Outside the shop, Roger paused and took Jocelyn by the arm. “Can I see it, Jocelyn? The Neverland map, I mean? Just for a minute?”

Her first impulse was to say no, for it was hers, wasn’t it? The mapmaker hadn’t given it to Roger, and even if he had, she was the captain. Why shouldn’t she get to study it first?

She opened her mouth to say so, but when she glanced up at Roger, his eyes filled with excitement, she remembered how it had felt to have him look at her without any recognition at all. When Roger had come to the Neverland with Peter Pan and become a lost boy, he’d forgotten, for a time, nearly everything about his life before—including his friendship with Jocelyn. She had thought he was lost to her forever, but in the end, he’d come back to her. A sudden surge of gratitude filled her heart. What would she do without him?

She tapped the boy on his nose with the rolled-up map. “I’ll do you one better. Why don’t you keep it? You have a head for directions, the ability to navigate by stars, and that most excellent brass compass. All you need is this map and you can be my navigator.”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” the boy called out. “I accept this commission and will serve loyally to keep us on track.” He gave a smart salute, making Jocelyn giggle. There was no one she liked half as much as Roger.

The same could not be said for Meriwether, who, now recovered from his shaking, pulled a second button from Roger’s shirt, tossed it to the gutter, and flew off alone in a huff.

The boy simply shrugged, unperturbed by the fairy’s antics. Roger offered his arm to Jocelyn, and, as they had several hours before needing to return to the ship, they set off with no real plans. The pair ambled along under buildings cobbled together from old ship parts, through an outdoor market lit by oil lamps and starlight. Jocelyn was sorely tempted to buy a tempest in a teapot, in case she ever needed a decent storm or a nice cup of Earl Grey at sea, but she held back, telling herself that once she had the treasure she would be able to buy the entire tempestuous tea set, right down to the last tornado in a teacup and tsunami on a saucer.

“Roger,” she asked, “what will you do with your share of the gold when we find it?”

“First thing, I think I’ll buy some new clothes.” Roger still wore the thick bearskin pants he had been given as a lost boy, paired with a threadbare tunic. “Thanks to Meriwether, this shirt is barely holding together.” He sniffed the air. “And you may not have noticed, but these trousers are beginning to smell.”

Jocelyn wrinkled her nose. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think we are well past the beginning.”

Roger grinned and nudged her with his elbow.

She nudged back, just a smidge harder. “What else do you want? Bigger than a tea set or new clothes, I mean.”

“Don’t laugh, all right?” he said.

Jocelyn made her face very serious. “I won’t. I promise.”

“To tell the truth, the thing I want most out of the gold isn’t a thing at all. More than anything I want to travel the world, finding new lands and learning about…”

“Go on,” Jocelyn prodded, slowing her steps to look over at the boy.

His next words came out all in a rush. “I want to learn about the different kinds of plants that grow throughout the world.” He patted the pocket containing his map and compass absentmindedly. “I suppose that is rather dull.”

Jocelyn shook her head. “Not at all. I think plants could be very exciting. If you found the right kind.”

Roger flashed his special just-for-Jocelyn smile. “Not to most people, but thank you for saying so. What about you? What will you do with the treasure?”

They stopped in front of a stall selling manacles, shackles, and saltwater taffy. Jocelyn trailed her fingers over an iron chain. “If I have money of my own, no one will be able to tell me what to do. My grandfather will give up his ridiculous idea of having me marry into a wealthy family. I’ll be able to live whatever life I choose, either here or back on the mainland. Perhaps I will even captain the ship that takes you to all your exotic plants.”

Roger’s eyes sparkled. “I’d like that. Here’s to finding the treasure, and making our own futures.”

He held up an imaginary glass. Jocelyn lifted her own to his. Their pretend toast was punctuated by the sound of real breaking glass. The girl stared in puzzlement at their still-raised hands for a moment. More sounds—crashes and bangs, screams and yells—filled the air. Just up the street from where they stood, a flying bar stool came crashing through a window and out into the gutter. More shouting followed, louder now that the window glass was gone.

One man’s voice was perfectly distinguishable, even if the words themselves were not. They sounded somewhat like English, but only if it had been chopped up, heavily seasoned, and stuffed into a sausage. Only one person Jocelyn knew spoke with such a heavy Scottish accent, and he happened to be one of her crew.

“That’s Jim McCraig with a Wooden Leg!” Jocelyn cried. She took Roger by the hand and ran with him to the source of the commotion: a seedy-looking establishment with a crooked sign over the door. It read THE BLACK SPOT.

In my younger years, the Black Spot was a particularly favorite haunt of mine. Nearly all my most important milestones happened within its hallowed walls, from the first time I was rightfully accused of cheating at cards—after being wrongfully discovered—to the first time a woman tried to steal my heart. I’ve still got the scar to prove it.

