“Second to the right, and straight on till morning.”

That, Peter had told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland; but even birds, carrying maps and consulting them at windy corners, could not have sighted it with these instructions. Peter simply said anything that came into his head. Really, it was that blind lady, Luck, who let a child reach Neverland, or a star or a fairy guide, for they are a part of magic, and cannot get lost while traveling between the worlds even if they close their eyes, spin in a circle and try.

Sometimes just being lost might bring one to Neverland’s shores, or one might be tricked onto it, and thereafter entrapped.

Hook, Captain of the JOLLY ROGER, was one of the former; Scar Faced Woman Who Slew the Tiger Hiding in the Lilies and her braves were of the latter camp. What could trick an entire war canoe of seasoned Haida warriors from the coast of Canada and their young leader into those gloomy shadows? Nothing less than the machinations of Yaahl the raven. The story is theirs to tell; suffice to say that they fled the adult world in the middle of the eighteenth century, desperate to avoid the spirit of pestilence – smallpox – which was reaching epidemic proportions across all the indigenous nations.

Trapped on Neverland, the Haida made their secret paths through the forests, climbing high in the pines and setting traps for the devilish lost boys, who plagued them as much as that mongrel mix of pirates who competed with them for resources.

The pirates and Haida were each other’s enemies, it is true. But in a heartbeat they would string their arrows with the same bow, and stand side by side, raising club and sabre as one, to strike down their true nemesis: Peter Pan.

That spritely spirit, the laughing, arrogant Puck with whom we have been only recently acquainted ourselves, carries within him darker taints. The Neverland is his hunting preserve, and he does not hunt mere animals.

Unlike the Haida, the pirates were not tricked into Neverland, but sought it out, if one can seek a destination whilst desperately lost. The fierce men of the crew had cowered beneath a shooting sky filled with frosty stars that denied any navigation known to man. A month they endured, lost, lost far from any land of Earth and far from the light of day. A month of night, during which the cycle of standing watch and sleep, served as the only timepiece.

They had steered betwixt battling behemoths, and round slumbering turtles the size of Venice, Hook’s eyes ever fixed upon some point over the curve of the horizon.

“Where are we, Captain?” cried the first mate, Gentleman Starkey, almost despairing as a ship-killing storm came upon them: the third such. Even then, the crew were labouring desperately over the bilge-pumps below the deck, emptying the water that the strained timbers of the ship were allowing in.

“Compass unknown,” snarled the Captain, wrestling with the wheel as the ships’ timbers creaked, and a spar broke loose to whip past him with a malevolent partridge whir. “Light my cigar, man!”

The only man that the Sea-Cook had ever feared, Hook stood firm upon the deck, two strong hands grasping the wheel, cigarette holder clenched between his teeth. He had taken command of the ship after the Sea-Cook’s death, and with a hold full of supplies, sent them off the face of the Earth through a gate made of storms and uncertainty. The last land they had seen was the disappearing Ivory Coast; from there, Hook had steered them down to the Horn and straight into a maelstrom.

“But where are we going, Captain?” Gentleman Starkey demanded desperately, filled with fear.

Hook laughed, blackly, and would not answer him. He was navigating towards a certain winking star; one with a reddish hue, which a mother’s voice had told him about, many years ago, in the strictest confidence. In the lantern strapped to the prow, a small pinprick of fading light strained for that magical island, where it might be freed. The captured fairy expired as they crossed out of the Ocean, fading away entirely, like the last ember of a dying fire.

Canvas groaning under the pressure, the storm drove them into Neverland’s waters, and nearly broke them upon the shoals, as the white wave horses screamed and beat their foamy hooves across the deck. The JOLLY ROGER wallowed dangerously, until they managed to fight their way around the island to shelter in the lee, out of the wind.

As soon as the weather grew calm enough to make land, Captain Hook began searching the island. The discovery of treasure appeased many of those whose faith in him had been shaken by the long, mysterious voyage through darkness. He found in the land an active adversary; but it also revealed to him many of the markers his mother had spoken of.

