The Hook (1991)

by Terry Brooks

  Crowing.

  And there was more. There were names carved in the bole's flat surface, names out of time and memory, names from a past he had thought lost to him forever.

  TOOTLES. CURLY. SLIGHTLY. NIBS. JOHN. MICHAEL.

  Forgotten for so long, Peter realized as he traced the carvings with his finger, feeling the familiar roughness against his skin. Forgotten in the loss of childhood. Forgotten in growing up.

  "Tootles," he whispered. "Wendy…"

  And then the knothole opened before him, a door to something that lay within. Peter hesitated just an instant, then began to crawl through. There was a hollow space beyond. It was dark and the fit was tight, but he kept at it, knowing somehow that the rest of what had been lost to him, the rest of who he was, was waiting inside.

  Halfway through, he became wedged like a cork in a bottle. He braced his hands against the sides of the opening and pushed. Abruptly he popped through, tumbling headfirst into the darkness to land on his hands and knees.

  Behind him, the knothole closed. Peter reached out blindly, groping without success for something solid to grasp.

  Then a light appeared, approaching out of the darkness, growing steadily brighter. Abruptly Tinkerbell appeared, tiny and radiant as she hung in the air before him, no longer dressed in her faerie garb, but in a flowing gown of lace and satin, of ribbons and silk, of colors that shimmered like sunsets and sunrises and rainbows after thunderstorms.

  "I've been waiting, Peter," she said.

  Peter stared.

  "Well, why don't you say something?"

  He swallowed. "You look… nice, Tink."

  "Nice?"

  "Beautiful."

  She blushed then, bowed in the faerie way, and straightened, smoothing back the gown's ruffles.

  "Do you like it?" she asked him, and pirouetted slowly one full turn.

  He grinned like an awkward boy and nodded. "Very much." He came forward a step and bent close. "What's the occasion, Tink?"

  She grinned back. "You are. You've come home, you silly ass."

  Peter rubbed the bump on his head tentatively, confused. "Home?" he repeated doubtfully.

  She began to brighten, to extend her glow in steady waves, lighting up the darkness that lay all about, chasing back the shadows to the farthest corners until all was revealed.

  Peter looked around wonderingly. He stood in an underground room that had been hollowed out beneath the trunk and within the roots of the Nevertree. There was a huge fireplace at one end, blackened and cold, and the ruins of a rocking chair and a great cradle bed lay piled at the other. A flat section of the tree humped out of the earth at the center of the room and might once have served as a table. Everything had been charred by a devastating fire, and where once the floor must have been swept clean and smooth, there were clusters of mushrooms at every turn.

  I know this place! Peter thought excitedly.

  "What happened here?" he asked Tink, bending and touching as he examined the wreckage.

  "Hook happened," she answered.

  "Hook?"

  "Yes, Peter. Hook burned it when you didn't come back."

  A light came into Peter's eyes as he rummaged through a pile of debris shoved into a far corner. Gently, almost reverently, he began picking up bits and pieces of what had once been the wooden walls and thatched roof of a child's playhouse.

  His hands shook. "Wendy," he breathed. "This is where… This is Wendy's house. Tootles and Nibs built it for her. There were make-believe roses for decorations and John's hat for a chimney-"

  He gasped in shock. "Tink, I remember!"

  He whirled about. "This is the home underground!" He rushed over to the remains of the rocking chair. "Wendy used to sit and tell us stories in that chair-except it wasn't here, it was over there! We'd come back from adventures, and she would be darning our socks. She slept here. Tink, Tink, your apartment was here as well-right here! And little Michael's basket bed was here! And John slept here!"

  He was charging about now, pointing to first one spot and then another, the words flooding out of him. Tinkerbell watched breathlessly, rapture shining on her face, adoration mirrored in her eyes.

  Peter stopped, catching sight of something else amid the wreckage. He knelt, brushed back the ashes and silt, and held up a worn, half-burned, one-eyed teddy bear.

  "Taddy. My Taddy," he whispered. His eyes lifted, and he seemed to look somewhere far away. "Taddy used to keep me company in my pram. My mother…" He swallowed. "I remember my mother…"

  Tink darted forward, her light flashing as she came. She hovered at his ear. "What about your mother, Peter? What do you remember? Tell me!"

