Chapter 15
Hook
Ahandful of his crew accompanied Hook and Tink when they left after dawn, trekking into the hills behind Coconut Cove and traversing the worn paths toward Rochland.
The rest stayed behind to tend to family and ship repairs.
The first hour was full of yawns and weary sighs.
Since then, though, they’d never shut up.
“Still can’t stop laughing at Reya’s face!” Sage said behind him.
“Hey now,” Smee warned.
“Yeah, yeah, but seriously, the look she had when Rell told her she was in charge?” Sage cackled. “If she wasn’t so pregnant with my future niece, she’d have probably tackled her to the ground.”
“Your…wait, what?” Tink said.
“My niece. It’s going to be a girl. You’ll see.”
“B-but…” She sputtered. “You’re one of Smee’s sisters?”
Almost there, love. Hook grinned.
Sage’s burst of laughter likely scared off any wildlife for miles. If it didn’t, Smee’s guffaw surely did.
“Barley is my brother,” Sage said when she recovered.
“Oh.”
He could almost picture the flush creeping up Tink’s cheeks as she and the others followed along the path after him.
“She might as well be my sister, though,” Smee said. “Been hanging around since we were young.”
“Ouch!” Tink yelped.
Hook whirled around, ready to run to her side. But Sage already helped her up from the ground where she’d stumbled over a tree root on the path.
“Merrin’s teeth, that hurt.”
“All right back there?” he asked. His fist squeezed around the machete he used to hack away pesky branches.
“We’re fine,” Sage assured him and waved him on.
It took effort to turn his back on them and focus on the path ahead. Times like these were some of the few he resented being captain. Command meant duty, leadership. Not stalking near the back of the line to watch Tink as she hiked with his crew through the jungle.
“Been meaning to ask,” Smee started as they continued on their way. “Who’s Merrin? And the other ones…”
“Durin. Oh, and Flora, I think,” Sage supplied.
Aye, he had half a mind to know too. But Tink would never have told him. His crew, however…
“They’re our revered elders,” Tink said. “They watch over us from the spirit plain and bless our way of life. Durin is the elder of weaving and tinkering, Merrin of farming, Beryl of flight…”
She rambled on, listing off various names and things about them. Oh, to be able to write them all down. Perhaps then he’d understand even half the unique curses she loved to spout.
“So Durin’s beard…” Sage began. “It’s…unique?”
“Just big and bushy.” He could almost picture Tink’s shrug.
“At least, statues of him portray it that way. And that’s what the elders say too.
The living ones who are in charge back home, not the revered ones in the spirit plain,” she clarified for Smee, whose confusion he could almost feel in the air, especially as he hmm’d and mused aloud at her words.
“Well, that’s…a lot,” Smee said.
“Sorry,” Tink replied. “Guess it is confusing to outsiders.”
“Life’s simpler in the cove and on the sea, that’s for sure.”
“How long has your family lived here?” Tink asked.
“Oh, forever,” Smee replied. “I grew up fishing these waters as a boy, mending nets, sneaking down to Rochland every so often to, er, examine the goods coming in.”
“A pirate from the start,” she said.
Her light giggle annoyed him. Not the sound, he loved that, but that it was directed at Smee.
How could she talk and tease half his crew and ignore him?
She’d answered all their questions, asked a number in return, but he might as well have been invisible.
His back practically shivered from her cold shoulder.
No sane woman ignored Captain Hook. That was half the reason he didn’t want her to come.
He couldn’t think with her around, couldn’t focus.
And the other half? Trouble followed her like a shark after blood.
“Aye, the captain and me use ta’ get into all kinds of trouble.”
The back of his neck burned.
“You grew up together too?” she asked.
Hook hacked a fallen branch with a machete, clearing the way for those behind. “That’s enough of that. We’re too close to Rochland for that kind of talk.”
Best no one overhear something that could tip off the locals to who exactly lived on the other side of the island.
He probably shouldn’t have let her talk about her homeland either, but damn if he wasn’t curious.
The locals of Rochland knew most the residents of Coconut Cove, especially Smee’s sisters, Anne’s husband, and some of the others who often came to town to gather goods and information.
But the less they connected them to pirates, the better for all of them.
It was a risk, him coming into town with his distinctive hook, but some risks were necessary.
Sweat drenched his shirt, especially where he carried a small pack on his back.
