Tiger Lily
Page 18
“His name is Reginald Smee,” Maeryn said.
I bit Tiger Lily, as hard as I could. I don’t know how I thought it would help. Faerie bites are worse than wasp stings—they pierce and burn and ache all at the same time. At best, I knew, I’d be swatted away, and at worst she might crush me by accident in her sudden reaction to the pain. But what happened was worse. She didn’t even seem to notice it at all. It was like Tiger Lily herself wasn’t even really there.
“He’ll wait for your fire, up on the plateau, every night at dusk until he sees it.”
For a moment, Maeryn’s eyes flicked to me. I could see in that one look that she saw my alarm, and it amused her. Tiger Lily stood up to leave, and all I could do was follow.
She didn’t go to Reginald Smee that night. Instead, she woke Pine Sap from his spot on the floor of his house, late. In his sleep, the first thing he did was hug her. He held her tight, despite her stillness, despite her body never softening into his. He knew her well enough to know he needed to hold her anyway.
“I need help,” she said.
In the morning, in the comfortable shelters the tribe had given to them, the visitors woke with an inkling that something was off. I happened to be in Phillip’s tent at first light, scouring for dust mites.
He sat up in bed, and saw the feather lying on his blanket, just on top of his chest. He turned it around and around in his hand, curious, startled that it could have arrived in the night without him knowing it. And then he heard the scratching on the roof.
Some of the others had already come outside.
No one screamed. But one man fainted. I had to stay well hidden, but through the cracks of his shelter, I watched.
There were so many crows. Crows on the roofs. Crows on the path. Crows perched on every bare surface, so that all the paths through the village were black instead of brown.
The villagers began to mutter to each other. They knew what it meant, even if the Englanders didn’t.
They were sure—even before they saw her, standing in the square, her hair cut as short as Tik Tok’s had been—what it meant. Their gods were back. Tiger Lily had called them. And the Englanders were doomed.
THIRTY-NINE
The Tiger Lily I knew had disappeared. I listened and listened and heard nothing inside her. I don’t know where she went during those days. But her body remained and did things I couldn’t predict.
I followed her one night into the dark forest, setting a path for the plateau. I felt her tremble. I thought she was scared of things she couldn’t see. But later, I realized, she was scared of herself.
What could I do? I threw acorns into her water jug, stuck leaf stems in her ears, shoved a jagged pebble into her nostril, all to get her attention. But nothing slowed her steady pace. For the first time, I thought about going back to my swamp after all. I wanted to be somewhere where I didn’t have to watch.
Up on the plateau, she lit a fire and waited, her back against a boulder, and far below in the darkness we could see the lights of tiny fires, all of different settlements across the island: her own village, and even the distant fires of the Cliff Dwellers. The lights would have been comforting on another night, but knowing what we were there for kept me on edge. Tiger Lily waited, her hand near her knife, dull eyed and still. I listened to her heart but it was a black pit; it sounded like the sky at night when it was too cloudy to see the stars.
The woods below were quiet. Animals had retreated into their burrows. The whole world seemed to be sleeping. Back home, I thought with sudden longing, the faeries would be gathered around a warm sulfurous spring, lounging and huddled together.
It must have been hours before we heard the sound of a pair of feet climbing up the last rise.
Smee appeared on the edge of a jagged, rocky area at the side of the meadow. His eyes flicked to Tiger Lily’s knife as he approached. She watched him, expressionless. When he reached the circle of the fire, he crouched across from her and stirred a stick in the flames.
“You’re willing to help us?” he said.
“Yes,” Tiger Lily said, without hesitating.
“Bad things may happen to them.” As he said this, visions of strangling Tiger Lily played in his head. He was tempted to lunge for her now, but he knew if he did, he’d be a dead man. Better to wait until the moment she was off her guard, when the time came. “You know that, don’t you?”
Tiger Lily nodded. Her eyes were trained on the fire. “You promise me they’ll happen to the girl, too?”
