James paused thoughtfully and wondered if his parents would even recognize him if—when—he got home. Then he shrugged his red coat over his shoulders, fastened each button, and set his hat atop his head. Even if he was preparing to fight a war, it was not uncalled for to preserve a bit of etiquette and good form.
He creaked open the door to the outside, cold and warmth mingling strangely in the air, and noted, with satisfaction, the ever more tumultuous sky, the peals of thunder cracking like whips through the air, and the lightning illuminating the angry clouds. The stars racing and nearly crashing into one another. Peter was getting furious.
James walked across the deck, happy with the bright sheen of oil on the ship’s side, and the net, which, in any other weather, would have been visible, if not obvious. But, in the dark, Pan might miss it. James stood at the ship’s helm and smiled in a way he hadn’t smiled since he’d come there. It was a smile of sinister darkness, curdled with hope. His hair blew behind him as he faced the storm, features lighting up with the sky. It was enough to give noticeable chills even to the pirates on his crew.
Then, there was a silence, one that fell and hung for a moment between the thunderclaps. In that thick quiet, James heard it—a snap of a twig. Then another. The Lost Boys were at the ship now, and Peter was with them.
James looked out into the trees. They were slate-grey, leaves quivering.
He held a finger to his lips and the pirate crew receded into the shadows. It would seem to Pan and his boys that the ship was empty. At least, that was what James hoped. There was a tap on the boat’s side, and several more followed.
Tap, tap, tap, and a sliding.
Tap, tap, tap, slide.
James smiled secretly. Starkey and Jukes each moved quietly to their posts on either side of the net.
James pulled out Pan’s flute, leaning against his cabin, and waited for another silent moment to come. When one did, James brought the flute to his lips and blew out. Long, slow breaths that the flute amplified with its low, mournful whistling. Flintwise, who stood beside him, shuddered.
Then, the thunder crashed, much louder than before, and Peter shot up over the deck, knife already drawn. It sliced easily through the net and Peter sprang through it, walking on air on the other side. James was stricken, knowing in the depths of him that if it came down to hand-to-hand combat, Peter would best him every time. The color drained from his face when Peter stopped above him, put his fists on his hips, knuckles buried in the familiar makeshift outfit—drapings of hide and moss— and looked down and smiled.
“Well, pirate, it seems you have something of mine.” He smiled with his teeth.
“Yes, fairy, it certainly does.”
Peter frowned. “Do not call me ‘fairy,’ for you know my name is Peter Pan.”
“Then do not call me ‘pirate,’ for you know my name as well.”
“Why would I ever learn your name, pirate?” he said, eyes bright, spinning briefly in the air.
James’s face darkened. “You know me, boy.”
Peter crossed his legs and set his face on his hand for a minute, lines in his forehead deeply creased. “No, pirate. I don’t believe I do.”
James’s nostrils flared, a dark hate blooming in his chest. “Lies.”
“Never.”
James laughed, but it was completely devoid of humor. “You lied to me once, Peter Pan. Of course you would do it again.”
“I did no such thing,” Peter said, thin eyebrows arched. “I’ve never even met you.”
“James Hook. You know me.”
Peter looked genuinely confused. James furrowed his brow, and a deep pain, one that tore at him harder, even, than when Peter had tried to kill him, spiraled in his gut. “Is it possible that you really don’t remember?”
“Yes. Because we have never met. Why would I recall you if I’ve never seen you?”
James was overcome with rage and confusion. Was it truly possible that the boy somehow didn’t know him? After all that time together in the Neverwoods? It hadn’t been so long since he’d left, had it? He had a compulsion, only for a moment, to race to the edge of the ship, to stare down at the Lost Boys waiting there and be sure that Bibble hadn’t forgotten him. Or Bobble or Slightly.
