Captain James Hook and the Curse of Peter Pan (8 page)

The first gusts of autumn carried with it the knowledge that I missed registration at Eton.
 
When registration is up again next fall, I’ll be fourteen, too old to claim the scholarship I earned this cycle.

Birds called out to one another before darting off into the sky.
 
William watched them as they flew away.
 
I knew enough to look in the other direction. Dark clouds gathered miles to the south.

The wind whistled a silent warning.
 
Waves picked up pace.
 
Soon, the gentle temper of the island became menacing.
 
We had hours at most, so I set us to work immediately.

William and I had a good give and take.
 
I requested.
 
He fetched.
 
I assembled.
 
Over the past few weeks, we made chairs, a table, and a workbench.
 
Now, we made traps.

The traps we made weren’t for the animals that live on this island.
 
Those we made weeks ago.
 
Instead, I hoped to collect what fish the storm would surely bring in.
 
I weaved vines into a net and tethered it to the trees at the island’s southern inlet.
 

The clouds came in like a thick grey sheet within hours, tucking the sun away long before its bedtime.
 
And like a child, the sun peeked through the cracks to get a last look in on what it was missing.

It’s that thought of childhood that brought my mind to William.
 
He had fully recovered from near death. His color returned before that first night.
 
His broken bones and open gashes all mended in days. The first clash of thunder snapped my mind back to the present.
 

We began to bring the barrels inside to wait out the storm.
 
I dragged the last of the barrels through the mouth of the cave and bumped into William, who stood dumbfounded.

“What are you staring at?” I scolded. But when I turned, I finally saw the state of our home.
 
Our barrels were toppled and shattered.
 
The cots we made from tattered clothing, leaves, and branches were torn to ribbons.
 
Our stores of food were gone.
 
We had nothing.

“What madness is this?” I asked.

William shrugged, “Maybe some animals got in here…”

“And tore up our beds? No, this was deliberate,” I told him.
 
“Someone wanted to do this to us.”

“Someone?” William asked. “You mean there is someone else here?”

“I’m not sure if he really is a ‘someone’, but I’m almost certain that he’s here,” I told him.

“James, what are you talking about?” William’s face twisted in the same way that Emily’s did that morning I told her about Peter Pan.
 
I resolved to hold myself to the promise I made not to talk about Pan until I had absolute proof.
 
It wasn’t in William’s limited philosophy to allow him to understand.
 
Not yet, anyway.

“Nothing,” I lied. “I’m just spooked is all.” He nodded and turned back to look further into the cave. “Stay here and get a fire going. I’ll check if we forgot anything.”

As I made my way to my father’s grave, terrible thoughts came to mind.
 
William and I made life on the island possible, but for how long?
 
There was no means of escape.
 
No source of food was certain or sustainable.
 
Now, if Peter Pan was having fun at our expense, how else could this end except with our deaths?

“Father,” I started. “I don’t think we’re going to make it off of this island.” I laughed joylessly to myself as I realized how much easier it was to talk to my father now that he was dead.
 
Out of habit, I reached into my pocket and flicked the gold watch open.
 
The loud ticking pierced through the gathering storm, focusing me. “I’m being strong for William, but even he has to realize that we’ll never see home again.” Tears of rage ran down my cheeks as I snapped the watch shut.
 
“I’m sorry that I’ll never avenge you.
 
The monsters that deserved to die go on living while I waste away here.”
 
There was shame in my doubt.
 
Somehow I felt that I had to speak those words aloud to hear how unlike me defeat really was.

A new resolve burned within my chest and I allowed myself to build the fantasy that kept me strong.
 
I thought of my mother, sitting by the fire clutching her old scarf.
 
She rocked slowly back and forth with each sob.
 
I watched her face light up with joy as William and I burst through the door.
 
She held me close and called to Emily, who came in from the dining hall and ran into my arms.
 
It was all perfect. The way it was meant to be.

A sudden rustling to my right startled me.
 
Nimble feet pattered on the soft dirt.
 
The pace was quick and playful.
 
My first guess was logical but entirely wrong.

“William?” I called.
 
“What in blazes are you doing?” My error must have been irresistibly funny, because it was followed by a familiar and infuriating giggle. It was unmistakable.

“Peter!” I cried. “Pan! Show yourself!” I challenged.
 
The rustling stopped.
 
Hidden behind the brush, two eyes lit up in the gathering darkness.
 
They were not as I remembered them from the night we met.

A beast lunged for me just as I began backing away.
 
Its jaws snapped inches from my face.
 
I tumbled to the ground, but recovered my footing quickly and drew my knife.
 
My heart raced as I finally saw the full measure of the creature.

This crocodile covered the distance of the brush in two steps.
 
Its length and breadth were easily twice that of the one William and I killed.
 
Something ancient and angry stared back at me from behind her black, dead eyes. We could never dig a ditch big enough.

We stared at each other for minutes. Her jaws opened and closed slightly as if she would speak at any moment. Part of me wished that she would. Talking crocodiles would fit quite nicely in this twisted world of fantasy and horror.
 
I moved to the right and she moved to match.
 
I moved to the left, she moved and advanced.
 
There was nothing to do but stand still and wait for her to come get me.
 

With a howl, William swung in from my right, wielding a tall pointed branch.
 
He did his best to get in front of me and draw the crocodile’s attention but it didn't work.
 

“What's got it so mad?” he asked.
 

