Lost Boy

by Christina Henry

  I’d loved her, and I’d forgotten her. That was partly Peter’s fault, but it was also mine. I’d wanted to forget.

  My anger at Peter burned brighter than it ever had, but my grief and my shame were almost worse. I’d remembered my mother only to remember what I’d done.

  I’d left her there, her arms thrown out, reaching for me. The last thing she thought of was me and I left her.

  To run away with the monster who’d killed her.

  Sal gasped and covered her mouth at my words, though I don’t think she was surprised—not really. It seemed precisely the sort of thing that Peter would do, if he wanted someone and there was somebody else in his way.

  Peter didn’t care about obstacles, even if they were shaped like people. They were only things to be jumped over, to be knocked down. You didn’t care about them.

  He’d done it all so well, really. He’d looked for me—not just any boy would do for Peter—and found a boy who had the potential he wanted. Then watched me, and waited for his chance. And when he had it, he’d killed her, and then twisted me up so I was afraid. Once I was afraid, he could make me do anything he liked, and he made himself my savior, and he made me feel special and loved and then he pushed all the memories of my mother out of me.

  Peter had chosen me first. He’d cut me away from the herd and taken me to the island, and I was too much of a boy to remember what I had lost. I could only remember all the days when it was just Peter and me, and we were happy then.

  But the song had stayed, the song that my mother sang to me. No wonder he hated it when he heard it. He wanted me to shed all my life in the Other Place like an old skin, but he couldn’t stop bits of it clinging to me.

  Everything I lost swelled up inside me then, the life that I might have had without Peter. Yes, my father was a drunken ass who beat us. But we were saving, my mama and me. We were going to leave him and find a quiet place away from the city where we would be safe.

  And I would have grown up and my mama would have grown old but there would have been grandchildren for her to kiss and hug and hold so tight. There would have been a life, a boring, ordinary life to Peter but a full life, one that followed the natural order of things.

  It was not natural for boys to stay boys forever. We were supposed to grow up, and have boys of our own, and teach them how to be men.

  I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my side, and then in my hands and legs and feet, and something scratchy and prickly at my chin.

  Charlie’s eyes widened. “Jamie, you’ve got a beard!”

  I rubbed my face, and it wasn’t quite a beard, but there was fuzzy hair that hadn’t been there before.

  Sal hit my shoulder then. “I told you not to grow up too fast! We’re supposed to grow up together!”

  “I don’t think I have a choice, Sal,” I said, and there was a little grief there too. What if I kept growing and I was too old for Sal? What then? “It’s not something I can stop.”

  I stood, and stretched, and realized everything hurt—my lungs and eyes, burned by smoke; my legs from trying to outrun the fire; my arms, from clinging to Charlie so tight.

  The smaller boy was avoiding my eyes, staring at the mass of dead Many-Eyed on the beach. Behind them the plains smoked still, though all the grass and flowers were gone now and there was nothing except a blackened field as far as the eye could see.

  “Peter,” Charlie said, and a sob caught in his throat.

  Sal reached for him but I shook my head at her. He didn’t need to be comforted yet. He needed to say what was in his heart first.

  “Peter didn’t like me,” Charlie said. “He tricked me, and I believed him.”

  He did look at me then, and his eyes would never be those innocent little duckling eyes again. That was what happened when you were betrayed.

  “I believed him, and then he tried to kill me,” Charlie said. “You never hurt me, Jamie. You always watched out for me. I shouldn’t have believed him.”

  “We all believe him, at first,” I said. “Even me. That’s how he lures us here with his promises.”

  “And then he rips us all to pieces,” Sally said.

  “He won’t bring any more here,” I said, and took a deep breath, for now I had to tell her the thing I didn’t want to say. “The path to the Other Place is gone.”

  “Gone?” she said.

  I explained what I’d found, that the tree was cut down and the hole to the tunnel covered in grass.

