Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
The next morning, Sasha headed out on deck.
“Mornin’, Mr. Smee,” a pirate greeted her as he was scrubbing the wood planks.
“Morning.” She stepped around the man’s work, not wanting to walk through where he’d just been cleaning.
That was just rude. It had been weird waking up in the closet of a pirate ship.
It had been weirder wandering down to the cook’s mess hall to get coffee and toast with butter on it for breakfast.
It was even weirder that all the pirates were nice to her.
They all greeted her like they knew her.
I am the boss’s favorite suck-up to them, after all.
And maybe gay lover? Lordy, I’m sure there are volumes of that all over the internet.
She had taken her little tin mug up to the deck to find the captain.
Because as much as this felt like the world’s weirdest bed and breakfast, she was anxious.
Captain Hook was standing up by the aft of the ship along the starboard side, staring at the island, his flesh and blood hand folded at his back. She stood beside him and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
“Do I need to insert a quarter?” She sipped her coffee.
“Very funny.”
“I dunno, I figured maybe you were a pulp comic or something. Had to pay to get the next issue.” She smirked. “Sorry. Not in character. I’ll get better at that.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“That I expect you will.” He tapped his hook on the wooden railing. “Peter Pan is still alive, or the story would have ended. I do not know about your sister. It can be a draw if you both die. He may seek to kill you to keep the score at zero.”
“I was going to ask.” At least he offered the information, she supposed. If he was telling the truth. “What do we do next?”
“You have a choice to make today, my dear. We may either do this story the long way or the short way.”
“Like, abridge it?”
“Mm. In a manner.”
Sasha tried to recall everything she could about the Peter Pan novel. “Well, we haven’t met Tiger Lilly or any of the extremely racist depictions of the ‘natives’ yet.” She cringed. “Can we skip that? Or at least change them to be not so glaringly offensive?”
“You’re writing this, not me.”
“Yeah but I’m not trying to. It’s not a conscious effort.”
“I recommend you not be racist, then.” He smiled as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Then we won’t have an issue.”
“I’m not the—this isn’t my book!” She threw up her hands. “J.M. Barrie was the guy who wrote ‘redskins’ living in wigwams, smoking peace pipes, and speaking in broken English, while living on a Caribbean island for some inexplicable reason.”
Hook was cackling in laughter. “You’re so upset.”
“Because it isn’t—” There was no point in arguing with him. She sighed. “Never mind.”
He put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her into his side.
“Calm down, darling. I’m accusing you of nothing.
Humans are stupid, hateful things. And your ability to think spitefully for whatever reason knows no bounds.
You are always labeling groups as lesser and other.
The target group is always changing and evolving.
This story simply has products of a time when you simply had a few more acceptable groups of lessers. ”
“What a horrible way to think about it.”
“Villain.” Leaning down, he kissed the top of her head.
It was such a strange gesture from him, she didn’t quite know what to do with herself at first.
Not to mention he had basically just said “don’t worry, humans are always being racist shitheads, you’re just always rotating who you’re picking on.” And she really wished she could argue with him, but he wasn’t exactly wrong, was he?
“I know.” He let out a hum. “Terrible thing, when a villain starts to make sense.”*
“I thought you couldn’t read my mind inside the stories?”
“I didn’t need to. The look on your face tells me everything.
” He patted her shoulder. “Now. I take it by your glorious objection to dealing with the ‘locals,’ that you would prefer an abridged tale? I think even if you strove to correct the glorious inaccuracies surrounding Tiger Lilly and her people, their inevitable slaughter at the hands of pirates might come off as a bit…” He paused, before sliding his hook along the steel pin holding a section of the rigging in place, creating a horrible metal-on-metal sound. “Excessive.”
The whole situation had become so surreal, the whole conversation so ridiculous, she had to let out a sad, broken laugh, and stare up at the sunny blue sky dotted with clouds.
“What?” Hook seemed lost.
Pinching the bridge of her nose, she really wished the answer to this whole thing had been drugs. “I’m debating the optics of fictional genocide with Captain Hook.”
“Hardly genocide, don’t be dramatic.” He scoffed as he walked away from her.
“Just a little mass murder. Regardless, abridged you want and abridged it shall be! I’m eager to start our game in earnest, I will admit.
