by Lisa Jensen
“The Little Chief says, ‘It’s Hook or me this time!’”
“When?” I demand.
“Today. Now,” the young messenger declares. “Chief Eagle Heart says to tell you the Little Chief cannot be held in check for long. We are ordered to burn your ship to the waterline, and everyone in her.”
Stella comes up beside me, Piper fluttering at her shoulder, as the brave evaporates back into the forest. “We’ve very little time,” Stella says tersely. How well she knows my mind only intensifies my dread of the awful moment when she won’t know me at all.
“I won’t let them pay for my crime,” I mutter. “It doesn’t always have to be like this. I can help them now.”
“But—”
“I can’t abandon them to be slaughtered, drowned, burned alive—”
Stella’s mouth flattens into a tight line, but she argues no more, clutching at my arm. But her stricken face reflects my thoughts. Is there some trick the boy can still use against us, some spell of fire that might yet prevent our escape?
Chapter Thirty-two
THE BLOODY PLANK
“Mortal humors! So long as I live they will mystify me,” huffs Piper, once we’ve descended the trail to our boat at the bottom of the gorgeous ravine. “Do not while away too much time. When the moon reaches her zenith in the sky this evening, the pathway between the two worlds will close to you for the last time, Captain. Summon me when you are ready. Sound a bell to call a fairy,” she reminds us. “Time was, every mortal knew it.”
In a twinkling, her sorcery propels us as far as the mouth of Kidd Creek. But our skiff cannot be seen to simply coalesce out of the ether alongside the Rouge, although it should scarcely give my men any more of a fright than Stella’s presence inside it. Was she not believed drowned in the Mermaid Lagoon all this time? Until Pan taunted me about losing her, last time I was aboard. What will the men think now? But there is no more chance than ever that Stella will listen to reason, take herself off somewhere safe with Piper while I attempt to prevent this massacre.
“I’m not going anywhere without you,” she tells me fiercely. “Our bond is our strength; we are weak and foolish apart.”
Even if ours is a journey into death, we will take it together.
* * *
“If we have a plan, Maestro, now is the time to tell me,” Stella suggests, as we row within hailing distance of the Rouge’s starboard quarter. I hear brisk activity on deck—hammering, a rattling of buckets, light chatter, even some laughter popping sporadically like grapeshot over the water. But there’s no sign yet of flames, nor flying boys, nor war canoes.
“There must be a way to stop it,” I reason. “I’ll call for a parley, declare a truce. At least, I can challenge him man to man—”
“No!” Stella gasps.
“Only to spare the men, save the ship from burning,” I go on stoically. “I’ll honor my word not to harm a boy.”
“It’s not the boys I’m worried about,” Stella grumbles.
“This battle must be deflected somehow,” I insist. “My men know only warmaking, the game they can never win. They have never needed a leader more, and I must give them one. Pacify the boy until he goes off in search of another game and we can be away from here.” And before I can begin to consider all the ways my plan can go awry, I call, “Ahoy! Rouge, there!”
I am in full Hook regalia as we climb the chains, dressed in my much abused but sturdy black coat and snowy-plumed black hat, my French sword at my side. Stella, clambering up behind me, makes an altogether different impression, dark auburn hair loose and tousled, white chemise girded with green ivy vines from the heart of the forest, pink seashell hanging once more round her neck, buckskin slippers on her feet, knife sheathed at her waist. Had the Neverland itself dreamed a creature to embody all of its eccentric communities, that creature should look no more fey than Stella looks now. I keep her close to me as we march amidships, calling the men to gather round.
To my amazement, it’s Filcher who pushes himself to the front of the circle, beaming as mightily as his fretful features will allow.
“All set, Cap’n!” he sallies, before I can even begin. “Decks all sanded. Weapons done up all proper. Just like you said.”
I can’t even remember the last thing I said to them.
“And that other matter,” Filcher goes on happily. “We seen to that too. The plank you asked for. We built it.”
* * *
Blast me for a Bedlamite! It protrudes like a gargoyle’s rude tongue from the port bows of my own Rouge, a thick wooden plank made fast inboard near the fore shrouds. Most of its length extends out through the rail of the high foredeck over the teeming blue waters of the bay. Never, ever have I beheld such a thing outside of a Wendy’s storybook in all my time in the trade, and certainly not on any ship of mine.
