Chapter Thirteen

THE NEVERLAND, 1724: HOOK

For a while we found respite in the Neverland, although we did not know to call it by that name. It was our Eden. After the storms and fog, we craved peace above all things, careened the ship without urgency, in part because we’d lost so many men, but also because we were none of us anxious to sail off again. There was wild game in the forest, and fish in the sea. We continued to think the place uninhabited, a paradise provided solely for our pleasure. If there were never any ships on the horizon for us to plunder, neither were there any warships to hunt us down. We grew indolent and stupid.

The redskins found us first. A party of my men encountered a hunting party of theirs in the wood. My men had known Africans in the islands, mulattoes of native blood, and fierce runaway maroons, but they had never known warriors of such swift and ferocious skill. Only two of my men returned that day to tell the gruesome tale. We set about final repairs to the ship in earnest, making her seaworthy again, protected by our Long Tom and the stern-chasers on deck as we worked. But the tide that had brought us to the mouth of Kidd Creek would never carry us far enough out to sea to escape. Always, we found ourselves becalmed in the fog. Always, the current brought us back to the Neverland.

We dropped anchor further out in the bay, a more defensible position than the shallows by the creek. We kept to our ship, and the warriors kept to their villages, but still there were skirmishes. A raiding party I led to cut out a few ripe females for our pleasure was a miserable failure; all but myself were butchered. They lost many braves canoeing out to our ship in the dead of night, repelled by our pikes and pistols. Time and again we tried and failed to chart a course through the fog back into familiar waters, until a party of drunken men murdered the navigator they blamed for failing to get us out of there. But the powerful forces that ruled in that place were far beyond the control of any one puny man.

And never were we more certain of it than the first time we saw them swarming toward us, a cloud of children dressed in leaves and animal skins laughing and shrieking in midair above our ship. The latest tribe of Lost Boys with the Pan in the lead.

I shall never forget my first sight of him, soaring overhead as I stood my ground amidships, my moonstruck men cowering in disbelief. He was not a very little boy, perhaps eleven or twelve years of age, and yet in possession of a full set of tiny baby teeth, which made his expression eerie. That and the keen light in his gray eyes peering out from under his dirty, tawny hair. Green leafy vines wound over his shoulder and round his middle, over a pelt of ragged fur. He went bare-legged above boots of furry skins, with a short sword at his side and a knife stuck in his boot. In one hand he grasped the musical Pan pipes which gave him his name. He hovered in the air above me, a light like a firefly buzzing about his shoulders, and whooped with delight.

“Pirates!” he cried, and all the other little boys in skins began to cheer. A dozen perhaps, of all races, gabbling in all tongues, and all as befouled by filth and grime as the blackest Moor among them. “And what is your business in the Neverland?” he demanded of me.

I gazed up at him coolly, not to be undone by a mere flying boy. A whelp was a whelp to me. “My only business is to leave this place,” I replied. I closed my hand round the hilt of my sword but did not draw it. “You will oblige me by showing me the way.”

Derisive laughter greeted this remark as he peered at me with unvarnished disdain. “Oh, will I? And who might you be to order me about, dark and sinister man?”

I made my eyes glinting slits of menace. “I might be the devil.”

“Or you might be a codfish!” he cawed, not the least daunted, and all the boys took up the chant. “Codfish! Codfish!”

I had seen too much of Hell to mind the taunting of little boys, but this one had witchy powers I intended to possess. While they were all still bouncing about, I slid my sword out and upward in one swift movement, catching not flesh but a length of vine girdling the boy’s middle. His weight pressed against my sword and I dragged him down through the air so his startled face was opposite mine.

“They call me Hook,” I seethed at him. “And you are my prisoner. Boy.”

Even as I spoke, I saw excitement kindling in his gray eyes. He bared his little teeth and strained upward as the air between us began to pulse with uncanny glittering, like a hail of diamonds in a shaft of brilliant sunlight. The firefly light was dancing about us too. The boy began to rise, and my blade rose with him, and even as I gripped with all my strength, my sword was sucked up out of my grasp like a loose spar in a hurricane. With a shout of triumph, he grasped the hilt, slithered the blade out from under the vine he wore, and hurled my fine French cutlass to the deck with disdain.