Smee nodded. Even he could see something had changed in her. He studied her face, and none of the fierceness and compassion he’d seen and admired was there. She was cold and empty. He wondered if maybe she wasn’t worth killing after all.
Then suddenly, a flicker of the old Tiger Lily appeared, just for a moment. “But none of the boys. Only Peter and Wendy. Anyone else, and …” She gave him a warning look. She didn’t have to finish.
Smee swallowed deeply, visibly afraid. But also, though Tiger Lily didn’t see it, eager.
She drew a map for him in the dirt, tracing it all with a steady finger. Of course, Smee already knew the lagoon.
“We’ll need you for bait,” Smee said. If Tiger Lily had been more herself, she might have sensed the trap. But she only nodded, agreeing. Peter had abandoned her, but she knew he wouldn’t abandon her to die.
She didn’t see how intently Smee studied her face in the firelight. “They can’t swim,” she said finally. It was enough.
They arranged when and where they would meet. And then Smee turned and trudged back down the mountain, breathing heavily from the exertion. She watched him go, then sat in silence, listening to the crackle of the fire.
As Tiger Lily walked home, I pricked at her, I stung her, I pulled out several of her hairs. But she flicked me away easily. Still, I kept on trying.
Because there were two things I knew. Neither of us could ever really see Peter drowned and survive it. And it wasn’t Peter that Smee planned to destroy.
FORTY
“They say there are pearls at Whitestone Beach.”
Tiger Lily was standing amid the boys at the new burrow. Peter and Wendy had gone for a walk. They wanted all of the alone time they could get, Tootles said, while Nibs gave him an exasperated look. Of all of them, Nibs was the only one who really understood. From a tangle of bushes, Tiger Lily herself had watched them leave, their hands entwined, her heart cold as stone.
“Your hair,” Slightly said. “It’s … it’s horrible.” Nibs elbowed him, but Slightly’s eyes were glued to Tiger Lily’s scalp. “Did it catch on fire or something?”
“Why would we want pearls?” one of the twins asked. He was bouncing Baby on his knee. In the many months that she had known them, she realized, Baby did not seem to have gotten any bigger. Was he stuck in infancy forever?
“To make a gift for the Wendy bird,” Tiger Lily said. “She loves pearls, didn’t you notice?” Only Nibs looked suspicious. “She might be so grateful she’ll take you to England with her.”
The boys all shrugged. “Okay,” said Curly, unable to resist rushing into anything that seemed vaguely foreboding.
I tried to get in their way, but of course they dismissed me. Slightly said I was having “lady’s hysterics.” One of the twins mentioned something he’d heard about women going crazy twelve times a year. Nibs pointed out that that was impossible since I wasn’t a lady, and that insects were just irrational and you could never know why they did the things they did.
Tiger Lily led them through the forest, to where the path changed from dirt to loamy mud, trailing through scrubby little bushes that were spaced enough to leave natural footpaths. Finally, they reached the shore. This was a quiet inlet; the sand white and warm. And indeed, the ground just below the waterline was covered by beds of thousands of oysters.
They secreted Baby in a basket in the bushes, and waded in the water. Immediately, Tiger Lily plucked off her necklace and dropped it into the water, wher
e it would probably never be found.
For many reasons, her one pearl no longer seemed as beautiful as it once had.
The boys hauled their oysters into the shade to shuck, sand stuck to their feet and calves. Never was there a group more relaxed, and happy to have something new to do.
Tiger Lily had brought two jugs of caapi water, packing them in on her back, and now as they sat in the shade of a palm tree, she offered it around. I sat on the bottle and tried to sting anyone who handled it, but they brushed me aside.
Tootles drank first. Then Slightly. Nibs looked suspicious, but took a sip. They all sat and talked and waited for the effects of the water to set in.
“I feel weird,” Slightly said, and grinned.
“I feel fine,” Tootles said solemnly. “But it’s crazy that that tree’s smiling at me.”
“You’re a real piece of work, Tootles,” Nibs said.
