Hook & Jill (The Hook & Jill Saga) (39 page)

Hook drew his lips from hers, and even his laugh was gilded. “I used to envy the birds. Even they cannot match us now!” Trapped in the grain of the beams overhead shone more little stars, scraped from his glowing shoulders and twinkling down on their magic circle. The lovers reclined together, suspended, their hearts soaring, their eyes still blinded to everything else.

But the sea was calling. At length Hook’s ears attended it, and Jill, though not yet understanding the liquid language, was drawn, as ever, to the open window. She pulled him with her and flung the casement to its widest extent. “Come, Hook! Fly with the birds. Fly with me!” Her radiant arms stretched longingly, one toward him, one over the sill.

But he stabbed his hook in a beam of the ceiling and anchored himself. Reaching down, he seized her round the waist. “Hold, my love. I see now how very easy it was to entice you away from home.” He gathered her into his arm. “You feel the power of flight and you forget your position. But I have made you a queen over men this time. You will find them easier to govern than boys.” His eyes appreciated her splendor. “And easier to tempt.”

Jill looked at her lover in surprise, then laughed at her state of undress. “Forgive me! I’d no thought of anyone but you.”

“A fault for which I shall never upbraid you. Fetch your gown, before I forget myself. I’ve an obligation to discharge. We’ve yet to complete the terms of our accord.”

“You were generous. You granted all I asked and more— except for Nibs and Tom.”

“You demanded their freedom.”

“Which you refused.”

“It didn’t occur to you then that they desired to join me.”

“Even though I meant to join you, too.”

“And I had already granted their freedom. I couldn’t give to you what belonged to them.”

“Nor could I give you what belonged to others. You worked ruthlessly to free my heart, so that I was at liberty to grant it.”

“The only thing in the world for which I lacked. Except for the tale, the accord is sealed.”

“The story of your Beauty. Yes! I hold you to our agreement.”

Reluctant to descend, they settled on the floor to leave footprints in the fairy dust as they waited upon each other, donning only essentials. Once Jill had coaxed his claw through its lacy cuff, Hook led her to the couch and took her into his arms. The flightless swan supported their backs, catching a little glitter of its own. Their eyes, blue as sapphires, met and held. Hook noticed that her eyelashes still sparkled with magic. He began.

* * *

“You told me the story of James, the young man who entered into the Neverland to mold his destiny. Here he found everything he desired. Skill, experience, wealth, women, respect… power. He didn’t court companionship, for ignorant of its charms, he had never sought it. By day he lived his fantasies, and by night he gathered strength. In the form of Beauty.

“She came to him in his dreams and whispered to him shyly, like a maiden, through the veil of sleep. Growing ever bolder, still she declined to join him— yet she taunted him with his incompletion. He reached for her but she tormented him, hiding within his soul behind a curtain of Darkness, torn just enough for the light of her smile to enter. As he dreamed, he could see her smile, a ray of loveliness, but intangible, unkissable. He could hear her voice; she spoke to him in golden words, but when she told his tale, she dictated that he should suffer loss and pain and interrupted passions. But also, ultimately, love.

“Over time, her features became refined, her voice clearer. She swam like a mermaid in and out of his sleep until one morning he netted his desire, fixing her image in his waking mind. He caused her likeness to be set in his skin. He commissioned her face to be carved in wood. Having gained this power over her, he ordered that she should bear his weakness and turn it into strength. And he hung her, his sweet tormentor, at the fore of his ship— the prow of his life. Now her hook plucks the waves, her hand summons the unattainable. Like the interrupted man, she seeks to grasp what she cannot hold.

“The Beauty has sailed with me forever. And the day I watched her forsake the water to follow an eagle and catch the sky, the moment I stood in Darkness beholding her face in sunshine, I knew that she is you, and you are me.”

* * *

Jill’s tear collected gold-dust granules as it cleared its path down her cheek. “She is your storyteller.” She took his face in her hands and looked into her own eyes. “She dreamed her life into you, all her desires. But she had to grow up before we could become one.” And, inspired and inspiring, she kissed him.

