“Ouch!” said James, letting her go, but she wasn’t quick enough; James was able to snatch her back out of the air. He felt her struggle in his hand as he was fighting off Peter’s attack with his other, and wondered what he was doing. Everything had gone terribly wrong. This wasn’t what he wanted. He had ruined everything; he saw it in Peter’s eyes. He had wanted so badly to be friends—the best of friends—but James was now his enemy.

“Peter, we don’t have to be enemies. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. All I wanted . . .” But the rest of his words didn’t come—all he knew was the pain. It shot from his hand to the rest of his body like a bolt of lightning. It was a blinding, all-encompassing pain so overwhelming he thought he would pass out.

He wasn’t even sure what had happened until he saw his severed hand tumbling through the air alongside him, still clutching Tinker Bell as they plummeted overboard toward the water below. None of it seemed real. Nothing had since he’d saved Blackbeard from the Kraken, and he wondered as he had several times since if this was all a dream. He wished with all his heart it was. If only he were fast asleep in the Dead Woods, dreaming of the fate he avoided in Never Land, or even back home again with his mother. He wished to be anywhere other than where he was now.

Time seemed to slow as James saw he was getting closer to the water, and the crocodiles waiting for him there, and he made a silent wish that when he died he would somehow be able to join Blackbeard in the Floating Boneyard, but right before James fell into the lagoon the Jolly Roger appeared out of nowhere, swooped down, and caught James before he fell to the crocodiles below. James’s hand wasn’t so lucky.

“Tinker Bell!” yelled Peter, diving into the water after a crocodile licking its chops. And James wondered if the beast had eaten the fairy along with his hand.

That was the last thing James saw before everything went black.

Chapter XVI

James woke several days later to find two things: a hook lying on his bedside table, and that he was Peter Pan’s enemy. He didn’t want either. Smee had managed to get them to a secret part of the island none of the Lost Boys would dare enter: the Labyrinth of Longing. And it sent a penetrating dread into James’s already wounded and fearful heart.

“You’re finally awake, sir,” said Smee, who had been sitting at his bedside. His face was full of worry, his eyes tired and hooded from lack of sleep.

“Take that horrible thing away, Smee. I don’t want to look at it,” said James, repulsed by the hook sitting on his bedside table.