Lost Boy

chapter 1

Sometimes I dreamed of blood. The blood on my hands and the empty eyes in a white-and-grey face. It wasn’t my blood, or blood I’d spilled—though there was plenty of that to go around. It was her blood, and I didn’t know who she was.

Her eyes were dead and blue and her hands were thrown out, like she was reaching for someone, like she was reaching for me before that great slash was put in her throat. I didn’t know why. I didn’t even rightly know whether it was a dream, or something that happened in the Other Place, before I went away with Peter.

If that girl was real it must have happened there, because there were no girls on the island except the mermaids, and they didn’t really count, being half fish.

Still, every night I dreamed of flashing silver and flowing red, and sometimes it startled me out of sleep and sometimes it didn’t. That night I had the dream same as usual, but something else woke me.

I’d heard a sound, a sound that was maybe a cry or moan or a bird squawking out in the night of the forest. It was hard to tell when you heard something while you were sleeping. It was like the noise came from a far-off mountain.

I wasn’t sorry to leave the dream. No matter how many times Peter told me to forget it, my mind returned over and over again to the same place: to the place where she was dead and her eyes asked something of me, though I didn’t know what that something might be.

I came awake all at once the way I usually did, for if you don’t sleep light in the forest you might open your eyes to find something sharp-jawed biting your legs off. Our tree was hidden and protected, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t danger. There was always danger on the island.

The piles of sleeping boys huddled under their animal skins on the dirt floor. Light filtered in from the moon through the holes we’d cut like windows in the tree hollow—me and Peter had done it, long ago. Outside there was a steady buzz, the hum of the Many-Eyed in the plains carrying across the forest.

“It’s just Charlie,” Peter said dismissively from above.

He was curved into one of the holes, his body loose-limbed and careless, looking out over the forest. In his hands he held a small knife and a piece of wood that he was whittling. The blade flashed in the moonlight, dancing over the surface of the wood. His skin was all silver in that light and his eyes deep pools of shadow, and he seemed to be part of the tree and the moon and the wind that whispered through the tall grass outside.

Peter didn’t sleep much, and when he did it was just a quick nap. He would not waste a bit of his life in slumber, even though his life was already longer than most, and he hated the way the rest of us succumbed, dropping like biting flies in the summer heat while he pestered us for one more game.

I rose and tiptoed carefully over the other boys until I found Charlie. He was balled up in a knotted tree root like a baby in a cradle, and he was barely older than a baby at that. His face was covered in sweat that glittered like jewels, like a pirate’s treasure in the moonlight. He moaned, shifting restlessly in his sleep.

Young ones sometimes had a hard time adjusting when they first came over. Charlie was five, much younger than I had been when Peter had taken me, much younger than any boy he’d ever brought to the island before.

I bent and scooped the smaller boy from the tree root, holding him to my heart. Charlie kicked out once, then settled.

“You’re no help to him, you know,” Peter warned, watching me shuffle to and fro with Charlie in my arms. “Stop babying.”

“He’s too little,” I hissed. “I told you he was.”

I don’t know why I bothered, because there isn’t a point in saying things Peter won’t listen to anyhow.

Peter usually chose boys who were about the same age I was when he picked me—around eight or nine. Peter liked that age, for boys were old enough to have the spirit of rebellion and the will to follow it. By then a boy would have gotten a good taste of adulthood—through work or schooling, depending on his class—enough to know that he didn’t want to spend his days toiling at figures or in the fields or fetching water for some rich man.

The last time we went looking for new boys, Peter had spied this tiny one wandering through the piles of filth in the alleys. He declared that the child would be a splendid little playmate, and I argued that he would have been much better off in a home for orphans. Naturally, Peter won. He wanted the boy and Peter got what he wanted—always.

And now that he’d got him, Peter had no use for him. It wasn’t any fun to play with someone too small to fight and roughhouse with the bigger boys. Charlie couldn’t keep up when Peter trekked us through the forest on an adventure, either. More than once I’d suspected Peter of trying to leave Charlie somewhere so the little boy might get eaten, and then Peter would be free of the trouble of him. But I kept one eye on Charlie (though Peter didn’t like it), and as long as I watched out for him and carried him home there wasn’t much Peter could do about it but complain. Which he did.

“You should have left him by the crocodile pool,” Peter said. “Then his crying wouldn’t wake you up.”

I said nothing, because it wasn’t worth my breath. Peter never lost an argument—and not because he wasn’t wrong; he was, and pretty often too—but because he never got tired. He’d keep coming back at you no matter how right you were until you threw up your hands and let him win just so you’d have some peace.

Peter didn’t say anything else and I went on walking Charlie until his breathing told me he was properly asleep again. I tried to replace the boy in the pile of skins he’d been sleeping in, but he whimpered as soon as I tried to put him down. Peter sniggered.

“You’ll be up all night with him, walking him like a mama with her babe,” Peter said.

“What would you know about it?” I said, as I rubbed Charlie’s back again to get him to settle. “There’s never been a mama here, and you don’t remember yours.”

“I’ve seen them at it,” Peter said. “In the Other Place. The little babies wail and the mamas walk to and fro and shush and jiggle them just like you’re doing now. And sometimes the babies quiet and sometimes they don’t and when they don’t the mamas will cry and cry themselves because those little wailing things won’t shut it. I don’t know why they don’t just put those babies under a blanket until they stop. It’s not as though they can’t make more.”

He didn’t mean it, not really. At least, I didn’t think he meant it. To Peter all children were replaceable (except himself). When he lost one here on the island he would go to the Other Place and get a new one, preferably an unwanted one, because then the boy didn’t miss the Other Place so much and he was happy to be here and to do what Peter wanted.

Those who didn’t listen so well or weren’t happy as the singing birds in the trees found themselves in the fields of the Many-Eyed without a bow or left near the pirate camp or otherwise forgotten, for Peter had no time for boys who didn’t want his adventures.

After a while I sat and leaned against the bark of the tree, humming a quiet tune that I learned once, long ago, before Peter, before this island. I didn’t know who had taught me that song, but it had stayed in my head all these long years. The song irritated Peter, and he told me to shut it, but I sang until Charlie’s breath grew soft and quiet and even, his chest rising and falling in time with mine.

I stared out the window, past Peter, to the untouchable moon. The moon was always full here, always looming like a watchful eye.

Two staring eyes. Small hands covered in blood.

I pushed the dream away. It did me no good to remember it. That was what Peter always said.

I had been with Peter longer than I’d been in the Other Place, longer than I could count, anyway. The seasons did not pass here and the days had no meaning. I would be here forever. I would never grow up.

Peter’s whittling knife danced in that white light until the moon disappeared behind my closed eyes.

• • •

I was smaller then, and Peter was big and brave and wonderful. He said, “Come away and we’ll have adventures and be friends always,” and I put my hand in his and he smiled and that smile went into my heart and stayed there.

We ran through the streets of the city where I lived, and Peter was so swift and silent I could hardly believe it. He ran like the wind was part of him and his feet barely touched the ground and I thought, watching him run in the dark, that he might take off and fly and take me with him. It would be lovely to fly away from the city and into the stars, for the city was dark and dirty and full of big people who would grab at you if you were small and say, “Here, now, what’s all this?” and cuff you around the head just because they could and they would take your bread and your apples and leave you with your insides all twisted up and then throw you back in the mud and laugh and laugh.

But Peter said he would take me away from all that; he was taking me to a place where there was all the food you could eat and no one would hit you and there was no one to tell you what to do and when to do it and to get out of the way and go sleep in the trash where you belong. He said that on his island you could sleep in the trees and taste the salt from the sea on the air and there was treasure and fun all day long.

I wanted to go there. I couldn’t wait to go there. But I was scared about getting on a ship to go to the island. I’d never been on a ship before, but I’d seen them in the port. Peter might not like me if I told him I was scared so I didn’t say anything, but I was certain that once we got out to sea a monster would come and break the ship into a thousand pieces and we would fall, fall, fall to the far bottom of the water and never be seen again.

Peter tugged me along and I was getting tired and he said, “Come on, Jamie, just a little more and we’ll be there,” and I wanted to make him happy so he would smile at me again, so I ran and tried to be as fast and quiet as he.

I thought we would go to the docks, but Peter was taking us away from there and I tugged on his hand and said, “Aren’t we going to a ship?”

And Peter laughed and said, “Why would we go to a ship, silly?” But he said it in a way that didn’t hurt and didn’t make me feel stupid—more like he had a secret and was laughing because he was going to share it with me soon.

We went away from the city, far away from the place where I slept, and I didn’t know where we were or if I would ever find my way home again, and then I remembered I didn’t want to go home anymore because home is where they hit you and you sleep in the dirty straw and she screams and screams and screams . . .

• • •

The scream was still in my ears when I was roused by Peter’s cock-crow just as the sun emerged over the mountains. His cry and her scream twisted together into one sound and then the scream faded away as my eyes opened and I saw him perched in the window.

He had ginger hair that was always dirty, for he hated to bathe, and was dressed in a shirt and leggings made from deerskin, the hide grown soft and white with age.

His feet were bare and filthy, the toenails broken and torn from scampering over rocks and through trees. Peter was silhouetted in the window, legs wide apart, hands on hips, crowing with great vigor.

“Cock-a-doodle-do! Cock-a-doodle-do!”

My eyes had opened immediately, accustomed to Peter’s morning antics. Several of the newer boys groaned and covered their heads with their arms.

Charlie blinked sleepy blue eyes at me. “Get up now, Jamie?”

“Aye,” I said gently. I placed the younger boy on his feet and rose, stretching. I felt somehow taller today than yesterday—not a lot, just a smidge. It seemed my hands were closer to the roof of the hollow than before. I didn’t have much time to trouble about it, though, for Peter’s next words shook it from my mind.

Peter clapped his hands together. “We’ve a raid today!”

“What for?” I asked, not troubling to keep my annoyance hidden.

I didn’t think this was the time for a raid. We’d only brought the last six boys over a few days before. Most of them were not even close to ready.

“The pirates need raiding, of course!” Peter said, like he was giving the boys a huge pile of sweets.

Nod and Fog, the twins, cried, “Hurrah!”

They were both whippet-lean and strong with it, little ropey muscles on their arms and legs, matching shocks of blond hair darkened by their mutual dislike of washing. I’d never been able to tell if they hated to wash because Peter did or because they liked feeling the bugs in their hair.

Nod and Fog had been on the island longest except me, and raiding the pirates was their second-favorite game after Battle. There was nothing the twins liked better than an excuse to shed blood.

A long time ago Fog had taken down a wolf with only a sharpened rock, a feat that Peter so heartily approved of that he made Fog King of the Tree for a week. Fog made a kind of band for his head out of the tail and attached the wolf’s ears to it, and turned the rest of the skin into fur leggings. He’d briefly contemplated a cape, but dismissed it as too awkward for fighting.

Not to be outdone by his brother, Nod had promptly gone out and slaughtered one of the big cats that prowled in the mountains on the east side of the island. Now he wore the cat’s yellow ears and yellow furred leggings, and was still inclined to complain that Peter hadn’t made him the King of the Tree.

Some of the other boys tried to copy Nod and Fog, and got eaten by a cat for their trouble. And when we lost a boy we would go collect a new one from the Other Place, for Peter had particular ideas about how many boys should be about him at all times.

There were fifteen of us in all, including Peter and me. We lost a few every year to Battle, and to the raids, and some to illness or animals. Ambro had died coughing up blood, and now Del was looking thin and white. Soon he would start coughing too, and then Peter would send him outside to sleep.

Peter had complained incessantly about the noise when Ambro was dying, as if the boy could have prevented it. And if he could have stopped it, he would have, for we all loved Peter, even when he was cruel. His approval was hungrily sought, and his derision cut sharper than the blade of a pirate’s sword.

Peter hopped down from the window, landing lightly on his feet despite the height. Sometimes I thought that Peter couldn’t be hurt, and that was why he didn’t bother so much when others were, for he couldn’t understand their pain. And Peter was bound to the island in some way that the others weren’t. He understood the land, and it understood him. That was why I had grown a bit and Peter hadn’t.

It was the island that kept us all young, though some of us wouldn’t stay that way. Some of the boys, for reasons none of us could comprehend, grew up like normal. It didn’t happen too often, for Peter was pretty good at choosing the right sort of character for the island, and I think that had something to do with it, the desire to stay a boy and do boy things for always.

But when Peter noticed the boy turning into a man, that boy was cast out, no looking back, no second chances. Those boys ended up in the pirate camp if they made it across the island alive, and became unrecognizable bearded faces, no longer our little friends.

I reckoned I’d been about eight, same as Nod and Fog, when Peter found me. I’d be long dead if I’d stayed in the Other Place, for one or two hundred seasons had passed. I wasn’t sure exactly how many because it’s easy to lose track if you don’t pay attention. I looked about twelve, a few years older than I was when I arrived.

Nod and Fog, too, had grown a bit. Peter had started out eleven, and had stayed eleven. There wasn’t a part of him not exactly the same as it had been when he took me from the Other Place so long ago, his first friend and companion.

Sometimes I worried, just a little, that I would grow up and be sent to the pirate camp. Peter always cuffed my ear when I said things like this.

“You’ll never grow up, you fool. I brought you here so you wouldn’t.”

But I was getting a little older just the same, and Nod and Fog too. We lost too many of the other boys to tell if only the three of us felt the minute creep of age. Sometimes at night, when the nightmare clung to me, I wondered if Peter’s assurances that I would never grow up were only assurances that I would die before such a thing happened. I wondered if that were better, to die before I became something withered and grey and not wanted.

Our leader crouched on the ground with a stick and drew a quick map of the island, and then a detail of the pirate camp. Our tree was in the very center of the forest and in the very center of the island. The forest cut through the middle of a mountain range on the east side. It crossed the whole middle of the island and emptied out to the ocean on the east side, and a sheltered lagoon on the west.

In the northwest part were the plains in which the Many-Eyed lived. We didn’t go there if we could help it.

If you went straight south from our tree, you would run into the crocodile pond and then the swamp. The swamp became a green marshy place that met the ocean.

The southwest corner of the island was mostly big sand dunes, giant things that took a long time to climb up and then down again. Past the dunes was a sandy beach, the only one where we could safely play and collect coconuts. On the northern side of this beach, hidden by the forest that wrapped around it, was the mermaid lagoon.

The pirates had staked out the beach on the north end of the island, near the cove just where the border of the plains and the mountains met. There was no beach on the east side at all, only sheer rock face from the mountains and a towering cliff where the forest ran up to the sea.

The boys crowded around Peter. I had no need to. I knew the island by heart, better than anyone except Peter. I’d been over every root and rock and plant, crept around every wild thing, seen all the mermaids a hundred times over and pulled away from the snap of a crocodile’s jaws more than once. I didn’t like having a raid so soon, but I knew my part if one was to happen.

Charlie stayed with me, one of his little hands safely buried inside mine. He stuck his other thumb in his mouth, not interested in the map or what might happen next.

I sighed softly. What would I do with Charlie in a raid? It was a certainty that he wouldn’t be able to defend himself, and I half suspected Peter of devising this trip just to get rid of the smaller boy.

Most of the new boys seemed unsure as they collected around Peter, except for a big one called Nip. He was almost as tall as me, and I was easily the tallest boy there. Nip had the look of a boy who liked to be the strongest and the fastest, and he’d been eyeing me since he’d arrived. I knew Nip would pick a fight soon. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to do Nip serious harm when it happened.

There wasn’t any malice about this; I didn’t wish the boy any more harm than he wished me. But I was the best fighter. Peter knew it. All the boys who’d been around longer knew it. Even the pirates knew it, and that’s why they tried their damnedest to kill me every time there was a raid. I’d learned not to take it to heart.

The pirate camp was about a two-day walk from the tree, depending on how fast you could hurry along a pack of boys, and though Peter made it sound like an adventure to the new boys, I knew well enough that there was as much work as play. There would be supplies to gather and carry. The Many-Eyed patrolled through the plains we had to cross. To top it off, the pirates might not even be in port. This time of year they were often away raiding themselves, stealing gold from galleons at sea and crying girls from cities they burned.

To my way of thinking this was not a smart idea. Not only did I have Charlie to worry over, but the new boys were untried. We didn’t even know whether half of them could fight at all, much less against grown men who made their living by the blade.

And Del might not make it. I could already imagine the boy sicking out puddles of blood on the way, blood that would attract the Many-Eyed to us when we took the path that bordered their lands. It was a risky plan, probably wasteful. Even saying that all the boys made it to the pirate camp, it was unlikely all would make it back. We never did come back with the same numbers that we left with.

I let Charlie go with a reassuring grin. The little one gave me a half smile in return when I told him to stay where he was put. I sidled around to Peter, who energetically slashed at the ground, making marks to indicate who would go where in the pirate camp. I had to try, though nothing was likely to come of it.

“I don’t think—” I began under my breath.

“Don’t think,” Peter said sharply.