As fun as this has been, and all. You!” He called to another pirate.
“We attack the Lost Boys at sundown in their secret hideout. Prepare to go to shore. We’ll be sneaking inside, taking them prisoners, and bringing them back here.
So we’ll need rope. Fabric to gag them. Knives.
We’ll take them all except Pan himself.”
“But sir.” The pirate took his tricorn hat off and held it in front of him, gripping it in both hands in a show of deference. “It’s a secret hideout. How will we know where it is?”
The expression on Hook’s face was of a man who had spent literal centuries surrounded by imbeciles.
Pulling the gun from his waist sash, he shot the pirate dead in the chest.
“Any other questions?” He shouted at the others.
Everyone muttered a series of “no-sirs” and quickly went about their business, ducking their heads and getting ready for the evening’s work.
“I thought not.” Hook grinned. “Tonight, we end this Peter Pan business once and for all.”
Sasha couldn’t help but appreciate his conviction.
Looking out at the island, she could only hope her sister was okay. And if she wasn’t? The only way to keep the score tied at zero was to throw herself to the crocodile. Or hope Peter Pan ran her through.
Sasha’s stomach twisted in a knot at the idea of killing herself. She didn’t want to die. Fake or not. The idea was horrifying. Could she do it? Feed herself to the proverbial wood chipper as part of a “strategy?” She didn’t know.
But something told her she’d have to find out. If not here in Neverland, then…soon.
“Mr. Smee!” Hook shouted at her from across the ship.
“Yessir!” She rolled her eyes. “Coming, Sir!”
This fucking sucks.
Sidney didn’t know how much blood a person had, but Peter’d been bleeding for a while by the time the tide finally brought them back to where the Lost Boys were waiting for them.
Like, for at least two chapters.
That had to kill a person, right?
Sasha would know the name for that. What was it? Plot armor? She didn’t know. She just followed after the boys in their grubby excuses for clothing as she hopped barefooted through the jungle, wincing as she stepped on every goddamn piece of pointy sea grass and rock.
Yeah. Fuck everything about all of this.
She really hated being barefoot on pointy surfaces. It was like her least favorite thing in the world. She suffered the whole way through the march back to the tree that they called their home. When they finally were there, they rolled the hidden door away.
Tinker Bell didn’t waste a second before she came rocketing out of the door, jingling and shimmering and likely swearing her ass off, buzzing around Sidney’s head, obviously blaming her for everything.
“I don’t care what you think, I had nothing to do with any of this!” She swatted at the fairy. “Go away! I don’t want anything to do with Peter Pan, I just want to go home. You can have him! He’s yours!”
That seemed to catch Tinker Bell off guard. The fairy hovered near her, looking at her in stunned surprise.
She glared at the fairy. “Yeah. You didn’t even ask me, you just assumed.
Well, screw you, you uptight little bitch.
I just don’t want him to die, because he’s my only hope of getting out of here alive.
So sue me. But I don’t want anything to do with him!
” Storming into the tree, she followed after where they brought Peter.
They’d laid him down on a cot, and were unwinding the bandages from his chest.
“Are any of you a doctor?” She highly doubted it.
“No, but I can pretend to be.” One of the boys smiled proudly, picking up what she assumed was an invisible and imaginary doctor’s bag.
“I…don’t think that’s how it works.” She cringed. Peter was so fucked.
“It is in Neverland,” another boy nodded sagely. “In Neverland, if you believe, it’s real. We have whole feasts of food that exists because we make it exist.”
She couldn’t tell if they were just gaslighting themselves or if that was literal magic. Hard to tell with a fairy hovering in the air near Peter’s head. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
Either way, she wasn’t cut out for this shit. And she wasn’t about to watch a tween stitch a guy’s chest shut with invisible thread. “Cool. Knock yourselves out.” Turning, she walked out of the room, shaking her head. “I’m going to bed.”
Abducted by a book. Meeting demigods. Getting stuck in Peter Pan as Wendy.
Flying. Making out with mermaids. Nearly being murdered by said mermaids.
Watching her sister almost die from a killer electric crocodile.
Almost dying herself from said crocodile.
Floating around in a deus-ex-bird’s-nest until dawn.
Yeah.
She needed a fuggin’ nap.