“Not much further now,” Tink told him.
“Good, because I think I just gave myself a hernia.”
“There it is,” Tinkerbell nodded past Tootles’ shoulder. Tootles glanced at the small cottage and smiled, despite the throbbing in every single one of his tired muscles. The “cottage” was actually a giant hollowed-out tree; a replica of the one they had lived in Neverland. Except, this one was larger and had a second story. Tootles looked up and could see warm fire light streaming through windows that were the shapes of flowers and acorns. It was an architect’s impossible dream.
“You made this place, didn’t you, Tink?” Tootles asked as the door magically opened for them and they hauled Peter’s unconscious body inside.
“Lay him there,” Tink nodded toward a sofa-like structure a few feet away. It rested in front of a beautifully lit fire place.
Tootles set Peter down and then straightened. He closed his eyes and sniffed the air. Immediately upon entering the cottage, he’d caught the scent of caramel and vanilla. Pine and sap and honey. It was the scent that had filled the tree house in Neverland.
He opened his eyes again and turned to Tinkerbell.
“Now what?”
“Now we cover him up and wait.” Tinkerbell was busy unfolding blankets that had been piled in the window seat along one side of the room.
“I don’t get it,” Tootles said, trying to keep his tone respectful enough that he didn’t set off the pixie’s notorious temper. “Why couldn’t you at least use your magic to make him a little smaller or even use it now to cover him with blankets?” He helped her unfold the remaining blankets and draped them over the sleeping Peter.
“I’m kinda running low right now,” Tink told him. When she’d finished tucking Peter in, she turned to Tootles. “The thing is,” she said, “he fell really far.”
Tootles considered this for a moment and then sighed. “All right, you’d better tell me about it.” He gestured to the chairs around a table by the fire place. They sat down. “Start from the beginning,” he said.
So, she did.
*****
One thing you can say about pirates is that they each have a story. Wendy had learned this over the last few days. There were many men in Hook’s crew, as he needed a large crew to man the more than forty guns his ship sported. She hadn’t had a chance, yet, to personally meet them all, though they had all been surprisingly genial to her, thus far.
However, she’d managed to make the acquaintance of a few, and, in her writer’s opinion, their stories begged pen and paper…
There was a pirate that they all called Cecco. Though he was not dressed as well as Starkey and didn’t possess Starkey’s gentlemanly air, Cecco was still quite a handsome man with sandy brown hair and hazel eyes and a strong jaw. However, there seemed to be a shroud forever hanging about him – an invisible warning, of sorts, to keep your distance. Once, while she was secretly watching the attractive pirate adjust one of the sails, Smee had come up beside her.
“’E’s one to watch, miss, that Cecco.”
Wendy had jumped a little, startled by Smee’s sudden appearance. Smee was holding a long, heavy coil of rope in both hands and rocking back and forth on his the balls of his feet. He did this often, she’d noticed. It was a nervous habit that made him seem constantly and somewhat inappropriately giddy.
“What do you mean?” She asked.
Smee busied himself with setting down the rope and then straightened as if he had a crick in his back. He then leaned forward conspiratorially. “The handsome Cecco,” he whispered, as if reading a line from a storybook, “escaped from his cell, though no living soul knows how, and left his name carved on the back of the warden at Gao.” Smee looked Wendy in the eyes, nodded once, smiled, and then picked up his rope again.
Wendy watched him walk away, a spring in his step.
Cecco was the first of the pirates she’d learned about, so to speak.
There was also Skylights, who looked, for all the world, utterly and completely different from Cecco. Where Cecco’s hair was sandy brown, Skylight’s was as white as the froth on the sea. Where Cecco had all of his teeth, Skylights was missing most of his. To call Skylights old would be a horrific understatement. When Wendy looked at him, she imagined parchment paper so ancient that, if it were to be unrolled, it would crack and crumble.
Then there was Arnold. The other men called him Arnold the Black. True to his name, he sported short-cropped black hair and a long, ragged black beard, which he braided sea shells and beads into so that it looked a little like a fish net stuck on his face. His eyes, too, were black. But blackest of all was his tongue, which the men claimed he had tattooed long ago so that if he ever had to play dead, he could let his tongue loll out of his mouth and the black of it would convince any other pirate that he had gone to Davy Jones’s locker.