“She’s really got it out for me, doesn’t she?” I said. Of the three ways I could get out of this alive, only one involved not sacrificing William to the crocodile. It did, however, involve the sacrifice of my only pistol shot.
 
I drew my pistol from my belt and aimed it at the croc’s head.

“How do you know this one is the female?” William asked.

“We ate her eggs and killed her mate,” I smirked.
 
“Only a mother would be so angry.” There was no time to plan and no room to maneuver.
 
It was unlikely that this shot would kill the animal.
 
At most, it would scare her away or startle her enough for us to make good our escape.

As I drew the hammer back, the beast paused.
 
She looked to the sky and breathed in deeply.
 
She hissed at us again and disappeared into the thick underbrush.
 
William and I looked to the darkened clouds and felt the first drops of rain.

“What happened?” William asked.

“She’s hiding from the storm,” I told him.
 
“The croc could have killed us just now, but there’d be no joy in it for her.
 
The coming storm would have hastened the taste of her revenge.”
 
She didn't need to speak for me to understand her perfectly.
 
“Get into the cave. We’re not safe here.”

Chapter Sixteen

Wind and water pounded the rock outside as William and I sat for hours and watched the fire make shadows dance against the rocky wall.
 
We didn’t talk.
 
We didn’t move.
 
We just watched.

The quiet gave me time to think again of how oddly fortunate our lives were on the island.
 
If it were not for the fresh water spring and the barrels of food that washed ashore, we would never have survived this long.
 
Now, the cave provided the ideal shelter from the storm.
 

My trance was broken when the fire began to die into smoldering embers.

“We need to keep it burning,” I told him.
 
William snapped out of a waking sleep and gathered kindling.

“Why?” he asked.
 
“It isn’t cold here, just wet.” I grabbed the dry twigs and snapped them before setting them onto the pile.

“The fire isn’t for us,” I said.
 
The sticks caught and light filled the cave more brightly than before.
 
I pointed into the darkness outside, “It’s for her.”

“The croc? Where?” William stared for several seconds more.
 
“I don’t see anything except for a fallen tree trunk at the cave opening.”
 
At that moment, the tree trunk blinked and snorted. Her eyes flashed a cold reflection of the flames.

“My god,” William gasped. “How long has she been there?”

“About two hours,” I told him as I added another dry log to the pile.

“What are we going to do?” he asked me without taking his eyes off of the beast. He stared for another few moments before speaking again. “I mean, you can’t be thinking that we can kill her.”

“Right now, we wait her out,” I told him.
 
“She’s looking for shelter. The fire is the only thing that is keeping her away and that’s your job.” He turned to me and looked down.

“Good, because you’re doing it all wrong again,” he said as the color returned to his face.
 
He knelt by the fire and made two quick adjustments.
 
“You need to let air in or you’ll smother the flame.” In seconds, the blaze was hot and bright.

“At least we know the fire is in good hands,” I said with a smirk. He smiled as he hopped over the thin stream of water to look for more wood to burn.

“I don’t blame her for wanting this cave back,” William said with a grin.
 
“It’s warm.
 
It’s dry. There is even a way to drain rain water out from the storm.” I didn’t think much of the comment at first, but the longer I let it sit in my mind, the more a question burned to the surface.

“If that is true,” I thought aloud, “then why is there always a stream even when it isn’t raining?”
 
The question puzzled William and sparked even greater curiosity in me.
 
The fresh water that made up the spring outside came from within the cave.
 
There wasn’t any more water flowing now than usual.
 
Was this water really from the storm or from another source entirely?
 
I realized that, in the time since we killed the male croc, I never thought to venture further into the cave.

“I’m exploring,” I told William. “Stay here and keep the fire lit.
 
We don’t want her back in here.” I made a small torch and followed the water upstream.

Although the island itself was scarcely a mile in length, I must have covered half of that distance in the brief moments of my exploration.
 
By all rational sense, I should have been outside behind the cliff when I first stopped to relight the torch. The cave had been black as pitch since I first left William to guard the entrance.
 
As the fire died in my hands, a faint glow at the far end of the cave got steadily brighter.

The madness of this island was dizzying. There was no way that there could be a second entrance to the cave.
 
There was no such opening outside.

As I approached, I found a small pond, no more than twenty paces in diameter. The rock wall shot straight down, closing it off at the back.
 
The water trickled past my feet toward the mouth of the cave.
 
The water had to be coming from a natural wellspring underneath.

With the mystery solved, I turned to make my way back to tell William.
 
But as my fingers traced the wall, I caught a carving in the rock.
 
Like the tree outside, the words were those of a Spaniard:
País de Nunca Lamás
.
 
I didn’t know what it meant, but I studied enough Latin to know that
País
was a form of the word land.
 
Nunca
looked like some form of no or not.

My mind rolled the words over again and again.
 
Land No?
That made no sense.
 
Not Land?
No Land?
It seemed likely that someone stranded here would curse his fate.
 
My eyes widened as I looked at the carving again.
 
Shock tore down another barrier between what was and what couldn’t be.
 

Never Land
.

“But that’s impossible,” I whispered.

My fingers traced the cracked edges of the rock wall repeatedly. There were no seams. No hinges. No openings.

The light from the wellspring rippled against the walls, drawing my attention back to it.
 
William could hold his breath far longer than me.
 
My first thought was to run back and get him, but I couldn’t lie to him again nor could I tell him about Peter.
 
If I couldn’t prove Pan’s existence, I would not make myself into a fool yet again. I took off my shoes and over shirt and waded into the water.