Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
- W. B. Yeats
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
- also Yeats
***
She came to me once more. That very night, in fact. As I stewed over my defeat and brooded over my next gambit.
"I hear you tinkling at the door, Ms. Bell. Do come in," I said.
My cabin remained in disarray after my recent tantrum. I confess, my cup of rage spilleth over.
"How did you know I was there?" she complained.
"Call it pirate's intuition. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Oh, just came to see how you're healing," she said.
"My defining characteristic?" I offered. "Oh, it has long since lost its scabs. Only the bruise upon my ego remains."
Tinker Bell shuffled about, clearly brimming.
"What is it? Have it out, before you wear a hole in my ship and we sink to the bottom of the cove. Have you come to gloat?"
"Goodness, no!" she replied. "Have you never wondered why I brought you here?"
I had, but better to let her speak true and be done. I kept mum.
"Neverland needs its Prince of the Wild."
"And indeed it has him," I sneered.
"But what would Peter be without James?"
"A good deal happier, I'd wager."
"Perhaps," she trilled, "But no Pan."
"I don't follow," I spat back, "And I grow tired of your games." I speared a grape with my hook from a nearby bowl of imagined fruit and let the implied threat speak for itself.
"When I brought you here, I knew Neverland would bring out your true nature. Neverland needs Captain Hook."
"Are you implying that...?"
"Yes."
"So I was meant to...?"
"Of course."
"And I'll always be...?"
"Without a doubt," she smiled, quite pleased with herself.
"Oh Ms. Bell. You are wicked,"
"How dare you," she shot back, facetious. "I am the epitome of virtue."
"And I'm trustworthy," I said, ironic. "Then all my wretched, deceitful, vile scheming is all part of the design, as it were?"
"We all have our parts to play," she sang.
A flash of steel, glinting in the light of the kerosene lamp. My sword settled into a post, humming.
I missed.
Tinker Bell giggled with delight and blew a raspberry, "Thhhhbbbbbttttt..." her thumbs in her ears and her fingers waggling like antlers.
Before she flew out a port hole, I swear I saw her smile. A genuine smile, and perhaps the last I'd receive from her. It would've warmed the remains of my heart if any portion of my heart remained.
"Very well," I spoke to the Neverland night. "So be it. Smee!" I cried. "Rouse the men! We're going hunting."
The End