Devourer of Men: A Captain Hook, Crocodile, and Wendy Darling Reimagining

My vision blurs with the rising panic.

I don’t want to go back.

I can’t go back.

I fight and flail and thrash and scream.

But it’s no use. There are three guards plus Theo. I’m no match for them. I will be thrown in the dungeon and I will rot there.

Tears spill over my eyes.

There is no one to save me.

The guards have me hooked between two of them, facing the way we came so that I’m being dragged backwards into the bowels of the castle. Theo trails behind us but he avoids looking directly at me.

We pass cell after cell. The air gets wetter, colder and I start to shiver.

I stop fighting and hang limp in their arms, sobbing, my bare feet bumping over the uneven rocky floor.

Maybe I was always destined to be forgotten in the dark. Maybe I was never meant to have any life at all. From the moment I was born, I knew I was cursed. I was always at the mercy of someone else.

I’ve very nearly given up, surrendering to my fate, when I hear the advice Asha once gave me burbling up from memory.

If you know how to properly knee a man in the balls, you will never be without a weapon.

I seize on that.

I have always admired Asha. For her strength, her intelligence, her bravery.

I have always wanted to be more like her.

You are not weak, she told me once when I complained about my ability to withstand court gossip. I know she meant that I was not mentally weak, but all this time she’s been training me in the practice yard, she has given me another gift: confidence in my own strength.

I am not weak.

I will not be imprisoned.

I don’t deserve it.

And more than that, I have fucking earned the right to live.

When the guards reach my assigned cell, the man at the front withdraws his ring of keys and opens the lock. The door creaks, the sound echoing through the tunnel.

Knowing I need a better position before they shove me into the cell, I go limp, dropping immediately to the floor. The uneven stone scraps at my back, but I ignore the pain. Instead I use it as fuel.

“Christ,” the man on my left says, grumbling to himself. “Leave her to me.” He comes around, hooking his arms beneath mine, hoisting me up like a doll. “They say you’re a witch but I think they got it wrong. Seems more like a petulant child to me.”

The others laugh.

The man smells like ale and pickled cabbage. It makes my stomach roll.

With my feet beneath me and the man still in front of me, I brace myself to the stone, then put my hands on his shoulders the way Asha taught me.

Get a good foundation, she said. Then control the body.

Years and years and hours and hours of practice with Asha puts my body on autopilot.

I know what to do.

I send my knee flying upward. I hit the man square in the balls and he turns red on impact, all the air rushing out of him, spittle catching in his mustache. His eyes bulge as he shields himself from another attack, bending over like a wilting flower.

“Hey!” the other says.

“Grab her,” the third says.

I yank the wilting man’s dagger from his belt and spin around as the second guard charges toward me.

Always aim up, Asha said. Most men will be taller than you. Vital organs will be higher. But watch for the ribs.

The blade sinks easily into his flesh. Blood gushes down my arm.

I pull the blade out just as the third guard, the leader, grabs me by the shoulder and spins me around, his fist clenched, aimed for my face.

I duck. He punches air.

I sink the blade in his knee and his leg buckles. His howls bounce down the tunnel walls then come back.

Turn them into a pin cushion, Asha said once demonstrating on a stuffed potato sack. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Up. Aim.

I stab. Stab. Stab again.

The guard coughs up blood and crumples to the stone floor.

I heave a breath, adrenaline pumping through my veins as I stand in the middle of the carnage.

Then I turn around and face Theo.

His nostrils flare, eyes going big and round.

“You don’t want to do this,” he warns.

“Yes I very much do.”

Blade still in hand, I charge him.