Some of the boys snickered, and I narrowed my eyes at each face in the circle. One by one their gazes fell away, except Nip, who stared insolently at me until I growled. Nip dropped his eyes to the ground, a red flush climbing his cheeks. I answered to no one but Peter, and the sooner the new ones learned that, the better.

“I know what you want,” Peter said, his green eyes bright and intent on his drawing. “Stop babying.”

“It’s not babying to wait till they’re ready,” I said.

“Stop babying,” Peter repeated.

And that was that. Peter had spoken, and we would all do as he wished. It was his island. He had invited us there, had promised us we would be young and happy forever.

So we were. Unless we got sick, or died, or were taken by the pirates. And it was of no nevermind to Peter if we did. The boys were just playmates to help him pass the time, though none of them knew this. They all thought they were special in his eyes, while the only one who was special was me. Peter had picked me first, had kept me at his right hand for so many years. But even I had no power to make Peter do what he did not want.

Peter wanted a raid. We would have a raid.

I stuffed my hands under the waist of my deerskin pants and hooked my thumbs over the edge. I listened to Peter’s plans with half an ear. I had heard it all before, and I knew what I would have to do anyway. I always fought the first mate.

I’d killed most of them, and the ones who lived carried my mark. I cut off the right hand of all my victims, living and dead, so they would know who I was, and remember. I always used their own swords to do this, for I carried only a dagger, and I thought it hurt them more if I used their weapon.

Peter always fought the Captain. There had been a few Captains over the years, although this new one had been about for quite a while. I didn’t think Peter tried very hard in a fight sometimes. He seemed to like taunting the Captain better than killing him.

After a bit Peter stood up and dusted his hands. “Go and get something to eat, boys. Then, after, we’ll get on to our mission.”

Most of the boys filed out of the small notch that served as both entrance to and exit from the tree. The tree was enormous and completely hollow inside, large enough to fit thirty boys lying side by side on the ground. The roots twisted up along the floor, making chairs and beds for those who wanted them, though most nested in piles of skins.

The new boys still wore the clothes that they had when they came from the Other Place, and the rest of us wore a mishmash of animal skins and clothes we’d stolen from the pirate camp. I had a red coat buttoned over my chest, taken from one of the Captains a long, long time ago, when he’d foolishly left it hanging on a washing line. It was too big in the body and I’d had to cut the sleeves and the tails a bit, but it was mine.

For a while Peter was inclined to be jealous of this, for it was a good prize, and to wheedle and imply that I ought to give it to him, but I wouldn’t. I’d seen it before he had and snatched it off the line while he was looking for something shiny to take, as always. He just couldn’t bear to think I’d beaten him at anything. Then he decided the coat was a stupid thing and that it looked foolish on me because it was so big, but I knew he wanted it.

Charlie waited where I had left him, until I went to him and gave him a nudge with my knee to follow the others outside.

The little boy looked up at me with grave eyes and spoke around the thumb in his mouth. “Are you coming?”

“In a minute,” I said, and patted Charlie’s shoulder. “Go on, now.”

I wanted a word with Peter away from the others. When I turned back Peter had his arms crossed and watched the twins with mild interest.

“What’s this about?” I asked.

Peter shrugged. “What is it ever about? They like to hit one another.”

Nod and Fog rolled on the ground, each punching the other in the face as hard as possible. One of the twins—it was hard to tell who was who when they were tangled up and rolling in the dirt—was bleeding, and the blood dribbled and splashed away from their flying bodies.

We watched the twins for a few moments longer. Peter would have let them bash about until they were both dead, but I didn’t want them breaking limbs just before a raid. Peter didn’t think about these things. He said that was why he had me, so I would think about them for him and save him the trouble.

Fog had snapped Nod’s wrist once, and though I had tried to set it with a piece of bark and some rope made from a twining plant, it hadn’t healed quite right. The wrist was just slightly off straight, and if you touched it where the break was, there was a knot of gnarled bone underneath.

Nod wasn’t bothered in the least by the break or the less-than-perfect healing, but he’d had a fever for several days after, and things had been touch-and-go. I watched over him during that time, made sure Nod got through. But if one of the twins broke another bone right before a raid, Peter wouldn’t let me stay behind to watch over him. I had my job to do, and nobody else would look after Charlie. We’d return to a corpse that used to be a twin, and I’d bury it with the others in the clearing in the woods.

I thought all of these things while the twins spun and pummeled. After a moment I stepped forward to break them up.

I heard Peter mutter, “Spoilsport,” but the other boy didn’t stop me. Maybe he, too, was thinking about the harm they might do each other. Or maybe he’d lost interest in watching them fight.

One of the twins had pinned the other’s arms with his knees and was pounding ferociously on his brother’s face. The latter had a broken nose, the source of the blood spattered about on the roots and dirt.

I hooked the attacking twin—I could see now it was Nod, by the yellow cat’s ears—under the neck of his leather vest and hauled him off Fog. Fog immediately jumped to his feet, tucked his head under like a goat and ran for his brother, head-butting him in the stomach.

Nod dangled from my hand with his toes just brushing the floor, and he let out a great whoosh of air as Fog’s head caught him just under the ribs.

“None of that now,” I said, tossing Nod to one side so I could catch Fog by the shoulders as he made another run at his twin.

“He took my best knife!” Fog shouted, his arms spinning like a windmill.

One of his hands caught me in the chin, just clipped me a bit. It wasn’t enough to hurt, not even close, but it set me off when I was already in a foul mood about Peter and the blasted raid.

“That’s enough,” I said, and hauled off a good one right in Fog’s mouth.

The smaller boy fell to his bottom on the ground, wiping blood from his lip.

Nod cackled at the sight of his brother chastised in the dust. I turned on the second boy, lifted him from where I had tossed him in the tangle of roots, and gave Nod the same treatment I’d given his twin.

The two of them sat side by side in the dirt, identical pairs of pale blue eyes staring up at me from blood- and muck-encrusted faces.

I heaved a deep breath, my hands clenched at my sides.

“Sorry, Jamie,” the twins chorused.

I pointed at Nod. “Give him his knife. He worked on that blade for days.”

“But . . .” Nod began, but stopped at the look on my face. Nod and Fog both knew better than to get on my wrong side.

Nod pulled the stone knife from under his vest and handed it to Fog, who tucked it lovingly into a leather sheath at his waist.

I jerked my head toward the notch. “Go eat something.”

They scampered to their feet, seemingly none the worse for wear. By the time they reached the notch, the argument had been forgotten, and Nod playfully punched Fog in the shoulder.

Peter chuckled softly. “That’s why neither of them play against you in Battle.”

I took another deep breath, waiting for the red to recede, so that I wouldn’t turn on Peter.

For a moment I’d thought about pulling my own knife, the metal one I’d stolen from the pirates. Then I’d knock Peter to the ground, grab his jaw and squeeze it together until Peter’s tongue lolled out, and slice it off as neat as the edge of a pirate’s sail.

Then the mist drew back a bit, the crazed burning in my blood cooled, and Peter stood there, grinning, unharmed, unaware of what had passed in my mind.

It startled me, it surely did, for I loved Peter—at least most of the time—and spent the better portion of my life trying to make him smile at me the way he did when we first met.

“They try me sometimes,” I said, after a bit. I was returning to myself again, the Jamie I knew.

Peter slung his arm around my shoulder. “You’ll whip the new boys into shape. And we’ll have an excellent raid.”

“There should not be a raid at all,” I said, trying once more, though I knew it was in vain.

“It’ll be a lark,” Peter said, and he nudged me toward the notch in the tree.

Outside a few boys scampered in the clearing around our tree, chasing and tagging one another. Some of them had plucked the fruit from the trees and stacked it in a pile. Del showed the new boys how to peel the skin from the orange-yellow fruit before eating it.

“The outside bit, that’ll make you sick if you eat it. But the inside is nice and sweet,” Del said, holding the fruit up to his lips and biting into it. Juice spilled over his chin. The sticky yellow stuff stood out against his white skin, like a warning.

I paused, my hand on the trunk of the tree. Peter emerged beside me and followed my gaze.

“Del won’t last much longer,” I said. “He won’t last a raid—that’s for certain.”

Peter shrugged. “If he’s sick he can stay behind. Better he coughs out that muck when I’m not here. I don’t want to listen to it.”

This was more or less what I expected, but I felt a surge of that same strange anger I’d felt a few moments before. It made me speak when I would have held my tongue.

“What if I was the one sicking out my lungs?” I said. I felt the temper perilously close to the surface, lurking just underneath my skin, hot and wild. “Would you leave me behind?”

Peter looked at me, just the faintest of questions in his eyes. “You never get sick, Jamie. All the time you’ve been here you’ve never had so much as a sniffle.”

“But what if I was?” I persisted.

I wasn’t sure whether I should be angry with Peter or not. There was no harm in his feelings. Peter would like it if Del was alive, but it wouldn’t bother him if Del wasn’t. He didn’t wish the other boy harm.

“You won’t be,” Peter said, and he ran off to join the running boys. They were practicing swordplay with sticks now, jabbing and slashing at one another with the long branches that fell from the fruit trees.

I stared after him, felt that familiar mix of love and worship and frustration that I often felt with Peter. You couldn’t change him. He didn’t want to be changed. That was why Peter lived on the island in the first place.

I crossed to the circle of boys gathered around the pile of fruit. Most of the lads were fine, but Charlie struggled with the small stone knife that one of the older boys had lent him.

I knelt beside him on one knee, took the unpeeled fruit from Charlie’s little hand.

“Like this, see?” I said, making quick work of it and handing it back to Charlie.

The smaller boy looked up at me with shining eyes as he bit into the fruit. “’S good,” he said.

I ruffled Charlie’s hair, yellow-white in the sunlight. He was like a little duckling with his head all covered in fuzz, a little duckling who’d follow behind me and expect me to keep him safe. There was nothing to be done about it now. I would just have to make sure to keep him with me until the smaller boy got bigger, or smarter.

I stood and called Nod and Fog to me. The twins were busy beating at each other with sticks, but they quit as soon as they heard my voice, coming to attention before me like soldiers.

“Take Kit and Harry and check the traps,” I said.

We’d need the meat while crossing the island. Some to eat, and some for the things we might meet on the way. I didn’t like the way the Many-Eyed had been acting lately. They were bolder than they’d ever been before.

“’Kay,” the twins said.

“And take the new boy, Nip, with you,” I said.

Nip looked like he might be working up the gumption to come at me, and I was not in the mood for fighting just then. Best if the other lad were busy.

Nod and Fog collected the others, including an obviously reluctant Nip, and disappeared into the trees. I looked up at the sky, calculated they would be back by midday.

I rounded up the other boys and set them to tasks—cleaning and collecting the knives and bows, rigging up carrying pouches for food, laying out strips of fruit to dry in the sun. Peter frowned when he realized all his playmates had been taken from him for chores.

“What’s the idea?” he said.

“You want a raid, don’t you?” I said, turning away so he wouldn’t see the gleam of satisfaction in my eye. If he wanted his raid he could have all that came with it, including the work.

“Aye,” Peter said.

“Then there’s work to be done.”

“Not for me,” Peter said. He planted himself defiantly in the shade of a fruit tree and took out the piece of wood he’d whittled at the night before, one he’d turned into a little flute. He whistled, watching me from the corner of his green eyes.

I gave Peter my back, and went about my business. Peter watched me closely, though I pretended not to notice, watched me as a mother might watch over her child, or a wolf might watch something that was between it and its prey.

chapter 2

The trap-checking party was back just before the sun was highest, as I had expected. All the traps were full, which was an excellent surprise. It meant we could do less hunting on the way to the pirate camp. There was always plenty of food in the forest, but much less once we reached the border of the mountains and the plains.

Peter, of course, wanted a bit of rabbit for lunch as long as there was so much to go around. And I, though my inclination was to save for the upcoming journey, didn’t argue.

I was pleased to see Nip looking so bedraggled after trekking around the forest with the twins, who’d doubtless kept up an unaccustomed pace for the tall boy. If Nip were tired out from exercise, he would, I hoped, be too tired to cause trouble.

Soon we had a fire crackling in the clearing and a couple of the fattest rabbits on spits, watched over carefully by Del, who was the best thing we had for a cook. Del sprinkled a bit of sweet-smelling leaf he’d collected over the rabbits, and my mouth watered.

The best of the meat was given to Peter first, and then me, followed in order by the size of the boy, the length of time he’d been on the island, and his current position of favoritism in Peter’s mind. Thus Nip and Charlie were the last two to get fed, and they had the smallest portions.

Charlie bit into the rabbit with relish. The tiny piece of meat was more than enough for a boy his size, especially as he’d been eating as much yellow fruit as he could get his hands on all morning.

Nip narrowed his eyes at the scrap Del held out to him. “What’s all this, then? Where’s the rest of it?”

Del looked uncertainly from Nip to me to Peter. Peter was not inclined to do anything about Nip at the moment. His face was buried in the best piece of meat and he smacked his lips with every bite.

I didn’t like to step into every confrontation between the boys. First, it would mean I’d spend my whole bloody day solving problems and I had better things to do. Second, the other ones would never learn how to get along if someone always fixed it between them. So I waited. I didn’t care for Nip, but Peter had picked him and the boy needed to find his place in the group just as Del needed to defend his.

And Del is going to die soon anyway. It was a heartless thought, and it made me feel a little sick to think it, but it was true.

It wouldn’t matter what happened now, not really, because Del would be dead before we came back from the pirate raid. He would cough out all the blood in his lungs or he would be too weak to defend himself from the pirates or maybe, if he was lucky, one of the Many-Eyed would take him and kill him fast and use what was left of Del to feed its children.

So when Del looked at me I just looked back, and waited to see what happened. I liked Del better than Nip, but I didn’t think Del would get away from this one. Del was a good fighter—leastways, he had been before he was sick—but I didn’t like his chances against the bigger boy.

Del swallowed, like he knew what was coming, and said with only a little stutter, “It’s your share of the meat.”

Nip knocked it away with a hand that seemed twice the size of Del’s, Del being so thin and pale that he was half ghost already, and Nip hearty and strong from knocking boys down and taking their food in the Other Place.

“That’s no share,” Nip said, leaning over the fire to push his face in Del’s. “I want yours.”

Del had fairly allotted his own pile when his turn came up—it was larger than Nip’s, though not as much as Peter’s. He’d been on the island for some time, and he’d cooked it all besides. He looked at his food, then at Nip, and his chin came up.

“You’re new. You get your share last. That’s how it is here. If you don’t like it, you can get your own food.”

“Or,” Nip growled, “I can take it from a skinny little rat like you.”

Nip’s big hand was already reaching for Del’s share, but he was looking at Peter to see if our leader approved. That was stupid, because he was so busy looking at Peter instead of Del that the big lug didn’t see Del shift, shift so his foot was closer to the hot coals of the fire.

Good for you, Del, I thought.

Del kicked the red coals into Nip’s face with a sideswipe of his foot. Some of the boys near Nip got some ash on their food and shouted at Del about it, but their complaints were drowned in Nip’s scream.

The flaming coals touched his eyeballs and he made a noise like something dying. Nip immediately showed his brains were made of pudding by doing the one thing guaranteed to make it worse—he clapped his hands over his eyes and rubbed at them, shouting all the while and stumbling away from the fire like a blind bear.

Most of the boys had stopped eating to stare while Nip threatened Del. Now that there was no fight in the offing they went back to their rabbit, ignoring Nip.

Del calmly picked up his own meat and tore into it with his teeth. When he glanced at me I winked at him to show he’d done fine. Del gave me a half smile in return. I thought again how pale he looked and how powerless I was, even with the power to live forever, to stop what was to come.

Charlie paused in his eating and with big eyes watched Nip bellowing and blundering about. “Should we help him, Jamie? He’s hurt.”

“He got what he deserved for trying to take Del’s share,” I said, and patted his head to take some of the sting out of it. Too little, and too softhearted on top of it. Charlie would never make it unless he toughened up, unless he lost something of what made him Charlie.

Just for a moment I felt the weight of that bear down on me, and I could feel the deadweight of his small body in my arms as I carried him to a grave I spent all morning digging.

The vision was so real, so painful to my heart, that I lost where I was until Peter said, “Someone ought to make that noise stop. It’s hurting my ears,” and the spell was broken.

I sighed, knowing an order when I heard one, shoved the rest of the rabbit in my mouth and stood up. Nip shouted and flailed and staggered closer to the forest’s edge.

Really, I wondered what Peter saw in him. If I had been with him the last time he went to the Other Place (and I wasn’t because Ambro had just died and I’d taken his body out to the border where the Many-Eyed lived, in hopes that it would keep them satisfied. We did this now and again, when it seemed they were tempted to go into the forest), I would have advised against Nip. Peter had gone for just one boy, one especially to replace Ambro, and come back with this. He wasn’t half the boy Ambro had been, to my way of thinking, and because Peter took a trip just for Nip, he had a false sense of his own specialness.

But I was the only one who was special, truly special, for I was the first, and would be the last if it came to that. It would always be Peter and me, like we were in the beginning.

