by Andrea Jones
But the ladies wouldn’t allow hiding tonight. They held out their slender brown arms. “Come, we are waiting for you!” The young men felt their feet trundling them forward.
“You can’t dance in these. Set them here, with your swords.”
Nibs and Tom hesitated until Mr. Smee nodded, his spectacles flashing in the firelight as he turned away. The two women eased them down. The ladies drew off the prized boots and, knowing the ways of pirates, set them at the ready.
Like the boys, the clearing was changing. The house was growing up, too, and a totem pole stood beyond the fire. It appeared to waver, springing to life in the heated air above the flames. Its wood showed only two symbols carved in it so far— at the top, a lion with a fierce expression; under that a tiger, bearing a subtle smile. Tom knew the work. “The Twins!”
Two heads stooped so that two sets of brown eyes could peer at them from the viney window of what used to be Wendy’s house. Smiles followed. The beat of the drums was too much to resist. It was a force of nature, and they all began to move to it. The twins left the little house to the sleeping children; young men belonged outside tonight. The braves and the brothers hailed one another, while the women smiled and began to move as well, sinuously, around the fire and over the blankets.
Mr. Smee laid a hand on Lily’s arm and coaxed her from the cluster of braves. “Are you free, love?” She laughed, then looking back at her admirers, she touched the nearest on the cheek with her fingertips, and as his black eyes watched regretfully, she left him.
“Smee. You are late.”
“And I’d not let the boys fly ahead, I’m that stubborn!”
Lily’s feet slid through the damp, cool grasses as she led him around the old house, past the stacks of lumber, and into the adjoining frame of the new. Inside, in the warm light of Smee’s lantern, she bent over a basket, her hand resting on the knotted edge. Smee set down the lantern. Disregarding the basket and its sleeping infant, he tugged her arm away from it. “The captain sent you this.” He slipped three golden bracelets onto her wrist.
Lily held up her arm to view them and her smile stiffened. A cooling breeze swept through the house frame, and her manner matched it. “The captain’s generosity has already proven bountiful. Please tell him that my sisters and I accept these as gifts only. As for all who come to us, it is our pleasure to assist him.”
Mr. Smee’s eyes twinkled over his spectacles. “And this.” He pulled from his pocket a cord on which dangled another shiny object. Lily studied it. Slowly, her eyes lit with comprehension, and her smile softened. Smee hung it on her finger. “He said to tell you your builders should know what to do with it.”
She clasped it. “A key. For the front door when it’s ready! It is a message, isn’t it? He tells us that the place will be truly our own. The good captain grants us the gift of home.”
“Aye, Lily. He asks nothing more of you. I’m glad to see you happy. I know how much you’ve wanted a real home since leaving the village.”
She rested her hand on his brawny arm. “Smee, I ask no more than you can give.” She looked out the door to the alluring light and listened to the drums that called her back. “And you do the same for me.” After a long moment, her eyes shifted back to his admiring face.
“Aye. We’re a pair.” And with an effort, Smee freed up his gaze to cast a glance about the place. “That’s a fine big window! Almost another door, you might say.”
“Yes. Our young men tell us the window must never be closed. It is a tradition.”
“You’ll be wanting some curtains for it. I’ll bring back some fine kind of cloth this trip, and run you up a set.”
Lily smiled, but her voice was subdued. “So the time of parting is come, then? Your captain has won Wendy from the boy?”
Smee grinned. “We’ll know in the morning, but I’ve no doubt. And then we’ll be weighing anchor.” He scooped her into his arms while she dropped her treasured key to the pallet on the floor. His red beard burrowed into her neck and she giggled like a girl until the baby began to mewl, pudgy elbows flailing at the air. Smee’s rough smile struck his face. “Go on. I’ve a job to do, anyway, getting these cursed boots off.”
“Will you hold your daughter again?”
“I’d rather hold you. Give her these.” He unhooked his spectacles from his ears and tossed them to Lily. “I’m told children like such things.”
