Captain James Hook and the Siege of Neverland (28 page)

My eyes caught the canvas bag tied to Smee’s belt.
 
A plan formed.
 

“Mr. Smee, is that the sack you used to carry part of Bertilak’s body?”

“Aye, sir,” Smee said.
 
“Wrists and calves.”
 

“Give it here.
 
I have an idea.”

We loaded the cutter, set the horses loose, and were halfway through the bay when an arrow hit the boat.
 
Many men covered their heads, expecting more arrows to come, but none did.
 

One of the men yelled, “Look!”
 
It may have been Starkey who said it.
   
I didn’t bother to check.
 
My eyes were fixed on the shore.
 

Three men stared at us from the beach.
 
Two were warriors.
 
Little Panther beat his chest.
 
His voice cracked as he yelled over the water.
 
Next to him, Tall Bull breathed slow hard breaths.
 
His large frame cast a dark shadow over their elder, High Chief Bear, whose hands were raised in prayer.
 

They were a sight to be sure, but I didn’t look at them for more than an instant because at their feet knelt Michael Fast.
 

His hands were bound behind his back.
 
He looked tired and surely beaten, but when he saw us, he perked up and pulled at his restraints.
 
His cries caught in the cloth in his mouth.
 

Tall Bull removed his gag and Michael screamed.
 
“Captain!”
 
The word echoed over the water.
 
Little Panther quieted and jumped in place as he listened.
 
“Captain!” Michael said again, “Come back!
 
I’m here!
 
Captain!”

It continued more or less like this for long minutes.
 
Michael screamed.
 
The men behind him loomed over him like the gray mountain behind them.
 

“What do they want?” Teynte asked.
 

To their credit, more men in my crew knew the answer than I expected, but it was Noodler who spoke.
 
“They want us to watch.”
 

Tiger Lily walked out from the trees and stood over Michael Fast for several moments.
 
She never once looked at him.
 
Her eyes were on me and she made sure that I saw her before she grabbed the man by the hair and drew out her knife.
 

She held him like that for several seconds and the man burst into a new round of screaming.
 
“No!
 
Not like this!
 
Please!
 
I’ll do anything!”
 
These words and many more like them spilled from him, differing in form and volume.
 
Tiger Lily was unmoved.
 

He resisted her, but she tensed and flexed a surprising strength for someone so thin and so young.

The moment came as we knew it would.
   

Tiger Lily jabbed the knife into the far side of the man’s throat.
 
Blood spurted onto the sand.
 
She twisted it and more blood came.
 
His eyes went wide and his mouth opened to plead with words he could no longer say.
 
She then pulled the knife across slowly, so slowly that Michael’s eyes rolled back before she let him slump forward onto the beach.
   

“Bugger this,” Smee said and fired a shot at them.
 
More shots followed.
 
Soon, we were all emptying our pistols at the shoreline.
 

Tall Bull took High Chief Bear into the Crescent Wood.
 
Little Panther was quick behind them.
 

Not Tiger Lily.
 

Even now, even as our shots whistled by her ears and hit the trees behind her, she stared at me as though she were chiseled from stone.
 
Yes, she was still a child, but there was little left of the girl that I knew so briefly.
 

We had expended our shots and were reloading when she finally turned and disappeared into the forest.
 
We didn’t fire after them any more and no arrows flew our way, so it was over for now.
 
They made themselves clear.
 

We sailed to the ship in silence and I slid into my quarters.
 

The fading light bathed my cabin in dark oranges and reds.
 
I lit three candles and listened for the soft ticks of a broken clock.
 
Hearing nothing, I pushed through my disappointment and picked up my pen.
 

Chapter Twenty-One

August 19
th
Assumed

Log Entry Five

The sun rose and set once already since I began writing this entry.
 
Time was lost to us now, so it might as well be afternoon.
 

Neverland has given me more than enough perspective.
 
Small victories are meaningless here, as is anything achieved in the short term.
 
Only the long game matters and I am the only man on this island capable of thinking in those terms.
 

Battered and scarred as he may be, Peter Pan survived our little scuffle.
 
No doubt he forgot the encounter by now.
 
If only he could hold the memory of my hand at his throat.
 
Perhaps my hook will be a more memorable experience for him in the future.
 

Tiger Lily’s tribe may prove to be a hinderance to that end.
 
Their stealth makes navigating the island a more difficult proposition.
 
Our visits ashore will have to be that much more thoroughly coordinated until I can pacify her people.
 
She told me that I was destined to end their suffering.
 
Death is indeed quiet, but it is my hope that it doesn’t come to that.
 
It would be unfortunate if she ended up like the Green Knight.
 
It only took hours of planning to dispose of a giant capable of recovering from any wound.
 
How hard could it be to kill one little girl and her family?
 

Despite her threats, Tiger Lily is only a distraction.
 

Peter Pan hides in the castle with his child army.
 
They hope to make it a new home.
 
Maybe they intend to play as knights all night and day.
 
What fun that would be!
 

Pan called me a knight once.
 

Come to think of it, I’d been called a knight more times and by more people in the past few days than anything else.
 
Bertilak may be gone, but his marks still stained this world.
 
I must wipe them clean from everything save for memory.
 