  She wilted as I spoke, and for a moment I was afraid she would faint, for she’d gone very pale.

  “How did he know? We’ll never escape him,” she whispered. “Oh, why, oh, why did I ever come here?”

  “Because you thought it would be better than what you had,” I said. “You thought that you would be happier here.”

  “I would be happy here,” she said fiercely. “If not for him. If it was just us, you and me and Charlie and Nod and Crow, and we could grow up as we should, then I would be happy here.”

  “But he is here,” I said. “And I don’t want to stay on the island any longer. I’ve been here for too many seasons already.”

  “What do we do?” Charlie asked.

  He came to my side then, and wound his fist in my coat the way he used to do, but he didn’t put his thumb in his mouth. He wasn’t a baby anymore.

  “We’ll have to sail away,” I said. “It’s our only hope.”

  “Not with the pirates?” Sal asked. “Because I don’t think they’ll be very welcoming to us, not after all that’s happened between us.”

  “That’s all Peter’s doing, and Nip’s,” I said sharply. “If Peter hadn’t burned down their camp, and Nip hadn’t told them where to find us, then we wouldn’t have had to kill any of them. Or at least not so many of them. There might have been a raid, but it wouldn’t have been the same.”

  Everything was Peter’s fault. My mother was killed by Peter. The boys he brought here died because of Peter. The pirates came looking for a war because of Peter, and were massacred by us because of Peter. Charlie had nearly been fed to the Many-Eyed because of Peter. It was all down to Peter.

  “It doesn’t matter now if it’s our doing or Peter’s,” Sally said, and she shook her head at the look on my face. “It doesn’t. The pirates think all of us are the same now. If we go to them for help, if we ask them to take us away in their ship, then they’ll hurt us.”

  She added then, in a small voice, “They’ll hurt me more than you if they know I’m a girl.”

  I didn’t really understand this then, but I remembered that the pirates sometimes brought girls back to camp with them after they’d been away from the island, and that the girls spent all their time screaming and crying.

  So I took Sal’s word. After all, she’d found it so unsafe to be a girl that she’d pretended to be a boy, which was how she’d ended up on the island in the first place.

  “We’ll have to build a boat,” I said. “Build it in a secret place, where Peter won’t find it.”

  “He can find everything,” Charlie said. “Because he can fly. He told me how he flies all over the island and he sees everything. It was nice to fly, even if it did end when Peter threw me on the ground. It was scary then. This big Many-Eyed made all this noise and then Peter told the fairy what to say and the fairy told the Many-Eyed that Peter brought me as a present for them to eat.”

  His eyes welled up then. “I thought he was my friend and he tried to feed me to monsters.”

  Again, Sally wanted to pick him up and comfort him, but I stopped her.

  “Charlie,” I said. “What fairy are you talking about? The toy that Peter gave you?”

  Charlie shook his head. “No, silly, a toy’s a toy. This is a real fairy, a fairy that lives on the island. She can talk to the Many-Eyed and she showed Peter how to fly.”

  “There are no fair
ies here,” I said. “I’ve never seen one.”

  “There are,” Charlie said. “But they only like Peter and not the other boys, so they don’t come out where we can see them. Only Tink does because she’s Peter’s special friend.”

  “Tink?”

  “That’s what he calls her, because she makes a kind of tinkling noise when she talks.”

  I gave Sally a significant look. “I heard a tinkling noise that day when we were on the path talking about leaving for the Other Place.”

  “Do you think she was spying on us for Peter?” Sally said.

  “She always spies for Peter,” Charlie said. “And it’s easy for her, because she seems just like a firefly unless you get a close look.”

  “And she taught Peter how to fly?” I said.

  “Well,” Charlie said. “She didn’t really teach him. She shakes her dust on him and the dust makes him fly.”

  “So if we had some of that fairy dust, then we would be able to fly away from the island,” I said slowly.

