“Don’t worry about them!” yelled Hook. “Keep running! The Night is all that matters!” She saw another spurt of blood in front of her. “Go!”
She screamed, not caring anymore. “Run, dammit!”
They had made it to the edge of town and exploded out from under the leering buildings that had offered them so much protection and into the dense jungle that led to the beach. She breathed in the beautiful, natural light and the sweet air of Neverland as she ran for her life, tree branches exploding overhead, trunks showering her with splinters. In front of her, a younger pirate stumbled, his leg turning over as his ankle exploded. Wendy ran up beside him, hoisting him up against her.
“Come on! I need you to run!” She helped him hobble a few feet forward before Smith scooped him out of her arms and threw him over his shoulder.
“GO!” he screamed. The jungle grew less thick overhead as the blue sky watched their battle from above—two crews, racing for the beach, God knew where the other three were.
“Get to the ship” screamed Smith from somewhere behind them. “Ho, lads! Make ready to weigh anchor! Go handsomely about it!”
“Aye, aye!” the breathless crew replied, sprinting through thick green leaves.
Her feet slapped the wet mud underfoot as she plunged forward, pushing vines and leaves aside, ducking her head every time she heard a shot. Hook’s curses rained down from behind her, mingling with the clinking sound of the men’s weapons as they bounced against their hips, their legs fervently pumping underneath them. Something besides fear was driving the men frantically towards the Night—they were men protecting their home, the love of their lonely lives. She was, indeed, their queen and the crew was almost feral in their desire to be aboard her decks now that the tide had turned so quickly. Smith raised his hand for the crew to run past him, “Go, go! Come on men! I better find sand up your arses tonight ’cause you were moving so fast! Quick as thieves!”
Getting back to the ship was a blur of jungle, of leaves whipping her in the face, of the heavy sound of the pirates’ boots splashing through deep trenches of earth and water, of light filtering through the canopy, and of the sweet sound of the sea as they poured out onto the sand. Hook yelled something to Smith, who stayed back near the entrance to the jungle, counting the men. Wendy kept running forward, Hook waiting for her and then running close behind her. She could hear the breaths of the Undertow crew right behind them, firing blindly into the jungle as the crew of the Night ran up the dock.
“Smith!” Wendy breathed. “Smith!” Hook gave her a grin as he leapt aboard his ship, the crew moving quickly to their positions, hauling off the anchor and hoisting the sails. They ran up and down the deck, flowing like a stream around Hook, who calmly walked up and took his place behind the wheel. Wendy looked back. Smith was still on the beach, lighting a stick of dynamite. Her mouth fell open as he stuck it in the sand at the entrance to the trail … and right up against the huge barrel of snakes. Then he sprinted like mad for the ship, a few swift crew members of the Undertow emerging from the jungle a couple of seconds later, firing their pistols at Smith as he ran. Then, there was only the sound and the fire, an explosion that made Wendy’s teeth rattle. Body parts flew in the air, landing with a bloody stump on the sand, and the snakes were airborne, thrashing their tails as the impact hurtled their bodies up and through the air, their venomous teeth spread wide open.
Wendy would swear later that she heard them scream. Black bloodied snakes rained down on the Undertow crew, who were staggering and disjointed. Their screams as the snakes landed on them, bit them, or wrapped around their necks were terrible, but it had worked. The Undertow would not beat the Sudden Night out of the harbor. Smith ran up the wooden dock, leaping into the air and catching onto the side of the Night with both hands. With a groan, he heaved himself onto the ship. Blood was leaking from his shoulder, but he barely noticed the splatters he left behind as he ran up to the poop deck, where Captain Hook was staring at the boats in the harbor through his spyglass. The sun was beginning its slow fall into the sea, and the crew fell easily back into their frenzied work, the deck a place of mass chaos that was intrinsically complex, like a symphony barreling forth from the sails that stretched and billowed. The Sudden Night pulled quickly away from the shore, curled back into the protective folds of the waves, speeding away from the pearled sand of Treasure Bay, now flecked with blood and hundreds of wriggling black snakes.
