Chapter 25 – Return to Neverland
March 19, 1660

The next morning I was woken by a soldier telling me the female prisoners were awake and wanting to out, so I began to dress. A look at my uniform jacket and its many slashes reminded me how close it had been but after studying Hook's scarlet overcoat, and trying it on for size as a temporary replacement, found that I was just a shade larger in size than Hook himself. Still, I liked the coat and a second perusement of Hook's clothing showed the man shared one of my mental peculiarities, he liked to dress fancy at all times, something I couldn't do in truck driving because the materials just didn't survive the at times extremely rough conditions and forced me to dress in jeans and button up shirts, something you see a lot in cowboys.

Leaving both the scarlet overcoat and uniform jacket behind, I left the officer's area to find most of my crew lounging at or around the center tables as they enjoyed breakfast which smelled wonderful. Ella and Linguini were really getting along as they served everyone, and Colette was smiling as she cooked away on the stove, then stopped as I smelled something truly wonderful.

"Bread?" I asked her to get a smile.

"Oui," she said as she opened the door to the oven. "These pirates have no idea what they have. Leaven? Pah! They let it go to waste."

"I bet it will be wonderful," I remarked as I felt my mouth water. Hardtack was like dry Subway flatbread; you could eat it, it would sustain you, but did you really want to?

"Would you expect anything less?" she said with a smile. I left her to her work, having watched her from a distance enough to know that feeding any amount of crew for any time was a difficult task that could easily consume hers, Linguini's and Ella's time for the whole day, a task made more arduous in that Colette preferred to treat every meal as a culinary experience and not just making some sort of stock food and do a buffet style dinner.

"Are you the captain," a honey-skinned woman asked as I approached the bars. Dressed in an off-the-shoulder blouse with an external corset over a purple skirt, she was the only woman up and about.

"Colonel Owen Hunt," I said as I introduced myself. "Are you ladies well?"

"I got a splitting headache," she told me as she rubbed at a temple. "You can call me Esmeralda."

"Anybody got willow bark?" another girl groused from her hammock.

"Sorry," I said as I gave her a wan smile then stopped myself from adding 'Tylenol hasn't been invented yet.'

"So what's your intent with us, Colonel Hunt?" Esmeralda asked me. Reminded that they were still locked up, I brought out the keys and unlocked the door.

"I'll return you to port," I told them as I swung it wide. "You may contact your families and either resume your journey or start new lives in Saint Eustatius."

"You mean you'll just set us free?" Esmeralda said as she left the cell quickly, the other girls scrambling hastily to join her as if the door could swing shut and seal their fate.

"Certainly," I told her as she looked incredulously at me. "I'm a Dutch privateer tasked by the king to end the threat of Captain Hook."

"I wish you had done that before he attacked our ship," a young brown haired teen said dourly, her dress similar in style to Esmeralda's own leading me to believe they had been from the same ship. Esmeralda pulled the youngster into her arms as the gave a hiccup of a sob, a tear forming on the older woman's face as well.

"I'm sorry," I said, hanging my head as the last of the girls filed out and I shut the door and locked it.

"We have no family left," Esmeralda told me. "My husband, her brothers, they were all killed when Hook captured our ship."

"I faired nae better," a red haired woman said as she injected herself into the conversation. She was dressed in a simple white dress with a similar lace cover and sash and a large, lacey shawl around her shoulders to remind me of a wedding dress though she was barefoot underneath.

"Were you married?" I asked her but she shrugged.

"I had yet to meet him," the woman finally said. "I'm Monica O'Dooley, by the way."

"A pleasure," I said bowing slightly to her as I gestured to the table where food was already being set down. The other three didn't seem inclined to talk, so I left them to their misery as they ate.

Going topside, I soon got the ships underway and heading back to Neverland, taking only a few hours to return with both ships. I was also reminded that the my new brig would be slightly slower than my sloop as Timon had to lower several of the sails so as not to pass me by but figured that if I could get a good round of chain-shot on a fleeing vessel I might be able to slow them enough to capture.

Pulling up to the dock, Clarion and the girls there all seemed to file out and wander down to the shoreline awaiting our arrival, but once they realized it wasn't Hook and his men it set them all to talking in their own little groups as some pulled out long stem pipes and began smoking.

"I am impressed," Clarion said as I stepped down the gangplank. "Is he still alive?"

"For now," I said as I looked over the girls, trying to do a headcount and found there were over forty in total. "He's got a date with the gallows when I return."

"I'd love to see that," she said with a smirk.

