Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,54
day,” she growled with as much dignity as she could muster. Feeling her dress drip-drop in tatters and streams behind her, her legs scandalously bare but for the bandages that now wrapped them, Wendy marched into the jungle unsure of the direction she was going except that it was away from the mermaids. Beside her was someone who might not be her friend yet, but who at least didn’t seem to want to kill her.
Which was beginning to seem like a very rare thing indeed in Never Land.
“I thought you said my idea was a good one,” Mr. Smee said doubtfully from behind Hook. “I thought you was going to use the shadow like a sextant or compass or whatnot to find Peter.”
The captain stood ramrod straight at the wheel, his lower jaw jutted out. That was one thing you could certainly say about Captain Hook—when he was moved by a plan (his own) or an emotion (his own) or a crazy idea suggested by another member of the crew (somehow reinterpreted as his own), his bravery and clarity of purpose surpassed those of the finest storybook hero. His antics might not have made a lot of sense to an outside observer, but he carried them through with the enthusiasm and fearlessness of a toddler who didn’t know any better.
Right now the outside observers were his own crew, who pretended to do their tasks while visibly unnerved by the sea changes going on around them. Most gave up and just twiddled their thumbs or daggers, trying to listen in on the captain’s plans.
“Yes, but the bloody thing’s a shadow,” Hook said with great disdain. “I can’t put a gold needle in its mouth and align it with north, now can I? I need someone else’s expertise on the matter. Outside direction on how to filter its essence into compass form.”
“Yes, Cap’n, I see that, but…” Smee swallowed. “Madam Moreia?”
“I don’t see anyone here with a better idea,” Hook said with a sniff. “I don’t like the idea too much meself…but there’s times a villain has got to rely on a little help from his people. His community, as it were. Exchange some trade secrets. My expertise is piracy, not black magic. Moreia is conjured out of the darkest fears stupid little children have of old women and their unknown habits. She’ll help. Out of professional courtesy, if nothing else.”
“Unknown habits?” Zane protested, overhearing. “Everyone normal’s got a granny. Smacks of ageism, don’t it?”
“Not if it’s specifically the unknown habits,” Major Thomas suggested. “For years I didn’t know that the foul-smelling cack me nanna smeared on her rump every morning was anti-wrinkle cream. Thought it was oils decocted from the placentae of unborn babes. So she could fly or sommat.”
“What was the recipe?” the Duke asked, trying to sound casual.
“Oh, shut up, you lot. I said stupid children, didn’t I?” Hook roared. “Who knows why they fear their old neighbors and not rabid dogs or Staphylococcus aureus or stepping out in front of oncoming carriages? Now SHUT UP and let me remember the passage over Soulsucker Reef!”
The heavens turned murky and thin. In patches between strangely resinous clouds, the sky was black with cold, un-glittering stars—despite its being late afternoon. A wind picked up, so hideous and unclean that even the most wretched pirates shuddered and held their noses against the foul stench. Polluted thoughts came with it, and not the usual familiar nightmares of witchery like ravens and cats and curses; these were presages of end-times: battlefields crawling with things no longer quite human, the dead and decaying in piles on the ground to every horizon, the wrenching howl of the last person alive.
Far too quickly for some on board, a rocky island emerged out of the mist. Hook muttered port port, starboard a bit, keep it steady to himself, his eyes as cold and unblinking as the alien stars above.
There was a dock on the otherwise empty island. Despite the crew’s desperate pleas to weigh anchor farther out, their captain refused.
“You, none of you, would still be here when I was done,” was all he would say, without his usual bluster and speechifying. The truth was enough to silence the men.
Ever so carefully, Hook piloted the ship in. Strange apparitions appeared on the dock. Their mouths dripped to the planks and they flickered in and out of view at irregular intervals…but they caught the ropes thrown down and tied them neatly to solid-seeming cleats. Soon, for better or worse,