The Night sped away from the shore. Smith perched on the railing. “Jaali and his Vicious Seas be pulling out, thank the bloody gods, and I don’t see Viper’s Strike, so that leaves the Coral Plunder and the Undertow.” Wendy could see the ships now, crews running frantically back and forth. Smith dropped his voice.
“Captain, the Undertow. You must. Our girl, ’tis trim.” Hook stared at the water, his hand gripping the wheel firmly. Smith leaned forward. “C’mon, let’s send those traitors’ rigs to the bottom of the friggin’ seas.”
Hook was staring at the two ships, his eyes steady. He cleared his throat. “Mount the swivel guns! Aim everything at the Coral Plunder!” There was a moment of silence before the deck exploded with activity, as every single crew member ran to his battle station, their mouths open and panting like racehorses.
Smith was screaming out orders. “Ready about!”
Wendy felt a tug on her pants. She looked down to see Michael, his eyes wide with excitement. She bent down and wrapped him in her arms, crushing his tiny body against hers, taking in the sweet scent of his hair. Instructions to go below deck lingered on her tongue, but instead she took his hand and led him to the side of the deck.
“Wanna see a pirate ship blow up?”
Michael stopped breathing. “More than anything in the world!” he gasped.
“That’s what I thought.”
The Sudden Night swung wide.
“Come avast!” Hook cried. “Ready the cannons.”
Smith grabbed ahold of the wheel. “The Undertow, Captain?”
Hook lowered his voice. “You know why we won’t fire on the Undertow.” He yanked the wheel away from Smith. “Do you question me, First Mate?”
Smith shook his head. “Never, Captain. Get ready to fire on the Coral Plunder!” Barnaby was running back and forth on the deck, the most work Wendy had ever seen him do, yelling out coordinates and nautical terms that she had yet to understand. “Aim Yer Mother’s Breasts at their mizzenmast! Eleven degrees north!”
The Coral Plunder was pulling away from shore, starboard side reaching for the water when the massive Sudden Night breached beside it. There was silence aboard the Night for just a moment.
“FIRE!” Hook screamed, and then there was a roar as the cannons began firing, a louder sound than Wendy had ever heard. She clasped her hands over Michael’s ears as the smoke drifted across the deck, the ship herself giving a lurch backwards at the force of the guns. The Coral Plunder’s deck began exploding into sharp slivers that flew outwards, pieces landing on the deck of the Night. Wendy and Michael ducked down, staring through one of the rope holes in the deck. The Coral Plunder’s crew was screaming and diving overboard, and Wendy saw more than one body floating face down in the water. Giant holes exploded outwards, one after the other as the Night peppered the much smaller ship into slivers. The sound was deafening. Black smoke began to rise from below decks.
“Launch the squealers!” Hook yelled, and suddenly the air was full of tiny black circles, each one the size of an apple. They peppered hard onto the deck of the Coral Plunder, their flaming tails streaking through the air like phoenixes. The flame reached the gunpowder inside, and the explosion blew Wendy and Michael off their feet, backwards. Wendy’s back hit the mast. The rest of the crew was face down on the deck, anticipating the impact.
“Reload Yer Mother’s Breasts!” Smith yelled, and the giant cannon was rolled forward, its nozzle split into two parts. Voodoo was loading a chain into the front of the cannon, linking it with two spiked iron balls.
“NOW!” the captain screamed, and Voodoo lit a flame underneath the cannon before stepping back with a wicked smile. The cannon discharged, and the spiked balls, bound by the chain, whirled towards the mast of Coral Plunder. Wendy’s heart pounded with excitement, her skin tingling as she watched the chain slice cleanly through the mast of the other ship, the crow’s nest falling hard, the man inside of it plunging down into the fiery hell that was once the deck of a grand ship. The ship was torn apart and sinking fast, giving a great groan as it surrendered its weight to the sea.
“Release the chum!” screamed Smith, and two crew members began dumping buckets of bloodied fish into the water. Smith saw Wendy staring at him in horror. “So the sharks finish the job.”
When she shook her head, he laughed. “What do you want, dearie? We’re pirates!” Hook raised his voice again.
