It has been stated many times that Smee was pathetic, and in all fairness, that was true. But when a job was laid before him there was nothing that could stop him from carrying out the captain's will. He could be stern and commanding, barking orders with the best of them, but as he lacked the intelligence of the best of them, he could also be unbearably foolish. Such was the case when he handed James an ax, pointed him towards a dead tree near the shore, and ordered he make a replacement plank for one that had rotted from the belly of the ship. For such an old vessel the Jolly Roger was actually in splendid shape, but as she lay on her side in the yellow sand one could see the ways of the ocean taking their toll on her body. Sea creatures clung to the sides and wood rotted with the water, and there were even several places where the mermaids had gouged at her in attempts to sink it.
There was more than sufficient work for everyone, from scraping and cocking the hull to mending sail rends, to searching out wood to make planks. Smee gave James what he saw as the simplest task. Of course, having never been a sailor or a craftsmen (at least, from what he remembered) even the simplest task became a mystery.
First James swung the axe at the tree as seemed proper, and the blade stuck tight in the trunk. He braced a foot against the bark and heaved with all his might, and went sprawling backwards into the sand. He grumbled some rather colorful words he had picked up during his stay, retrieved the ax, and tried again. This time he tried to simply swipe bits away from the tree, but on the third stroke he missed the tree entirely, and the ax went flying back down the beach to where one of the sails was being mended, very nearly taking a limb off one of the men.
"Bloody fool! What the 'ell do you think your doin'?!" the man shouted, taking up the ax and waving it at James. "Are you trying to kill us???"
"Sorry!" James shouted, and went forward to retrieve the tool. The other pirate handed it back, swearing under his breath.
Maybe this ax wasn't supposed to be swung? James tried rubbing the blade againt the gouge he had allready made in the trunk. Except for a bit of fraying this did very little. Finally frustrated, he stuck the ax in the trunk of the tree and went to find Smee. The boat swain was perched up on the hull of the ship, dictating to the workers which planks could stay and which had to be replaced.
"SMEE!" he shouted thru cupped hands. "Smee, how one earth do you make a plank from that damned tree!?"
"Cut it down and hack it out!" Smee shouted back, entirely distracted.
"I don't know how!"
"Ask someone, I'm busy!"
Ask someone? Admit to a crew that allready thought you were a pansy that you had no idea how to chop down a tree? It seemed preferable to simply throw himself into the ocean now and save them the trouble. James hitched his thumbs in his belt and wandered slowly back towards the tree.
Now, how to go about this matter.....a long moment of pondering revealed to him that the roots of the tree were barely anchored in the ground at all, it had been dead so long. Feeling smug, he braced his back against the tree and pushed, and the thing fell over. That was one problem solved, anyway. Now he simply had to shape the thing into a long, thin rectangle. He pulled out the ax and stared at it.
Oh, this was going to be entertaining.
First, he decided the branches and roots must be gotten rid of. This was not too terribly difficult, and could be accomplished by taking hold of the branch and tapping the axe against the base until it came free. Now he had something roughly cylindrical and about half again as long as he was tall. He remembered that planks were flat on all sides, and began to scrape the blade along the top of the tree, peeling away curls. This took far longer than he had expected or realized, and as he ran the blade down yet another time someone shouted "James!" Startled, the ax slipped, and James nearly howled when it cut a sizeable gash in his palm.
"Good lord, James, it's been three hours! Aren't you done yet???"
He glared at Smee, who stood with his hands on his hips looking every it as annoying as he sounded.
"No, I'm not done yet!" he snapped. "This isn't as *ow* easy as it looks!"
"Your bleeding." Smee observed flatly. "Didn't I tell you to ask someone for help?"
"Like I'll bloody well admit I can't cut down a tree! Not to THESE fools. You've heard what they think of me."
Smee raised an eyebrow "I'd rather look like a fool than be bleeding, late, and STILL looking like a fool. Here, let me see the cut, it's probably got woodchips in it."
James reluctantly held out his hand. Smee snatched it by the wrist and examined the slash thru his spectacles.
"That'll turn to poison if your not careful. Come on then, we'll wash it out and bandage it."
Of course Smee was right in that James DID feel the perfect fool, being led my his wrist thru a swarm of working men, holding in one hand a blood smudged ax, and the other palm open for all to see the source. Fortunatly Smee did not lead him to the boat,but up into the forest to a conveniently placed spring of clear water (there were many of those in Neverland because the fairies like them so). With an infinite care that was almost femenine Smee submerged the wound and gently removed the wood fragments with dexterous fingers.
"Be more careful next time. A limbless man isn't worth much." Smee chided, and finally relinquished his wrist. "Don't use that hand until you find something clean to bandage it with. And rinse of that ax, it's bad luck."
