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  His confidence began to build as he drove The Boy down, down. The pirates’ initial laughter and derision fell into bewildered silence as this young flying upstart went toe-to-toe with their captain and, by all appearances, was winning quite handily.

  The Boy’s movements were slow, confused, desperate. He seemed unable to deal with the increasing speed of Paul’s blade, and was even gasping and breathing heavily as if with great effort.

  The pirate crew was wondering: Could this be the great Boy, slayer of pirates, the most respected blade in the Anyplace? By all rights, Paul should have been wondering as well. But he was not, instead growing overconfident in his own prowess and convincing himself that The Boy’s reputation was exaggerated. Would that you and I could warn him, but we must instead be confined to mute witnesses as Paul sees an opening and drives his blade home, hoping not to kill The Boy but to wound him grievously enough that his immediate threat would be ended.

  And there is The Boy’s blade, as we might have expected, but Paul did not. With a speed he had not displayed earlier, The Boy easily turned aside Paul’s attempted coup de grâce. Their blades skidded against each other, locking at the hilts. The Boy smiled a wolfish smile, displaying those perfect first teeth; and his face was bare inches from Paul’s.

  “Was this a good game for you?” he said, his solicitous tone at odds with the darkness of his expression. “Did you enjoy my pretending you were a threat? Personally, I’ve grown bored. Time for a new game.”

  That was when Paul realized that he had woefully miscalculated. The Boy shoved him back hard; and he hurtled across the deck, evil crewmen throwing themselves to either side like tenpins to clear his path. He rebounded off the forecastle, and there was The Boy coming straight toward him, blade extended. Paul realized in a heartbeat that meeting the thrust, trying to deflect it, was a hopeless cause. All he could do was avoid it. He backflipped out of the way, The Boy just barely missing him. The Boy promptly pivoted, kicked off the deck, and came at Paul once again, cackling and swinging his gleaming blade.

  Paul parried once, twice, a third time; but each time he did it was as if a powerful shock ran the length of his arm, for The Boy was just that strong. It wasn’t that he was remarkably muscular, but there was formidable power in his wrist; and in swordplay, that was what was required.

  The full truth rapidly became apparent to Paul. The Boy had been toying with him. It really had all been a game. The Boy could have done him at any time, but instead it had amused him to let Paul believe he was providing a challenge. This realization dawned upon the pirate crew as well. Reinvigorated, they cheered on their leader and roundly catcalled and hissed the upstart.

  The Boy drove him backward, and the tip of his sword began raising small cuts on Paul’s arm. Paul wanted to cry out but bit it back, resolved not to show vulnerability even in the face of overwhelming odds. But his movements slowed, and as his confidence waned, even his ability to fly started to diminish. The increasing weakness that The Boy had only feigned, Paul now genuinely experienced. His feet were no longer airborne, instead grounded upon the deck. The Boy did not even bother to continue flying, instead matching him step for step, driving in faster and faster, wounding Paul at will now. Then Paul tripped over some coiled rope and fell backward. The Boy stood over him, ready to plunge his sword into his defeated challenger.

  That was when the bells sounded; and if chiming was ever angry, it was then. The Boy looked up in confusion, and Paul in relief, as a glowing ball of light hurtled toward him like a streaking comet.

  “Don’t I know you?” said The Boy.

  “You killed me!” the outraged pixie said.

  “Did I?” The Boy said carelessly. “I’ve killed so many, it’s hard to keep track.”

  “I’m Fiddlefix! I was your pixie! You saved my life!”

  “Well then, if I saved it once, that entitles me to take it now, doesn’t it?” But there was something in The Boy’s voice that was perplexed, as if he were trying to justify things he had done that he knew he should not have.

  “Get away from him!” said the crooked old lady.

  Fiddlefix began to glow more brightly, and The Boy shielded his eyes, stepping back. Her incandescence was directly related to her mood; and the more outraged Fiddlefix became, the greater her illumination. “I will not get away from him!” Fiddle said. “He was mine before he was yours! Before he was any of yours! And I will have him, and be avenged for his betrayal of me!”