But no, they hadn’t. Surely they hadn’t. Peter was nothing if not egocentric. In the past, if anything hadn’t related directly to him, or he’d found it irritating or useless, he’d forgotten it, sometimes instantly. Peter had always been prone to forgetting unforgettable things. James had just never reckoned that he would be counted among them. Rage bubbled up inside him.
“Take me back home, Peter, or I swear to you, I will—”
“You’ll what? Catch me in a net? Did you truly think you could catch Peter Pan in a net? Did you think I wouldn’t see it in the storm?”
Starkey and Jukes grumbled and shifted uneasily, and James’s mouth fell open, for that was indeed what he had thought.
Peter laughed a loud, taunting laugh and stretched out his arms, the little dagger he always had balancing on those dexterous fingers. James recoiled automatically, knife flashing in his mind, hurtling him back into an unwelcome memory of that very blade digging into his neck, those long, thin fingers crushing his arms, his windpipe.
“Foolish man!” called Peter, gripping the knife again, drawing James out of his reverie. “I saw it when the sky flashed. Even the lightning loves me!”
James shook his head for he knew what the Pan said was true, but he regained his composure quickly and shouted up at the boy, “Fine, then. Come and claim what’s yours.”
Peter grinned devilishly and James outstretched his sword, thinking it bad form to spring it upon the boy. Peter brandished his own dagger. But, when he shot downward, he did not come at James. Instead, he went after a pirate James did not yet know the name of.
The other pirate was as stunned as James, and he fumbled for his sword. Several men started toward him, blades outstretched. James saw the dread in the man’s face and dropped the flute, running as quickly as he could to defend his crewman. There was a great fear in the depths of him, welling quickly up, devouring him. He could not have another innocent man’s face in his head, dead at the hands of Peter Pan. It was this fear that drove the generally elegant man into fumbling, and he knew before Peter struck that he would not get there in time. Nor would Starkey or Jukes, who were both barreling toward him, both knowing as well as James that their guns would do nothing against Pan; he was too quick. But getting within sword-fighting distance was impossible.
Peter drove his dagger to the hilt into the pirate’s chest. Blood spilled over the blade from the wound. And James was left, once again, with an image that would haunt his dreams forever.
James’s face went through a myriad of changes in a moment. From terrified to stricken to denying, and finally resting on malicious. Malice, James could do.
“Peter, yet again you provoke me,” he said, voice barely audible over the fierce wind.
“What will you do about it, old man?”
James thought for a moment, seriously contemplating his answer. Then, he turned his face up to the boy and gave him the most honest reply he could. “Kill you, Peter. I will kill you.”
Peter laughed at this, a shaking, loud belly-laugh. “You can never kill me.”
“Can’t I?”
“Of course not.” His mouthed quirked up and crossed his arms. “I’m Peter Pan. No one wishes to kill me.”
In this answer, James had to turn his face away, for he refused to let Peter see the raw emotion he had stirred up. “I do. You killed me first.”
Peter frowned, then shrugged, as though his statement was of no value whatsoever. “Nonsense. Why do men always speak such nonsense?”
James turned again to face him, face lit by the periodic flashes of lightning in the inky sky. “What I say now is not nonsense. I will kill you, or I will die trying. You can consider that a promise.”
Peter clapped his hands together. “W
hat fun.”
“Come and fight me.”
He crossed his legs in the sky and leaned his cheek against his knuckles. “I’m bored of this adventure.”
“But you can’t leave yet. Not without—”
James was silenced by Pan’s shrill, merry whistling on his flute.
“How did you—”
“I nicked it. While you were staring at something or other. I can’t remember.”
James’s jaw clenched and he stared up at Peter, brow shadowing his features. “The pirate. I was staring at the dead pirate.” A gruff cry went up from his crewmen, and his own voice was shaking with his body, trembling with dark, dangerous rage. “The man lying in his own blood on my deck, Peter. The same blood on your knife. The one you just murdered minutes ago.”
Another angry shout from the men.