  Peter was clasping Taddy to his chest now, his head shaking slowly. "I remember her… my mother… and my father… looking down at me, talking about how I would grow up and go to the finest schools…"

  The words triggered old, forgotten memories, and they came to life once more, bright and vivid.

  He lay in his pram, just a baby, tucked beneath his blue blankets, staring upward at the sky, at the clouds that floated, at the birds that soared.

  "… you can be sure, very fine schools indeed." He could hear his mother speaking, her voice insistent. ' 'First Whitehall, then Oxford. Of course, after graduation he will prepare for a judgeship, then perhaps a term in parliament…"

  "It was only what all grown-ups want for their children," Tink advised solemnly, her soft voice like a bell in his ear.

  "Yes, but it frightened me so," said Peter. "1 didn't want to grow up… and someday die."

  The baby thrashed wildly in his pram and the brakes came loose. Down the walkway it went, gathering speed, rolling toward a pond. Peter's mother gave chase, frantic to catch up. At the edge of the pond, the pram suddenly stopped, safe.

  But the inside of the pram was empty. The baby was gone.

  It was night then. Rain tumbled down from the clouded sky. Thunder rolled and lightning flashed. On an island at the center of the pond lay the baby, soaked to the skin and crying dismally. A tiny light appeared and transformed into Tinkerbell. She stood looking down at him, then picked up a leaf to shield his face from the rain. Cooing and whispering, she calmed him. The baby murmured, and she replied. Then she threw a sprinkling of pixie dust over him, took hold of his tiny hand, and away they flew into the night.

  "I brought you here to Neverland," whispered Tink.

  Then Peter was three, flying back again to Kensington Gardens, night all about, moon and stars distant and pale. He flew to a third-story window and tried to open it. But the window was locked. The boy stared at it in confusion. Despair filled his eyes as he saw that inside his mother slept with her arms wrapped close about another child.

  "She had forgotten me," Peter said softly. "She had found… someone else."

  Then he was twelve, flying boldly through the nursery window at 14 Kensington Gardens at a dozen years past the turn of the century. The Darling house was dark and still and the nursery bare of the furniture it held now, save for a few of the toys, which looked newer and brighter. He'd found other windows to visit since his own had been locked. He'd chased his foolish, stubborn shadow in and out of this one a few times, and finally it had been caught by Nana and then shut away by Mrs. Darling in a bureau drawer. He came looking for it, found it, and was unable to reattach it. They wrestled in the dark. He tried to stick it on with soap and, when that failed, burst into tears, waking the sleeping girl…

  "Boy, why are you crying?" she asked him.

  They bowed to each other and he asked her back, "What's your name?"

  "Wendy Angela Moira Darling. What's yours?"

  "Peter Pan."

  Peter's eyes were wide and staring and his breathing was rapid. How many times had he come back for her after that? Always in the spring, to return her to Neverland for cleaning, to take her away once again…

  He saw her aging, growing up while he did not, leaving her childhood while he remained oblivious and unchanged. Thirteen, f
ifteen, seventeen…

  And then one day he forgot to come for her and did not come again for many years. When at last he did, when finally he remembered, he found her kneeling in the nursery by the fire, her face in shadows, the room transformed once more…

  "Hullo, Wendy," he greeted.

  "Hullo, Peter," she replied. A pause. "You know I cannot come with you. I have forgotten how to fly. I grew up a long time ago.''

  "No, no! You promised you wouldn't!"

  But she had, of course, despite her promise, because in the world outside of Neverland you always grew up. So Peter became friends with her daughter, Jane, and for many years they went together to Neverland.

  But Jane grew up as well, and one day Peter came to the Darling nursery to discover that Wendy was a grandmother and Jane's daughter now slept in her bed. Peter, ever adventurous, skipped onto the bedpost to view the sleeping child and found himself face-to-face with Moira. Something in the way the smile on her lips hid their kisses enchanted Peter and made him reluctant to leave. Every time he tried to go, he was forced to turn back again. A dozen times he ran to the window and started to fly away, Tink beckoning from without, anxious to go on to other windows, to blow out the stars in other skies. But each time he hesitated and went back for another look.

