even had a drunk Smee play the concertina, but the terrible music had no effect on the shadow at all.
(It did, however, make the captain want to put his own ears out with his hook.)
The shadow had some presence in the real world; otherwise the cord wouldn’t have held at all. But the rules that governed it were tricky and, well, Hook wasn’t the most logical and thorough practitioner of the scientific method. He grew frustrated often and tantrums came quick.
The captain stewed, rage boiling up quietly behind his eyes and face again.
And then, in the silence of this latest lull, a quiet ticking began. Distant and weak.
Hook’s prodigious brows shot up to the top of his forehead.
He dashed out of the cabin, throwing papers and chairs aside, and ran to the railing—nearly knocking a pirate overboard along the way.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
He started to let out a sigh of relief. Just some of the rigging snapping against a mast, or…
Tock.
What passed for Hook’s heart almost stopped, clenched in an invisible icy fist.
He staggered away from the railing, hands over his ears so he couldn’t hear it anymore.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
“No, no no no no no! Not now! It was all coming together!” he cried, rushing up and down the deck in a panic. “I was practically handed Peter’s shadow. And once I used it to get Peter, I could blow everything the boy loves to smithereens—while he watched! It’s the greatest revenge ever planned by any villain ever! And I was almost there!”
He ran back to the comforting darkness of his cabin and threw the door violently shut behind him.
“WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME HERE!” he screeched at the shadow. “I am running out of time! Can you hear that? It’s the vile croc, come for me! So talk, blast you!”
“Maybe it can’t talk,” Smee suggested from the corner of the room, where he had waited quietly until the captain’s fit had passed.
“Of course it can’t talk,” Hook swore, raising his eyebrows at his first mate’s predictable stupidity. “It’s a shadow. But it could make a sign, or write something.…I gave it the bloody slate, before I made those dismal noises! It didn’t even bother to try.”
“Maybe it can’t write. Maybe Peter Pan can’t write. Can he read?” Smee asked curiously. “Never seen the lad with a book or nothin’…”
“Why, that’s…” Hook paused, thinking. “Actually, that’s a very good point, Mr. Smee. The sadly ignorant Peter Pan probably can’t even write his own name—uneducated lout.”
“So maybe he’s not worth your time,” Mr. Smee hazarded. “Such a useless, adventurous, young, enthusiastic…er, I mean utterly uneducated boy. A right simpleton. Not much of a nemesis, right? Maybe you should just forget about him, like the crew’s been suggesting. Forget about all of Never Land. Just put it behind you. Let’s go out and find us a merchant vessel or pillage a seaside town. Right now. Like in the good old days.”
“I won’t let Peter get away! I won’t let him escape me this time!”
“But Cap’n. It’s a never-ending chase,” Mr. Smee pointed out as gently as a mother consoling a child chasing his own shadow. “Oh, sometimes it seems like you get the best of him, but he always gets the best of you in the end, and then he slips away. Maybe it’s time to…let it go, like? Move on? Wrap up that part of your life and enjoy what’s enjoyable now? The sea, the sun, the blood of your enemies…”
“But…but I want him,” Hook whispered, lips trembling. “He always gets away from me and it’s not fair. He took my hand. He took the best of me.”
“Nawww,” Mr. Smee said, patting him on the back. “Not the best of you. Your hook is so useful, ain’t it? And shiny. He didn’t take nothing away. He gave you a deadly weapon, and a boatload of memories, and a souvenir. Let the lad go. You’re the bigger man. You’re the only actual man, as it were. So maybe it’s time you—”
“WHERE IS PETER?” Hook roared suddenly, whirling on the shadow, leveling an accusing hook at it.
The thing flung itself backward in fear but did nothing else.
It didn’t even shrug, which one would assume even an ignorant, badly behaved, etiquetteless shadow of an uncivilized simpleton could resort to.
Hook’s eyes narrowed.
“Maybe you don’t know exactly where he is. But you have some idea. You’re part of him. You even act like him. There is some sort of ley line or force that connects the two of you. If