I tried to stand up, and couldn’t. If I didn’t get help, didn’t get the leg sewn up as I’d done before, then it wouldn’t heal properly and I would never walk right on it again.
I found a tall stick to use as a crutch, and managed to prop myself up on it. Then slowly, ever so slowly, I limped across the meadow.
I was halfway there when a figure rose out of the darkness from the trail below. I squinted; then a smaller figure appeared beside the larger one.
Nod and Charlie.
Charlie ran to me, crying, “Jamie! Jamie!”
“You didn’t listen,” I murmured. “You didn’t mind.”
“We came to take care of you,” Charlie said. “The way that you always take care of us.”
“Didn’t you believe that I could beat him?” I asked, but there was no rancor in it. “I was always Battle champion, you know.”
“Yes,” Nod said. “But we knew that Peter would cheat.”
The tears came then, the tears that were for everything I loved and everything I lost, the tears that I’d been unable to cry for Sally, the tears that I’d never known to cry for my mama.
All those boys. All those bodies. All that weight on my heart.
Sally.
My mother.
And the one person I wanted dead that could never, ever die.
“He did cheat,” I sobbed. “He did.”
“He always does,” Nod said. “He would never have let you win.”
• • •
Nod and Charlie looked after me until I was well again. We never saw Peter in those days, nor Tink, nor anyone. Nod showed us the place where he’d buried Fog, and we often found him there just before the sun went down, talking quietly to his brother. I tried not to listen to what he said at those times. It was just between Nod and Fog.
We lived in the meadow until I could walk without the stick. I considered it my punishment to be trapped there near the place where I’d killed so many boys at Peter’s behest, killed them because we’d thought it was fun.
Every day I looked at my wrist, at the place where my hand used to be, at the mark that once was mine to give and now belonged to Peter.
On the day I could walk unencumbered again we went away from that place of blood, that place where Peter’s life was fed by the boys who died in Battle. I’ve never returned there since the day me and Nod and Charlie left it.
We went, of course, to the pirates.
• • •
They don’t call me Jamie anymore. I covered the stump of my hand with a hook, and so that became my name.
It’s all right, really, for Jamie was a boy. A foolish boy, one who thought he could do right, who thought he could escape a monster called Peter.
He brings new boys to the island again, for Peter must have playmates. He flies through the night and past the stars and finds them, and when he finds them he gives them the gift he never gave me, and sprinkles them with fairy dust.
When I see their shadows silhouetted against the moon, my heart burns and my teeth gnash and I want to point the ship’s cannon at them and shoot them out of the sky.
Mostly I don’t, because it’s not those boys I want to kill. I’ve had enough of killing boys. There’s only one person I want to die—the person who never will.
And sometimes, sometimes, he even lets them go home again if they don’t want to stay. And sometimes he doesn’t, and they die up in that mountain so Peter can live.
But that’s a freedom I will never have. Peter’s curse means that though we sail the ship away from the island we will always return again, no matter what direction we sail.
If we head north, with the island behind us, we will soon find it again, peeking over the horizon. If we sail south or east or west, the same will happen. It’s as if we sail upside down and around in a circle, and find ourselves at the top of it over and over and over again.
The other pirates don’t know why they’re cursed to return to the island, though I think Nod suspects. Nod is the only one who truly understands what happened between Peter and me. Even Charlie doesn’t understand it completely.
Peter will never let me go. If I’m not his playmate and friend, then I am to be his playmate and enemy. He brought me to the island and he swore I would never leave and so I haven’t.
It will always be Peter and me, like it was in the beginning, like it will be in the end. Peter, who took everything from me and gave everything too.
Peter, who loved me best of everyone except himself.
He tells the new boys I am a villain, and they call me Captain Hook.
If I am a villain, it’s because Peter made me one, because Peter needs to be the shining sun that all the world turns around. Peter needed to be a hero, so somebody needed to be a villain.
The anger that I carried with me all the days of my childhood is for only one person now, and if I ever catch him again he’ll be sorry.
I know I can find a way. He’s given me so much time, all the time in the world, and there must be a way.
Someday. Someday, he’ll be sorry he crossed me.
When I hear him laughing, out there in the sky and in the night, and that laugh burns me deep down in my heart, I know I’ll find a way to make him sorry.
I will make him so sorry.
I hate Peter Pan.
About the Author
Photo by Kathryn McCallum Osgood
Christina Henry is the author of the Chronicles of Alice, including Red Queen and Alice, and the national bestselling Black Wings series, featuring Agent of Death Madeline Black and her popcorn-loving gargoyle, Beezle. Christina lives in Chicago with her husband and son. You can visit her on the Web at christinahenry.net, facebook.com/authorChristinaHenry and twitter.com/C_Henry_Author.
Copyright
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Copyright © 2017 by Tina Raffaele
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Henry, Christina, 1974–, author. | Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew), 1860–1937. Peter Pan.
Title: Lost boy : the true story of Captain Hook / Christina Henry.
Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017003070 (print) | LCCN 2017008682 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399584022 (softcover) | ISBN 9780399584039 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Peter Pan (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Never-Never Land (Imaginary place)—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy / Historical. | FICTION / Horror. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.