Peter and the Shadow Thieves (4 page)

Hook picked up the pistol. “Smee,” he said, in the calm, reasonable tone he used only when he was very close to kil ing somebody. “Do we have any more gunpowder? Any
dry
gunpowder?”

“No, Cap’n,” said Smee, getting warily to his feet. “You used it al up yesterday, when you was—”

“I
know
what I was doing yesterday,” snapped Hook. He had been shooting at the boy, who had spent a half hour dropping coconuts on the fort. The boy avoided the pistol shots with infuriating ease while laughing—
laughing
—at the man who had once been the most feared pirate in the world.

Hook cursed and hurled the pistol to the ground, almost weeping with frustration. He could not believe that he had come to this: marooned on this strange island; taunted by this horrid boy who had cut off his hand; unable to retaliate against the horrid boy’s horrid little friends because of the horrid savages protecting them.

Worst of al , Hook, who had once roamed the seven seas at wil , no longer dared venture more than a few yards from the cramped confines of the fort for fear of encountering the beast that had gulped down his hand after the cursed boy cut it off—the giant crocodile, longer than a longboat, known as “Mister Grin.” It had taken to lurking near the fort, watching, waiting, its vast, jagged jaws smiling a hungry, toothful, expectant smile.

Hook had tried sending men out to lure Mister Grin away, but the beast showed no interest in others. Having tasted Hook, it seemed to want only him, lumbering forward when Hook showed himself, sometimes brushing its massive tail against the outside of the log wal s while Hook cowered inside, drenched in fear-sweat, his wrist-stump throbbing.

Oh, yes, Hook hated his situation with a white-hot fury that burned in his brain. And the cause of it al was this boy flying down the mountain toward him now, ready to jeer at him yet again. And he was helpless to do anything about it.

“Cap’n,” said Smee, picking up the useless pistol, “you best get in the fort, before he starts dropping things on you again.” Hook stood a moment longer, staring in frustrated fury at the oncoming form of the boy, less than a mile away now. But Smee was, for once, right: better to go into the fort.

Without his favorite target, the boy would become bored in time, and leave.

Hook turned toward the door. He was stopped by another hail from the top of the tal palm tree.

“Cap’n,” cal ed the lookout. “There’s another one.”

Hook whirled and looked up. “Another what?” he shouted.

“Another boy, coming down the mountain.”

“Flying?” asked Hook.

“No, Cap’n. He’s on foot. Maybe a third of the way down.”

A
boy, on foot. On the wrong side of the mountain.
The plan formed instantly in Hook’s mind.

“Crenshaw! Bates!” he barked.

Two crewmen stumbled from the fort, blinking.

“There’s a boy coming down the mountain,” said Hook. He turned toward the lookout and said, “Davis, show them which way.” The lookout pointed toward the mountain; Crenshaw and Bates nodded.

“I want you to go up there and get him,” said Hook. “I want you to stay under the trees, away from the clearings, so the flying boy don’t see you, understand?” The two men nodded.

“When we get him,” said Bates, “do we kil him?”

“No,” said Hook softly. “You bring him to me.” He glanced toward the mountain again; the flying boy was only a few hundred yards off. Hook turned back to the two men. “Go,” he hissed. “Hurry!”

Crenshaw and Bates trotted into the jungle.

“Cap’n,” said Smee. “You best get inside now.”

“No, Mister Smee,” said Hook. “I think I’l stay outside for a bit.”

“But, Cap’n,” said Smee. “If the flying boy sees you, he’l stay around bothering you al day.” Hook smiled for the first time in months, showing a mouthful of yel ow-brown, sharklike teeth.

“Exactly,” he said.

CAPTAIN NEREZZA ADDRESSED the man peering through the spyglass.

“Wel , Mister Slank?” he said. “Is that your island?” Slank put the glass down. He was a tal , sturdy man with big, rough hands and shaggy hair that, like Nerezza’s, was held back in a ponytail. His face, in its own way, was as shocking as Nerezza’s: though he stil had his original nose, Slank’s skin had been badly damaged by more than a month drifting at sea in an open boat. The relentless sun had burned his skin into a hideous mask of angry blisters and scabs through which could barely be discerned the features of a man.

“Aye,” he said, his voice harsh, as if his throat was stil parched. “As sure as I’m standing here, that’s the island, Captain. The single cone of a mountain is what tel s it, and the shape. That’s the one, al right.”

It was then they felt the chil . Every man on the ship had felt it; every man dreaded the sound of the voice that was sure to accompany the chil . The tropical sun stil hung bright in the sky, but it was as though the air around the ship had gone cold and dank, like in a dark London al ey near the docks in December. There was a smel , too—a faint but distinct odor of decay.

The sailors—trying to look casual about it, but clearly terrified—moved forward, away from the quarterdeck; one of them crossed himself. The man at the wheel, who could not leave his post without being flogged, went rigid and pale, his eyes fixed on the horizon. Nerezza and Slank also stiffened, neither daring to turn toward the companionway behind them, the companionway that led down to the officers’ cabins.

The crew had been ordered to keep away from that companionway, but no orders were necessary. No sailor on the ship would go down there, not for a year’s pay. Not with the rumors that had been scurrying around the ship since the…
visitor
had boarded the ship, at sea, in the dead of night, under very strange circumstances.

For openers, there was the matter of how he had arrived. It happened a few minutes into the middle watch, just past midnight. Only Nerezza and Slank were on deck. Nerezza, taking the wheel himself, had ordered the entire crew, every last man, to go below and close al hatches behind them—something that
never
happened aboard a ship at sea.

