فصل 20

CHAPTER 20

PETER’S PROMISE

PETER,” SAID JAMES. “Wake up. Please, Peter. Please wake up.”

Peter moaned. His eyelids fluttered, then opened. Above him hovered the anxious faces of James, Prentiss, Thomas, and Tubby Ted.

“He’s alive!” said Prentiss.

Peter shivered. He was lying on something hard that felt like metal. He was cold and soaking wet. The air was dank, smelling of the sea and human sweat. He heard water rushing nearby. He tried to sit up, but he was too weak.

“Where are we?” he said.

“It’s some kind of ship,” said James.

Peter strained to lift his head. He was in a long, low-ceilinged room with curved walls; it was quite dim, illuminated by a lone lantern swaying in the distance. He saw a row of metal bars—he and his mates were in a cell at one end of the long room. Toward the center, beneath the lantern, he could make out the figures of men in red uniforms. He looked for portholes and saw none. He tapped the floor—it was metal. This was like no ship he’d ever been on.

“But how…how did we get here?” he said.

“There were these things,” said Thomas.

“Like giant snakes,” said Prentiss, shuddering. “With suckers!”

“When the boat went over, they grabbed us, pulled us down, and put us in here,” said James.

“I thought I was going to drown,” said Thomas. “I was underwater and getting sucked deeper and deeper. Nothing but water and more water…”

“Then a door shut,” said James, “and the water went away somehow, and those men put us in here.”

“What about the pirates?” said Peter.

“I don’t know what happened to them,” said James, “except for…” He nodded nervously to his right. Peter looked that way and saw that there was another cell next door. Sitting on the floor of that cell, glaring balefully back at him, not eight feet away, was Hook, although his name no longer fit him. Someone had taken the bent sword off his left arm, leaving an empty sleeve tied in a knot at the end.

The two locked eyes for a moment, then Peter turned back to James. Lowering his voice, he said, “Has he said anything?”

“No,” whispered James, glancing at Hook. “He just sits there staring at you.”

“And Tink?” said Peter, a trace of hope in his voice.

“Haven’t seen her,” said James. “Sorry.”

“What about them?” Peter whispered, nodding toward the men in the distance.

“I tried to talk to them,” said James, “but they don’t answer.”

“They’ve given us nothing to eat,” said Ted.

“Help me up,” said Peter, struggling to rise.

“Peter, no,” said James. “You shouldn’t…”

“Help me up.”

“All right,” said James, taking Peter’s arm and helping his friend to his feet. Peter clung to the bars of the cell door, fighting off a wave of dizziness. Then he called out to the men sitting under the lantern.

“Hello!” he said. “Hello! May I speak with you, please?”

The men looked over. One of them, thin, with a full beard and dark, piercing eyes, stood and took a few steps toward the cell, squinting and frowning into the gloom. When he realized that it was Peter calling, his eyes widened and he shouted something in a strange language. One of the other men stood and walked to a metal door at the far end of the room. He rapped twice, then walked hastily back to the group under the lantern, clearly eager to get away from the door. The door swung open. The men turned away and looked down. A dark shape oozed into the room.

Peter gasped. Impossible! He felt the other boys moving close to him.

“What’s that?” whispered Prentiss.

Peter felt his skin crawl, understanding now what had caused the dread he’d experienced in the canoe.

“It’s all right,” he said quietly.

“But what is it?” said James.

Peter had no quick answer for that, so he remained silent, feeling his mates crowd even closer to him as Ombra glided toward the cell. The dark shape passed the uniformed men, paused, and with a voice that Peter had hoped he’d never hear again—a voice like a dying moan from a deep well—said something in a language Peter did not understand.

One of the men, shoved forward by the others, unhooked the lantern with a trembling hand and reluctantly followed the dark shape. Ombra stopped at the boys’ cell, directly in front of Peter, who took an involuntary step back, the other boys crowding behind him. Ombra stood still, presumably looking at Peter, though there was no face visible in the capelike form, just the two dimly glowing red orbs. Then he spoke, in a hideous groan that made Peter flinch despite himself.

“You hoped you were rid of me.”

Peter said nothing.

“You were never rid of me, Peter.” Ombra turned to the man with the lantern. “Bring it closer,” he ordered.

The man brought the lantern forward. Flickering yellow light spread through the cell. Ombra—half-turned away from the light—glided toward the cell’s bars. Peter stepped back and opened his arms to push the boys away from Ombra.

“Don’t let him touch your shadow!” he said.

Too late. Swiftly, like ink flowing, Ombra oozed through a gap in the bars and into the cell. Peter stumbled backward with Prentiss clinging to him; Thomas and Tubby Ted ran to the far corners of the cell, cowering, their backs to the bars.

James did not move. Peter looked down and saw that his friend’s shadow was gone. He had been Ombra’s prey.

James stood alongside the dark shape, his expression vacant. He turned to look at Peter with lifeless eyes. Then he spoke, not in his own voice, but in Ombra’s wheezing groan.

“Your friend is very loyal to you,” said Ombra/James.

“Let him go,” said Peter. “He’s done nothing to you.”

“He has not,” said Ombra/James. “But you have. So this is a warning to you, Peter. If you disobey me on this voyage, if you make trouble, if you seek to escape, your friends will suffer. You know I can make them suffer.”

As he spoke, Ombra/James raised his right hand, dug his fingernails viciously into his own cheek, and raked his face. Parallel trails of blood began to ooze from the wounds.

“Stop!” shouted Peter, grabbing at James’s arm. “Please, stop!”

Ombra/James put his bloody hand down and regarded Peter impassively.

“So there will be no trouble?” he groaned.

“No,” said Peter.

There was a flicker of movement on the floor; Peter looked down and saw the dark shape of a shifting shadow slither the two feet from the base of Ombra’s capelike form to James’s feet. James groaned and collapsed to the floor, where he slapped his hand to his wounded cheek and cried out in pain. Ombra’s voice groaned again, this time coming from the cape.

“We have an understanding,” he said. He turned and seeped back through the bars. Peter approached James, but as he did, he felt an odd tugging sensation at his feet. He looked down to see his own shadow, which should have been slanting away from the light of the lantern, bending and curving, as if trying to reach toward it—or, Peter realized, toward Ombra. A moment later, the dark thing was gone, gliding back to the far end of the vessel. As the man with the lantern turned to follow him, Peter’s shadow returned to normal.

Peter dropped to his knees next to James, who was covering his bleeding face with his hand. James looked at Peter, eyes wide with confusion and fear.

“What happened?” he said.

“It’s all right,” said Peter. “You’re all right now.” He glanced over his shoulder at Hook’s cell. The pirate was standing against the far wall, his eyes following the dark form of Ombra as it disappeared into the distant gloom. Hook’s eyes flickered to Peter, and in the instant before he looked away again, Peter saw that the once-fearsome pirate was quite terrified.

Kneeling over James, Peter struggled to sort out the troubling questions swarming through his mind. How could Ombra still exist when he had been shattered into a thousand pieces of shadow? Why had that not killed him? Where was Ombra taking him and his mates? What would happen to them? And—most puzzling of all—why had Ombra used James to threaten him? Why had he not simply taken his shadow, as he easily could have? Peter recalled his struggle with Ombra at Stonehenge and wondered—was it possible that Ombra was afraid of him? And what had caused the odd behavior of his own shadow?

As he comforted James, he heard Ombra’s awful voice in his mind, over and over: You were never rid of me, Peter.