Alias Hook (22 page)

“What crimes?”

But the young chief will not be baited. “This is where the council will be held,” he says, nodding at the map.

Pan’s various lairs in the wood have always been protected by enchantment. On the rare occasions that I or my men stumble across one by sheer blind chance, the boy merely dreams a new part of the wood into existence that we have never seen and builds himself a new one. But never before have I had a map.

“Remember it,” Eagle Heart intones, and when I’ve fixed the route in my memory, he rolls the buckskin back into his pouch.

I stare at him. “Why show this to me?”

“Our women,” he begins, “my mother, they fear he will do her some mischief. He is only a boy. And boys can be … reckless.” We regard each other in a moment of empathy I should never have thought possible. “We will very much regret an innocent life come to harm,” he goes on.

Easy enough take the high moral ground, now he’s delivered her to the Pan. And yet, he brings me the map. “Can you not advise him to be merciful?” I fence. “You are his allies.”

Eagle Heart slowly shakes his head. “My men will not oppose him. We do not wish to lose our homeland.”

Of course, the Indians can ill afford to anger the boy. Their crops would fail, the buffalo would die off, their villages would not survive. They’d be banished to make their way in a hostile world that’s long since passed them by.

“You risk much coming to me.” I eye him keenly. “Why?”

His gaze does not waver from mine, although another beat of time passes between us. “Our elders tell us that innocent blood must never be spilled in this place.”

“That has never pertained to my men,” I point out.

“Your men engage in warfare. My men, too, are warriors. When we pledge to fight each other to the death, we are no longer innocent.”

“The boys make war,” I protest. “How can they be thought innocent?”

“The boys do not understand what they do,” the young chief replies. “They forget their actions and can not learn from them.”

“They have license to murder at will,” I say sourly.

He fixes me with his flinty gaze. “The wisdom of our elders is very old. Older even than you, Captain. It is said that if one innocent life is lost here, this place, the Dreaming Place, all of it will end.”

End? Can such a thing be possible? No wonder the chief is desperate enough to seek my help. “But I am no barrister; I cannot speak on her behalf,” I try to reason. “It will go much harder on her if the boy believes she is valuable to me.”

The young chief does not ask me the obvious question, the one I cannot, dare not answer. What exactly is her value to me? But it’s plain in his penetrating silence as he gazes at me.

“Well, what can I do about it?” I grumble.

“Our storytellers say you have lived for many suns and moons in this place,” replies Eagle Heart. “The elders tell us that great age brings wisdom.” He eyes me pointedly. “You must be wise.”

I stare back at him.

“If you bring your men,” he adds quietly, “we will kill them all.”

Chapter Eighteen

THE BOYS COUNCIL

“It’s a trap!” Filcher insists, bug-eyed with dread, when I climb into the skiff under the larboard main shrouds.

Once again, Brassy found me sober and alert at daybreak, fastening my gold-trimmed scarlet coat, my habit de guerre. But this mission calls for a diplomat, not a warrior, so I’ve selected a less martial hat, my mahogany tricorne with its froth of gold lace and pink flamingo plume. I tell the men I am summoned to a parley with Pan, but I am not so witless as to mention the map.

“Don’t go, Cap’n,” Filcher wheedles, in a panic at having to command the ship in my absence. They all saw what happened to me in our last battle.

“Nothing can happen to me, Mr. Filcher,” I remind him, with a show of cavalier ease, flipping back the tails of my scarlet coat as I sit. “And there’s a great deal to be gained if I learn where the boys keep their lair.”

At least no one can argue with this.

“What about us, then?” Nutter grumbles, at the tackles.

“Man your guns. Hold your positions.” Do your worst, I narrowly prevent myself adding, for I’ve seen how little interest Pan takes in murdering my men if I am not here to see it, and today he’ll be busy. “It’s not every day I’m invited into enemy country,” I point out. “If I can’t make it pay, I’m not worthy of the name Hook!”

Now as I pull through another brilliant blue morning up the coast for the northernmost extremity of Pirates Beach, I’m not at all convinced that anything I say will persuade the Pan from whatever course of action he chooses. It never has before. Yet I was reckoned quite a wit in my day, and Pan is only a boy, as they all keep telling me. In a war of wordplay at the boys’ trial, might not a seasoned wit prevail over youthful willfulness?