“Mr. Filcher, who in hell gave the order to build that bloody thing?” I yelp.
Filcher’s bonhomie curdles. The others go owl-eyed, as if I’ve said something extraordinary.
“You did, Cap’n,” Burley ventures, at Filcher’s elbow. “For the boys, you said.”
“To show ’em we mean business next time!” Nutter chimes in.
“I never gave any such order!”
“Aye, ye did, Cap’n,” Burley maintains placidly. “‘I have a surprise for you men,’ you said. ‘Build a plank and prepare for battle.’ Down by the creek, it were. Me and Brassy and Flax, we all heard you.”
“But no one actually saw me,” I fence, as the possibilities take shape in my mind. “Am I a will o’ the wisp, some Biblical oracle that issues orders out of bushes? I’d have shown myself to you, had I been there in fact.”
“But we all know your voice,” says Flax.
“It was a trick of the boy’s,” I tell them, “mimicking my voice to get what he wants. Listen, men, the boys are on the warpath, and they’re bringing the braves. They will be here any minute. He’s the one who wants a fight, and if you value your lives, you must not give it to him.”
This is met by a chorus of blustering dismay. “But we’re all ready!” Nutter yelps, while others shout, “Fight! Fight!”
“There are too few of us to rout the boys and the braves combined,” I insist. “What use have our weapons ever been against the boys, much less a hundred warriors? It would be suicide!”
This gets a few of them stirring among themselves, trying to mask their unease from their more adamant fellows. I cannot say the restless tide of their passions, so easily swayed, is shifting in my direction, but it’s possible they might yet listen to reason. I glance at Stella, who steps back to concede the spotlight to me, her expression heartening. “But we are strong if we stand together,” I rally the men. “Don’t pick up your arms. Don’t play his game. I will challenge him instead, persuade him to some other contest. I’m the one he wants to beat, and when he does—”
“Coward!” hisses Nutter. “Fight ain’t even started, and he’s ready to hand it over to the boy.”
No sound at all greets this outburst as the big red-headed fellow looms up opposite me. “Why else are we here except to fight the damn boys?” he cries to the men. “All we need is a captain who will lead us. A captain right here on the Rouge, not off punting down the river like Lord Fucking Fauntleroy every day; a captain who won’t lie to us,” and he glares at Stella. “A captain who don’t go all soft over a woman. We need a new captain! I call for trial by combat! Who’s with me?”
The men are buzzing now, although they’ve not yet begun to chant like the boys.
“We can’t fight among ourselves, there’s no time!” I exclaim. “This is just what Pan wants, to weaken us—”
“No, you want to weaken us!” Nutter shouts me down. “We want to fight!” And he plants himself before me. “Hook, I challenge you to trial by combat!”
“I’m not going to fight for my command!” I splutter. A moldering bucket of bolts forever beached in an eternal nightmare, that is my precious command. �
�God’s blood, man, take it! I wish you all the joy in the world of it, but first—”
“But it’s gotta be trial by combat,” pipes up Filcher, his wary eyes shifting appraisingly between Nutter and me. “It’s in all the stories, i’n’it?”
I don’t see by what signal it happens, only that men have quietly shifted over to box in Stella—Flax, Swab, thickset Burley. When she tries to edge away from them, hands grip her arms, her shoulders, holding her fast.
“This has gone far enough!” I cry, snapping out my sword, but I’m not quick enough; they drag Stella out of my reach.
“Looks like we’ll fight after all, eh, Hook?” Nutter exults, stepping in front of me again. He stretches out a mighty paw, snaps his fingers at Filcher. “Get me one of them things.” And my first mate scurries off like a toady to the magazine, pulls out one of the biggest, longest blades.
“Mr. Burley,” I sally in Hook’s iciest purr, never taking my eyes off Nutter as I struggle to regain my authority. “Who is in command here?”
Burley squints at me, then at Nutter, then glances about at the other men, avid now for their entertainment. “That’s what we’ve got to find out,” he declares.
Filcher trots up to Nutter and slides the hilt of the sword into his grasp. Nutter sights down the length of his arm at it, preening with it, as men have done since the first hour of time, seeing their own worth reflected in the bravery of their weapons. In a grand gesture, he sweeps his blade in a half-circle before him. “Give us room, lads!”
