Unhooked (15 page)

I stare at the blood beginning to drip from Pan's finger and think of the way the boy's life drained away from him when the Captain inhaled the glowing thread, and I have a feeling I understand more than I want to.

“You see, my dear, children do well enough here in Neverland. This world is a place for the wild, unruly desires of innocence. But your Captain is no longer a child, and he's certainly no innocent. Without what he takes from those boys, his body would become as fragile as this poor creature's.” With a deft flick of his wrist, he brushes the shards of the fish back into the water. The other fish immediately swarm, darting in and out to scavenge the remains of their friend. “As all human bodies become here as they age.”

The tattoos.
On the ship, the older boys all had dark, scarlike lines that I'd thought might have been some mark of loyalty or rank, but I see now they weren't. What just happened to that fish is happening to all of them.

“
All
humans?” I ask, my voice wavering. I'm not any more of a child than most of the tattooed—no, cracked—boys in the Captain's crew. Neither is the Captain.

“Well . . . perhaps not
all
,” Pan concedes. “As you saw in the hold of the ship, your Captain has found a way to avoid such an unfortunate end. When he accepts what the Dark Ones offer, he takes for himself his victim's innocence and youth. The younger the child, the more power it contains, the more time it buys him.” His cool eyes bore into mine as his expression goes coldly dangerous. A moment before, the valley had felt like a peaceful, welcoming place, but now there is a dangerous tension radiating from Pan.

“But it will never be enough for him. This world will
never
be a place where he belongs.” Pan's features soften, and his mouth curls into a slow, satisfied smile. “Not as I belong,” he says, brushing his hand over the soft grassy ground cover between us. Tiny white flowers appear at his touch. “And not as you could belong, Gwendolyn.” His cool eyes meet mine, but he doesn't speak for a long, uncomfortable moment.

“Me?” I say with a surprised laugh. But a small part of me still wonders at the pull I feel to the island, to Pan. “This isn't my home. I don't
want
to stay here,” I force myself to say. And it's only partially a lie.

“But it could be,” he says simply as he trails his fingertip along my leg, drawing a line of his blood from my knee down almost to my ankle. I can't look away from the dark smudge of his blood on my pants, and can't help but think that he's basically marked me.
But for what?
the small voice inside me asks.

Then, as though sharing the best sort of secret, he bends his head toward mine conspiratorially. “In this world, you could do anything.
Become
anything.” The sky has lit completely now, and the pink from the sunrise has all but melted into the bright blue of day. A blue that can't compete with the brightness of his eyes. “I can show you, protect you. Just as my mother taught me.”

“So you're not one of the Fey?” I ask, surprised. Until this moment I hadn't known for sure.

“No, but the Queen of this world was the only mother I ever knew, and because of my mother's gifts, I am as close to Fey as any mortal has ever been.” He plucks one of the tiny blossoms, and as he holds it, the petals turn from red to pink and then to blue. “For some, Neverland can be paradise. I can give you that, Gwendolyn.”

As I reach for the flower to accept it, a part of me also wants to accept the promise of his words. My memories are still so hazy, but the one feeling I cannot shake, the feeling that comes through clear and sure, is how out of my control my life had always felt. Even as I held everything together, each move we made was my mom's choice. Each time I had to start over was because
she
decided.

What would it mean to choose the beauty and wonder of this place for myself?

“You could belong here, Gwendolyn,” Pan tempts, offering me the flower. “You could belong with me.”

His words stroke at something inside me, something that wants and aches and cannot remember having been satisfied before. I'm not sure what I mean to accept when I reach out to take the flower from him. But I can't bring myself to care. I just want something,
anything
, to feel right and real and true.

But as soon as the stem of the tiny flower is between my fingertips, tiny black lines begin to creep along the petals' surfaces. With a gasp, I let the flower fall to the ground, wilted and gray on the bright emerald of the grass. At the sight of it, the intense wanting that had reared up so suddenly and so strongly crumbles and fades.

