“All right, I will take that into due consideration,” Wendy said. “Otherwise, promise?”
“Oh, I promise.”
“Swear…swear by the pirates’ code!”
Hook looked exasperated.
Wendy put her hands on her hips.
She knew about boys trying to sneak out of promises. She had two younger brothers. You had to be very specific with your orders and wishes, or they were as wily and untrustworthy as evil genies. And what was a pirate, really, but a boy grown, with a real sword and a mustache?
“Swear it,” she repeated.
She could have sworn she heard muffled laughter from behind him on the deck.
Hook sighed.
“All right, all right. I swear on the pirates’ code: I, Captain Hook, promise that in return for Peter Pan’s shadow I shall grant Wendy Darling passage to Never Land and home—when circumstances allow it.”
“All right then,” Wendy said, trying to sound surer than she felt. She had just won a battle of wits with a pirate, just like in a story. Why didn’t she feel triumphant?
“Come on, men, let’s welcome our passenger aboard!” Hook grinned again at her, a smile that narrowed to points at the corners of his mouth that were as sharp as those at the ends of his mustache, as the end of his hook.
There was a thumping and pounding on the deck. A rope ladder unrolled over the side, bumping and bouncing on its way down, the last step landing neatly at Wendy’s feet.
She took a deep breath, set her jaw, and climbed up.
As might have been guessed from the preceding pages, Wendy hadn’t much experience interacting with the world at large; that is, people who weren’t her family, shopkeepers, neighbors, or other audience members at the theater. Yet despite this innocence she had an immediate sense that perhaps these pirates were not the nicest people to be left alone with. It was one thing to tell tales of swashbuckling battles and the backstory behind the bosun with the eye patch—and quite another to actually be in their midst.
Captain Hook presented his men with a flourish. They stood neither in neat rows nor at attention—with very little respect at all, actually—and beheld Wendy far too boldly for her liking. One skinny chap with large gold earrings who slouched provocatively to one side actually gave her an appalling wink.
Their clothes were not the bright primary colors of nursery room imagination; they were salt-faded and dull. Their faces weren’t merely unshorn and artfully streaked with a daub of tar; they were grubby. All shades of skin were dulled with not enough washing. Wendy found her hands twitching, the urge to grab a cloth and scrub them almost overwhelming all other thoughts.
“Men, this is Wendy Darling. Wendy, this is me crew. Crew, she is a guest aboard the Jolly Roger and I expect you swabs to treat her as such.”
“It’s bad luck to have a woman aboard,” one large old pirate with a red bandanna growled. “Worse than a cat. Brings storms and swells.”
“Oh…I think it’s the best sort of luck to have a lass on deck.” A man with one eye and a loathsome leer grinned at her disgustingly.
“If any one of you touches her,” Captain Hook said with a very false smile, “you’ll be feeding the sharks before you can draw your next breath.” He leaned on his heels and put his hands on his hips, a movement that threw his splendid jacket back and revealed the twin pistols that were holstered elegantly on his hips.
This made Wendy feel a lot calmer but a little vexed. What if the pirate was saving her life, or wanted to arm wrestle? What then?
“This whole thing is a bloody waste of time,” a third pirate scoffed. “We should be out attacking ships, looting gold, and plundering treasure!”
“And so we shall. But in the meantime, she has given me something more valuable than all the gold in Never Land,” Hook said airily. “Peter Pan’s shadow!”
He unfurled the poor limpid thing and flapped it out to show them. The shadow hung limply from its neck where the pirate held it, struggling only a little.
The pirates looked mostly unhappy at the sight, a smidgen angry, and not just a little uncomfortable. Seeing a shadow hanging there apart from its owner was unnatural and might make the heartiest and blackest soul shiver, but even Wendy could see there was more to it than that.
“And what will that get us?” demanded an orange-haired lout with a northern European accent.
“Why, it will get us P—” Hook paused with a not-very-subtle side-eye at Wendy. “It will get us something we’ve always wanted. Well, something I have always wanted. And I am your captain. So it’s what you want, too—or at least it’s in your best interests to want it. And when I have it, we will be done with Never Land and all its silliness forever, and there will be only plundering and loot from here on out. All right?”
There were muttered grumbles of grudging assent.
“For now, I’m putting the shadow in safekeeping, in the trusted hands of Mr. Smee.”
At this the pirates looked even more uncomfortable—and disgusted. Possibly resigned. They threw up their hands and slowly dispersed, growling and unsatisfied and muttering curses.
“So there you are, my dear,” Captain Hook said, bowing to her. “A loathsome lot, to be sure, but you’re safe among them while we’re on our way to Never Land.”
“What time shall we get there, if you please?” Wendy asked politely.
“We don’t deal with time or clocks or watches on the Jolly Roger, Miss Darling. Except for figuring latitude and longitude. Pirates are free from such civilizing constraints and demonic inventions of man. We have none of those infernal contraptions on this ship, I can tell you.”
Wendy narrowed her eyes. What a strange thing to say—and there was a strange look behind his bluster. Fear? Could it possibly have been fear? He was afraid of something. Something he wasn’t telling her.
“All right, well…Approximately how long will it take to get there? Surely pirates aren’t entirely free from the passage of time, what with meals and sleep and the like.”
“Oh, you’re a very clever girl, aren’t you, Miss Darling? Well, these things aren’t precise, but it shouldn’t be more than a day or so.”
“And how are we to get there?”
Captain Hook gave her a knowing smile. “I suppose if you were with Peter Pan he would say something like oh, second star on the left, et cetera, et cetera. And you would fly through the sky, straight to the island of your dreams.
“Alas, my lady, pixie dust and good magic are rather out of a pirate’s reach. We had to go a different route, and it nearly cost poor Major Thomas his life. Possibly his soul. It was a bit unclear. Anyway, he’s a useless lubber and prone to grog. Not much of a loss there.”
Wendy’s eyes widened and her hand went to her mouth in dismay, but Hook was already touching his hat to her and spinning away, chuckling over the shadow he held.
Now alone, she looked around the deck nervously. There were no benches or chaise lounges as on a proper transport vessel. Because of the lateness—or the earliness—of the hour, the pirates mostly went belowdecks to their bunks. None of those remaining seemed particularly happy about the strange motion of the ship, gliding along without oars or sails or any human help at all. They occupied themselves with other pirate-y pursuits: five-finger fillet on an upturned barrel, surreptitious sips from leather flasks, shouting over a game that involved rolling with what looked very much like knucklebones instead of dice.