***
10
***
It was obvious at times like this how far Hook's mind had wandered since the days of his youth. Neverland contained a plethora of illogically placed caverns, secret hiding places in the rocks, hidden hovels made by children long past, and even trees so strong and carefully placed that a nimble one could cross from one side of the island to the other without ever touching the earth. Every waterfall hid a secret cave and every cliff side offered a dozen cracks wide enough for a boy to disappear into in a pinch. The island was designed exactly how a child could want it to be, with adventure at every turn but safety never far away, and Hook no longer remembered how to find it.
His crew was useless as they ever were to him now. They were best interested in leaving well enough alone by this point; the boy was gone, let it be peace enough at that. They didn't want to hunt a possessed cabin boy through the forests of Neverland where all things living were their enemies. They obeyed him only for fear of him. While it was possible that both Mason and Starkey, both fighting without hindrance, could slay him without much cost to themselves their fear of him stayed their swords. A terrifying man, was James Hook, and when his eyes became dark and that red light stayed immovable inside them he became terrifyingly awesome. No one would risk their lives against his claw.
Moving through the forest, treading lightly as they could in a fruitless search, they looked the sight of a death march. Hook was at the fore, with his head tilted down as gave his eyes a dangerous slant, radiating a cold, lethal warning to no one but the trees. He had all the air of the misshapen, poisonous mushrooms that grow in damp corners of grave yards, the sort even the most wide-eyed of children instinctually avoid for fear of their mutilated cycloptic glare.
Trailing behind him at a good three yards, a distance that could almost be considered safe, Ignatious Starkey and Alf Mason followed with cutlasses at their hips and enough space between them to draw without damage. They'd yet to draw them once in the day and night Captain Hook had been dragging them across the island.
"I think the blighters gone mad." Mason muttered darkly, scowling at the spaces between the trees. Hook was too far ahead to hear them.
"Not mad, perhaps, but stupid, certainly!"
"How can he not be mad?" Mason made a vague gesture towards the captain's back. "This'll make the second day we've been out looking for Jukes! That boy hides better than we'll ever find, the captain should get it through his thick skull and go back to the ship."
"The sooner we go back to the ship without a body, the sooner Mullins gets the hook. The captain's after blood."
"What for?"
Starkey raised an eyebrow. "What part of yesterday morning did you miss, Mason old boy? Smee's bloody carcass stretched across the main deck or the blood on Jukes' face?"
"Well of course I saw that." Mason growled. "I had to scrub the deck, didn't I? What I don't understand is why he's all in a fury over Smee. The idiot never did a thing right and he ain't exactly mourning the passing. He ordered the body thrown to the croc like he was so much driftwood! Not a prayer for his soul!"
"Can you in any way imagine Hook and Prayer meeting, anywhere, outside of a brothel room?"
Mason frowned. "You know what I mean. He didn't care one bit about Smee and he's not one for vengeance just on principal. I don't see what in hell we're doing out here."
Starkey drifted closer in, hindering his sword arm shoulder to shoulder but allowing him to talk in a voice Hook couldn't possibly overhear. "If this is a vengeance of principal than I'm the Queen of England, and don't—" He held up his hand before Mason could open his mouth "—comment on that or I'll take your tongue off. When Hook got captured by that row galley, back when we were all on the Rake, who's the idiot he got shackled to that saved his sorry hide?"
"Smee." Mason said, remembering the quick explanation Hook had given his brother of why they couldn't kill THIS prisoner but the others were alright. "So?"
"And when Hook lost his hand to Peter Pan, who's the one who made a tourniquet when Hook didn't have the presence of mind? Who's the one who sat over him like a fussy mother when infection and fever broke out? Who's the one who kept him alive?"
Mason looked confused. "Smee did. But Hook wouldn't think he owed him for it."
"Of course not. Hook pays his debts but anything Smee did wasn't a debt, that was a duty."
"Right."
"Right." Starkey leaned on his shoulder slightly and gave a conspiratal grin. "But guess who was it that snuck into the crew quarters in the middle of the night, when we all thought Smee would die of pneumonia, and sat with the bugger till the sun came up?"
The carpenter stared at him in disbelief. "Hook?" Starkey nodded. "Why?"
"I've wondered that myself." Starkey turned a critical eye on Hook's back and fiddled with the guard of his cutlass. "If you ask me I don't think it was entirely Cecilia's fault that their engagement didn't work."
Mason snorted. "You're awfully quick to pin that accusation on someone, ain't ya?"
"Well can you think of any other good reason we're out here chasing down a cannibalistic cabin boy?"
Mason thought for a moment. "Principal." He decided. Starkey rolled his eyes, and they walked on.