He pressed her hand to his cheek. “A story and the truth. A perfectly matched set.” Hook abandoned the couch and plucked her from it, drawing her toward the door, but in front of the bookcase, she paused. In the full light of day, their reflections bounced back rich in color. The books behind the glass were real, clothed in leather, and the letters clearly legible. Neither the books nor the lovers took precedence; the images did not supercede, but enhanced one another. Opening every door of every shelf, Jill uncaged the contents, sending sunbeams flying. She snatched up her feather and twined it into the Pirate King’s hair, alongside his earring. “Our stories have woven together, and it is I who have come alive, here in the Neverland.”

“My dream, alive.”

The lock slipped easily now, and the door opened to favor their escape. A trail of magical sand marked their progress, ending where their feet kicked the deck of the companionway out from under them. Unnoticed except by a similar light twinkling in the crow’s nest, Hook and Jill flew, hand in hand, into the blue sea sky, up, and over the starboard rail. Hook flew as if he had always held the power, not a skill to be relearned, but a memory awakened. They dove down, rolling once, and flew ahead, past the forward anchor still coated in the moss of Neverbay and dripping with moisture. Here Hook pulled himself upright. Drifting alongside the ship, the pair kept pace with her, and their feet were dewy with the spray she tossed as she harvested the waves. Hook shook the blacker waves from his face. The feather flapped in the air.

“Follow me.”

Jill followed, flinging herself along with him to face the dipping bow, with the wind leaping into their arms and filling the sails all above them. And then she saw the sickle, reaching for the sea. She saw the open hand. She grasped it, letting the wind flutter her against the hull as she stared at the figurehead. The captain linked his own hook with the wooden one and braced a foot against the ship where it glistened with damp. His white shirt billowed like the sails as he watched her face.

“My Beauty, carved from my visions.”

It was like looking up into a beloved old mirror, brown and aged, but still reflecting truth. The Beauty leaned eternally, yearning for the edge of the horizon, her eyes clear and seeking the adventure that waited there, longing, perhaps, to tell its story. Her hair swam in the air, and at the end of a lovely looping pathway, her tail trailed in the sea. Her smile, Jill’s own regal smile, bade the sea to claim its kiss. Everything about her was tempting, was true.

Jill looked closer, and her lips opened in surprise. Her hand rushed to her throat. There, on the Beauty, every bit as dark and weathered as the carving of the face, was her scar. Jill reached out to feel it, a gash smoothed by the trickster, Time.

“Has it always been there?”

Hook inclined his head. “Like my hook. A mark, blending with your beauty to form your soul.”

She remembered. “The end of my story, as I wish it. As you told it.”

“No, only the beginning. You are a work of art that lives on forever.”

Her eyes beheld the mermaid again, and she held her head erect. “Am I really so beautiful?”

Hook smiled wryly. “Yes. We are.” He bent his knees and shoved off from the hull, and like the perfect pirate she had made him, he stole the woman away. He took her soaring then, cleaving the air with his hook and spiraling high into the shoreless ocean of the sky, where even the white wings of his ship could never venture. He looked down where it skimmed below, spreading its feathers of spray, a water bird promising flights to spirit Hook and his Jill onward to other oceans, other islands.

Hook had won the few things he held dear. Now he secured them in his heart like the treasure in his coffer. The legendary captain of the
Roger
locked his Beauty in his arms while she leaned back and spread her golden wings, and they danced as one in the wild music of the heavens, and would not be captured by the wind, or Time, or blind monsters, or even little boys who just want to have fun.

Chapter 30

The Seas of London

The London moon rode high and bright on the waves of the sky, crisply casting the boy’s shadow. Legs wide, hands on hips, the familiar image pressed against the curtains. Closed curtains.

The shadow cocked its head, listening. A stutter of hooves on cobblestone bounced up from the street. Like the moon, the midnight clock floated in the heavens, ticking inaudibly, and having struck the hour, its gonging dissolved in a sea of stars. No further stories could be heard.