At midmorning I stow my boat in the underbrush and claw my way up the cliffside trail to the wood. I make my way from the willows to the log, and finally to a tumble of ancient rocks, choked with high yellow grass and bristled shrubbery, where I conceal myself to peer into a little clearing. The council, as Eagle Heart called it, is already underway.

“The prisoner may not speak!” cries Pan, perched like a little lordling atop a high tree stump at one end of the clearing. The Lost Boys sitting clustered together to one side of the stump all cheer wildly. A row of stoic Indian elders, all male, sit opposite the boys, a line of chess pawns ready to be deployed: two boxy, big-shouldered fellows, one corpulent, a fourth arrow-thin, all wrapped in blankets, with long gray or white braids and furrowed, impassive faces.

Stella stands at the foot of the tall stump, her cinnamon-colored hair loose above her shoulders, hands still bound behind her back, watching it all with her lively eyes. An old blanket with a hole cut in the middle has been thrown over her head, so as not to offend the precious innocence of the boys, I suppose, with the sight of her immodest shift. There’s something poignant in the sight of its dirty white hem, torn and muddy from the wood, peeping out from underneath the skewed edge of the blanket, but I’m relieved to see that someone has given her a pair of sturdy buckskin slippers to wear, beaded in the Indian fashion.

“But that’s foolishness. I must speak if I’m to defend myself,” Stella reasons. I cringe for her as I huddle behind the scrub; there is no reasoning with boys. Call them foolish, and they’re goaded to ever more reckless acts of imprudence and perversity just for the delight of thwarting you. Boys are made of petulance and bravado; they do not respond to reason.

“You are not allowed to defend yourself,” scowls the Pan, angry to be contradicted. “We all know you broke the law, and now you have to be punished.”

“Punish her! Punish her!” chant the other boys.

“What law have I broken?” Stella fences.

“I’m the one asking questions!” Pan exclaims. But the redskin elders, sitting across the clearing from the boys, all look at him in expectation, so he heaves a great impatient sigh at this delay. “You came to the Neverland against my wishes,” he tells her. “I said no, and you came anyway.”

“But why was I forbidden?” Stella persists.

“Because you talk too much!” Pan explodes. But his angry face turns crafty in the blink of an eye. “There, that’s another law you broke,” he cries. “Girls talk too much, and ladies are worse.”

He’s on his feet now on top of the stump, arms folded across his chest, gazing down at Stella, secure in the triumph of his logic. She says no more, gazing up at him, just like all the saucy little Wendys who ever tried to prove their mettle, coaxing, even arguing with their beloved Peter. He doesn’t like to be defied, but he never minds so much when the Wendys do it, for then it’s only make-believe. He knows they adore him; that’s what gives him power over them, however much they might protest and stamp their little feet. But Stella does not betray her feelings so easily. He can’t be sure she adores him, and so he loses the power of allure over her. He always forgives the Wendys because they are children. But he’ll not forgive Stella.

“What’s the sentence for breaking the law, men!” he cries.

“Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!” the Lost Boys chorus happily.

Stella ignores them, watching Pan, and he chafes under her scrutiny. Would she fall to her knees or plead for her life or even bow her head, acknowledge his superiority, he might show her mercy. But she does none of these things, and her quiet courage, the thing he finds so laudable when the little Wendys are defying me, now irritates him almost to a frenzy.

Suddenly, Stella turns to face the gabbling boys. “Do any of you know what it means to actually kill someone?” she prompts. “You? You?” The boys she’s addressed, a chunky little Hindu fellow with missing teeth and a squirrel tail on his belt, and a grimy, leaner boy with reptile skins knotted round his middle, shrink back as if lightning bolts had issued from her eyes.

In a fury, Pan launches himself off his perch to hover before Stella’s face, blocking her view of his boys. “It means to win!” he cries savagely. “I always win. You’ll see!”

I’ve never seen him so wound up. He might do anything in this state. The elders shift uneasily, murmuring among themselves in their private language, while the boys resume their lusty chanting. There must be braves hidden nearby, watching these proceedings, but they won’t interfere. No one else in all of the Neverland is foolish enough to oppose the boy. Cursing myself for the fool I am, I rise from behind the barrier of scrub and stride into the clearing.

