Alias Hook (29 page)

All eyes turn to Burley, who squares his bulky frame as if shouldering into a headwind. “Yours, Cap’n.”

How must I appear to them? Grimy clothing befouled by the Mermaid Lagoon, my drooping red coat reeking of bilgewater from the bottom of the boat, plumed tricorne in disarray over my loose and tangled hair. Now that Stella has brought me back to life, they take me for a ghost! It makes me exceedingly merry; I can’t repress a laugh, which horrifies them further, Hook’s vengeful ghost laughing in their faces.

“I fear your labors are in vain, my bullies, for as you see—” My gaze falls again on that forlorn little box. Oh, it’s like a comic opera! I expect the chorus to march in, singing
fol-de-rol, fol-de-rol, folly, folly, folly.
“And what portion of my anatomy were you planning to ship over the side in that?” I ask in giddy astonishment.

“Er … they said … there wasn’t nothing left,” Nutter offers, still clutching the lines. “They said you was drowned.”

“Who would say a thing like that?” I ask coolly.

At that moment, Filcher bounds up out of the hatchway carrying my splendid indigo hat, beribboned in red and gold. He stops dead in his tracks at the sight of me, his small, shiny eyes rounding with shock.

“Bloody ’ell!” he stammers. He stares down at my hat as if it’s come into his hands of its own accord, looks at me as if I’ve caught him making off with the bloody crown jewels.

“Eager to assume my badge of office, eh Mr. Filcher?” I sally.

“We was going to bury it,” he murmurs to the hat.

“Out of respect,” Burley chimes in hopefully. “Swab said we had to put it in a box or it wouldn’t go down.”

I nod at Burley, sweep my gaze back to Filcher, quaking before me. “And who told you I had drowned?”

He seems unable to account for it, shoots an uncertain glance at Nutter.

“It was the boy,” Nutter declares, making a decisive movement to coil the line back in place that the others follow.

My blood chills. Did Pan see me at the lagoon? “You spoke to the boy?” I demand of Filcher.

“Not just me, Cap’n,” my first mate hastily rejoins.

“They came two days ago, Cap’n. For a parley.” Nutter takes up the tale. “Him and his fairy. Asked where you were. We didn’t know. He said he’d beaten you, and got rid of the … new mother … in the Mermaid Lagoon.”

“Wot was we to fink?” Filcher pipes up.

“And then, when you didn’t come back…” Nutter shrugs, and Filcher nods enthusiastically.

“That’s right, Cap’n, that’s how it was,” Burley agrees.

Hook would snarl that he was back, and they’d all better look lively, but my brain is racing. The boy is not so easily gulled as my men, but if the rumor goes round that I am dead and Stella as well, drowned in the Mermaid Lagoon, might we not gain the advantage? If Pan had to come sniffing round my men to learn my whereabouts, perhaps he doesn’t know for certain I was ever at the lagoon. His spy, the crocodile saw us emerge, but what if it didn’t live to tell the boy? Pan forgets those he kills, and if we disappear from his sight, Stella and I, drowned in the lagoon, might he not forget us both? This might be my quest, a rebirth, as the merwife called it, if not a victory over the boy, at least a means to wriggle out from under his control. To abdicate my command here at long last, retire from the field. It’s worth a try. Indeed, it’s in the best interest of my crew if I am not here to draw the boys’ fire. I have only to invent some plausible story to pacify them.

“Well, men, I was at the Mermaid Lagoon,” I confess, gratified to see the shudder that pulses through them all.

“And the woman?” Filcher asks sullenly.

“I meant to snatch her back if I could. She was a valuable physician whose skills would have been useful on this ship,” I tell them. “But the boy condemned her to death, and there was nothing I could do.” Let them construe what they will from this. The fewer people who know Stella lives, the safer she’ll be. “I scarcely escaped from the place myself,” I continue. “I was driven into the water and had to fight for my boat. One of the loreleis gave chase; tenacious as a bloodhound, she was. Pursued me downriver.” I struggle not to laugh aloud over this inspiration; if the men believe the loreleis inhabit the channels as well as the lagoon, they’ll be far more likely to stay out of the waterways altogether. “But I routed the creature and sent her sniveling back to her sisters.”

I’d better play Hook to the hilt if my ruse is to succeed. I eye each man in turn to see who dares dispute me. None do. My grimy appearance does nothing to dispel my story, and most of them gaze upon me with renewed admiration.

