Chapter 28 #2
“That’s an amazing question. I’m guessing Gayelette knows, but apparently she didn’t think it was important to tell either of us.
All I know is this.” He dropped heavily into his chair again and closed his eyes.
“I was found wandering around on the streets at around the age of five, dragging this book along with me. Whether by a trick of magic or by my own mind trying to protect itself after being left behind, I had zero recollection of my life before then,” He tapped his hook against his temple and opened his eyes.
“It was a blank slate. And whoever found me left me on the steps of the orphanage and took the book with them to sell, I’m sure.
I never forgot it, though, and feared I’d never see it again.
Imagine my surprise a couple months ago when I walked into a bookseller’s shop and saw it sitting on the counter.
More tattered and worn than I remembered, but still intact.
I paid handsomely for it, and doubled the amount to have the seller have his bookbinder repair it.
Picked it up from him two weeks ago and nearly demanded my money back. ”
“W-why?” I managed, lifting the cover open and slowly flipping through the pages.
Snow White, just as I remembered. Little Mermaid. The Ugly Duckling. And then, Cinderella. Only that one…looked different.
“Because,” James continued softly, “I opened the book to find that I couldn’t even read the words. The ink seemed to be alive. Writhing and moving, ever-changing. Except, when I turned the page to an earlier tale, it was fine.”
What did it all mean?
Was Hook sent into this book from Ca’an Saas, same as me? Was that why he’d plagued my dreams since I could remember…Because we’d known one another in a past life?
He continued to speak but his voice became background noise as blood buzzed in my ears and I began to read;
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Harmony Marie Fallowell…
“It’s not,” I whispered. “My middle name isn’t Marie. I don’t have a middle n?—”
Molly. She called me that whenever she was mad at me, or wanted to make a point. Said all mothers know that if you want to get your children’s attention, you need to use all three names, so she’d given me that one.
This wasn’t the Cinderella story I vaguely recalled from my childhood before my own book of fairytales had gotten destroyed.
This was my story.
With trembling fingers, I leafed to the last page and swallowed a gasp.
And Duncan Westerly, King of Alabaster for a day, became known as Duncan the Just. He restored power to the people and ? —
The rest was exactly as James said. A mass of swirling letters and ink that made no sense, and shifted with each passing second.
My head thumped like a drum as I tried to digest it all. I had so many questions, it was hard to even know where to begin.
“Do you know me?” I demanded finally, my voice sounding as raw as my insides felt. “Did you dream of me, long before you ever met me?”
His face went stony and he pursed his lips into a hard line, but it didn’t matter. I already knew. Part of me had always known.
I flipped to the next page, hoping to find the answers there but beyond the title and the image of a pirate ship that had followed me from the last world to this, I found more of the same garbled mess. I thumbed through, nearly frantic now, until he laid his hand on mine for an instant.
“Don’t bother. My guess is that our fate isn’t yet determined and whatever belongs there is still being written.”
I looked up and met his gaze and realized with a start that he was smiling again.
“Are you crazy? Don’t you wonder where you came from? Why you were put here?” I demanded, incredulous. “Fucking hell, I’ve never once seen a genuine grin on your face, and this… This is what tickles you? Finding out you’re trapped inside a fucking book, in a story without an ending?”
“Nope. That’s not the part that tickles me, Princess.
” He leaned in, setting his hook on the desk between us.
“What tickles me is that, if I’m stuck in a story, then this hell is temporary.
When you finish writing this tale and turn the page to the next, I’ll cease to exist.” He dropped back against the chair and blew into his fingers. “Gone.”
It was a gut punch.
Because that was when I realized that he’d stuck around all these years—steeped in his childhood trauma—for one reason and one reason only. To exact his revenge. Once he’d done that? It wasn’t just that he’d be lost…in a dark place without a purpose.
It was that he had no plans to remain above ground.
Fucking hell.
Captain James Tyler Hook had a date with death.
And he couldn’t fucking wait.
An hour later, I was sitting at the table in my room staring down at the words on the page as they blurred again into a pile of gobbledygook. I flipped to another lens on my jeweler’s loupe and tried again.
If possible, it made it even worse.
I let out a groan and tossed the loupe beside the book and pressed a hand to my aching back.
“My eyes are crossing, I’m so tired.”
“I hate to say it, but I think you’re wasting your time. You’ll be able to read it when things become clearer. We obviously haven’t learned the lesson or gained the knowledge we need here yet to see it,” Moll reasoned with a shrug as she stepped up behind me.
“Who are you now, Gayelette?” I shot back. “If we just stopped trying every time we run into a locked door or a blocked path, we’d never have gotten this far. I gotta do my thing, even if it turns out to be a waste of time.”
I wasn’t about to tell her that deciphering the book was also a great way to put off telling her what else I’d learned in James’ library earlier, about Pan and Tink, and about young Caleb’s “illness.”
“I think our time is better spent getting some rest. We’ll be getting to base camp soon enough and then it’s going to be go go go.
If it were me—and I get it—it isn’t,” she said, holding up both hands in surrender, “but if it were , I’d focus all my energy on the tasks closest at hand.
” She ticked them off. “Get the clock from Noru without dying, go back to Neverland and make sure the kids are alright, and then we check the book again and see if it can give us some clues as to what comes next. You’re spinning your wheels for nothing. Especially since…”
We might be dead before then anyway.
She wasn’t wrong. I let out a sigh and closed the book, running my hands over the buttery soft, leather cover. But if there was nothing to decode right now, and the other option was to think about James and his death wish? That meant it was time to get Moll up to speed.
“Jame—uh, Hook and I talked about something else as well. It’s troubling, Moll.” I turned to face her fully and leaned over to pat her mattress. “You should have a seat.”
“We just spent the first part of tonight making a mortal enemy of a magical flying man-boy and his freaky fairy girlfriend and are on our way to fight a crocodile the size of a barge in fucking Monsterland. How much more troubling can it be?”
I stared at her in silence, and she slowly lowered herself to the bed, the smirk sliding from her face.
“Tell me. Is it the children?”
I steeled myself and forced a nod. “It is. They’re alright for now, as far as I know, but Hook shared some things about Pan and Tink.”
Sick of being in the dark myself, I didn’t pull any punches.
I let it rip, explaining about their tragic past, and lives lost at the orphanage.
About the clock, and the truth of what happened between them and Hook.
And about how the pair lured young boys to Neverland, using their energy so Tink could keep the two of them both strong and immoral.
When I was done, I reached out and took her icy hand in mine.
“Nothing has changed.” I squeezed until she met my gaze. “Do you understand me? Everything is going exactly to plan. We’re going to get the clock and then rescue those kids. The only difference between now and two hours ago is that we know who the bad guys are.”
For a second, I thought I’d lost her. She looked about one stiff wind away from a total, emotional breakdown.
But then something happened. Her posture straightened, her blue eyes, so full of despair a moment before, went cold with determination.
“You know what this means, right?”
“Tell me,” I encouraged with a nod.
“It means there is no room for error. We will kill Noru and get that damned clock. There is no option to die trying this time, Harm. Promise me. I don’t think I could take it if…”
She trailed off and pressed her fist to her mouth.
Even if I was able to get us back to the general area of Neverland, I had no idea how we would find it behind Tink’s shield, but because Moll had already suffered so much…because I loved her more than anything, in this story or any other, I did the unthinkable.
I made a vow I wasn’t sure I could keep.
“I promise.”