I'm not sure if Pan realizes the emotions that have just crashed through me. He doesn't seem to, because a moment later he takes my hand and gently settles it palm down in the soft, grassy growth. Then he covers it with the broad warmth of his own hand, pressing my palm so firmly into the ground, I can feel the uncomfortably sharp point of a pebble, the dampness of the earth. Beneath my fingertips is the constant and gentle throb of an island always changing.

“Listen to Neverland, Gwendolyn. Can you feel it calling to you?” His voice is soft and urgent, coaxing me again to believe that what he's saying might be true.

I want to pull my hand away and rub the heat of his skin from mine, but I can't. Because it would be a lie. The ground
does
pulse beneath me, like a heartbeat. And there's more—something warm growing beneath my palms. Something comforting and welcoming.

“You don't have to be afraid, my dear. You need only ask for what you most desire, and see if Neverland finds favor in you,” he tells me, low and sweet. “You need only call to it, to see if it responds.” Pan's eyes are clear and bright now, hopeful as they meet mine. “Go on,” he urges. “Try.”

I swallow hard, not sure whether the connection I feel to the land is safe—or even real. Not sure whether I can trust his words. But he's looking at me so ardently, and I can't bring myself to disappoint him. I close my eyes, and I do what he asks.

I want to go home,
I think because it is what I'm supposed to think.

And once you're back there?
the small voice whispers.
What then?

I want to have a normal life, a normal home. I want to find a place where I fit without pretending to be something I'm not.
That's what made Westport feel like home, I remember then—I had someone there who didn't look at me like an outsider, who didn't ask questions that forced me into lies. I had Olivia.

The ground beneath my hands goes hot, burning against my palms as an ache travels up my arms. I open my eyes and jerk my hands away, scraping them against the ground just to be free of Pan and the uncomfortable heat.

He's watching me with an intensity that's almost uncomfortable. An intensity that makes me think he knows what's just happened. All at once, I realize how easily I was taken by his words. How completely I'd fallen under the spell-like pull of his appeal. And I'm shaken by it.

I glance away, because his gaze is too steady and expectant for me to hold any longer. I focus on the broken flower and make myself ask the only question that matters. “Will you take me to Olivia now?”

He considers me a moment longer, and for a second I think he knows everything—how close I came to accepting, how much part of me still wants to. But he smiles, pleasant as ever, and I think maybe I was wrong.

“Of course,” he says, standing and offering me his hand.

A minute later we are aloft again, soaring over the tops of the trees, the falls passing beneath us as we make our way farther into the island. Up we fly, toward the craggy center of the mountains, until we come to a place where there is no jungle. He lands in a clearing where there is only the smooth face of a cliff and the barren rock beneath our feet. Behind us, a gaping chasm in the ground separates us from the rest of the island.

“Where are we?” I wrap my arms around myself. The air isn't any colder here, but the bleak landscape sends a chill through me just the same.

“Home,” he says simply, a smile teasing at his lips. “This is where I live. Where I keep my boys.”

“Here?” I ask, looking around. There isn't anything here but the flinty face of the rock rising up around on one side of us, and the gaping tear in the earth on the other. My stomach sinks. “Where's Olivia?”

“Inside,” he says, gesturing grandly to the sheer cliff.

I don't know what he's talking about—there is no door or portal or split in the rock that could be an entrance to a cave. “There's nothing there.”

“Isn't there?” he asks wryly.

I look again at the rock, and just as I'm about to tell him,
No, there isn't
, the earth beneath my feet begins to tremble. I grab for Pan's arm as the entire wall of rock begins to move. With a thunderous grinding, the cliff shifts backward slowly, rearranging itself and revealing the silhouette of jagged spires and towers.

When the land finally goes silent, I'm standing in the shadow of an enormous structure. A castle. Or maybe a fortress would be a better description, because it's too massive, too violent-looking to be anything as romantic as a castle. It towers at least six stories above us, hewn from the red-gold rock of the cliff that bore it.