“Now, men, we mustn’t contradict the boy.” I beam at them. “If he believes me gone, he’ll be off his guard. So I think it’s best if we carry on with this funeral.” I nod at the wooden box. “Although, Mr. Filcher, I’d appreciate it if you’d spare my hat.”

With an audible gush of relief, Filcher hands my hat to me.

“My time among you must be brief if we are to maintain this fiction,” I counsel them as they all hop back about their business. “Filcher, you’re in command when I’m gone. Keep the larder stocked and the weapons in trim.”

“But Cap’n, where’ll you be?” Filcher grunts, grabbing a line beside Nutter to lower the boat again.

My malicious grin cheers them, and they bend eagerly toward me. “I will be in the skiff on the river. Scouting a passage to the boys.” The hauling and hammering still as they all swivel their faces toward me. “The redskins have their lakes up in the high country, and the loreleis their lagoon in the south. There must be a channel connecting them that flows through the wood, and I mean to find it. Now that I’ve survived the Mermaid Lagoon, the whole of the river is ripe for exploration. The boys council I attended was held in a public place, but how much more likely are we to find their secret lair by cunning, from their private waterway? Think of it, men! Why should we constantly wage a losing war of defense when we might enter into the heart of boy country by stealth, launch a pre-emptive strike on their own turf? Murder them all before they have the wit to fly!”

Now the men finally open their lungs and cheer. How like the boys they are.
Kill, kill, kill
. Stella is right; we men are a sorry lot.

What ever possessed her to love me?

This unwelcome thought steals in upon me like a sudden frost in the middle of my triumphant charade. But I shake it off, order the burial party over the side with Burley in command, and a brick from the ballast in the hold to weigh down the box. I give my abused scarlet coat to Brassy and go into my cabin to collect fresh clothing for my presumed voyage of exploration, my French cutlass and an extra dagger. With Brassy off in his cupboard with his brushes, and Cookie packing the victuals I requested from the galley, I steal into Stella’s cabin to purloin another shift out of the chest I gave her, along with the clothes she wore here, and the volume of Milton that gave her such joy, all of which I stuff into a pillow sleeve.

Back in my cabin, I return my ribbony hat to its peg. My plumed and lacy tricorne is so unsuitable for skulking about in shadowy places, even my men might notice, so I hang it up as well, pluck off the black hat, and draw on my black coat. But at the last moment, I find I cannot bear to leave behind the frothy pink feather, still redolent of Stella. So I snap it out of the brim of my tricorne and slide it inside my shirt, under my black coat, next to my heart.

I scarcely step foot upon
Le Reve
when Stella comes bounding up the hatch and across the deck to kiss me.

“You must be sweltering in that thing,” she exclaims, pushing my black coat off my shoulders.

“If you are going to undress me every time we meet, Parrish, we’ll never get anything done,” I protest, making no attempt whatever to move away from her busy hands.

“Well, you look like an undertaker!” she laughs.

“How fitting, as I’ve just come from a burial.” And I tell her all that transpired aboard the
Rouge
. “I need only go back now and then to hear news of the boy. Only think, if he forgets about me, about you…” I’m arrested in the act of shrugging entirely out of my coat. “Perhaps they will all forget,” I breathe. “The boys, my men, all of them. The Neverland. They might forget all about us, Stella. They might leave us here in peace.”

But Stella frowns. “Here?” she echoes. “We can’t stay here, you know that.” Her hands clasp my shoulders, her dark eyes are vivid. “I’m going home, James. And you’re coming with me!”

Chapter Twenty-four

THE REDEEMER

“Home? The world of men and war you were so eager to escape?” I suck on a stringy piece of salted wild pig purloined from the galley of the
Rouge,
along with a bottle of port. We’ve removed ourselves below to the salon as dusk creeps over the Neverland. “Have you changed your mind?”

“Coming here changed everything,” says Stella. “I never realized how much I’d miss all I left behind. Little things. Daft things. A snug home, a fire in the grate, and a rattling good book. An excellent glass of port.” She raises an empty hand in mock salute; we must pass the bottle between us, as all my goblets are back aboard the
Rouge.
“The changing of seasons, the company of friends, the healing cycles of time, grown-up pleasures, I crave them now.” She sits back a little, sighs. “Running away doesn’t solve anything. It’s time to go back and rebuild the world we’ve got.”

