Tiger Lily

by Jodi Lynn Anderson

  She thought he would ignore her, but Pine Sap looked up.

  “Are you leaving us for him?” he asked.

  She looked at her feet. “No.” She breathed. “I don’t know.”

  Many things struggled on his face, anger being one of them. But hurt was the biggest. “You lied to me.”

  “I know.”

  He turned back to his work. “I always thought if you didn’t have to marry Giant, you would have married me.” His voice cracked. “I thought that was what you would have wanted.”

  Tiger Lily sank back in surprise. “But you’ll marry Moon Eye.”

  He looked startled for a moment, and then recognition settled onto his face. He shook his head and laughed. “No.”

  “You built this house for her.”

  Pine Sap chewed on his bottom lip with a rueful smile, and looked at her, disbelieving. “I built it for you,” he said, amazed.

  “But …”

  “I know. It wasn’t a rational thing. But I knew you’d like it. Close enough to home, but then, tucked away from everyone’s eyes.”

  “But Giant …”

  “Well, I was planning to poison him when I started.” He smiled darkly, as if the idea was ridiculous now. “Then I just started hoping he’d let you have one thing you want. A wedding present.”

  Tiger Lily was silent. She couldn’t feel worthy of the gift.

  “Tiger Lily, you know Moon Eye isn’t for me.”

  “She is,” Tiger Lily said.

  “She’s like me. They’re two different things. You’re …” He swallowed. “You’re everything to me. You know that. Don’t pretend that you don’t.”

  She wouldn’t look at him. She knew, but she didn’t want to know. More than anything, she worried for her friend. Because if it wasn’t Moon Eye, no one was for Pine Sap. No one at all.

  That night Tiger Lily sat up in the dark, unable to sleep. She counted the three days left of her free life to herself, over and over. The noises of the village had died for the evening and given way to the sounds of the forest, so active after dark with snakes and owls and other, deadlier night creatures.

  Tiger Lily watched the sky from outside her house for a while. It seemed so low and warm, like she could reach out and touch its fabric. Finally she ducked back inside and stretched out on her bedroll, throwing an arm above her head and looking at nothing. Without the humidity of the wetter times of year, the air got cool after sundown. Her skin felt dry, and she worried her fingers against each other.

  She must have fallen asleep, because she didn’t hear him come in. When she did, he was kneeling right beside her head. She squinted at him in the dark, almost sure he was imaginary.

  “Tiger Lily, I didn’t mean it,” he said.

  Peter touched her hair with his hands, took strands between his fingers.

  “Forgive me.”

  She’d never seen him so open and scared. His shoulders stooped, he looked smaller.

  “You can come live with us. We can go farther away so we’re never found. You can still be my wife.”

  He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Please.”

  “I can’t,” she said. It was automatic.

  “But you’ll forgive me. I know you’re angry but you’ll forgive me. You can’t live without me.”

  She sat up. “I can live without anyone.”

  Peter’s breath came faster and harder. “I need you to say you’ll come.”

  Everything tilted back and forth inside her. She felt herself weaken and slump in surrender. She made her choice.

  “I need two days to say good-bye,” she said, feeling sick and also joyful. “I’ll meet you at the bridge, midday, not tomorrow night but the next.” She was struck by how little time it was. But it was all she had left.

  Peter sat next to her. He wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her on her cheek, and on her lips. He gathered her hair up in his hands like he could take it with him.

  “Okay, Tiger Lily. Okay.”

  He stood and left as silently as he’d come. She sat, legs wrapped in her covers. I felt her pulse slow down. But she couldn’t sleep. She lay and watched the air turn gray with the morning light. She was awake to hear the first stirrings of people waking up. And then, finally, she drifted off.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Tiger Lily was one of the last to discover what was happening that morning. Instinct must have told everyone to steer clear of her, to tiptoe past her, on their way to do what they’d convinced themselves wasn’t a horror.