Lily looked askance at him and set them down by the lantern. “Take your boots off, man, and hold peace about things you don’t understand.” She shook a mellow-gold bracelet off her wrist to dandle it over the child, who grasped it and quieted. Lily drew off her dress, swaying to the drums, and when she turned back to Smee, the blue-white drops were beading on the tips of her breasts and rolling down in lines that clung to her curving skin.
Throwing off his shirt, Smee dropped to his knees on the pallet. With his big hands on his Lily’s hips, he pulled her toward him. “Aye, woman. You make good sense. This is something I understand!” Her arms cradled his red head and it bobbed as the strong, sweet man lapped up the mother’s milk and suckled at her breasts, bringing her to a tender ecstasy before he tucked in to feast on the heartier fare also offered him by the generosity of his hostess.
Outside by the fire, the flutes breathed music through their shafts and the drums beat on, slowly and steadily now, stretching Time to make the night last. The flames of the beacon fire whipped in the breezes and the orange kerchief weighed anchor and went sailing, flagship of a fleet of shirts, skirts and breeches. Soft brown hands beckoned and lingered on bristled chins and smooth, muscled chests. Tougher hands responded in kind, and the dance settled onto the blankets. Kisses were learned, then given and taken freely, and brown thighs opened to receive curious caresses, and later, one by one, the knowing hands guided virgin timber into lush forests, to the happiness of all.
And on the colorful blankets in the clearing and up to the windswept pinnacle of the Indian mountain, there were no boys left to mother. Only brothers, partners, and paramours.
* * *
On the ship, in the rolling waters of the bay, the woman in the captain’s bunk lured him closer with a not-so-hidden kiss. With all her heart, she gave it to him while her left hand wound his hair around her fingers, imprisoning him. Her right hand wound snakelike under her head. Between the sheet and the pillow she sought her weapon, then clutched it at the hilt. Before she could strike, his hand followed the contour of her arm. His grasp was casual as he encircled her wrist, yet it rendered her dagger impotent. Pinned beneath him, she struggled while he took his time to end the kiss, and then he raised himself up.
“I will use it first,” he said.
Her breath came in ragged bursts as she gripped her knife and dragged his arm downward. She rolled with him toward the middle of the bunk, above him now, still clutching his hair. “The legend of Jill decrees what I must do. If you can’t give me what I need, I’ll take it!”
“The blood of the beast that stalked you?” With his hideous wrist, Hook forced her chin up. “Or the one that caught you?”
“I want the one thing you can’t abide. The letting of your own blood! Do I demand too much?”
His gaze was fierce, touching every curve of her face. “You have shed yours for me. I am purged of that. I flinch at nothing now.” He sat up, bringing her with him. “You needn’t steal from me. I will give you everything, and never miss it.”
He wrapped his hand around her fist and kissed her palm, just below the handle of her dagger, then held the stump of his arm over the red-stained linen, the bloodied bedclothes where she had lain when he tore her young life away. “Mark me again!” He pointed the knife at his mangled flesh. Her legend commanded; she narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth, and together they cut a crimson line and he bled, his lips set in a twist. She went cold, her eyes burned, and she watched his dark blood mix with her own, and the cold turned to heat and pounded in her chest, firing the wound he had ripped open to bleed de
ep within her. She dropped the dagger, splayed her hand and set it in the pool, smearing the colors together, her eyes wide, her face rapt in magical trance. She convulsed when he touched her, gripping her wrist. He raised her hand, still spread stiffly, then he set it on the sheet, pressing it down, lifting it up, and then releasing her. He held out his open hand to her and she grasped it by the wrist and when the ritual was done a set of crimson handprints marked the white linen, left and right, male and female, commingling their blood— an emblem of their unity.
Then Hook threw his head back and laughed, long and loud, while she wrapped herself around him, her scarlet fingers scratching at his skin and the blood-rage of her legend still possessing her. The sound of his laughter went ringing below, where the crew lay on their bunks and hoisted up on their elbows to leer at one another in the lantern light. The echo of it hurled itself up the mast high over the sea and set black Roger to flapping as he grinned at his captain’s triumph. And Hook flung the dagger away, wrapped his wrist and laid her down, to take her offerings again while she burned.
