pirates. With limited magical means. You cannot on a whim decide you’ve missed Mummy and Daddy long enough and expect to be transported instantly. These things take time.”
“All right, I will take that into due consideration,” Wendy said. “Otherwise, promise?”
“Oh, I promise.”
“Swear…swear by the pirates’ code!”
Hook looked exasperated.
Wendy put her hands on her hips.
She knew about boys trying to sneak out of promises. She had two younger brothers. You had to be very specific with your orders and wishes, or they were as wily and untrustworthy as evil genies. And what was a pirate, really, but a boy grown, with a real sword and a mustache?
“Swear it,” she repeated.
She could have sworn she heard muffled laughter from behind him on the deck.
Hook sighed.
“All right, all right. I swear on the pirates’ code: I, Captain Hook, promise that in return for Peter Pan’s shadow I shall grant Wendy Darling passage to Never Land and home—when circumstances allow it.”
“All right then,” Wendy said, trying to sound surer than she felt. She had just won a battle of wits with a pirate, just like in a story. Why didn’t she feel triumphant?
“Come on, men, let’s welcome our passenger aboard!” Hook grinned again at her, a smile that narrowed to points at the corners of his mouth that were as sharp as those at the ends of his mustache, as the end of his hook.
There was a thumping and pounding on the deck. A rope ladder unrolled over the side, bumping and bouncing on its way down, the last step landing neatly at Wendy’s feet.
She took a deep breath, set her jaw, and climbed up.
As might have been guessed from the preceding pages, Wendy hadn’t much experience interacting with the world at large; that is, people who weren’t her family, shopkeepers, neighbors, or other audience members at the theater. Yet despite this innocence she had an immediate sense that perhaps these pirates were not the nicest people to be left alone with. It was one thing to tell tales of swashbuckling battles and the backstory behind the bosun with the eye patch—and quite another to actually be in their midst.
Captain Hook presented his men with a flourish. They stood neither in neat rows nor at attention—with very little respect at all, actually—and beheld Wendy far too boldly for her liking. One skinny chap with large gold earrings who slouched provocatively to one side actually gave her an appalling wink.
Their clothes were not the bright primary colors of nursery room imagination; they were salt-faded and dull. Their faces weren’t merely unshorn and artfully streaked with a daub of tar; they were grubby. All shades of skin were dulled with not enough washing. Wendy found her hands twitching, the urge to grab a cloth and scrub them almost overwhelming all other thoughts.
“Men, this is Wendy Darling. Wendy, this is me crew. Crew, she is a guest aboard the Jolly Roger and I expect you swabs to treat her as such.”
“It’s bad luck to have a woman aboard,” one large old pirate with a red bandanna growled. “Worse than a cat. Brings storms and swells.”
“Oh…I think it’s the best sort of luck to have a lass on deck.” A man with one eye and a loathsome leer grinned at her disgustingly.
“If any one of you touches her,” Captain Hook said with a very false smile, “you’ll be feeding the sharks before you can draw your next breath.” He leaned on his heels and put his hands on his hips, a movement that threw his splendid jacket back and revealed the twin pistols that were holstered elegantly on his hips.
This made Wendy feel a lot calmer but a little vexed. What if the pirate was saving her life, or wanted to arm wrestle? What then?
“This whole thing is a bloody waste of time,” a third pirate scoffed. “We should be out attacking ships, looting gold, and plundering treasure!”
“And so we shall. But in the meantime, she has given me something more valuable than all the gold in Never Land,” Hook said airily. “Peter Pan’s shadow!”
He unfurled the poor limpid thing and flapped it out to show them. The shadow hung limply from its neck where the pirate held it, struggling only a little.
The pirates looked mostly unhappy at the sight, a smidgen angry, and not just a little uncomfortable. Seeing a shadow hanging there apart from its owner was unnatural and might make the heartiest and blackest soul shiver, but even Wendy could see there was more to