CHAPTER NINE: The Pirates Of The Jolly Roger
He hid himself by the shadows of one of the jungle's larger trees, as if he was a thing unworthy of being shined upon by the face of the Never Land's sun. He had learned a few curses from Tinker Bell, those forbidden words that he heard when she thought he was not listening. He used the baddest of them that he could remember as he looked at his body. He was transforming into an entirely different creature, and he was afraid of the changes. His arms and legs were disgustingly long and bulged at the queerest places. Hair was sprouting at the most inconvenient spots. Why, even his face was starting to become hairy! And when he spoke, oh, horror of horrors! The voice that came out of his throat was not his, for it rumbled deeply in the most alarming manner.
But these bodily changes were not the foremost in his list of worries. Lately he had noticed that he was having a difficult time lifting himself up into the air. Though he had grown outwardly, he knew that it was not his increased weight that was the cause, but some heavy thing that buried itself inside his chest.
Then it came to the point when he could not even lift himself an inch off the forest floor. As he recognized this fact the thing inside his chest became even more heavy, and caused new feelings to grow inside him. Feelings that were dark and painful which robbed his eyes of their stars, replacing them with the coldest shards of ice.
By this time he had resolved to never see Tinker Bell anymore. That lying little imp! She had promised him he would never grow up, but he was doing exactly that. He took to stomping about the forest floor, hacking away angrily at the underbush with a sturdy stick he had fashioned from a fallen branch.
It was during one of these days that he came upon the pirates. They were making their way through the forest in search of an Indian village to ransack, singing their crude songs in off-key voices. By force of habit he hid himself behind a tree as he watched them with his cold eye. He had never seen them this close, and in this distance he could see how very different one pirate was from another. One was old and toothless; another held a blade between his teeth; another had a ring through his large nose; another one's skin was covered with the most curious assortment of patterns.
But despite all of these differences, he recognized there was one thing common to all the pirates.
They were all men.
Like himself.
-------
He sprang out of his hiding place, and suddenly they were all upon him, their knives and teeth bared and gleaming. He struggled against them, but he had no weapon with which to defend himself, and soon he was overpowered. They cursed and snarled like mad dogs as they bounded back to their ship with their prisoner, who bounced above the shoulder of an ebony-skinned giant. He could do nothing in his discomfort but bite the gag they had stuffed into his mouth, as both his arms and legs were tied rather too tightly together.
Upon reaching the shore, they threw him roughly on the floor of a rowboat, and then they were on their way to their ship. As they approached it he saw its black flag waving forbiddingly in the air. He savored the tangy essence of the sea winds as they whipped about his face, and wondered how he could have endured all that time inside the forest with its stuffy humidity.
The rowboat bumped gently against the side of the ship, and once again he was draped over the shoulder of the black giant. Again he was thrown roughly to the floor, and he landed most painfully on his side. He looked on as the dirty boots – and some dirty bootless feet – parted and gave way to a pair of relatively cleaner ones attached to rather short, hairy legs.
"Boys, boys! Not too roughly!" a voice admonished almost in a motherly tone, but in a man's voice. He looked up past the short legs and a bulging middle right into the bespectacled face of a small old man.
"Why, hello there!" The man smiled kindly at him, as if he was not squirming like a fish out of water on the floor. He glared back coldly, but it was lost on the jolly old man. "Welcome to the Jolly Roger! I am Cap'n Smee… well, not exactly Captain, but you see, we've got no real captain now, but we took a vote and agreed that I was the most captain-ish of us all. Am I right, you mangy dogs!" The last was roared in a voice which more or less exactly failed to come across as fierce.
But the other pirates nodded stupidly, and some roared back enthusiastically, "Aye, Cap'n Smee!"
The not-exactly-captain person addressed him once again. "What is your name, sir?" There was the longest silence as he waited for an answer, but the prisoner only stared back. Then one of the pirates ventured in an unsure voice, "Uh… Cap'n Smee… the gag?"
"Oh, yes, yes," Captain Smee stammered as he fumbled with the gag's knot.
He spat as the gag was removed, and gnashed his teeth fiercely at the pirates. "I have no name," he growled. "My fairy calls me her Boy."
Some of the pirates snickered, and the one with the ring through his nose put his thumbs together and waved the fingers about, in a way which reminds one of a fairy's wings. "Ooh, little fairy!" The voice was high-pitched and mocking.
He bristled at this, and his eyes glowed red with hatred. With a sudden burst of strength and speed, the ropes broke and he was free. Only a gleaming blur was seen as he managed to unsheathe a sword from the nearest pirate, and then with a sickening sound it went through flesh, and the nose-ringed pirate was no more.
The others backed out in horror, gasping as one. "Does anyone have more to say?" He said, each word dripping with venom as he held the sword out.
"N—no – no more, Captain – I mean – " Smee held his shaking hands out, as if warding off the sword that was being moved dangerously close to his own nose. Even the stupidest of the pirates who heard their Captain Smee speak these words realized the significance of the concession of the title, albeit unconsciously.
And that was how the pirates of the Jolly Roger found themselves a new Captain, a proper Captain, with no more need for voting, for there was no doubt that one whose eyes could glow as sinisterly red as those of this daunting figure before them did is proper captain material. Never mind that he knows little, if any at all, of seafaring. That could be learned in time, but making one's eyes glow red is not something one can learn by practice.
But what of his name? No pair of eyes, no matter how keen, could find in him a trace of the essence of the Boy that he was before. For the longest time, he was simply addressed as Captain, but that one word was enough to send the sturdiest of the pirates' knees to knocking.
The mermaids were the first outside of the ship to know of the new captain, and they whispered amongst themselves. When the fairies learned that this new captain of the pirates held an exceptionally deep hatred for their kind, they avoided him and his crew at all cost. The Indian tribes held secret meetings about how to better protect their villages from the increasingly cruel attacks and plundering.
And the Never Land's winds blew ever colder.