“Oh, yes. Some fellow or other. I always forget them after I kill them.” Peter dismissed the point with a wave of his hand. Then, he stood and bounced off nothing, rocketing into the sky, taking the storm with him.
“Off to the tree house, boys!” he called.
James stalked over to the ship’s edge and peered over. The Lost Boys were traipsing off across the beach, frantically following their leader. James laughed angrily. Peter hadn’t even allowed the boys to battle. Arrogance. He’d wanted them to come see him do something grand, but no one was allowed to fly into a war with him. So if they couldn’t climb, he figured they’d all simply wish to risk their lives in order to watch. A muscle twitched in his jaw, and he stayed the hands of the pirates who were aiming various nasty things at their backs. James had no desire for killing children, his friends. Not ever, really, but certainly not tonight.
After the adrenaline of battle had disappeared, he turned away from Pan and his boys to the pirate lying on the deck. He walked over to him and knelt beside him, then brushed the man’s straw-colored hair out of his face, wishing to see it.
“What is this fellow’s name?” he called.
No one answered.
“His name, men, his name!”
Bill Jukes stepped forward, eyes downcast, wringing his hat in his hands. “Larsen, Sir. Larsen Griggs.”
Larsen Griggs. James burned the name into his mind. This man deserved to be remembered; he certainly wouldn’t be by his killer. But he would by his captain.
James choked, looking at him, and breathed shakily in and out for a while. Then, he left without a word, leaving the pirates to clean up the dead man, resolved to dwell on something other than Larsen Griggs’s blood on his hands.
In his cabin, he sat on his bed and pondered darkly, twirling his sword by its hilt. “Tree house,” Pan had said. So, they had a tree house now, did they? Perhaps he would look for it tomorrow. Perhaps he would find it. And perhaps Pan would be inside. And, perhaps, no, for certain—for certain, James would kill him.
THIRTEEN
IT WAS A CHALKY SORT OF DAY AS JAMES STOOD ON THE dock. The clouds were pastels, like swaths of cotton candy, and the light chill rose a trail of goose bumps on his skin.
He’d left the ship several minutes earlier, snuck away silently. This mission was not the sort one asks his entire crew to carry out. No, this was the sort a man waits his entire life for, and then he tells his friends to let him do it alone. As it was, James didn’t have any friends. So, he simply left.
But now, standing on the mooring and surveying the island, he found he did not know where to start. Neverland was such a vast place, and treacherous, and filled with all sorts of nooks and crannies. Where was one supposed to find the den of a part-fairy and his band of children? He knew for certain that they resided in a tree, but that was no real help at all. He might as well have said that they lived above ground or that they lived somewhere surrounded by air. The trees were innumerable. But, James forced himself not to think such thoughts, and instead, decided to consider the vague clue a real advantage.
James raked a hand through his hair and felt the slight stubble on his defined chin, the new wire in his biceps. Yes, somewhere early in his twenties now for sure. He could be no younger than twenty, by any stretch of the imagination. The words “old man,” as crowed by Peter, echoed in his head as he stared out at the vast forest.
A sharp pain stabbed through his stomach at that, a needle of worry. He had always wanted to become a man anyway, so the sentiment shouldn’t have affected him so. But affect him it did, and as he stood there doing nothing much but getting older bit by bit, he found that he was afraid.
When that fear settled in so snugly that James knew it was to be a stubborn, welcome-overstaying houseguest, he figured there was nothing to do but distract himself from it, and that was when he took his first step onto the beach. After that first step, it was not so difficult to take another, and another. Thus, he made his way across the Spanish Beach (that was what he called it now, in honor of his ship) and entered into the looming forest.
The bramble bit at his calves and the branches on the trees scratched his forearms as he passed them. He wondered, first, if this was somehow intentional, if the island knew what he was after. And second, he greatly regretted his choice of wardrobe—a sort of threadbare, very piratey-looking shirt that rolled up at the elbows, and some thin pants that rolled up at the knees and— goodness—he hadn’t even thought to put on shoes. He shook his head and decided that this sort of foolishness proved conclusively that he wasn’t full grown yet. And, through the spiteful forest, he pressed on.