  Paul wasn’t sure if the crooked old lady understood what Fiddle had said. He did, however, see that she was going to attack the pixie, for there was a sword attached to her left wrist and she was clearly about to come at Fiddlefix with it. Paul was not certain if something as down-to-earth as a sword could hurt Fiddlefix, but he was not about to take a chance. Thinking fast, he grabbed up the rope he had tripped over and flung it quickly. By lucky chance it looped around the old lady’s foot, and Paul yanked as hard as he could. It pulled her off balance and sent her tumbling to the deck.

  The rest of the fearsome crew tried to attack, but the light from the angry Fiddle continued to grow until she was nearly a floating sun. They fell back, crying out, unable to keep looking at her.

  “Bad form!” The Boy said, and Paul noticed that The Boy’s voice sounded very unusual, far more petulant than the bravado that usually pervaded his tone.

  And that was when Fiddlefix cried out, and what she said was, “His shadow! Look at his shadow!”

  “Curse you, you meddling sprite!” said The Boy, swinging blindly with his sword. “You should have shown the good taste to stay dead!”

  Paul looked where Fiddle had indicated, and what he saw caused him to gasp in astonishment.

  The bright light that Fiddlefix was providing caused The Boy’s shadow to stand out in stark relief against the deck. And Paul, even though he was squinting against the brilliance that Fiddle was generating, was still able to make out what she had already observed.

  The shadow cast by The Boy upon the deck was not The Boy’s own. The general outline of the clothing was there, but the body was longer, the head more angular and, most significantly, the shadow had a slim, curved hatchet instead of a right hand.

  It was the shadow of Captain John Hack.

  Chapter 8

  Hack and Slash

  It is now time to explain to you the truth behind the crooked lady with the hooked nose. It is not an especially long tale—barely long enough to serve as a diversion—but it is an important diversion nevertheless, and it must be told somewhere. So best it be here, especially since it informs much of what is to come.

  There are certain things you know, and as I mentioned to you earlier, the main reason for the knowing of things (not to mention the telling of things) originates in the Anyplace. Everything that happens, or did happen, or will happen in the Anyplace reflects back and through to reality.

  “Common knowledge” and “common sense” were both developed in an area called the Anyplace Commons, a central meeting point and neutral territory where all Anyplace denizens congregate from time to time just to shake hands and explain that, yes, they may have hunted one another and tried to kill one another but, really, no hard feelings and it was nothing personal.

  Or consider if you will legends of a Great Flood that pervade many civilizations unconnected with one another. How was that possible? Because there was, or is going to be, a Great Flood in the Anyplace. The “when” of it doesn’t matter all that much since the Anyplace is timeless. When it does happen, it will bounce forward and backward through all the memory of man, like a rubber ball. If it already happened, same thing.

  For instance, you’ve certainly heard combinations of words so routinely that you simply take them for granted as having meaning without truly wondering why. “By hook or by crook,” for instance. Most believe it to mean that something will be accomplished through whatever means necessary, be they fair or foul. They believe it so firmly that they don’t pause to wonder why “hook
” is equated with “fair means.” “Crook” taken to mean “evil doings” is sensible enough, we suppose, but what is fair about a hook? Nothing in particular, as many a chagrined fish would tell you.

  You did not realize, very likely, that a pirate team called Hook and Crook once traversed the outer seas of the Anyplace. If they came upon you, and Hook failed to kill you, then Crook would certainly attend to whatever unfinished business Hook had left behind. That’s where it comes from.

  Always beware of a meaning that is common knowledge, for “common knowledge”—as befits anything invented in the Anyplace—can be treacherous.

  “Crash and Burn,” “Vim and Vigor,” these and many others were team denizens of some renown in the Anyplace.

  Which brings us to “Hack and Slash.” They, too, were a pirate team, not dissimilar from Hook and Crook. The difference was that Hack was the formidable foe of The Boy, as you well know by now. But who, then, was Slash? His first mate? A trusted (or distrusted) lieutenant?

