Captain James Hook and the Curse of Peter Pan (2 page)

My body thumped to the floor beside my bed.
 
My first instinct was to hide beneath it, fearing trolls or demons, but I decided against hiding and scrambled to one knee.
 
I peaked over the side of my bed, searching for whoever attacked me, but saw nothing except an empty room in the dim moonlight.

I did, however, see the first of many tragedies my visitor leaves in the wake of his foolishness.
 
My ship, the replica of my father’s vessel, lay broken in the center of my room.
 
The mast was snapped in half and the damage to the hull listed the boat forward and to the left.
 
My heart did the same.
 
I dropped to the floor and began picking up the pieces of that perfect ship.

Then something extraordinary happened.
 
A light swirled and swept about my room, not bound to any candle or lantern.
 
It was a light without heat or fuel.
 
It settled on my desk and I found myself walking toward it as if pulled by an invisible rope.
 
The light was like that of a firework sparkler my father once brought back from a voyage to the Far East.
       

As I approached it, the light danced from side to side in small jumps, like a grasshopper too stupid to recognize if it is in danger but still trying to keep its distance.
 
The thought gave me an idea, but as I grabbed for an empty jar on my shelf, the light took off and began circling the room again, this time too high to catch.

It was then that I saw the curious boy, perched in the upper corner against the ceiling of my room. That delicate light rushed past his face, igniting his eyes in a terrifying reflection.
 
I screamed again and dropped the jar, causing it to shatter on the floor as well.

“Shh! We don’t want any adults to come,” the boy said. “They will ruin all the fun we can have. My name is Peter Pan. I saw the ship through the window and wanted to play with it.
 
I love playing captain and don’t have any toys that look that nice where I’m from.”

“I am James Hoodkins,” I told him, wiping a tear from my cheek.
 
I rose from the ruin of my broken ship to meet him eye to eye. “And there are more polite ways to ask if someone wants to play than bursting into their room at night.”
 
He nodded as if trying to understand.

“Why are you crying?” he asked.

“I wasn’t crying.”

“Yes, you were.
 
Just before.”

I told him that having tears of shock are not the same thing as crying.
 
Although I had never been more terrified of any man or creature in my short life, I was surely not going to show such poor form by giving him that satisfaction.

“You wrecked my ship,” I told him, pointing to the mess on the floor.

“That was her fault,” he said.
 
The light began to furiously encircle his head, creating a sort of halo.
 
He argued with it, as a crazy person would talk to himself in the night.
 
The glow of the argument lit up his blond hair and dirty green outfit. When he began to float down from the ceiling, the boy and his light stopped squabbling.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

The boy stared blankly at me and asked, “Do what?”

“Come now,” I said. “Don’t be silly. How do you fly like that?” The boy laughed as he glided around the room, twirling and spinning.

“I think a happy thought,” he said.
 
“Then I take to the air and I’m off to my next big adventure.”
 
He soared for several more moments before asking, “Well, James Hoodkins, what do you want to play?” Hundreds of answers raced through my mind, but only one idea interested me.

“I want to fly.”

Peter’s eyes filled up with joy and he was once again in the air.

“Just think of a happy thought and let it lift you away.” Of the joys that flooded to mind, my Emily’s love conquered all.
 
With my eyes closed, I leapt, expecting to take flight among angels. I hung in the air for an instant and then fell to the floor with a thud.

“What happened?” I asked, looking up at Peter with betrayal in my eyes. “That was the happiest thought I had.” His face wrinkled with confusion.
 
After a moment, he snapped his fingers and smiled.

“That’s right, you need fairy dust as well.”

“And you didn’t think that was important enough to tell me before?
 
I could have leapt to my death out of the window.”

“But you didn’t,” Pan said.
 
He placed his hands on his hips as if to stress how proud he was of his keen observation.

“Well,” I started, trying to sound less angry than I was, “Where can I get fairy dust?”

“Where else?” Pan laughed. He pointed over to the corner of my room where the sparkling light rested on the lid of a trunk of old toys.

“Her name is Tinkerbell,” Peter said.
 
I nodded to it politely. “She’s a fairy.”

“Rubbish,” I said on reflex. A flying boy was one thing, but a fairy was too far beyond belief. Yet, the instant that the word came out of my mouth, the light went out and the creature hurdled to the floor.
 
Peter dashed through the air, caught it, and brought it to my desk in a rush.

“You’ve killed her,” he said.
 
A sob brewed beneath his words.

“Now we’ve each destroyed something the other cherishes,” I said, not really meaning it but still hurt from the loss of my replica ship and the fall to the floor. “We’re even.” I turned my back to the scene, but softened at the sound of tears.
 
I had so few visitors, day or night, due to my condition.
 
I shouldn’t make a habit of sending new friends away, even ones as odd as this unnatural child and his sparkler.

What I saw when I walked over to him mocked the barrier between what was and what shouldn’t be.
 
The doused light was in fact a small woman, no bigger than a child’s thumb, with the wings of an insect.
 
She, too, was dressed like Peter, in a sort of green vegetation woven into tattered cloth.

“You can save her,” Peter said, choking back tears.
 
“You have to say that you believe in fairies.”

“I don’t know if I can,” I told him. “This is like some dream.”

“You have to say it!”

If she were still just a light, it would have been easy to doubt her existence.
 
As I stood over her wilted little body, my conviction melted at the edges. The walls of my truth collapsed with thundering silence as a whole world of possibilities opened up to me.
 
She undeniably existed and she was undeniably dying.

“I do believe in fairies,” I said.
 
A spark burst from her mouth.
 
I repeated it and more sparks flew.
 
I said it a third time and the light exploded around her, lifting her up.
 
