Alias Hook (39 page)

“But you didn’t go.”

She shakes her head. “You never dreamed yourself here, James. You don’t have a dreampath of your own.”

And I realize my foolish delight at breaking the spell is all for naught. Proserpina is long dead; her voudon can no longer transport me away from this place.

“But I do,” Stella goes on quietly. “The dreampath remembers its dreamer, that’s what Grandmother Owl said. Each path seals itself up again to protect the magic surrounding this place. It will only open again for the original dreamer. If I don’t take you back through mine, you’ll never be able to get out.”

So that’s what sent her rushing away from the protection of the merwives. “And you came back for me?” I gape. “After all I said to you?”

She stares at me as if I am the world’s chiefest imbecile. “God damn it, Maestro, we’re on this journey together, remember?” Her sidelong glance darts across the pit to where Proserpina appeared. “At least, I thought we were…”

“You can’t seriously believe I
wanted
to lose you again!”

She is on her knees now, too. “Death is all you ever really wanted. And now that it’s possible—”

“And I thought I was the fool,” I groan, and I reach for her before she can berate me any further. She resists for an instant for form’s sake, then comes at me on the flood, and I fold her to me with all my strength, this vibrant, prickly woman with no better sense than to love me, press my face into her smoky cinnamon hair. “Now that I have something to live for at last, you think I want to throw it all away?”

She lifts her face to mine; I grasp her hand and place her fingertips on my chest. This is how it all began, the cycle of healing that brought me here, Stella’s touch. The wanton percussion of newborn life begins to stir inside me once more. I flatten Stella’s palm gently over the rioting of my heart. She feels it, looks at me, her green-tinted dark eyes fierce with understanding. Life-giver. Redeemer. Lover. Friend.

“You’ve given me life, Parrish. I mean to deserve it. If you’ll still have me.”

“Oh, James, I’ve been such a wreck without you!” And Stella’s arms close round me again, more powerful than any fairy spell.

I shut my eyes over the clamor kindling inside me, hold Stella closer still. “I did come back that day,” I murmur. “But by then you were already gone. I went to the merwives to try to find you.”

“And meanwhile, I walked straight into the boy’s trap, like an idiot,” she frets, raising her face again to mine. “And now you’re in trouble too. If—”

“Do not think to rebuke yourself for the single bravest act anyone alive or dead has ever committed on my behalf,” I tell her. “If it all ends tomorrow, tonight even, were the fire pits of Hell to yawn open and swallow us up before sunrise, this moment with you is worth whatever comes, Stella. This moment might be all we ever have.”

And her mouth opens under mine, and her body unfolds like a flower in my arms. Our next kiss is more tender, the next as urgent as the pull of the tide. And I give way to this crescendo inside me, as furious as bloodrage, as spellbinding as fairy magic. Tempestuous life thunders through my blood, swelling my heart, pulsing under my skin, drumming in my fingertips, as we tumble across the bearskin in a frenzy of sensation— deep, soft fur against skin, pungent smoke in our nostrils, a tiny, distant popping of tinder, the fervor of her touch, the sweet fire of her mouth, our mutual keening, our reckless momentum.

For so long, my life was like a spinning compass, without points or direction. Stella is my guiding star. Her body is my altar, my refuge. Her love is my life, and by God I will deserve her, coaxing the most wondrous music out of her that I have ever played, until we lose ourselves at last in the riotous swell of this love we make together.

I stretch out on my back with Stella drowsing alongside me. Silver smoke winds up through the hole above the skins to escape into the night, disappearing into the pattern of Neverland stars.

“Stella,” I whisper, “look,”

She tilts up her head in time to see a tiny glimmer of light tumble across a circlet of stars. The Medicine Wheel, I believe it’s called. It may be a trick of the smoke, or a wavering pulse of heat from the fire, but for a moment the entire circle appears to quiver in place, as if animated. Stella’s body sighs against mine.

“A shooting star,” she murmurs. “How lovely.”

We are ripe for Morpheus at last.

There is naught but a little glowing pile of embers to see by when I am suddenly awake. Most of the stars have sunk out of sight in the hole of black above us; it’s the eerie dark before dawn. I hear only a fading cacophony of night insects and the sirens’ muted song, yet something compels me out of our warm nest. Untangling myself from Stella, who sleeps blissfully on, I creep off the bearskin, open the tent flap and peep out, but my eyes discern only blackness and a distant bruise of moonglow behind clouds. I gather my courage and step outside to see what the matter is.