  No. Slash was Hack’s piratical sister.

  I notice some of you shuddering in outrage at the thought, or saying dismissively, “A female pirate? No such thing! Why, women on a ship are bad luck. Any seaman worth his salt would tell you that!”

  What say you, then, to Anne Bonny or Mary Read, eh? Tremble in the presence of Gunpower Gertie, the Pirate Queen of the Kootenays, or Honcho Lo, a determined supporter of the Chinese revolution who took command upon her husband’s death.

  No, no, there were many females who did as much mischief on the seas as their male counterparts. But all of them paled in comparison to Captain Slash. Most of them, having encountered her, would have backed away and left quietly lest they find themselves in a battle they could not possibly win.

  “Slash” was no more her family name than Hack’s was his. What we do know of Captain Slash is as follows:

  Her first name was Mary. Her education was not as impressive as her elder brother’s. Nevertheless she did mirror him in several key aspects, such as his Eton-bred obsession with matters of good form. And she was untrustworthy and blackhearted as they came.

  She absolutely adored her brother, and followed him everywhere and anywhere he went. When piracy presented itself as his most promising future trade, she followed him unhesitatingly into his mercenary endeavors. Technically speaking, Hack was the captain and she was his first lieutenant.

  However, as time passed upon the Skull n’ Bones, the captain and his sister came to follow very different patterns. Hack preferred to roam the deck and the seas by daylight, for he was very much into strutting and preening and being admired by all who saw him; and it was quite simply easier to see him in daylight.

  The sister embraced the night side. With only a few of the hardiest of the pirates up and about, Hack’s sister would be at the wheel, keeping a wary eye out for danger or plunder, as either presented itself. Other ships that might have thought that night was a safe time for travel, since the pirates themselves no doubt slept, occasionally encountered a very rude surprise, thanks to the female pirate’s nocturnal vigilance.

  Since their activities thus did not overlap all that much, the crew tended to refer to her as “captain” as much as they did her fraternal counterpart. If the great man himself knew of it, he did not voice any objections, since it represented no undermining of his authority.

  Curiously, she did not have the effete mannerisms that her brother occasionally displayed. She was, in that odd respect, more manly than the man who meant so much to her. She walked with a determined swagger, a squaring of the shoulders, and had a fondness for hard rum that garnered her the instant admiration of other pirates. It was not unexpected. In any field of endeavor that is dominated by men, a woman could not settle for being as good as the least of the men. She had to be better than the best of them. Unfair, perhaps, and unjust, but the way of things nevertheless, even in the Anyplace.

  Nor did she share her brother’s oddest phobia: the sight of one’s own blood. She was less squeamish about such matters, if you will; and that was never more evident than this particular time that I will now share with you.

  You know, of course, that The Boy severed Captain Hack’s right hand from him and fed it to the formidable serpent, the one that would then continue to pursue Hack until that famed pirate’s eventual demise.

  What you do not know of are the minutes immediately after that legendary initial dismemberment.

  There lay the great captain, sprawled upon the deck, moaning loudly and flitting into and out of consciousness (mostly out of). The right sleeve of his frock coat was bisected, and the material that remained was becoming thickly stained with his strangely colored purplish blood.

  Pirates tend to take their cues from their captains, and so as the pirate captain wailed and moaned over the loss of his limb, so too did his crew take up the cry. The delighted laughing of the arrogant Boy floated above their heads even though he himself had taken leave of the place. None of them even noticed that the serpent was already endeavoring to haul itself up the side of the boat, anxious to devour the rest of the tasty morsel presented it.

  Out from below deck stormed the sister of the great man. She held an alarm clock in her hand, shaking it angrily, sleep still blearing her eyes. It was early in the morning, and she was about to take out her frustration on the whole of the crew for making such an ungodly hullabaloo when she had so recently gone to bed.

  Imagine her shock, then, at seeing the following: her brother lying bleeding; the crew in disarray; and a serpent with jaws wide open, perched halfway over the rail and about to insinuate its entire massive body onto the ship’s deck.

