Never, Never (15 page)

T
HE SHIP WAS QUIET, AND, UNUSUALLY
, J
AMES WAS
not in a foul mood. He lay in his bed, hands clasped beneath his head, and stared up at the ceiling. Though Pan was a constant somewhere in the recesses of his mind, on this morning, the boy was buried very deep. Consuming James's thoughts was a woman.

He wondered what she was doing at this moment, if she was spearing a deer or swimming in the lagoon or fending off a barrage of suitors. He wondered when she would choose to come see him again. Most of all, he wondered if she was thinking about him as well.

There was a soft knock at his door, and James was so content, he didn't even conjure a glower.

“Come in.”

Smee tottered in, smiling and apologetic. Smee was always at least one or the other, James found. He was not a usual sort of pirate. For whatever reason, that pleased James.

“Captain?” he asked in a quiet voice.

“Aye.”

Smee's eyes were darting around the room and he was clasping his hands tightly and rubbing them together.

“Speak, Smee.”

“Oh, it's nothing, sir. Nothing at all. Forget I said a thing.”

James rolled his eyes. “Out with it, man.”

Smee chuckled nervously and busied himself in James's cabin, arranging crooked things and closing drawers all the way and picking up a cloth to polish things. James thought that this was more uncomfortable than whatever it was Smee could have had to say.

The anxious pirate bent to pick up something on the floor and stopped for a moment, then sighed. His face was beet red when he held out a thin, beaded necklace to the captain.

“Someone dropped this, it seems.”

Ah. Tiger Lily. That's what this was about.

“Give it here,” James said, sitting up. He took the piece of jewelry from Smee's slightly shaking hand. “Are you truly that afraid of me?”

Smee laughed. “I fear I'm just about this afraid of everyone.”

He looked down bashfully and James found that he was unable to be annoyed with the man for his timidity. “Say what you came to say, Smee.”

Smee let out a breath and crisscrossed his fingers, then sat on the chair by James's desk. His bottom was too large for the chair and it puffed over the edges a bit. He crossed his plump legs as well, looking more and more awkward by the second.

“Well, Captain, it's just that, I wondered if—I was wondering if the lady princess was going to be staying here often.”

James raised an eyebrow. “Lady princess?”

“The princess, sir, yes. Tiger Lily,” Smee said, fiddling with his fingers.

“What leads you to believe she's been here at all?”

Smee refused to meet his gaze, concentrating instead on every item that was not James in the room.

“Smee,” James said, hitting his bed frame. Smee twitched. “Answer me.”

He bit his lips and puffed out his cheeks. “Well, it's only that I saw her leaving your quarters last night, Captain, and I just assumed…”

“Assumed what?” James barked.

Smee jumped, and the timbre of his voice rose instantly. “Captain, don't think I'm undermining you or challenging you or saying anything about your captainship.”

“Go on,” James said, voice lowered, eyes narrowed.

“It's just, I wonder at the risk. We've already made enemies of the mermaids, and Peter hates us even more than he already did, if that's possible. I only hope we don't provoke the Indians, too.”

James knew that what Smee was saying was not in challenge to his authority and that Smee was shaking in his boots being there at all, but still, he found himself getting defensive.

“So, you believe it your job to enter my quarters in the middle of the morning and control whom I do and do not see?”

“No, Captain,” he said, alarm written all over him.

“And you've enough foolish gumption to come and tell me that I'm getting us into too many skirmishes for your taste?”

Smee was nearly bouncing in his chair at this point. “Captain, I'd never—”

“And you presume to ascertain the nature of my relationship with Tiger Lily when you know
nothing
of it, other than a memory of someone you thought you saw vacating my quarters in the middle of the night?”

James had stood from his bed and towered over the blustering Smee.

“I don't mean to overstep, sir. Please, don't take it that way.”

“Well, you have.”

Smee looked downward and folded his hands in his lap. He looked so glum that James couldn't help but feel sorry for him. He would have to banish this empathy from himself, whenever he figured out how. As of yet, he hadn't, and so his voice softened, quite without his permission. Smee reminded him so of his mother that he was unable to maintain any sort of anger at the man for a decent length of time.

“Smee,” he said, voice low, drumming his fingers on his desk, “my relationship with Tiger Lily is something you needn't concern yourself over. Do you understand?”

Smee nodded.

“Nor is the amount of enemies we've made on the island. That's a captain's consideration, and a captain's job. Not a cook's.”