“I’m called Pan!” he crowed, as all the other little boys cheered. “And no man is a match for me!” He swooped down toward me. “Next time, Hook, you better fight fair!”

He blew a shrill bleat on his pipes, peeled off higher into the air and led the flying boys away past the shrouds and off over the creek in a cloud of chattering laughter.

My men thought they were bewitched or dreaming. But it’s children all over creation who dream the Neverland into existence because they crave it so much. Such was the powerful force we could not name, the unconscious, uncensored desire of children.

Much has been made of my obsession with the Pan, how I ignored the wise council of my shipmates to leave that place in search of more hospitable waters and fatter prizes elsewhere. How sheer childish obstinacy kept me in the Neverland, determined to have my revenge on the clever boy who’d got the better of me. But there was never any hope of escape from the Neverland. I was under a curse, and what few of my men who’d not had wit enough to die or desert me beforehand were bound to share it with me. We made every attempt we could, yet however far we sailed, neither the pattern of the stars nor the shape of the coastline ever altered. Every current, every breeze, brought us back to the Neverland, where the braves and the beasts and the boys were always waiting.

It was foolishness, grown men fighting little boys. My men never took it seriously until one of their fellows had his bowels stove in by a blade wielded with boyish delight. After that, they took better care defending themselves, but it was never an even match; the boys were fleet and ferocious as mosquitoes in the air, doling out death on a whim. Between battles, my men were glad enough to give themselves over to drink, for the Pan called on the enchantment of that place to see our rum casks ever replenished. Drink made them even more likely to get themselves killed in battle or do some fatal injury to themselves. Or risk my wrath, which grew hotter with every tedious new day.

I would have given the boy anything, done anything he asked to purchase our escape. But our presence was all he wanted, a party of bloodthirsty pirates to make his fantasy complete. Along with my eternal humiliation, which he came to crave above all things. My crew diminished, along with our memories of the world we’d left behind, our wits as befouled by rum and torpor as the stinking hull of the Jolie Rouge, rotting so long at anchor in the bay.

Silver strands glinted in my dark hair and beard when I looked in my glass. The aches and pains from a lifetime at sea, so long ignored in violent action, began to make themselves felt. I was as twitchy from inactivity as I’d been in the French prison, or during my time chained in the filthy barracoons of Cape Coast. So I hit upon a proposition I believed Pan could never resist: I would invite him to join my company of brigands. I hadn’t any notion of holding to the bargain for long. But once taken into my crew, I was certain he would long to sail off in search of real ships to plunder, and that would take us out of the Neverland at last.

He came aboard alone, without the usual company of boys in his wake. He had a lot of cheek to come unarmed, although we both knew he could fly away at any moment.

“Well, Hook,” he hailed me saucily, “have you more favors to beg of me?”

“Indeed no, I’ve one to grant you,” I sallied back.

He cackled like a little crow. “What do you have that I’d want?”

I told him, gratified to see the greed for adventure in his eyes. But he shuttered his greed and peered at me with suspicion.

“Why?” he demanded. “Why me?”

“You have proven yourself a worthy adversary, Pan,” I responded silkily. I had treated with the likes of Edward Low and Black Bart Roberts in my day; I knew how to coo and flatter. “You would be an ornament to our enterprise. Surely you’ve heard the stories of pirate captains granting their most valiant opponents a place in their crew?”

“Only when the pirates win the battle,” he piped up. “You have to beat me first!”

“No need for another battle if we are on the same side,” I reasoned. “Besides, I have had plenty of opportunity to judge your … skill and cleverness.” I fair choked on the words.

That mollified him for the moment, long enough for me to produce a rolled up parchment from my coat pocket. I had labored all day to limn the word “Articles” across the top, with all due flourishes, and to write out some nonsense about ship’s rules and the reckoning of plunder against the most gruesome injuries I could imagine, the sort of stuff that would appeal to a boy. In truth, I’d rarely bothered with such niceties; my men were bound to me by fear and greed and malice for as long as there was profit in it. But such things were much in fashion in other crews, and the stories always made a fuss over the fabled pirate articles. So I spread out the parchment on a barrelhead for his perusal. I’d had my men scrawl their names or their marks in a column with an empty space at the bottom. All very official looking.

