Terry Brooks - The Hook (1991)

He crossed the rope bridge from the island to the atoll where the Nevertree stood straight and tall against the blue waters of the ocean, and he raged anew at fate and circumstance, at missed chances and poor choices, at heaven and earth and Hook. He did not fully know where he was as he stumbled on, grasping now in belated hope at the promises Tink had made him, at the wishful looks in the Lost Boys' eyes, at the dreams of rescue that seemed to have eluded him forever. He lurched about in a fog, muttering words of power that had gone empty and flat, now spreading his arms as if they were wings and jumping up and down in a vain effort to fly, now crouching to thrust and parry with an imaginary sword. Back and forth, left and right, hither and yon he staggered, descending into a madness that shut him away within himself as surely as barred doors and latched windows close an empty house. Tears blurred his eyes and ran down his cheeks, and the bitter taste in his mouth choked him until he could barely breathe.

And then, suddenly…

Something hard smacked him squarely on the top of his head. Down he went in a heap, his arms and legs outstretched, his body limp. He lay without moving for a time, stunned and frightened, drifting on the edges of consciousness, curling up within himself and hiding away from the pain of the world.

When he finally opened his eyes again, he found himself sprawled at the edge of the Nevertree pool. He took several deep breaths to clear his head, then struggled to his knees and bent over to splash water on his face. He remained kneeling when he had finished, watching the waters clear before him. As they did, the face of a boy appeared. The boy was perhaps fourteen and had wild, blond hair and mischief in his eyes. The boy, Peter thought, seemed familiar.

For though he wasn't, he looked very much like Jack.

Jack! Jack! Jack!

In the distance somewhere, the pirates were chanting his son's name, over and over.

He reached down and touched the reflection in the pool, tracing the lines of the boy's face. The water rippled slightly with the movement, and the image changed.

Peter caught his breath. The face had become his own.

Jack! Jack! Jack!

He caught sight of something beneath the image, something round and solid that rested at the bottom of the pool. He reached down into the waters and carefully extracted it. He held it wonderingly in his hand. It was Jack's autographed baseball, the one his son had hit out of Pirate Square.

Understanding flooded through him. It was the baseball, falling at last out of the sky, that had struck him.

Jack's baseball.

Come somehow to him.

It was a small thing, really-a meaningless circumstance, some would argue. But Peter Banning held that ball aloft as if it were a trophy, and something primal came alive in him, something so feral he could neither understand nor contain it. He reared back and screamed. But the scream did not come out a scream at all, but a crow as wild and challenging as any given forth by Rufio.

Peter surged to his feet, galvanized by the sound, backing away from the pond in a crouch until he was up against the trunk of the Nevertree. A voice whispered. Here! Here! He whirled around, searching for the speaker. A shadow thrown against the shaggy old tree was poised to flee. Peter moved and the shadow moved.

Then he saw that the shadow was his own.

He stared down again at Jack's baseball, and as he did so he saw out of the corner of his eye his shadow move, gesturing to him, beckoning anxiously. The voice whispered again. Here!

Peter glanced up hurriedly and the shadow froze. Peter traced the shadow's legs downward to its feet, finding them attached to his own. He lifted his leg and so did his shadow. All well and good.

He rubbed his head where the baseball had struck and took a step closer. This time his shadow did not follow, but actually charged ahead, waving him anxiously on, calling out to him to hurry. Come on, Peter, come on! He went obediently, not bothering to question that such a thing could be, wondering only where it would lead. The shadow pointed downward to a gnarled hole. Peter pushed back a tangle of vines and grasses that half masked the wood and bent close. What he saw was the outline of a face, revealed by just the right slant of the sun's bright light, the image etched clearly in the worn bark, eyes and nose and a mouth that stretched open as if it were…

Crowing.

And there was more. There were names carved in the bole's flat surface, names out of time and memory, names from a past he had thought lost to him forever.

TOOTLES. CURLY. SLIGHTLY. NIBS. JOHN. MICHAEL.

Forgotten for so long, Peter realized as he traced the carvings with his finger, feeling the familiar roughness against his skin. Forgotten in the loss of childhood. Forgotten in growing up.

"Tootles," he whispered. "Wendy…"

And then the knothole opened before him, a door to something that lay within. Peter hesitated just an instant, then began to crawl through. There was a hollow space beyond. It was dark and the fit was tight, but he kept at it, knowing somehow that the rest of what had been lost to him, the rest of who he was, was waiting inside.

Halfway through, he became wedged like a cork in a bottle. He braced his hands against the sides of the opening and pushed. Abruptly he popped through, tumbling headfirst into the darkness to land on his hands and knees.

Behind him, the knothole closed. Peter reached out blindly, groping without success for something solid to grasp.

Then a light appeared, approaching out of the darkness, growing steadily brighter. Abruptly Tinkerbell appeared, tiny and radiant as she hung in the air before him, no longer dressed in her faerie garb, but in a flowing gown of lace and satin, of ribbons and silk, of colors that shimmered like sunsets and sunrises and rainbows after thunderstorms.

"I've been waiting, Peter," she said.

Peter stared.

"Well, why don't you say something?"

He swallowed. "You look… nice, Tink."

"Nice?"

"Beautiful."

She blushed then, bowed in the faerie way, and straightened, smoothing back the gown's ruffles.

"Do you like it?" she asked him, and pirouetted slowly one full turn.

He grinned like an awkward boy and nodded. "Very much." He came forward a step and bent close. "What's the occasion, Tink?"

She grinned back. "You are. You've come home, you silly ass."

Peter rubbed the bump on his head tentatively, confused. "Home?" he repeated doubtfully.

She began to brighten, to extend her glow in steady waves, lighting up the darkness that lay all about, chasing back the shadows to the farthest corners until all was revealed.

Peter looked around wonderingly. He stood in an underground room that had been hollowed out beneath the trunk and within the roots of the Nevertree. There was a huge fireplace at one end, blackened and cold, and the ruins of a rocking chair and a great cradle bed lay piled at the other. A flat section of the tree humped out of the earth at the center of the room and might once have served as a table. Everything had been charred by a devastating fire, and where once the floor must have been swept clean and smooth, there were clusters of mushrooms at every turn.

I know this place! Peter thought excitedly.

"What happened here?" he asked Tink, bending and touching as he examined the wreckage.

"Hook happened," she answered.

"Hook?"

"Yes, Peter. Hook burned it when you didn't come back."

A light came into Peter's eyes as he rummaged through a pile of debris shoved into a far corner. Gently, almost reverently, he began picking up bits and pieces of what had once been the wooden walls and thatched roof of a child's playhouse.