“Back to your stations, men! We mean to make our way to the clear blue!” She and Michael watched as the Coral Plunder’s mast disappeared into the sea around Treasure Bay. Crowds from Port Duette were pouring out of the jungle now, coming to see what the noise had been, hoping to get a glance at whatever excitement they had missed. The Undertow was pulling swiftly away from the dock.
“Quickly, lads! We are going to put as much space between ourselves and the Undertow as possible.” The crew quickly reassembled themselves, but not before Hook gave one final command. “And hoist the Jolly Rodger!”
Smith turned to him, unabashed glee washing over his face.
“Sir?”
“We no longer are a member of the Scorned Fleet, so there is no need to fly that flag. Fetch my father’s flag.”
Smith appeared a moment later, carrying the white-and-black flag that Wendy had seen that first day in Hook’s quarters. They attached the flag to the mainline and pulled it upwards, the black flag unfurling, the white skull grinning as it flapped in the wind. Hook stared at it for a moment, a moment of pride passing over his face, so brief Wendy wondered if she imagined it. Than he looked at Smith’s raised eyebrows, answering his question without speaking.
“Maison will be dealt with when the time is right. We are not running, we are planning, and we will ferret him out soon enough. And when we do, he will beg for death, I swear it to you.”
Smith gave a delighted smile and ran his hand along the tip of his dagger, turning it then to his tongue. “Indeed, he will.”
Barking orders, Smith spun away from the captain. Wendy and Michael began making their way below deck when she felt a hard grip on her arm.
“YOU,” the captain hissed, flinging open the trapdoor. He turned on Michael. “Stay here!” Michael scampered off with a fearful look on his face. Without a word, Captain Hook dragged Wendy roughly down the stairs, her feet stumbling as she fell. He stood her up. “Girl, I don’t like to do this.”
Then, using his good hand, he back-handed her across the face. The blow cracked hard against her cheek, sending shots of pain up her jawbone and across her brow. Her head exploded in pain, but she didn’t fall to her knees. She stood, bent over, gasping and covering her cheek. His breaths were ragged and heavy as he towered over her in the darkened hallway. Fear, like the fine edge of a needle, raised the hair on her arms. Hook looked furious, his gray eyes narrowed, his mouth twisted in fury.
“What were you thinking, exposing yourself to Maison like that? What noble glory did you hope to gain through your righteousness for my cause? And for what? For nothing. You put yourself in great danger, for nothing!”
Wendy steadied herself, her body attempting to right itself from both the blow to her face and the hard rocking of the Night.
“I was trying to help you! I didn’t know that Maison …”
“No, that’s right, you didn’t know. You don’t know anything.”
The pain of the slap ricocheted through her head, stoking the quiet fury that had been growing inside of her since the first time she met Hook.
“That’s because you haven’t told me anything! You keep giving me small particles of information, and it’s not enough! I can’t help you defeat Peter if I don’t even know how or why. For instance, you could have told me that Oxley—”
“Shh, quiet, girl.” Hook closed the distance between them, putting his hand over her mouth roughly.
“You never know who is listening inside these walls.” His voice dropped, and Wendy could smell his wine-soaked breath as it washed over her cheek. “I didn’t know if I could trust you, not yet.”
Wendy shook her head. “I have everything to lose if Peter has his way. Whatever it is … I will do. But not for you. For my brothers.”
Hook crouched down, looking straight into her face, his gray eyes tracing every angle of her hazel ones.
“I believe you. But if you cross me …”
Wendy rolled her eyes. “Than you’ll throw me out to sea, drown me, drag me, dismember me. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”
Hook’s thin mouth curled at the end, a sarcastic grin plastering his face. “I do believe you are getting the hang of things around here.”
“Will Maison …?”
Hook’s smile disappeared. “Maison has the benefit of being mentally unhinged, which makes it much harder for me to anticipate his actions. What he did in the Privateer was a risky gamble. We could have all just as easily died in that dank hellhole.”
“Speaking of Maison …,” Hook reached into his pocket and pulled out the note from Oxley. He unrolled the scrap, read it for the second time, and then handed it to Wendy with a sigh. “It seems that forces align against us, Miss Darling.”
