Alias Hook (36 page)

A young buck spirals up his horned head, freezes, naught but black nostrils in motion, only yards away as we pass by in the underbrush. My companions move like shadows, but my errant slipper scuffs against a green pine bough underfoot, and the creature canters off. No one rebukes me; the hunting will commence while I’m off about my business.

Eagle Heart motions us to a halt, catches my eyes, nods up ahead. It can’t be called a clearing, a stand of ancient trees growing thickly together, as if emerging from a single maze of boulder-sized roots: pines, firs, twisted scrub oaks, higher branches entangled in a cloud of green. Incongruously, amid the jumble of scratching, tearing, thorny boy plants that carpet the wood, exuberant tendrils of jasmine, Pan’s favorite, wind round each trunk in profusion. What midafternoon sunlight slants in through the leafy cover of a thousand surrounding trees shimmers and dances amid these venerable trunks like the miasma above the mermaid lagoon. Even as we watch, two cackling little whelps trailing furry tails and weeds come racketing in between the trunks. One of them pauses like the wary deer we just saw to spy a hunting party of braves so near their hidden lair, and the one behind all but crashes into him. But Eagle Heart raises one hand in salute. And the boys shout back, “How,” or some such boyish nonsense, clamber over the largest of the gnarled roots, and disappear, no doubt down some rabbit-like hatch into an underground burrow.

As dense as the vegetation is here, as trackless the ground, still I’d have surely found this place in my many forays into the wood, over time, had it not been magicked from my view. Yet it shows itself to Eagle Heart like a constant lover. He regards me now, eyes like black steel, waiting. And I emerge from the knot of braves to stand beside the young chief.

He stretches the point of his bow to where the boys disappeared, and I nod in return. Then he points his bow in the opposite direction, toward an outcropping of rock shaded by leafy undergrowth, down which a little jet of water burbles into a tiny pool in a circle of smaller stones. A spring. I nod again and the chief slides his bow back over his shoulder, points toward the tree trunks, points to himself, shakes his head. He will come no further, cannot be seen escorting me into their lair. He stretches out one hand, and I shrug the empty quiver and bow off my shoulder, hand them to him. My last weapons. He moves his head in the direction he and his braves will be waiting, should I find what I seek.

I touch my fingers to my heart, to my mouth, open my hand to him, the only gesture of their silent language I’ve learned in their village today. Thank you.

They melt back into the forest as silently as falling leaves, and I take a few steps nearer the thicket of tree trunks. Beneath the frenzy of birdsong and the grumbling of distant beasts, the riotous laughter of boys hooting at some unseen game echoes up from below. Sweating from more than the hot sun and thick, jasmine-sweet air so far from the breeze off the bay, I turn and pick my way over to the spring pattering into its little pool of rock. I am only steps away when something comes rustling out of the forest straight for me. Another boy. We freeze for an instant, staring at each other. I will my complexion to darken, my hair to blacken, my withered stump to disappear under its fringe. Slowly, I raise my hand. The boy nods, mumbles some greeting, makes as if to scamper off, but swivels his head round to me again, peering with all his might, frowning, nervous fingers worrying the snakeskin he sports round his middle. I’ve seen this particular whelp before, yesterday, on the rail of the
Rouge.
From no more distance than separates us now. And with a mottled cry of alarm not yet formed into words, the boy races off to the tree trunk portal and dives in.

2

My shaking fingers can scarcely grapple the shell away from my slick chest, but I shove it to my lips and blow as I lean over the spring. I can’t say if it makes any sound at all, or I am too frantic to hear aught but my own rasping breath, but I blow a second time. Noises of alarm are beginning to pop up like toadstools from beneath the trees, but as I follow the path of the boys toward the gnarled root, a softer sound whispers past me in the air, a low, beguiling melody. The sirens’ lullabies begin to fill the forest like the sunlight itself, and I peep over the root down into the dark shaft, forcing myself to wait until I hear no more shouting, no more voices of any kind.