  She was beveling a spear for Pine Sap, a parting gift. She had the tip in her sight line and was chipping away at the point. She hadn’t turned her mind to leaving Tik Tok, because that would cause her to lose heart. And she hadn’t noticed the village had gotten quiet around her. Nor had I, so wrapped up as I was in Tiger Lily’s head. Her thoughts were far away, with the burrow. She only looked up from her work when she heard a collective murmur rise from the other end of the village.

  Still, she didn’t know anything was wrong at first. It was curiosity that pulled her down the path toward the square.

  She couldn’t see him right away. Her view was obscured by the crowd around him. But then, two people in front of her parted, and there he sat. He was wearing his raspberry dress. Phillip stood behind him. Tik Tok’s face was still and empty. In fact, his expression was so foreign she almost didn’t recognize him, despite the dress and the long, flowing hair.

  He caught her eye; Phillip moved his hands behind him, and all at once she knew what was happening.

  Phillip lifted Tik Tok’s ponytail and began to saw at it with his knife. Tiger Lily lurched forward, but the crowd was slow to part, and by the time she reached the front, the ponytail had dropped to the ground with a soft thwush.

  Phillip laid breeches of the standard brown leather that all the men wore on Tik Tok’s lap. He smiled at Tik Tok.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked.

  Tik Tok stared down at the clothes in his lap.

  It was all over quickly. The crowd moved away. Only as it dissipated did people begin to mutter to one another about what had just occurred, with an air of uncertainty. Red Leaf doubled back and scooped up Tik Tok’s ponytail to give it to him. No one seemed to understand what they had done to him.

  Tik Tok sat alone, staring down at his feet, the same blank expression on his face. He looked like a stranger.

  Phillip knelt next to him. “You’ll be happier this way,” he said warmly. “I promise you, Tik Tok. The women made the pants for you.”

  He glanced up at Tiger Lily, and she could only return disbelief on her face. No rage. Not yet. Phillip stood, patted Tik Tok on the shoulder, and walked off.

  Tiger Lily took his place by Tik Tok’s side, slid her hand into his, but his fingers didn’t respond. Without his long hair, he looked smaller, older.

  “What did they do?” she whispered. She heard a noise and turned to see Pine Sap, just arrived. Long strips of wood lay piled in his arms, and he stood still and surprised, his mouth open and catching air.

  “H-help me,” she stuttered.

  They lifted Tik Tok by his armpits, and he didn’t make it difficult for them. He stood and walked, cooperatively, but without moving to stand on his own. He let them lead him to his house, and put him into his bed, while Pine Sap ran to get a cup of hot water. Once he returned, Tiger Lily mixed some tea to soothe him, and as with the walking, Tik Tok merely cooperated and drank it in small, slow sips. She had the feeling that if she’d offered him a cup of worms to drink, he would have obeyed.

  She covered him with his fur blanket. When she went to his trunk to find that it had been emptied, all of his beautiful dresses gone except the one he wore, the rage finally set in.

  She found Pine Sap out by the central fire. He had taken the men’s clothes Phillip had given to Tik Tok, and was burning them, piece by piece, in the fire.

  “You should have stopped this,” he said.

  “I got here
too late. I didn’t know....”

  “Before. You should have stopped it before. You are always somewhere else.” He wasn’t angry. Just disappointed. “You’re his daughter.”

  She must still be getting older, she thought, because Tiger Lily felt something entirely new. She had never felt like a coward before.

  She didn’t notice the number of days going by, and she didn’t go to meet Peter, so consumed was she in watching over Tik Tok.

  He did not rally as the days went on. In fact, it was the opposite. He sank into himself and turned inward. He ate when Tiger Lily fed him, but it was clear that if she hadn’t, he would have easily gone without. He did not come to tribal dinners, didn’t wash himself or go into the woods. He stopped looking around distractedly for his clock. He did not take off his raspberry dress, and by the days it accumulated layer after layer of dirt. His hair became slick and greasy and wild, sticking up from his head in all directions. And most of all, he stopped talking. After the day his hair was cut, he did not say another word. He became mute, like me.