“Don’t say work,” one of the twins said. “Bite your tongue.”
Tiger Lily let their every word tattoo itself on her. Tomorrow, she would be a stranger to them; they would hate her. She knew this in a vague, distant way, as if she were watching herself from above, with no power to change things.
Finally Tootles slumped back and yawned. The others soon followed. The boys talked and fell asleep, one by one, until every last one of them was peacefully passed out in the shade, the soft lapping of the water lulling them. When she was sure they were all asleep, Tiger Lily stood quietly. She was tempted to forget everything and stay on the beach all day, until they woke up, and laugh with them like she used to. She had the sudden urge to kiss each one’s cheek, but the gesture would have been too strange to her. She only patted Nibs’s hand, as affectionately as she could, before she stood and walked back into the forest.
FORTY-ONE
She met the pirates at the edge of the lagoon. Maeryn was there, sunning herself on a rock in the middle of the water. The Never bird, perched on its enormous nest, watched them nervously and then lifted off, its giant wings flapping loudly. It perched itself on one of the low limbs hanging over the lagoon.
Hook was sitting on the beach. He stood when he saw her, holding his back and wincing, then smiled. It was a painful smile, with so few teeth. He looked desperate and wounded—like someone should be looking after him. She narrowed her eyes as she studied him. She seemed to doubt, for a moment, that he could really be the Hook Peter was so afraid of. But then, there was the unhinged quality to his eyes. As a hunter, she must have been reassured. His eyes hinted that he could be deadly in the same way a rabid possum could. He made no reference to her strange haircut, so uncharacteristic for a girl. He barely seemed to notice.
“It’s simple, really,” he explained. “We’re just using the tides. We’ll put you on the rock.” He gestured to the rock where Maeryn now perched. “Peter will come to retrieve you. We’ll ensure he’ll be able to get out there, but not get back. The girl will be easy to grab.” Hook was happy with the plan. It was simple, and clean. He would never even have to touch Peter. No matter what some of the men believed, he didn’t long to feel his hands around the boy’s neck. He just wanted him gone.
Hook had sent Mullins to lure Peter away from the new burrow. The men had all argued over who would have to do it. He was to allow himself to be caught, and confess—seemingly as a random aside—that Tiger Lily had been captured. The men, Hook explained, had drawn straws to determine who would have to go, because there was always the likelihood that Pan would kill the man immediately. But in the end Hook had picked the best liar.
They sat down on the beach side by side, Tiger Lily with her hand on her dagger, Hook propped up awkwardly with his hand rubbing at his lower back, and waited. I sat on the ground, my legs on the cool dirt, shivering. Tiger Lily observed, looking sideways, the swollen lump where his hand used to be. She noticed that his feet jerked back and forth with habitual tension, as if he were tapping them on the floor. This was a man who needed to crawl out of his own skin.
“Well, it should be soon, if they’re coming,” he said, almost resigned. He handed her a coil of rope. “Better be off.”
Tiger Lily’s heart kept a slow, steady pace, though mine began to race. She stood and walked into the murky lagoon water. Maeryn had promised her safety, but there was always the chance she would break her word and try to drown Tiger Lily on her swim. Tiger Lily was beyond caring. She swam out to the rock in the middle of the water with no incident, and scrambled onto it, sitting cross-legged. She shivered as she pulled the ropes around herself to make them look like they bound her arms and legs.
She waited.
I alighted on a craggy tooth of the rock and watched the woods like she did, hoping no one would come. The trees were silent for what seemed like forever, except for the usual sounds of birds and ground creatures. I wondered if Mullins was, indeed, dead. And then there was the quietest shuffle in the brush. Another moment, and a flash of brown. And then two hands parting the green of the bushes, and Peter, staring at Tiger Lily across the water, and moments later, the whiteness of Wendy behind him.
