The man rolls his eyes again. “Bit inconsistent there, son.”
Hook shrugs. “A’m a pirate.”
The man runs his tongue over his top lip. “Anything left for me?”
Hook gives him a dry laugh. “Not wi’ what I’ve done t’ her.”
The man’s eyes pinch. “I thought she was a virgin when you met her.”
“Sure, well.” Jamison shrugs. “Consider her defiled.”
Piano.
I walk away from them, back the way I came.
There’s this funny feeling of rushing water in my ears, and all my blood feels like it pools to the top of my skin, and I go hot and prickly.
My arms and legs feel like logs, and I find myself moving through the town without a conscious thought.
I don’t know where I’m going.
Leave.
That’s all I can hear inside my mind.
Leave and go home.
Leave this terrible, wonderful place and get back to London.
Marry Jasper England. Marry no one! Marry your work like your mother. Never speak to another man again. Just leave.
But how?
Without Hook, without Peter, without Rune—where is she even?—I don’t know how to get home.
My heart’s racing. I place my hand over my chest, tell myself to calm down, but then I feel the necklace Jamison gave me in the process.
I pull it off my neck, the string breaks, and I throw it on the ground.
“You right there, miss?” says a youngish-looking man, leaning up against the wall.
I’ve not seen him in town before.
He’s got funny glasses on too. A different shape but coloured lenses as well.
Neverland is odd at the best of times though, so I don’t think much of it.
“I need to get to England,” I tell him. I don’t know why. Because what could it hurt, I suppose?
“England, do you?” The man walks over to me, looking up and down. “Are you in some trouble?”
I shake my head and swallow. “No, no trouble.” I might just be dying inside, that’s all. “I just need to get home. My previous transportation has failed me.”
“The gall. Anything failing you?” He eyes me, horrified. “The absolute gall.”
I flash him a smile, pretend to be flattered by his pandering. It’s a man’s world.
“Do you know anyone with passage out of the realm?”
The man nods. “I do, yes.”
“Really?” I look up at him, hopeful.
There is something awful about it, I think. How eager it is—how when we’re hopeless, the smallest hope offered to us feels like a lifeline even if really it’s a life sentence.
Hope clouds things like intuition, I think. If you’re ever having to hope for something, it means you’re having to ignore the flagrantly obvious to cling to something else.
Yesterday, this man in front of me would have been a man in whose presence I’d have reached for Hook’s hand.
Now? He’s an observant stranger willing to help a girl in distress.
“Really.” The man nods. “Come.”
He nods his head and I follow him through the town.
That makes me feel better too. We’re walking through the town. No suspicious backstreets, nothing shady. We’re in broad daylight.
People can see us.
I’m fine.
Though we are heading out of the main part of town. Away from the harbor. But I suppose I should be grateful.
I wouldn’t much care to be in the harbor right now.
Actually, I never want to be in the harbor again.
My heart burns in my chest, and the fact that I’m not doubled over in pain right now is a testament to nothing except my pain threshold.
It’s eating me alive, and all it’s doing is telling me that I love him.
I love him, and I don’t know him at all.
He isn’t who I thought he was. I was right before.
He tricked me into loving him, made a fool out of me.
I should never have come here, and now I have to leave.
Leave. Even the thought of it makes me want to cry because it’s not what I want either. Even though being here is hard, even though being here has blown my heart to pieces—even still, there feels something rather tragic about leaving it.
Both boys aside, I love it here. I feel a kinship with the land that I’ve only otherwise felt for England. To leave it feels devastating in its own separate way.
But how can I stay? Between being banished and being betrayed?
“Where are we going?” I eventually ask as we approach the edge of town.
There’s not much out here, just a few boats; Hook said it’s better for fishing. But that’s all. It’s just the water to the left, trees to the right.