“It’s a great and solemn honor to be sworn in,” I went on, raising my right hand. Pan was fond of ceremony. “But first you must sign the Articles, my bully, and we shall be in business.”

He leaned his elbows on the barrel, squinting down the paper, then up at me. “Do I get to sign in blood?” he asked eagerly.

I inclined my head, swallowing a smile. “If you like.” I produced a sharpened quill from my other pocket, gingerly testing its point against my forefinger. He returned his gaze to the paper, scowling in perplexity. And it occurred to me that my calligraphic efforts had been wasted; the boy could not read. Small wonder he needed the Wendys to tell him stories. “There,” I added helpfully, placing the nib of the quill upon the empty space.

“Is that where it says Captain Pan?”

“Captain Pan?” I gaped at him.

His gaze darted up to me. “I get to be the captain,” he barked. “I’m the one who always wins.”

“But my boy,” I struggled to recompose myself, “there is a world of ships to plunder out there. You may captain any one you—”

“Out there?” he cried, eyes widening at me. “You mean to trick me, Hook! You want to go out there! You want to run away! It’s a foul trick!” he bellowed, and a cloud of Lost Boys swarmed up over the wales and flew to us, brandishing their weapons. My men had been sent below so as not to alarm the boy, and that is how I came to be surrounded by angry swords and buck knives with only a quill clutched in my sword hand.

There must have been a dozen of them, devilling and poking at me. I swatted at them like insects, but they were much bigger and heavier, and they were armed. Half of them fell on my flailing arm as I roared for my men. Pan had a grip on my other hand; he’d shaken out the quill and was waving my hand like a prize.

“By this hand you would have sworn falsely to me!” he cried. “You would have tricked me out there, made me grow big, made me grow up! But I will never live in the grown-up world.” He drew a raspy breath, and I saw more malice in his glittering eyes than I’d ever seen in any pirate. “And neither will you! Never ever! And this is so you won’t forget!”

Three of the little beggars pinned my hand to the barrelhead, while another who’d been flitting all over the deck brought something back to the Pan. I couldn’t see what it was, for all the boys shrieking in my ears and cuffing me about the face as I tried to duck and bob. It wasn’t until he brandished it over his head that I recognized one of our boarding axes.

It took both his hands to manage it. I saw the downward course of the heavy blade and I struggled desperately, lunging and writhing, but my limbs were sandbagged with squirming bodies, and I could not twist away.

The pain was exquisite, a perfection of white-hot agony so consuming, I couldn’t hear my own shriek for the thundering in my head. The children were all shrieking too, giddy in their triumph and whooping as the ax came down again. Of course, he couldn’t do it all at once. Flesh and bone are more resistant than you think; the blade was old, and he was not experienced. It took several good whacks to break down the skin and pulp and sever the bone within.

There was no need to restrain me after that. I’ve heard of Blackbeard fighting on and on with blades and pistol balls twisting in his vitals, but it was not like that for me. I sank to my knees, stupid with pain, clinging to the barrel for support, watching red blood spurting out of my pulpy wrist like wine out of a spigot, as the boys jeered gaily all round me. My fingers were still clutching wildly, I could feel them, but the hand to which they were attached was already gone. Pan flew to the side with it, dripping blood across the deck, and held it aloft like a trophy. At the rail, he paused and whistled. I shall never forget it. He whistled, and the crocodile came splashing up under the hull for its treat.

Pan lighted upon the rail, still grasping his grisly prize, and turned back to me. “I win again, Hook!” he cried. “I’m the true captain of the Neverland!” He dropped my bloody hand over the side, and the boys all cheered, yet for all their din, I heard the greedy snap of reptilian jaws.

It was like an afterword in a tedious book by the time my men mustered themselves on deck to chase off the boys with Long Tom. I don’t remember much about it. I was slumped against a pile of cordage, my arm cradled in my lap, watching blood soak through my breeches and into the deck, until blessed oblivion gaped open before me like a great black welcoming sea.

The shock of it was not so much that I had been overmatched by little boys. I have seen green youths scarcely older than the Pan battle ferociously for their lives on the bloody deck of a prize ship. No, it was the glee with which they did it, the jeering, jabbering Lost Boys. We were not in a battle. No lives were at stake. They mutilated me for the sport of it. For the fun.

That is what it is to be a boy.