He turned his lashy blue eyes on her; he had the kind of open, disarming gaze that could make people lose their trains of thought, even boys. “Because it’s not fair to the rat. You have to at least have a fighting chance.”
Tiger Lily took this in silently. I watched the two of them. I liked the way they stood together. They both kept one ear on each other, and one on the forest around them. And yet, there was something almost peaceful about them standing there. Maybe the way he seemed to vibrate made her stillness seem less glaring, and Peter seemed calmer.
“You don’t say much?” Peter said.
Tiger Lily shook her head. She was unsure what to say without revealing too much of herself.
Peter leaned on the railing, which was merely a long crooked stick suspended by two wooden forks. He swayed forward and back against it listlessly, pumping his arms slowly, looking for something else to say. The railing didn’t appear to be sturdy enough to hold his weight for long. There were still parts of him that hadn’t caught up to the rest of him. “We do know girls. It’s not like we’ve never seen a girl. I love girls. I mean, I have loved a lot of them and there are some I love now. We know lots of girls actually.” He leaned in, paused. “They say a lot more than you do. It’s nice when they laugh.”
Tiger Lily merely stared down at the water below, trying to absorb all of the information. Then suddenly, in a heartbeat, Peter’s eyes turned to me, as if he’d been noticing me all along. He reached out and lifted his hand gently underneath me, studying me. Imagine a human touching a fly this way. Most humans don’t find faeries worth studying and, if they do try to touch them, accidentally smush them or at least break a limb or two. But Peter touched me so carefully and gently that it felt like a whisper. “You’re a pretty little thing,” he said. Then, just as quickly, he set me onto a leaf and turned his attention back to Tiger Lily. He pointed across the thin swath of swamp to a tree just out of reach. A strange ball, trailing ribbons in a kind of tail, perched in the branches.
“Nibs made that ball for us when we were kids,” he said. “You can twirl it and fling it really high. Too high, I guess. Slightly lost it there ages ago. No one can get it.” He nodded down to the crocs. “I don’t know why we’d want to get it anyway. We wouldn’t play with it anymore. We’ve outgrown that kind of stuff. But still, Tootles wants it back in the worst way. Maybe it’s for the memories.”
Before he could say more, Tiger Lily was on the trunk of the tree, shinnying her way up. She moved like an eel, wriggling and quick, her strong legs carrying her higher and higher, until she was at the limb. I perched on the railing to watch and held my breath. Peter held his.
Ask a Bog Dweller about endurance. But for things requiring balance and strategy, Sky Eaters were the most graceful and accomplished people in all of Neverland. Even faeries marveled at their skill. And Tiger Lily was easily their best climber. Here was an impossibly skinny limb, but she distributed her weight expertly. And simply, so quickly that it seemed without thought or effort, she had the ball in her hands, its ribbons still wrapped in twigs and thick leaves.
She climbed down and gave the ball to Peter.
“Thank you for giving me my necklace back,” she said, with a great effort.
Peter stared at the ball in his hand and frowned. Then he looked at her as if he felt sorry for her. “We could have done that. But the hard part is unraveling the ribbons from the leaves, that’s what I meant. It’s just a pain. That’s all.”
She tilted her head, confused. “Oh,” she said.
“You looked strange climbing in the tree like that.”
Tiger Lily pulled her braids between her fingers, her sudden self-consciousness feeling foreign and strange to her. “I didn’t do it to look nice,” she said.
“But you do care.”
Tiger Lily studied the tree and decided if she did care, she would now choose not to. “I don’t,” she said.
“All girls do,” he added, pushing the point.
“You must not know many girls.”
“I know a million,” Peter said, dark and serious. There was a long awkward silence, but if Peter regretted his words, I couldn’t tell.
“Did you cry? About your friend?” he finally asked, changing the subject.
She shook her head. She couldn’t have cried if she wanted to. Other girls in her village cried a lot. Boys claimed not to cry, but she had seen Pine Sap cry harder than anyone, over a wounded bird. Then again, he had a special connection to birds. Learned all their calls. Knew their habits.