Smee nodded and folded his hands, looking miserable.

James sighed and rolled his eyes. “Get up, man.”

James reached for his boots, and sat, pulling them over his calves one at a time, and Smee nearly knocked his little chair over in an effort to obey.

“Since you did ask, Mr. Smee, Tiger Lily will likely be spending a somewhat significant amount of time aboard the
Main
in the coming days.”

“As you wish, sir.”

James smiled to himself and fixed his hat atop his head. A captain was only really half a captain without his hat, after all. After Smee waddled out of his chair and onto the deck, James followed suit, boots
clack-clacking
on the hard floor.

The suns were shining brightly, and the men were up and working. James beamed, and beaming was an action he rarely took. The sea was a bright blue, and active, all manner of sea-creatures swimming around in it. Little blue dolphins jumping and splashing, glowing nymphs
dotted here and there, a large purple sea turtle. Even the usually foreboding forest looked merry, and the ocean begged to be sailed upon. The various trinkets they'd stolen on their voyages glistened in the bright morning air. Today was a good day to be a pirate.

James breathed in the humid ocean air, looking over the vast and endless sea, and smiled. But something at the edge of the horizon caught his eye. There was a strange shape in the clouds, and an odd color. It looked as though someone had been working on a bright blue patchwork quilt and a foolish friend had sewn in just one patch that was the wrong color. There, at the odd-looking cloud, the sky was a dark, purplish grey.

The sky in the distance started to swirl, as though it was preparing for something truly horrid. James furrowed his brow and peered in its direction. The longer he stared, the stranger and larger and darker it became, until his entire crew had stopped working and they were all looking at the sky. It spun and mixed and wound around itself, looking strange and beautiful and horrifying at once. And the air tasted a bit like pepper.

James nodded slowly to himself. The weather was behaving in a way it only did when it was linked to a very specific island native. James knew without a doubt that it was he. Peter Pan was coming. Coming to make good on his promise. Yes, James knew with absolute certainty for whom the weather was twisting, before he felt the shift in the wind or saw the sea rumble or heard the distant crow echoing amongst the trees.

He readied himself, as he always did when he expected a battle with Peter, and stood on the eerily quiet hull of the
Spanish Main
. Another crow, haunting and soft, and James steeled his nerves, preparing his mind to murder a child.

J
AMES
'
S COAT BILLOWED, A FLURRY OF RED AND GOLD
behind him, and he stood overlooking the vast, darkly churning landscape of Neverland. Any minute now, the boy he hated would come flitting through the trees, searching for an adventure. That adventure, James was quite certain, would involve the Pan attempting to kill him. And what choice had he then but to slay the boy?

It set him all aquiver, the thought of robbing the boy of his breath, of slitting his throat, of stopping his heart. The quivering, however, came only partly from eager anticipation. The other piece of it came from dread. He hated to acknowledge that, for it seemed terribly unmanly, or at least unpirately—and certainly uncaptainly. But it was the truth. He knew that, despite his intentions, he was affected by Pan's spell just as was the rest of the cursed island. Perhaps that was why it was so impossible to imagine doing the deed.

Not only that, but there was something that felt foul in the idea of killing a person so young. Although in truth, Peter was only a few years younger than him—fourteenish to James's somewhere-around-twenty—those few years, between people so young, felt like a lifetime. So his spirit recoiled, as if, the instant he did it, he would lose the last shred of innocence his soul so desperately clung to. That,
in that moment, he would be stealing another's childhood, and his heart would become like that of the Pan's.

Truthfully, that was the thing he feared most.

There came a whispering through the leaves on the trees. One that spoke of the boys who were on their way, the side for whom all of Neverland would be rooting, and the tense nature of a place in the seconds before battle. And then, there came a deadly quiet.

“Where is the captain, captain, Captain Hook?” sang a loud voice, faceless behind the trees. But all knew to whom it belonged.

“Off to find the captain, captain, Captain Hook.”

James shuddered despite himself and drew out his sword along with the rest of his crew, trying not to imagine that the voice was coming from a spirit who could best him at every turn. Starkey took a step toward him, shielding him.

“Ah, and there's the captain, captain, Captain Hook.”

Peter emerged from the forest, hovering just a bit above the ground and grinning from ear to ear. The air that flooded in around James was sickly sweet, almost nauseating. And the green grass swayed in time to Peter's song.

“Going to bleed the captain, captain, Captain Hook.”