I watched Nip for a few moments. He made such a fuss I was embarrassed for him. My own inclination was to spin him around and point him to the path through the forest and come what may. If he got eaten by a bear or stumbled over a cliff, that was all right with me. But Peter hadn’t said to get rid of Nip, only to shut him up.

The other boy blinked as I approached. I could tell he was trying to get his eyes to focus on me, that I was nothing but a blurry shadow moving toward him.

“Here, now,” Nip said, his fists up. He sensed, I think, the dark thoughts in my mind. “Don’t you come near me. I didn’t do nothing wrong. That pasty little runt threw fire in my eyes and he’s the one who ought to . . .”

Nip didn’t finish, because my fist connected with his temple, hard enough that his ears would ring the next morning. That might not have been enough on a regular day, but Nip was already tired from checking the traps, sore from the coals in his eyes and hungry because he’d been too busy trying to take Del’s food to eat his own.

One punch was all that was needed for now, though I didn’t fool myself that it would be enough when Nip came looking for turnabout, as I knew he would. He was that kind.

Nip went down hard, face-first in the dirt, like a toy soldier kicked over by a careless boy. I went back to the fire.

“Quieter now,” Peter remarked.

You could still hear the buzzing of the small flies, and the soft sigh of the wind through the branches of the trees, and the crackle of wood burning in the fire. The sun was past its high midday point and the shadows were lengthening, though it was still a long time until night fell. The boys were eating and laughing and pushing and shoving one another, the way they did, and I was happy to be there, to see them all that way.

Then Peter got that look in his eye, the one that said he wanted to stir the pot. I don’t know why it was so but Peter just didn’t feel right when everyone was content. Maybe it was because he wanted all eyes on him or maybe it was because he wanted everyone to feel the way he did all the time. He told me once that when he sat still he felt like there were ants crawling under his skin, that if he wasn’t moving, running, planning, doing, it was just as though those ants would crawl right up inside his head and make him mad.

He leapt to his feet, and they all turned to look at him. I saw the satisfaction on his face and thought of a group of mummers I’d seen once in the Other Place, long ago, when I was very small. The leader of the troupe had the same look when he jumped on the box in the center of the stage, a feeling that must be like all the stars circling around the earth only for you.

“Who wants to hear a story?” Peter said.

All the boys chorused yes, because they were feeling fed and warm and because Peter wanted to tell a tale, and if Peter wanted it, then they did too.

“What kind of story? A pirate story? A ghost story? A treasure story?” Peter hopped around the circle, scooping up a handful of dirt as he did.

“Something with lots of blood and adventure,” Fog said.

“Something with a mermaid in it,” Nod said. He was partial to the mermaids, and went often on his own to the lagoon where they liked to splash and show their tail fins above the breaking waves.

“Something with a haunt walking and scaring folk to death,” Jonathan said. “I saw a story like that once. This fellow killed a king so he could be king and then the old king’s ghost stayed about and sat in the new king’s chair.”

“What would a ghost want to sit in a chair for? Ghosts don’t need chairs. They fall right through them,” Harry said. He’d been around the island for a while, and I’m sorry to say that being bashed around in Battle and at raids had done nothing very good for his brains.

“So he could scare the new king for killing him in the first place,” Jonathan said, punching Harry in the shoulder.

“Killing who in the first place?” Harry asked.

“A ghost story,” Peter said, effectively squashing the argument before it got properly started. He smeared the dirt he’d scooped up across his face. It made him a wild demon in the shadows left behind by the lowering sun.

Charlie’s cold hand grasped for mine. He stood up so my ear was close to his mouth. “I don’t like ghosts,” he whispered. “There was one in the house where we lived before. It was in the wardrobe and my brother said if I opened that door the ghost would take me away to where the dead people live.”

I squeezed his fingers, partly to comfort him and partly to cover my surprise at his words. A brother? Charlie had a brother? And an older one, by the sound of it. Where was he that day we found Charlie wandering lost and alone? Why hadn’t Charlie told us about him?

Charlie crowded closer as Peter spoke.

“Once there was a boy,” Peter began, and his eyes glinted when he looked at Charlie and me. “A very little boy with yellow hair like baby duck feathers.”

I brushed my hand over Charlie’s downy blond head and gave Peter a look that said I knew what he was about.

“This little duckling was very foolish. He was always wandering away from his mama, and his mama would squawk and find him again. And she would scold him and say that he had to mind her and stay close, but whenever they went walking in the woods he never did.”

“I thought this was a ghost story,” Harry said. “What’s all this about a duck?”

“Shush,” Jonathan said.

“One day the duckling and his brothers and sisters and mama were walking in the woods, and the foolish little duckling saw a jumping grasshopper. He laughed and followed the hopper, trying to catch it with his fat little hands, but he never could.

“He kept on chasing and laughing until he noticed, all sudden-like, that there was no quacking of mama and brothers and sisters all around him and it was silent as his grave. It was then the foolish duckling saw how he’d lost the path and there was nothing but the great big wood closing in.”

I felt that this duckling boy was shortly to be eaten by one of the Many-Eyed. I frowned at Peter, but he didn’t much care about the message I was trying to send.

“The silly little duckling quacked then, quacked loud and long, and waited for his mama to quack back, but she never did. Then the little duckling started to cry, walk and quack and cry all at the same time the way a baby will. The other creatures of the forest watched the duckling pass by and shook their heads, for the boy had been so foolish and hadn’t listened to his mama when she told him to stay close and mind her.

“It started to get dark, and the duckling was scared, but he kept walking and crying, thinking that around every corner there might be his mama, ready to scold and hug him all at the same time.”

“My mama was never like that,” Harry said to Jonathan in a low voice. “She only did the yelling and the hitting, none of the hugging.”

Peter gave no sign that he noticed this remark. “After a long time the boy came to a clear pond in a little valley. The water was so fresh and still that all the world reflected in it, like the shiniest looking glass you ever did see.”

Ah, I thought, it’s to be a gobbling by a crocodile, then. I pulled Charlie a little closer to me and put him in my lap, like I could protect him from Peter’s story with my arms.

“The little duckling went to the water and peered in, and inside the water was the valley and the trees all around and the white face of the moon and the white face of another little duckling, fuzzy yellow hair and all. The duckling quacked ‘hello,’ for he was very pleased to see a friendly face after walking and crying so long in the woods on his own. The other duckling in the pond said ‘hello’ at the same time, which made them both laugh and laugh. The duckling reached through the water, toward his new friend, and their fingertips touched.

“At that very moment the smooth surface of the pond rippled and the sneaking, peeking eyes of a crocodile broke through. The croc wasn’t far from where the little duckling and his friend were laughing together. The duckling started up and shouted to his friend, ‘Oh, get away, get away or you’ll be eaten.’

“He ran a little way and looked over his shoulder to see if his friend followed him like he hoped, but the other duckling wasn’t there. Then the little duckling’s heart was in his mouth, because he was so scared but he didn’t want to leave his friend to be gobbled up by the crocodile. Those sneaking, peeking eyes still lurked in the same place, so the duckling thought he had time to get his friend from the water.”

“How come the bird was so stupid?” Harry asked. He seemed to have forgotten that the duckling was actually a boy in Peter’s story. “Don’t he know the pond only shows what’s put in it?”

This didn’t really make sense but we all knew what Harry meant. A few of the others nodded.

Charlie hadn’t forgotten the duckling was actually a boy. He pressed his face against my chest, like he was trying to climb inside my skin, trying to find a place where he could be safe from the story. Only Charlie and I seemed to know it wasn’t to end well, and only I knew the story was meant for me. Charlie was dead scared of the crocodile pond, and he was right to be. Those beasts could gobble a little one like him in one bite.

“Haven’t I said he was a foolish little duckling?” Peter said, responding to Harry’s question. “Everyone knows we stick together in the forest.”

“If you go out alone you won’t come back,” a few of the boys said together.

“’Cept Jamie,” Fog said.

“Yeah, ’cept Jamie,” Nod said.

“Nothing in the forest would be dumb enough to try and hurt Jamie,” Peter said, with a fierce kind of pride.

That pride would have made me swell a little were it not for Charlie’s small voice. “But what about the duckling?”

“Right you are, Charlie,” Peter said. “That little duckling crept back to the so-still pond, where Mr. Crocodile waited. He gathered all his courage and looked into the water and saw his friend there, so very close to those watching eyes.”

“I thought this was a ghost story,” Billy said. He didn’t seem much impressed by the tale of the little duckling. “Where’s the ghost?”

“Aye,” said Jonathan. “I thought a proper ghost story would have bloody white creepers covered in chains and all.”

“If you don’t shut it we’ll never get to the ghost bit,” Peter said, temper snapping in his eyes.

That’s all right, I thought. Charlie and me, we don’t need to hear the end of this story. We don’t need to know how the crocodile chomped the little duckling into its jaws while the boy cried for his mama, because Charlie and me, we already see it.

Peter cleared his throat so all the boys would pay attention again. There was no thought of leaving, of doing something else, of taking Charlie somewhere he wouldn’t hear. And the boys who were bored wouldn’t leave either. It was Peter’s island, Peter who’d brought us here, and in the back of every boy’s mind was some form of the same thought—He could send me back, if he wanted.

They didn’t know that Peter wouldn’t ever let anyone leave. Once you came to the island, you stayed on the island. That was the rule. You stayed there forever.

And none of them wanted to go back, for they’d all been alone or as good as, running from the smell of ale and dirty straw and the fist that made your teeth fall out. Anything Peter had on offer was better than that, even if there were monsters here.

Except, I thought, maybe for Charlie. Charlie didn’t belong. Charlie might have a brother, a brother who teased about the ghost in the wardrobe but who might look out for him too, and maybe Charlie had been that little duckling following a grasshopper the day we found him. Maybe we should have just turned him around so he could find his way back to the path, instead of taking him away with us.

“The duckling reached for his friend in the water, and his friend reached back. Just as the duckling was about to grasp hands with the other boy his fingers somehow slipped past and into the water.”

“How can a bird have fingers?” Harry asked Billy, and Billy shushed him at the look in Peter’s eye.

“The sneaking, peeking crocodile eyes hadn’t moved, so the little duckling thought there must still be time to save his friend. He reached in the water and the other boy reached back and his face was scared but their hands did not touch. The little duckling knew then his friend was trapped beneath the surface and that meant he would be eaten for certain.

“No wonder the crocodile hadn’t lumbered from the pond to chase the duckling, for his meal was only a snap and a clap away, no need to run after little boys on land.”

“Here, now, where’d the boy come from?” Harry asked.

“The little duckling thought and thought, and then he dragged a large branch to the pond and pushed it in for his friend to grab. It splashed and crashed and the old fat croc blinked his eyes, but he did not move, and the duckling’s friend was still stuck beneath the water, his face as pale as the white moon.

“The duckling saw a vine on a tree and he ran to the tree and tugged with all his might, always checking over his shoulder to make sure the croc wasn’t about, but the croc just stayed where he was put, like he was sleeping with his eyes open.

“The vine came loose with a ripping noise and the duckling tumbled back, rolling so far so fast that he almost went right into the pond with the friend he was trying to save, and what would happen then? Who would save them if they both were trapped under the surface?

“He threw the vine in the water and told his friend to grab hold of it and he ran away from the pond as fast as he could, holding his end of the vine and hoping, hoping, hoping he was pulling his friend from the reach of the crocodile’s teeth. After a while he looked back and saw he had gone far from the water and the sneaking, peeking eyes but he was all alone. The end of the vine trailed along behind him, wet and dirty and friendless.

“The little duckling cried then, for he was scared of the croc and the water and of being by himself in the woods and he just wanted his mama, just wanted her to come and put him under her wing and take him home.”

Peter looked at me, and I knew this last part was for me—a warning, maybe, or a foretelling of the future? Charlie started to shake then—he couldn’t bear it another second—and I turned him around so his head was on my shoulder, just like he was my little duckling and I was his mama, putting him under my wing. I gave Peter a look that said, Do your worst.

“But though he was a foolish duckling he was still, deep down, a brave one too. He wouldn’t leave his friend behind. The little duckling decided finally he must dive into the water and push his friend out, and the thought of this made him tremble all over and made the downy yellow fuzz on his head stand up. He stood on the shore of the pond, watching that sneaking, creeping crocodile, who was so still the duckling almost thought he wasn’t even alive.

“Just as the duckling had worked up enough courage to leap into the water, he heard something, something so far away but so longed for that he was sure he imagined it. It sounded like Mama, quacking and quacking his name.

“The little duckling forgot about his friend in the water and turned and called for her, and she called back and now his heart was full and happy and he started away from the pond, running across the clearing and shouting and shouting for her. Everything would be all right now that his mama was here.

“But, oh, that peeking, sneaking crocodile, he knew his time had come. The little duckling’s back was turned but if he had looked over his shoulder he would have seen that old crocodile moving fast now, faster than anyone would have thought possible. His tail whipped that giant monster’s body through the water in a trice, and though he splashed as he clambered onshore, the little duckling did not hear. He could only hear one thing—the voice of his mama.”

Charlie trembled all over, his body vibrating against my chest, and he covered his ears with his little hands. He didn’t want to hear because he already knew, and so did I. The other boys leaned forward, their eyes shining in the afternoon light, for Peter had them well and truly caught now.

“And what do you think happened then?” Peter asked, for he never lost a chance to perform for the audience.

“He got eaten!” Harry said. “And he turned into a ghost!”

I sniggered a little at the look on Peter’s face, for although it was obvious where the story was heading, he clearly felt that Harry’s delivery left something to be desired.

“The little duckling’s mama broke through the trees and saw him running to her, and she saw, too, the crocodile behind, his eyes so hungry and red. She shrieked and reached for her duckling but it was too late, far too late. That sneaking, creeping crocodile had hold of the duckling’s leg and the little duckling was too surprised to cry out, too surprised to do anything at all.

“His mother, she was quacking and squawking as the little duckling was dragged away, but she should have kept a better eye, shouldn’t she? Isn’t that what mamas are supposed to do?”

“Don’t remember our mama,” said Nod, and Fog nodded his head up and down in agreement.

“I do,” Billy said, and it didn’t seem the memory brought him any particular joy.

“I do,” said Charlie, but it was a tiny whisper, just for me. “She used to rock me and sing to me and hold me so tight.”

“That mother duck, she ran after the crocodile, but he disappeared under the water of the pond, taking the little duckling with him.

“Now, you might think that the little duckling turned into a ghost that haunts that old crocodile pond,” Peter said, his eyes hard and bright as he glanced at the shivering Charlie in my arms.

“Didn’t he?” Harry asked.

Peter shook his head side to side, a long, slow “no” that had all the boys peering at him in confusion.

“What’s all this duck business about, then, if he didn’t turn into a ghost? Where’s the bloody ghost in the ghost story?” Harry asked, but there was no rancor in his voice, just confusion.

“The mother duckling stood at the shore of the pond, weeping and weeping for her little lost one. Her tears were so great and so many that the waters of the pond rose and flooded around her feet and ankles, and she sank deep into the mud there until the water covered her to her knees. On and on she wept, for she knew it was all her fault for letting her little boy get lost in the first place. After a very long time her tears ran dry, but by then her legs had turned into stems and her yellow hair into the petals of a flower, and so she stands there until this day, crouched over the crocodile pond, hoping forever to see the face of her little duckling again. And sometimes, if you go to the crocodile pond late at night, you can hear her voice on the wind, crying his name.”

Peter said this last bit very quietly and dramatically. I didn’t know what the rest of the boys would make of this tale—they mostly looked confused and slightly disappointed—but I knew that Peter meant it for me. But was I the little duckling’s mama in the story, or was I supposed to return him to her before something happened to Charlie? I wasn’t sure.

Peter’s eyes were dark and full of blood, but the wet on my shoulder was from Charlie’s quiet tears.

chapter 3

After that strange little interlude, the boys were full of energy and ready to run, so Peter decided we ought to set off for the pirate camp though the sun was lowering. As usual, my objections were overruled.

“The sun will be up for a while longer,” Peter said. “Anyhow, the boys are already gone.”

It was true. As soon as Peter had given them leave to go, all the boys had collected their supplies and weapons (following the lead of Nod and Fog, who were always happy to order the new boys about). Then the twins whooped and hollered and ran into the woods, and most of the others had followed them with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Del’s face was less pale than usual, and I could tell he still felt some lingering pride at having fought Nip off at lunch.

Maybe he would make it. Maybe he wouldn’t die slowly coughing out blood. Maybe.

Everyone left except Nip, who was still passed out where I’d left him, and Peter and Charlie and me. Charlie had one hand attached to the tail of my coat and the thumb of his other hand was stuffed in his mouth.

Peter eyed the little boy with distaste, though after the story he’d told, Peter could hardly expect Charlie to scamper happily after the others.

“Go and kick Nip,” Peter told Charlie. “If he doesn’t get up he’ll have to stay here on his own while we raid the pirates.”