Fortunately for me, hours wasted in swordfighting drills have had little effect on Nutter. Fortunate too he didn’t choose to fight bare-handed; he could pummel me flat in a heartbeat. He has no fencing skill, might as well be wielding a broadsword, or a club, but he’s a tall, broad fellow with a reach like an octopus. I can only dance around him, ready to parry any thrust or lunge he might make in the usual way. Instead, he comes at me suddenly, with a cry and a swipe of his blade, like a thug in a street brawl. Only the desperate speed of my defense checks him, his golden eyes narrowing, cheeks reddening. Perhaps I’m not so easy a target as he supposed. And so we circle and feint, trapped in this idiocy, myself praying only that I can tire him out, wind him, before all is lost. The boys must not find us like this, divided against each other. They must not find Stella captive.
And a more acute alarm ripples through me as I dodge another clumsy lunge. What if this has been his object all along, the diabolical boy? To lure me and Stella back here, to prevent our escape? He may in fact be on his way with the braves, there’s nothing Pan likes better than an audience. But why tell my men to prepare for battle if he were planning a surprise attack? To pump them up to the expectation of bloodshed, make them so eager to fight, it wouldn’t even matter who the enemy was, Pan or me. Or perhaps it was his voice put the notion of trial by combat into their pliant brains as well, anything to delay our departure. And now Stella is captive once more, while I waste my strength against this gigantic fool who aspires to nothing more in life than the pathetic honor of generalship against the boy.
And as Nutter comes about to have at me again, I calculate the angle of his incoming lunge, feint back a step, and drop both sword arm and hook to my sides. Stella gasps behind me as the arc of Nutter’s blade passes a whisper from my belly.
“Well fought, Mr … Captain Nutter,” I sally. “I concede defeat. The Jolie Rouge is yours.”
As I turn for Stella, still fast in the grip of Flax and Swab, some of the men take this as a signal to cheer and whoop. But not Nutter.
“Oh no you don’t, Hook!” he yelps. “You’ll fight me like a man! Take her to the plank!”
Our circle has oozed around the deckhouse by now, and Flax and Swab obligingly drag Stella to the foot of the ladder leading to the port bows. But the rungs are too narrow for more than one foot at a time, and Flax’s close herding at her back only makes her stumble. In a sudden fury, she rounds on him, crying, “God damn it, let go of me!”
And for a second, she is free of them, trotting up the ladder too swiftly for the others to keep up. Gaining the foredeck, she veers sharply to starboard, as if she means to run for it, and I shoulder Swab and Flax aside to get to the foot of the ladder. Nutter, in a frenzy, races up the starboard ladder to cut her off, but Stella runs instead to the middle of the rail and slams her shoulder into the massive ship’s bell depending there from its arched belfry. Its low, sonorous peal ripples out over the deck like a scolding.
I charge up to the foredeck, but Nutter gets to Stella first, clutching her like a shield as he advances again on me, waving his sword. She does everything she can to trip him up, jabbing her elbows backward, feinting back with her heels, until he shoves her at me and regrips his hilt with both hands. I just manage to sweep her behind me as Nutter charges; I give ground, maneuver to keep Stella behind me in the narrow strip along the larboard rail I still hold, praying Piper answers the bell soon. Nutter swipes at me, I parry as best I can, and feel Stella move away behind me. Nutter stumbles back a step, and I look round to see where she’s gone.
She’s climbed up on the plank.
It makes perfect sense; where else can she go and not be interfered with by men eager to force the outcome of our contest? I’ve no thought to spare for how she might get down again, as I whirl about to find Nutter slashing at me like a Turk. There’s no room for a backhanded riposte, and as I fall back from the arc of his blade, my heel connects to the foot of the unfamiliar plank and I stumble. My hook against the deck breaks my fall, but my sword hand, extended in a desperate feint for balance, leaves my position open as Nutter’s rebounding weapon dives for me.
Yet it hovers above me, the dull sheen of the blade aglitter with a thousand tiny sparks. A fairy charm, by all the gods, Piper come at last! But Nutter’s face at the far end of his weapon is the only purple I see, furious at this intrusion. The fey light that dips and dazzles round his head is green and rusty gold.
It’s not Piper who’s answered the bell. It’s Kes.