"I'm willing to carry all you girls with me," I offered her, but her smile grew strained as she eyed the girls.

"I'm afraid we can't," she told me with a sigh. "The crop…"

"You can live without it," I told her as I tried to get her to quit. "It'll hurt, you'll want to rip your insides out and the pain is worse than childbirth, but it will pass."

"I hope so," she said softly as she pulled out a broken piece of a pipe. "I really do."

"Do I need to stay and help you through it?" I asked her but she shook her head.

"I guess I just needed to be reminded that Heaven still exists," she finally said as she put the ruined pipe away. "Might I ask a favor?"

"Leave you with as much food as we can spare and return one day?" I proffered and she nodded.

"A month or so, maybe," she told me as she looked to the fields. "What happens after that..."

"When I get Hook back to Saint Eustatius I'll be gifted five hundred acres," I told her and she smiled. "While I have no plans to stay there and will be moving my base of operation to Saint Martin once the new governor is selected, I can at least offer you ladies the chance to survive on the mainland."

"Out of the goodness of your heart?" she said and I couldn't help the smirk. "I don't believe anyone has that much good in them."

"True," I said, conceding that point. "I was thinking of being your landlord. You can use the land to grow poppies or maybe sugar cane while maybe operating a brothel at the edge of the property so all the girls with you can contribute to their fullest."

"Now that, sir, I will believe," Clarion told me with a smile of her own. "Very well, I accept on behalf of all of us."

We shook on that and with Colette's supervision the two vessels food stocks were detailed and enough food for three months were left with the girls while giving us a good month of food stocks for each ship. Even though the day was far from over, I decided to lay over the night and let the men enjoy themselves before we returned to port, the Hook and his men protected by the married men and women I carried aboard like Aladdin and Jasmine, Simba and Nala, along with Colette and Linguini who seemed more interested in the peace and quiet as the men aboard left for their own merriment.

I stayed nearby myself, transferring my personal items to the new ship I dubbed the Scarlet Wench as I loved the color and style of Hook's overcoat and wanted something similar. Once settled, I took my guitar and played songs while watching the merriment unfold in the pirate village, letting my mind wander and plan.

Having the girls willing to leave and come back to port was going to be a plus as I didn't want to leave them here to be forgotten. While I didn't like their smoking of opium, their dependence did give me more leverage as they needed land as well when they moved to grow and maintain their own addiction. I wasn't a doctor by any means, most of my medical knowledge coming from shows like Mash 4077 and House MD, even feeling confident enough to do a tracheotomy if the need arises as it was a relatively simple operation to open the throat up and access the windpipe so a patient can breath.

As far as the six prisoners turned passengers, who I had given leave to use the one room in the officer's area with all the extra beds to sleep their headaches away in peace, I wasn't quite sure what to do with them. Esmeralda and Hilda seemed confident enough to handle themselves come what may, but Monica was a green teenager with no idea how to survive. The other three were still catatonic, moving and functioning on a basic level but as the old saying goes, the lights were on but nobody was home but the maid.

"You play beautifully," Ariel said as she joined me on the quarter-deck of the bridge where I was positioned to watch the sunset.

"Thank you," I said as I set the recorder aside where I had been playing My Heart Will Go On made famous by Celine Dion for the movie Titanic. The song itself was simple enough but would sound better on an instrument with better range, in my opinion.

"Care to take a walk?" she asked me with a smile. I rose and offered her an elbow which she took and began to lead her off the ship and down the beach towards the setting sun. Content to bask in the beauty of the moment, the color of the pink sky, the gold of the sun as it neared the water and the sparkling beauty it created, I didn't realize we were leaving the village far behind until we crested a hill to better see the sun setting and realized we'd covered a good mile already.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Ariel asked as we crested the small hill to find more beach and an unobstructed view of the setting sun. From here the sea looked like sparkling diamonds as the sun shone across its surface.

"Oh yes," I said as Ariel pulled me forward. I felt a pang of dismay at her wanting to leave our vantage point over the beauty, but followed her nonetheless as she led me to the beach where she finally removed her arm from mine. I turned to see her look over the water with a longing smile before glancing down at her attire and began working on removing it.

"Not afraid to get your clothes wet?" she asked me as she pulled her vest off and dropped it on the beach. Taking that as a cue, I began stripping as well as I wondered what was going on, then remembered Ariel was a mermaid as she stripped out of her linen shirt and began to remove her small boots.