I don’t see him at first, might have never done but for a sudden incandescence of white moonlight spilling from between ragged clouds. He stands immobile, not the length of a tops’l yard away from me, his bow drawn, the arrow nocked and pointing at my heart, a larger target now than once it was, and far more vulnerable.

3

I say nothing, do nothing, only gaze into the flinty eyes of the young chief above the eagle feather drawn back against his cheek. I wear neither clothing nor hook, having come directly from Stella’s arms. And with the absurd vanity of our species, I am glad for a fleeting instant that I’ve never grown a paunch, despite the other deformities of my body, for Eagle Heart is scarcely any more clothed than I, stripped down to a breechclout, as chiseled as a Greek, painted not for war but for stealth.

Such are the lofty ruminations of my last moments of life. But the young chief does not shoot.

“Captain,” he says quietly.

“Chief,” I respond.

We regard each other for another long, silent moment. Stella murmurs in her sleep behind me; the mat rustles beneath her. For a blink, Eagle Heart’s gaze shifts to the open flap, then back to me, standing before him, naked in the pre-dawn chill, reeking of Stella.

“We meant no disrespect to this place,” I offer.

“Our women will perform the cleansing ceremony after you are gone.” Slowly, without the slightest thrum of string or creak of wood, he lessens the tension in his weapon and lowers bow and arrow. “This is a sacred place,” he goes on. “Our young ones come here to begin the journey out of childhood. The maidens bleed. The youths have their first dream vision, to honor the ancestor whose dream brought us to the Dreaming Place.”

He pauses as sweet-acrid smoke wafts out of the structure.

“We didn’t mean to steal,” I apologize.

“The fruits of the earth are free to all,” Eagle Heart replies. “A gift from the Great Spirit.”

Stella’s voice comes softly from behind me, addressing the chief, and his black eyes shift toward her. She’s wrapped herself in my coat before venturing out to crouch beneath the tent flap.

The young chief’s expression is as impassive as ever, but his eyes move back to me. “Our elders have rendered their judgment.”

I’m shaking. Stella rises to stand beside me, steadying me.

“You offend me and dishonor yourself when you break your oath,” he tells me gravely. “But the consequence of your action was this life,” and he nods at Stella. “Honor your oath and we will have no further quarrel with you. In our judgment it is now your destiny to leave the Dreaming Place.”

Stella’s fingers close round the stump of my phantom hand, and my good hand crosses over to cover hers. “But—”

“Our shaman watches the stars,” says the young chief. “Destiny is like the wind. He tells us yours now blows another way.”

“Your shaman,” Stella murmurs to the chief. “How does he say we are to leave this place?”

“You must ask the Spirit Queen.”

“Is there no other way?” I ask petulantly.

Eagle Heart reproves me with his stony gaze. “The Little Chief will come,” he tells me. “He will hunt you and your woman. Our shaman says you must leave by the next moonrise, or the Great Spirits who cradle the Dreaming Place in their hands will no longer let you pass. Twice before have the spirit elements stood ready for your journey, but never before were you ready to go. This is your last chance, Captain.”

I nod. “What must I do?”

“You must go the Spirit Place. Give the queen what she asks for and she will guide you.”

What will Queen BellaAeola ask of me? My heart? My soul? My sanity? What price will she set on my freedom? Mine and Stella’s together, what might she not demand?

“How are we to find her?” I ask.

“Follow the stream to the wood, and ask your spirit guide.” Eagle Heart gestures toward the sound of lapping water out beyond the trees. “Your boat is waiting. Our warriors will not stop you.”

Stella thanks him, and the chief evaporates back into the jungle as silently as the smoke slithered out the hole in our refuge of hides. As his form is swallowed in shadows, the full moon emerges from the clouds once more, as red as blood in the pre-dawn blackness. Stella sees it too, regrips my arm, and we exchange a long, silent look. Her expression is as pregnant as the shimmering crimson moon. It’s time to face our destiny, whichever way it now blows.

Chapter Thirty-one

SUITE: THE QUEEN’S PRICE

1

“Drugged? Are you sure?”

