by Lisa Jensen
“Hook!” cries Pan, from his perch in the center of the others along the rail. “I knew you’d come back!”
“What do you want?” I bark, steeling myself for the news that Stella is his captive, or worse.
“She’s gone, isn’t she?” He’s positively beaming. “I told you!”
My first response is relief, followed by an agony of loss more bitter than I have ever known plunging through my vitals; it takes all the willpower I possess to conceal it. “Well, what of it?”
Pan frowns at me as if I am a stupid child, then his eyes light up. “So I am the true captain of the Neverland!” he crows, exuberance lifting him high off the rail. “And you are nothing!”
He actually feints backward in the air, grasping the hilt of his sword, anticipating my furious charge. The boys too loom up expectantly, threading their bows, drawing their weapons, eyeing the men. I myself tremble with the urge to go roaring after him, a target at last for all my renewed misery, and my men would not fail me. It’s what they all want, men and boys, all of them.
But my imagination gambols on ahead to the aftermath of my decision: the deck of the Rouge strewn again with the corpses of my men, unprepared for battle, without even Long Tom for cover, flesh sprouting arrows, stab wounds gaping blood. I can drive them to a brave and glorious death, as commanders have done since the beginning of time, and they are sheep enough to thank me for it, but why? The whole business revolts me, our battles to the death over nothing at all, Hook’s pompous pride, so easily ignited, the boy’s childish imperatives.
The boys shriek with pleasure as I yank my French sword from its scabbard, but they choke on their hurrahs when I throw it to the deck and stride across the waist, leaving the men in a knot on deck, Gato in the ratlines, Needles peeping out of a hatch, Nutter teetering on the balls of his feet, all of them staring at me as I march to the center of the boys’ line and glare up at Pan.
“Go home, boy.”
His gray eyes sparkle, his sword is in his hand, but as I am unarmed, there’s naught he can do but brandish it menacingly about my head, each thrust a little closer, so I feel a scurry of air against my cheek, a flutter of blade in my hair. It’s as if he were trying to coax a cat into swiping at a string, clucking and simpering at me. Flat steel slides against my cheek, a point glances off my shoulder. A stout little fellow in raccoon furs nervously fingers his bow and arrow behind the Pan. Agitation boils across the whole of the ship.
“I am master here!” Pan yelps, his little teeth bared in a grin a jackal might envy. “Say it, Hook! Say it!”
But I stand like a block of stone, ignoring his whooshing blade. This time, for once in my life, it’s myself I refuse to betray by giving in to the mob. I am done with his games. Let him scalp me if he wants, mutilate me again, prick out my eyes; how I wish he’d prick out my eyes so I might never have to see the Neverland again. He scowls, mouth compressed into a line, flourishes his sword, and the other boys swarm in closer, rattling their weapons, growling.
A larger shape looms up to my left, tall, solid, reeking hot sweat. Another weapon clatters to the deck, and the boys paddle about in confusion as Nutter plants himself beside me. The snake boy on the gun has to rustle up and follow to keep Nutter in his sights. The big redheaded fellow stares straight ahead even as blade points and arrow tips jab in the air round his face. The tide of the boys’ attention turns again when Burley heaves up on my other side, square and stony-faced. Gato’s knife rings against the deck as he drops out the ratlines to stand beside Burley; Flax, then Swab, even Filcher join the line, all of us unarmed and resolute in the face of the boys’ chivvying.
“I am master here!” Pan tries again, but his voice falters with frustration. His boys begin to chorus, “Pan! Pan! Pan!” but more out of habit than zeal.
An arrow gripped by its shaft grazes Nutter’s cheek, but his amber glare sends the assailant reeling backward. One little fellow cries “Codfish!” and a few others take up the chant, but even that feeble jeer dies off. The boys paddle more strenuously now in testy confusion. They can’t call the pirates afraid, not this time.
Pan darts to me, his face as dark and furious as I have ever seen it, snorting through his teeth like a little terrier, trying to perceive what part of me he can no longer control. With an abrupt movement, he snaps his blade back into his belt.