Once we were nude she took me by the hand and led me into the surf waiting till the water was to our knees before she dove forward over an incoming wave. Taken momentarily aback, I got to see her nude body transform back into a mermaid as she was covered in water, then dove in behind her. She seemed to sense my hesitation, waiting on me to come alongside where she again took my hand and pulled me further from shore into deeper water until she let go. I floated there in a standing position for a moment before Ariel popped up in front of me, her arms going around me to pull me to her bare chest.

"You can swim," she said as we floated there.

"Float, rather," I said as we bobbed in the water. "If left here it'd take me a while to get back to shore."

"I won't," she said with a smile as I placed my arms around her waist.

"I thought you were waiting for something," I asked as it hit me why she had me out in the water.

"I was," she said she smiled. "I felt the shift this morning."

"Whenever your ready," I said when she leaned in close and kissed me. Our lips pressed together and with her arms around me, she then pulled me under the water with a mere flick of her tail. Knowing her gills would provide me air was a small comfort and gave me a new respect for scuba divers as the glittering surface seemed to fall away as we dove deep to the ocean floor where Ariel laid me out on the sand.

For maybe the first time in my life I felt what it was like to be a woman as Ariel forced my legs apart to settle herself over my body. With our lips locked together and my eyes able to see nothing but Ariel's own and the ocean's glittering surface through her red hair, I was forced to go off feel alone for what was happening.

Ariel reached between our bodies where my cannon was already in ready position as if it sensed what was about to happen, guiding it to her entrance. I could feel the scaly exterior of her tail as I was maneuvered into position then through a hole into the warm interior of Ariel's body. I felt her wince as I slid inside, her breath sucking in as we shared the air provided by her gills and I had the idea that her gills simply pumped air into her airway and she still breathed air in and out like a normal human, but the feel of my cannon stretching her insides brought me back to the moment as Ariel forced my cannon deep inside her.

Once seated, Ariel put her hands on the sandy floor above my shoulders as she began to wriggle her tail. The feeling reminded me of Sil riding my cannon, and with nothing else to do wrapped my legs around Ariel's scaly tail as she rode me, making sure to regulate my breathing and not pant which was difficult considering Ariel soon began riding me like a stud into battle. As the feeling of climaxing approached, I began holding my breath to keep from hurting Ariel even as she moved her tail faster, water itself beginning to move past us to make it feel like we were in a riptide and she was merely holding us still.

As I got closer to shooting off my cannon, I got the idea that mermaids didn't climax in the same way, a feeling that solidified when I blew my cannon and Ariel didn't change her pace at all, her muscles milking my cannon of all its seed and seemingly draining me as well. She didn't stop moving until I felt completely drained, laying there on top of me shivering with her eyes glossed over in apparent ecstasy as my seed worked its way through her body and fertilizing a new generation of mermaids

With the heavy breathing part over I resumed normal breathing and was almost afraid something was wrong when life flashed back into her eyes. Picking me up and a swish of her tail had us moving again, this time for the surface where we broke water as the last of the sun disappeared and what had to be a trick of the light as I swear the horizon flashed green.

"You made it," Ariel said with a chuckle.

"That was intense," I told her as I turned back to look at her. "I thought for a second you had fallen asleep."

"It's so different being back in the water," she told me with a smile. "That feeling of pure joy that fills you as your seed flows into my belly and then, like gunpowder, explodes and overwhelms you. I almost can't wait to do that again."

"If you want to dive back down," I offered and Ariel smiled.

"Are you sure?" she asked me and I nodded my assent. Kissing me again, we dove back under as the light faded and the moon rose, but that green flash of light nagged at me as Ariel pushed me back to the ocean's floor, but something in the water felt off as Ariel sagged in relief after our second round of love-making, something that made Ariel pull away as she looked up and around for danger before kissing me again and taking me straight to the beach.

"What was that?" I asked her as I picked her up so that her legs would dry off and return.

"Sorry," she said with a wince. "There was something..."

"Wrong," I said and she looked at me.

"I've never felt such pure hatred," told me as she placed her head against my chest. "It rings in the sea like poison."

"Let's get back to the ship," I told her as I looked to the horizon but found nothing. "Can't be too careful."

Ariel nodded before turning to bend over and grab her clothes and I mine. Once dressed we rushed back to the village but the party was still in full swing, no one else seeming to notice the change in the sea. With a cutlass on my hip and my pistols loaded and ready, I sat the entire night watching and waiting for trouble to find me, afraid that it would as the party continued on, with no one but Ariel and I the wiser.

The question was why.