Deeper and deeper into the humid wood he moved, until there was a sort of cadence to the trek. Then, he was no longer thinking, no longer the scheming, conniving pirate; he was a predator. He moved lithely, operating only on feeling and instinct and whatever else it is that propels a hunter. He found that, without intending to, he was running, waiting to happen upon the tree he knew he would recognize instantly; he could feel it. But, the running came to a very abrupt halt when, all of a sudden, he felt an arrow whizz past his nose and stick into the tree to his left.
James stepped back, a surge of adrenaline coursing through his veins, and jerked his head to his right, fiercely searching for whomever had just tried to shoot him. There was a snap of a twig and a flash of color in his peripheral vision, and James was the hunter once again. Abandoning his quest for Peter, he shot off toward the flash, powerful legs carrying him faster, faster. He could feel that someone was near, someone who wanted him dead. Then, he could hear him breathing, and finally, when James’s lungs and muscles were on fire, he was right there, upon him.
With all the force he could muster, James rocketed himself at his assailant and careened into him, knocking him to the ground with such force that both of them bounced a little. James snarled and sat on top of the assailant, sweat pouring down his face into his eyes. The person beneath him was refusing to look at him and was covering his face with his hands. The stinging sweat made it difficult enough to see without the cover, and James was not amused. He jerked the boy’s arm away from his face, snarling, surprised at how easily he was able to do it, how little resistance with which he was met, and pinned it to the ground.
His eyes cleared, and he sucked in a quick breath and blinked rapidly, immediately befuddled. “I—Tiger Lily?”
She was furious; that much was clear. Her mouth was set in a hard line, hands clenched into fists. The look out of her eyes was made of pure venom and a bit of fear.
“James Hook,” she spat.
James remembered himself then and scrambled to get off her, trying not to focus on the smooth, dark skin of her bare arms, the feel of the soft curves of her body beneath his. He looked away from her for a second, hoping against hope that his face was not nearly as red as it felt. Then, because he could not ignore her for long at a time, he looked back at her face. She was proud, staring at him unabashedly, looking somehow regal despite the twigs tangled in her long, black hair and the dirt streaked across her cheekbones. She was older, still, than she’d been last he saw her, somewhere between his mother and cousin bac
k in London. Sixteen, he thought. And it showed. Her face was lovelier, eyes large and deep and dark, the lines of her waist and hips and chest more defined; she had quite literally stolen his breath.
“You tried to kill me,” he mustered, having a hard time speaking at all.
“I tried to kill you? Excuse me, but I wasn’t the one on top of you just now.”
A grin flashed across his face, but he subdued it quickly and made himself focus on the conversation at hand. “You think I just came after you for nothing? You shot an arrow at me.”
She looked away, and James was pleased with himself. He had her there.
“Well, you shouldn’t be running through the woods this early in the morning. You should know that’s when we hunt. You looked like an animal.” She sniffed, her long angled nose wrinkled, and she looked down at him from the bottoms of her eyelids. “And you smell like one, too.”
James narrowed his eyes. He opened his mouth to protest, but a small breeze made its way to his nostrils and he shut it again. Spending any significant amount of time on a pirate ship, it turned out, did not do good things for a man’s scent. He made a mental note to have a bath when he got back onto the Main.
He straightened and nodded curtly. “Well, I apologize for manhandling you earlier.”
Tiger Lily stopped picking leaves out of her hair and bristled. “I hardly think you manhandled me.”
The corner of James’s mouth turned up. “Really? What would you call it, then?”
“I’d say you surprised a poor girl out of nowhere and tackled her before she had a chance to respond. And I held my own, anyway.”
James could not stop himself from laughing. “Yes. You had me fearing for my life there with your remarkable self-defense.”
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