Hook & Jill (The Hook & Jill Saga) (7 page)

Slowly, Hook shook his head. He was learning.

* * *

During the course of his observation, Hook absorbed every nuance. His time was well invested. On the whole, the girl favorably impressed him. She assumed an air of tolerance for all parties, yet Hook would swear that in guarded moments he’d seen her strike at the tiny moving light. He tapped the sickle of his claw against his boot leather, considering. Judging from all he had witnessed, the Wendy was ripe for his harvest. All according to plan, he now knew his enemy.

He could almost taste her.

Pluck. And abandon. Exactly the traits he required of her. He nodded to himself. Exactly the things he would do to her.

As the last brilliance of afternoon sparkled on the Lagoon, Pan, in his self-important manner, straddled the big rock, hoisting his boys out of the brine one by one and slinging them onto it, where they stretched out to dry. A handsome eagle feather was twined into his dirty hair. Her treasure, plundered. Never had Hook been more disgusted by that boy.

Forming his final impressions, Hook observed as the Wendy stood still, apart from Pan, seeming to engage the fairy in banter. But as soon as Tinker Bell ventured within range, the girl blew at her, creating a gale that wafted the sprite several yards out to sea. Afterward the girl was wise enough to dive off the rock and disappear— until her streaming head and shoulders emerged from the sea, directly in front of Hook’s lair.

She was near enough for him to hear the gasp as she sucked first air. Her hair floated on the water, rippling in its eddy. She swam, and her arms sent water churning to bounce against the ledge not far from his feet. The Wendy clutched and hauled herself onto the very shelf of rock on which he had lain with wet, gaudy trinkets, savoring the salt on their skins.

His arm jerked. He held his breath. He could have touched her.

Do nothing rash. Keep to the plan.

He lowered the hook.

Her breath came in bursts as she rested. Her hair and her gown clung to her body while, for a few moments, she lay luxuriating, like a mermaid. Upon sitting up, she tossed her head, bent, and gathered the hair into her hands, one fluid motion. She wrung the water from her hair and the droplets plunked on the rock surface, spattering it. A sudden rivulet snaked toward Hook’s boot. As he drew himself deeper into shadow, his shirt whispered against the wall.

Just a whisper, but she heard it.

Immediately, she pivoted to discover the beast that stalked her. For one instant, as her eyes challenged the darkness, her features were revealed to him.

Taken aback, he stiffened, his brow creasing in incredulity.

He recognized her face. It belonged to him, and he to it. Her face had been carved from his dreams.

Everything connected. He knew who she was.…
Wendy
.

A laugh thrilled the air, and Wendy spun around. A mermaid beckoned to her, just feet away. The lovely tail waved, lazily, tauntingly. Wendy leapt to her feet, her mouth opening in awe. The mermaid raised up, an array of round, rich jewels shining on her breast, and she let loose a song of piercing beauty. As she fell back to stroke the water, her melody pulled Wendy with her, enticing the girl to return to the sea, and even her wake was succulent. Enraptured, Wendy rose lightly on her toes, and with one twist of her shoulders, floated up.

Hook didn’t move. He stood staring at the glistening drops falling from her gown as she pursued his lady of the deep from the medium of the air. For the first time, he resisted the lure of the siren song.

He hadn’t even heard it.

* * *

By twilight, the treacherous tide of Mermaids’ Lagoon was rising, its waves ceaselessly concealing and revealing its secrets. As intended, all elements of this infamous place had come into play that late afternoon. Those who could escape the tide had done so.

One remained, changed forever.

At the shadowed entrance to a womb of rock, a seaman waited for a dinghy. The sea rose, whispering as it came, pulsing in and out of the cave, swirling over and then laying bare his boots. He watched, but didn’t see.

All those dark thoughts, broken segments… She would join them together. With a tale. An intriguing tale.

He looked up, and far out to sea. The wind made free with his hair and toyed with the golden earring. He stood firm.

Now he had his bearings. Captain James Hook observed the new stars and fixed his course.

Wendy was his storyteller. And so much more.

