His hand was dirty and his body vibrated with excitement. I didn’t hear so well as Peter—a few moments passed before the shouting and cursing of the pirates reached me.
The marking rock (so called because Peter or I scraped a mark on it every time we went on a pirate raid) was at a place where the trail to the beach rounded the foot of the mountains, turning east; we heard them long before we saw them.
The Captain’s voice was loudest, booming, “Get on, you dogs, and FIND THAT BLASTED BOY! I’ll string him from the yardarm and keep him there until his face turns blue! Catch him! Catch him!”
From the ruckus they made it seemed like the whole camp was turned out to find Peter, but as they passed our hiding place I saw there were only five, plus the Captain. The first mate was not among them.
I hadn’t cut off the new mate’s hand yet, but the previous first mate (a man they called Red Tom because he had red hair—pirates are very unimaginative) was with them. I’d taken his hand some months before. The stump was wrapped in a striped bandanna, though, like it was still fresh—or like he was ashamed of it. Perhaps he was just ashamed that a boy had done it.
The group of pirates continued on, cutlasses drawn, and I felt sure that if they found Peter, there would be no dragging him back to the camp. They’d surround him and cut him to pieces and carry his head back as a trophy. Peter had gone too far this time.
The Captain panted along behind the others. He wasn’t truly as fat as Peter made him out to be, though his belly did seem to get in his way when he fought and he wasn’t very fast.
Given this, it was a certainty that Peter could have killed the Captain several times over, but he hadn’t. Peter could be a cat sometimes, letting a mouse think it was all right to crawl out of the mouse hole until one day it suddenly was not and the mouse found itself pinned by sharp claws.
“How far do you think they’ll go?” I whispered once all the pirates had missed our hiding place.
They had never come so far before, all the way out here to the plains, and they appeared very determined. What if they went through the foothills and tracked our steps back to the Bear Cave? From there it wouldn’t take much to find the trail that went back to our tree. Dozens of boys had walked that trail for dozens of years. It was a clue that even a foolish pirate Captain couldn’t miss.
“They won’t cross the mountains,” Peter said. “Can you imagine that Captain even climbing up to Bear Cave? His face will turn red and his heart will blow up before he gets halfway there.”
“He might send the others on,” I said, trying to make him feel the urgency of the situation. The boys would be in danger. But Peter didn’t care about the boys. He only cared about his fun.
So I would make it fun—at least, Peter’s idea of fun.
“What if they went into the plains instead?” I said.
Peter’s eyes glowed. “Now, that would be an adventure. They’d stumble right into the Many-Eyed’s nest.”
“And then the Many-Eyed would never think it was us that killed their child,” I said.
“It wasn’t us. It was you,” Peter said.
Peter enjoyed laying blame, particularly if he hadn’t earned any in the process.
“But you’re right—the pirates would distract them,” he continued. “I’d better be the one to go into the fields, though, since the Many-Eyed don’t know you.”
It wasn’t like Peter to express interest in the well-being of others. I stared at him.
“I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, Jamie. You were the first, and you’re still my favorite.”
Then he smiled, and oh, that smile. It was that smile that had stolen me away from the Other Place, the smile that made me want to do anything for him.
I was suddenly sorry I’d grown, even if it was only a little, and wished I could be smaller again and that it was just Peter and me, running and climbing and laughing, back when the island was ours.
He clapped me on the back. “You can help me, though. I’ll go ahead here in the grass until I’m in front of them. You creep up behind and kill any that try to go back to the camp for help. The best thing will be if the other pirates don’t even know what happened. They’ll think the island ate up their crewmates.”
Peter’s grin grew wider and fiercer. “How I’ll love to feed that Captain to the Many-Eyed. He’s grown so boring.”
I could have pointed out that he could slay the Captain anytime he wanted a new one (that was how we always got new ones) but I didn’t. I didn’t care how Peter did it so long as he kept the threat of the pirates away from the boys.
He stood, and he was small enough that his head didn’t clear the tall yellow grass, though his ginger hair was just visible.
“You go on back to the cave after I lead them into the plains,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”
I didn’t want to wait at the cave for Peter. I wanted to go on, to get back to the tree, to assure myself Charlie and Del hadn’t been caught out by Nip. But Peter wanted me to wait, and I would wait because he’d smiled and made me remember.
He was gone the instant after I nodded, so light and free and unbound to earth that the grass barely rustled as he passed.
I waited a few moments, then followed. I could be quiet, but not as silent as Peter. A rabbit was startled by my appearance and darted out of the grass toward the path. I was certain Peter had walked by it a moment before and the little creature had not even noticed.
After a while I stopped and listened. The sun was hot and making me drowsy, for I hadn’t slept in more than a day now.
I think I did drift off for a bit, crouched there in the grass with my eyes closed and the sun beating down and the lovely earthy, grassy smell all around me.
There was a voice then, an accusing voice that sounded like Peter’s—“What have you done?” I thought he was angry about the Many-Eyed again, but that wasn’t it.
