Peter and the Sword of Mercy (14 page)

Who will help me?

Her hand still on the locket, she hurried on, alone in the deepening London night.

“F
OR
G
OOD
”

P
ETER TOOK OFF FROM THE
M
OLLUSK VILLAGE
at dusk, carrying a coconut. Tinker Bell, as always, flew at his side.

Fighting Prawn watched them soar skyward, a frown of concern on his face. “Be careful,” he called.

“I’ll be fine,” Peter answered, leveling his body as he began to swoop across the village compound. He passed over the hut that housed the shipwrecked sailors, who were seated on rough stools outside, eating supper. Their leader, the huge Cheeky O’Neal, shouted up, “Where are you going, Peter?”

Bad men,
chimed Tink, as she always did when she saw the sailors.

Peter nodded, ignoring O’Neal. The big man was always asking questions, lately more and more of them about the island’s water supply. Peter didn’t trust him any more than Tink and Fighting Prawn did. He’d be glad when the sailors were off the island.

That was the purpose of the coconut. On its shell was a message, composed by Fighting Prawn and etched in squid ink by Fighting Prawn’s daughter, Shining Pearl. The message read:

CAPTAIN HOOK:

I PROPOSE A DEAL. MY MEN WILL REPAIR YOUR SHIP AND PROVISION IT SO YOU CAN LEAVE THE ISLAND PERMANENTLY. IN RETURN YOU WILL TAKE FOUR SHIPWRECKED SAILORS WITH YOU. SEND A MAN TO OUR VILLAGE AND WE WILL ARRANGE A PARLEY.

FIGHTING PRAWN

The plan was for Peter to fly over the pirate fort and drop the coconut. Peter was confident he could handle this task. Over the years, he had dropped many items on Hook, among them ripe mangoes, dead fish, and vast quantities of bat poop. He generally flew these missions at suppertime, when the pirates were outside, eating and enjoying the evening cool. Peter loved watching them scatter to avoid his missiles. He never tired of tormenting them, especially Hook. Hook, for his part, never tired of thinking up revenge schemes, none of which had ever worked.

Peter, leaving the Mollusk village behind, swooped low across the jungle canopy, his body only a few feet from the treetops. In seconds he reached the side of the steep volcanic mountain that divided the island in two. He shot upward, Tink at his shoulder, the two of them zooming up the mountain face, reaching the top in minutes. From here, looking back, Peter could see the mermaid lagoon and the smoke from the Mollusk village cooking fires curling into the reddish-gold sunset sky. Looking ahead, he could see the high log walls of the pirate fort. Beyond that, he saw the masts of the sailing ship that, kept aloft by starstuff, had flown Hook, Peter, and others back from Rundoon. It now sat on the sandy bottom of Pirate Cove, a large hole in its hull.

From somewhere on the mountainside below him, Peter heard the mournful trumpet of a conch shell. The pirates, copying the Mollusks, had learned to communicate with one another over great distances by blowing into the shells.

Peter angled himself downward and began his long, swooping descent. Because of the massive mountain’s shadow, night fell quicker on this side of the island, and as Peter closed in on the pirate compound, the darkness was almost complete.

As he crossed over the top of the fort wall, well above it, Peter frowned. He saw no pirates below; in fact, he saw nothing but blackness, because there was no cooking fire and no torches or lamps—no lights of any kind. Peter wondered if the pirates had gone somewhere.

Be careful,
chimed Tink.

“I
am
being careful,” he answered. Flying about a hundred feet above the ground, he circled the compound, peering down: nobody. Peter frowned. He wanted to be sure Hook, or at least one of his men, saw the coconut when he dropped it. He swooped lower.

Careful.

“Quiet, Tink,” said Peter, peering into the darkness below. He descended slowly, warily, his eyes darting this way and that. Forty feet above ground, now. Thirty. Twenty. Now he was almost even with the top of the fort walls, and still he saw nobody. He stopped his descent and drifted toward the fort’s big log gate, slowly, slowly …

Get away!
chimed Tink.

“NOW!” roared an unmistakable voice.

Peter lunged upward. For an instant he thought he would soar free.

Then he hit the net.

It was made of vines braided into thick ropes by skilled sailor hands. The net had been attached to two tall palms that grew just outside the fort gate. Had it been light, Peter would have seen that the tops of the palms had been pulled to the ground and attached to stakes with thick ropes. The palms thus became giant springs, to which the net had been attached. When the signal came from the lookout on the mountain—that had been the conch sound Peter had heard—the pirates had run outside and taken their positions. Then they had waited and watched as Peter flew over, his silhouette just visible against the sky. When he was low enough, Hook had given the command, and the men had yanked the loose vine ends, untying the slipknots and unleashing the palms, which snapped up and flung the huge net high into the sky over Peter. There were rocks tied around the circumference of the net; these, plus the weight of the net itself, quickly dragged Peter to the ground. He slammed into the hard dirt of the compound, the breath leaving his lungs, pain shooting through his body.