He leapt to meet her and I watched as they circled my room in celebration.

“Is she alright?” I asked.
 
My words stopped Peter and the light cold.
 
He bent over and whispered to Tinkerbell. She responded, but no matter how hard I listened, I could only hear the ringing and chiming of little bells.
 
I stepped closer to better hear her unusual noises.

“What’s she saying?” I asked. “I don’t understand her.”

“That’s just how they talk,” Peter explained.

“Does she still have enough fairy dust to help me fly, too?”
 
I asked. She continued ringing and he began to laugh.

“She says ‘no’ because you’re an ugly boy and you wouldn’t know a fairy if it flew in and poked you on the nose,” he giggled.

“She’s a vile little thing, isn’t she?” This time Tinkerbell darted right up to my face and rang loudly.
 
Having been raised by a British Captain and knowing sailors my whole life, I could only imagine what she was saying now.

“It’s not her fault,” Pan said. “Fairies are so small that they can only feel or think one thing at a time. Right now, she hates you because you killed her.” I turned back to Tinkerbell in time to see her give me the most obscene gesture before she soared through the open window into the night’s sky.

“That wasn’t very adult of her,” I said, a little insulted.

“Adults,” Peter said under his breath.
 
“All they want us to do is grow up.”

“We all must grow up sometime, Peter.”

“Not me,” he laughed. “I’ll be a boy forever.”

The word “rubbish” formed on my lips, but I caught myself before it was spoken.
 
Memories of the last time I jumped to judgment rushed through my mind. I could no longer afford the comfort of growing comfortable in my truths.

“I have to go after Tink,” Peter said as he glided over to the window. “In the mood she’s in, she can get into all sorts of trouble.” He smirked at me as if to hint at yet grander secrets.

“Are you coming back?” I asked.
 
He puzzled over the question for long moments before finally answering.

“I don’t know.”

Peter leapt through the window and was gone in an instant.
 
He left me standing in the mess of a broken ship and shattered glass, but I didn’t mind.
 
Pan made anything possible and I wanted to know all of it.

Chapter Three

The next morning I stormed down the stairs, the thunder of my footfalls shook the house around me.
 
While cleaning my room last night, I pieced together a thousand ways to tell my mother about the strange boy who flew into my room.
 
She was a believer. She must have seen them, or something like them, before.
 
My mind raced with wonder at what adventures she could share now that I believed as she did.

I leapt down the final four steps and raced to the dining room.
 
I burst through the door crying out, “Mother! Mother, your stories are true! Peter Pan can fly!”

But it wasn’t my mother’s warm laugh that greeted me first.
 
The cold stare of my father stopped me as dead as gunfire.
 
He sat at the head of the table in full uniform, his face reddening slightly.

“Father,” I breathed.
 
“You’re back days early.” He said nothing.
 
Instead, he nodded at one of the place settings and drew his lips tighter at the corners, instructing me to sit and remain silent.
 
Father’s magic was different than my mother’s in that he could express whole ideas with simple looks.

As I moved to the table, I noticed the fourth place setting.
 
A hand clasped down on my shoulder before I had a chance to ask who the setting was for.

“Your father and I were carried away on slightly different business,” a voice said just behind my ear.
 
It was barely above a whisper, but I knew it well.
 
I looked up at a man with lean, sharp features and steel-gray eyes.

“Mr. Ashley,” my father said, “come and sit with us.”

“I’d be delighted,” Mr. Ashley responded.
 
Heath Ashley served under my father since he first entered the Royal Navy.
 
Father always spoke highly of him and, whenever Father was home, Heath Ashley was always at the house performing one task or another.
 
Only in the last year did Heath receive a commission to serve as a first officer on a different vessel.
 
We hadn’t seen much of him since then.

We were already seated when Mother came in from the kitchen, carrying trays of food.

“Well, I for one am thrilled that you are home,” she said as she took her place at Father’s side.
 
We rose and stood until she was seated, like gentlemen of good form should.

“You look exhausted, Heath.
 
What have you been doing?” Mother asked.

“I’ve been searching for the missing boy all night,” he responded. “Dr. Sotheby’s kid.”

“That’s dreadful,” Mother said.
 
“James, you remember Donald Sotheby from school, the one with the curly hair?” I nodded and recalled that the last time I saw him. He and one of the other boys got into a scrap on the way home. Curly always liked playing jokes on other kids and it must have caught up to him that time.

“So, how is your commission?” Mother asked Heath after a long pause.

“It has held many surprises,” he said, “and many rewards.” Father’s eyes widened and tensed at the edges. It was not uncommon to hear them go on for hours about the most trivial details of life at sea. This hush between them unsettled me.
 

“Rewards?” Mother asked.
 
She darted a questioning look between Heath and my father.

“Heath is getting his own command,” Father said.
 
“By this time next month, he’ll be the youngest captain in the fleet.”

“That’s outstanding,” Mother applauded as her face alighted with joy. “Which ship will you have?”

“The
Champlain
,” Heath responded.

“Isn’t that the ship you are already on?” I asked.

“Indeed,” Heath said.
 
“The captain I am serving under is being promoted to admiral.” Mother gave Father a puzzled look but didn’t speak.
 
Confused, I said what she was thinking.
 

“But, Father, weren’t you supposed to be promoted to admiral after this last voyage?” All three turned to me, but I wasn’t sure why.
 
It was a perfectly fine question.

“It seems that Heath knew which man to back in this fight,” Father said.

“You did the right thing stepping aside this time, John,” Heath said.
 
“The King’s Navy will have an Admiral Hoodkins soon enough.
 
Besides, as I recall we both followed his lead on this last, most worthwhile venture.” Father tensed again and fixed his eyes firmly on Ashley.