***
Meanwhile, on a neglected long-boat bobbing aimlessly out on the ocean, Cookson opened his eyes to one amazing headache and the empty view of the morning sky. He sat up quickly, instantly regretting it as his vision flickered with red spots and his head sent a complaint all the way down to his tailbone. But he wasn't aboard the ship. He wasn't passed out in the gutter outside a tavern, either, which would have been preferable to other choices. He seemed to be in a rowboat. In fact, he seemed to be in a rowboat that was very far away from any solid target. He stood up (slowly) and turned in a circle on the shaky platform. There was water to the left of him. There was water to the back of him. There was even water to the right and the front of him.
It was Mullins' doing, he decided. Letting go a set of the most fluent curses he knew in both Greek and English, Cookson called up a mental map of where the Jolly Roger had been located by the island, and checked with the sun for directions. He could only assume it was morning. Mullins most likely would have set him adrift in the direction perfectly away from the island, meaning the direction he ought to row was….. Squinting at the sun for a moment and thinking, he snatched the single oar Mullins had been so gracious to leave him and turned the boat around 180 degrees.
The captain was going to have his hide when he got back…
***
"Slightly doesn't have me under any spell, Mullins!" Billy shouted with exasperation. Mullins, who was now a good six feet further away than he had been a few minutes ago, had his knife out again.
"Ye've been bewitched to saying that! Don't worry, Billy Boy, I'll stop his cursed workings!"
"Mullins, LISTEN TO ME!" Billy grabbed hold of both Mullins' wrists and held them in an unbreakable grip by his shoulders, forcing him to see him. "I am NOT bewitched. Slightly is NOT A WITCH! I'm not possessed, I'm not being controlled by some demon, it's all me, Mullins!"
"Billy—"
"I KILLED SMEE! I'M the one who ate him! I didn't want to do it but it was still me!" His voice cracked and he jerked his hands back from Mullins, fisting them at his sides and swallowing to keep the stress from pushing past its cork. He continued in a very controlled voice. "That's why the fairies are looking for me. It's not because of what happened on the ship, it's because of what it meant. They didn't even know I was the one who killed him. They thought the croc did it." His voice softened in tone. "I have to find someone who can help me, before I fall asleep again. Someone who could get rid of the ghoul in me."
Mullins looked astounded. "You really believe what you say, don't ye." He asked softly, slowly lowering his dagger from the direction of the as-yet-mute Lost Boy. Billy nodded.
"Two people have told me the same thing. What else am I supposed to believe?"
Mullins looked at Billy and frowned, apparently thinking.
"If we pretend for a moment I believe you, and we pretend you know what you're saying, how do you explain how you've been living this past year? You've been eating Cookson's food, living on a ship, oceans away from the boneyards. You've slept with a rosary and you didn't burn, you lived just like any other boy in your position. How could ye do all this if ye aren't human?"
Billy winced at that. "I don't know."
"Then how can you be so sure you're a monster?"
Billy sighed and closed his eyes. He looked tired.
"Could I be anything else? I'm not possessed, Mullins, that much has been made clear. And if I'm not possessed, what sort of man kills his crewmates and doesn't even remember it in the morning? What sort of man am I if I'm only a man?"
Mullins didn't answer. Billy turned his eyes up to him and looked, just for a moment, a most innocent thing, void of fault or guilt or knowledge. It was a fleeting illusion and then it was gone, replaced by a more corporeal image of a frightened, exhausted cabin boy in miles over his head, innocent only so much as it took to want to trust him in this temporary perdition.
Slightly, fulfilling the same observatory role as the trees in this conversation, sat down at the base of one and dropped his head back against the rough bark. Somewhere, a chickadee was singing.
"I don't know, Billy." Mullins said, replacing his dagger in his sash finally. "Nothing makes sense ever since we came to this cursed place. For the sake of argument say I believe you. What are you going to do?"
Billy gave a short, humorless laugh. "Run. Half the island's after me, and all that's left is after Slightly. I'll run and I'll hide until they all give it up. I can do it, you know. If Slightly comes with me maybe we can find someone to help, together. If not, I guess…I'll do it on my own."
"I'm coming with you!" Slightly interjected, sounding offended that Billy even said such a thing. "I've slightly come this far, where do you expect me to turn back to now? I could have gone back to the Lost Boys last night but I chose to stay with you! You think I'm going to be chased off just because this'll take slightly longer than you thought it would?"
"I guess not." Billy smirked. He looked back to Mullins, his expression fading. "What are YOU going to do?"
"The same thing I was going to do before I found ye." He hitched his thumbs in his sash. "I'm going to stand beside you against the captain."
For the first time since Mullins had found him, Billy Jukes smiled genuinely.
"Thanks, Mullins."