Its walls are solid rock, and its windows are narrow slits high up from the ground. The only opening at all is a deep, dark tunnel that leads straight into the mountain itself. Even without the chasm that cuts it off from the rest of the island, even without the steep bluffs that pen it in safely on all sides, this is not the sort of place anyone could attack easily.

Pan's eyes are dancing, his mouth twitching in amusement as he glances at the grip I have on his bicep. “Ready, my dear?”

I try to pull away, but he stops me by placing his hand over mine and tucking my arm more securely against his body. He smiles then—a truly breathtaking sort of smile—and the look in his eyes is enough to make my cheeks flush with warmth.

I glance away, uncomfortable. There's something about the way he looks at me that makes me think he sees something in me that no one else ever has. Like I am something whole and strong and
important
. Being looked at like that—being
seen
—is something completely new and absolutely intoxicating.

And I don't trust it one bit.

But I've made my choice. Before us, the towering fortress waits. The Captain and his ship feel very far away. London feels even farther. With the warmth of Pan's body next to mine, the scent of him, wild and free as a winter night, surrounding me, and the promise of finding my friend ahead of me, I take one last look at the open sky above and walk on.

The boy had grown ever more sure he might never see his brother again, so he did not hesitate to grasp him in a tight hug once he realized it was no apparition before him. His brother smiled, flashing the crooked tooth in his worn-out grin. “Volunteered to come up to the front,” he told the boy. “Couldn't leave you to have all the fun.” But the boy knew, from the worry darkening his brother's eyes, that wasn't it at all. . . .

T
HE ENTRYWAY OF THE FORTRESS is lit by the same floating phosphorescent blobs that Pan had with him on the ship. They hover around us, guiding us through the dark tunnel as we make our way deeper into the mountain. I reach up to touch one that comes close to my face, but Pan snatches my hand away before my fingers can brush against it.

“Fairy lights,” he tells me. “Never can tell how they'll react.”

From the other side of the tunnel, I can make out the sounds of voices. As the light gets closer, the sounds grow, and the glowing orbs peel off, leaving us. When we reach the end, the tunnel flares open into a great hall with a ceiling that soars stories above. Two sullen-looking boys snap to attention, blades drawn, but when they see Pan, they scuttle to their posts against the wall and avert their eyes.

The Great Hall of the fortress is a mad playground. Everywhere I look there are children, most much younger than the ones on the Captain's ship. A group of small boys nearly runs me over as they chase after an even smaller one. They're all screaming all sorts of inventive curses and brandishing swords that look too sharp to be safe for any game. Other boys, who couldn't be any older than nine or ten, lounge around the edges of the great space, smoking thin, sweet-smelling cigars on thick piles of furs.

“Where did they all come from?” I wonder, struck by the number of them.

“The Dark Ones steal them from your world,” Pan tells me. “I bring them here and give them a home,” he says, throwing his arms wide.

Rows of torches lining the walls throw their flickering light over the scene before me. They give the whole space an otherworldly quality. But even with the high ceiling, the air in the fortress is dank and stale.

“This all belonged to my mother.” He takes a step into the chaos. “When I was a small boy, the Queen and her people filled these halls with light and merriment, and every day was an adventure. Now these walls offer me and my boys protection—from the Dark Ones, from the pirate, often from the other creatures of this land.”

“Where's the Queen now?” I ask, moving closer to Pan to avoid being hit by a boy careening after a friend.

“The Dark Ones rose up and overthrew her some time ago,” he says, his voice dark and his jaw tight. I wait for him to say more, but he doesn't. “Come. I'll take you to Olivia.”

Pan doesn't seem to notice the disorder around us as he leads me through the hall, still holding my hand firmly in the crook of his arm. He deftly sidesteps the piles of broken weapons and an unconscious boy as we make our way to the far wall. Without warning, he scoops me into his arms again, and then we're rising through the air toward a door nearly three stories up that I hadn't noticed before. He gives it a brisk knock before pushing it open and setting me gently inside.