Charlie looked up at me, which I could tell bothered Peter no end. He was used to having his wishes granted without question.

“I’ll do it,” I said. I didn’t want Nip to wake up swinging and punch Charlie in the face, although I was pretty certain that was precisely the goal Peter had in mind.

“I’m not minding him while you’re about it,” Peter said, just as if Charlie weren’t there at all.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Come with me, Charlie.”

Peter frowned, this outcome apparently not at all what he’d wanted.

“Go on after the others,” I said to Peter, and his frown became fierce. Not only was I taking the risk of harm away from Charlie but I’d just dismissed Peter like one of the other boys. Like he was ordinary.

And Peter never wanted to be ordinary.

“I don’t want to go yet,” Peter said.

“As you please,” I said, and hid my smile as I turned away.

Charlie kept his hand on my clothes, but as we approached Nip he tugged at the hem. I glanced down at him and he shook his head at me.

“You don’t want to get closer to Nip?”

Charlie’s thumb popped out of his mouth. “He scares me.”

“Do you want to go back to Peter?”

Charlie shook his head no again, but didn’t offer any explanation this time. I had a fair idea that Peter’s “ghost” story had taken some of the shine off the other boy for Charlie.

“Just stay here, all right? I’ll just go give Nip a kick and come right back for you.”

Charlie shook his head, his eyes big and blue and full of feelings he couldn’t put into words, but I could see the story of the lost duckling swimming around in them.

“I promise I’ll be back,” I said. “I don’t want you to get hurt if Nip wakes up like an angry bear, right? And you can see me all the time I’m gone.”

Charlie turned this over in his mind, and finally nodded and let go of my clothes. He snagged one hand firmly in his own shirt hem and put his other thumb back in his mouth.

Peter stood near the fire where we’d left him, his brow creased as he watched us.

Whatever trouble Peter seemed to think Charlie might cause, it was nothing, in my mind, to the trouble Nip would cause. He was that kind of boy, the kind who’d always be slugging the others and taking their food and generally disturbing the peace. Not that there was so much peace, really, with more than a dozen boys about, but the roughhousing was usually in a friendly spirit.

I’d seen Nip’s eyes when he went for Del at lunch. There was a piggy kind of meanness in them, a cruelty that didn’t have a place in our little band of lost boys—at least I thought so, though clearly Peter didn’t, else he wouldn’t have chosen him.

That made two mistakes Peter had made in the last collection—Charlie and Nip. I knew what he thought he’d get in Charlie—a sweet little toy to play with. I wondered what he thought he’d get out of Nip.

All this was drifting around in my brain as I stood over the prone boy, and so I didn’t do any of the things I might have done with one of the others—shake him awake, or roll him over so that the sun on his face made him open his eyes. No, I did exactly as Peter had told Charlie to do—I kicked him.

I kicked him good and hard in the ribs and if I didn’t crack any bones it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Nip rolled over with a cry and came to his knees. His face was smudged with dirt and ash from the fire and his eyes were reddened from the coals. It took him a moment to realize where he was, what had happened and what I was doing there. When he did he stood up—staggered up, really, and his hand went to his head like my last blow was still ringing there.

None of this stopped him from putting up his fists in clear invitation.

I hadn’t wanted to fight him earlier, so I’d sent Nip off with Nod and Fog. Now I wanted to fight. It’d been boiling in me all day.

First the dream, and Peter’s insistence on a raid that would probably kill half the boys, then Nip’s bullying of Del and that thrice-bedamned story about the duckling that Peter told to terrify Charlie half to death. I’d been holding back so as not to scare the little boy who trailed behind me, but now Nip offered a chance to beat him good and bloody and I was going to take it.

It wasn’t fair of me, not really. Nip was about the same height as me, and he had more weight on him, but he was still staggering-stupid from before. It wasn’t an even fight.

I didn’t care if it was even or not. I just wanted to beat the piss out of somebody.

So Nip put his fists up and I smiled at him. And when I smiled he dropped his fists a little and asked, “What are you smiling about?”

His nose was broken before he realized why I was smiling.

Then his cheekbone—I heard it crack—then I kicked in his stomach and he staggered back, puking his guts up.

I would have done more. I could have done more. The red haze was riding hard in my blood and I wanted to peel his eyelids back and pop his eyeballs out. I wanted to put Nip down for good.

But then I heard Charlie’s tiny gasp as the bigger boy retched out what little he’d eaten that day. When I looked back I saw his eyes as giant pools of blue in a face as white as a seabird’s wing feather.

There was blood on my knuckles from where I’d busted Nip’s nose open, but I knelt and opened my arms to Charlie and he ran into them. I felt that hard anger receding—not disappearing, for it never disappeared entirely but waited for the right feeding to bring it back to life.

Nip retched again, his breath harsh and shallow. He started to speak but I stopped him.

“You leave off the other boys, you hear?” I said. “Else there’ll be more of the same for you.”

Nip’s eyes narrowed at me, full of resentment. “What’s it to you? Who do you think you are, anyway? Peter picked me himself.”

“Don’t go thinking that makes you special,” I said. They were all the same. They all thought they were special, but only I was. I was first and none of them could take that from me. I was first and best and last and always. Peter could do without them but not without me. Never without me. “You’re here to be part of our band, and we all work together here.”

“I’m not taking orders from you,” Nip said.

“Then you can leave,” I said. “Go live with the pirates and see how you like that.”

“Try and make me,” Nip said, and sneered. His face was spattered with blood from his nose, and his left cheekbone moved in a very wrong way when he talked. He must have been full of vinegar to keep gabbing at me through that. “Don’t see how you can when you’re playing nanny.”

Charlie was nothing to do with this, and I wasn’t going to let this new boy bring him in.

“I can kill you with one hand,” I said, and let Nip see it in my eyes.

“Can you really?” Charlie whispered in my ear.

I nodded once, and wondered if Charlie would be scared of me now. But instead he gripped my neck tighter, like he knew for certain I was strong enough to look after him, to keep him safe. And I was.

Nip watched me, his mean little eyes going from my face to the back of Charlie’s head resting on my shoulder. I saw him working something out that I didn’t care for.

All this happened while Peter watched and waited by the dying embers of the fire. The sun’s slanting rays were longer and longer by the minute. I wasn’t keen on starting off after the others in the dark.

“Leave off the other boys, and do as you’re told,” I said to Nip. “Or else you’ll pay for it.”

I turned away then, for he was the sort of boy who would learn his lesson only after hard knocks, so there wasn’t any point in standing there bandying words with him all day.

“Now can we go a-raiding?” Peter asked in a singsong voice, skipping around me like a child asking his father for a sweet. “If we don’t catch up to the rest soon they’ll get eaten by the Many-Eyed without you there.”

“Nod and Fog can look out for them,” I said mildly, though I privately agreed. Nod and Fog could take orders, but too often they got caught up in their own concerns to take proper care of the other boys. “Besides, they’ll stop at the cave for the night before they get to the fields.”

“Then let’s go!” Peter cried, and ran into the woods after the others.

Nip had pushed up to his feet. He looked a right mess and none too steady. I hoped he fell off a cliff or wandered into the mouth of a bear on the way and saved me some future trouble, for he was staring at me with that trouble in his eyes.

“Are you coming or not?” I shouted to him.

He didn’t say a word to me, only went after Peter.

Charlie had picked up his head to watch the bigger boy. “Maybe he’ll get lost,” he whispered hopefully.

“Maybe he will,” I said, and rumpled his hair. “You don’t like Nip, do you?”

“He tried to take Del’s food,” Charlie said as I placed him on the ground. He immediately grabbed the hem of my coat as we went toward the path after the others. “He would have eaten mine if you weren’t there.”

He understood this instinctively, understood that because he was small there would always be those who tried to use their size against him.

Nip and Peter weren’t far ahead of us on the trail and I didn’t fancy the four of us walking together like a happy family. “Do you want me to show you something, Charlie?”

“What?” he asked.

“A shortcut,” I said.

“A shortcut to what?”

“I know where they’ll stop for the night,” I said. “And anyway, all those boys don’t know how to be quiet when they’re together. We’ll hear them before we see them.”

“And we won’t have to walk with Nip,” Charlie said, his eyes lit up at the thought of a shortcut, a secret for only him and me.

That was the magic the island had—rocks to scramble over and trees to climb and mermaid lagoons to swim in and, yes, pirates to fight. I didn’t want to take the boys there today, but fighting pirates was some of the best fun you could have. The whole island was a great wide playground for boys like us to run in, to make secret places, to go where we wished and when we wanted with no adults to stop us or make us mind.

And Charlie, he needed that magic. I was pretty certain that we’d taken this little duckling from a mama who loved him.

Peter didn’t think very much of mothers—it had been far too long since he’d had one to remember, and most of the boys had the kind of mothers you wanted to forget.

Peter said mine was like that too, that she’d harangued and beaten me, but I didn’t remember her. I didn’t remember too much from before, only flashes, and sometimes the songs that made my heart ache and Peter frown.

I knew the boys would stop at Bear Cave for the night, so named because the first time Peter and I went there we found the bones of a huge bear. Peter had loved that snarling skull so much that he mounted it on the wall and we dug a fire pit beneath it like some altar to an ancient god. When the fire was lit the flames played strangely on the skull, making it seem that at any moment it would live again, devouring us all.

I spared a thought for how those dancing shadows would frighten Charlie, then let it pass. I couldn’t keep things from scaring him, only from harming him.

The boys would stop at the Bear Cave, because there was good cover there and it was well before the fields of the Many-Eyed.

Nod and Fog, for all that they both seemed fearless, were both terrified of the Many-Eyed. I’d never shame them for this; nor would anyone on the island with sense. Even Peter, who liked to tease and play on the others’ fears, wouldn’t mock this.

The boys wouldn’t try to cross the fields without Peter or me, and it was pure foolishness to try at night in any case. That was asking to get eaten.

Charlie followed me off the path and into the dark thicket of trees. It was cooler away from the main walk where the sun beat down on the exposed trail. Here under the canopy of leaves the small flies didn’t buzz and bite, and the shifting shadows welcomed those with a heart to explore.

Little soft things scurried in the undergrowth, rabbits and field mice and miniature foxes with overlarge ears and watchful eyes. I liked the soft loam of the earth here, the wet green smell of the ferns mixed with the pungent sweetness of fallen fruit.

The trees arced over our heads far above, the long broad leaves tangling there like they stood arm in arm, protecting us.

“I like it here,” Charlie said, kneeling to push his fingers into the dirt. He laughed when several fat pink earthworms poked their heads blindly through the surface, waving about like they were sniffing for an intruder.

All we needed to do was cut through the forest and we would come out alongside the rocky cliff that led up to Bear Cave. The footing was narrow there, but Charlie was small and I’d climbed it so many times I could do it in my sleep.

We’d easily beat Peter and Nip there if they stayed to the path, for the path they followed twisted and rambled all through the forest and countryside before stopping at the point of Bear Cave, where the mountains met the plains.

And Nip wasn’t all together in his mind and body either. The memory of his broken cheekbone moving out of time with the rest of his jaw made me smile to myself.

Charlie ran ahead of me, giggling and flushing birds out of their nests in the ferns so that they chirped angrily at him. It was the first time I’d seen him free and happy since he’d arrived on the island.

When night fell and the woods grew dark, he came back to me. It didn’t feel that this was because he was scared, just a little unsure where to walk.

Bigger animals moved in the dark around us. We heard the soft pad of hooves and spotted the gleam of white antlers.

Later, we heard a bear snuffling toward us, big and broad and smelling of the last thing he killed. Bears mostly left us boys alone, but the reek of this one warned me of its approach and I decided not to risk it, pushing Charlie onto a tree branch and following after him.

We waited until the bear’s shadow passed underneath the branches we perched on and its grunting bulk gradually moved away.

“Would it eat us?” Charlie asked. I was glad to hear that he didn’t sound frightened, only curious.

“Probably not,” I said. “Bears have much better things to eat on this island than skinny boys, and that one has already had a feast.”

“I smelled the blood,” Charlie said. “It probably had some rabbits, like us.”

“A rabbit’s nothing but a mouthful to a big old grunter like that.” I laughed. “He’s been at deer or elk or maybe some of the fat silverfish that live in the ponds and streams. All those kind are much better food for a bear than us, but a bear is something that kills, and being something that kills, the best wisdom is to avoid its teeth and claws.”

“Are you something that kills?” Charlie asked. “Nod and Fog say that you are. They say no one’s killed more pirates than you.”

“I’ve lived here a long time,” I said. “Peter’s lived here even longer.”

I shifted uneasily as his bright little eyes studied me in the moonlight. Both of us knew quite well that I hadn’t answered the question.

I’d killed more pirates than I could remember, and for longer than I could remember. The pirates hated Peter but they hated me more, for I was a plague to them, a plague that cut away their best and youngest mates. No older pirate was quick enough to face me, so they sent their bright things to try to take me. But no bright young man, for all that he has the strength of a man, was as fast as a twelve-year-old boy. And I had experience on my side, though I did not look it.

You’d think that after all these years of losses to us, the pirates would choose another island when they wanted to stay in port, but they returned to ours season after season. One time, long ago, I asked Peter why they kept coming back.

“Because they want to know why we never grow up, silly,” Peter said, and cuffed the back of my head. “They think we have some special treasure that keeps us young, and they want it.”

I frowned at him. “If they want it, then why don’t they ever go past the beach near their ship?”

“They think they’ll catch one of us when we come a-raiding,” Peter said.

I snorted a laugh, and Peter smiled at me, and when he smiled like that it was just the two of us together, brothers forever.

Charlie’s voice brought me back to the woods and the dark, his voice and the fear in it. “Will I have to kill a pirate?”

“Not if you don’t want to,” I said. Not if I have anything to say about it, you won’t.

“I don’t know how to fight,” Charlie said.

“You’re not the only one,” I said, thinking of the other new boys, the ones who’d never handled a sword or a knife. “Just stay with me and you’ll be fine.”

I hopped off the branch and reached up for him, and as I set him on the ground I decided. Peter wouldn’t like it, but I wasn’t going to let Charlie anywhere near the pirate camp. I was going to tuck him up in a tree or a cave like a baby in a cradle and keep him well away from any fighting. If I was lucky, Peter wouldn’t notice.

Except Peter notices everything.

There was always a first time, I reasoned. He might be so busy with the raid that he wouldn’t trouble to keep track of Charlie, though since the little boy was almost always attached to my sleeve that was unlikely.

Charlie’s silence told me he was worried about the pirates, and the joy had gone out of the adventure in the woods.

Too damned little, I thought for the dozenth time that day. Too little for all of this.

We emerged from the forest right at the bottom of the cliff path. The boys up in the cave had a fire lit and the smell of burning wood and meat had led us to them for a good mile before we reached the cliff. They were having a raucous time of it, too—screeching and laughing and jumping about.

“They’re having a jolly time,” I said, smiling down at Charlie.

He stared up the path at the leaping shadows and beyond, into the cold white eye of the moon. He didn’t seem to think it was very jolly up there, and his fist wound into my coat again.

I detached him gently. “You have to go ahead of me. There’s not room for us side by side.”

He stubbornly rewound his fist and shook his head. “I don’t want to.”

I felt the first stirrings of impatience. “You have to.”

“I don’t want to,” Charlie repeated.

I deliberately peeled his hand out of my coat and pushed him toward the path. “You have to. We can’t stand here playing about all night.”

He wriggled away from my hands, shaking his head, his mouth set in an obstinate line. “No.”

I didn’t know whether this was about Peter or Nip or that he was afraid of the dark or the cliff path or what. I just knew that I wasn’t of a mind to deal with his nonsense. I didn’t care about Charlie’s reasons at that moment; I just wanted him to mind me.

I was angry and let him see it. “You have to go up there. If you don’t, I’ll leave you here.”

His face went shocked and white. I could have smacked him and hurt him less, I reckon. “The duckling,” he whispered. “What about the duckling?”

“The bloody duckling didn’t listen, didn’t mind,” I said, starting up the cliff path and leaving Charlie there, staring after me.

Peter was right. I didn’t do them any good when I tried to take care of them. I wasn’t Charlie’s mama and it wasn’t down to me to be one. If that stupid little boy fell in the crocodile pond or got eaten by a bear or wandered into the fields of the Many-Eyed, it was no nevermind to me because he wasn’t my problem, not my responsibility.

Peter was the one who’d wanted the little brat. Let him look after Charlie, let him . . .

My steps slowed, then stopped. I was about halfway up the path, the raucous shouts of the boys in the cave practically inside my ear, they were so loud. I looked back.

Charlie stood at the base of the path, his face upturned in the moonlight, tears streaming from his eyes.

He appeared frozen, his muscles locked, unable to follow, unable to do anything but wait. Wait for me to return for him.

I sighed, and my anger went out with that sigh. Peter chose the boys, yes, he did. But he didn’t care for them. He didn’t look after them. He didn’t teach them how to find the best mushrooms or how to string a line to catch a fish. He took them to fight the pirates but didn’t teach them how to do it properly so they wouldn’t get killed. He didn’t show them how to skin a deer for clothes or comfort them when they cried in the night or bury them when they died. I did that.

