“Aye, the Jolly Roger, she is a beauty, isn’t she?” said Blackbeard, seeing James cast his eye on the beautiful ship. “Cursed she was, by three witches, as I sailed her from their shores with some of their treasures. They said the only way to break the curse was to give her away freely to someone who saved my life, and that is you, James. She is yours.” Then he added, “And so is my crew.”

James thought he couldn’t possibly be hearing Blackbeard correctly. There was no way he could be giving him this ship and his crew.

“But sir, we’ve only started our journey together, I couldn’t let you give me your ship.”

“You’ll make a fine captain, James. My time has finally come to an end. I’m tired of running from my fate. You reminded me of that when we were talking earlier.” Blackbeard was now looking down at the lights flickering under the water.

“Do you think that’s what I’m doing, sir? Running from my fate?” asked James, thinking of his life back home, and the promise he made to himself when he thought he was going to die. Though he could hardly call what he’d had back home in London a life. If he were there now his mother would be thrusting every eligible young lady in front of him until he agreed to marry one of them, and what would his life be like once married? Suffocating in drawing rooms, longing to be in Never Land. Was that his fate? He knew plenty of men who’d escaped their arranged marriages and took up bad habits, spending all their time at their club, arrested in their development, seeming to never grow up, and he wondered if they, too, had fallen out of their prams and gotten a taste for Never Land. James didn’t want to spend his life that way. He would make sure his mother was well taken care of, but he would not forfeit his dreams. Even if he never found Never Land, at least on the open sea, he felt like he could breathe.

“You’re running toward your fate, a better life, and you have it all before you. You get to choose the sort of man you want to be. It’s your choice, James, no one else’s,” said Blackbeard, taking something golden from the wooden chest adorned with a menacing eye that seemed to be looking into James’s soul.