A gelid, tomblike aroma of dust and damp earth assails me as I climb down the dark shaft, out of the light. A length of knotted rope guides me down the tilting shaft, and I slide feet-first into an open chamber. Gaining my bearings, I stand cautiously; the top of my head just grazes the earthen ceiling. Two or three stubby candles, blazing heroically under glass here and there, provide the only illumination, and blinking away the musty gloom, I find myself in a kind of common room. A rickety sort of wooden table stands at the far end, with a few random objects strewn upon it: a ball, some rocks, feathers and shells, the mummified paw of some small forest creature, boys’ treasures or gaming pieces. On the other side of the shaft through which I entered, rough shelves have been dug out of the hard earthen wall, on which are stowed a jumbled disarray of sticks, clubs, wooden bats, broken arrow shafts, piles of bladed weapons, one or two still edged and bright, but most ruined by age or rust or neglect. The grand arsenal of my enemy.

Little heaps of fur litter the dirt floor in the shadows. These must be the cub’s nests they make for themselves, I think, until I peer at one nearest the faint, flickering light and realize it’s an inert boy, the snakeskin boy lolling stuporously in the dirt at my feet. I prod him gently with my moccasin, but he doesn’t stir, merely snorts and groans and rolls over on his other side. I straighten up as far as I may, gaze again round the chamber, begin to recognize the wheezing and snoring of other sleeping boys.

As my eyes adjust, I notice dark blotches that must be small tunnels in the dirt walls, leading away from the main room. I choose the biggest one, across the room from the entry that brought me here, and peek inside into a dark passage. A pale, greenish light beckons from the other end, and I creep through the tunnel to emerge into another chamber, smaller than the common room, but more elaborate—higher ceiling, a real lantern hanging on a peg in the wall, a thick carpet of green, red and yellow leaves over the dirt floor. A sturdy little carved bedstead, plumped with mountains of eiderdown stands in the corner. And slumped across it, legs sprawling on the leafy floor, head and shoulders still draped over the bed, lies Pan.

His wicked short sword has fallen on the leaves beside him, as if he were arrested in the act of stuffing it into his belt. His panpipes have dropped on the bed. He resembles nothing so much as one of my own slaughtered men, but for a thin string of drool leaking out of his open mouth onto the bedclothes. This is the fiend I’ve fought so bitterly for so long? This ridiculous child?

A little open chest of more carefully honed weapons stands at the foot of his bed. And at the far end of the room, in the shadows furthest from the light, looms a tall figure dressed in white.

Stella.

She appears to stand upright, although her feet scarcely touch the ground. Do I only imagine she seems to sway slightly in place? She does not speak, and as I grab the lantern and move toward her, raising the light to her face, I see her eyes are closed, her expression utterly serene. Please, no, by all the gods and devils of this place, not murdered! Hung up like some ghastly trophy?

“Stella!” I hiss as I draw near. Her mouth works a little, and she sighs, and I shudder with relief. Still an arm span away, I sense a kind of sizzling energy around her, detect a faintly sulfurous fairy odor. Odd glints of green and purple shimmer briefly in and out of the light, like cobwebs in the sun. I set down the lantern, reach longingly toward her, but a tingling of burning pinpricks assails my hand, and I withdraw it. Am I a coward, afraid of a little pain? But if she is under fairy magic, what greater harm might befall her if I attempt to remove her? What if she is charmed to die at the first show of force?

True love’s kiss will not break this charm, could she even feel it within this veil of sorcery. But she heard my voice. What did Piper tell me? Choose words that will stir the heart. Praying I have not already lost the power to move her heart, I lean as close as I might, position my mouth near her ear, quell the tremor in my voice.

“Please forgive me, my Stella Rose,” I whisper. “We’re on this journey together.”

Her brow furrows slightly, her lips begin to part, the voice that issues out is soft and faint. “Run away, James.”

Stung by this rebuke, I back away as the shimmering gauze of light that encloses her fizzes angrily. I can no longer speak to her heart. I’ve lost her love. I can’t save her. Then her dark eyes open, glinting green; she blinks at me in both wonder and agitation.

“Run away, James!” she says more urgently, color flushing slowly into her cheeks. “Oh, James, oh, no, why are you here? It’s too dangerous, you must get away!”

And the very air around her seems to short and sputter, like dampened fuses. Her legs buckle as her feet touch ground, but I lunge in to catch her, draw her out of her cocoon of witchcraft with only the faintest peppering of heat against my skin.

She clutches at my elbows, fighting for her bearings, gaining her feet. “You must go now!” she insists.

“Not without you, Parrish.”

