I didn't let him leave. The moment he mentioned getting back home, I tossed the lamp aside and grabbed him by the sleeve.

We'd been sitting silently for the moment, just looking at each other, a bit curious on both ends. There seemed to be something quietly magical about him and he looked at me as though he'd never seen anything of my sort.

But with my fingers wrapped around his sleeve, I felt I might have overstepped. He flinched, almost unnoticeably, working his arm out of my grip with a gentle shoulder shrug. I withdrew, feeling blood rise to my cheeks. "I'm sorry," I said. "I just don't know where I'm going. Don't leave me here."

He pushed to his knees, then to his feet, towering over me with such daunting height that I dared not say another word. "Well, you're welcome to come along, Miss." He held out a hand to me, a delicately sculpted safety net. "No promise that you'll find what you're looking for, though."

What was I looking for? I felt a crashing wave of abandonment wash over my heart. Odysseus, where are you? I wondered. Why won't you come back for me? I took the stranger's hand, shivering at his warm, calloused touch. I stood up on quaking legs and shoved my arms into the sleeves of the coat.

I pitched forward in the sand. My knees buckled and gave way like rotten wood beams in an old porch and I fell into him, arms outstretched. The man caught me in his strong, tree-limb arms. I closed my eyes and let him gather me to his chest. Oh, Acacia, I thought, Where's your independent I-need-no-man mentality now? It'd shied away days ago, as the hunger set in and the ways of the modern world slipped out of my grasp. Why shouldn't I need a man? I felt safe in his strong, unfamiliar arms.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled into his chest. "I'm just so tired --"

"Not to worry. Put your arm around me," he instructed. He smelled of the sea, fresh salt, dust, coconut. I threaded my arm through his as he supported me with his hand on my waist. We both flushed a little as the wind ruffled the lace trim on my thighs, lifting the tiny skirt slightly. "What is your name, miss?" he asked as we took our first steps in tandem.

"Acacia," I told him. "You can call me Casey. What about you?"

He guided me up the beach with short steps, waiting for me to drag my feet up to him with each one. The sand felt cold and gritty under my bare feet as I struggled along with my weight against him. "I go by many names."

Ah, mysterious. I started to loop my finger through his belt loop, a flirtatious move I'd pulled on many a man in the past, until I realized that his pants had no belt loops, only a strap leading to a sheath from which the hilt of a sword jutted out of his hip. I ran my finger along the top of it and felt the worn, smooth metal of it under my nail. "What should I call you?" I asked him.

The man breathed out, fingers drumming gently against my side through the coat. I shivered, glanced his way. He didn't look at me. In the thin glow of the flickering lantern I saw only his still jaw and the tip of a golden brown earlobe. I felt my stomach pulse with excitement when he yanked me closer, although it was only to keep me from falling into a pit in the sand directly in my path. My heart thrilled as he held me there, close, tense, for a moment, eyes on mine, before relaxing his grip again. "Be careful," he advised.

"Okay." I bit my lip to keep from screaming as we began the slight uphill climb toward the pitch black gaping mouth of the woods. I didn't want to go in there, but I couldn't tell him so -- he'd leave me behind on the beach. 

Instead, I tried again. "So what's your name?"

"Here, I go by Jas," he said.

"Ah, like Captain Hook." Being an English major at university had equipped me well to quote Wilde and Frost as well as to make allusions to children's books like Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland often enough merit weary looks after five minutes of conversation about most things. A couple in a movie would have a "Walrus and the Carpenter" dynamic or a baby would laugh and I would remind someone nearby that that was how the first fairy was created.

Of course, I'd only said these things to perpetuate my silly literature-snob persona and annoy my long-time friends. I never thought twice about any of it. Which made it so easy to forget that this here, this sand under my feet, was in face the Neverland I had so often referred to. The land of dreams, shore of wishes.

I felt him flinch against me and realized I'd made a mistake. "Where are you from, Miss?" he asked.

"England?" I told him, my voice too high. He didn't answer, so I kept going. "Manchester, specifically. Well, I'm from from Leeds, but -- well, do you even know where England is at all? It's just far, far from here. My, I haven't the slightest clue how many nights we flew to get here--" I stopped babbling as the pirate tugged me toward the rustling lip of the forest. "Are we going in there?" I asked.

"Yes," said he. I gripped the back of his shirt and let myself be led into the undulating darkness.

The air smelled instantly rich, of sweet fruits decomposing in wet, loamy earth. The humidity covered my face like a wet towel, sank into my clothes and skin. My toes recoiled but could not escape the pervasive soil. It felt clammy on my feet, sent shivers up my body. Jas crunched silently on. I knew he could hear me yelping with discomfort as I stumbled behind him over prickly tree roots and sharp rocks in the nearly pitch-black darkness.

"Jas?" I said, trying to hang on to the back of his shirt. He'd unwrapped his arm from my waist and now used his sword to chop clear the brush in our path. I hopped along behind him like a damned soul dancing on the hot coals of Hell. "I'm sorry if I . . . offended you. I didn't mean anything by it."

He slowed down just enough for me to catch hold of the back of his pants. I didn't care that I could feel the heat of his body emanating out from between his back and the waistband of his pants -- a closeness that would have embarrassed me just a moment ago now seemed imperative. If I lost him, I knew, I would not find him again.

I heard the shing of sword against a branch followed by a crash of the wood against underbrush. "Don't worry yourself, lass," he growled. Maybe he didn't growl, but everything sounded menacing in the crawling blackness. The flame inside the lamp wiggled its fingers and stuck out its tongue like a pouty child, refusing to illuminated anything but my bare feet, now covered over with a thin layer of rich dirt, adhering to the humid sweat on my skin. "I can hear that you are confused."

"Yes," I answered, but vaguely. I was too busy holding up the lamp in front of us, trying to catch sight of his right hand until the flame found a glimmer of metal on his other side and I was satisfied.