They all carried one, just the necessities.
The branches overhead blocked out some of the noon sun, but nothing could hold back the humidity.
The sea was kind, letting the wind blow across it to cool a sailor and fill his sails.
But the land hated him as much as he loathed it. It always had to remind him of it too.
As they cleared a rise, the port city came into view below.
Rochland had an orderliness to it he appreciated, with its buildings laid out in neat rows as if someone had bothered to plan it.
Suppose they had. Once. The edges of town were less precise where it grew past its original borders.
The witch kept her shop at the edge of the east quarter.
“There she is,” Smee said.
“Wow!”
He looked over his shoulder in time to catch Tink’s wide-eyed stare as she took in the city for the first time.
He supposed it was impressive to someone who’d never seen it before.
It was the opposite of Tortuga’s haphazard wood buildings with its multistory stone structures and cobblestone streets.
Which was probably why the royals of Gamor set their sights on it for an outpost.
“Remember what we discussed,” Hook said, his voice low so only his crew could hear.
Nods greeted him. Keep a low profile. Just a bunch of traders and craftsmen in town for a few days.
They even had a hoard of shell and fiber jewelry Smee’s sisters had made to sell in town as part of their cover.
His crew was used to this ruse, and it was the reason he’d brought only a few. Still, a reminder never hurt.
*****
The blazing sun overhead beat down on the simple hat he wore, bringing out the smell of fish that clung to nearly everything in Rochland.
His normal hat was so much nicer, stiff but supple leather, accented with red and gold stitching.
Lucky too. But it was too nice, too recognizable to wear around the city.
He pulled his cloak tighter around him despite the heat.
His hook was a giveaway for his identity, but one he might need depending on the witch’s mood, or the innkeeper’s, or anyone else who came looking for trouble in this gods-forsaken city.
“Francis and Davies. Take our packs and go find an inn. Try the Gilded Pearl first,” he ordered.
They served a good ale. Better yet, it stood only one block from the orderly rows of streets and houses of the old city, not too far from the edge of the forest. That made it perfect for sneaking away if it came to it.
Plus, they turned a blind eye if the customer paid well.
Both men trotted off with their packs in tow.
Just ahead, a two-story house painted a burned cherry red faded into the buildings around it. In all his years, the witch’s storefront never changed. Time herself wouldn’t touch the Green Witch, nor the men of Gamor whose patrols skipped this street, best he could tell.
Hook drew them to a stop outside the front facade. Unlike the other buildings, no windows gave a glimpse inside. The shop had no sign either, just a poor old bird’s skeleton, wings stretched out in flight, above the door.
“Poor bird,” Tink muttered.
“You can’t mean good ol’ jolly Roger?” Smee replied with a wry grin.
Hook’s back stiffened.
“Like the boat?” Tink’s fair brows rose as her nose wrinkled.
The boat, he mouthed.
“Yeah, you see this one time—”
“Smee?” He crooked a finger at his first mate.
“Uh…” Smee looked between them before stepping closer to Hook, who threw his arm around his shoulders, letting his hook gleam near his face.
Hook dropped his voice to a low whisper. “When I lost that unfortunate bet, did you really choose to name my ship after that bloody bird?” He pointed his hook toward the eerie skeleton, its bones bleached by the sun.
Sage snorted. “You didn’t know?”
A sideways glance did nothing to dim her humor, nor Tink’s, who bit her lip and looked away. Any idiot knew she listened to every word.
“Aye, aye, I did.”
Hook sucked in a deep breath, drumming his fingers on his taller friend’s shoulders. His ship, his pride and joy, was named for a bloody, dead bird on a witch’s door.
“Could be worse,” Sage offered.
Could it be, though? He pulled away from Smee, his good hand in a fist. “We’ll discuss this later.Smee, Tink, with me. Sage, watch the street.”
The first time he’d pushed through the witch’s black door, he’d been a few new whiskers shy of a boy.
She’d told him true what he wanted to know.
Not that it helped. The ring sitting against his chest grew suddenly warm, heavy.
Hook swallowed down those dark thoughts and entered the dim entrance hall.
Crimson drapes separated the room beyond. The moment he stepped through them, darkness and sharp, woody scent swallowed him. Thick, hot air, worse than the steamy day, buffeted his skin.
“Welcome, welcome,” a melodic male voice called.