“C’mon, men!” he cries to his boys. “We might as well fight a bunch of girls!” The boys hoot with laughter, scrambling to close ranks behind him as they all rise in the air. “But we’ll be back!” Pan exclaims, drawing a few random cheers from the boys. Irresistibly, Pan zooms down once more to me. “That’s two games you owe me, Hook,” he growls. “Maybe you don’t have enough pride to fight for yourself. But I bet you’ll fight for her!”
“But she’s gone,” I remind him.
“Not yet,” he hisses at me. “Not unless I say so!” And off they all fly, an erratic pattern in a sky newly besmirched with sinister gray clouds.
My men neither guffaw nor congratulate themselves, shocked to sobriety by their newfound stature, dispersing their line in silence. Only I remain rooted in place.
She’s not gone yet. Stella is still in the Neverland.
* * *
“Cap’n’s acting funny.”
I pause at the foot of the ladder, hastily stuffing a strip of dried salt fish into my coat pocket, as Flax’s covert voice drifts past the hatchway above.
“He’s just smarter than you, is all,” answers Nutter.
“It was smart not to fight?” Flax prods.
“Little bastards had the advantage,” Nutter points out. “We wasn’t ready. Cap’n played a smooth trick on ’em, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure he did. Next time they come back, they’ll think we’ve all gone soft. That’s when we’ll give ’em what for.”
I’m astounded that Nutter thinks so highly of my methods. One impulsive act of bravado and Hook is reborn, his despair taken for tactical cunning. Thus are military legends made, of hot air and delusion. I creep up the ladder, behind them. As the voices move off toward the deckhouse, I hear Flax make a derisive click of his tongue. “If you ask me, he’s soft already.”
“That’s why nobody’s asking you, old son. Cap’n done the right thing—this time.”
“Who’s to say he won’t turn yellow again?” says Flax.
“Oh, there’s a fight coming, I promise you,” Nutter chuckles confidently. “And next time we’ll win!”
Chapter Twenty-seven
SUITE: FAREWELL FEAR
1
She’s not gone yet. But Pan may be rallying his murderous boys to hunt her down at this very moment. Certainly, if she were already in Pan’s possession, he would have brought her on board the Rouge today to start a battle. I must find her before he does.
It’s dreary work rowing once more down Kidd Creek, but if she is still at large, sooner or later, she must return to our only place of refuge. Where else can she go? I maneuver behind the falls, stroking for the shelter and solitude of Le Reve. By the grace of whatever powers rule in this place, let Stella be aboard. Ahead lies the strip of black beach in the lee of the familiar cliff crowned with ripe foliage. Every palm, every fern, every dripping succulent is just as it was, a silent chorus of tranquil beauty welcoming me home.
One thing alone is missing. Le Reve is gone.
Irrational panic grips me; I must have made a wrong turn, followed the wrong route, although I could row here in pitch blackness, even drunk or asleep. It’s an illusion, some unrecollected rock or outcropping of vegetation standing between the sloop and my vision. But there is no such phantom impediment. The entire surface of Lake Hypnos stretches before me, and Le Reve is nowhere on it. All that labor, long, exhausting decades of my life lavished over every detail, my fond memories of peaceful industry away from the boy, all of them destroyed. My absurd pride in my work, blasted now to atoms, my only solace wrenched from my grasp. Le Reve is gone.
Why did he do it? For spite alone? Did he send her to the bottom, or did he simply command my beautiful sloop to disintegrate, the way he commanded the roses to die, to dissolve into particles and whisper away on the wind? Yet another victory over me.
I get a firmer grip on my oars and my wits. If our sanctuary has disappeared, where else in all the Neverland might Stella go?
* * *
It’s as green as ever on the Mysterious River, tropical foliage waving idly in the breeze, dripping along the water with serene indifference. All is mist and humidity as I row, beyond feeling, beyond weariness, beyond any other consideration but Stella’s welfare. Grant me her safety, and I’ll do anything you ask, I beg of the limpid atmosphere itself. But I receive no reply that my poor wits can discern.