Chapter 7

Taming the Beast

The course of Time being so erratic, Wendy couldn’t be sure, but by her uncertain reckoning, weeks had passed since the Lagoon adventure, and still Tinker Bell was prone to twinkling fits of hysterics. The memory was fresh for Tink, who was drenched before it was over, and although it was no one’s fault but her own, she chose to blame the Wendy. Even Peter hadn’t curbed her vitriol, and Peter could tame almost anything.

Wendy had been mesmerized, deep under the spell of the mermaid, but some instinct had guarded her. She took to the air first in her pursuit of the creature, instead of diving into the maid’s own element. Her sudden flight alerted Peter to the situation, and he kicked off the rock to her rescue. Tinker Bell, still vigilant, streaked after, fearing for Peter’s affection, hoping for the Wendy’s demise.

Entranced by the song, Wendy flew nearer, lower, trying to capture the sound before it sank into the sea. She was so close as it submerged, she felt it must be near the surface still. Just as she pitched to dive, Peter blazed in front of her, breaking the flow of sound. Abruptly, she halted to watch in bewilderment as Peter plunged in to warn the mermaid away. Tinker Bell was so determined to ward off competition that she plunked right after him, spraying a tiny jet of spume as she immersed herself in the merworld. Thereafter, the haunting song ceased altogether, and laughter broke the surface in a cloud of effervescence.

Tink was too airy to swim. She bubbled back up and floated, a soggy bit of flotsam. As she spluttered, glowing particles of her fairy dust ebbed away, and the sight of it frightened her. She panicked, her wings waterlogged and beating against the sea, unable to attain flight nor make her way through the water.

Only moments passed this way, for as soon as Wendy came to her senses, she awoke to Tink’s dilemma. She reached down and formed her hands into a raft. In spite of the fairy’s ill will, Wendy found the grace to respect her proud nature. She allowed Tink to climb on deck by herself, dragging aboard a single shred of dignity— whereupon Tinker Bell aimed and spit.

Dignity remained tattered yet and frequent hair pulling was the order of the day, so Peter cocked an arrow and pretended to shoot Tinker Bell down, while Tink reversed herself and escaped up the tree shaft to the world above. A hollow tinkling echoed in the chute, and Wendy awarded her hero a smile, grateful to him for both recent rescues and her belief in him confirmed again. She was relieved, and now at liberty to discuss the idea of the day.

Any good idea that wandered into the hideout became Peter’s in the end, by right of domination, and Peter decreed that today should be a hunting day. Living among the trees, one lived among the beasts. It followed naturally that one would hunt the beasts from the trees. The logic was Peter’s own, and because it was his, it belonged also to the Lost Boys. But it didn’t really matter whose logic it was to begin with, anyway. Everything became Peter’s.

Therefore it was Peter’s idea, not Wendy’s, to hunt today. And that afternoon in the hideout he announced, “Take up your bows and knives, boys, the forest is too full of beasts. We must thin them out.”

Knowing his enthusiasm for the hunt, Wendy had qualms about the suggestion. She remembered the fates of other creatures at Peter’s hands. But there was need for the excursion on several levels and, condescending, Peter yielded to her request that he slay only beasts this outing, “But if trouble arises, or even Indians or pirates, I’ll not stay my hand!” He was never more happy than when hunting.

“I’ll come along, then, and keep a lookout for trouble.” Wendy vaguely hoped to warn trouble to keep low before Peter could have at it.

But all the children, excepting Peter, harbored the terror of pirates that Wendy’s stories inspired. Even those boys who’d killed a pirate or two in their time wondered now how they’d done it. The children had been rummaging for weapons, but at the mention of trouble, they hesitated. Beasts were the least of their worries.

“Shall we hunt waterfowl today?” asked John. All the boys knew Peter slew birds in the marsh only as a pretext for spying on the pirate ship. On more than one occasion, Peter had changed quarry in mid-hunt, aiming for felons over feathers. His band was loyal, but leery. John, having at one time lived among the civilized, had developed a different stripe of courage from the rest. He dared to bluff. “Near Neverbay?”

“No, we’ll stalk big game in the underbrush. Wendy needs fresh skins.”

Silence fluttered down like the last leaf.

“A large family does go through them,” Wendy affirmed.

