He’s a strong swimmer, but I can tell he’s holding back for me, glancing at me frequently to make sure I haven’t given up. That idea certainly has its merits, especially when my thoughts wander back to Coy, to the look in his eyes …
A whistle sounds across the waves. It’s a high-low, not the same tone as what the pirate used earlier.
“Ahoy!” a voice calls, and that’s when I see a small boat cutting through the waves toward us.
“About fucking time, Starkey!” The pirate reaches out and grabs me, then holds me in front of him. “Get a move on!”
I gasp as the boat turns hard right and drifts up to us with perfect speed until it stops right in front of me.
“Here. Take her.” The pirate lifts me from the water, and another reaches down, his hands out. But the pirate pulls me back. “I didn’t say for you to lift her by her tits, Starkey,” he snarls.
“Oh, my apologies.” Starkey speaks with what sounds to me like a posh English accent, as if he stepped right out of a movie. “Let me try that again, love.” He reaches farther and grabs me under my arms.
I yelp when my pirate’s hand finds its way to my ass and pushes me from the water. “Watch it!”
“Just helping you, lass,” he grumbles.
Starkey puts me down on a little bench, then offers his hand to my pirate.
I grip the sides of the rowboat as it rocks violently, but then all three of us are on board.
“Starkey, row.” My pirate sits next to me. “Are you hurt?”
“What?” I stare at the Jolly Roger as Starkey—dressed in much nicer clothes than I’d expect from a pirate—begins to row with steady strength.
“Water in her ears.” Starkey snorts a laugh, then goes quiet when my pirate glares at him. Funny I think of him as ‘my pirate’ when he’s anything but. He’s my enemy, the man who killed Coy right in front of me. A grunt escapes him as he rolls his shoulder, and I watch as a red stain grows along his wet shirt. Pan’s arrow wound is still bothering him. Good. It’s what he deserves.
“I’m not hurt.” Not physically, at least. I have my usual aches since arriving in Neverland, including the headache, but now it’s joined by the mermaid bite and the open hole through my heart where memories of Coy leak out. “I don’t know why it matters since all you’re going to do is turn me over to Hook so he can kill me.” I wrap my arms around myself and turn to look at the Jolly Roger as it grows ever larger.
“She’s salty.” Starkey grins. “I like that in a woman.”
“Mind your manners.” My pirate’s voice is low, lethal.
“Apologies again.” He sighs and keeps rowing, perhaps finding it better not to open his mouth lest more apologies fly out.
Manners on a pirate—now that’s a laugh.
The ship looms large now, the sides the same dark wood as the rest of it. It rests on the waves, unbothered by the full moon or the black water beneath it. Above, I see shapes hurrying along the decks, some of them calling out to each other with nautical terms that have zero meaning for me.
It sends a chill through me, that this hulking craft of wood and treachery will probably be my last stop on my trip to Neverland.
Once again, I wonder if I’ll simply wake up. Walk the plank, wake up in my dorm room. Strung up on a rope, wake in my dorm. Sliced from ear to ear, asleep and drooling on my desk. I snicker to myself at the mix of gallows humor and false hope. Now that I’ve been here long enough, it’s the real world that begins to seem fantastical.
“Plummeted like Icarus, I tell you.” Someone’s voice echoes across the water, and I look up to find a pirate gawking down at us. “But here they are, not a lost limb between them.”
“Smee, stop your yapping and drop the tackles!” Starkey eases up on the oars, and we float closer to the brigand’s ship.
I can’t help but shiver as the ocean breeze brushes past me.
A wood frame swings out above us, and ropes are lowered from it. Once they reach the boat, Starkey and my pirate make quick work of getting our small boat hooked up. Then someone above yells, and a pulley begins to turn with a creak as we rise from the water.
“Hang on, lass.” My pirate stands, his balance impossibly good despite the wobbling of the boat, and grips the rope overhead, keeping it steady as we ascend.
“Swing her in!” another man yells as we crest the top deck of the ship, and the wooden frame pulls us onto the deck and lowers us slowly.
“Make fast, Starkey.” My pirate jumps out onto the deck, then offers me his hands.
I look around at the ship and meet several sets of curious eyes, though no one speaks to me. Starkey busies himself with pulling ropes tight and securing the rowboat onto the Jolly Roger’s deck.
