Alias Hook (40 page)

“Oh, excellent!” Piper cries.

I need not ask how the predatory Kestrel came by her name.

“You have a special affinity for all three elements?” Stella goes on.

“I do indeed,” the imp chirps on. “Oh, I knew it was right to bring you here!”

Stella gapes. “It was your doing?”

“No, yours,” the little creature replies. “You wanted it so badly, renounced the grown-up world so completely, you were in a state of innocence reborn. Certain beyond all mortal reasoning that this place exists.”

“But I saw it in my dreams,” Stella rejoins, eyeing me.

“Yes, yes, yes,” the imp chants happily, also beaming at me. “Your dreaming called out to her.”

“But—my thoughts were all of death,” I stammer.

“What we think and what we dream are not always the same thing, Captain,” Piper rebukes me gently. “You grew a dream the Neverland could no longer contain. It stretched beyond our borders. A dream of longing for something you could never find here. Perhaps your two dreams collided in the realm of the mortal heart, where the Sisterhood has no power. We know only mortal children who are heartless until they lose their innocence.” She turns again to Stella. “Your dream was so powerful, even Peter felt it. That is how they found you, Peter and my sister. We couldn’t let him leave you behind in the nursery, Kes and I. Boys can be so thoughtless sometimes.”

“You can’t mean Kestrel defied the boy to bring her here!” I exclaim.

“My sister’s magic merely opened the dreampath for you to claim your dream,” the fairy tells Stella. “Never before has a grown-up woman come to the Neverland. But I—we knew, Kes and I, that if the spell were to break, Captain, you would have to share someone else’s dreampath to get out. You could not leave the same way you came.” She turns again to Stella. “It was no great matter for Kes to glimmersail you here while Peter was distracted elsewhere.”

It’s difficult to imagine the wanton Kestrel, singing madly for my blood just hours ago, showing such concern for my welfare. But the imps’ taste for gaming is legendary.

“Where did it come from, this prophecy of signs?” Stella asks.

“From the earth, from the sea, from the sky,” Piper replies. “This is a magical place. The natural world, the spirit world, the life of dreams, all are connected here.”

“And how long have you known about them?” Stella continues.

“Far longer than anyone else has been alive on this island, except for the Captain, Peter, and we fairies. To the merwives and the First Tribes, it is ancient times since the prophecy first appeared in their lore.”

I marvel at Proserpina’s craft, to seed her spell so completely into the fabric of this place.

“A few words sifted into the dreams of the shaman and the mer-bard, simple enough to do,” Piper goes on. “If the time had come to break your spell at last, Captain, we wanted to speed you along to claim your reward.”

“But why speak in so many riddles?” Stella asks. “If you fairies knew about the signs and the dreampath, couldn’t you simply … tell him?”

Piper turns again to me. “You never asked for our help,” she says sadly. “And the only way to break your spell was to change what was in your heart. No one else could do that for you.”

2

The channel ends at the inland falls, which mark the trail back up into the wood. Piper told us the Fairy Dell will open for us, but we must make the rest of our journey on foot.

I return Stella’s moccasins to her, and we climb the trail through dust and weeds and brush and bristlecone. I give her my knife to cut a length of trailing ivy to girdle up her shift, and she tucks it into her sash like a lady buccaneer in a comic opera. At last we reach a plateau alive with shrubbery, pine, oak and fir, whose increasing intensity of greens signals the way to the Dell. Following a vibrato of fiddle music and jingling laughter through greening trees and violet mists, we come to a green clearing in the forest.

Stella’s hand is warm in mine as we enter the greensward, the bustle of the imps going about their morning tasks so different from their lurid nighttime revels. A party of young males breeze past us, sweeping windfall leaves into piles for their beguiling charms. A few shimmering females trail their sparkle over beds of buttercups and bluebells that obediently raise their heads, while others flutter up into the trees for acorns and moss and mold and berries for their potions. One imp tries to bedevil a fledgling in a nest until an indignant mother sparrow drives her off. In an alcove at the base of another tree, in which depend improbable tools of rock and honed gemstones, an elderly imp in silvery mustachios lingers over a bowl while one idle finger commands a chair of twigs to build itself.