  As shaman, Tik Tok was the only person who could marry Tiger Lily and Giant. Each day he remained in bed meant another day that the wedding was delayed. But this was only a vague consolation to Tiger Lily.

  Her anxiety grew as the days went on. At first, she knew that he would have to recover. Then, she began to wonder if. She cast the thought out of her mind, because of course he would. But sometimes, when she sat watching him, she recognized that he was wearing someone else’s face. And she didn’t know if that was something you could come back from, because she had never seen it happen before.

  Obsessively, she wondered what to do about the Englander. Her heart hardened more and more toward Phillip as the days passed, so that she couldn’t see him without clenching her fists. Her heart went bitter and black whenever he crossed her mind.

  One evening, when she was putting Tik Tok to bed, she was staring at that face, and suddenly she grabbed his hand, and tried to force her way toward him.

  “Tik Tok, I have something to tell you. I have a secret. I took your clock,” she whispered. He blinked at her, made no sign that he understood or cared. “I lost it at the bridge. I dropped it into the mouth of a crocodile by mistake, and now it swims around the island all day, telling the fish about time. It’s gone.”

  Tik Tok didn’t stir. He just blinked at her. “I’m sorry. I did it because I wanted to show it to someone. He lives in the woods and I go to see him. Tik Tok, I’m in love with Peter Pan.”

  If the shock of it reached him, he didn’t show it. He didn’t look worried, or angry, or surprised. And this sank her heart most of all.

  And she didn’t know, but all this time she was taking care of Tik Tok, she was letting Peter slip through her fingers. Because when she turned her attention to him again, everything had changed and couldn’t be turned back.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  When I first heard of the Wendy bird, I didn’t think any more about it. The words slipped past my ears. Neverland was full of creatures I’d never heard of.

  I didn’t connect it with the morning the warriors came running back from the hunt saying there was, indeed, a ship, and that this one had anchored safely off our shores.

  The Sky Eaters, and Tiger Lily in particular, knew in an instant they had come for Phillip, just like he had said they would. And Tiger Lily thought fiercely that they couldn’t take him away soon enough.

  Several of the tribe members offered to join him on his journey to the ship, now that the aging disease had been deemed a thing that belonged only to the English and their strange continent. Phillip packed up some food and gifts from the tribe for the trek to the shore, and Tiger Lily watched him and the others walk out, and hoped he would never come back.

  The ship had been anchored for a few days when she finally felt she could go find Peter. She made sure Tik Tok was fed and put in bed for the afternoon, though she knew Pine Sap and Moon Eye would be there to watch over him. She glared at anyone who looked at her on her way out.

  Peter had explained to her where the new burrow was located, but it was still hidden enough that she had to backtrack a few times past landmarks before she found it. From there, she followed their tracks into a glade.

  The boys were all in a clearing, laughing about something. To her surprise, even Peter was laughing. None of them ran to greet her. They were strangely off their guard.

  It seemed odd that Peter had his back to her and kept it that way as she approached, though she knew what the reason must be: he had, no doubt, waited for her at the bridge, and she’d never come. But then, there was something strange about the way he held himself.

  And then she saw, at the same time I did, that there was someone new among them. Chattering away to the boys, who were all raptly listening and laughing, she was so like Phillip’s descriptions of heaven that for a minute I thought she was an angel.

  She was perched on a rock, in a dress the color of a calla lily, and with eyes even bluer than Peter’s. Her hair was curly, and fell down her back and over her shoulders in a carefully arranged wave. Her skin was cloud-like with whiteness. Her mouth was an O as she looked at Tiger Lily, and then quick as a mouse, she slid off her rock and ran behind Peter, who turned to stand between her and whatever ghastly thing she’d seen.

  When he saw who it was, his body relaxed, but his face went cold and blank.

  “Oh, Wendy, it’s our friend. Tiger Lily.”