James obeyed, and felt stragnely bewildered as he wandered back towards the beach. In the time he had been gone one of the other men had renderd the dead tree into four planks and left a mess of wood chips on the ground. More than sufficiently humbled, he slunk back towards the boat to find some descreet use for himself.
Instead of chore he was met by Barbecue, who leaned against the rotted keel looking strangely docile in a too-large linen shirt that was missing half it's buttons. From his belt hung an impressive longsword with utilitarian hilt, and wedged on either side of his waist were drab pistols, apparently loaded. His eyes scanned the forest line with an alertness entirely at odds with his slack frame.
"What are you watching for?" James asked, momentarily forgetting Barbecue's rank. An angry flash from the captain's eyes reminded him.
"Redskins."
"Redskins, sir?"
"Yes." he said calmly. In an akward limp, for his wooden leg was ungainly in sand, he came to James and examined the wounded hand, but did not comment. "If you had a memory you may recall Captain Lowether? No? Of course not. He sailed the Happy Delivery, and while she was beached on the shore for mending soldiers stormed and took her. Do you see why it was so easy? Look about you, is there any better time to overtake us?"
James glanced quickly about the shore, and with battle in mind all he saw seemed a liability. Men were scattered, unarmed, and unattentive. Against the heat of the sun and labor most had stripped of their shirts, white or black backs perfect targets for an arrow. The sailcloth and rigging, spawled as they were on the sand, presented an obstacle of tangles for anyone rushing to arms.
"Don't think you're safe, James." Barbecue hissed, moving to within inches of James's turned back. "You may have been friends with the redskins once, but now you are their enemy." Barbecue reached around James's ribs and pointedly ran a finger down the button line of his shirt, and James shuddered at the implications. "None will hesitate to rend you open, James. And if you try to betray me.....neither will I........"
"I..I don't doubt it....sir..."
Barbecue chuckled, and circled round in front of James. "I didn't think you would. Now, what are you........"
Barbecue frowned and halted mid sentence, then turned his head ever so slightly to look over his shoulder to the forest. Whatever he had heard he apparently saw confirmation of. James followed his eyes. There, near the ground, the faintest hint of fairy glow shone out from between an enclosure that looked every bit like closed fingers.
"Peter and the fairy." Barbecue whispered. "No one else could hold one. The redskins and lost boys will be with him. Ready yourself."
Taking the hint to look casual, James tightened his fingers around the ax, but his stomach tightened as well. He didn't think he could bring himself to slay a redskin or a child, but if they would see him as the enemy, he may have no choice.
Barbecue made an exaggerated guesture to the working men. Tension
spread like a ripple,and hands crept towards loose tools and whatever might
be used as a weapon. From the trees came a crow James would soon
learn to dread, and with that both sides launched together in a fury of
battle cries and flashing metal. Barebecue shrieked in exhaltation
and immedialty discharged both pistols, falling two redskins in spatters
of crimson on the sand. For a moment his eyes turned to James, as
degenarate and cruel as the moment he had slain the redskin women in the
hut, and in a flash of intimate horror James saw the true form of the captain,
a monster in mockingly human form, pale mimickry of man holding basest
animalisms as truth. Spurred by an irrational burst of terror James
raised the ax and went swinging into the fray.
"Hurry, Hard To Hit, it's begun!" shouted Tiger Lilly, propelling madly thru the woods towards the sound of gloriouse death on the shore. She had to be there. She had to SEE them pay for what they did to her village! She had to MAKE them pay for what they did to James! Her slender leather-clad feet carried her forward over uneven ground, thin legs burning at the sudden burst of activity. Her brother, having not yet begun the bulk of his conditioning, fell further and further behind, and whether he ever caught up with her Tiger Lilly would never know, and didn't care.
She skittered to a halt at the tree line, feet going out from under her in suddenly loose ground and falling hard onto her backside. She made a small sound of pain and quickly scrambled up, and saw with dismay that the fall had broken the arrows held on her back. She gripped the head of one in a fist and looked out at the battle. On the ground, the redskins and pirates bled and shouted, bared torsos slick with sweat and the blood from misaimed slashes. The Lost Boys flew above, swooping like fishing birds to prick at the pirates with their swords, while the fairy Tybalt held stationary in the air, screaming warnings with ill concealed terror.
Tiger Lilly gasped a deep breath and dashed in, running behind battling pairs to bury the tip of the arrow in the pirate's ribs, distracting him that the indian blade might strike fatal blows. She saw her father, swinging a tomahawk against a black haired man that weilded an ax with such blind fury that it made up for lack of skill. Great Big Little Panther was falling back. With a gust of angry force she launched towards him, and gouged the arrow head into the straining shoulders of the pirate.