All of them, sweepers, gatherers, artisans and thieves, cobweb-draped females huddling over a stone cauldron, a cotillion of young bloods and girls tamping down a dancing ring round a favored mushroom, all of them are roused to their tasks by a quartet of fiddlers perched on a mossy rock sawing a lively laboring tune. In the center of all rises a dark green mound shimmering with eerie silver light; it looks like an ordinary burrow by daylight, not a blazing palace, although reeking still of fairy glamor as dreadful as it is difficult to resist.

We are not Goliaths among the fairies; they appear of normal size to our eyes, until we see one in proportion to a bird or a bluebell. Yet neither does it feel as if we’ve shrunk. It’s another way to disorient us, this feeling of being both large and small, alien to the fairies and akin to them, reminding us that the supposed advantage of our size, much less the reliability of our wits, have no meaning here.

The bubbling hum of talk grows more intense all round us as we enter into the heart of the Dell. Some watch us covertly, others make a grand, haughty business of paying us no mind whatever, while others simply stand in their tracks and stare, their cunning expressions impossible to read. I grip Stella’s hand more firmly.

“Hold on to me,
ma coeur,
” I whisper.

“Remember who you are, James,” she murmurs back, and squeezes my hand. A path of polished moonstones gleams in the grass, pointing the way to the glimmering mound where Queen BellaAeola keeps her court.

The portals of her palace resolve themselves more sensibly this time as we approach, but our quest is different now, Stella no longer the repulsed mother seeking the boy, nor myself the spy. We climb the steps, pass between the flowering white pillars and into the Great Hall, with its polished floor and bewitching mirrors. No shades of the dead shimmer here this time, only reflections of ourselves, none true and all skewed to provoke. I see myself a beggar in the world, thin and gaunt, a bowl of ashes in my hand, with Stella worn and wretched trailing behind me, the spark gone from her eyes. I see myself in horns beside a cruelly laughing Stella painted like a voluptuary. I don’t know what Stella sees, perhaps a vision of herself cowed and weeping and myself a raging tyrant. Much is risked in love, there are so many uncertainties, and our savage hostess knows how to play upon them all. But we don’t let go of each other, Stella and I, and the false reflections finally dance away.

All but the last, which we see together: ourselves as grizzled elders, our faces sunk in wrinkles, myself bald, stiff, bent, crabbing along on a cane, Stella sagging in her shapeless gown, frail, haggard and weary. Such is the fate of all things out beyond the glamor of the Neverland. Age, an enemy as pitiless as the boy, who can never be vanquished, from whom there will be no refuge once we are back in the world; it can’t be shrugged off like the other shades, and the wavering image grows steadier, taunting us.

A shudder passes through Stella’s living body pressed to mine, and I wrap my arm round her, hugging her closer. “To age again, I crave it above all things,” I say defiantly. “It’s the fondest desire of my heart.”

“I will grow old and ugly.” Stella’s voice is small and wavering.

“Not to me, my Stella Rose,” I promise her. “Never to me.”

“Then you will be blind,” Stella sniffs, although she straightens a little in my embrace. “In addition to your other infirmities.”

“Then you may let yourself go entirely,” I point out. “You may sprout cloven hoofs and a tail, for all the difference it’ll make to me.”

Stella laughs, and the vision of ourselves ancient and doddering pops and vanishes. In its place stands Queen BellaAeola, or, rather, she hovers there, hands fisted on hips like an Amazon, feet slightly apart shod in delicate, moss-like boots whose toes and high serrated cuffs rise and loop round and round like wanton tendrils of wisteria. Yards of twinkling gossamer drape from her shoulders and gird round her middle, all of it billowing round her like agitated flames, although we feel no breeze. Her skin is undyed, so light-washed I don’t perceive it as any color, only note again the arcane royal markings etched in the most luxurious shade of purple that trail down from her bare shoulder to curl provocatively round her breast. Her exquisite, silvery hair clouds behind her as well, and her moonlit eyes, circled in purple and shadowed in green, gaze at us both with impassive aplomb.

“So, Captain, have you come to conclude our transaction?” she purrs at me.

I fight down the memory of bitter desolation from our last encounter, raise my chin and return her gaze, struggling to calm my rattling heartbeats. “I have come to ask your guidance, Majesty.”

“Why have you never asked for my help before?” she chides.

“I never thought you would give it,” I reply, but it sounds so petulant, I quickly add, “I didn’t deserve it.”

The air shivers like tiny carriage bells heard on a breeze from far away. The imp queen is laughing. “Are you more deserving now?”

