"And you?" Hook looked down at us. "I know you don't have enough ale with you, but you should laugh at the moon with me." He waved his hand.
It was a challenging request for the crew of the Pequod. Most of the men wished for the Moongirl's help. Laughing at her was like burning all ships of hope and sailing to hell.
But the sailors and misfits complied. We all laughed at the moon. Hook roared louder. It took him a while before he lowered his head, looking darker than before, dark enough to make me realize he wasn't just a joker but the most powerful man at sea.
Everyone stopped laughing immediately, all except the puffing boy. He must have been smoking again, or too excited to sell his soul to Hook.
"What are you laughing at?" Hook growled, trudging toward him. The sailors parted.
The boy sweated, cemented in his place. Hook stopped right before him, saying, "You know who I am?"
The boy nodded speechlessly.
"No you don't." Hook squinted. "You think I'm just a giant man sailing the seas, a man you can sell your soul to?"
The boy nodded.
"Fool." Hook gulped from his bottle. He turned around to face us. Then he smashed his bottle on a man's head, bringing him to his death. Hook pulled up his sleeves, showing a hook instead of a hand. Everyone gasped. He walked among the sailors and misfits and pointed at one of them, then said, "You!" The man approached obediently, maybe wishing to sell his soul. "You're dead." Hook laughed, and then sank his hook into the man's belly. He turned around, pulling his bloody hook back, and calling another man. "You!" Another man approached reluctantly. "You live." Hook laughed again, like a spoiled child.
He continued walking, choosing whom to kill and whom to keep alive, killing half of everyone on the ship. I'd never seen so much blood and killing. I was about to vomit but held still, gripping my precious sack. Was I supposed to live or die in Hook's book?
Hook stopped before me, blocking the moonlight and enveloping me with his dark. I raised my head in an uncomfortable position to stare at him.
He stared back for a long time. Again, as if he knew me. "Going for the Tower of Tales?" He laughed.
I couldn't bring myself to either answer or ask how he knew. He didn't seem to be asking. He was looking at my sack, which seemed to expose where I was heading.
"Are you in love?" he uttered, his grey eyes slightly glimmering.
I nodded.
"True Love?" he asked.
I nodded again, almost wanting to tell the whole world I was in love. Proud of it, hanging on to hope.
"No, you're not," he said in a flat tone. "You know how I know?"
I said nothing, only continued staring at him. Who was he, really?
"Because your lover isn't here for you," Hook said, looking really happy about it.
His words cut through me. Whoever Hook really was, and whatever purpose all the crazy incidents around me served, he was right. Angel had weakened and ran away, leaving me alone to my… Wait! I finally realized who Hook was. Why everyone feared him.
He nodded with a grin. "Yes, that's me." He was proud. "That's why I chose who to kill and who to let live on the ship. In fact, I choose which ships to sink and which ones to pass in the Seven Seas. The Seven Seas belong to me."
"You're Fate?" I sighed. It was a rhetorical question. "But why—"
"—would people sell their souls to me?" He rubbed his chest, looking more sober than before.
I nodded.
"You must understand that Fate doesn't buy any soul he comes by." Referring to himself in the third person alerted me. Hook, or Fate, was like a demon child, ready to burn everything for his childish pleasures and impulses. This was why I couldn't sense his evil at first. It explained why Captain Ahab fled (I still wondered where to). He couldn't confront him. How do you confront a demon child who kills for fun and games?
"I only buy souls that I enjoy." He licked his lips. "Which reminds me." He raised his brows, pulled out a gun, and shot the puffing boy, hurtling him over the ship's rails—food for the mermaids waiting to eat him at sea. "You see, I love misery," he began preaching, raising his voice and walking among the crew again. "I love pain," he roared happily, and theatrically, like a king in Shakespearean play. "I love sorrow!"
The word sorrow echoed in the sea. It had begun to mean too much—Hook's addiction to sorrow, Angel's last name.
"That's why no ordinary soul satisfies me," Fate said dramatically. His childish laughter had disappeared. He had an itch and needed to scratch it: buying sorrowful souls. "You know what sorrow is made from?" He turned and faced me again, his bad skin reddening with passion for pain.