  You might well have heard the expression “throws like a girl.” That most definitely did not apply to the lady pirate. Seeing the situation laid out before her, she addressed the most immediate problem by slinging at the serpent the only weapon she had at hand—namely, the clock. She hurled it with such precision and force that the clock struck the serpent directly between the eyes, sending the animal off balance. The serpent flipped backward while the clock ricocheted straight up. As the serpent slid down the side of the boat toward the water, it let out a roar of frustration and protest.

  I’m certain you can anticipate what happened next. Say it. Go ahead; we can wait. Yes, there it is, as you most assuredly have predicted: The clock dropped from on high and skidded down the serpent’s throat. The serpent was dimly aware it had swallowed something but wasn’t entirely sure what. Then it hit the water, sank, and began to choke on the unexpected obstruction. The only thing that saved the animal was the onrush of water into its still-open mouth that pounded down and through and shoved the clock the rest of the way down the serpent’s gullet.

  Shaken and confused, the serpent swam away.

  Mary took a cloth and fashioned a tight bandage around her brother’s maimed arm. The rest of the crew was shouting, crying of their own very likely doom, for if their mighty captain could be so treated, what hope had they of surviving?

  With a great swelling of anger, Mary said, “Stop your barking, you dogs! It’s just a hand!”

  “Easy for you to say!” lamented her brother, coming briefly out of his swoon. “You have two!”

  Without a word, Mary released the pirate captain, allowing his head to thud to the deck. She turned, picked up an ax with her right hand, slammed her left arm upon the rail, and did not so much as cry out as she—

  I see you flinch. I do not blame you. I flinch as well. If you are young enough that you need to ask what precisely happened next, then very likely your mother or father is reading this to you and can take this opportunity to explain it as delicately as your sensibilities will allow. Likewise, your older sister, if reading aloud, will be careful in her description. If your older brother is reading this, then I fear you are out of luck. He will likely describe the fate of Mary’s left hand in as brutal and gory a fashion as he can muster, just to watch you squirm, because…well, because that is what brothers do. Our apologie
s in advance, and we hope it does not make you dislike The Boy for having cut off the pirate captain’s hand and thus set this tragedy into motion in the first place.

  Anyway…onward.

  It was Mary who suggested the ax to replace her brother’s lost limb, and he, in turn, recommended she sport a sword where her hand had once been. Thus did he acquire the name Captain Hack. By all rights, she could simply have gone with the name Captain Sword, but her devotion to her brother and desire to emulate him in all things was monumental. It would even have been touching if it were not all in the interest of evil doings. So she dubbed herself Captain Slash in order to emphasize that they were a team; and for a time, they were.

  But familiarity can breed contempt. Not only that, but pirates can breed mistrust. Indeed, they excel at it. One of the crew, Starkly—whom you’ve met—began fomenting dissatisfaction among his shipmates. Their noble captain, now Captain Hack, may have endeavored to bounce back from the trouncing he had taken from The Boy; but nevertheless there was clear, physical evidence that their captain was far from invincible. Had not a mere laughing boy gotten the better of him? Had not that boy’s actions resulted in the ship’s being perpetually followed by a ticking serpent? What sort of man had they trusted their fates to, if he was displaying this sort of ineptitude?

  Later in his career, Hack would have had a quick answer for these sorts of mutterings, content to gut Starkly from belly to collarbone along with anyone else who might actually give weight to his words. But Hack was still smarting from the encounter that had maimed him; and he even felt a small degree of shame, if such as he knew shame. Whenever one is a cowardly custard such as that, one inevitably looks for someone else upon whom blame may be assigned.

  In this instance, Hack blamed Slash.

  It was not difficult to do. She was a woman, first of all, and that alone is a great crime in the eyes of many. Plus, if she had not been a slugabed, she might well have aided him in warding off The Boy’s assault, thus averting the tragedy. The more the crew thought about it—or the more Hack told them what to think—the more blame they were able to lay at Captain Slash’s doorstep.