She was there again, whoever she was, the she who was in my dreams every night. Her eyes were blank and blue, and dark hair curled around her head. Her mouth was open but there was a smile too, a smile in the wrong place, a smile that ran under her chin from ear to ear. There was a wink of silver in the dark, like a darting fish in a stream, and then I was awake, eyes wide.
The pirates were shouting curses, and I heard Peter’s laughter on the wind. After a moment I was able to trace the sound. They were headed west, into the fields, and from the ruckus they made it seemed certain they would find the Many-Eyed.
The noise also told me all the pirates were after Peter. That meant I could relax and walk along the path instead of crabbing along in the grass. I stood, brushing the sticky bits of grass seed from my coat—I was inclined to be a little vain about that coat, though it was covered in blood and dirt and who knows what else. I was vain about it because Peter wanted it, and because it still bothered him that I’d thought of getting it first.
I drifted along the trail back to the cave, thinking of nothing in particular except perhaps a nap. The thrumming urgency that plagued me earlier was gone. The sun had beaten me into a sense of dreamy lassitude. My only thought was to reach the cave before Peter returned so that I could sleep for a time.
Because I was walking slowly and not listening properly, the pirate was practically upon me before I noticed him.
The trail wandered this way and that along the bottom rim of the foothills, and there were many blind turns and curves. I should have heard him—he pounded down the dirt in those heavy boots all the pirates wore—and his breath came in sharp puffs as he ran. But I didn’t hear him. I was thinking of my dream, and the voice, and the silver knife.
I rounded a corner and he was there—only a few strides away from me—and my sudden appearance made him draw up and jump away with a frightened yell.
“You,” he said, for of course it was Red Tom.
Red Tom who hated me
. Red Tom who’d lost his hand to me. Red Tom who was no longer first mate because of me.
That hazy, drifting feeling shook off in an instant. I had my orders from Peter. No one was to go back to the pirate camp.
When he’d passed by earlier, Red Tom had his sword out, ready to slice Peter apart. Now it was gone. He must have dropped it in the fields. Red Tom had entered the fields; I knew that much. I saw the clinging strands of long grass on his clothes.
His face was white as the cold moon though he’d been running hard. He made as if to charge me, but my words stopped him dead.
“You saw one, didn’t you?”
He gulped air, his skin more bloodless than before. “It were horrible . . . The Captain . . . It bit the Captain in two and his blood were everywhere. Everywhere.”
Red Tom closed his eyes, and I was sure he could see that vision of his Captain eaten alive on the insides of his eyelids. That was just enough time for me to pull my dagger out and lodge it in his throat.
His eyes flew open, and he gurgled, and blood pooled in his mouth and spilled over his lips. His hands scrabbled uselessly in the air as he fell to his knees, and then Red Tom was no more.
His body slumped to the ground. I pulled the knife out, wiping the blood on my deerskin pants.
The sun was heading down in the west. I shielded my eyes with my hand as I gazed over the long fields of yellow grass. There was no sign of Peter, the pirates, or the Many-Eyed. I thought they must have been quite near for Red Tom to be returning so soon to the camp.
Then again, I reflected, I had dozed in the grass. Though it had seemed like only a moment, it may have been longer. The noise that woke me could have been from farther away than I thought. Sounds traveled strangely on the island.
Red Tom’s corpse attracted flies almost immediately. I grabbed his arm and dragged him into the grass, leaving a trail of sticky blood behind. Sweat poured down my neck and back. It always amazed me how heavy grown-up corpses were compared to boys’, even if the grown-up in question was as skinny as Red Tom.
I left him just inside the edge of the fields, so that any passing Many-Eyed would find him and eat him. If any of the other pirates came looking this way for their lost companions, the only evidence they would find would be that trail of blood. With luck even that would be washed away in the next rain before anyone went searching.
Then I started on the trek back to Bear Cave. I entered the path through a narrow cut in two rock faces. The trail wound steeply upward before settling into an ebb and flow across the foothills and linking up with the cliff path to Bear Cave.
Once you were partway up the trail you could look out pretty far over the fields, and I did just that, turning back to see if I could catch a glimpse of Peter before the sun went all the way down.
I can’t run as fast as Peter; nor can I hear as well. But I can see clear and far, and the only limit to the accuracy of my shooting was how far arrows could fly.
To my surprise, Peter wasn’t terribly far away at all—perhaps a quarter of an hour’s walking. I saw him very clearly, not far inside the borders of the plains. Several blue and pink flowers sprouted nearby, bobbing around his head. He stood there, clearly unconcerned that he might be seen or caught by anyone.
His face was in profile, and he was—talking to his hand? At least, that was what it seemed like he was doing. I squinted my eyes and thought I saw a little golden light bobbing in his cupped palm.
A firefly? Why would Peter be talking to a firefly? That was strange, even for Peter. He turned away, toward the center of the plains and the Many-Eyed’s nest. I watched him, wondering what he was doing and why he wasn’t turning back toward the cave, toward me.
That was the first time I saw him fly.
He rose out of the grass gently, so gently, his bare feet wriggling in excitement. Soon enough he was almost level with my height on the trail. If he turned around, he would see me. But he didn’t turn around. He soared away, over the golden fields and toward the sea.