Of the Lady Niamh herself, there was no sign. Eventually, James Hook was forced to accept that she had likely not been able to return to the island. Taking on stores of fresh water, he attempted to pilot the JOLLY ROGER away, back into the ocean. He did not like the island, and if he attempted to force his crew to stay there, away from cities and major shipping lanes, he would have a mutiny on his hands. Regardless of what his mother had promised, he refused to become a castaway for her sake.

The JOLLY ROGER was steered out into the open waters around Neverland, towards the midnight of the horizon…only to find contrary winds pushing them firmly back, no matter how hard they tacked back and forth. Contrary winds turned to gales, which forced them almost against the rocks. After weeks of futile efforts, the pirates began to give up. Though they might sail around the deeper waters of the island, they could not leave its sphere of influence, like a toy boat spinning about the whirlpool of an emptying drain.

They were marooned, each man among them, imprisoned in this cruel little paradise. The JOLLY ROGER was no more than a raft which served as their shelter; they could not steer it to any real purpose, and may as well have been floating in a lake, the borders of which they could neither sail nor row across.

A trio of the pirates had attempted, under Hook’s instructions, to pilot a small dinghy out into the midnight ocean. Every member of crew had crowded along the rail to watch, muttering superstitious prayers. Hook and Gentleman Starkey had squinted through their spyglasses for hours, the hot sun reflecting in glassy streaks from the bouncing waves.

“They’re nearing it!” called down Smee, who was watching aloft from the crows’ nest.

Indeed they were. And then, before the eyes of the crew, the men had stopped rowing. The small craft bobbed, motionless.

“What are they looking at?” muttered Captain Hook into his moustache. They were very nearly there, in that deepening zone of twilight, which taunted them with the promise of free sailing. Yet they had stopped, and were staring as though hypnotised at a patch of water near them.

There were oaths and cries of horror as the crew witnessed the three unfortunate men stand in the rocking dinghy, and leap overboard. Like most sailors, pirates could not swim. Though they watched for long, agonizing minutes, not a one of them ever surfaced.

“Cap’n!” cried Cecco, his fingers clenching and unclenching convulsively into fists, “What did you see?”

Captain Hook and Gentleman Starkey shared a glance.

“Mermaids,” Hook said hollowly, still disbelieving what he had seen through the spyglass. “It was mermaids, the devil take them.”

Against such supernatural forces, he could not expect any more men to mount expeditions to the edge of the Neverland Sea. They stayed, stuck firmly in the centre of the web of influence that was the magical isle. With every moon that passed, the pirates grew more restless, and Hook resorted to ever-bloodier cruelties in order to retain the captaincy.

And so they stayed, waiting, and so Peter found them, returning from his adventures. What happened then? A cockerel’s crow split the air, and the bemused buccaneers found themselves attacked by a posse of small children. Their amusement turned swiftly to shock, and then hatred, as their number fell to the flashing little blades and piercing arrows. Attack from the natives who dwelt on the island was a matter of course to the crew of the JOLLY ROGER; but this wicked band of children, with their supernaturally lucky and vicious leader, was not an eventuality they had imagined even in their wildest nightmares.

Hook mused darkly on his most humiliating confrontation with the boy as he stared at the gleaming hook affixed to his wrist. Even now, he thought, if I close my eyes, I can feel my hand, clench my fist. The phantom pains sometimes awoke him in the night, sending him to the solace of dark amber spirits whose harsh smokiness soothed and befuddled his canker of a heart. The sun beat down, and he stretched out his legs before him to examine the rich, liquid sheen of the polished leather of his boots. His greatcoat was of exquisite velvet – blue today, to match his eyes – and an embroidered silk waistcoat danced down the long planes of his stomach to the solid gold buckle of his belt.

Ever since his childhood of deprivation in the boarding schools of England’s finest, he had emulated the manners of the grand gentlemen whose sons were his tormentors and unwilling companions. If not for his parents’ indiscretion, he might have been their peer, rather than their plaything. Despite this, he had always taken pride in being better dressed than any of the common herd, except possibly, the son of the Italian ambassador. Hook had seduced the boy into committing crimes, and then exposed him, so machinating the boy’s expulsion in disgrace, leaving Hook in command of the field. This unerring sense for the finer things in life had guided him unfailingly; had he stayed true to such fashion, he might have made his name in the rarefied halls of privilege and state. He had, however, made something of a mistake in turning to the ocean waves for his fortune.