I don’t know why, but my face falls to a pout. “How do you know that?”
He cocks an eyebrow. “’Acause ye told me and I’m no’ a piece o’ shit.”
I say nothing, because what could I even say?
“Is this what yer doing fer yer birthday?” Jamison looks around a bit confused. “Daphne, where’s Peter?” he asks, looking up in the sky for a second as though he might be circling us from above. He then looks back at me, and I suppose my face gives away that I have absolutely no idea.
Hook angles his jaw and gives me a look. “Yer joking me.”
I sigh and look away, fold my arms over my chest.
Jamison nods his chin at me. “What do ye need?”
“A map.”
He nods. “To where?
“Mount Carnealian.”
“Yer going t’ the volcano?” he asks, an eyebrow up.
I nod.
“By yerself?”
I nod again, nose in the air this time.
Jamison scratches his chin. “Aye, I’ve got a map. Come on.” He nods his head in the direction of his ship.
I follow him wordlessly. He weaves through people, me weaving after him. I don’t mind the feeling of it, me following him instead of him following me. For a moment, I catch myself thinking he might be someone worthy of following, but I look to my hand, feel the memory I’m holding that I can’t see: “Take her clothes off. Fuck her in a bath.”
Just because someone’s giving you a map doesn’t mean they’re good all of a sudden. It might just mean they want you off their part of the island and handing you a map is the fastest way to do so.
I follow him into the cabin of his ship. He starts rummaging around, pulling things from drawers, tossing them on his bed. He’s talking to himself. Everything he’s looking at looks nothing like a map.
“Come on then.” I put my hands on my hips. “What are you doing? Where’s this map of yours?”
Jamison looks over at me, flashes me a curt smile. “Yer looking at it.”
“What?” I frown.
He points to himself.
My head pulls back. “You?”
He nods. “As I live and breathe.”
My eyes pinch. “You hate me.”
Another nod. “I d?nnae.”
I fold my arms over my chest. “I annoy you.”
“Aye,” he nods. “Very much so.”
I shake my head at him. “You don’t have to do this.”
He stares over at me for a few seconds, then turns away. “I ken I d?nnae hae to.” He starts putting the things on his bed into a rucksack and says without looking at me, “I want to.”
“Are you sure?” I stare over at him, nervous.
He looks back at me and doesn’t speak for a moment or three. “Aye.”
“Okay.”
He ties his pack, then walks over to me and maybe stands closer to me than he needs to. “It’s about a day’s hike there and back.”
I feel dizzy being close to him again. Stupid girl. I swallow. Nod. “Okay.”
His eyes flicker over my face. “If it goes dark, we’ll hae t’ set up camp—stay the night.”
Please god, let it go dark, I think to myself, but instead, I just say, “Okay.”
He tilts his head. “The wee man winnae mind?”
I give him a grim smile. “It’s ever so likely that the wee man won’t even notice.”
He runs his tongue over his teeth and nods once. “Let’s go then.”
We walk out to the edge of town, mostly in silence. I don’t mind silences with Jamison though. And maybe we’re better if we don’t talk? I walk on his left-hand side, a few steps behind him, and I could pretend that it’s by chance but it’s not, it’s on purpose. Jamison Hook is spectacular from every angle you’d turn him in, but the most striking one of all is his profile. It highlights all his edges, and of those, there are many—I believe I saw a couple new ones at the Dirty Bird—but this angle in particular, his left side, sun facing—his features are so sharp. It is worth noting though, there’s a gentleness to him that I don’t think he wants me to see, that I don’t want me to see anymore either, I don’t think.* That’s why I put those thoughts down.
He looks back at me and smirks a tiny bit. “That’s a grand hiking dress ye’ve got there.”
I give him a look. “Rune gave it to me. For my birthday.”
“Very athletic,” he tells me wryly, and I push past him grumpily.
He chuckles to himself, jogs a few steps so we’re walking side by side, and he clocks my top lip.
“He d?dnae get it.”
I frown, confused. “Get what?”
On his own mouth, he points to the part of my lips where my kiss lives. I feel for it, touch it, swallow, relieved.
“No, he didn’t.”
Jamison gives me a single nod, and a smile I think he wouldn’t want me to see breezes over him, because he looks away.
“Ye’ve been here some months now,” he says to me. “Are ye liking it?”
“Sometimes.” I nod.
“Just sometimes?” He watches me.
I nod back. “Just sometimes.”
“Ye’ve had a good run.”
I give him a look. “I have?”
“Aye.” He nods. “No rogue magical villains hae floated through or anything. That’s good fortune.”
“What do you mean?” I frown.
“It’s Neverland.” He gives me a wry look. “It’s no’ all good. A lot o’ it’s fucked.”
“How?”
“It goes both ways.” He shrugs. “Has to. If it can be wonder-filled, then it has to be terrible too.”
I lift my eyebrows, waiting for more, and he rolls his eyes at me.
“Last year, a hellhound got loose on the isle—tore a bunch o’ people t’ pieces. The year afore that, there was an oilliphéist that would come out and terrorise everyone. The queen of hearts—”
I roll my eyes. “She’s not real.”
“Sure, not in the way ye ken her to be, no.”
I cross my arms, waiting for more.
“She’s a witch.” He gives me a look. “The man she loved d?dnae love her back. Now she takes the hearts of men in love and eats them. Feels full for a moment, then it empties her more.”
I stare over at him, eyes wide. “That’s a legend.”?
“No.” Jem shakes his head. “I saw her with me own eyes.”
I feel sick as I blink over at him. “But she didn’t eat your heart?”
He shakes his head. “I was no’ in love at the time.”
Our eyes catch—I don’t know why?—and then he gives me a quick smile and clears his throat.
“Hae y’seen a volcano before?” he asks, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.
I nod. “I have.”
“Where?”
I purse my lips, and he looks at them as I do. “I’ve seen Vesuvius in Pompeii and Mauna Loa in Hawaii.”
“Hawaii?” He looks over at me all interested. “I’ve always wanted to visit thonder.” He smiles in this far-off way that I don’t understand because he comes from Neverland, and how could you long for any place else? “What’s it like?”
“Well, parts of it are quite like here, actually—not too dissimilar from Cannibal Cove. Bigger waves. No mermaids.”
He gives me a look. “That’s a plus.”
“Not for Peter.”
He watches me for a second, says nothing, then says, “How dae ye get there?”
I give him a funny look. “Aeroplane?”
“Flying tin in the sky?” His head pulls back. “I d?nnae think so.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Don’t you captain a flying boat?”
He chuckles. “Nae. My dad did.” He shrugs. “My ship’s just a ship.”