THE GIFT
Disclaimer: Characters and setting created by JM Barrie for his play/novel Peter Pan. I write these stories purely for the love of it and gather no financial gain from them.
Author's Note: Perhaps not a very original outcome to this one, but fun to write. A counterpoint piece to "Sawbones". What can I say? I'm obviously fixated. Takes place before the events of "Peter Pan in Scarlet". Take your partner by the hand…
"I'm going to give you something."
In such a situation, the words are unsettling: puzzling, even. It is, of course, an annotation on the age-old question. What do you give the man who has everything?
The boy looks at him in surprise for a moment, until his sharp features are suffused with a cunning quite unpleasant to the eye.
"What's that, old codfish?"
Swords ring on the headland. The day is bright. Below on the shimmering glass-like water of the lagoon, the pirate galleon lies at anchor, the furled sails white against the masts, and beyond the ship, inland past the crisp white strip of sand on the beach, the jungle sprawls in its endless lush green tangle. The boy's sword is a dazzling golden flame as the sun beams down and scatters light along the sharpened edge: the pirate's sword has the cold, business-like gleam of well-worn steel. The cheerful sunshine seems almost a wasted opportunity. Surely this battle, one of the eternal battles fought throughout the ages, deserves at least a bitter rainstorm, threaded through with sharp fingers of lightning, or a howling gale that threatens to tear the combatants from the cliffs and cast them to the waters and rocks beneath? Perhaps the weather is weary of providing drama - the sun is relentless, just as the fight is. David and Goliath, George and the Dragon.
Hook and Pan.
Or maybe it is best to say James and Peter. After all, they have known each other so long that they might at least be on first name terms.
James lunges: Peter parries. This is par for the course and neither of them think much of it. If this were a dance, the lunge/parry step would barely prove a challenge for even the most fumble-footed of beginners.
Peter is intrigued, and, as children do when intrigued, he pushes the point, the same way he pushes his luck with his attack. James steps gracefully to one side with a swirl of gold brocade and red velvet to avoid being grazed.
"What is it?" Peter persists, turning to match Hook's sidestep. "It's not my birthday."
Their swords flirt with each other, briefly, points scraping. The eternal child is puzzled, but like all blithe spirits he enjoys the sensation, tasting the curiosity like a rare delicacy in his mouth.
"No," replies the eternal adult, bafflingly, "but I've heard 'tis better to give than to receive, boy."
He brings his large sword down with a satisfying metal slam, and Peter takes flight to gain the advantage. While being incensed by the unfairness of the tactic, James is possessed by a tiny gleam of pride: if Peter is flying, then it's because the child feels he needs that edge to gain the upper hand.
Peter, balanced serenely on nothingness, circles his opponent delightedly. After all this time, old Hook's come up with a new game, a guessing game that they can both play. What sport! The only question is, how long can Peter make the game last?
"You've brought me your spare hook," he guesses, keeping just out of range as the pirate watches him carefully. "A fine thing that I may hang my hat on when it needs to dry!"
"No," says James, resisting every instinct which screams at him to take a swipe at the infuriating brat, "indeed, I have not."
"Of course not," says Peter, immediately and self-importantly. "I knew that."
There is a pause, then he swoops down, plucks the hat from Hook's head and drops it onto his own with a crow of triumph. "You've brought me your hat so I may be captain in your place and all the seven seas will tremble at the name of Captain Pan!"
The pirate hat is very much too large for him. With his eyes half-covered, he almost misses Hook's lithe, cat-like jump, and the attendant sword-swipe which trims the fabulous plumage from the hat's crown.
"No," James says, again, and his eyes behind the swinging mane of black curls are alight with intent, gleaming like sapphires, "indeed, I have not."
Peter casts the hat into the air: it spins away across the sward of the headland, shedding a trail of shorn feather in its wake. James ignores it. It's just a hat, after all, and he's lost too many hats in this manner to truly care any more. In the dance, the loss of the hat would be of no more moment than a single foot placed an inch further to the right than was proper.