I reach out to stroke her hand. “Stella Rose, my sweet outlaw, my tumbling star. There is no way back from the Neverland. I prayed for centuries. I should have found it by now.”

“
Prayed,
is it?” She cocks an eyebrow at me. “Perhaps you invoked the wrong gods.”

“In my day you’d burn at the stake for such talk,” I note admiringly.

“It’s not witchcraft,” she says. “Forces exist in the world far older and more compassionate than the gods of men. Or boys. The miracles of nature are more powerful than anything church or science can imagine. Mysticism is as old as time. The shaman spoke of a dreampath—”

“Poetic metaphor,” I protest.

“All right, but he said the quest belongs to someone brave enough to follow the dreampath the
other
way. Out of the Neverland! Lost Boys and Wendys go back all the time. Peter flies in and out all the time. The merwives go back and forth underwater.”

“I mean there is no way back for
me.”

She shakes her head, her bouncing hair nearly the color of the port in the warm lamplight. “But it’s all different now. You yourself have visited the fairy queen and the mermaids.”

“Only because I was witless enough to follow you.”

“And why didn’t the fairies stop me, as Peter asked that day, remember?” Stella counters. “Why didn’t the Indians shoot me down? Why didn’t the mermaids drown me? Because the signs appear in all their folklore, and I must be part of it, somehow.”

“It may be your journey entirely,” I agree. “But not mine. Eden must have its Satan.”

“But surely you are the sacrifice here, not the Devil,” she exclaims. “You are the redeemer.”

I stare at her. “Madam, in my time I’ve been accused of many things—”

“You’re the one who suffers for their games,” she insists. “You are the one who dies over and over again so children may have their innocent Dreaming Place. So Peter can win, over and—” she pauses, wide eyes gazing inward, then gapes again at me. “His dreams are freighted with centuries of losses, that’s what the merwife told us. How can he not explode? He has to take it out on someone. Then you come along, the dark and sinister man, the pirate, symbol of the cruel grown-up world that has stolen so much from him. But this is the world where children prevail, where Peter always wins!” She is eager now. “Maybe he doesn’t even know why, but it must relieve the sorrow somehow, all his victories over you, the sorrow he can never be allowed to remember. That must be why she sent you here! Your witch, your voodoo queen.”

“Why would she care if the little whelp has bad dreams?”

Stella shrugs. “Might
she
have been a Wendy?”

I frown. “If so, she would have no memory of this place, would she? But … she did commune with spirits of the dead.”
Bienvenu, Mama Zwonde.
It chills me still to think on it.

“Maybe she didn’t care anything about Peter,” Stella suggests. “But she cared a great deal about you.”

“To curse me to eternal torment?” I gape. “By God’s hamstrings, it’s lucky she didn’t dislike me!”

“A curse
and
a chance,” Stella persists. “Lazuli told us the Neverland was in grave peril once because Peter was on the verge of giving way to all his sorrows. What if it was you coming here that put things right? However awful your other crimes, your witch must have known this would outweigh them all. Preserve harmony in the Neverland, keep this place safe for dreaming children everywhere. Redeem the Neverland and redeem yourself.”

And it comes to me again, what Proserpina said that day about my future, a violent end, my unshriven spirit forbidden to rest in peace. I took it for a curse flung at me in anger. Was it a warning?

“But … it’s fantastic,” I mutter. “Why would she bother?”

“She must have loved you,” Stella murmurs. “As much as I do.”

I am stunned to speechlessness.

“It just wasn’t supposed to take so long,” Stella adds.

“Perhaps my crimes were greater than she imagined.” I’m shaking my head against a floodtide of grim memory. “I should have faced the charges against me like a man, stood up to my accusers, removed the stain from our family name. But I chose to run away, take it out on the world, like a fool. Like a boy.” I draw a heavy breath. “My father might have lived.”

Stella grips my hand in both of hers. “Your witch knew what you were. She knew how much you had to answer for. But she expected you back in her lifetime. She wanted you back, I’m sure of it. What prevented you?”

I shake my head. “That was centuries ago. My memories of that time are naught but a blur of one fruitless campaign after another. After Pan slaughtered my original crew, he started bringing in replacements, former Lost Boys with no better sense than to dream themselves back. I would find them dazed and helpless in some forgotten corner of the island or other, de facto outlaws in this fairyland of children. How could I not—”