Chapter Thirty-three
PAN OR ME
“Oi!” shouts Nutter. He yanks back his charmed sword with an angry shake, as if to dispel the fairy glamor, while I regain breath and balance, scramble to my knees.
“I’ve done what you wanted,” the big fellow howls indignantly at the tiny creature. “Nobody’s touched your bleedin’ rival, just like you said!”
“You bargained with Pan’s fairy?” I gape at him, clawing up to my feet.
“Only to get rid of her,” Nutter glowers, pointing his sword at Stella on the plank behind me. The jealousy of Pan’s fairies toward the Wendys is well known in the stories. “Who d’you think tipped off the redskins?” Nutter puffs on, and it comes to me in an instant, Nutter’s hand across a gaming table, weeks ago, grasping a silver bell. Bugger me, it was Nutter I heard colluding with Pan’s fairy, right here aboard my own ship. The destruction of my rival. That’s why I was drugged, to force Stella out of hiding, begin the new game. I’ve been too witless to credit what lengths they might go to for a battle, any battle, whatever the cost. How like the boys they are.
“Foolish man!” Kes twitters at Nutter. “She is nothing to me.” Pointing to me, the imp cries, “There is my rival! More powerful, more fascinating than ever! My master cares for nothing but their war and his victories!”
“Then let me finish the job!” Nutter shouts, mustering up his sword again as I leap up on the foot of the plank to ward him off.
“No, no, no!” Kes sparks at him angrily. “Peter must kill him, finally kill him, or he will never forget him. Never, ever!”
So that’s why she was all afire for me to break my spell. Regain my mortality and lose my life to Pan at last. His greatest victory. And now I see them homing in for the rail, Pan and his feral boys, clattering their weapons in glee. The men in the waist are grabbing their weapons and shields as well, all too eager to turn the deck of the Rouge into a slaughterhouse once more.
“Good work, Kes!”
Pan crows, flying across the foredeck toward us. At the sound of his voice, Nutter spins about with attempted dash, sword upraised, as if he thinks he might have a chance against the boy, wholly unprepared for the speed and confidence and sheer joyous brio of an opponent who knows absolutely that he can never lose. Laughing, Pan darts and swipes at him playfully for a moment or two, and when the game bores him, one furious blow of his short blade knocks the weapon out of Nutter’s grasp.
“Stand aside, Man!” the boy shouts, and some of Pan’s lieutenants cheerfully buffet the unarmed, but still flailing Nutter back down the ladder with their bows and the hafts of their swords.
“Well, Hook,” Pan sallies at me, hovering a yard or two off. “You’re finally where you’re supposed to be. And she is right where I want her!” he boasts, gesturing at Stella on the plank. “I ordered ’em to build it special, you know, just for her!” He flutters a shade closer to me, his eyes vivid with joy. “You’re no fun when she’s around. So she’s going to die. And you’re going to watch. Then we’ll see who is master here!”
He rises higher in the air, fits two grubby fingers into his mouth, and whistles. Taking my eyes off him for an instant, I glance overboard to see shark fins circling beneath the plank. Clenching my sword, I plant myself at the foot of the plank.
“You’ll have to go through me first,” I tell him quietly.
“I told you we’d have another game,” he smiles.
“This is between you and me, boy,” I agree, my voice still low and terse. “Keep your whelps at bay.”
“And you call off your dogs,” he chirps, happy in our eternal game, the one we’ve played so tediously for so long. But never have the stakes been higher. Rising higher still, so everyone can see him, he cries, “It’s Hook or me, this time!”
His boys in the starboard bows and the men in the waist abide by this fragile truce for now, jeering and rumbling at each other, content for the moment to trade insults instead of blows. Pan’s vanity requires their rapt attention; he doesn’t want any other petty battles distracting away from his triumph over me. The boys carry no torches, flaming arrows, buckets of pitch. That the threat of fire was all part of the elaborate ruse to bring us here speaks to how close Stella and I are to realizing our escape. What did Proserpina say about the fire of rage? A warning against the anger that almost scuttled us twice, when Stella and I quarreled, and in Pan’s den, when I lost control, hurt a boy, exposed myself to Kes’ enchantment. I must not give in to anger again. Yet I never pledged to roll over like an infant and let him murder at will.
