The Game

Millenia have passed, a hundred years have gone,

the Never Magic's failing,soon there'll be no dawn,

there must be one to halt the fear and never ending growing,

the time is nigh, the Cockerel's crowing, the end of days are coming.

The window was closed and locked.

All lights were out in the room, save for the one that streamed through the door from the stairwell and the moon light through the glass of the window, giving a dim light that cast long shadows.

They huddled together under the covers of one of the beds with a torch and their favourite book, staring at the pictures of Pirates, Indians and Fairies.

“Hey! Don’t shove me!” he whined to his sister

“Well, move over and I wouldn’t have to shove you” she said defiantly

They wrestled for the torch.

Her trying to keep it and him trying to take it.

Neither of them noticed a new shadow creep into the room.

A draft blew at their feet and the girl turned to her brother.

“Did you open the window?”

“No. Mum locked it, I saw her”

Both crawled to the head of the bed and peeked out from underneath their makeshift sheet tent as the curtain shifted and blew gently into the room with the breeze.

They saw a silhouette in the frame.

Both children screamed.

Their mother, who had been down stairs, ran with the speed of a cheetah to the room of her children.

She ripped back the covers of both their beds.

She even checked the closet and under said beds but found neither hide nor hair of them.

She spun trying to see where they could be hiding and then noticed the window, which had definitely not been open before.

She moved to it and looked out onto the snowy ground below. Thankfully she saw neither of them outside.

She didn’t stop to wonder why it was open but continued into the next room in search of her missing children.

Later she would call her husband to return home and help her look, convinced they were playing games and later than that, the police would be called to report two missing children who would never be found.

“I don’t know what to do. I can’t do anything, I’ve tried everything before”

A young man looked to an older man who was in his mid to late thirties. Though, stress and tiredness made him look older than he actually was.

“I’ve just been told by lookout that there are two new arrivals to the island” the older man continued, his British twang making his words sound more posh than intendid.

“We don’t even know what faction has them, otherwise we’d be in there trying to rescue them!” he hissed, slamming a hooked hand into the wood of the ship in anger.

He was never usually one to care about these sorts of things, but since the darkness had come he found living here unbearable.

And when he'd started hearing about kidnapped children and ‘The Game’ his stomach turned in repugnance.

He’d never met anyone who could be worse than him...never even heard of it, never considered the notion that there would be someone worse than him....worse than Captain James Hook.

Yes, he had on numerous occasion tried to kill one, annoying little boy...but he had valid reasoning...that’s what he thought no matter what anyone else said. That reason helped him sleep at night, although he didn’t sleep anymore.

A thought struck him and he vaguely wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before.

He called for his bo’sun, Smee, who came running, sliding and tripping over to his Captain, irritating his fellow crew members as he upset the water buckets they were using to clean.

“Yes Cap’n?”

The young man next to Hook rolled his eyes and turned to lean on the wooden rail, staring out to the dark ocean.

“I’ve had an idea. Do we have anymore of Miss Belle’s Pixie Dust lying around?”

“I think there might be a bit left in the bag...what for?”

“Why don’t we bring them back? They might be able to help”

Smee started, pulling the red knit beanie from his head and twisting it in his hands with anxiety.

“But Cap’n, they won’t come back! That’s reason he started all this! It’s the reason all of this happened! What do you even expect them to do?! They wouldn’t stay! They wouldn’t come if asked!”

“I don’t know what to expect, but they might be able to help somehow. Even if it’s just to try and talk some sense into him! I can’t kill him, I’ve been trying that for years and I’ve never succeeded! But there are too many other problems to deal with other than him now. So killing him is off the table. I can’t do this on my own!”

“But you’re not on your own” the boy beside him spoke for the first time “You may have a point though. He is the main reason things here have happened the way they have. It’s either die or hide. And I’m not looking to die anytime soon...and I’m sick of hiding” he said this part to himself under his breath and tinted with tired sarcasm

Both men stared at him.

“You have certainly grown away from the young, selfless, carefree Lost Boy you once were” Hook said with a saddened smile, remembering good days long gone.

“There’s no time for ‘carefree’ and it’s not growing, it’s adapting...surviving” the boy stated

“And if we are to survive...if this world is to survive we must do everything that we possibly can to fix this...or die trying” the Captain confirmed for his bo’sun, who muttered a despondent ‘Yes Cap’n’ and walked away.

Hook turned back to boy who stared out at the Island that had once been his home, which was now choked with a dark mist this night and was silent, with only a few trees reaching out through the heavy air.

The only sound that would be heard anywhere was the water lapping against the side of the ship and the occasional ‘ting’ of the warning bell moving back and forth with the waves and wind.

Not even the Mermaids would go near the Island anymore and they were far more dangerous than the Crocs...it just proved how dire this situation had become.