“Black drops, irresistible oblivion. I have tasted it before.”

I am trying to explain to Stella why I was so late returning to her on the day we quarreled. We have breakfasted on bits of raw-looking fish and sinister strings of sea grass, washed down with spring water from a jug of iridescent stone. We found them in my skiff, tied up outside. My French cutlass and my knife were in the bottom, by which we know the loreleis came in the night. Now we are in the skiff heading northward again, retracing the route the braves canoed me down yesterday evening.

“Why?” Stella asks. “To keep us apart?”

“None of them knew about you.” I frown, trying to think if I ever slipped up in my charade among the men.

“I thought you must have gone back to them for good,” she says. “I thought if I could just get to the Fairy Dell and find the way out, maybe I could change your mind about me.”

I grimace to think how readily I lapped up the boy’s evil lies.

“But you were still gone the next day when I came back to
Le Reve,
” Stella concludes.

“Yesterday morning?
Le Reve
was still there?” I ask, and she nods. “Well, she’s gone, now,” I sigh.

“Gone?” Stella stares at me. “What do you mean, gone?”

“Sunk, broken up, magicked away, I don’t know, just gone,” I mutter, hauling on the oars. “He must have done it right after he captured you. His master stroke.”

“Oh no, James!” Stella looks aghast.

“It doesn’t matter, Parrish. You are all that matters to me.”

The Terraces rise up on either side as we row up the channel, their steep rockfaces striated with blue, bronze, coral and purple in the morning light. High above, a ribbon of Neverland sky mirrors the snaky progress of our river. We glide along an obliging current, gazing up at gaudily painted foothills sheering up to ever higher plateaus, crowned at first with verdant succulents and ferns, then a frosting of dark green pines as we progress northward. A pair of hawks circle on air currents high above; an eagle swoops from one terrace across the ravine to another.

“I hope we can find the place,” Stella worries.

Spying a familiar bundle stowed under the after thwart, I nod at Stella to haul it out and open it.

“Well,” I smile, as she unwraps one of the crystal goblets, “suppose we consult my spirit guide.”

I might as well have conjured merry Charles Stuart himself out of the thin air, or her precious Blackbeard, Stella is so astounded when the fairy Piper appears.

“Sandpiper,” the little thing introduces herself formally to Stella.

“We met aboard the
Rouge,
” Stella marvels.

“You did me a kindness,” the fairy recalls, too gracious to mention my part in their first encounter. Then she adds gently, “Do not judge us all by my sister, Kestrel.”

“Your sister is Peter’s fairy?” Stella gapes.

“Yes, and an insufferable little tart she is about it, too,” Piper huffs. “Peter always likes the sassy ones. Makes him feel important, to think he commands them.”

Stella glances wide-eyed at me, then back again to Piper. “Peter’s had other fairies?”

“It’s so exhausting, looking after the boys,” Piper concedes, with a fluttering of commiseration. “Most recently, our cousin Tinker had that honor, but she is in retirement. It took a hundred years off her life, she swears it.”

Stella can’t stop grinning as Piper turns again to me.

“Has the love you bear this woman cooled, that you break the pledge you made by it so easily?” the imp chirps.

Stella’s grin collapses, and I swallow a throb of alarm. “I love her more than ever,” I tell the fairy.

“He saved my life,” Stella protests. “Surely he did that boy no more damage than your sister making them deaf.”

“No indeed,” Piper agrees, fluttering placidly between us. “No permanent harm was done in either case, and as the First Tribes have forgiven you, Queen BellaAeola will hear your claim.”

“Your queen has a very distinguished name,” Stella ventures, as I dare to resume breathing. “Do fairies study Greek mythology?”

“Mythology,” Piper scoffs. “Mortals want credit for everything. In those days, we were honored as gods. Aeolus was a fairy artisan who taught mortals the art of sailmaking, so they too might use the gift of wind. The Queen of the Bells always takes his name, which means Wind Rider.” She flits about, wings abuzz, eager to expound on the arcana of fairy lore. “Those of us in the Sisterhood adopt the names of our totem creatures in the natural world. Private fairy names cannot be spoken to mortals.”

“Sandpiper,” muses Stella. “A creature who dwells where land and water meet, as well as in the sky.”