  Then Wendy appeared, slipping through the door of the nursery, racing to stay his passage for a single moment, so anxious was she to see him. But Peter needed no staying this night, drawn by what he saw in Moira's face, caught in a net that even he could not escape.

  "I shall give her a kiss," he offered finally.

  But Wendy dashed to stop him. ' 'No, Peter. No buttons and no thimbles for her. Moira is my granddaughter, and I cannot bear to see her dear heart broken when she finds she cannot keep you-as I once found I could not."

  She cried then, overcome with a vision of what might have been. Peter sat next to the sleeping Moira, twirling a thimble between his fingertips. But at the last minute he changed his mind for reasons that would be forever unclear. Captivated by the girl, he bent to kiss her on the lips as he had seen others kiss, and as his lips touched hers the thimble dropped away.

  He failed to see the sudden closing of the latticed windows-as if a breeze had sprung up. He failed to hear the click of their lock. He failed to see the look of horror on Tink's face as she peered through the glass from without…

  "I thought I had been shut away from you forever," she whispered, remembering with him.

  Then Peter was in school, dressed in a jacket and tie and polished shoes, his hair cut and combed, everything neat and proper and in place. He sat at a desk among other schoolchildren, staring out the open window into a fall afternoon thick with colored leaves and musty smells. A teacher walked to him, smiled, and said, "Peter? Where did you go?"

  She closed the window, startling him, so that he replied, "I don't remember. …"

  The memories faded. Peter stood staring into space, Tink hovering now at his nose, a splash of light against the gloom.

  "Oh, Peter," she said, and her voice was small and troubled. "I can see why it is so hard for you to find a happy thought. You carry so many sad ones."

  Peter did not answer, stunned at the truths his memory had unearthed. He was who they said he was. He was who they believed him to be. Tink and the Lost Boys-they were right.

  He was Peter Pan.

  He groaned as his eyes scanned the wreckage of his boyhood, the devastation of what he had once held so dear. But the hard truth was that all of his lives were in ruins, both in this world and the other. He had made them so; he had given up all his happy thoughts a long time ago. He had let them slip away.

  Almost without thinking, he tossed Taddy into the air in front of him. Taddy rose, and the tumbling motion slowed almost to nothing. Peter watched his teddy bear freeze against the gloom, and his gaze fixed on the single remaining eye as it stared down at him. Slowly his hands reached up.

  "Wait," he whispered. "I'll catch you, Taddy. I'll catch you."

  The fuzzy old bear fell toward him, but as his hands closed about its stuffed body, it was not Taddy he held, but Jack-bright-eyed and smiling at four years of age.

  "Jack! Jack!" he called out to his son.

  “Fly me, Daddy, fly me!'' another, familiar voice cried.

  “Maggie! Baby!''

  He caught his daughter in his arms, holding them both close, twirling them about wildly. They laughed and shouted with glee. Moira appeared and joined their circle, her arms coming about his waist, the soft scent of her skin filling him up. He kissed and hugged them, and they kissed and hugged him back.

  "Yes!" he cried happily. "My family-Jack, Maggie, Moira, 1 love you so much! I love being with you, having you close. Oh, I'm so lucky! Yes, Tink! Tink, this is my family, my wonderful, incredible family. They're back! They're …"

  His eyes snapped wide-for they had been closed on his vision-and he stared about in confusion. He was fifteen feet above the floor, hanging in midair. A surge of panic swept through him. He flailed at nothing and began to drop.

  "No, Peter!" Tink howled, pushing up from beneath to keep him in place. "That's your happy thought! Don't lose it!"

  He continued to fall, frantically trying to regain control of himself, shouting, "How? What?"

  "It's yours forever!" Tink squealed. "Hold that thought!"

  Peter's eyes squinched, his body tensed, and he brought back the image of Jack, Maggie, Moira, and himself twirling about and laughing merrily, of the warmth and depth of feeling his family gave to him, of the love they shared…

  He felt himself slow and then stop. His eyes opened. He felt himself begin to rise again.

  "Yes!" breathed Tink, suddenly eye to eye with him. "Yes, Peter Pan!"