“Stop!” I roar, and the chanting and muttering give way to an awkward pause. Everyone’s gaze swings to me.

“Hook!” cries Pan. All the boys scramble for their weapons, but I strike an accommodating pose and slowly spread my arms so they can see I’ve not worn my sword. My scarlet coat opens as well, to show I have no pistols stuck in my belt. I even peel back the lace cuff of one sleeve and hook back the other to show there are no knives concealed underneath.

“What are you doing here?” demands Pan, still on his guard.

“I assure you, I am quite alone,” I tell him. “I only intrude in the interest of justice. Ladies … er, Gentlemen of the council, I must lodge a complaint. This trial is not fair.”

“Not fair?” echoes Pan, utterly shocked.

“Your honor,” I address him, with a deep bow, mustering off my hat with a flourish so low, the pink feather flirts briefly with the dirt. “May I beg your permission to be heard?”

That’s the way to play the Pan. He regains his composure on the instant, cocks his head to one side, delighted I’ve come to join another of his games. Delighted at the chance to best me again.

“You may speak, Hook,” he declares imperiously and zooms back to his lofty perch on the old stump.

My mind races through the meager possibilities offered by what I’ve seen thus far. “The evidence in this case has not been thoroughly examined,” I suggest.

Pan folds his arms again. “She came here against my orders.”

“That is so,” I agree. “But how?”

The boy frowns mightily. “That’s right!” he cries. “Why didn’t the fairies stop her? Why didn’t the tigers eat her? Why didn’t the braves shoot her down?”

No one attempts to offer any explanation. “There is something in the Neverland itself that draws us all here,” I go on. “Is it not written in the stories? The Neverland must find you if you are to come here, not the other way round.”

They all mumble and nod. The sacred text of the stories is not to be disputed.

“Perhaps there is someone in the Neverland who asked for a mother,” I offer delicately.

“Who dares defy me?” Pan yelps, glaring down at the Lost Boys, who all begin to babble and shriek in protest. When they run out of their own number to point their grubby fingers at, they turn resentful eyes upon the elders.

“We have our own mothers,” the white-haired leader of the elders responds with cold dignity. “And our own storytellers.”

Then all look at Stella, who only shakes her head. “I don’t know who brought me here,” she says.

I turn again toward the boy, set my tricorne back upon my head. “Perhaps it was you,” I ooze.

“Me!” he bleats, outraged, his little hand reaching for the hilt of his sword. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“By no means,” I reply, warming to the subject. “But is it not possible that you might want a thing and never even know it?”

“Not me! I always know what I want. And I want her punished!”

Stella’s face remains composed above the ratty blanket that covers her. In her nightdress, she scarcely looks any older than the Wendys, but for the fierce intelligence in her eyes. She neither weeps nor protests. Perhaps she believes it’s only a game, that they won’t see it through, that with the inconstancy of children, they’ll tire of this game and find another. Or perhaps, despite all she said to me, she still craves the death that eluded her in her own world. Was this her plan from the beginning? Have I been part of her plan?

“This is when the prisoner must speak,” I interrupt them all. “Final words,” I explain loftily to Pan. “Marquess of Queensberry Rules, and all that.”

And he nods, the little whelp. Anything to make the game sound more official.

Stella glances at me for the first time, but I can’t read her eyes. “It’s true, I came here against your wishes,” she tells Pan. “But I wanted to escape the grown-up world, just like all of you. I thought I was needed here.” She glances all round. “But I see I was mistaken. You’ve clearly done very well for yourselves without a mother.”

The Lost Boys at this moment are sprawled all together in their reeking furs, their feet bound in rags or not at all, hands filthy, faces caked with mud and blood and snot, hair snarled with rotting vegetation, teeth blackened or missing in their gaping mouths. Irony is lost on the boys, of course, but a ripple of amusement passes through the elders, although none is so immoderate as to actually laugh.

“If I can be of no use to anyone,” Stella concludes, with a brief glance at me before turning back to Pan, “then of course you must send me back.”

Back. My blood is pounding.

“But you’ll tell!” Pan glowers at her.