From the lively intensity of her eyes, I feel I’m being invited to dance, or game, or duel to the death, or perhaps all three. Every word must count; Eagle Heart once warned me to be wise.

“I’ve grown up,” I tell her simply.

“Ahhh,” she muses, her eerie, caressing speech a-hum in my head. “And now the Red Moon is risen again, you would complete your journey, at long last. And if I refuse?”

I order my mutinous wits not to desert me. “I might attempt to cozen you with flattery,” I begin cautiously. “Or I might threaten to make war on every fairy in the Neverland if I don’t get my way. But those are the boys’ tactics.” I draw a breath. “And I am boy no more. Instead, I ask your pardon for my many, many mistakes.”

“What will you give me for it?” BellaAeola fences. “Have you found something in the Neverland you value at last?” My heart stutters as she turns her provocative gaze on Stella. “Your woman?”

Stella faces her out with the appearance of boldness, although I feel her tense beside me. “She is not mine to give you, Majesty,” I tell the queen. “She is mistress of herself.”

BellaAeola’s magnetic gaze holds Stella still. “And you, Woman. What will you give me?”

“Nothing,” Stella replies. Intensity quickens in the air as if the queen had lunged forward, although she does not appear to move. Nor does Stella back away. “My absence,” Stella explains. “A Neverland with no part of myself in it. Surely that will be a great relief to all who live here. Better than any other gift I might offer.”

“This is well.” BellaAeola murmurs. But something quickens in her demeanor as she turns her weird, shining eyes again to me, and this time she does sidle closer; it’s like the weight of the ocean pressing on a drowning man. “She kindles a passion in you, Captain, that was not there before,” murmurs the queen. “It is very exciting. Perhaps I will keep you for myself after all.” She looms closer. “I can show you delights far beyond mortal imagining. I can conceal you from the boy.”

I cannot lie and say I’m not tempted, not even to myself. My traitorous blood beats merrily in all my private places. My phantom fingers ache to caress her glorious body, so visible beneath the drape of moondust she wears. My blood, my body, might easily give way; she might fold her lustery wings round me like a bird of prey and smother me with pleasure, was it their decision alone. Yet my wits tick on with a fierce will I never knew before Stella came.

“You may beguile me, Majesty.” I labor like Sisyphus to roll words off my dry tongue. “You may use me as you please, bend me to your will, and I will not protest. We both know it. But you can never, ever harvest from me what I feel for Stella unless you are prepared to love me as she does.”

“Love, love, love,” BellaAeola trills derisively. “A handful of rain and a heart full of ash, that is mortal love.” But she has halted her advance. “Fairies do not love. It’s a foolish business and a waste of our considerable talents.” Eyeing me appraisingly, she adds, “You may yet regret the day that you refused me, dark and sinister man.”

The boy’s old epithet chills me, reminding me how closely allied are all magical forces in the Neverland. “It’s not in my feeble mortal power to refuse you, Majesty,” I answer her. “I only tell you the truth.”

“The truth is, Captain, it has never been done before, what you ask,” says the queen, with an ominous trembling of her wings. “How do you propose to leave this place? You have no dreampath to follow.”

“But I do,” Stella speaks up. “We will go together.”

The imp queen shifts her hungry gaze again to Stella. “And you, Woman. Your mortal power has intensified since last we met.”

“I’ve lost my innocence,” Stella tells her. Turning to me, Stella adds softly, “When I fell in love with you.”

By God’s life, she even bled; I remember now.

“Yes,” hisses the queen, nodding with intrigue. “You forfeit the protection of your innocence when you choose to love this man, knowing full well how upsetting the consequences can be for all who live here. Yet, my ladies—” and I hear an eager rustling and tittering like so many finches in the garlanded shadows around us, “—might make rather merry sport with such powers as you now possess.”

Stella neither falters nor turns away from her dazzling inquisitor. “But not in the Neverland,” she reasons gently. “It disturbs the boy.”

BellaAeola flutters back a pace or two in a great swirl of sparkling dust and fairy majesty to regard us both again. But neither anger nor yet scorn clouds her expression, only lively curiosity, as if we are a game she enjoys. “Alas, yes,” she agrees “Such feelings as you now arouse in the captain are as dangerous as a weapon to the boys’ innocence. There is more at stake here than my pleasure,” she adds, with a pretty sigh. “Or that of my ladies.”