Her heart beat at she unrolled the thin paper, her face still smarting. The ink was blotted and running towards the corner of the papyrus, covered with Oxley’s giant, messy scrawl.
“Peter Pan has formed an alliance with Captain Maison.”
Wendy closed her eyes. Hook crumpled up the paper and held it up to a burning candle, watching the letters turn into dark ash that sprinkled on the floor of the hallway, the embers sniffing out against the glossy wood.
“Just as I suspected,” Hook sighed, rubbing his hook through his black hair, spotted with gray that seemed more prominent than it did a week ago. He turned away from Wendy. “Put something cool on your cheek. Keme will help you, and you’ll help him prepare our supper. Tell him I feel like the orange guppy this evening.” He looked up through the open trapdoor, at the gray roiling sky above, the clouds bulbous and heavy.
“And you’re right. The time has come to trust each other, for transparency and risk. I had hoped to give you more time to come to terms with this life, with what you will have to do. It’s time you understood. It’s time you asked the question. And when you do, I swear on my dead father that I will tell you everything.”
Wendy raised her eyes to meet his, but they were off, somewhere distant, somewhere ancient and terrifying. The question … Hook had turned back by then, making his way towards the deck. All she could see was the outline of his figure, his frame holding back the growing storm.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Wendy!”
They were back in the cabin now and Michael had wrapped around her legs, and his face pressed up against her stomach.
“Wendy, I missed you!”
“Michael, I missed you, too!”
Michael pulled back, unimpressed with her sentiments.
“Did you bring me something from Port Duette?”
“Ummm …,” Wendy paused, the lies coming easily from her mouth.
“I did, it’s up on deck. It’s a surprise. I’ll give it to you tomorrow.” She would find something.
“Awww.” Her blond little brother kicked angrily at the ground. “But, I don’t want it tomorrow.”
“And I don’t appreciate whining.”
“Sorry.” Michael grinned. “Okay, you can give it to me tomorrow. But tell me all about Port Duette.”
“I will, I’ll tell you everything, but first, what did you do on the ship?”
Michael was practically bo
uncing around the room. “I had such a good time. Keme made us a REALLY good lunch—he made me pancakes! Pancakes, like Mother used to make us, only these ones had a yellow fruit in them, and we put honey on top.”
Wendy’s mouth watered at the description. “I climbed up to the crow’s nest with Hawk. He showed me all the parts of Port Duette that you could see from there: the main street, where the Privateer was, the beach and all the different ships: the Undertow, the Seaward Spit … oh, and he showed me where Harlot’s Grove was!”
“Oh he did, did he? What did he say about Harlot’s Grove?” Wendy was less than thrilled that the word harlot was now part of her brother’s vocabulary.
“That pretty ladies lived there, and that they helped the pirates. But he didn’t say what they helped them with. I asked. Clothes, I think.”
Wendy blushed, turning her face away to hide her smothered laughter.
“I met someone who lives there, Michael. Her name was Fermina, and she was very kind.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
“She was a very lovely person. I hope to meet her again.”
Michael nodded. “After we went up into the crow’s nest, I played with some swords for a while and took a nap.”
“You played with swords?”
He frowned. “Wendy, everyone does it here.”
Wendy felt a sad smile cross her face. He wasn’t wrong, and she knew it would be wrong not to let him learn how to use them, here in this world where death came quickly and childhood lasted forever and yet not at all.
The bell in their cabin rung once, a single shrill chime that let them know that Wendy was needed in the kitchen for dinner. She gave Michael a pat on the head as he scampered above deck, and watched the legs that were once round and chubby pound up the stairs, now longer and leaner. His hair was beginning to curl at the ends as it had grown much longer than their mother would have ever allowed, and was turning from honey to white blond in the blazing Neverland sun. His tan skin shone in the filtered light as the sky turned from gray to blue, as night began its slow descent. She blinked, and he was gone, up to a world of pirates and seas, of harlots and weapons. Wendy swallowed the unexpected lump in her throat and gave a shiver, making her way into the depths of the kitchen, to cook for the man who held her prisoner and kept her safe.