  “It doesn’t last very long,” Charlie said. “That’s what Peter said. You have to keep a fairy with you so she can keep dusting you. I don’t think Tink would do it anyway. She doesn’t like anyone except Peter, and I don’t think it would be very nice to catch her.”

  “What about the other fairies? Where do they live?” I asked.

  “In the fields,” Charlie said, and pointed at the desolation.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “If any of them survived, then they won’t want to help the ones that burned their homes down,” Sally said sadly.

  “Then we’ve got to go back to the idea of sailing away,” I said.

  “But Peter flies everywhere and knows everything,” Sally pointed out. “And if he doesn’t, then this fairy will spy us out.”

  “We’ve got to do something,” I said. “We can’t stay here. What about taking a rowboat from the pirates? There are only five of us.”

  “How would we do that?” asked Sally. “We’d have to swim out to the pirate ship, and I can’t swim.”

  “Me either,” Charlie said.

  “That’s all right,” I said, warming to my plan. “Nod and me can swim out at night and get the boat, and then take it around to the mermaid lagoon and meet you there.”

  Sally looked doubtful. “Won’t the mermaids tell Peter what we’re about?”

  “They won’t know until it’s happening,” I said. “I don’t share secrets with mermaids. And anyway, the mermaids don’t have any special love for Peter. They love themselves best.”

  “And when will we do all this?” Sally said.

  “Tonight,” I said. “We’ll go back and find Nod and Crow; then we’ll collect all the things we’ll need.”

  “Then Crow and Charlie and me will go to the lagoon,” Sally said. “And you and Nod will go for the rowboat.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What if Peter tries to stop us?” Charlie asked.

  I didn’t answer. I think we all knew that it was down to him or us.

  If Peter tried to stop us, I would be ready for him.

  chapter 16

  None of us wanted to climb over the corpses of the Many-Eyed or cross the smoking fields. We clambered over the rocks for several minutes until we came to the lagoon side, then skirted around the edge of the lagoon until we reached the main part of the forest.

  Three or four mermaids were sunning on a flat rock in the center of the lagoon, their fish tails lolling in the water. They didn’t give any sign that they noticed us but I was sure they did—mermaids noticed everything. It was the only way for them to stay alive in the ocean, with sharks and sea monsters all around.

  We stayed on the border where the forest met the plains. Crow had done a good job of it—all the grass had been burned here too, right up to where the plains, the forest and the lagoon met. Smoke curled from the ground, and there was a lingering heat in the air.

  By unspoken agreement Sally and I took it in turns to watch both the air and the forest. Now that we’d made our plans I felt a lingering unease, sure that Peter would somehow discover the plot.

  If he did find out, it didn’t mean that he would face us and fight us. No, it meant that he would try something crafty—like removing the rowboats from the pirate ship so we couldn’t get at them, or even burning the whole ship itself.

  Peter had killed my mother so I would stay with him for always. He’d destroyed the tunnel to the Other Place so I couldn’t get away. I was sure he’d do anything he thought he must to keep me there with him.

  I was first for Peter, and it didn’t matter whether I wanted to stay or not. Peter always got what he wanted.

  Then I saw him just ahead of us, kneeling on the ground over something. I let out a cry, and he stood and looked back at us, and I saw the bloody knife in his hand.

  “This is your fault, Jamie!” he shouted at me. “Your fault! None of this would have happened if not for you!”

  My dagger was out and I ran at him, Charlie and Sally forgotten. All I saw was Peter and the red haze that covered my eyes.

  He killed my mother.

  Peter killed my mother because he wanted me to play with him.

  “It’s your fault!” I roared. “You took Charlie! You burned the pirate camp!”

  You killed my mother, I thought, but I couldn’t say the words because the rage was choking me, consuming me.

  “I did everything because of you!” Peter shouted. “All for you!”

  I should have known he wouldn’t fight fair. Before I was within throwing distance of him he rose into the air, high above where I couldn’t reach him. Blood dripped from his hand and his knife and onto my face as he flew above me, and away.

