Hook took a deep, steadying breath. "And now this?" he finished, barely able to form the words. "This is my reward? You?"

His sneer faltered, and his face fell. There was a sudden tear in his eye. He took the hook from Peter's throat and placed his arm about the other companionably, turning him away from the befuddled crew. "How could you do this to me-after everything we've meant to each other?"

"I just want my kids," Peter answered.

Hook sighed. "And I my hand! But there are some things in life you simply cannot have back." Then he brightened. "Tell you what. Since I am possessed of more than a modicum of good form, I shall give you the chance you never gave me. I'll make you a deal, Mr. Chairman of the Board." He turned Peter toward the mainmast. "Climb, crawl, slither if you must, up to the yardarm and touch the outstretched fingers of your beloved children and I will set them free. That's right. Free. I promise."

Peter stared up at his children, dangling in the net just below the spar. "Ah, um, well, I have a real problem with heights," he ventured.

"Have you, now?" Hook asked sympathetically.

"Save us, Daddy," Jack and Maggie cried. "Climb! Hurry, please! We want to go home!"

Peter took a deep breath. "Hang on, Princess!" he called up to Maggie. "I'm here for you, Jack! I'm coming!"

He walked to the rigging, grabbed on, and started to climb. He was only a few feet off the deck when the dizziness began. He slowed, breathing hard and sweating. Pirates began to chuckle.

"I don't think we've explored all of our options yet," he called down to Hook. "Let's work together on this, you and me. You have prime waterfront real estate crying out for development-condominiums, time-shares, office space, you name it. The sky's the limit. No building codes! Go for mineral rights while you're at it!"

Hook pointed. "Touch them, Pan. Just touch them, and all this will be a bad dream."

Jack and Maggie were pleading with him to go on. He closed his eyes and climbed another few loops. The pirates craned their necks expectantly. Then Peter opened his eyes again, and the deck rushed up to meet him. He gasped and grappled with the rigging as if hanging off a cliff, unable to go on, his terror so great that it even shut out the cries of his children.

Below, the pirates were laughing and sneering.

Hook turned to Smee. "You see? I knew he couldn't fly. He can't do anything anymore. He's a disgrace." He threw up his hands and turned away. "I cannot bring myself to soil my hook with his blood. Someone else kill them. Go on, kill them, kill them all."

Jack rose up inside the imprisoning net and began to shake the ropes wildly. Maggie collapsed in tears. "Fight, Daddy, fight," they yelled in despair. "Don't leave us!"

A whip-thin pirate scrambled up the rigging, lashed one end of a rope to a rung and the other to Peter's ankle, and shoved him off. Down Peter hurtled, screaming. But at the last possible moment he was jerked up short, bouncing and twisting, inches from certain death. A handful of pirates, in stitches over the look on his face, released him, tipped him upright, and with swords and daggers in hand began to prod him across the deck.

In the direction of the plank.

Hook glanced disconsolately over his shoulder at the proceedings. Jukes and Noodler were swinging the brats away from the hold toward the prisons on the dock. As the netting passed over Pan's head he reached up, trying in vain to brush fingertips with his children.

Touching, thought Hook.

The net swung down to the dock, and the brats were dragged out and dumped into their cells.

Truly touching.

"I am retiring," he announced to Smee, who was tagging along dutifully. "Cancel the war. Cancel my life. Pan has ruined everything. I never want to hear his name again."

He mounted the carpeted deck stairs to his cabin, so depressed he did not think he would ever smile at a Lost Boy execution again. He was almost to the door when a flash of light darted in front of him and Tinkerbell appeared.

"And what about the name Hook?" she demanded. "Is this how you want to be remembered? As a bully of your enemy's small children? As the destroyer of a fat, old Pan?"

Hook swung at her, missing, burying the point of his claw in the deck rail. In vain, he tried to yank free, cursing furiously. Tinkerbell zipped about to hover before his face, her tiny dagger drawn, the point pressed into his hawk nose.

"Give me one week, Hook, and I'll get him in shape to fight you. Then you can have your old war."

Smee charged up, a blunderbuss in hand. He leveled the barrel at Tink, inches from the captain's nose. Hook blanched.

"It's a trick, Cap'n," growled his bosun. "Lemme blow the pixie vixen straight to Davy Jones."

Tink ignored him. "You promised the war of the century, Hook!" she said, jabbing at his nose for emphasis. "Your whole life has been building to this single moment. Mortal combat-your one moment of glory-Hook versus Pan!"

"That is not Peter Pan!" Hook sneered, indicating a terrified Peter, who was now wobbling uncertainly on the plank.

"Seven days," Tink repeated. "A pittance of time for you, a blink of the eye to a man of your infinite patience-an important, powerful man who can afford to wait."

She zipped away, gone in an instant's time, leaving Hook staring down the barrel of Smee's blunderbuss.

"Smee," the captain said quietly. "Lower that, will you?" His bosun quickly complied. "Now, bring me my cigars. I need to think,"

Smee hurried off, disappearing into Hook's cabin, baggy pants flapping like sails. Hook finally freed his claw from the deck rail and stood staring at its point thoughtfully. The faerie was right, of course. He could afford to wait. Needed to, in point of fact, if it meant getting a crack at the real Pan.

As if she had read his mind, Tinkerbell flashed back into view, gossamer wings spinning threads of light, "Seven days for a battle with the true Peter Pan," she whispered. "Seven days."

Smee rushed back through the cabin door bearing Hook's favorite cigar holder, a twin-stemmed affair. Hook accepted the holder and placed it in his mouth. Smee struck a match to one cigar while Tinkerbell flashed past with faerie magic to light the other. Hook puffed thoughtfully and looked out to sea, gazing past Peter as he was prodded slowly back along the length of the plank.

"Two days," he said quietly.

"Four," countered Tink. "The bare minimum for a decent Pan."

"Three." Hook's eyes pinned her. "Final offer."

She flitted to the end of his nose. "Done."

Tiny hand extended, she shook the captain's hook guardedly. A few of the pirates gathered on the deck had been listening, and they sent up a ragged cheer. Soon the rest were joining in, ignorant of what it was they were cheering about, but happy to be yelling all the same. A few flintlocks discharged and one final cannon. The noise was deafening.

Hook unplugged his ears. "Listen, lads!" he shouted them down. They turned dutifully, even those who had been working Peter along the dreaded plank. Hook's smile could melt butter. "I have made an agreement in the interests of good sportsmanship and so on and so forth. This pitiful specimen"-he gestured disdainfully at Peter-"this degenerate pretender shall have three days to prepare himself to do battle with me, at which time he shall return here and face judgment by the blade."

"Cap'n says take up the flint and powder, men, and wave the bloody shirt!" yelled Smee. "It's going to be-"

Hook clapped a hand over his mouth. "My show, Smee." He smiled anew. "It's going to be a perfectly wonderful war, gentlemen. A war to the death between Hook and Pan."

"A war to the death!" repeated Smee through the captain's fingers.

"Or if not"-Hook sniffed with a glance toward the prisons on the docks-"Pan's rug rats perish in the most horrible fashion I can devise."