A knock on my cabin door pulled my attention away from my writing.

“Come in.”

The door creaked open and Foggerty stepped through.
 
Since setting foot on the deck of the
Jolly Roger
, the cabin boy’s jaw darkened with the shadow of a beard.
 

“They’re ready,” he said in his new baritone.
 

I nodded and Foggerty held the door for me.
 
I checked the buttons of my coat and stepped out onto the main deck.
 
Each man stood at attention, waiting for their next order.
 

My crew of the willing.
 

I met each of their eyes and smiled.
 

Cecco waved me over from the forecastle deck.
 
I took a looking glass from Starkey and joined him.
 

The sun hid behind clouds, afraid to watch the work I had planned.
 
Three moons cast a pale gray light that stripped Neverland Island of its once vibrant hues.
 
Everything was still.
 
Even the beasts slept.
 
Danger lurked in the darkness, though, as dots of yellow and orange played on the mountainside.
 

“It be them,” Cecco said.
 
“In the castle, just like you said.”
 

“We’ll never get them out,” Noodler said.

“Agreed,” said Starkey.
 
“Why couldn’t we have kept it?
 
The farming alone would save us so much work.
 
The natives planted food.”
 

“They’re not natives,” I said.
 
“No one is native here.
 
We can farm our own land, Mr. Starkey.
 
We can do as we please as soon as we level the castle.
 
Mr. Smee, fetch me Long Tom.”
 

A puzzled look grew on the Irishman’s face and he stammered for several moments before speaking.
 
“We have no more gunpowder.
 
The shot on the island was the last of it.”

“I know,” I said.
 
“But we do have options.”
 

“You have solutions,” a dark voice said from within my cabin.
 
“Bold solutions.”
 

Whispers rippled over the crew as Morgan le Fay walked onto the main deck, still wearing Gabriel’s body.
 
Her whole countenance glowed, not just with posture and poise, but with an actual radiance.
 
Her auburn hair played on her shoulders in a breeze that I didn’t feel, only saw.
 

Smee looked down and away.
 
She put a hand under his chin and met his eyes.
 
The murderer of a dozen men blushed.
 

“And where do you fall on all of this?” I asked her.
 
“Aren’t you the mother of fairies?”

“Just to their king,” she said.
 

“That hardly implies consent.”

Her face became hard and somehow more beautiful.
 
“You’ll know my lack of consent when you see it.”
 

I smiled and my easiness softened her eyes.
 
“Mr. Smee.
 
The cannon.”
 

Smee relayed the order.
 
Several men wheeled it into place and tied it down on the starboard side.
 
We turned the ship and lined it up with the castle.
 

I then walked over to the dirty bundle I brought back with me from the bay.
 
In two deft movements I cut the rope and dumped the contents onto the deck.
 
Several of the men gasped as I picked through the pile of little corpses.
 

“Their dust is combustable,” I said, shaking one of the dead fairies over the barrel of Long Tom.
 
Gold flecks sprinkled as the little arms and legs flopped up and down.
 
When the dust stopped falling, I threw the body overboard.
 
The splash was hardly audible.
 
I picked up a rammer and packed the fuel tightly to the breech.
 
I withdrew it and loaded the ball, then rammed again.
 

I judged the distance, fed the fuse into the touch hole, and aimed.
 

Smee lit an old rag.
 

“Thank you, Smee,” I said and lit the fuse.
 
It sizzled as I stared at the target.
 
Doubt crept into my thoughts in those seconds, but I was not a fairy and doubt can not ruin me.

Thunder roared and gold smoke spilled out of Long Tom.
 
The ball flew a little over one hundred feet, then splashed in the water.
 

“Bugger me, it worked,” Jukes laughed.
 

“Aye,” Mullins said.
 
“We just need to use more.”
 

Their belief took root.
 
In truth, I am not sure whether the amount mattered.
 
Perhaps a spec would have been sufficient if I had believed it to be, but, again, I am no fairy.
 
A man has doubts.
 
Proof is as much the destroyer of faith as it is its fuel.
 
The instant the men saw how far one fairy shot a forty-two pound ball, they worked out a scale of weights and ratios.
 
Mathematics is a man’s sorcery and the numbers are never wrong.
 

It was now time to cement their belief and bring the men together as one.
 

“Mr. Teynte.
 
Try loading one yourself.
 
You were always better at getting more out of each shot than I was.”

“Aye, sir.”
 
Ed Teynte shook four fairies out and the men helped him load a second ball into Long Tom.
 

They lit the fuse.
 

The cannon thundered and we watched the forty-two pound ball collide against the castle’s outer wall.
 
Stone fell away and water rushed from the once narrow opening.
 

“Excellent shot, Mr. Teynte.”
 

“Thank you, Captain.”
 

“Look,” Cecco called out.
 
One small green figure flew from one of the castle’s windows and disappeared into the forest.
 
Seconds later, other little figures scattered into the Crescent Wood.
 

“Good,” I said.
 
“Give them a full minute to leave, then resume firing.”
 
I called Smee over and placed one of the limp fairies into his hands.
 
“Take the rest.
 
Shake out whatever dust remains into barrels.
 
Take a mortar and pestle from the cook and grind the bodies if you have to.”