10
***
It was obvious at times like this how far Hook's mind had wandered since the days of his youth. Neverland contained a plethora of illogically placed caverns, secret hiding places in the rocks, hidden hovels made by children long past, and even trees so strong and carefully placed that a nimble one could cross from one side of the island to the other without ever touching the earth. Every waterfall hid a secret cave and every cliff side offered a dozen cracks wide enough for a boy to disappear into in a pinch. The island was designed exactly how a child could want it to be, with adventure at every turn but safety never far away, and Hook no longer remembered how to find it.
His crew was useless as they ever were to him now. They were best interested in leaving well enough alone by this point; the boy was gone, let it be peace enough at that. They didn't want to hunt a possessed cabin boy through the forests of Neverland where all things living were their enemies. They obeyed him only for fear of him. While it was possible that both Mason and Starkey, both fighting without hindrance, could slay him without much cost to themselves their fear of him stayed their swords. A terrifying man, was James Hook, and when his eyes became dark and that red light stayed immovable inside them he became terrifyingly awesome. No one would risk their lives against his claw.
Moving through the forest, treading lightly as they could in a fruitless search, they looked the sight of a death march. Hook was at the fore, with his head tilted down as gave his eyes a dangerous slant, radiating a cold, lethal warning to no one but the trees. He had all the air of the misshapen, poisonous mushrooms that grow in damp corners of grave yards, the sort even the most wide-eyed of children instinctually avoid for fear of their mutilated cycloptic glare.
Trailing behind him at a good three yards, a distance that could almost be considered safe, Ignatious Starkey and Alf Mason followed with cutlasses at their hips and enough space between them to draw without damage. They'd yet to draw them once in the day and night Captain Hook had been dragging them across the island.
"I think the blighters gone mad." Mason muttered darkly, scowling at the spaces between the trees. Hook was too far ahead to hear them.
"Not mad, perhaps, but stupid, certainly!"
"How can he not be mad?" Mason made a vague gesture towards the captain's back. "This'll make the second day we've been out looking for Jukes! That boy hides better than we'll ever find, the captain should get it through his thick skull and go back to the ship."
"The sooner we go back to the ship without a body, the sooner Mullins gets the hook. The captain's after blood."
"What for?"
Starkey raised an eyebrow. "What part of yesterday morning did you miss, Mason old boy? Smee's bloody carcass stretched across the main deck or the blood on Jukes' face?"
"Well of course I saw that." Mason growled. "I had to scrub the deck, didn't I? What I don't understand is why he's all in a fury over Smee. The idiot never did a thing right and he ain't exactly mourning the passing. He ordered the body thrown to the croc like he was so much driftwood! Not a prayer for his soul!"
"Can you in any way imagine Hook and Prayer meeting, anywhere, outside of a brothel room?"
Mason frowned. "You know what I mean. He didn't care one bit about Smee and he's not one for vengeance just on principal. I don't see what in hell we're doing out here."
Starkey drifted closer in, hindering his sword arm shoulder to shoulder but allowing him to talk in a voice Hook couldn't possibly overhear. "If this is a vengeance of principal than I'm the Queen of England, and don't—" He held up his hand before Mason could open his mouth "—comment on that or I'll take your tongue off. When Hook got captured by that row galley, back when we were all on the Rake, who's the idiot he got shackled to that saved his sorry hide?"
"Smee." Mason said, remembering the quick explanation Hook had given his brother of why they couldn't kill THIS prisoner but the others were alright. "So?"
"And when Hook lost his hand to Peter Pan, who's the one who made a tourniquet when Hook didn't have the presence of mind? Who's the one who sat over him like a fussy mother when infection and fever broke out? Who's the one who kept him alive?"
Mason looked confused. "Smee did. But Hook wouldn't think he owed him for it."
"Of course not. Hook pays his debts but anything Smee did wasn't a debt, that was a duty."
"Right."
"Right." Starkey leaned on his shoulder slightly and gave a conspiratal grin. "But guess who was it that snuck into the crew quarters in the middle of the night, when we all thought Smee would die of pneumonia, and sat with the bugger till the sun came up?"
The carpenter stared at him in disbelief. "Hook?" Starkey nodded. "Why?"
"I've wondered that myself." Starkey turned a critical eye on Hook's back and fiddled with the guard of his cutlass. "If you ask me I don't think it was entirely Cecilia's fault that their engagement didn't work."
Mason snorted. "You're awfully quick to pin that accusation on someone, ain't ya?"
"Well can you think of any other good reason we're out here chasing down a cannibalistic cabin boy?"
Mason thought for a moment. "Principal." He decided. Starkey rolled his eyes, and they walked on.