Peter was good for showing you the quickest path to the mermaid lagoon and for picking teams in Battle and for sneaking through the pirate camp at night, stealing shiny things that he stored in a hollow in our tree like he was an overgrown magpie. Peter was for fun, for play, for adventures. Me, I kept his playmates alive—even when he didn’t want them anymore. Like Charlie.

I went back down the path, sure-footed despite the narrow track and the crumbling edge that promised a hard bruising fall, if not a broken bone.

I wasn’t sure Charlie would forgive me, but as I approached he broke into a run and leapt at me. I stumbled a little until I had his weight, saying, “Hey, now, you’ll make us both fall,” but not in a gruff way.

Charlie’s wet face pressed against my neck and he said over and over, “I’m sorry, Jamie, I’m sorry. I’ll listen. I’ll be good. I’m sorry, only don’t leave me.”

I patted his back and told him I wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t. I was better now. I would look after him.

I wished I could promise him he wouldn’t be hurt. But you can’t make promises like that—not on the island, not in the Other Place. Boys got hurt. They fell. They bloodied one another’s noses. They called one another cruel names. Sometimes they got eaten by crocodiles. Sometimes they got stabbed by pirates.

I wouldn’t lie to Charlie. But I could promise not to leave him.

chapter 4

Just before we crested the top of the cliff I set Charlie on his feet and wiped his face. My hands were dirty and left streaks on his cheeks.

“Can’t let the others see you like this,” I said.

“Boys aren’t supposed to cry,” Charlie said. “My brother Colin said so. He said only babies and girls cry and I’d better quit it. That’s why he sent me outside.”

“Outside?” I asked.

I was only half listening until then, my head cocked to one side to see whether I could hear Peter’s voice amid the chorus of noise coming from the cave. I wanted desperately to beat Nip and Peter, to prove somehow that Charlie was worth more than Peter thought he was, to show that Charlie wouldn’t drag him down. I didn’t hear our fearless leader, who usually liked to be the loudest.

Charlie spoke again. “Yes, he put me outside because he scared me and I was crying. Mama told him to watch me, only he didn’t. He hid in the cupboard and knocked on the inside of the door and pretended he was a ghost and then he jumped out and scared me. He scared me and I cried and he said, ‘Shut it, I don’t want to hear your noise; only babies cry like that,’ and when I didn’t stop he sent me outside and shut the door. I hit the door and I cried and told him to let me in but he only made a face at me from the window and went away. Then I stopped crying and he still wouldn’t let me in and I was thirsty. I was going to get a drink from the pump—it’s in the square—only I got lost and couldn’t find it and I was crying and so thirsty. Then I got tired and stopped crying but I couldn’t find home again. Then you and Peter found me and said we could have an adventure and I couldn’t find my way home so I came with you.”

I stared at him. This was the most words Charlie had ever said in one go, and they confirmed the great wrong I’d suspected. We hadn’t saved Charlie from an unhappy home or a life in an orphanage. We’d stolen him from a mama who’d probably cried every day he was gone, just like the mother duck in Peter’s story.

I don’t know what I would have said or done then, though my first inclination was to scoop him up and take him home straightaway, damn Peter and his pirate raid.

But just then a sound reached me, a chittering, clackety sound, a sound that should not be so close to the Bear Cave, should not be so close to this part of the island at all.

“What’s that?” Charlie asked.

“Sh,” I said. “Stay close and do as I say.”

He didn’t ask any more questions. Maybe it was my manner or maybe the memory of me leaving him at the bottom of the path, but he listened. Charlie huddled close to my legs as I strained, trying to figure where the noise was coming from.

It wasn’t from the forest or the path we’d just climbed; I was certain of that. It hadn’t somehow gotten around behind us.

Anyway, that didn’t make any sense. They wouldn’t come from that side, the forest side. They’d come from the other side of the cave. There was a downhill track there that went along through the foothills that bordered the plains. The Many-Eyed lived in the plains, and usually stayed in the plains.

Lately we’d been finding one or two on their own, probing into the forest like scouts. We would chase them off when we found them there, using our slings to throw rocks and scare them away. It was easy to scare them when we were in the forest, for we could climb trees and stay safely out of reach.

I’d proposed more than once that we should just kill them if they came in our territory, that it would send a message to them to stop sniffing about that part of the island. But Peter thought they would see a killing as an act of war, and that it would invite an angry invasion of Many-Eyed upon us. Peter knew the island best of us all, so we listened, and didn’t kill them.

But now one was nearby, far from its home in the plains. The Many-Eyed nested in the very center part of those plains, and that made it easy to avoid most of them. One had never come as far as Bear Cave, mostly because they didn’t seem to like climbing—or so we thought. The mountains were the one part of the island where there had never been any sign of them.

The clicking and chittering drew closer, and I was certain now that it was coming up the track—the track we would take the next morning to go down to the pirate camp. I hoped there was only one—maybe a young one that had gotten lost and just needed to be encouraged to go back to its proper home, far from us.

The boys in the cave shouted and screeched and seemed entirely unaware of what was happening. I tugged Charlie toward the cave. I had to get him inside and hidden, for he would be nothing but a little sweetmeat to a Many-Eyed.

We moved quickly and quietly across the flat rock outcropping that led to the cave. My heart pounded in my chest. I wasn’t scared for myself; I was scared for Charlie and the other boys. The new boys, especially. They’d never seen a Many-Eyed, and might panic, and that would make things harder when I wanted them to be safe.

If Peter were there, he might say they needed to learn on the run. I said that left a lot of dead boys and that was wasteful even if he didn’t care about any of them. But Peter wasn’t there. I was.

Charlie and I rounded the lip of the cave and at once I saw why they hadn’t noticed the noise or anything else.

Somebody had killed a deer—Nod, by the look of it, for he wore the deer’s head and part of its skin over his shoulders. They’d made quick work of the dressing and were roasting the deer’s haunches over the fire.

Somewhere along the way they’d all stripped down to their bare skin and painted themselves with blood. They were dancing and jumping and whooping around the fire.

I thought, Peter will be sorry to have missed this, for Peter loved it when the boys were wild things. It tied them to him better, made them forget the Other Place, made them belong to Peter and the island.

Then I thought, All the blood will bring the Many-Eyed right up to our door. It might have already.

I put my fingers between my teeth and whistled, a sound that echoed into the depths of the cave and made Charlie clap his hands over his ears.

All the boys stopped, staring at Charlie and me in the entry.

“There’s a Many-Eyed coming,” I said.

For a moment they paused, and I thought how vulnerable they looked, without their clothes and their weapons, and how the fresh blood looked like paint, like a dress-up game, not like they were the mighty warriors they thought they were.

Then Nod pushed off the deerskin and ran for his breeches and his sling and his knife, and Fog did too. The other boys who’d been on the island for a time followed, their eyes reflecting various degrees of fear, grim determination or panic. The new boys—Billy and Terry and Sam and Jack—milled together, mostly confused.

“What’s a Many-Eyed?” Terry asked.

“A monster,” I said, pulling Charlie into the cave.

I brought him over to Del, who could be trusted to be sensible. Besides, I wanted Del to avoid making himself any sicker. If he coughed out blood it would attract the Many-Eyed right to him.

“You stay here with the new boys,” I said to Del.

I put Charlie’s hand in Del’s free one, for he had just straightened up holding a small metal sword. He was proud as the devil of that sword, and well he should be, for he’d taken it out of a pirate’s scabbard while the fool slept on the watch.

Del’s brow wrinkled, and I could see in his face the question he wanted to ask—Why do I have to stay here and nanny?

“I need you to look after them,” I said. “In case the Many-Eyed gets past me.”

Del gave me a look that said he thought that was unlikely and he knew what I was about, but he rounded up the new boys anyway and pushed them to the back of the cave. Charlie looked slightly panicked at being separated from me but he went without protest.

“You too,” I said, pointing to Kit, Jonathan and Ed. “Help Del look after the others.”

The other three looked relieved. That left Nod, Fog, Harry and me.

I wished Peter were there. Me and Peter, we could take one Many-Eyed by ourselves, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about the others.

Harry wasn’t any too bright but he was strong and followed directions without question, which was why I’d kept him with me. Nod and Fog were terrified of the Many-Eyed but they were also brave as anything. They wouldn’t run from the fight.

I indicated they should follow me out of the cave. We crept to the mouth, listening, me in front, then Harry, Nod and Fog. I had my dagger in my left hand, though I didn’t remember taking it off my belt.

Now that the boys were quiet the clicking of the Many-Eyed’s fangs seemed incredibly loud, filling up all the empty space, crawling inside our ears and down our throats and into our hearts. It was the sound of something hunting, something hungry.

The echoing quality of the sound made it impossible to tell whether the creature was still on the foothill track or just on the other side of the cave wall, ready to turn in on us at any moment. I stepped forward and my foot slid in something slick.

Unlike Peter, who preferred to go barefoot, I wore ankle-high moccasins made from elk hide. The bottom of the right one was now coated in deer offal I’d trod in without noticing. That gave me an idea.

“Fog,” I whispered, as he was now standing in it himself. “Pass me some of that.”

Fog obligingly scooped up two handfuls of guts and carried them to me. I took the unidentifiable mess from him and peered around the cave wall.

The Many-Eyed was just clambering on the rock shelf. Its full body hadn’t cleared the edge yet. One of its hairy legs was testing the space, ensuring there was room for the rest of it.

For a brief moment I contemplated rushing the beast with the other boys, grabbing hold of that leg and pushing it from the side of the cliff. Its bloated body would burst on a protruding rock, and the Many-Eyed wouldn’t be any the wiser about why one of its own had died.

But Peter would know. Just because he wasn’t there wouldn’t mean not finding out, and he didn’t want to be at war with the Many-Eyed. He’d made that very clear. He would happily be at war with the pirates, and he didn’t mind—no, he even encouraged in the form of Battle—fighting among ourselves.

But we were not to start trouble with the Many-Eyed, no matter that they were a monstrous and unnatural scourge that was clearly (to my mind) creeping farther into the forest every day. Soon enough, I thought, we’d have a war with them whether we wanted it or not.

There was something about the Many-Eyed that stirred a primal sense of wrongness in me, though they were nothing more than part of the island to Peter. Their fat round bodies, covered in shaggy hair and swollen with the blood of their meals; their legs—eight of them, far too many, and the strange bent way they moved, gliding and awkward at the same time. They were alien, everything a boy was not.

“Harry, get a torch from the fire,” I said.

I squeezed the deer organs in my hand. The wet flesh slid between my fingers.

Harry darted back in place behind me, holding a long, thick piece of wood blazing at one end.

“Right,” I said. “I’m going to toss this mess to it and see if it will take it. Harry, you use the fire if it seems like it’s getting too close. Nod, Fog, you spread out behind me with your slings. If it gets going past me or Harry, then you take out its eyes with rocks.”

Even Peter couldn’t object, I reasoned, if a Many-Eyed fell over a cliff and died because it was blind. At least, he could object (and usually did, loudly, when not getting his way), but we wouldn’t have actively killed the thing and therefore would have followed the strict letter of Peter’s law.

My own inclination to wipe the Many-Eyed off the island would, too, be at least partially satisfied.

With my knife in my left hand and the deer guts dripping through my right, I jerked my chin toward the opening of the cave. The others followed me. I heard Harry’s breath coming in short, sharp pants. The torch he held dripped sparks on my neck, but I couldn’t cry out.

The Many-Eyed had cleared the cliff face and was fully on the rock shelf. There wasn’t very much space between it and us, and it seemed bigger to me than any Many-Eyed out in the plains with the wide blue sky above.

Here the darkness pressed down, and the rocks and cave made it feel like we were trapped in a closed room with the thing. The deer guts in my hand reeked, making my eyes water.

The Many-Eyed gave a long hiss when it saw us and pounded each one of its eight legs on the ground in a kind of ripple, starting with the back leg on each side and circling up to the front leg. I’d seen Many-Eyed do this before, when they were scared or uncertain.

I didn’t flatter myself that it saw four boys as a threat, but all Many-Eyed fear fire, and Harry’s torch was a good size for threatening. Harry moved to my right side while Nod and Fog stayed behind.

If it seemed like the creature would get around Harry and me, I wasn’t going to wait until Nod and Fog took out its eyes with slingshots. I was going to grab that torch and chase it off the cliff, Peter’s rules be damned. A giant monster wasn’t going to eat all the boys even if Peter did think one was as good as another.

The Many-Eyed took some tentative steps toward us, hissing through its long fangs all the while. I judged that it was a juvenile, not fully grown for all that it seemed so big on the rock shelf. The moonlight showed clearly that it didn’t have the silvery-grey fur that developed in adulthood; nor did it have the extensive scarring that resulted from the merciless fighting for food. There were always more Many-Eyed than could possibly be fed, given the astounding number of babies that spilled out of their egg sacs.

Only a young one, I reasoned, would have strayed so far from the rest of the pack, or been so foolish as to climb a cliff. Really, it could have fallen off a precipice and died before it ever reached us. I wondered what had pushed it on to even try.

And a juvenile would be distracted by the deer meat, and frightened by the fire. Or so I told myself.

I tossed the offal at the Many-Eyed, as far as I could throw, and as I’d hoped the deer guts skidded past its legs, close to the edge of the cliff.

It clicked its fangs together, and a little venom dripped off the edge of one, sizzling on the ground. You didn’t want to get that poison on you. It burned right through to your bone. I knew—I had several small round scars on my left arm where a Many-Eyed had splattered me years before.

The Many-Eyed looked toward the pile of blood and guts. I waited, hoping it would accept the offal as an offering and leave. That’s what an adult would do.

Its dozens of pupilless eyes rolled back and forth above its fangs, almost like it was considering. Harry raised the torch threateningly and the beast took two or three steps backward, resuming its hissing.

The creatures didn’t have any kind of noses that we could see, but they seemed to smell things all the same. It turned its bloated body toward the offal. I blew out my breath, only half aware that I’d been holding it.

When I was on my own there was no fear, only the sure sense of what needed to be done. But when the other boys were around—especially new ones

(especially Charlie)

I found myself worried on their behalf, and part of my brain always taken up in their safety. Which, I suppose, was one of the reasons why Peter told me to stop babying them. He never worried about them, not for a minute. Nor about me, come to think of it.

Suddenly the Many-Eyed turned back toward us, having ignored our offering, and made a high-pitched sound like a scream.

Fog gasped behind me and swallowed it just as fast, and I knew he wanted to scream too.

I stepped forward with my left foot and jabbed the knife in my left hand toward the Many-Eyed. I wasn’t trying to hurt it yet, only to make my intentions clear. It reared back, front legs in the air, and screamed again.

Far away, far, far across the plains, came an answering cry, so faint I almost thought I imagined it.

It’s calling for help, I thought.

And then I imagined dozens of Many-Eyed crossing the plains, climbing the cliff, surrounding the boys and wrapping them in silk and dragging them back to their colony to feed their babies.

“No,” I said, and charged it.

I hadn’t given any indication to the others what I would do, and Nod or Fog (sometimes it’s hard to tell who is who) shouted after me to stop.

His voice barely penetrated the tidal roar of blood in my ears. I knew the belly was the most vulnerable part, and I didn’t want to be within biting distance of those fangs.

The Many-Eyed’s shape made them seem awkward—that fat body balanced on all those legs—but they were quick as hell and could turn faster than you could blink. They couldn’t twist, though, so if I got behind it I might be able to slide under it before it realized what was happening. At least, that was what I intended.

“Harry, get that fire as close to it as you can!” I shouted.

And as I said that the Many-Eyed charged at Harry, right at the fire, screeching all the way.

For a moment we all froze, for none of us had ever seen a Many-Eyed run toward fire before.

I thought, This one is broken. It goes to fire instead of away from it. It climbs mountains.

I needed it to be broken, to be different from all the others, because if it wasn’t, then the Many-Eyed were developing new and frightening behaviors—and those behaviors didn’t bode well for us boys.

Then it knocked the torch aside with its leg and bit down on Harry’s shoulder, sinking its fangs into his chest. Harry screamed, screamed and screamed, and his scream unfroze my brain.

Blood spurted and venom poured, burning his skin wherever it splashed and spilling into his muscles and bones.

The belly, the belly, I thought, and knew I wouldn’t have another chance. It was distracted by Harry but it wouldn’t be for long. Maybe, maybe, I could still save him despite all the blood and the poison and the way his scream was fading away like he was waving good-bye.

I ran behind it, skidded to a stop near its stinger and leapt forward with my arms in front of me, belly down, sliding underneath its body.

It smelled of foul death there, so rank I nearly choked on it. I flipped to my back so I could see the bloated mass shaking above me as it killed Harry.

I slid the blade into the Many-Eyed’s belly, jerking the blade parallel to its legs to make a long slice in the thick hairy skin just like I did when I slid down a pirate ship’s sail holding on to the handle of my knife.