“Yeah.” Peter picked at his hangnail again. “Actually, I never get sad. It’s a waste of time, don’t you think?”
Tiger Lily didn’t answer. She was impressed by the idea of deciding not to be sad. His words made him seem very strong. Impervious.
“Why did you look after that man?” Peter asked.
Tiger Lily considered the question. “I didn’t want him to be alone,” she finally said.
Peter kept his eyes on her for a long while. She looked up at the moving gray clouds and resumed walking.
Peter followed her. We reached the edge of his territory. When she turned to say good-bye, his face was dark.
“You’ll come back?”
She shook her head. I looked into the shade. When the clouds drifted in, the forest became dark a few feet away. “No. I’ll never come back. I wouldn’t be allowed.”
Having had an eye on Tiger Lily since she was a child, I knew a few things. She had many flaws. Conceit. Stubbornness. Pride. But breaking her word wasn’t one of them. I knew, when she said it, we would not be returning to Peter and the burrow.
Peter took this in. “Well, I wish it was different,” he said sadly. He stopped short. He stuck out his hand, and she stared at it. “You shake it. Something Slightly taught us. It’s polite.”
He took her hand and moved it up and down to demonstrate. She let him, silently. He hung on to her fingers.
Suddenly he stepped forward and pulled her toward him and hugged her tightly. When he set her loose, she tottered.
“Okay, good-bye,” he said. Then he turned, as if forgetting her, and walked toward the burrow without a backward glance. Me, he had already forgotten for sure. But I watched him walk away. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t not. He had scooped me up. He had looked at me with his lashy eyes.
We were too late to get to the village before the rain. I dodged the drops, and I managed to stay dry, but by the time we got home, Tiger Lily was soaked. And me … I was fairly certain I was in love.
THIRTEEN
The second time the village decided Tiger Lily was cursed, it was when Aunt Fire burned herself alive.
Tiger Lily was sitting by the fire, listening to Pine Sap talk about the fascinating and mysterious traits of crows. He loved to study the ways birds lived and how they built their nests and the different, intricate ways they spoke to each other, and recently he’d become fixated on crows in particular … perhaps because he thought it might interest Tiger Lily, which it didn’t. He was regaling her with a description of a crow funeral and the tribal behavior of groups of crows when Aunt Fire appeared, her saggy face red and pulled tightly down in rage over some chore that Tiger Lily had left undone in Giant’s hut. She lifted the broom and beat Tiger Lily about the head and shoulders, knocking her bowl of corn and beans into the fire and sending Tiger Lily pitching forward.
Tiger Lily was physically strong. She could have snapped Aunt Fire in half like a twig. But she took the beating, lying down on the ground, too stubborn to even cover her head as the broom repeatedly struck her skull. All of Aunt Fire’s rage at every insult she had ever received rained down in those blows.
Then, when her abuser had spent her limited energy, Tiger Lily simply stood up, and walked off toward her hut.
A few minutes later, Aunt Fire was leaning by the fire, talking to Aunt Sticky Feet about the filth in Giant’s room, when she lost her balance, ever so slightly, and fell right onto the flames that happened to be cooking that da
y’s lunch.
It was almost as if she’d been doused in oil, it caught so quickly. She went thrashing about, running through the village, calling for help. But the speed only fanned the flames. Before anyone could stop her, or jump on her with blankets, she was at the other edge of the village, a black, smoking nightmare of a creature. She collapsed, and suddenly went silent.
As it happened, a crow was eating an ear of corn on a log just beside where she collapsed. The crow had stolen the corn from the tribe’s meal—so it had recently been roasted by the fire too.
When Tiger Lily came out of her house a few moments later, having missed the commotion completely, everyone turned to look at her.
After that day, Pine Sap disappeared into the woods every morning and came home every afternoon, and no one paid any attention. It seemed that he was distancing himself from Tiger Lily, at last. He wasn’t terribly useful for any of the village tasks, and the boys were glad to be without him on their hunts, because he always slowed them down. I must confess that even I never followed him, for lack of curiosity. My thoughts were on Tiger Lily, as were everyone else’s.