The night wore on, the candles flamed lower. When he was sated, Hook fell onto his back and breathed the sweet smell of the sea. Then he drew his own jeweled dagger from under his pillow. He ran the blade once through her hair and she clawed at it, lusting for it. But he raised it out of her reach, and the colors of the gems shone in the candlelight, wild and blazing, like their eyes.
“Victory is ours tonight!” He swung the dagger down at her back, tearing triumphantly at the sheet. The shriek of rending cloth made her flesh crawl; she cringed and clutched at him, in her savagery a creature of instinct, hardly human and beyond understanding now. But Hook smiled when it was free, a rectangle of stained linen, a standard of red to fly below his black banner.
Then he held her, his whiskers scraping against her ear over and over while he called her his Jill, and he stroked her and sponged the blood-rage from her heart. And together, gradually, they eased into the rhythm of the waves, soothed by the long, reassuring words of the sturdy wooden beams that held their world together. Her queen’s smile came to her, and she looked to him, and to their dark and light locks twining together on their shoulders, and all the while their red blood stained her hand.
He rose up and covered her with himself, his black waves hanging over her. Silkily, they dragged down her body, moving slowly, while she laughed in pleasure. His one hand and his naked wrist slid behind her knees, his beard and his lips tickled her softest skin, kindling the sensation within her thighs, building and fueling the flame there. Her hands and heels delved into the bed as her rapture intensified, and when she could bear his torture no longer, Hook raised his face to her, lifting an eyebrow in mock surprise.
His voice was velvet. “Why, Jill. I have found another kiss.”
Red-Handed Jill didn’t understand him, but she believed in him. And when her Pirate King took that kiss, he took her to Paradise.
* * *
They lay in the last guttering light of the candles. Hook watched the flickers play upon her features, and then he woke her.
“Tell me the tale now. The beginning of it all.”
She remembered it, like recalling a dream, and sat up to weave her arms and his story around him. Her eyes were as clear as her voice.
* * *
“Young James was born into one of the finest families in England. He was away in his last term at school when his beautiful black-haired mother was murdered. She had been vibrant, and corrupt in a very charming manner, and he had adored her.
“He had earned a reputation at school for his hot, quick temper. He wounded his fencing master at the very moment his mother was slashed and left to bleed to death on the ancestral bed in which she gave birth to him. James was not quite the last thing she thought of as her life ebbed away.
“There was another, a younger brother with a complexion of the very wrong shade to suit a dark father. James rushed from school when the authorities came calling. He burst into the mansion and surged up the stairs to the nursery, where the silly servant girl sat teary-eyed, clutching a little nightshirt. She wouldn’t speak until he struck her with the back of his hand, the first time he ever loosed his temper on a woman. Looking fearfully into her young master’s changing eyes, she admitted that the golden-haired boy fell from his pram in the park that very morning. Recounting his Lordship’s rage against her Ladyship, the nursery maid sobbed into the nightshirt, confessing that the frightened child must have run away, when she wasn’t watching.
“His passionate, arrogant father left the country with the family fortune and blood on his hands, never to be seen again. The scandal broke, and with his brother lost and his prospects ruined, James jumped a schooner and hired on, bound for exotic lands, learning to live, and live well, by his wits and his charm.
“A young man fallen from grace, he slipped into the Neverland, where lives the stuff of fantasy and of nightmare. James fit easily into both, a strong, handsome, brilliant man, cultured and callous.
“He left shame behind him on the shore the very first time his eyes beheld the sea. But he lost everyone he cared about in a single day. From that time to this, he was terribly alone.”
* * *
Everything connected, as he had known it would. Hook was satisfied. He drew a deep breath. “From that time to this.” They looked into each other’s eyes. The last candle sputtered out, and Hook and Jill lay not alone, but together, in the receding Darkness of dawn.