The Many-Eyed reared back on its legs and there was a terrible rending noise as its fangs tore free from Harry’s body. I rolled free just as hot liquid poured out of the slash I’d made. It stung where it touched my hand and arm and shoulder—I wasn’t quite quick enough to escape without getting burned.

The thing screamed again, that terrible high-pitched, inhuman sound. I thought I’d finished it, but it wasn’t quite done yet.

I rolled up to my feet, my knife in front of me, dimly aware that one of the twins had run to Harry and was dragging him toward the cave.

The Many-Eyed turned to me now—all of those red eyes mad and rolling, Harry’s blood coating its venom-spitting fangs, and its own blood running in angry rivers all over the rock shelf.

If I lunged for it, my moccasins would slide in the mess. They might even slide me straight under those sharp, sharp teeth.

The creature pounded all its legs on the ground again and I knew it was going to charge me. I’d gotten turned about while underneath it and now I was essentially in a corner with the cave wall on one side and the cliff face on the other.

There was a little jutting bit of rock shelf about waist high in front of me that made a kind of momentary shield, but it wasn’t enough to stop the Many-Eyed; nor was there enough of it for me to crawl into and hide.

Besides, I’d never hide while it went for the rest of the boys.

The Many-Eyed ran at me, though I don’t know how with its guts spilling everywhere like that. I didn’t have much space, but I got a running start and leapt onto the rock shelf. I lost the temporary protection of the shelf and was completely exposed atop it, but I was only there for a moment before leaping again.

It was going too fast to stop, and I don’t think it quite realized what had happened in any case. I jumped on its back before it realized I was above it and not in front.

I mirrored the slashing action I’d used on its belly, this time stabbing hard in the center of its body and sliding over it and down, just like I really was on a pirate’s sail this time.

More of the creature’s blood and venom spurted out, shooting upward in fountains. I crashed to the ground behind it, narrowly avoiding the stinger, and scrambled out of the way before it decided to sit on me.

The Many-Eyed thrashed its legs in all directions as it screeched, all of its insides erupting out. I flattened against the cave wall, covering my ears as it shrieked out its final death throes.

That noise will bring every Many-Eyed on the island, I thought in despair.

I had to get the boys away from there, back to the tree. And maybe I could lay a false trail with the dead Many-Eyed’s blood back to the pirate camp, so if any of its fellows came looking for it they would go after the pirates, not us.

I felt a little sick at the thought of the pirates paying for my deed, turning into meat for the Many-Eyed’s children. But truly—it would be better that it was the pirates, who just stayed on the island to torment us or to try to nab one of us to discover the secret of our youth. Better the pirates than one of my boys.

I thought all this as the Many-Eyed shook out its last drops of blood and then stilled. I could send Nod and Fog back to the tree with the others while I laid the trail to the pirate camp. I could burn the body first, too, and stink up the area, make the Many-Eyed confused about just who and how many had been here.

And then a voice rang across the rock shelf, sharp and clear and angry.

“What have you done?”

chapter 5

It was Peter, his words like frost on the air. I’d half forgotten he was on his way, likely delayed on the path by Nip and his injuries. Peter’s green, green eyes burned in the moonlight.

Most of the other boys stood silently behind him, their faces unsure. Everyone’s expressions said they were glad the Many-Eyed was dead, but Peter quite obviously was not glad and so they didn’t know how to feel about this.

“It attacked Harry,” I said, feeling angry and slightly ashamed, and then angrier because I thought I shouldn’t have to feel sorry about the Many-Eyed. “I thought it was going to kill him.”

“It did kill him,” Peter said.

His tone said this was of no consequence to him whatsoever. I closed my eyes for a moment so I wouldn’t scream at him in front of all the other boys.

“You should have left and taken the rest of the boys with you while it ate him,” Peter continued.

“Why? So it could follow us and eat the rest when it realized just how delicious we are? Peter, it was calling the rest of them. They would have swarmed all over this place.”

“Now they are going to swarm all over,” Peter said. “Because of what you did they will follow us into the forest and hunt us until we are all dead, and that will be the end of Peter and his boys.”

He was making me feel more foolish and embarrassed with every word. This was the first time any of us had killed a Many-Eyed, though we had fought them before and the monsters had eaten their fair share of boys over the years. I’d never understood why Peter only let us wound them, or why he would never explain.

“Why?” I shouted, unable to restrain my temper before the boys. I kept hearing Harry’s scream fading away, the last breath leaving his body. “Why are they allowed to take as many of us as they like but we’re not permitted to do the same for them? They should have been burned out years ago. We should have scorched the plains and chased the rest of them to the sea. We should never have let monsters stay on this island.”

“They’ve been here as long as I have,” Peter hissed. “We had a treaty! And you, you fool, you broke it and now they’ll come for all of us.”

I went very still. “What treaty, Peter?”

Peter’s eyes shifted away.

“How can we have a treaty with monsters, Peter? How can you have a bloody damned treaty that none of us have heard about before when we don’t even know how to talk to them?”

I saw it in his face—he’d said something he hadn’t meant to, and it was bad enough that I knew but worse that it was revealed in front of the others.

How had I not known this? How could I have lived on this island for scores of years and not known that Peter could actually speak to the Many-Eyed?

Worse, how could he treat with them like they were our equals? They ate us. They didn’t fight us fair and face-to-face like the pirates. They treated us like dumb animals, nothing but blood bags for their survival. They’d eaten more of the boys than I could remember all down the years.

And yet, and yet . . . Peter never let me kill one of them. Not one, no matter how many of my boys they took screaming to the plains.

The others were murmuring now, as some of the brighter ones fitted the jigsaw together.

“I never said I could talk to them,” Peter said in that careless way of his. Sometimes I could ignore it, but just then it made me see red.

I stalked toward him, splattered in the Many-Eyed’s burning blood, still gripping the knife that had saved the others and me from being eaten alive. I wondered, for the first time, why I’d ever followed him through the door in the Other Place, all those years ago.

When he’d smiled at me and told me we would have adventures, I thought we would be friends always, that it would just be Peter and me, like brothers. But now I saw—and it was so strange that after all this time I finally did see—that I wasn’t enough for him, had never been enough.

I didn’t mean anything to him, and not even I was special if he could keep a secret like this. And it made me love him a little less, and the memory of that smile hurt deep down in the place where I kept all my secrets and my sorrows.

Peter must have seen some of this on my face, or guessed it by my silence. I saw a little flare of panic in his cool eyes, where he thought no one could see. If he wasn’t careful, he would lose the boys. The others would follow me and he knew it, for I was the one who looked after them, looked out for them—not Peter.

His adventures wouldn’t matter when it came down to it. The boys wouldn’t enjoy starving to death just because Peter didn’t want to be troubled about gathering food.

“Well,” he said, as if I were not standing less than an eyelash’s length from him, covered in blood and fury. “It’s all done now and I suppose I will have to forgive you. After all, you didn’t know about the treaty and I really think I could make an argument to their chief that you were provoked. I must speak with him about his soldiers coming into the forest anyway.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t talk to them,” I said through gritted teeth, and I was certain I’d never sounded quite like that before.

The boys knew it too, for they went completely still and silent, as if abruptly aware of the presence of a bear, or something else large and sharp-toothed and hungry.

I felt something coming off Peter—not anger, exactly, but something strong and powerful, something I’d never felt him direct at me before. That power rolled off him, pushed against the haze of red all around me, sparked against it.

A few of the boys gasped and backed away. There was a rising scent in the air, that almost-burning smell that came before a lightning storm.

A little drop of blood rolled from the corner of Peter’s mouth, but whether it was wrought by my will or his effort against me, I never knew. All I knew was that something deep and savage inside me howled, howled for more blood, said there could never be enough.

“You’re allowed this one time,” Peter said, and I had a sense that only I could hear him now. “Just this once, because you’re Jamie and I can see you’re upset. But never again. If you try to take them from me, I’ll cut off your hand.”

“Don’t ever lie to me,” I said. “Don’t.”

I didn’t threaten him, for even as that submerged piece of me raged for more of his blood, there was still a part of me that hurt when I remembered just the two of us, and how we were happy.

Peter sensed the shift, the throttling of my anger, and gave me a crooked smile as he turned away, not worried in the least that I might plunge my knife into his neck.

“I’m going to burn the Many-Eyed,” I told his back. “And leave a blood trail to the pirate’s camp, away from the forest. At least it might confuse the Many-Eyed for a time, especially since they think we have a treaty.”

Peter turned back to me, ignoring my dig, his face transformed. The light of adventure glinted in his eyes. “That sounds marvelous fun! So much better than a silly old raid. I’ll laugh myself to death if a big old Many-Eyed lumbers into the pirate camp and eats that fat pirate Captain. He’s gotten so fat he’s hardly sport at all. What do you think, boys? Shall we lay a trail for the Many-Eyed to follow?”

There followed a series of reluctant murmurs instead of the cheers of delight Peter clearly expected. Most of the new boys (and a fair number of the old) darted their eyes between the corpse of the Many-Eyed and me. It was obvious they didn’t wish a repeat of this encounter, particularly if it meant they would end up like Harry—burning from the inside with venom and bleeding out white.

“It won’t work if we all troop through the plains and the beach leaving a trail behind us,” I said. “It’s really a job for one or two.”

“Then we can be the two,” Peter said, slinging his arm over my shoulder like nothing had happened between us.

I shrugged out of his embrace, nodding my assent because I still didn’t trust my voice, not entirely. He wasn’t acting any way that he didn’t normally act, but it bothered me more than usual.

Peter pretended he didn’t notice my cut, but I knew he did. “Nod, Fog, you take the others back to the tree.”

He waved his hand, dismissing them. They all looked relieved to be going home instead of with us. The fun had gone out of the adventure for most of them when the Many-Eyed appeared.

It made me worry, again, about taking the new ones to the pirate camp. Just because we didn’t go today didn’t mean we wouldn’t go another day, when Peter got it into his head again that it would be fun to have a fight. The pirates, like the Many-Eyed, weren’t interested in mercy for small boys.

The only one who looked disappointed was Nip, whose bruises appeared worse than they had the afternoon before. The broken cheekbone had swelled and was pushing up to his eye, making it look even smaller and meaner. Someone ought to fix that, I thought, push the bones back together so they’ll heal properly. But the only person who knew how was me, and I didn’t much care to.

Nip’s good eye watched me, and I saw the waiting in it. He would wait for his chance to hurt me and then take it.

I didn’t care about that as long as he stayed away from Charlie and the others. What Nip might do to me—or, rather, try to do—was no worry to me.

I went into the cave to see if I could salvage some of the burning wood from the bonfire. The boys followed me to collect the sacks of supplies and the weapons they’d left there.

Nod jerked his head at the deer carcass they’d spitted. It was scorched on one side and dried out on the other, entirely uneatable.

“Waste of good meat,” he said sadly. “And I took it down with one shot, too.”

“Aye,” I agreed, though I wasn’t really listening.

Harry’s body had been dragged off against the wall of the cave. He looked like some rubbish that had been shifted aside so people wouldn’t have to look at it.

And that was how Peter thought of him, really, now that Harry was gone, and his big stupid face was stupid and empty now, and I wanted to weep but knew I couldn’t as long as the other boys were there. So I put that weeping feeling inside, next to the place where Peter’s lie about the Many-Eyed had burrowed into my heart and curled up there, waiting.

I carried an armful of dry wood out to where the Many-Eyed’s corpse lay, seeping fluids that steamed in the night air. It was almost impossible that it was still night, that the sun had not yet risen to end that seemingly endless darkness. It was a very long time ago that I’d woken in the night to the sound of Charlie’s cry, though a full day had not passed.

I returned back to collect some of the burning wood to use as torches. Charlie stood in the mouth of the cave, his gaze half on me and half on the other boys, shuffling his feet.

Before I could ask what was wrong, he burst out, “Can’t I go with you?”

I could just imagine what Peter might do to Charlie if we brought him along—tie him up and leave him in front of the pirate Captain’s tent when I wasn’t looking, or “accidentally” push him over a cliff, or some other horror I couldn’t imagine. No, it didn’t bear thinking about.

Besides, it would do Charlie some good to be away from me, with the other boys. It would help him find his place, and he needed to find it if he were to stay on the island.

“I won’t be gone long,” I said. “You just stay close to Del. You like Del, don’t you?”

“Not as much as I like you,” Charlie said, and then he beckoned me closer.

I put one knee down so our eyes were level, and he covered the side of his mouth with his hand as he whispered, “And I’m afraid of him.”

He cut his eyes toward Nip, who leaned against the cave wall with his arms crossed, watching us. There were burn marks around his eyes and that swelled cheek and I didn’t like the way he looked at Charlie, not at all. We’d crossed him, to his way of thinking, and he wanted his own back. He would take it out on Charlie when I wasn’t there.

Del had crossed him too, I realized, and rethought the idea of having only Del watch out for Charlie while I was gone. I couldn’t trust Charlie entirely to the twins, though, for the twins liked to run and fight and play too much—they didn’t have it in them to look after a little one.

“I can’t take you with me, Charlie,” I said. “We’ll have to move very fast, and there might be more Many-Eyed.”

“I . . . I can fight and run fast,” he said.

He could do neither, which we both knew very well, but he was trying so hard to be brave I didn’t have the heart to crush him. “There’s no shame in going back with the others,” I said. “They can run and fight too, but this is a job for just two.”

One, really, for there was no reason for Peter to come along except to pretend he knew what to do when he didn’t.

“I have to get back to it,” I said, so that he would know there would be no more discussion.

Nagging in the back of my mind was the worry that the Many-Eyed would track the smell of the dead one before I had a chance to lay the false trail. I hoped, too, that burning the corpse would keep the rest away entirely.

They all feared fire, and the scent of smoke should drive them away instead of arousing their curiosity. Though that juvenile had run right at the fire . . . but that one was stupid or sick. It had to be.

“Okay, Jamie,” Charlie said, his voice very small. “I’ll mind you. I’ll be good.”

I smiled at him, and rumpled his duckling-fuzz hair, and he smiled at me in return.

“Stay with Del,” I said. “Don’t wander off on your own.”

“I won’t,” he said, and there was the shadow of a sneaking, peeking crocodile on his face.

I went to have a word with Del. “Keep Charlie close to you.”

He was the only one of the boys who were left that I could trust completely to follow his task and not get distracted like a magpie.

Del coughed, a cough that started off low and ended with him spitting out a great gob of blood on the cave floor. His cheekbones were sharp enough to slice you open but his eyes were steady as he said, “I will.”

“Nip’s got it in for Charlie and for you,” I said. “I’ll be back as quick as I can, but watch yourself until I am.”

“I’m not afraid of Nip,” Del said, his fingers wrapped tight around the pirate’s sword. “But come back soon, anyway, Jamie.”

Del went to Charlie, who stood exactly where I’d left him, watching me. Del took Charlie’s hand and then called to the other boys to follow as he led them back down the path.

Nod and Fog, who were supposed to be leading the group at Peter’s decree, were squabbling over something in the back of the cave.

Charlie glanced back at me as Del led him away, and I felt a stab of fear. He was so little, so vulnerable, and so much could happen while I was gone. I was the only one who could really look after him properly.

And we never should have taken him in the first place. That was what ate at me, really. Charlie wasn’t one of our boys. He wasn’t lost, not in the way that Peter preferred. He had a family.

That, I couldn’t solve. Once you came to the island you could not leave—that was one of Peter’s most fixed rules. If you weren’t happy, then you could go to the pirates or feed yourself to the Many-Eyed or toss yourself into the mermaid lagoon and drown, but you could never go back to the Other Place.

So I went to Nod and Fog, because I would need them to keep Del and Charlie and the others safe from that look in Nip’s eye, the one that said he was only waiting for his chance.

The twins hadn’t noticed the others departing. They were arguing (I really did not care to know about what), and while they hadn’t gotten to the point of rolling on the ground punching each other, experience told me this was in the offing.

Before they could get started I smacked them both in the back of the head. They looked up at me with innocent eyes.

“We weren’t doing anything,” Nod said.

“Yes, we were. He took . . .” Fog started, but I cut him off.

“Listen to me,” I said, and lowered my voice though no one was about. Peter could be outside, lurking, listening. “What do you think of that new boy, Nip?”

“Don’t like him,” Fog said immediately.

“He’s a bully,” Nod agreed. “And he wants a fight with you, Jamie. We all can tell. Do you want me to put biting bugs in his clothes? I can do that. He’ll go mad from the itching.”

“Never mind that,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. It’s Del and Charlie I’m worried about.”

“Charlie’s never done nothing to him,” Nod said. “But Del got that Nip good.”

“He was roaring around just like a big old bear when Del threw the fire in his eyes,” Fog said.

He jumped to his feet and started on a credible imitation of Nip staggering around with coals in his eyes.

This was precisely why I couldn’t leave Charlie alone with these two. They went off on their own adventures and forgot everything around them.

“Stop,” I said.