What happened now took only a few seconds. With a lack of caution
caracteristic with those untrained for battle, the pirate turned towards
the new pain with a eyes full of fear-spurred violence, and Tiger Lilly
gasped as she recognised the blue eyes, the hair grown longer without tending,
the pale, blue shadowed features of James. His throat opened as he
saw her, but the blade of the tomahawk was instantly wedged into the bone
of his shoulderblade, wretching from him the most horrible sound she had
heard in her life. In almost the same instant the top half of a sword
blade shot outward from the cheif's ribcage. Tiger Lilly screamed
as they both fell. For the first time she was afraid, truly afraid,
and she fell to her knees as impotent as if the blade had been thru her
own stomach. Barbecue ripped the blade from the indian's body and
quickly glanced over James's wound. It wasn't fatal. He regarded
Tiger Lilly and thoughtfully smudged the blood smeared blade over her back,
leaving a red trail on her buckskin....but then he had vanished back into
the battle.
"Peter! Behind you!" Tybalt shrieked, bringing up his hands to nearly cover his eyes. But he shouldn't have worried; Peter spun and deflected the pirate blade, and in the same motion slashed some distance into the man's abdomen. One of his crewmates lunged in retribution, but Peter had allready taken back to air, and left the pirate to examine the gory split. He'd begun a new game, of sorts. Peter landed, let the pirates come at him, then slash and take off before he could be hurt. Though the boy was having marvelous fun with it, Tybalt was nearly dead with fear each time he touched ground. The entire situation, in fact, seemed built to panic the poor fairy. His boys were battling with full grown men, and these men were so terrible with the fear and fury of battle that he was sure all of them would be dead by the end of it. Especially his dear Peter! While the other boys seemed to retain some common sense of what was an acceptable risk, Peter did not, and had several times come very near a bloody end.
Tybalt had quite enough fear left, however, to become even paler when he heard a high shriek, unlike anything the pirates or redskins could make. It could only be one of the boys, since the redskins had no children in their party. He darted off in the direction of the sound, trying to pinpoint it against the twisting mass of human flesh, but he quickly noticed that all the boys were in the air and well. So who had made it? He spotted a smaller body, a redskin girl hunched over between a greiviously injured warrior and a pirate. The only redskin girl was Tiger Lilly....but the indians had left her and her brother at the village!
Covering his ears to try to block out the sounds of battle, Tybalt dove into the mess and hovered in the hollow the girl's bent over body created.
"Tiger Lilly, what are you doing here!? You could be killed!" he scolded, to frightened to sound angry. She made a strange whimpering sound, and the fairy realized she was crying. What had happened? When it became obviouse the girl was ignoring him, he tried to figure it out for himself. It didn't take long. Though the face of the fallen redskins was distorted with fantastic agony, he could pick out the features of Great Big Little Panther. Her father.
Tybalt felt quite ill at that, and in a momentary panic he shot away from her and up into the sky, as far as he could go. Far enough away that the noise faded, the men became one shifting mass, and he could close his eyes and pretend they weren't there. Tybalt had never been one for action. He prefered pursuits of the mind, favoring adventure novels to actual adventures, and theatrical death in abstract than reality. But it didn't look like he had a choice.
Damn protective instincts! He couldn't leave her down there!
He spiraled back down and latched onto her collar. "Tiger Lilly! You have to get out of here! The pirates, they'll--"
"I won't leave them!" She pulled Tybalt away from her and dropped him on sand that was saturated, and not with water.
"Tiger Lilly, you don't understand! They're pirates! They've been stuck on a boat alone for as long as you've been alive, and Barbecue doesn't make them follow rules of conduct! If they capture you they'll hurt you..."
"I said no!"
The battle had begun to drift down the beach, away from the sails and rigging, and they were no longer pressed tightly with men. As Tybalt contemplated how he could force her away, Great Big Little Panther, who was unfortunatly still conciouse, lifted his head the smallest bit.
"tiger lilly.....go.....i told you to stay away........" he rasped.
"I couldn't! I couldn't leave you!"
The noise had tapered, and suddenly came a loud cry of victory. Tiger Lilly's head snapped up to see it was not the redskins, but the pirates who waved their stained weapons in triumph. Barbecue literally danced over the bodies, bringing his sword down now and then to mutilate the faces of the dead. And those not yet.
"Tiger Lilly, go now!" Great Big Little Panther managed to shout. She gave a sob and, with the fairy holding onto her buckskins, dashed off towards the tree line. But she had waited too long. One of the pirates got in front of her and caught her around the ribs, laughing.
