The Lost Boy

Epilogue

It burned. Not as badly as the green moon's power, no, but it was worse than any sort of pain he'd felt back in London. 

This wasn't even the first time he'd been bitten, or even attacked, by an animal. 

One time, at five years old, he'd yanked a stray cat's tail and it had clawed him, scarring his left arm with four long, thin claw marks near the inside of his elbow. 

The only other time was when he'd been eleven and he'd teased a street mutt. The dog had bitten his right leg and left a nasty round scar above his ankle. He'd needed some treatment after that one, but that wasn't what mattered about the memory. 

What mattered was the pain that those moments had inflicted. Neither time had been quite as painful as this. 

Why? 

He couldn't think of any other reason than this: it was a crocodile. One of the most vicious, nasty, terrifying creatures he'd ever seen or heard about. 

What was worse was that it was Rooster's crocodile. 

A crocodile by itself was bad enough, but his best friend's crocodile had attacked him. If he'd had any doubts about not needing Rooster anymore, that crocodile was all that needed to be mentioned. 

No way was he friends with the "mum" of a crocodile. 

His wrist had stopped bleeding, all the little pockets created by the beast's sharp little teeth decorating his skin with multiple scabbing, red spots that seemed to sew his right palm around his wrist. 

But the halt in bleeding did not bring a halt in the pain. He fought the tears that threatened to emerge from his eyes, battled the urge to wail. He was better than that. He was no baby. 

He was a pirate. 

Holding his left hand to his chest, he gingerly peeled his bandaged fingers away from his wrist. The scabs ripped away in sharp, stabbing bursts that brought tears to his eyes and he dug his teeth into his lower lip to keep from crying. Blood began to spring up from the puncture points once more, while the scabs that had previously formed there stuck to the bandages wrapped around his right hand. 

He reached into the only pocket of his trousers and pulled out a circular, golden pocket watch. He flicked it open and his lip curled in disgust as water fell free from the watch. Sea water, by the smell of it. Ugh. 

The hands were no longer ticking. He curled his lip further and spat angrily at the dirt. 

The watch was his only connection to his mother, a pirate. She'd left him the watch when she'd dropped him off at the orphanage. He didn't know what had happened to her after that day. 

Some part of him didn't care about what had become of the woman who'd abandoned him. 

Another part of him wanted to feel connected to her. 

He swiped a finger across the inside of the watch's lid, where a name was engraved. After years of pestering, Wilshire had finally revealed that as far as he knew, the watch had been specially made for him, something that his mother, who Wilshire had explained was a pirate named Anne, had put genuine effort into, instead of simply stealing. 

James Hook. 

That was who he really was. There would be no more of this "Codfish" nonsense. He was James Hook, son of the pirate Anne Hook, pirate by birth. He didn't know who his father was; he didn't care, either. 

He didn't need a family. 

What he needed was a crew. If he was going to be a pirate like his mother, he needed a pirate crew.