Fog quit his antics and Nod stopped laughing and sat up straight.

“I want you to keep an eye on Nip,” I said.

This was better than asking them to watch Charlie, which they were unlikely to do well. They’d forget about him in an instant. But if they thought there was a chance they might get to tease Nip or harry him or fight him, they wouldn’t forget.

“If he tries for Del or Charlie, you stop him.”

“How do you want us to stop him, Jamie?” Nod asked.

I knew what he was asking. Did I want them to hurt Nip or kill him? If they killed Nip outside of Battle, then Peter would come down on them—might even try to exile them, despite all the time they’d been on the island. I’d never let it come to that, of course. I’d never let them take a punishment meant for me.

Besides, if someone was going to kill Nip, then I wanted to do the deed myself. Nip, I felt, had brought something rotten to the island. He was a worm inside the sweet fruit, and when you found a worm you tossed it to the ground and stomped on it.

“Don’t make it forever,” I said. “But I don’t mind if you bloody him while you’re at it.”

They grinned at each other, already planning their sport.

“Now get on,” I said. “The rest of the boys are already gone.”

“We’ll catch up to them faster than a mermaid can flip her tail,” Fog said.

“Don’t let Nip do anything to Charlie,” I warned. “Or there’s always Battle.”

The twins never fought me at Battle. Never. It had likely contributed to their long life on the island.

The same fear blazed up in two identical sets of eyes. I knew they would mind me, and keep a sharp watch on Nip. They collected their things and chased out after the others.

The bonfire had burned down to nothing but glowing coals, but a few pieces along the edge of the pit were unburned at one end and burning on the other. They’d serve my purpose.

The first seeking fingers of dawn were stretching over the plains when I rounded the cave wall. Peter was perched on the little rock shelf, whittling at a piece of wood.

The shape of his creation was just forming—a round ball at the top that spread down into a kind of bell shape. It looked like a child’s toy—a doll, perhaps.

We didn’t have any toys on the island, for all that we were a band of boys. Despite his fear of growing up, Peter likewise disdained child’s toys, which were from the country of babies. Our toys were knife and sword and stick and rock, the kind of playthings that bit.

I stopped and narrowed my eyes in suspicion. Was he planning some trick on Charlie?

“What’s that?” I asked.

Peter tucked it away and resheathed the knife before I could get a good look at it.

“Nothing really,” he said easily, and his too-unconcerned manner set the hair on the back of my neck rising. Before I could say anything he spoke again. “Didn’t you want to burn that mess and lay a false trail? Are you going to wait until the whole tribe of Many-Eyed are climbing the cliff in search of it?”

Of course he was right, and I did want to return to the others. But he was hiding something. He had that look.

The sun was halfway to its zenith before I got the Many-Eyed burning well. It’s not as easy as you’d think, burning a dead creature. Flesh and skin want to cook and crisp and char rather than ignite. If you want to get a body burning, you’ve got to build up the fire around it good and hot and then keep watching it to make sure it stays aflame. Once that fire is hot enough, though, the body will burn right down to the bones.

Peter, naturally, watched me running to and fro while he continued to whittle at his piece of wood. Each time I passed him I tried to get a good look at it, but he would cover it with his hand or tuck it away so I couldn’t.

As soon as I realized this game was amusing him, I stopped trying to sneak a peek. Thereafter both he and I would feign indifference when I passed, though Peter looked sulky when I stopped playing.

An enormous column of black smoke rose in the sky. I wondered if the pirates would see it and come investigate.

They never strayed too far from the camp, at least as much as we could tell—and certainly never as far as the mountains. But perhaps the smoke would draw them. If it did, all the better. They would lie in their own scent trail and do half my work for me.

“Peter,” I said, wiping my forehead with my arm. I’d taken off my red coat and laid it to one side, for the work was hot and we were exposed on the rock shelf.

He didn’t respond, seemingly absorbed in the whittling, but I knew Peter. His hands might be busy but he watched me intently from under his eyelashes.

“Peter,” I said again, sharply so he would know I was on to him.

“Mmm?” His knife flashed in the sunlight, winking silver.

“What if you went ahead of me to the pirate camp, and drew some of them out along the trail?”

Peter looked up then and frowned. “They never leave their camp, because that Captain is a cowardly codfish. Anyway, even if I could get them out, I wouldn’t want them so close to the forest. They might get ideas about where our tree is.”

“Not likely,” I said. “You’ve said yourself that this is the dumbest lot that’s been at the camp in many a year. Besides, we don’t want them to come all the way to the cave. I just want them to follow you partway, to make a scent trail for the Many-Eyed.”

Peter’s eyes gleamed as he understood. “And then their scent trail will meet your blood trail, and when they go back to camp they’ll take some of the blood with them.”

I nodded.

“What fun!” he said, tucking his knife and his whittling project in the pouch he wore at his belt. Then he scowled at me. “But you might have thought of this before, so I wouldn’t be so bored watching you burn this thing.”

Sometimes I thought I would bite my tongue bloody not saying the things that Peter needed to hear. Needed to hear, but wouldn’t hear, so I saved my breath and didn’t point out that he might have helped.

“I’ll bring them out to the marking rock,” Peter said. He was already off the rock shelf and bounding toward the path that led down the other side of the cliffs, the side the Many-Eyed had climbed up in the first place.

The marking rock was a boulder that was taller than me and Peter stacked on top of each other. It was on the path that ran alongside the plains of the Many-Eyed, and it was close enough to the pirate camp that Peter might be able to lure them there.

“How will you get them out of the camp?” I shouted after him.

His voice floated up from the path, echoing off the rock, full of mischief. “Oh, I’ll find a way!”

And then I was alone, and glad that he was gone. I’d never been glad at Peter’s absence before, and something inside me seemed to shift. My legs hurt like fire for a minute, and then it was over, and I distinctly felt that I was taller than I’d been a moment before.

chapter 6

I wondered whether Peter would notice. I wondered whether I should worry about growing up. I hadn’t grown for such a long time, and never in such a dramatic way. It was more a creeping sort of growing, usually, the kind you didn’t realize had happened until one day you noticed Peter’s eyes were below yours and they didn’t use to be.

Then I realized I hadn’t time to worry about getting taller, for Peter could run fast and light when he was on his own and if I didn’t hurry, the trail wouldn’t be laid in when he got to the marking rock.

I didn’t want to leave Harry in the cave, nor the remains of the deer, both of which would attract bears or big cats. Though I was loath to put Harry in the fire with the thing that had killed him, I knew I must. There wasn’t time for burying, and burning was better than being picked over by whatever creature sniffed out the rotting meat that used to be a boy.

I dragged Harry over to the bonfire of the Many-Eyed and heaved him atop the monster’s corpse, getting a mouthful of smoke for my trouble. Coughing and pounding my chest, I backed away from the fire and went back for the charred remains of the deer.

Harry and the deer and the Many-Eyed burned. I collected blood in a coconut half shell that I carried in my coat pocket for cupping water from streams, so I wouldn’t have to touch the blood and possibly be burned. There were pools of it that had splashed around the Many-Eyed in its death throes. Then I left Bear Cave and the rock shelf behind, following the path Peter had taken.

The mark of his foot was barely visible in the dirt track and sometimes not present at all for several steps, as if he’d taken a huge leap and landed soft as down floating on the wind. I ran quickly, and though I was not as light as Peter, I could travel nearly as fast.

With a troop of boys crossing to the pirate camp, this path would take hours to traverse, but the sun was just past overhead by the time I reached the path that bordered the foothills on one side and the plains of the Many-Eyed on the other. Several times I marveled that the juvenile Many-Eyed had made it to Bear Cave in the first place. The trail was narrow in several spots, occasionally bordered on both sides by sheer faces of rock. How the creature had managed to make it through and sniff us out at the cave was a wonder.

I balanced the coconut shell in my hand and dropped no blood until I reached the plains. It was important that the other Many-Eyed not consider the hill path at all, but think that the pirates had killed their young here on the border and dragged it back to the camp.

This part of the trail was the most dangerous, for while almost all Many-Eyed stayed in the central plains, there was always a chance of coming upon a soldier walking near the edge of their territory. They might even be looking for the one that was now dead and burning in the distance.

The smoke was barely visible above the foothills from here, but it would be clearer from other parts of the island. It might make the pirates curious, and help Peter in his task.

I listened, hearing nothing but the sounds of the wind, the cries of the birds, and the buzzing of the Many-Eyed ever present but distant, as it should be. When they gathered together in any group larger than two, they would naturally make this noise—a steady kind of buzz that seemed incongruous with their fangs. Still, it was useful as it kept us from being overwhelmed by their numbers. The buzzing that preceded them made it easy to avoid a large pack.

The distance of the noise forced me to wonder if I’d been overcautious about the juvenile in the first place. Perhaps with so many babies (and they did have so many—I’d snuck close to their camp once to get an idea of their numbers and later wished I hadn’t) one missing young was no nevermind to them.

Still, it didn’t pay to take risks with the boys’ lives, especially if this business of a treaty was true. I would follow through with the original plan.

I splashed some blood along the trail, then deliberately ran to and fro, dragging my heels in the dirt and making a lot of footmarks. I pulled out handfuls of tall yellow plains grass so it would appear to the pirates or the Many-Eyed that there was some kind of struggle. It wasn’t certain how much the Many-Eyed would understand of my charade, but they were smarter than they appeared; that, I knew. They weren’t just dumb animals.

Proceeding with caution, I followed the path and kept my ears open for sounds of the Many-Eyed or the pirates that Peter was to entice out of camp. I splashed more blood here and there and scratched up the ground in different places.

The blood was not as skin-burningly potent as it had been coursing fresh from the Many-Eyed, but it hissed a little when it touched a rock or leaves or dirt, and sometimes a small curl of steam emitted from a tiny droplet.

Even though I was listening close, I didn’t hear Peter’s approach. I crouched just inside the long grass across from the marking rock, waiting for him. The last of the Many-Eyed’s blood was splashed at the foot of it.

One moment I was alone and the next Peter appeared, seemingly out of nothing. He saw the blood around the rock and turned on the spot, looking for me.

“Here, Peter,” I whispered, parting the grass so he could see my eyes.

He dashed in beside me, his face wilder and fiercer and happier than I’d seen it in a long while.

“Are they coming?” I asked.

“Yes,” Peter said, and it seemed he was resisting the urge to clap and scream with joy.

“What did you do?”

“Set the camp on fire!” And then he did chortle, delighted with himself and unable to hide it.

“Set the . . .” I started; then my voice trailed away.

I hadn’t noticed the smell of smoke on him at first for my nose was full of the reek of burning bodies, but I caught it now.

“You burned their camp down.”

Peter caught the disapproving tone. “What’s the matter? You don’t think it was a wonderful notion? It got that fat old Captain good and riled, all right. He’s waddling after me now, waving his sword and cursing about what he’s going to do when he catches me. Which he never will, of course. He looks just like a plump never-bird egg, rolling along.”

He laughed again, and my frown deepened, which made Peter’s laugh fade away.

“Come, now, Jamie, how is burning their camp any worse than stealing from them or killing them?”

“Well . . . it’s not fair play, is it?” I said slowly.

I wasn’t sure if I could explain my feelings, even to myself. Yes, we and the pirates fought and killed each other. But that was man-to-man, as it were. We faced one another and we all had a fair shot.

Burning the camp—it was sneaky, somehow sneakier than a little theft. And it was cruel. Peter hadn’t just taken their jewels or their swords—he’d taken their home.

The pirates would have a much greater motivation to leave the seaside and hunt us across the island if their camp was gone.

Peter’s actions put us all in danger—much more so, I thought, than anything I might have done to anger the Many-Eyed.

I was about to tell him all this when he clamped his hand over my mouth. “They’re coming,” he whispered.

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 shouting 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.

Anger snapped inside me, mixed with dread. I dropped the stones I’d been playing with and jerked him roughly around to face me.

“What have you done, Peter?”

“Oww, Jamie, that hurt,” Peter said, rubbing his shoulder.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” I roared.

“Only what I had to,” he said, and he was serious in a way that I rarely witnessed. “Nobody will take you from me, Jamie.”

I could have killed him then. The rage surged up, pulsed in my blood like fire. I should have killed him then. It would have prevented everything that came after.

Peter took a half step back, just a little shuffle, but he’d never retreated from me before. Never.

He realized this immediately and stepped back toward me, but I was already turning, already running. Charlie was more important than dealing with Peter.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering to run!” Peter shouted after me. “It will be already done by now!”

I didn’t care what he said. Until I saw Charlie, I wouldn’t believe Nip had succeeded in whatever task Peter set him. I believed—I had to believe—that Del and Nod and Fog would look after him as I asked.

I ran, and the terror swamped my anger, and the fear that I would be too late drove me on, faster and faster. I cut into the forest, never wishing so much that I could fly as Peter did at that moment.

My legs burned and my chest heaved and my hair was soaked in sweat and I ran. The forest held no joy for me now. It was only an obstacle in the way, a thing that kept me from Charlie. I’d promised him he’d be safe. He had to be all right. He had to be.

I ran, and Charlie’s tiny face turned back to look at me as Del led him away, and his face said he was trying so hard to be brave. I didn’t think about his blue eyes empty or his yellow duck-feathered hair matted with blood. I didn’t think of those things, and I ran faster.

I burst into the clearing before the tree, gasping for air, and I was so wild with anxiety that it took me a moment to realize what I was seeing. All the boys were gathered in a still, silent circle—all but two of them.

One of them was tied to a stake that was driven into the ground. His face and chest were a mass of purpling bruises, but he was still alive. The other one lay on the ground.

He was white and still and he would never get up again. The pool of blood underneath him told me that.

“Oh, Del,” I said, and knuckled away the tears, because I didn’t cry in front of the others. “Oh, Del.”

His sword was in his hand, lying limp in his open palm. He’d fought, or tried to. I was proud of him for that.

“Jamie!” Charlie ran to me and I picked him up without even thinking about it. He trembled all over and his eyes were red and swollen because he was too small to stop himself from crying in front of the boys.

“He saved me,” Charlie said, weeping into my neck. “He protected me.”

I let Charlie cry because I couldn’t, not just then, not while the boys were watching, not while Nip was watching me with a sneer in his eyes even though he was tied to that pole.

Nod and Fog separated themselves from the others and came to me. They seemed unsure whether to be ashamed about Del or proud that they’d caught and tied up Nip.

“He went for Charlie so fast,” Nod said.

“Didn’t even think he could move that fast,” Fog said.

“Del was right next to Charlie and he was taking out his sword as he got in Nip’s way,” Nod said.

“Nip never got a finger on Charlie,” Fog said. “Not one. Del got off one slash”—here he pointed at an ugly wound in Nip’s thigh—“but Nip got Del’s throat before Del could do anything else.”

“Then we caught on to what was happening and jumped on Nip, and us and the others pounded him good and proper, ’cause we can’t have boys just killing other boys. That’s not how it works here.”

The rest of the boys murmured in agreement.

“We were just having a trial before we hung Nip, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, Billy says,” said Nod.

“You’re supposed to tell your story in front of a judge and then the judge says you’re guilty and then you’re hung in the town square,” Billy said proudly. “I saw a hanging once. The fellow’s neck didn’t break when he fell like it was supposed to, and his legs were kicking around and his face was purple for a long time before he died.”

All the boys turned to look at Nip, as if imagining him kicking and turning blue at the end of a rope. None of them seemed particularly troubled by the idea.

“We were just deciding who should be the judge,” Nod said.

“I think it should be me,” Fog said. “’Cause I noticed him killing Del first.”

“No, I did,” Nod said, and punched Fog in the shoulder.

“No, I did,” Fog said, punching back.

I knew it was a short walk from this to the two of them rolling on the ground bloodying each other’s noses. I shifted Charlie to my left arm and moved to break them apart with my right.

Nip’s laugh, slow and congested (he was laughing through broken teeth), cut in before I could. We all turned as one to stare at him.

“Ain’t none of you going to judge me,” he said. “Peter told me to do it, and he’s not about to let me swing from any rope when I’m just doing what I was told.”

Nod broke away first, running at Nip and punching him in the face. Nip’s head cracked against the pole from the force of the blow.

“You’re a liar!” Nod shouted.

Fog, who hated to miss out on anything his brother did, followed suit, punching Nip’s other cheek and shouting, “Liar, liar, liar! Peter would never do that!”

“That’s outside of the rules,” Nod said.

“It’s not fair play,” Fog said. “If we have something to settle, we go to Peter or Jamie, and if fighting’s needed, real fighting, we save it for Battle.”

“Yeah, we don’t stab the other boys just ’cause we feel like it,” Nod said. “And those are Peter’s rules, so we know you’re nothing but a dirty liar.”

The other boys nodded, and the general feeling was that Nip’s lie about Peter was almost worse than his killing Del.

I knew it wasn’t a lie. I knew, but I wasn’t about to save Nip.

Nip’s eyes darted around the closing circle of boys, all of them ready to carve their piece of flesh from the liar in their midst.