"Looks like we got ourselves a new toy, captain!"
"Two!" shouted another, from some distance. "One of the Lost Boys lost a bloody foot! He Can't fly! Ha!"
Tybalt panicked and lifted up into the air, trying to see which boy they had. One of the pirates held roughly in his arms the pale Marsh, who had gone the color of parchment and who's eyes rolled in only partial lucidity. One of his legs ended ubruptly above the ankle in a messy, bleeding, dirty stump.
Barbecue cleaned his sword on the shirt of a dead pirate, and resheathed it. "Allright, you dogs! Tie up the prisoners! SMEE! Where the bloody hell are you!?"
"Here, sir!" Smee shouted back, sniffing and rubbing at his spectacles.
"Smee, patch up that Lost Boy, I want him kept alive. Where's James?"
"The brit? He's dead, sir, axed in the back." Starkey said with some confusion.
"Did anyone think to CHECK HIM???"
"N-no...."
As general policy, if someone was greiviously injured after a battle they were left with the dead to be carried off by wolves or by the tide. Why should it be any different now? Barbecue back handed Starkey all the same and went stalking down the beach. James was, of course, where he had left him, sprawled on his face in the sand. The captain ripped open the back of James's shirt and peeled the soaked material back from the wound.
"It's not too bad. Fool probably fainted." Barbecue hauled
James up in his arms as if he were nothing more than a child, and as an
afterthought, glanced down at the indian cheif that was glaring at him,
entirely impotent, from the sand. "Someone come get this fellow,
too. We have a game to play with the redskins, hm?"
James Remembered. He remembered long crowded streets and coal smoke, eternal rain that worked the gutters and the high cries of flower girls that worked on his street corner (though they often stayed on well past the night hours, selling quite some more than flowers). He remembered rushing thru the crowds, a parcel under arm and checking again that his hat was right, his coat was right, and his shoes were right. Not that Annabell cared about such things, it was himself that was concerned with this vanity and form. He ran up to the front stairs of a somewhat middle class home and forced himself into composure as he rapped the door thrice, politely.
Annabell's mother answered, and allowed him admittance immediatly. He spoke to her only as long as form dictated, and waited nervously for Annabell to come down from her room (it would be rude to enter a lady's chamber, after all).
She came. A dream vision of dark hair and eyes, formal skirts
and bracelets. She would speak to him in the parlor......
.....wet rot, dirt, wood smoke, hot metal, coppery tints and a whispy stench of seared tissues. James awoke with a jerk and choked on the burning smells, eyes unadjusting to the darkness. There was some light, though....low fire, heat more than light.
"Be calm, you'll hurt yourself." came Smee's voice, in it's most gentle but authorative tone.
"What..."
"Just lie still. On your stomach, there you go. This is going to hurt, but a little pain will save you a lot later on."
"What are you doing?"
"Sealing that shoulder wound. Good thing you came around before, or you might have awoken to a nasty surprise."
"Smee....Smee, I remembered something...."
"Shh. Later."
There was movement in front of the fire, and he thought he saw something be lifted out of it. That burnt coppery smell struck him even stronger. In the darkness, a point of red light approached him.
"What....no. Put that away, you're not going to--"
"Quiet. The lost boy took it without a whimper, I expect no less from you? Lie still."
"What lost boy?"
Smee didn't answer him this time. A hand pressed into his back, flattening his chest against the wooden boards beneath him, and the red point moved out of his vision.
Up on deck, Barbecue heard a shrill scream of pain, and wondered absently which one had made that sound. From the unpleasant smell that drifted up thru the boards he had gathered that Smee was burning the wounds closed on the prisoners. He knew the indian cheif was too well trained to make any sounds of pain, and the lost boy didn't seem aware enough to even jump. Good Lord, did that mean James was making that sound? Hm. That boy could certainly bellow when he had a mind to.
He absently scratched his leg right above where the wooden one started, and looked out across the gently moving waves. The sun was nearly set now, stringing red out over the water, and he thought it looked like a sea of blood. Damn, it had been a good day. Nothing put him in a better mood than a good fight, and despite the fact it had been predictable and at a poor time, it had been a teriffic skirmish. Of course, a lot of men had been lost, but that hardly mattered. In the morning another batch would wake in the hammocks, and the crew would go on as if they had always been there. For a moment Barbecue felt cold slip down into his innards. It was the same feeling one gets after the Epiphany, that one is living in a world of stage props and maniquens, and wondering if thats what you are yourself. He quickly shoved it away. He was where he was, whether or not any of it was real didn't matter. He was in control. THAT was what mattered....wasn't it? That he was in charge? In charge of a ship full of dreams.....