I felt the burn of envy deep in my chest, scorching hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. When had he learned such a thing? Why hadn’t he shared it with us?
Why hadn’t he shared it with me?
The warmth I’d felt when he smiled at me was gone. I didn’t know Peter anymore, not the way I used to. We used to share everything. Peter would never leave me out of an adventure.
But now he had treaties with the Many-Eyed and he knew how to fly. He kept secrets. I didn’t need to wait at Bear Cave for a boy like that, someone who said I was special but only said it so I wouldn’t look too closely at what he was doing.
I ran, all fatigue forgotten then, and when I ran I tried to forget all the times we’d teased the crocodile and splashed with the mermaids and made a fool of the pirate Captain.
All I could think of—all I could see—was the sight of Peter flying, flying, flying away.
Flying away without me.
chapter 7
He didn’t catch up with me until well past the Bear Cave. The sun was gone, the moon was up again, and the urgency I’d lost earlier while sleeping in the heat of the day had returned in force. I’d been away too long. Anything might have happened to Charlie by now.
I’d chosen the less direct trail the boys took earlier because I didn’t want Peter tracking me down on my shortcut. That was my special way, mine and Charlie’s now, and I didn’t want Peter knowing too much about it.
I heard Peter approaching, but only because he whistled the tune of a pirate sea shanty. The night was cloudless and the moon so bright, as always, that it was like daylight on the path once you were away from the shadows of the trees.
“Jamie!” he called to me, once I came into his view. “Jamie, you should have seen it!”
He didn’t seem to notice that I’d ignored his dictate to wait at Bear Cave, and that burned inside me too, all mixed up with my jealousy over his flight.
“Jamie!” Peter said, as he caught up to me and matched his strides to mine easily.
This irritated me also, as I was half a head taller than Peter and my legs much longer. Only a short while before I’d lamented growing. Now I was bothered that my height gave me no advantage over the boy who always loved to win.
“Did you feed the pirates to the Many-Eyed?” I asked, my voice cool.
Peter didn’t notice at all. “Did I!” he said, so full of glee his body hummed with it.
He then described what was no doubt a thrilling adventure that involved Peter being daring and brilliant to rid himself of his enemies. I listened with only half an ear, for if you’ve heard one Peter’s-daring-and-brilliant story, you’ve heard them all.
I picked up a smooth rock from the path and tossed it from one hand to the other, then tossed it in the air with my knife hand and caught it in the same one several times. I found another rock that was about the same size and juggled the two for a while, until I felt I’d gotten the hang of it, then added a third rock in.
Peter stopped talking about how wonderful Peter was and laughed at my trick.
“You could be in a traveling fair, Jamie, flipping torches lit on fire,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder.
“When have you ever seen a traveling fair? It’s not as if we have them on the island,” I asked, curious. I remembered seeing one myself, long and long and long ago, just a washed-out memory of men in brightly colored silks capering across the square.
“We should,” Peter said. “We should have mummers and dancers and magicians to come and entertain us in the evenings. The boys would love that. And we can clap and throw flowers at the performers while they bow.”
He was already off in his own mind, imagining how wonderful it would be, but it did not escape me that he hadn’t answered my question. Peter did that when he didn’t want you to know something. He’d just pretend he never heard you in the first place, and sh
outing in his ear wouldn’t make him budge.
“We should have taken a magician from the Other Place instead of Charlie,” Peter said. “A magician would have been useful. At least for a while. When he wasn’t useful anymore, we could feed him to the crocodiles.”
“Why do you hate Charlie so?” I asked, ignoring these musings about a magician. Peter would never bring an adult to the island. “You picked him. I told you to leave him behind.”
Peter stared into the sky, giving the impression he was not listening at all, but I knew that he was. We had been together long and long, Peter and me, and I knew his ways as well as he knew mine.
I waited, knowing he would say something sooner or later, for Peter loved to fill in empty space.
“He takes up all your time,” Peter finally said, and I saw an uncharacteristic frustration wrinkle his brow. “It’s always ‘Charlie this, Charlie that, Charlie’s too little, he can’t fight, he can’t keep up.’ Where’s the fun in that? I brought him here to play and he’s useless.”
“I have to look out for him because he’s small,” I said slowly. “Because he shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t have taken him, Peter. He still has a mother.”
Peter flipped his hand at me. Mothers were of no concern to him.
“If he takes up so much of my time, if he annoys you so much, then you should let me bring him home, back to the Other Place. He doesn’t belong here,” I said.
“No,” Peter said, and his voice was sharp as the blade he carried. “You know the rules. Once you come here you can never leave. Nobody leaves. Nobody goes home. This is his home now.”
“But if he—” I began.
“No,” Peter said. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, as Nip will have . . .”
He trailed off, suddenly realizing what he said.
“As Nip will have what?” I asked.
Peter said nothing, only turned away and feigned interest in a black-and-emerald butterfly that landed on one of the fat white night-blooming flowers that bordered the path.
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