A canoe had been left on the opposite shore, meant to look as if the pirates had beached it there after they’d tied Tiger Lily. Peter’s instinct must have told him that it was too obvious, but he didn’t hesitate. He crouched his way along the tree line, quietly trying to push Wendy back to safety every few feet, with Wendy quietly insisting on following. She didn’t know she was making things harder for him rather than easier. She was caught up in her own bravery.
I looked back at Tiger Lily, then skimmed just inches above the water to the shore. I stung Peter’s hands as he handled the boat. Wendy swatted me away. “She hates me,” she whispered, seeming to think that the focus of my entire life was trained on her.
I knew too well by now that they wouldn’t listen to me, and it paralyzed me with sadness. I landed on the bow of the boat, exhausted, and watched helplessly as they paddled out, Peter signaling to Tiger Lily with his hands and looking around for signs of the pirates who, by all appearances, seemed to have abandoned her to the rising tide.
They reached the rock, and Peter climbed out to untie her. For a moment he met her eyes. But quickly, he swiveled to help Wendy out of the boat so that she wouldn’t tip into the water without him to balance her. She crouched on the rock, and he told her to hold on to the boat’s tip as he turned to Tiger Lily. I floated down onto a dead leaf.
It was at that moment that Tiger Lily let her ropes fall. She slid into the water like an eel. At the same moment, the boat seemed to drift out of Wendy’s grasp of its own accord. No one saw the shadow of Maeryn’s body underneath it, towing it away. To Wendy, the tide seemed to be carrying the boat in the opposite direction it was supposed to, out to the mouth of the lagoon and into the ocean beyond. But Peter wasn’t looking. He was watching the place where Tiger Lily had disappeared underwater, trying to understand.
He was not afraid at first. He put his hands to his mouth and yelled for the mermaids.
He waited for a few minutes, and then called for them again. The water carried his voice clear and loud.
And then he waited. “They usually come right away,” he said to Wendy, concerned but not fearful. He yelled again, Maeryn’s name, then those of some of the other mermaids I didn’t know. The water was strikingly silent.
And finally, recognition seemed to settle itself on his face, and a dawning fear. The last emotion to settle in was a sickening hurt. He knew in that one solid moment he had been betrayed.
I watched them from my leaf. There was nothing I could do now, even if they chose to notice me. At the other edge of the lagoon, I saw Tiger Lily emerge from the water and slide into the bushes silently, but Peter was looking in the other direction. He watched the water for several minutes, his face pale. All the life seemed to drain out of him. I began to lose my breath, clutching the leaf I was sitting on, flapping my wings together.
Wendy, up until now confident and unafraid, was studying him.
Peter didn’t say that in an hour the tide would be in and the water would be over their heads, but she was reading it on his face. He looked from shore to shore, as if something might appear to help, though neither of them could imagine what. And Wendy, who was not stupid after all, began to shake, her breath becoming shallow.
“I can’t die,” she said. “I can’t die.”
Peter put his arm around her. “We won’t die.”
Tears threaded out of Wendy’s eyes, though she was deathly silent.
I didn’t want to watch, but I couldn’t leave. The minutes passed. The water rose. The pirates had faded into the woods, maybe to watch in secret, as if Peter could still get at them even from where he was.
The water crept up the rock slowly but inevitably.
Peter was white as a ghost. It was the first time, outside of his dreams, I’d seen terror on his face. He held her arms to steady her, but his hands trembled violently. He studied the shore for Tiger Lily, or any sign of anyone, but other than me, they’d all vanished. His eyes lingered on me for only a second. I wondered if he realized then that I’d tried to warn him. But he finally just turned back to Wendy, and put his arms around her. He straightened himself up and seemed to try to grow to be more like a man.
She was silent. The tide seemed to move faster now. They shivered as it made its way up their bodies. Wendy lost her balance under the water for a moment and slid off the rock, but Peter managed to grab her and pull her upright.
She began to gasp, unable to calm herself enough to breathe.
The leaf I was sitting on became waterlogged enough to sink. I flew to shore, and perched on a berry bush. I thought I might be sick.