James's hand faltered a bit; the metal of his sword was suddenly extremely heavy. Bill Jukes drew closer to him as well, elbow propping the sword up, so no one saw that James was weak. Peter shot closer to the
Spanish Main
until he was upon it, his fingertips resting lightly on the edge of the boat. Only half his face was visible; James could just see his red hair, laced with sparkling tendrils of gold, and his excited eyebrows and squinting eyes, which gave the final verse of Pan's song a strange quality.

“Going to kill the captain, captain, Captain Hook.”

Peter leapt easily up and stood, bare feet on the ship's ledge, hands on his hips. The hide and moss he wore was falling off his shoulder, but he didn't seem to mind. James could see in Peter's eyes, the boy was thinking only of blood. No one made a sound, save for Pan's Lost Boys, who were dutifully scaling the side of the
Main
.

“Why don't you let them fly with you, Peter?” James asked, though he knew it was an inappropriate time.

Peter cocked his head. Then, he grinned. “I'm the only one allowed to fly into battle, James Hook. It's the rules.”

“Ah, we've added another to our list, have we?”

Peter shrugged.

“Are you quite certain you want to take part in this little adventure?” James said.

James was being very obviously overly polite. It seemed to give the boy pause, and he didn't reply for a moment. But then: “I am.”

“Foolish boy.”

Peter lowered his brow and stared at James from the tops of his bright eyes, strands of hair blowing around with the wind. It made him look especially wicked. “Do not say such things to me, pirate.”

“I'm only attempting fairness,” James said, voice calm and even. “I think it unsporting to invite you into a battle you believe you can win.”

Peter threw back his head and laughed, floating up into the grey air, and then came back down. “Everyone knows I'll beat you.”

James's pirates snarled and sneered, and James raised an eyebrow. “Do they?”

The Lost Boys hopped over the ship's edge one by one.

“Of course they do,” said Pan. “This is Neverland. I cannot lose.”

James's face took on a sinister quality and he lowered it and glared at the Pan. Then, he held out a single finger and beckoned him.

After that, the
Spanish Main
became an instant flurry of activity. Several Lost Boys, boys he recognized— Tootles, Bibble and Bobble, Simpkins—all drew their tiny swords and sprinted into the fray, children's battle cries accompanying them. It twisted a tight knot in James's stomach, which he resolutely ignored.

His band of pirates charged back. There was general clanging and sliding and scratching and gruff yelling as the battle began, but James could hardly afford to pay attention to the boys, Lost or otherwise, whether or not his heart was urgently pointing him toward his old friends. He had a much more immediate concern.

The bloodthirsty child leapt here and there, flitting from gangplank to crow's nest to the side of the boat in impossibly quick jumps. James struggled to keep up, pupils darting this way and that.

“Up here, old man!” Peter laughed.

James turned to see where the noise had come from.

“Oh, too slow. And here I am again.”

James spun in a full circle, looking a fool. Laughter bubbled out of Peter, and James let out a harsh cry of exasperation.

“Come and fight me like a man, boy!”

Peter stopped mid-air, long enough for James to fix his eyes upon him.

“Stupid pirate,” he spat. “I do nothing like a man!”

James realized then that he was quite close to his cabin, and he backed up against it, splinters digging against his back, not because he was frightened, but because he knew it would force Peter to come to him. And force him it did, for the child could not go long without a violent activity. Patience, Peter Pan did not possess.

Peter flew down at him, dagger out, and James broke his lean and stood erect. He swung his strong arm and clanged his sword against the boy's, much harder than Peter could ever hope to do. The sheer momentum of it sent Peter tumbling in a somersault to the ground, but he simply rolled into a standing position, deftly, as though he'd meant to do it.

“Here I am,
Captain
James Hook,” he called, voice taunting, words themselves nearly sneering.

“So you are.”

Peter set his fists at his sides. “Come and try to gut me again.”

“I assure you, that is not in your best interest,” James said, an arrogant smile quirking his lips.

“Ha! Last I knew, you were too much of a codfish to do anything to me at all.”

James's gaze brushed Peter's collarbone. Not even a scar.

This boy, this wretched boy.

“I promise you, Pan, your fate will not be the same should I catch you again.”

Peter's eyes sparkled as they circled each other. The hullabaloo was going on around them, but James could hear nothing of it. He nearly forgot that anyone else was there, so focused was he on the child and his blade. James took a step toward Peter and Peter shot into the air, then landed on the deck with a
thump
. Peter made a move to fly at him, and James pointed his sword at the boy's heart.