The village watched her out of the sides of their eyes. It oppressed her, and we all wondered what she would do. The only thing we wondered more was what Giant would do. And the hopeful among us, myself included, thought he would never marry his mother’s suspected murderer.
For several days, Giant stayed away, mourning by himself across the river. When the tribe buried Aunt Fire on a hill overlooking the water—where all of the tribe’s dead were laid to rest—he stayed away. Tik Tok presided over the ceremony in a solemn deep-green dress, and spoke about the continuity of the spirit.
It was during those days that Giant first came after Moon Eye, when she was down by the river washing her hair. She had come to sit at the water’s edge, and he came upon her accidentally through the bushes. He startled her. Then he grabbed the edges of her dress. She pulled out of his grasp, and ran back to the council fire, where she lodged herself at Pine Sap’s side and never said a word.
Everyone watched Tiger Lily’s house for signs of contrition. Until she came out one night, and approached the fire where everyone was gathered for dinner. There was a collective holding of breath when they saw her, and only later did they whisper about what to make of it.
Nothing had changed about her, except that she was wearing two feathers in her hair instead of one.
I confess. I flew back to the burrow on secret, nightly visits. I watched Peter and the boys. I nestled behind Peter’s ear one night while he slept. I lay on his chest and listened to him breathe. I wanted to be close to him and smell him and hear his heartbeat.
I watched the lost boys living without a girl in sight. I watched how they existed hand to mouth, from one kill to the next. And how they wondered what else there was out there to see and do and what was missing. Next to Tiger Lily, Peter was the loneliest person I’d ever set eyes on. But mostly, I saw something they wouldn’t let anyone else see. How scared they were, and how well they hid. And I knew, too, what they hid from, and how much they should fear.
FOURTEEN
I believed she wouldn’t go back until the moment she was walking into the woods, three days after the village buried Aunt Fire. Maybe it was the suffocation of everyone’s stares that made her break her word. Or maybe, as I thought later, there was just something about the boys that drew her back.
It was a little before dusk, and she slipped away effortlessly, as almost no one dared come by her house now, and those who did would think she was down at the river, or over in the manioc fields. She made her way to the burrow easily enough, through the tangled, humid woods, over the crocs nipping at her from under the footbridge. I followed with slightly trembling wings.
The burrow was empty, but Tiger Lily followed the footprints (in the shape of bears’ tracks—they must have worn decoys on their feet) down to a lagoon. Tiger Lily wasn’t fooled. I floated on a breeze in her wake.
The lagoon was tidal, with the giant, tree limb-filled dwelling of an enormous Never bird the only thing floating on its surface. This Never bird had probably taken years to build its huge nest—it measured about as wide as an average man was long, and was filled with all sorts of colorful feathers pilfered from other birds, as Never birds—much like birds all over the world—attract their mates with a show of how beautifully they can decorate. The water itself had a deep, briny, muddy smell, and cool air drifted off its surface. It reached like a fat thumb inland from the sea, where it lay still and muted and peaceful. From here, it was hard to guess that, just beyond the tilt and shelter of the hills that surrounded the lagoon on three sides, the ocean roared.
Tonight, the shore of the lagoon had been festooned with torches. Peter was there, with the others, perched by the water, watching its glossy surface. It was one of the twins who first spotted her, and let out a whoop.
“You’re just in time,” Nibs said breathlessly. “We’re having a dance.”
“A dance?” she asked uncertainly.
“It’s an English thing. Except in England there are girls. We’re honoring Tootles because it’s his birthday. We think.” He smiled sheepishly. “At least, that’s what we’ve decided. We throw him a lot of parties to make up for all the other times we can’t help making fun of him. I don’t know if you’ve noticed he’s an easy target.” Tiger Lily had noticed.
Peter stood and smiled at her, rubbing his dirty hands on his thighs and then reaching out to shake hers, awkwardly. “You weren’t coming back,” he said. His mouth tilted up reluctantly, like a smile he was trying to keep in. She didn’t answer, but let him grasp her fingers in his strange gesture of manners. He didn’t seem to notice me.
