Unhooked(31)

“Will your Captain take you to your friend?” Pan asks me.

No. He already told me he wouldn’t.

One thing is clear—whoever he is, this boy knows about Olivia. The prospect of finding her, of finally finding someone who is squarely on my side in this upside-down world, is enough to make me stop struggling. It’s enough to give this Pan character a chance.

When my chin dips in the barest nod, his eyes light with satisfaction. “Quiet now,” he tells me as he eases us into the corridor.

He moves through the tight space as silently as the night, pulling me along easily, but he doesn’t immediately go to the steps that lead up to the main deck. Instead, he stops at a short ladder that descends to the very deepest part of the ship. “I’ve one thing more to do,” he tells me, the whites of his eyes glinting in the light thrown by the orbs that follow us.

He motions for me to take the ladder first. My arms still ache, but I manage to keep ahold of the well-worn railings as I inch myself down, Pan following behind me. He’s dimmed the small lights that float around him so they’re only ghostly whispers of their former brightness. Putting a finger to his lips, he dismounts, and then takes my hands and pulls me toward a glow coming from behind a stack of large wooden crates.

“He won’t last much longer, Cap’n,” Will says, his voice startling me as it drifts through the darkness.

“You think I don’t know that?” the Captain answers.

As we get closer, I see the two of them silhouetted by a lantern hanging from the ceiling—the Captain and Will. They’re leaning over a small body laid out on a pallet on the floor. I recognize the boy as the one the Captain was helping earlier—Davey. For a moment I’m not sure if the boy is alive, but then he lets out a small, labored moan.

Will shuffles back uneasily, his jaw tense and his brow deeply furrowed. But it’s not the boy’s injuries that have Will so tense. In the dim lamplight, I hadn’t noticed the large, dark figure waiting in the shadows of the hold. But now that I see it, my breath seizes in my throat.

As the Dark One approaches the Captain, the hold fills with a familiar metallic buzzing. The creature’s wings half unfurl and fill the tight space, but the Captain doesn’t move to attack. They stand as though locked in an uneasy truce, each taking the other’s measure. Then, in a motion so quick that I barely see the blur of darkness as it moves, the creature plunges its fist into the boy’s chest.

The small limp body jerks violently in response.

I stagger back at what I’m seeing, and Pan’s arms go around me, supporting me gently but also pinning me firmly in place. “Help him,” I whisper, my voice ragged with the shock of what I just witnessed.

“Shhh,” Pan soothes, brushing his lips against my temples. “It’s too late now. Had we arrived a few moments sooner . . .” He trails off, his implication clear—if not for my hesitation earlier, we might have saved the boy.

I watch in horror as the creature’s hand passes through the small body, like the boy is no more solid than a ghost. The boy convulses again, his chest lifting up from the floor until his whole body hovers rigidly in the air. When the creature finally withdraws its fist, it brings with it a trailing thread that glows with an eerie luminescence.

The Captain does nothing but watch.

“What is that?” I whisper, unable to keep the horror—the wonder—out of my voice.

Pan’s voice is calm, sure, as he whispers in my ear. “It’s taking the boy’s life, Gwendolyn.”

The Captain stands motionless as the Dark One spools the thin luminescent thread around its dark fist before thrusting it forward and offering it to the Captain.

“His life?” I whisper, horrified.

“Well, perhaps not his life, exactly,” Pan says with a frown.

“Please, Will,” the Captain urges, the desperation in his voice uncharacteristic. The Captain and Will are staring at each other across the darkness of the hold, tension simmering between them. “I won’t lose you to this place.”

“No,” Will says quietly, his voice sure. “You won’t. Not in that way, at least.”

The Captain frowns as though he’s understood more in Will’s words than I do. “It’s already done. And it would give you more time,” the Captain urges. “Already, your arm—you know what’s there is only the beginning. That mark will grow, and when it does, you’ll die.”

Will rubs absently at the piece of dark fabric wound around his forearm. “Maybe, but how many times have you told me that there are worse fings than death, Cap’n?”

An uncomfortable silence rears up between the two. “What would you have me do, then?” The Captain’s voice is no more than a ragged whisper. “Should I leave all of the lads to die?”

The buzzing thrum in the air grows, signaling the creature’s impatience.

Will glances at it warily before he turns back to the Captain and shakes his head as though in defeat. “Do what you must,” he says. His shoulders slump as though the fight has gone out of him, and he walks away from the Captain and the dark creature. His steady steps echo through the dark hold as he ascends the ladder to the deck above.

The child’s rigid body is still hovering in the air. The boy’s mouth is wide, and his sightless eyes are still open in a combination of pain and terror. The Captain doesn’t even seem to see the boy though. His eyes are focused on the place where Will disappeared, toward the ladder hidden by the darkness around us, to the deck above. The Captain’s face is blank, his eyes steady, and though I can tell he might want to, he doesn’t go after Will.