“But if he catches you—”

“Look.” I stoop for the lantern, turn her gently round and shine the circle of light across the room, where Pan still sprawls athwart the bed.

“Oh my God,” she gasps. “He’s not … you haven’t…”

“He’s sleeping,” I assure her. “They’re all sleeping. Can you not hear the loreleis?”

She pauses, listens; the lush, distant crooning continues. And beneath it, we both detect another noise, quite nearby, a low, mournful refrain in counterpoint to the lorelei’s’ serenity, a stark and chilling outpouring of misery. Hastily, now, I steer Stella toward the doorway that opens on the tunnel, lantern aloft, glancing all round for the source of the weird sound. When we spy it, hairs prick up along the back of my neck.

Pan is sobbing in his sleep. It’s not the gulping hysteria of a cross, thwarted child, but a steady, low-pitched keening of loss. Water leaks out beneath his eyelids while his boyish mouth disgorges a deep, haunting chord of anguish as old as time. It’s the most unnerving thing I have ever heard or beheld in the Neverland.

Only Stella’s fingers closing round my maimed arm rouses me. I’m just turning from hanging up the lantern when a streak of light explodes out of the tunnel mouth, sparking furiously in the air before us, blocking our escape; a flash of green and rust, a halo of golden hair as bright as the sun.

Pan’s savage fairy, Kes.

3

Her light is dazzling, her temper unmistakable, even did I not force open my mind to the bellicose meaning of her words.

“Thief! Murderer! Man!” she screeches at me in a frenzy.

Of course, she is immune to the loreleis’ song, dodging back and forth before my face with such vigor, I’m forced to take a step backward, another, pressing Stella back behind me. This imp will not be as accommodating as her sister; I have only a fairy’s promise that she will not blind me again, or turn me into a cockroach, or do some further harm to Stella.

“I have no quarrel with you, Madam,” I fence, determined to shrink no more, stand my ground. “Please let us pass.”

“But I have a quarrel with
you,
Captain!” she spits back. “How dare you come in here and … and—” Hoisting herself higher in the air, she stares over my shoulder and Stella’s toward the bed. “Peter!” she shrieks, darts over us both to zoom down to her master. For the moment that she coos tenderly into his ear, whispers soothing blandishments, I maneuver Stella round to the mouth of the tunnel and press her in ahead of me. Then the imp’s frantic cries, “Peter! Wake up! He’s here, Peter! Get up!” jangle all round the room, and Kes flies into my face again, incensed, screaming invective, her little face as red as Nutter’s, making violent gesticulations about my head, my eyes. Yet she does not touch me, lays not so much as an infinitesimal finger anywhere on my person, nor dare she cast any kind of spell.

“Monster! Coward! Cuckold! Fool!” she flings at me, along with many other epithets, searching for the right one to goad me into some warlike gesture and unleash her powers; she fizzes round and round my head in such a disorienting glitter of sparks I am losing my bearings, longing to bat her aside if only to find my way out. “Your woman laughs at you! Your men despise—”

In the midst of her invective, I feel Stella’s fingers lace through mine and I am pulled into the momentary respite of the dark tunnel. But an arrow of fairy light speeds past us both, into the chamber ahead. As we emerge, Kes is flitting from one stuporous boy to the next, trailing sulfur and incantations, and although the mermaid chorale continues in the air, boys are starting to sit up, rub their eyes. Pound their heads.

“I can’t hear!” shrieks one little wretch, batting at his ear.

Another fellow lurches up in front of us in confusion, but I herd Stella past him toward the shaft with the hanging rope that leads above ground. Kes circles all around, attempting with sign language and fury to rally the army she’s deafened against the sirens’ song. But only one seems to understand; the boy in snakeskin staggers up, staring hard at Stella and me; he races over to their arsenal to pluck up one of the few sharpened knives, and as Stella grabs for the rope, he charges her. I lunge between them with a swing of my ruined arm, catch him in the stomach, knock him to the hard dirt ground with a
whoof
and a gasp, his weapon jarred out of his fingers.

And all round me is suddenly screeching noise and brutal bright light, heat and distortion. A reek of brimstone turns my stomach, I’m spinning into oblivion in a hail of gleeful fairy laughter. A smudge of white disappearing up a rope is the last thing I see.