He brings his right arm up to block Peter's retaliation, and the slim golden sword rings like a bell as it strikes and slides off the metal cuff of the hook. The boy is more than puzzled, now, he is ragingly curious. He has to know. His feet touch the ground again, and as they circle each other, a smile touches those perfect child's lips. Wonderful. The game is going on longer than expected. Perhaps the old man has finally grown some brains.
"I don't need a hat anyway," he says, tensing joyfully as James feints to the left. "Even without a hat I make a better captain than you."
To his surprise, this doesn't produce the expected response. Normally Hook would break stride, break rhythm, lose the careful pace of the dance in a flood of uncoordinated fury. Today he strikes, but in a solid, controlled move - take your partner by the hand - before retreating gracefully. Peter frowns. An adult opponent would have been dismayed, but Peter is a child and children love surprises. His frown melts before the perfect, pearly smile of his milk teeth, and he moves in - swing your partner round and round - so they can continue the dance. Up and down the headland they fight, James' boots trampling uncaring through the gorse and bracken as he keeps his head tilted aloft to where Peter darts like a dragonfly in the matchless blue of the skies.
"Your treasure!"
"No."
"A mermaid's comb!"
"No."
Their swords take over for the next few volleys. Peter's blade chimes and glimmers mischievously - will I land a blow this time? it seems to ask, and is answered by the heavy metallic finality of Hook's sword - no! The sun beats down on their hair, their backs. Peter, in his simple green and gold, flashes through the long grass with a whoop of pure joy. James is magnificent and terrible on his trail, black hair unfettered from the hat and coat-tails dragging the vegetation as he passes. For the first time in so many years he is playing Peter's game with a copy of the rulebook in his pocket and a willing smile in his eyes: for the first time since Peter took his hand he is playing with the full expectation not just to draw, but to finally win.
The boy alights on an outcrop, the sun-warmed stone hot under his bare feet, and knuckles his fists on his hips deliberately.
"I don't believe you're going to give me anything at all," he says. "You just want me to guess and guess and guess until I give up. Well, guess again, old man!"
For a few packed moments, the fight is on in grave earnest. The swords no longer sing their metallic songs as they clash against each other. When the weapons do touch, they scream, and Hook's coat is laid open along both sleeves with the ugly, heavy sound of expensive velvet tearing.
They part, both glaring a little. Peter's glare is a sight known to many parents the world over, a sight they probably see every birthday when the long-awaited gift, parcelled up so lovingly in ribbons, bows and patterned paper, turns out not to be a puppy after all but instead a gleaming set of pencils for taking notation in algebra class. It is the glare not of I-want but I-wanted: whereas Hook's glare is that of a man who has been given the gift he always desired, only to have it snatched away: I-have in opposition to I-haven't.
"I always win," says Peter confidently. "And you always try to cheat. Even at a guessing game. You cheat because you know I'll beat you otherwise."
"Oh, you're quite wrong," James replies, breathing a little harshly from his exertions. "I do have something to give you. You just can't guess."
They clash again, Peter bolting forward through the air at full force and meeting James' stony resistance as he braces his legs and blocks the golden sword.
"And if you can't guess," he adds, through clenched teeth, "then you lose, boy. You lose."
Peter's mouth and eyes widen in shock at the very idea. The sun pours white light onto the smooth iron curve of the hook: James and Peter brace for a moment, locked against each other, sword and hook, sound youth and crippled age - and then the pirate gives Peter a shove so hard that the boy tumbles backward out of the air to crash-land in the heather, in the thickest patch where the purple spikes of flowers have already come to maturity and are beginning to show signs of seed.
Before Peter can rise, James is on him. The hook presses wickedly to the young throat, while the sword is poised carefully over the slim child's wrist. One knee with all that adult weight behind it presses down deliberately on the boy's ribs.
Peter looks up defiantly, expecting the familiar sight of the captain's eyes flaring red with the anticipation of the hook's blooding - but they are not. They are the blue of the summer sky above, cloudless and bright, and strangely calm.