“It’s true!” Nip shouted, desperate now. The sneer was all gone, and the knowledge that Peter might not be back in time to save him was dawning.

He was a wreck of himself, covered in the evidence of two beatings, but his strength—or fear—was so powerful that he was able to shift the stake a little as he wrenched to and fro, trying to break free from the ropes that bound him.

“I’m not a liar!” he screamed.

Nip looked right at Charlie and me, who’d ceased his sobbing and stared at the bigger boy with blank eyes. Charlie didn’t much care if they hung Nip either.

“Peter told me to take care of that little brat, and if he was here he’d tell you so! If you hurt me you’ll be sorry!”

“No, we won’t,” Nod said, shaking his head. “You broke the rules.”

“Jamie knows the rules better than anyone,” Fog said, and turned to me for assent.

“Yes, you broke the rules,” I said. I didn’t say that Peter would never tell Nip to go after Charlie. I couldn’t bring myself to speak the lie.

Fog nodded. “Jamie’s passed judgment. We’ll hang you now.”

“I’ll get some rope,” Billy said happily, and ran off to the tree.

We stole rope from the pirates regularly, as it was handy for things like setting snares and much sturdier than the vine ropes we sometimes wove.

In a trice Billy had fashioned a hangman’s noose and thrown it over a branch of the tree. He fixed the rope around the branch in such a way so they could toss it over Nip’s neck and then pull the rope (with Nip in it, of course) up from the ground, sort of a pulley with Nip on one end and the boys on the other.

The rest of the boys surrounded Nip. Fog cut him loose from the stake. Nip immediately tried to fight his way out of the crowd, but he was so wild that none of his blows landed.

The boys were able to subdue him easily and dragged him, screaming incoherently, to his noose.

“Stop making so much noise,” Fog said, and stuffed a filthy rag from his pocket into Nip’s open mouth.

Nip’s eyes widened and he tried to shout through the rag, the result being a kind of intense grunting that made the other boys laugh. A couple of them picked up sticks and poked him to see what other noises Nip might make.

“I don’t want you to look when they string him up,” I told Charlie. I was reluctant to put him down again, sure that if I did, I’d find out that it wasn’t Del’s body in the middle of the clearing but his.

“Okay, Jamie,” Charlie said. “I’ll mind you.”

I remembered the way I’d lost my temper with him at the bottom of the cliff path. It seemed so long ago, and it was only yesterday.

“I don’t want you to have nightmares,” I said, by way of explanation.

Charlie nodded and turned his head away when the boys finished poking at Nip and put the rope around his neck.

Nod and Fog and three others grabbed the trailing end of the rope and pulled. Nip let out his longest scream yet, muffled by the rag.

They only managed to pull him far enough so his heels dragged in the dirt, even with five of them putting their backs into it. Nod gave a count to heave again in three, two, one . . .

. . . and Peter bounded across the clearing in two jumps. If any other boy had been looking, they would know his secret in that instant. It was quite obvious he wasn’t leaping like an ordinary boy.

He pushed into the fray and cut Nip down before the others realized he was even there.

Nip collapsed in the dirt, clawing the noose off his neck and yanking the rag from his mouth. All the other boys chorused, “Awwwwww,” for Peter had spoiled their fun.

“What’s all this, then?” Peter said sternly, looking around at all of us.

His eyes rested on Charlie a moment longer than the others. I saw the flicker of disappointment in them, but then, I was looking for it.

Nod and Fog rushed to tell what happened. I’d been standing a little apart from the rest, but now I set Charlie down and joined them. Of course the smaller boy immediately wound his fist into my coat, but I couldn’t blame him for that after Del.

Peter avoided my gaze. He also didn’t glance at Del once. Now that Del was dead, he was no longer interesting to Peter. If anything, Peter was likely relieved that Del had died before coughing out his lungs and annoying him with the noise.

Nip smirked up at the others. He obviously thought that Peter’s last-minute rescue confirmed his specialness. I had a feeling he was in for a big surprise on that front.

Nod and Fog finished telling the story, tumbling over each other in the rush to be first, but Peter got the sense of it. When the twins finished, Nip broke in before Peter could speak.

“I told them,” Nip said, “that I was only doing what you told me to do.”

I think he would have liked to drawl this out in a self-satisfied way, but the effect was ruined by his swollen face, missing front teeth and the need to spit out blood every third word or so.

Peter’s eyes went wide when Nip finished speaking. He appeared astonished at this news. “I?” he said, pointing his thumb to his chest. “I told you to kill Del? I never did!”

His outrage was almost believable, if you didn’t know what I knew. The other boys were nodding and muttering that they knew Nip had lied about that.

“No,” Nip said, his face twisted in frustration.

He still believed Peter would support him, that Peter would tell the truth when it came down to it. He didn’t know Peter the way I did.

“You told me to take care of that little yellow-haired brat. And I was trying to except that skinny one got in my way.” Nip jerked his chin in the direction of Del’s corpse.

“I told you to take care of Charlie,” Peter said with exaggerated care. “Look after him! He’s very small and you’re very big. I never told you to lunge at him with a knife.”

I saw then how Peter had done it, that he’d likely said those precise words—“take care of Charlie.” This was how he’d set Nip to the task instead of doing it himself—so he could deny it all if Nip failed.

Nip scowled at Peter like he couldn’t believe what Peter was saying. “You never did! You told me to take care of the brat and you knew just what you were telling me to do, and it wasn’t anything to do with ‘looking after’!”

“Don’t call Peter a liar!” Nod said, and ran at Nip.

He landed on the bigger boy’s stomach with his bony knees. Nip oofed out all his air and had no chance to get it back as Nod pounded his face.

“Peter’s no liar! You are!”

Peter pointed to Jonathan and Ed. “You two, get Nod off him.”

He put out a restraining arm to stop Fog from joining in the scrum. Jonathan and Ed dragged Nod off Nip, though it seemed to me they did so very slowly. Nobody was much interested in Nip’s well-being.

“Get up,” Peter told Nip.

Peter wasn’t concerned for Nip’s well-being either. I knew how Peter thought. Nip had failed, and now he was no longer valuable to Peter. The other boy would have to prove his worth again, or else spend all the rest of his days on the island on the wrong side of Peter’s attention.

Nip struggled to his feet, his nose freshly bloodied, his mean little eyes in their swollen sockets darting around for an ally and finding none.

“Now,” Peter said, his hands on his hips, and gave us his best angry glare. “Rules have been broken. First rule is that we don’t kill each other outside of Battle. That’s not our way.”

Nip opened his mouth to speak, to defend himself, to say again that he was only doing as he’d been told. Peter waved a dismissive hand at him and talked louder.

“Nip killed Del, but the rest of you were going to hang Nip for it, which means you broke the rules too.”

All the boys seemed slightly ashamed now—not for hurting Nip, necessarily, but for getting carried away.

“Nip’s done wrong, and so have you. That means there must be a Battle.”

A murmur started up immediately. The new boys weren’t sure what Battle was, and the older boys speculated that Battle wasn’t quite fair with Nip in the condition he was in.

“You’re right,” Peter said. “Nip should have a chance to heal, so it will be fair.”

He put his hand on his chin and twisted his mouth this way and that as he took in Nip’s injuries. “What do you think, Jamie? Thirty sleeps?”

That was overly generous, to my way of thinking, though there was always the hope that Nip would catch a fever and die before Battle day.

“Twenty,” I said, just to show Peter he couldn’t lead me by the nose.

He shook his head. “Thirty. We’ll mark the days off on a board. One of you find a good piece of wood for marking.”

This was exactly the sort of task I’d like to set Charlie on, but his hand clung to my coat in a way that said he would never let go. Anyway, I didn’t want him out of my sight until after Battle was over. I wasn’t so sure Peter wouldn’t plan something else now that his first idea had failed.

One of the new boys—Sam, I think—scampered off to find a board. I realized with a pang that there were now as many new boys as old—we’d lost both Harry and Del in the last day. It was down to me, Nod, Fog, Jonathan, Kit and Ed. The rest had been there less than a week.

And knowing that, knowing they didn’t know a damned thing about Battle, I knew what would happen when next Peter spoke.

“When Nip’s healed up, one of you will fight him to death in Battle. Then this disagreement will be ended forever.”

“I will,” I said, before Nod or Fog could volunteer.

They both loved Battle, whether it was in play or to the death, and surely both of them had more cause to fight than me. I hadn’t even been there when they tied Nip to the stake.

But it was my lot to stand for the boys, to look out for them. Nod and Fog were good fighters, but Nip was much bigger than them. And he’d have more reason to fight and win, for he’d feel his reputation as truth-teller was at stake. There was a slyness about him, too, that told me he’d try for any advantage in a fight.

Nod and Fog weren’t sneaky fighters. But I was. I’d do whatever was necessary to survive. We were the same that way, Nip and me.

And it came down to this—I wouldn’t lose the twins too, not after what had passed in the last day.

“Jamie, no,” Charlie whispered, tugging at my coat.

Peter gave me a curious look, one that I couldn’t read. “Why should you be the one, Jamie? You weren’t even here for the first part of it.”

“Aye,” Nod said. “It ought to be me.”

“No,” Fog said, “it ought to be me.”

Of course the expected thing happened. I shouted over the noise of them punching and arguing.

“It will be me, because I’m the one who passed judgment,” I said, and they stopped trying to hurt each other to stare at me. “I stand for all the boys.”

“But, Jamie—” Fog said.

“No,” I said. “It’s me.”

They both sighed.

“I suppose it’s only fair since you were the judge,” Nod said.

“But, Jamie, I could take him,” Fog said. Fog knew—or thought he knew—why I was putting myself in front of him.

“I know you could,” I said. “But it will be me all the same.”

Nip squinted at me, and I could tell he was already working out the best way to kill me. His thoughts were so plain anyone could read them without trying.

I showed him nothing. I knew better. Anyway, he’d have a hard go of it, trying to kill me. I’d been on the island much, much longer than he knew.

Peter looked from me to Nod to Fog to Nip and then heaved a great sigh, as though he hadn’t intended for it to end that way all along. Me against Nip, his right hand against the boy who wanted to take my place.

“Very well,” he said, in that pretend grown-up voice he used when he wanted to be serious. “Nip against Jamie, thirty sleeps from now. Sam, you’re in charge of marking off the days. When you wake up in the morning put a line on that board with a rock.”

Sam nodded. He looked eager to be a part of this, but glad that he had a meaningful part to play that wouldn’t involve blood or death.

The circle of boys broke up, and nobody seemed to know quite what to do with himself. The game was supposed to end with Nip kicking from the end of a rope until he was still.

Since it hadn’t ended that way, none of the boys wanted to look Nip in the eye. I wondered what would become of Nip until Battle day. He hadn’t made a place for himself among the boys before this, and he seemed unlikely to now. It’s hard to make friends with someone who tried to hang you.

Del’s body lay in the center of the clearing and Peter pretended it wasn’t there as he walked by.

“Who wants to swim with the mermaids?” he shouted, just as if nothing of import had happened.

There was a loud “hurrah” from Billy, and the others joined in the chorus. They appeared relieved that Peter was giving them something to do besides think about recent events.

I didn’t point out that it was nearly sundown, and that sharks sometimes swam into the lagoon after dark, making the mermaids scatter. I didn’t say that the boys had just returned from a long, pointless trek to Bear Cave and back and needed to sleep and eat so they wouldn’t do foolish things that might get them killed.

I didn’t say anything at all, though it was clear Peter expected me to do so. He wanted so badly to tell me off for babying them, for spoiling their fun, but I wouldn’t bite his bait.

I watched them go, Peter in the lead, the rest already forgetting Del.

Soon the only boys left in the clearing were Charlie and Nip and me. Nip turned and limped inside the tree to lick his wounds, just like a bear—and just as dangerous.

I picked up Del’s body—he was already cold and stiff—and carried him out to the place where I buried the boys we lost.

Charlie trailed behind me, a little yellow-feathered duckling, and he patted my shoulder when I put Del in the ground and wept like I would never stop.

chapter 8

The boys didn’t return until almost morning. Charlie and I chose to sleep outside in the clearing by the fire. Nip was likely too damaged to be much of a threat, but I wasn’t risking Charlie over that belief. It was only sense to stay away from him when the others were gone.

The night was fine and cool, the never-birds calling to one another in long singsong cries. Charlie tucked himself right up against me like a roly-poly bug and went to sleep. I lay awake for a while, listening to him and the night breathing all around me, and wondered how Peter could fly.

• • •

I thought we would take a boat to the island, but Peter took me to a secret place, so-so-so secret that it didn’t look like anything at first and I thought he was teasing me. We had to go outside the city, a long way, and I was tired when we got there, so tired, but Peter kept smiling and clapping and telling me it would be wonderful, so I kept going even when I wanted to close my eyes and fall down. When we got to the secret place, there was a big tree, and a hole between two thick roots that jutted out of the ground.

“In there,” he said, and pointed.

I thought for sure then that he had tricked me. “That’s nothing but a hole in the ground,” I said, and could hear the tears in my voice.

“No, no, it’s not!” he said, and he was so earnest that I believed him again. “It’s magic, and only we know that it’s here.”

He came next to me and put his arm around my shoulder and pointed up over the top of the tree. The tree was very big, bigger than some of the houses in the city, and right above it were two stars. One of them was very bright and one of them was smaller.

“It’s because of that star,” he said. “The second star to the right. That star shines over my island, and shines over this tree, and if you go inside you’ll come out on the island on the other side.”

He must have seen me doubting, because he said, “I’ll go first, and you follow.”

That seemed a little better to me. If he went first, that meant that he wouldn’t stand outside the hole and pour dirt on me and laugh, which had seemed a possibility. He dashed into the hole and slithered inside so fast I hardly saw him. I stood there, unsure if I should follow or not as there still seemed the chance of a trick.

His head popped out of the hole again like a jack-in-the-box, and his green eyes gleamed in the starlight. “Come on, Jamie, follow me. Follow me and you’ll never grow up!”

I took one step, and then another, and then I was inside and the earth seemed to close all around me.

• • •

The whooping and hollering woke me first, and then the wind brought the smell of the sea ahead of them. They tumbled wild-eyed out of the forest, and many of them just collapsed once they were within sight of the tree.

I sat up and grabbed Fog’s ankle as he danced by, full of mermaid songs. “Where’s Peter?”

“Went to the Other Place,” Fog said. “Said he had to find new boys to make up for Harry and Del.”

I let Fog go, and he fell to his knees and then flat on his face, snoring before his nose even touched the dirt.

Peter had gone to the Other Place without me—again. The last time he’d brought back Nip, a choice he’d known I would never approve. It was clear now that the reason for that was to find a boy with just the right qualities, one who wouldn’t be troubled about slashing a five-year-old’s throat.

I soothed Charlie down again—the ruckus of the boys’ return had him sitting up and rubbing his eyes—and soon he was asleep like the others. The air filled with the sleeping breath of boys, their dreams dusted by the glow of the moon.

I stayed awake the rest of the night, watching that cold eye, and wondered what sort of boys Peter would return with this time.

• • •

There were three of them, not just two to replace Harry and Del. The extra one was, I perceived, to replace whichever of us (Nip or me) was lost in Battle, and Peter was trying to get ahead and save himself a trip later.

The first was called Crow, and he was in the Nod and Fog mold—small and energetic and liked to roughhouse. Soon enough he was always a part of their games and fights, and it was just as if they’d been born three instead of two. We found ourselves saying “the triplets” instead of “the twins” before we knew it.

The second boy was Slightly, and we called him that because he was thin and slow to talk and generally more thoughtful than the other boys Peter picked. We could have used a boy like Slightly in the long run, but it wasn’t likely that he would have lasted long with those qualities. At least, that was what I told myself later, when I was burying him.

And the third boy was Sal. Sal wore a brown cap over a head of short black curls and had blue eyes that were always laughing at me. They told me in a thousand ways to stop being so serious and to have more fun; that was what the island was for.

Yet Sal was also kind and good to all the boys, especially Charlie, and that made me like him, for no one else thought much of Charlie. The others wouldn’t hurt him, but he couldn’t keep up with them and so they didn’t think of him. Sal did think of him, and waited for him, and walked next to him while the little boy shyly showed him the best places to dig for worms.

Soon enough Sal was a favorite of everybody’s, for he had a way about him of making everyone feel like they belonged. Sal could make you feel happy just by smiling—those tiny white teeth flashing always made me warm in my belly. Some of the happiest days I had on the island were those days before that awful Battle day, when Sal and Charlie and I would break away from the others and go off roaming on our own.

Peter watched all this and pretended it was fine, that he wasn’t bothered in the least that this new boy had taken me away from him even more than Charlie had. He even pretended not to mind about Charlie so much.

He pretended, but I caught him watching.

He watched Sal and Charlie like that sneaking, peeking crocodile in his story, the one who waited for his time to come.

Peter brought Sal to the island, and Sal changed everything for all of us forever, though I couldn’t know that would happen.

I was only a boy then.