The boys looked up, down, and sideways. Constructing a tepee had seemed such a good idea at the time. But because of avenging arrows, Wendy’s precautions forbade the family to fly over the Indian village, and the children had no recent image of a tepee on which to draw. They had, however, discovered that animal skins made a cozy tent when you lashed them together and suspended them from the bedposts.

It was the campfire beneath the tent, on the bed, that went all wrong. The stench still hung about, which was in fact the real reason for vacating their home today. Vacating was also in fact Wendy’s idea before it was Peter’s. Peter liked the smell of burnt fur. It reminded him of burning and pillaging. It reminded Wendy never again to slack her responsibilities and leave the children alone. For very different reasons, both Peter and Wendy determined the children should examine the Indian village next time the natives moved up to their mountain camp.

Opting for discretion, those children offered no comment. With the energy of acquitted suspects, Peter’s boys fell to smearing their faces with mud for camouflage— an unnecessary precaution for those who had been smoked with the skins— and up the tree shaft the family went, away through the forest and even farther up into the treetops, with Peter in the lead sending parrots shuddering off, appropriating an eyrie among the leaves from which to spy out their prey.

Wendy always seized an opportunity to fly, but the children climbed this time and became tangled between quivers, bows and branches, and for several minutes their quarry, which were no doubt anxious to begin the charge, refused to come close to the snapping, dragging, and rustling. It wasn’t the nature of the big game on the Island to tolerate such noise, even from easy targets. The beasts might do better, all things considered, to engage in the Indians’ hunt, now in dependable progress on the other side of the Island. One could count on the natives to observe tradition.

Once they won freedom from the foliage, the children chattered like the monkey families scampering deep in the forest, whence these primates could be heard screeching and screaming in delight. Thinking themselves above danger, the monkeys audibly defied it, prompting Wendy to wonder if such innocence, whether in boys or in beasts, could long survive this wilderness. The boys, at least, seemed bit by bit to learn caution.

The family settled in, Wendy and Peter screening themselves in the shade of branches, and the others perching above them or nestling in trees on either side. Tinker Bell appeared, flying down from a parrot nest she’d been trying on, and settled on Peter’s shoulder. Wendy sent her a suspicious look. Peter picked off a few orange feathers and addressed his fairy sternly. “You can stay, Tink, but only if you’re quiet.”

“Quiet and at a safe distance from me.” Wendy narrowed her eyes, leaving it to her rival to work out the ambiguity.

“And see that you don’t go near the beasts, Tink. I don’t want any loose fairy dust on them.”

Wendy turned to him in surprise. “Why, Peter? What harm can it do?”

The Lost Boys caught Peter’s meaning and regarded Tinker Bell with anxious eyes. They had never thought of this scenario, and their expressions transformed as it revealed itself to them in horrifying detail. They were too well acquainted with the fairy to believe she wasn’t capable of it, or— to put it charitably— unthinking enough in her blue rages.

“You know what fairy dust can do. It made you fly.”

“But how can it hurt the animals?”

“Not the animals, Wendy. Us. The animals could chase up here after us, if they could fly.”

She didn’t want to believe it. “But they’d have to think pleasant thoughts, too!”

“I can’t think of anything more pleasant to a beast than to fly up here and tear into us, can you?”

Eyes widening, Wendy looked again at Tinker Bell. “Oh.” A monkey shrieked in the thick of the wood somewhere behind her. Tink crossed her arms, sat back on Peter’s shoulder and smirked. Her movement shot off a few of the sparks that a moment ago seemed so innocuous, and something uncomfortable prickled inside Wendy. She kept her voice slow and even. “I think, Peter, it would be safer for the children if Tinker Bell would please go home.”

Careless once more, Peter shrugged Tinker Bell off. “Go on, Tink, leave us to hunt.”

Tinker Bell beat her wings and recovered herself. She hovered for a time, glaring her malevolence, first at Peter, but especially at the Wendy. The fronds enclosing the girl stirred in the breeze as she returned the fairy’s stare. Tink darted off to the forest, chiming madly, but Wendy’s prickly feeling did not go with her.

The boys, at least, were happier at her departure. They began once again to look forward to the adventure ahead. Nibs and Curly, just above Peter, were debating the anatomy of the beasts about to be slain. Curly asked Wendy if they might wish on the wishbone. “You said your mother let you pull one in the old life. I’d wish to see London.”