"I told you I was going to give you something," James says conversationally, looking down as butterflies flicker past between him and his captive. "And James Hook always keeps his promises."
He presses the blade of his sword down a little, hard enough to put pressure on the delicate nerves and tendons in Peter's wrist and make the slender boy's fingers lose their grip on the sword. Peter gnashes his pretty teeth in anger. Hook rests his weight a little further forward, black hair falling in from his shoulders to frame his thin face. One long ringlet brushes Peter's nose.
"I never said that what I was going to give you was a gift for you. Dear me, no. But like all children, in your self-centred pride, you assumed." He shakes his head, once, in understated mockery. "What I'm going to give you is a gift for me."
Now, and only now, the red spots deep in the centres of his eyes light up as they always do when he is in the grip of wrath or other unhealthy passion. Peter meets that murderous look without flinching. This scene has been played so many times before, and he fully expects it to be played out again. Their dance-cards are full for eternity.
Time to change partners. Hook's action is swift and business-like, his usual sense of melodrama burnt away by the clarity of the sunlight. All the best momentous deeds are carried out in broad daylight, when the elements and shadows cannot distract from them, and the stark brilliance leaves no opportunity for doubt.
The thick steel blade is drawn back firmly, then swings down. There is a sound like old wet wood being split, and Peter wails, not the scream of a child in pain as much as the cry of a child who sees the long weeks of the summer holiday finally drawing to a close when he feels he still has so much to accomplish.
The Neverland sky darkens, and now the rain begins to fall. A light rain, accompanied by a fine strong wind blowing away from the island and out to sea.. Below the cliff, in the shining waters of the lagoon, the pirate galleon rolls in the waves, the white sails unfurling from their binding ropes and straining as they fill with breeze.
James, with the abrupt efficiency of a man who has places to be, kicks Peter's severed hand into the gorse where it lies like a curling, beached starfish. There is remarkably little blood, and Peter sits crying in the heather as his island's weather struggles to reflect his pain. His young face is so haggard with shock and dismay that in the growing darkness it seems to have sprouted lines around the mouth and eyes: lines of agony, lines of misery. He stares up at his enemy as he cradles his ruined arm, but Hook is no longer looking at him - he is staring at the horizon, keen eyes seeing where the line of cloud ends and the fine weather begins. When his gaze falls upon his ship, he sighs, rain shining on his thin cheeks and making his black hair shine like fresh dark wax. He smiles, and as is true of most people, even the very weary and miserable, that simple expression transforms him. Years fall away with that smile: once he was young and gave that smile willingly to those who delighted to see it.
Peter's sobs turn to howls as the enormity of his wound begins to become clear, and James' attention is drawn back to him. He crouches on his haunches in front of the keening child and lays the hook in a fatherly fashion on Peter's shoulder, turning the claw cruelly so that the iron point digs in just a little. Peter's eyes never leave him: staring, accusing. The answer to the age-old question is, of course, simple: what do you give the boy who has everything? You give him the gift of loss, and take something away.
"This gift is called failure, boy," he says, in a tone that might be mistaken for kindly if one wasn't listening closely enough. "Years ago, it was given to me, and I am simply passing it on to you. I never asked you to guess what I was going to give you. You chose to compete with me, confident that you would win without even knowing if you wanted the prize."
In the heather, James Hook stands, his eyes already on the path leading back to the lagoon where his ship sits ready to sail.
"I am leaving now," he says, and with those words the last of his miseries, held so long in the lines of his mouth and his eyes, drop away. "When you grow up, Peter Pan, come and find me, and we can finish this like men. Growing up, after all, is simply the process of learning from the pain life so generously gives you."
His smile grows wider.
"A process I have started for you today."
And with that, he turns to the path. He does not look back, although Peter's cries, mingling now with the thunder, are dreadful to hear. And he doesn't stop smiling - the smile of a man who, having thought himself quite forgotten, discovers on his very own doorstep the one gift he wanted most in all the world.