“Improved at swordplay, I see, old man.”

“Indeed.”

“But still afraid of me.” Pan opened his mouth in a twisted grin.

“What gives you that impression?” James's heart crashed against his rib cage, in time with the thunder,
acknowledging that what Peter said was true. But his face gave away none of the terror he felt.

“Because every time I look at you wrong, you flinch! Ugly old pirate. A braver man would have swung his sword at me by now.”

James's fingers twitched against his sword. “And a smarter child would know enough to keep his mouth shut and not taunt his elders so.”

The proud look on Peter's face was what baited the captain, and he could not stop himself from lunging at him. Peter's wild eyebrows raised and he smiled brightly and met James's sword with his smaller blade. James pressed on, throwing his body weight behind the sword, and breathed into Peter's face.

“I could kill you now, Pan.”

“Do it, then,” Peter hissed, and he pushed James off him. Then, the duo was back to circling one another.

“I could do this for ages,” Pan boasted.

“I already have.”

Peter lunged at James, who easily parried the strike, and again, with the same result. Then, he darted upward, knife in his mouth, and plunged to the deck behind him, kicking him in the back. James tumbled over, slipping on a pool of blood, he didn't know whose, and landed on his hands and knees on the worn wood. He flipped around quickly, brandishing his sword, unhappy to be on the ground but decidedly more comfortable facing Peter than having him at his back.

Peter was above him then, knocking into him, pushing the breath from him. He was strong, for a boy. They grappled for a minute on the ground. It was all very undignified, kicking him in the groin, being bitten in the shoulder, grabbing him by the throat.

And then, with his right hand clasped around Peter's windpipe, James stopped. His ears perked up as he heard
a strange
tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock
, the one that had accompanied that crocodile a short time earlier. Without intending to remove himself from the fight, he turned his head instinctively to find the direction from whence the phantom sound was coming.

Without warning, there was a searing pain just above his wrist, as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.
Tick-tocking
forgotten entirely, he turned and cried out. Where he'd once had a hand, there was nothing but mutilated flesh. Bone, muscle, vein, everything splintered.

Pan smiled devilishly and floated up and away from him, holding James's severed hand in his own. James paled and gasped for breath, yelling out with every bit of oxygen he had left. He was certain that the real pain hadn't yet set in, and nor had the realization. He could not truly believe, even if he'd wanted to, that the hand in the child's fingers was his own.

James sat, dumbstruck, clutching his stump of an arm, as crimson blood soaked his jacket and dripped onto the floor. He looked up, somehow both horrified and numb, as Peter flung the hand over the ship's edge. Despite his handicap, James scrambled, crawling, one-armed, to the end of the boat, and stared, wide-eyed, as his hand landed in the open jaws of the crocodile.

The croc's eyes looked the same as Peter's—heartless, cold, and indecently, unusually satisfied with the taste of his blood. Pan spun into the air, twirling over and over, and crowed as he always did. The Lost Boys and pirates stopped their fighting, and every person on the boat turned to look at James.

James met, for only an instant, Bibble's eyes. They were large and dark and sad and horrified, and James's chest was a playground for all sorts of terrible emotions. The chief one was stabbing and aching all at once—betrayal.

He turned his face away from Bibble, his
friend
, struggling to breathe, and knelt on the floor, blood soaking the knees of his pants. He turned his attention to the nothing at the end of his arm, still in shock.

When the battling was over and there was only silence and Peter's whooping in the air, that was when the pain set in. James breathed in and out shortly for several seconds, then let out a scream that was different than any sound he'd ever heard or made. It was pure anguish and rage. He screamed for several breaths until he was lying on the floor, and the corners of his eyes started to go dim, and everyone was gone but he and his pirate crew.

There was a great deal of chatter then, and a furious amount of activity around him, but James barely paid heed to any of it. He was nearly delirious from pain and loss of blood. He made out a few words here and there.

“He be bleedin' out, lads. He'll be dead in a moment.”

“His entire hand. His hand! And did you see the crocodile?”

“Wait, I've got it. The coals! Pick him up; bring him to my cooking pit.”

James's head lolled around as they picked him up from the deck, and he felt himself fading in and out of consciousness. Then, they thumped him down. He could feel heat rising like soft wool around him and smiled.

“Someone, grab his arm. No, the other one, idiot. The right one, with the blood all over it.”