burlap sacks that ignited instantly. Hook gave a scream and lunged toward his ship with his hand outstretched. At that moment, I pulled my sword from my belt, leapt up above him, and slashed at his wrist.”
Peter turned in the air and brought his sword down with incredible speed. Wendy gasped at his sheer physical power.
“I saw Hook’s hand fall from his wrist and the rush of dark blood that came with it. He grabbed his wrist and screamed my name, but I was already on my way up and out of the cavern, up toward the tunnel I had come from. I looked back one more time and saw that the Jolly Rodger had turned into a rapidly consuming flame. The fire had licked its way up the mast and down to the sea. As I watched, the flames reached the stores of the ship where gunpowder was kept, and a massive explosion ripped through its hull. The heat from the flame had turned the cavern into an oven, and pirates were leaping into the water to escape its raging heat. Hook was running away from the Jolly Rodger and toward the black whale bones, screaming to his men to protect her. The heat gave one final blast, so hot I felt it in my bones, and the Jolly Rodger gave a huge creak, as though she were surrendering, and began to sink into the water.
“I watched as her red eye disappeared underneath the black and red sea, the hands of burnt men grasping at her for one last moment before slipping underneath. The last thing I saw before flying up into the tunnel was the outline of Hook, fringed with fire, staring at me as blood dripped from his wrist, and the burning black and white flag of the Jolly Rodger. I knew then that I had started a new story, that Neverland was no longer his, but mine.”
Wendy Darling Page 15