Hurry!
chimed Tink.
They’re coming!

Wheezing for breath, Peter struggled, trying to stand, but the net held him fast. He felt for the dagger he wore in his belt, hoping to cut himself free of the thick braided vines. But as he pulled the dagger out, a boot came down heavily on his hand. Peter yelped in pain and dropped the dagger.

He saw a shape looming over him. A pirate trotted up with a torch, and Peter saw Captain Hook staring down at him, dark eyes gleaming in the flickering torchlight.

“Got you, boy,” he said. He leaned over, his face close enough that Peter could smell his foul breath.

“And this time,” hissed Hook, “I’ve got you for
good.”

A F
AMILIAR
F
ACE

M
OST OF THE TIME
, Molly’s captors kept her in a small, damp cell. There was a barred window in the door, through which Molly could look out into a passageway lit every twenty feet by bare electric bulbs, the dim light from which provided the only illumination for the cell.

She was somewhere close to the Underground—that much she knew from the rumble and screech of trains in the distance—but where exactly, she had no idea. Her last memory had been of aboveground when the hackney driver had swerved suddenly into an alley, and three men, their faces hidden behind scarves, had grabbed her, pulled a hood over her head, and carried her roughly into a building, then down some stairs, and still more stairs, then through a maze of dank corridors, and finally into this awful cell.

Once established here, she had pleaded with her captors, then shouted at them, but to no avail. They told her nothing, refusing to speak a word. Three times a day they brought what passed for food—bread as hard as bricks, a slimy potato or carrot—sliding a wooden plate under the bolted door. Molly had learned to eat quickly, and to then slide the plate back out when she was finished, because the rats would come looking for it. A few times a day the men took Molly down the hall, where she was allowed the use of a crude toilet; this was her only time outside the cell.

Twice each day—Molly assumed it was morning and evening, though she had no way to keep track of time—prisoners were herded past her cell door. There were eleven of them, by Molly’s count, all men, chained together at their ankles, the chains clanking on the corridor’s stone floor as they shuffled past. They were covered from head to toe in dirt and grime, as though they’d been digging.

The first time they’d passed, Molly had spotted James immediately, seventh in line. She had called out his name. He looked at her and quickly shook his head. The guards, big men who carried pistols, shouted at Molly to be quiet and roughly shoved the prisoners forward, causing them to stumble into one another.

After that, the prisoners knew better than to try to talk to Molly. But some of them, always including James, glanced in her direction each time they passed, their expressions ranging from exhaustion to desperation. Molly watched them, her face pressed to the bars, trying wordlessly to communicate some comfort and to receive some in return.

Because of the filth covering the men, it was difficult for Molly to make out their features. But two of them, aside from James, seemed familiar to her. One of them looked like the missing Underground passenger whose picture had appeared in the newspaper the day James had come to her house. The other was the man who was always fourth in line. He always looked at Molly intently, as if he wanted to say something. Each time he passed, Molly became more certain that she knew him from somewhere. But from where? Another picture in the paper? A neighbor? A businessman or friend of her husband’s? Who was he?

For long, bleak hours in her cold, cramped cell, Molly pondered this question, along with others: Why had she been kidnapped? Why brought here along with the others? Why was she still being held? Certainly it had something to do with the Starcatchers, with everything James had told her; but why the Underground? Why were men being captured to dig?

The questions multiplied in Molly’s mind, but no answers came. One thing she knew and clung to: her absence would be noticed. George would be frantic by now. She felt awful for him, and the children—how worried they must be. There would certainly be people looking for her. Half of Scotland Yard, if she knew George! They were looking, and they would find her.

Wouldn’t they?

Molly pulled her coat tight around her, shivering against the unrelenting chill of the cell. She heard the scratching of a rat in the corridor.

Please let them find me.

U
NCLE
T
ED

W
ENDY HAD A PLAN
. Actually, it was more of a desperate hope than a plan. But at the moment it was all she had.

It had come to her on the train ride back to Cambridgeshire. Searching her memory, trying to remember everything her mother and her grandfather had told her about the Starcatchers, she’d convinced herself that there was indeed someone she could turn to: the flying boy, Peter. He was more than just his mother’s friend. He was an ally of the Starcatchers. He had joined forces with her mother and grandfather more than once. Wendy prayed that he would help her now.