One place alone might offer Stella refuge. At the very least they might be able to help me find her. Their scouts inhabit every waterway in this island; perhaps one of them has heard something, seen something. If I am not too late.
Still some distance downriver from the place where phantom tributaries obscure the entrance to the Mermaid Lagoon, I hear something splash off my port bow. Hoping to spy again the flying fish guides, I peer over my shoulder to see a vision out of a nightmare, long, webbed fingers closing upon the wales, a dark head rising up to stare at me. A pale face under a tangle of greenish-black hair in long, dripping coils, turquoise eyes, an ear with a shark’s tooth through its lobe; a face I know. I still my oars and nod to Mica, the warrior siren.
“Captain,” she murmurs.
Letting go one oar, I reach slowly for my sword, which lies in the bottom at my feet. I lift it gingerly by the blade and offer the hilt to Mica. She takes it. I peel back the flap of my coat to extract the knife from my belt and hand this to her as well. She slides it into a length of plaited seaweed round her waist.
“I come to you unarmed,” I tell her. “Please, I beg an audience with Madam Lazuli.”
* * *
Sand swirls in uncanny patterns across the surface of black water in the old sibyl’s water glass, within its coronet of volcanic spikes. There is not yet any recognizable image, like the fish we saw before, but the sibyl nods her sprigged white head with satisfaction.
“We will find her, Captain,” the formidable blue merwife, Lazuli, assures me, coiled up on her tail beside me on the rock plateau before the water glass.
I am too late for Stella; she has come here and gone again, so they tell me. Not off to collude with some other man or fairy for her release, but here to the safety of the merwives after I abandoned her. She blew her shell whistle over Lake Hypnos and was borne to this lagoon by a mermaid escort yesterday, while I wallowed in oblivion on board the Rouge. This morning, scant hours ago, she left them again, and we have climbed to the water glass to find out where she went.
I nod, squeezing out my hair, still wet from my watery descent, and lean in closer to put myself in the way of the draft of cool air that enters the grotto through a channel in the rocks directly above the sibyls’ oracle glass. They have treated me generously thus far; dozens of Mica’s sister warriors swam on either side of my boat and in the vanguard, creating a current with the strength of their bodies to speed me downriver to this place. The air bladder they provided rendered my descent into the lagoon as tolerable as possible, yet disquiet grips me do I allow myself to recall the fathoms of water under which we are buried here.
“She begged us to send a messenger to a certain elder woman of the tribes,” Lazuli goes on.
“She’s gone to the Indians?” My heart sinks another fathom still. A brave on a quest, a far more likely means of escape than any of my men.
But the blue merdame shakes her head. “I believe she wanted their help to guide her into the Fairy Dell.”
I am chilled by more than wet. Of course, the Indians know the wood better than anyone but the boys. “Surely, they would not agree?” I protest. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I cannot say what the answer was,” Lazuli confesses. “Our messengers relayed her request through the network of waterways that connect our lagoon to the Indian territory. The response that came back was not in words. The tribeswoman sent her a packet of dried blossoms.”
I frown at her. “Dream Flowers?”
“So she called them,” Lazuli nods. “Her answer was to come in a dream, and since it was evening by then, we persuaded her to stay the night here, with us, where she would be safe. But her sleep was troubled, and something had changed by this morning. When she awoke, she was desperate to go back.”
“Back?” I echo. Can the boy be wrong? Has she gone already?
“Back to you,” the merwife elaborates. “She said there was something she had to tell you.”
My heart clenches. “She didn’t say what?”
“She was in too great a hurry. Our women guided her back to the lake behind the falling water.”
Dare I mention Le Reve? But if Stella called the sirens from on board yesterday, they must know by now my sloop exists. “Back to my ship?” I ask. “My sloop, I mean.”
The blue siren nods. “That is the last they saw of her.”