  The girl’s eyes appeared above his shoulder, then she slid out from behind him, gathering herself. She stepped forward and shook Tiger Lily’s hand.

  “I’m Wendy, pleased to meet you,” she said.

  She retreated back to her rock, climbed onto it again carefully, slipping many times as she did so, though it was only a small rock, and turned to eye her warily. Peter made no move to greet Tiger Lily.

  Tiger Lily’s eyes went to the stranger’s neck. She was awed to see that the foreigner wore a necklace full of pearls just like her precious one, though Wendy’s necklace must have held twenty of them.

  The boys were all too shy around the visitor to say much of anything.

  Finally, Nibs spoke up.

  “This is the Wendy bird. We saw her up in a tree and thought she was a bird.”

  “One of the shipmates was showing me how to climb. We don’t have many trees in the city. It was terrifying!”

  “She fell on me,” Curly said, in a voice near ecstasy.

  I had always marveled at the femininity of some of the girls in Tiger Lily’s village, but Wendy was a shocking contrast. Wendy bird was dainty in every way. Her arms and legs tapered into tiny wrists and ankles. Her chin was small and had a sweet little point to it. Her down-turned lower lip pulled her mouth into a soft, delicate frown, which she corrected by smiling often and at everything the boys said.

  “I have to get back to the ship soon,” she said. “They’ll be worried.”

  “But you won’t tell them about us,” Peter said sharply.

  “No, of course not. I’ll say I got lost looking for shells.”

  Peter looked at Tiger Lily darkly, then absently threw a rock at a target behind her head, and it hit true.

  Wendy gasped. “That’s wonderful! How did you do that?” Peter looked surprised, smiled, then threw another one at the same target.

  “Amazing!”

  “You try, Wendy bird,” Tootles said. And Peter nodded.

  “Yes, your try.”

  Tiger Lily stepped out of the way. Wendy threw with a fragile, half-intended motion, and the pebble went flying far to the right of the tree. She laughed.

  “Oh, I’m terrible.” She looked over at Peter, and for the first time something stirred in Tiger Lily. It was a feeling she didn’t recognize.

  Peter smiled and laughed and looked delighted. “I can teach you, next time you come.”

  Wendy lingered, though she kept saying she had to go. She laughed at everything the boys said that was even vaguely funny. She punctuated
their stories with exclamations of support and admiration. And Peter looked like he didn’t have a care in the world, so delighted did he seem with his visitor.

  As the time wore on, Tiger Lily began to notice she was merely part of a rapt audience. Finally, she moved to leave.

  When she said good-bye, the boys only muttered at her out of the sides of their faces, and I could see that many blushed as they looked at Wendy, and couldn’t take their eyes off of her.

  Well, she was one of the only girls they’d ever seen, Tiger Lily thought. Though they had never looked at her that way.

  On the way home Tiger Lily talked with herself. The Wendy bird was beautiful, but she was not for Peter. She was a strange creature, another species—it was understandable that they were all fascinated. But Peter belonged to her.

  She reassured herself in this way. And her noble nature wouldn’t let her really believe Peter could ever betray her. But no matter what she said to herself, in the pit of her soul she feared the Wendy bird. From that first moment when she set eyes on her, the English girl scared her more than any other creature in the forest.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Here is where I become more than an observer, and enter the story in my own right. Because I decided to return, to get another look at the Wendy bird and possibly regurgitate something on her head. And the moment I arrived back at the burrow, I felt the world go black a moment before I was pressed between two strong hands. It was Peter who’d caught me. How he’d memorized my flight habits, which of course were so fast I was virtually uncatchable, I never knew. “I want you to stay here,” was all he said.

  I’ve been called jealous. Vain. Cruel. Devious. Malicious. But let me say this: when Peter captured me and claimed me for his own, I stayed for one right reason, and one wrong one. The wrong one was that I was in love, and it was hard to say no to Peter. The right, and honestly, the bigger, reason was that I wanted to keep an eye on the Wendy bird for Tiger Lily’s sake.