They had all bathed, in their own way. They looked cleaner than they had the last time Tiger Lily had come, though still disheveled. Peter’s hair was mushed to one side as before, but his pale skin was clean and glowing. He was beautiful, there was no way anyone could deny it.
There was an awkward silence, and Tiger Lily felt it. “What are you looking at?” she asked.
“There are jellyfish in the water,” Peter said to her. “Here.” He pulled her down beside him. “They can’t survive in any other kind of water, just this lagoon. If they float too close to the surface, they die. They’re here forever and nowhere else.” He turned his big eyes to her solemnly. “They never can go see the ocean. It’s tragic.”
She looked down at the water. She could see the ghostly shapes of the jellyfish, but so deep she might have been imagining them.
While the others were absorbed in what was underwater, I scanned the surface of the water from one end of the lagoon to the other, out of habit. For years after my father left us for Belladonna, I had looked for him … the last time someone had seen them, they were living on a duck’s back. But I had never been able to find him. I no longer really thought I might. But scanning the waters was a habit.
“Well,” Peter said after several minutes. “Should we start the dance?”
Tootles retrieved jars of a brown, fetid liquid from the burrow. In fact, Tootles seemed to run most of the errands for his own party. He hurried from here to there, jamming torches into the ground, before returning to the circle. They all—except Tiger Lily, who politely refused—began to drink from their jars.
I tried to make myself useful. I brought edible flowers to put in Peter’s drink. I held a leaf and fanned his ear to keep him cool. He barely seemed to notice. I secretly spit in Curly’s jar when he wasn’t looking.
A mermaid beached herself on a rock in the middle of the lagoon to watch the festivities. She was bare and sludge-covered from the torso up, and her slippery lower body lay twitching on the muddy, stony surface. She was all curves and mud, sharp teeth and soft lips. Barnacles had grown on her shoulders, her elbows, and at the curve of her neck, but she was still a magnificent animal. Peter walked to the water and waved to her, just gently.
“Why is she watching us so intently?” Tiger
Lily asked Tootles.
“Oh, that’s Maeryn. She wants Peter to go swim with her. He does from time to time.”
“But they’d murder him.” Mermaids were among the most treacherous predators in all of Neverland. They were known to lurk in bodies of water no bigger than puddles, waiting to drown hapless swimmers, though faeries have nothing to fear from them because we are too small and bitter for them to eat.
“No.” Tootles shook his head. “The mermaids are in love with Peter. That one most of all.”
“And Peter loves them,” Slightly added cynically. “In his way.”
Tiger Lily looked out at the mermaid. She thought of Peter underwater, with the darkness, the mud, the fish, and the hidden places. The things he would see that she likely never would.
“He can’t even swim,” Nibs said. “The mermaids have to do the paddling for him.”
“Mermaids can’t help being killers,” Slightly said. “He shouldn’t go in there.”
“They can help it if it’s Peter,” Tootles said. “Everything goes his way.”
Slightly rolled his eyes, but Nibs rubbed Tootles’s head affectionately. He seemed to be the only one who sensed Tootles needed extra attention.
“We’re lucky. He looks out for us.” Nibs took a sip of his drink, and noticed Tiger Lily watching him curiously.
“We learned how to drink by spying on the Bog Dwellers. We watched how they made beer. We were getting bored of everything else.”
The mermaid made a splash as she slithered back into the water. I was glad. There was something menacing about the way she had sat watching.
The boys launched into the dance part of the night as best they could for a group of only boys. Curly played a long bamboo flute. The twins sang. I found a place to watch from a fern. They all became unrecognizable as the night went on. Tiger Lily sat like a statue, hands on her knees, back straight, out of her element. As they grew sloppier and less alert, the twins argued too loudly about whether Tiger Lily was ugly or beautiful, and finally agreed that she was “ugly beautiful.” Tiger Lily pretended she hadn’t heard, but her heart slowed to absorb the blow. Tootles and Nibs performed a small, spontaneous skit, and Slightly did a little ballet that made everyone laugh. Some of the boys played cricket with a skull for a while. Every time Tootles came to bat, he’d go running from base to base, holding his sagging pants up from behind, but not fast enough to keep half of his backside from being revealed in all its pale glory.
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