Jocelyn hurried up the steps, pushed through the door, and walked right into the middle of a brawl, with her crew members at the heart of it. Jim McCraig grappled with two enemies: a small man and a large woman, both entirely covered in tattoos. The man stomped on Jim’s “wooden leg” (a mighty sliver protruding from his big toe), while the woman squeezed his head in her beefy hands. Jim’s eyes popped, and a string of what would likely have been judged to be profanity—if anyone could have understood it—poured from his gaping mouth. This strange scene was made stranger by a brightly colored parrot circling the air above Jim’s head, screaming words every bit as impassioned, and every bit as unintelligible.

Off to Jim’s right, One-Armed Jack was locked in battle with a foe of his own. Somewhere in the course of the evening, Jack must have procured a new prosthetic arm. Like the man himself, it was somewhat unconventional: a long wooden stick with some kind of flexible red bowl at the end. The bowl reminded Jocelyn of the sucker on an octopus tentacle—mainly because it was suctioned to a table, trapping Jack in place while an elderly pirate slapped him about the head and neck with a rolled-up newspaper.

Blind Bart and Jocelyn’s crew cook, Nubbins, were similarly engaged, each doing his best to hold his own in the melee, each falling fathoms short of adequate.

In the middle of the brawl, Dirty Bob stood on a table. In one hand he held the jagged neck of a broken bottle, in the other his sword. His eyes darted this way and that, nearly filmed over with a crazed excitement. Spit flew from his mouth as he roared, “Get up, you filthy yellow dogs! Fight like men! You’re pirates under Hook’s flag—let no man dishonor that!”

“Bob, get down from there this instant!” Jocelyn called, but her voice was lost in the sound of curses and crashing fists. “Roger, we have to stop this!”

“Aye, Captain. I have an idea!” He stepped to a battered piano in a darkened corner, sat, and began to play. His notes rose above the brawling cacophony, and the fighting men paused and looked around.

Roger began to sing:

Oh, hi derry, hey derry, ho derry down,

Give sailors their grog and there’s nothing goes wrong.

It was like magic. The pirates stopped fighting immediately, even as their fists still hung in midair. Nearly everyone joined in for the next lines:

So merry, so merry, so merry are we,

No matter who’s laughing at sailors at sea!

When the last note died down, Dirty Bob threw his broken bottle to the floor in disgust. “What the devil did I just witness? None of you are real pirates! Yer just a bunch of ladies in the church choir!”

Before he could start up the fighting again, Jocelyn pulled a tattered scrap of sail, serving as a tablecloth, out from under him, sending the man tumbling to the ground. “That’s enough of that!” the girl commanded. “My crew, get back to the ship. Your furlough has been canceled.”

“Wait just a minute there, missy.” A bearded giant of a man in a stained apron came around from the other side of the bar. He narrowed his eyes under a single bushy brow. “Take a look at this place.”

There wasn’t a table left standing other than the one Dirty Bob was lying next to. Most of the chairs had been reduced to sticks and splinters. Broken glass and broken teeth littered the floor like confetti left over from the world’s worst birthday party. (Mine. Age seven.)

Jocelyn nodded. “I see. But why should it be my concern?”

“Because yer men started the affair.” He pointed a meaty finger at Bob. “Especially that one. Coming in here talking about how Cap’n Hook’s flag had been raised again and he and his mates were the only ones tough enough to sail under it. I warned him to take that kind of talk outside, but he just kept at it, challenging anyone who’d have him and his shipmates to a fight. We get a lot of rough talk in here, and most paid him no mind, but then he…”

“What did he do?” Jocelyn turned to Bob. “What did you do?”

No one answered for a moment; then a tremulous voice at the back of the crowd called out, “He insulted our mothers. We just couldn’t let that stand!”

Jocelyn sighed. She would never understand the silly preoccupation with mothers that was so prevalent on the Neverland. On the other hand, she had once flown into a rage at Prissy Edgeworth, a horrible girl at school, for insulting her mother, so she could hardly blame the men for their reaction.

The bartender continued, “Aye, insult ’em he did. It’s clear he’s responsible for this mess.” The man tilted his head, cracking the joints in his neck. If she hadn’t been there herself, Jocelyn would have never believed such menace could be packed into a little popping sound. “And you,” he went on, “are responsible for him. Make it right.”

Jocelyn felt the dwindling pouch of gold at her waist. “I’m a bit light of doubloons at the moment—”

“I’ll take what you have.” The bartender held out his hand, and Jocelyn dropped her remaining coins into it.

Nubbins pushed a broken table off his chest, picking himself up from where he had fallen to the floor. He clapped the girl on the back and smiled with lips swollen and bruised. “Don’t worry, Captain, there’ll be enough gold to buy this place a hundred times over—and put in a shiny new kitchen—once we find Hook’s treasure! How did it go with the map?”

She glared at him. “Stow that talk, Nubbins!” she whispered, her eyes darting around to see who might have overheard.

In the back of the room, she caught a glimpse of a familiar, warty face. When Krueger had attacked her ship, a man that looked suspiciously like this one had nearly thrown her overboard. What was his name? Benito? Could they be one and the same?

The girl wiped her palms on her skirt, heart thumping. “Let’s go, men. Back to the ship, now. Heave to!”

They followed behind in sheepish silence.