Black arms reached out and felt at the sash, secured a grip and pulled to lift the window. The arms were strong, but the casement declined to yield. The fingers flew to the latch and worked at it, rattling. Immediately, a dog barked within the recesses of the nursery. A glow leapt up and shone through the fabric of the drapes, as if it had been waiting for Peter. Approaching slowly, it refined itself. Its gleam burned through the insubstantial belly of Peter’s shadow. He grinned, expectant. The candle’s light glided up to the curtain, and there it stayed, a constant little fire unruffled by any errant breeze from any open window.

Peter waited. He peered at the light. It abided. Peter rattled again. The dog barked; the dog hushed. The mischievous boy pounded the glass with the flat of his hand, but to no avail. Like the flame, the parent holding it remained resolute, unwavering.

Peter’s face tensed and he sprang back from the window. He hovered. Not a breath stirred the candle’s light. He shook his head, then he stilled and hung there. All alone.

The sky shimmered around him. Something wet rolled down his cheek, something he’d felt before. He dashed it away. Then he felt something he’d never felt before. It lifted the golden hairs off his forehead and rustled through his leaves. It whistled a little as it touched his ears. It was cool, even refreshing. He couldn’t help but feel it, and it stirred him somehow, like Tinker Bell’s wings. Like Wendy’s words. It dried his tears.

The wind.

Peter lifted his arms to welcome it, to let it in, to inhale it deep in his lungs. He sensed that this was his only opportunity; it would never catch him again. And when the wind released him, he turned away, arms still upraised, falling back into the ocean of the London sky. He didn’t look back, but he determined to return. He’d remember. He would always remember.

* * *

Behind the curtain, Mr. and Mrs. Darling would remember, too. The unflagging flame sustained them. They had traveled through darkness to understanding. They were grown-ups, and they had to accept the truth, however disappointing. They now harbored no hope of retrieving their Wendy. Except in memory, except in myth, she was lost to them.

They told her story, over and over again. In their fondness for the girl they embellished the tale, they made up legends about her. But the family knew: these new stories weren’t real. Not without the magic of the Wendy.

For she was no ordinary girl. From the time the fairies spied the open nursery window and returned her to Number 14, the Darlings had known she was only on loan. It was just a question of Time. As the first little girl ever to venture from her pram in the park, Wendy had nonplussed the winged creatures of air. The fairies hadn’t known what to do with her. They had brought her home.

The Darlings had opened their hearts to her, however briefly, and Time had not been on their side. While she lingered, dreaming dreams and weaving stories, Wendy kept strict track of Time, gazing over the sunken city at the clock tower and listening for its chiming; rocking her baby brothers to the rhythm of the pendulum on the mantel; counting the minutes to grown-up, and never knowing why. Some thing, maybe some one, called to her, demanding her presence elsewhere. Whatever it was had hooked Wendy’s heart and pulled with a powerful grip. Fearing she would fly too soon, the Darlings never reminded her of her first adventure in the park. Now it was too late. Time had run out.

Their own spinnings were only stories, phantoms, like the Darlings themselves must seem to a bunch of boys who lived in the Neverland. Only the Wendy’s words were golden, infused with arcane powers, like grains of enchanted dust. Wendy had been touched by the fairies. Some of their magic rubbed off on her, and all unknowing she had spun dreams into reality, truth from tales. Her fantasy had come alive, in the Neverland. Now its waiting time was over, and she had answered its call. And wherever she was now, her parents still believed in her.

But Mr. and Mrs. Darling had learned. They were taking no chances on losing the three colorful youths she’d sent to them not in her stead, but with her love. From now on these boys would fight pirates in the park, they would bubble and bob about mermaids in London’s lagoons. They were whole and happy. They were home.

Peter Pan and his shadow could come and go. He could rattle like the skeleton tree at the door of Dark Hunting, he could pound until the ill-omened leaves dropped from his clothing to litter the doorstep. The nightlight would burn, steadfast. But until young men chose to fling it open, the nursery window would remain closed.

* * *

Peter had to go hunting again. He needed weapons. Michael had flown home with the dagger that had been Slightly’s. The hidden cache hoarded plenty of knives, but Peter prided himself on keeping an even score, one for every Lost Boy. And another dagger and two swords were missing in the recent engagements with pirates. One plundered, two confiscated. They had to be replaced.