  “That’s not fair play, Peter!” I shouted after him. “Not fair play at all!”

  Sally screamed then, and her scream shocked me away from Peter. Then I saw what he’d been kneeling over.

  It was Crow. Peter had arranged him so all his limbs were pointed out like an “X.” Crow’s throat was sliced from ear to ear, and then Peter had done the final thing to hurt me.

  He’d cut Crow’s right hand off.

  That was my mark, the thing that I did to pirates. Peter wanted me to know that this was about me, not about Crow. Crow had died because of me.

  Sally covered Charlie’s eyes, pulled him to her, but it was too late. The little boy had seen. He didn’t cry, though. He only said, “There’s so much blood.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Yes, there was so much blood. That was what Peter brought. He didn’t bring magic and fun and eternal youth. He brought fear and madness and death, trailing blood behind him, trailing all the corpses of all the boys behind him.

  And yet it didn’t weigh him to the earth at all. Every drop of spilled blood only made him lighter, gave him the freedom to fly.

  “We have to find Nod,” I said. “And get away as soon as we can.”

  “What if he’s already killed Nod?” Sally said.

  “We still need to know,” I said.

  “There might not be time for the rowboat,” she said. “You have to go all the way across the island for it.”

  “What about the other one?” Charlie said.

  “What other one?”

  “The one you left on the beach the day you killed all those pirates,” Charlie said.

  “That boat is probably gone now,” I said. “I didn’t anchor it, and the tide would have taken it out to sea.”

  “Isn’t it worth finding out?” Sally asked. “The Skull Rock beach is much closer than the pirate camp. Me and Charlie will go and see while you find Nod. It will be faster if you go on your own anyway.”

  She was right; the pirate camp was much farther away, though getting there was safer now that the Many-Eyed were gone. But there would be the di
fficulty of crossing the camp under cover of dark, as well, and then swimming out to the ship. If by some lucky chance the other rowboat was still there . . .

  “I can’t believe it wouldn’t have drifted away,” I said. “I think you’d be safer just going to the mermaid lagoon like we planned.”

  There was at least a small chance that the mermaids’ watchful eyes would stop any mischief Peter might try on Sally or Charlie. The mermaids had their own set of rules, and I hoped that they wouldn’t let Peter kill anyone right in front of them.

  “Stop talking to me about what’s safer,” Sally said. “Nobody is safe here. It’s not safe as long as Peter is alive. Whether I’m with you or at the mermaid lagoon or at Skull Rock, I’m not safe. Peter took Charlie right from under our noses while we slept. There is no safe.”

  She made me all knotted up inside, because she was right, but I didn’t want her to be. I only wanted to be sure she was still alive when I returned, but there was no way to be sure anymore.

  “All right,” I said.

  I wanted to hug her again, or touch her hair, or just stand close and breathe her in. I didn’t do any of those things. I didn’t know how. I was only a boy, for all that I was beginning to look like a man.

  And there was no time.

  Sally and Charlie went south, to cut through the forest and then the dunes and down to the beach. I went toward the tree, which was where I thought Nod would go if he couldn’t find us. That was what we always did. We always went back to the tree.

  I ran, because I wanted to find Nod before Peter did, because I wanted to get back to Sally and Charlie before Peter did. I ran because everything I loved had been taken from me again and again and I was tired of Peter taking more.

  I didn’t know what day it was anymore, or how long the sun had been up. It seemed I’d been running since Peter took Charlie away, but I wasn’t tired. Fear and anger drove me on, made my legs stretch longer, made my feet barely touch the ground. Somewhere I’d lost my moccasins, though I couldn’t remember when that might have been. Perhaps my feet had grown out of them and I hadn’t noticed.

  My red coat caught and snagged on branches and I tore it off and threw it away in the woods. It didn’t matter anymore. Peter had always wanted the coat. He could have it now.