The crew, needless to say, had been intensely curious about what was happening on deck, and as it happened there was a witness: the youngest cabin boy, a slight, mischievous towheaded lad named Michael Doakes, nimble as a squirrel in the rigging. Rather than going below, Doakes had concealed himself aloft, lying on a furled sail, from which he had an excel ent view of the moonlit deck.

The story that Doakes—a subdued and shaken Doakes—told belowdecks later was so strange that some of the crewmen were convinced he must have gone mad, or gotten into the grog. For the boy claimed that a man—or
something
—had come on board, and yet…
no ship had brought him.

“I swear it!” he said, responding to the doubting looks of the men gathered around him. “There was no ship in the water.”

“Then how’d he get here?” asked a skeptical voice. “We’re five hundred miles from land.”

“I…I don’t know what it was,” said the boy, his normal y ruddy face gone pale and sickly. “I thought I saw a…a…”

“A
what,
boy?”

“A shape in the water. Big as our ship, but it weren’t no ship. It came alongside, and then I thought I saw an…an arm come aboard….”

“An arm?”

“Yes, a great huge arm, like a snake….”

“You’re mad, boy!”

“Hush! Let him talk! Then what, boy?”

“Then the arm was gone,” said Doakes. “And the shape was gone. And there was this
thing,
or man, or whatever it is, standing there on deck.”

“What’d he look like?”

“I couldn’t say. It…he was al dark, like he was wearing a cloak, head to toe. When I looked at him, al I seen was black, just black. He walked across the deck. It was strange, the way he moved—like he was
gliding,
on wheels. Anyways, he went up on the quarterdeck, and he said something to Cap’n Nerezza and Mister Slank.”

“What’d he say?”

“I couldn’t get the words, but the
sound
of it was strange, like wind moaning in the rigging. It gave me the strangest feeling, like I was cold al of a sudden. I could tel Cap’n Nerezza and Mister Slank didn’t care for it, neither. They was backing up away from the man, and turning away, like they was afraid to look at him.”

“
Nerezza
?” said an incredulous voice. “
Afraid
?”

“That’s what it looked like,” said the boy.

“Then what?”

“Then the man went down the companionway, quick as anything—it was like he
flowed
down, like water down a drain. And then he was gone.” Doakes’s account of the strange visitor was instantly the talk of the ship. Most of the crew believed the boy, but there were a few doubters—for a while. Their doubts vanished the first time the chil descended over the ship. It had done so several times since, and each time, it was fol owed by the dreaded voice.

Nerezza and Slank, standing on the quarterdeck, heard that same voice now, a cross between a hiss and a moan, emanating like a winter wind from the companionway behind them.

“You found the island,” the voice said.

Nerezza and Slank looked at each other, then Nerezza answered.

“Yes,” he said.

“You are certain,
Slank
?” the voice said.

Slank flinched, then said quietly, “I’m certain.”

A pause; neither Nerezza nor Slank moved. Then the voice spoke again.

“You had better be right, Slank,” it said. “
You had better not fail us again.
”

Slank said nothing, stil staring at the island. He had, indeed, failed; had somehow, incredibly, let the most valuable trunk on earth—the most valuable
thing
on earth—slip through his fingers, because of some mindless mermaids and a…a
boy.
Defeated, humiliated, he’d barely escaped the island with his life; he’d spent weeks at sea, drifting on a tiny boat with Little Richard, his huge and loyal servant, whom he had ultimately, with some regret, been forced to kil and eat so he could stay alive. Because he
had
to stay alive, if only for revenge.

And stay alive he had, long enough to be picked up by a trading ship, and final y make it back to Rundoon, where he’d had to report his failure to King Zarboff. Zarboff, enraged by the loss of the trunk and its priceless cargo of starstuff, had wanted to feed Slank to the giant snake he kept as a pet. But Zarboff was only a king; he was subordinate to higher-ranking members of the Others, the secret group that for centuries had control ed much of the world through the powers they gained from starstuff. They knew they needed Slank alive, to lead them back to the island, and the trunk. For the time being, Zarboff’s snake went hungry.

And so Slank had found himself hastily put aboard this ship—cal ed
Le Fantome
—commanded by the brutal Captain Nerezza, a man often employed by the Others, a man known for getting things done by whatever means necessary.
Le Fantome
had spent weeks—too many weeks—wandering the sea, searching for an island that didn’t seem to be on any of the charts; an island that, Slank suspected, Nerezza sometimes did not believe existed.

The recent midnight arrival of the mysterious visitor had increased the urgency of the search. Clearly, the Others were growing impatient in their desire to get the trunk back.

So Slank was relieved and pleased to see the island. Relieved, because it meant that he might yet escape from this debacle with his life. And pleased because the boy would be on the island.

He meant to kil the boy. The thought brought a rare and painful smile to his face, his badly worn teeth showing briefly amid the mass of sunburn scars.

Slank turned to Nerezza. “There’s a decent anchorage off the eastern side,” he said.

Nerezza nodded.

Then the voice again, behind them: “How long?”

Nerezza considered, squinting at the island. “About two hours,” he said. “We can be ashore before sunset.”

“
No,
” groaned the voice, a sound that caused skin to crawl throughout
Le Fantome.
“Not before nightfal . It must be at night, do you understand?” Nerezza, too shaken to speak, nodded.

“At night,” the voice repeated.

And despite the heat of the day, Slank’s teeth began to chatter.