Chapter 26
Death of a Legend
Jewel awoke to the raucous sound of chirping. But night’s crickets no longer sang; now she heard the birds of dawn. Rubbing her eyes, she yawned. She smiled in contentment, lying tucked in Peter’s golden strands. Thinking she heard grass rustling at the top of the shaft, she swiveled toward the entrance. Wide awake now, Jewel listened, her little ears intent.… Nothing. She sighed.
Then came the skitter of an acorn rolling down the chute. Jewel leapt from the tangle of Peter’s hair and crouched to fade among the tree roots forming the wall. Peter awakened, jumped off the bed, and caught the acorn as it tumbled across the floor. They both heard the call. Slightly’s voice, fully grown.
“Peter! We’ve come with word from the Indian council.”
Peter cocked his head toward the shaft, but remained still.
“Peter?” A pause followed, then another voice murmured and mingled with the first. Peter strode soundlessly to the fire and pitched away the little brown nut. He plucked a knife from the table, sheathed it, then grabbed up a sword.
Jewel’s eyes opened wide. She recognized the gleaming rapier Peter had won from Hook. She hadn’t seen it in ages, she’d forgotten all about it, she hadn’t warned him! But surely her master would remember that Peter had confiscated his weapon?
The voice echoed down again, and Peter listened.
“The word is this, Peter. The Indians will remain on the mountain. You’re all alone.” A red clay object clattered down the shaft, the grasses stirred, and then there was silence. Even the birds had flown.
Peter dashed to pick up the token. It was a peace pipe, long, feathered, and painted with symbols. His features clouded. A moment later, his face became a mask of determination. Exuding all the entitlement of an aristocrat, the boy rested the sword on his shoulder and paraded to the mantel. With ceremony, he positioned the pipe where his arrow used to reside. He tested the point of the rapier on his fingertip, crossed to the niche, and swept the curtain open with the blade.
“Tinker Bell!”
He said it so commandingly Jewel nearly popped out of her hiding place to fly to his shoulder. Only just in time did she catch herself lighting up, and she hunkered down again, biting her lip. She had almost disobeyed her master!
She should never have stayed here! He was gracious to allow it. But he had made it clear what punishment would befall her if ever she betrayed him. Too well she remembered her frantic attempts to stay afloat in the Lagoon as her precious dust became
saturated and swirled away. Compelled by her bondage, Jewel had confessed when he questioned her that, of all the elements, only water could end her powers. If enough of her grains of magic fell into the sea to lump and wash away, she really would be like some kind of cricket— with no light, no flight, and no music.
Jewel acknowledged the truth now. Her master had made her see it: the Wendy saved her at the Mermaids’ Lagoon, in spite of everything. But Jewel was certain that once that girl became Jill the pirate, she would never intercede for her, especially if the master’s fearsome wrath was spurred to its height, as any mistake with Peter would do. Jewel’s wings began to tremble. She folded them farther out of sight, cramping herself deeper into hiding.
Peter stood as if undecided. He banged the sword on the table and glared at the chute, then paced the length of the cavern, his expression dark. He opened his pouch and upended it, shaking the contents over the tabletop. A lone tooth fell with a tiny clatter, and a few waxy leaves floated to scatter. Jewel caught the glimmer of a flake or two of her dust, but Peter shook his head.
“Not enough!” Replacing the pouch, he lifted his chin. He stood stock-still for a moment, then, as his new-idea look illuminated his face, he skipped to the shaft. Jewel blinked and Peter was gone.
* * *
Mr. Noodler saw it right away in the morning. He smiled and elbowed his fellows, pointing his backward hand. “See the new standard, mates!” It flapped in the wind under black Roger, a red and white banner printed in familiar ink. Two bloody hands, proclaiming their captain to be whole again. Noodler’s gold teeth glinted. “He’s finally found his right hand!”
Bill Jukes’ tattoos lost their symmetry as he smirked. “Aye, and that flag will serve right well to bait his enemies, too.”
“The croc’ll be sure to rise to that!” Laughing aloud, Cookson pulled his knife from his belt. The pirate crew sharpened their steel and fell to their chores, making ready for some sport.