***
Meanwhile, on a neglected long-boat bobbing aimlessly out on the ocean, Cookson opened his eyes to one amazing headache and the empty view of the morning sky. He sat up quickly, instantly regretting it as his vision flickered with red spots and his head sent a complaint all the way down to his tailbone. But he wasn't aboard the ship. He wasn't passed out in the gutter outside a tavern, either, which would have been preferable to other choices. He seemed to be in a rowboat. In fact, he seemed to be in a rowboat that was very far away from any solid target. He stood up (slowly) and turned in a circle on the shaky platform. There was water to the left of him. There was water to the back of him. There was even water to the right and the front of him.
It was Mullins' doing, he decided. Letting go a set of the most fluent curses he knew in both Greek and English, Cookson called up a mental map of where the Jolly Roger had been located by the island, and checked with the sun for directions. He could only assume it was morning. Mullins most likely would have set him adrift in the direction perfectly away from the island, meaning the direction he ought to row was….. Squinting at the sun for a moment and thinking, he snatched the single oar Mullins had been so gracious to leave him and turned the boat around 180 degrees.
The captain was going to have his hide when he got back…
***
"Slightly doesn't have me under any spell, Mullins!" Billy shouted with exasperation. Mullins, who was now a good six feet further away than he had been a few minutes ago, had his knife out again.
"Ye've been bewitched to saying that! Don't worry, Billy Boy, I'll stop his cursed workings!"
"Mullins, LISTEN TO ME!" Billy grabbed hold of both Mullins' wrists and held them in an unbreakable grip by his shoulders, forcing him to see him. "I am NOT bewitched. Slightly is NOT A WITCH! I'm not possessed, I'm not being controlled by some demon, it's all me, Mullins!"
"Billy—"
"I KILLED SMEE! I'M the one who ate him! I didn't want to do it but it was still me!" His voice cracked and he jerked his hands back from Mullins, fisting them at his sides and swallowing to keep the stress from pushing past its cork. He continued in a very controlled voice. "That's why the fairies are looking for me. It's not because of what happened on the ship, it's because of what it meant. They didn't even know I was the one who killed him. They thought the croc did it." His voice softened in tone. "I have to find someone who can help me, before I fall asleep again. Someone who could get rid of the ghoul in me."
Mullins looked astounded. "You really believe what you say, don't ye." He asked softly, slowly lowering his dagger from the direction of the as-yet-mute Lost Boy. Billy nodded.
"Two people have told me the same thing. What else am I supposed to believe?"
Mullins looked at Billy and frowned, apparently thinking.
"If we pretend for a moment I believe you, and we pretend you know what you're saying, how do you explain how you've been living this past year? You've been eating Cookson's food, living on a ship, oceans away from the boneyards. You've slept with a rosary and you didn't burn, you lived just like any other boy in your position. How could ye do all this if ye aren't human?"
Billy winced at that. "I don't know."
"Then how can you be so sure you're a monster?"
Billy sighed and closed his eyes. He looked tired.
"Could I be anything else? I'm not possessed, Mullins, that much has been made clear. And if I'm not possessed, what sort of man kills his crewmates and doesn't even remember it in the morning? What sort of man am I if I'm only a man?"
Mullins didn't answer. Billy turned his eyes up to him and looked, just for a moment, a most innocent thing, void of fault or guilt or knowledge. It was a fleeting illusion and then it was gone, replaced by a more corporeal image of a frightened, exhausted cabin boy in miles over his head, innocent only so much as it took to want to trust him in this temporary perdition.
Slightly, fulfilling the same observatory role as the trees in this conversation, sat down at the base of one and dropped his head back against the rough bark. Somewhere, a chickadee was singing.
"I don't know, Billy." Mullins said, replacing his dagger in his sash finally. "Nothing makes sense ever since we came to this cursed place. For the sake of argument say I believe you. What are you going to do?"
Billy gave a short, humorless laugh. "Run. Half the island's after me, and all that's left is after Slightly. I'll run and I'll hide until they all give it up. I can do it, you know. If Slightly comes with me maybe we can find someone to help, together. If not, I guess…I'll do it on my own."
"I'm coming with you!" Slightly interjected, sounding offended that Billy even said such a thing. "I've slightly come this far, where do you expect me to turn back to now? I could have gone back to the Lost Boys last night but I chose to stay with you! You think I'm going to be chased off just because this'll take slightly longer than you thought it would?"
"I guess not." Billy smirked. He looked back to Mullins, his expression fading. "What are YOU going to do?"
"The same thing I was going to do before I found ye." He hitched his thumbs in his sash. "I'm going to stand beside you against the captain."
For the first time since Mullins had found him, Billy Jukes smiled genuinely.
"Thanks, Mullins."