  "I've done it!" Peter whispered, still rising, flooded with emotions he could not begin to describe. "Look at me! Look at me, Tink!"

  He twisted about sharply and caromed off a wall. Down he dipped and then up again. The grown-up within him faded like a ghost at dawn and the sleeping child came awake. All the trappings of all the years he had struggled to find what he had lost vanished. Twisting and tumbling about, he embraced anew the dreams that had belonged to Peter Pan.

  "Tink, I can fly!" he shouted. "I can really fly!"

  "Then follow me and all will be well!" Tinkerbell cried in glee. "I love you!"

  And up through the hollowed trunk of the Nevertree they flew.

  Pixie Dust

  Oh, it was a glorious moment for Peter as he soared upward through the Nevertree, his earthbound restraints shed, his identity recovered, and his boyhood found anew.

  With Tinkerbell leading the way, he spiraled through the gloom, gaining speed and confidence as he went, his exhilaration welling up inside until he thought he must burst. Out through a split in the giant trunk they exploded, faerie and boy, twisting this way and that, darting among the ancient limbs like fireflies at night. Down and around they sped, whipping through leafy boughs, spinning like tops and whirling like pinwheels. Tree houses flashed by in snippets of wood and colored cloth. Birds scattered with wild cries.

  Oh, look! Peter Pan is back!

  He cannoned out the top of the Nevertree and rose toward the clouds beyond, laughing in delight. He was transformed, become the essence of the spirit that lives within us, that wondrous spark of childhood we all too frequently manage to leave behind in growing. It flared within him like a fire fanned, and suddenly he could contain himself no longer.

  Back arched, neck stretched forth, head thrown back, he began to crow.

  "Yes, Peter, yes!" he heard Tink shout. "Oh, welcome home, Peter Pan!"

  Together they flew into the clouds, there to mimic each other's attempts at foolishness, to do swan dives and belly flops, to fly upside down and backward, to race against shadows and sunbeams, to play at tag and hide-and-seek. When they had exhausted themselves, when the initial thrill of flying together once again had diminished just enough, they lay back upon a cloud to float in the breeze.<
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  There, for the first time, Peter looked down at himself and was startled by what he saw. He was no longer a fat, old Peter Banning. He was a younger, lighter version. Pounds had somehow been shed, muscles had somehow reemerged. He was sleek and hard and younger looking by years. He threw his head back and laughed at the impossibility of it all-at the wonder of what he had become.

  "Oh, the cleverness of me!" he exclaimed, the boldness of the little boy easing past the grown man's restraint.

  Then he leaped back to his feet and dived through the clouds toward Neverland's green jewel. Down he went, faster and faster, a mischievous gleam in his eye. Tink caught up with him, as reckless and willing as he, saw that gleam, and knew instinctively what he was about.

  Where are they? he asked himself, scanning the pillar of rock and the Nevertree that sat atop it. Where are the Lost Boys?

  He found them gathered at summer where it faded into autumn, bunched in a tight circle about Rufio. A stick traced patterns in the earth as Rufio outlined a plan of attack against Hook and the pirates. Heads arched forward in concentration as his stick moved.

  Peter came in like a tornado, spinning over their heads, autumn's leaves cascading downward in his wake. Pockets, at the back edge of the crowd, was the first to look up, floppy cap knocked askew. His eyes went wide as he saw Peter, and he tumbled over onto his back.

  "Id's hib!" he gasped, pulling at the clothing of those closest. "Id's really hib!"

  Peter laughed and spun back again, Tink at his heels. Down he flew a second time, whooping in triumph. Other Lost Boys were looking now, turning to stare, then jumping to their feet. Latchboy and Too Small were screaming in delight, arms waving and gesturing. Rufio, distracted finally from the description of his battle plan, rose to confront the cause of the interruption.

  Peter swooped low across the sea of heads, snatched a Lost Boy's dagger from its sheath, and with a single pass severed Rufio's belt. Down went Rufio's pants to lie in a tangle about his feet. Lost Boys everywhere cheered and shouted, trying to follow Peter's flight. Peter came back a final time, skimmed the surface of the pond with his hands, and sent a spray of water cascading directly into Rufio's astonished face.