Only I was not aboard to greet her. What did the Dream Flowers tell her? If it was the secret to getting out of the Neverland, why didn’t she go? Unless she flew off to London without me, on my ship, like in the stories. I almost hope she did, rather than imagine all the mischief that might have befallen her since then in this wretched place. “They are both gone now,” I tell Lazuli, “Stella and my ship.”
The merwife sighs, scratches thoughtfully at her springy, silver-gray head. “She was safe as long as she was with us,” Lazuli tells me. “She has not called again for our help. We do not know that she’s come to any harm…”
Again I find myself angling nearer the air shaft, as if to escape the miasma of dread rising to suffocate me like steam from the lagoon. “How can there be so many harmful things in this place?” I groan. “How can it be a haven for children?”
Lazuli regards me with patience in her sapphire eyes. “The Neverland must have its wildness, its terrors,” she tells me. “Here, children must find not only their happiest fantasies, but their most violent and terrible nightmares. They must face their demons and laugh at them. They must conquer fear. That is the key to growing up.”
At Lazuli’s elbow, the old sibyl scatters more sand over the water in her oracle glass. “Yessss…” she hisses, “there is something to see now.” And Lazuli motions me forward to gaze into the water. The sand drifts apart on the surface, revealing a green image, foliage along a river bank. Falls thunder nearby; I can hear them. It’s like watching a play on the surface of the water. An offstage voice cries out,
“Are you there, Madam? Come out. I need you!”
It is my own voice. But even as I stare in confusion, the last of the sand sinks away and I see Pan calling out through his cupped hands, calling out in my voice. The waterfall is visible now, and my heart catches as another voice answers,
“James, is that you?” Stella emerges from behind the falls, hurrying along the bank, shift clutched up in both hands, her expression eager. “Where are you? I’ve been so worried!”
And the wretched boys swarm up out of hiding, fly across the water to surround her.
“Your codfish James can’t help you now, Lady!” crows Pan.
I watch in impotent horror as Stella tries to outmaneuver the boys. Twisting away, she grasps the shell whistle round her neck, but Pan rips it out of her hand with such violence that the seaweed thong breaks, and he throws the shell into the river. In an instant of inspiration, Stella feints away from the boys trying to herd her and plunges off the bank into the river herself. My heart surges; the boys fear the water!
But as she strokes out into the river, the boys shouting and heckling her from the air, Pan rises up and whistles through his two fingers. An ominous splash answers up ahead, and the nightmare shape of the crocodile comes speeding along the surface of the water, straight for Stella.
She sees it, paddles in place for a frantic moment. There is nothing she can do but scramble back up onto the bank. The evil reptile might yet give chase, were that its purpose. But at Pan’s signal it sinks obediently back into the water, waiting, while the boys charge Stella with a length of rope, winding it round her arms and shoulders, despite her flailing and wriggling, until she can only kick out uselessly at boys hovering several feet off the ground.
“You’re wasting your time,” Stella challenges Pan, shaking back her wet hair, determined. “He doesn’t care anything about me.”
I am stabbed to the heart to think she might believe it. Yet how gallantly she fences not to lure me into a trap. A trap for both of us, it must be, or he’d have let the crocodile rip her to pieces.
“We’ll find out!” bleats Pan. Then he turns to his sparkling fairy. “Shut her up, Kes, so she won’t be any more trouble.” A shiver of light envelops Stella, and her kicking and squirming cease. “Glimmer her back and wait for me,” Pan instructs his fairy. “We have work to do. C’mon, men!”
But now the image is fading into black water once more.
“Where has she gone?” I beg the old sibyl. “Is she safe?”
The crone shakes her snowy head. “The glass cannot see where she is,” she murmurs in her whispery voice. “Only where she was.”
I can only guess at my ghastly expression from the sympathy in Lazuli’s, scarcely notice the gentle hand the merdame lays on my arm as I struggle to collect my wits.
“As long as you are here in this grotto, the Boy King cannot detect you,” Lazuli tells me.
