Tiger Lily
Page 19
The sun was setting, obscured from view by the cliffs but sending slices of orange and purple into the sky at the horizon, though the darkness of the water swallowed the colors rather than reflecting them.
From where I sat, Peter and Wendy were the two loneliest figures in the world. But Peter was somehow the lonelier of the two.
FORTY-TWO
It was soon dark enough that only the greens were glowing. And then they, too, dimmed as the darkness thickened.
I didn’t hear her come up behind me. She was on her belly. I had given up on her. It didn’t even occur to me to try to spur her into action. Whoever Tiger Lily was, she wasn’t the person I knew anymore. For all I knew, she had sidled up beside me because she couldn’t resist watching the spectacle of a drowning.
Across the water, Wendy seemed to be having some kind of choking fit. Peter was holding her hand, and his feet kept slipping. He was clumsy and dismantled, hunched over and desperate.
Tiger Lily moved so quietly I barely noticed until she was already in the water.
She surfaced under the Never bird nest. From where I perched, I could just see her eyes glinting, and that her nostrils were above the water’s dark surface.
From anywhere else, the nest would have looked to be simply floating. It seemed to move back and forth with the ripples of the water, so subtly that it was hard to tell that it was drifting toward the rock where Peter and Wendy were losing their footholds. I held my hands to my mouth, unsure what was happening, but hoping. Was this part of the plan she had negotiated with the pirates? It didn’t seem like it could be.
The evening was so dark that Peter and Wendy were just shadows, and almost indistinguishable from the black water, but alert. Peter had seen the nest drifting toward him. I didn’t dare go near, for fear of illuminating them with my glow and allowing any still lurking pirates to see.
Tiger Lily was halfway across the lagoon when I became certain she had changed her mind and that she was, indeed, going to save them.
I saw a fin just break the surface to her left, and I flew.
Before I was even close, Tiger Lily was yanked under the water.
There were three or four of them. Mermaids hunt their prey in circles, like sharks do. A wide round current marked where they circled below. Tiger Lily surfaced once, choked, and went under again.
I landed on the floating nest, skidding to a stop with one of my wings slapping against the water. It stuck, and I clung to a twig, half submerged. Touching the water, I could feel a swirl of thoughts under the surface—the muddy, half-fish thoughts of the mermaids, enraged at her betrayal, and then, clearer and more familiar, Tiger Lily. But it was like there were two of her. There was a Tiger Lily who wanted to follow Tik Tok underwater, and was unwilling to fight the mermaids off. And there was a Tiger Lily I knew from when she was a child. This Tiger Lily flailed out with both hands. She pulled her dagger from her waist and sliced out in an arc, and kicked her way up to the surface. An unearthly scream rose from under the water: one of the mermaids, mortally injured. Tiger Lily lunged at the nest, and pushed it farther, then pushed again. She saw it slam against the rock at Peter’s feet as he leaned out as far as he could. Then she swam in the opposite direction. It was almost like a water ballet—the way the mermaids circled her, how they disappeared and resurfaced in the churning water, again and again as I fluttered above. Mermaid blood floated on the surface of the lagoon in buckets, iridescent and oily.
Still, I didn’t believe she had a chance of making it across until she was there, scrambling up onto the muddy shore and pulling herself to safety in the dry bushes. She choked out water onto the ground, then crawled farther into the brush.
I could hear her now, her heart beating, her arms around her legs, shivering. And I turned in time to see Peter guiding Wendy from where they’d paddled the nest to the opposite shore. I watched until they reached the water’s edge, and their shadows climbed onto dry ground, disappearing into the bushes.
I don’t know how a girl with lungs instead of gills survived such an attack. Even one mermaid as old and strong as Maeryn would have been more than a match for any land creature—human or otherwise. But I never saw Maeryn again after that night, and I’m quite sure Tiger Lily must have killed her.
Maybe what the villagers had said all along was true. Maybe the second Tiger Lily I heard under the water—the one who fought—was the girl who had been drowned in a vat of turkey broth but had somehow come out alive. Maybe she couldn’t be drowned.
Later, Wendy would tell people on the ship that they had battled pirates. But she would never say that Tiger Lily had betrayed them, or that she had rescued them either. Because that would have meant asking a question she couldn’t comprehend asking: why the native girl might have wanted her dead. It didn’t fit her ideas of who was bad, and who was good, and what was a happy ending, and what wasn’t.
Undetected, Tiger Lily stood, shaken and wet and cold, and made her way toward the bridge that led across the crocodile creek, and toward home.
She was just stepping onto the first creaky wooden plank when Reginald Smee caught her, finally, off her guard.
He had been waiting behind a tree, not well hidden at all. But it turned out, he hadn’t needed to be. Before she knew it, his hands were around her neck. She couldn’t call for help.
Even exhausted as she was, her reflexes were fast. She and Reginald slammed into one side of the bridge and then the other before she got her elbows between his arms. As she thrust them outward, breaking his hold on her neck, she also thrust him forward.
The bridge’s rail splintered behind the weight. There was a moment when it seemed the rail would hold. And then a creak, and a sinking crash, and it fell away behind him as he tumbled.
The crocodiles were ready.
Tiger Lily pulled herself back from the brink as Reginald Smee fell backward and splashed into the water among the crocodiles. There was no real struggle. No scream or wet flailing about. Just a tussle among the crocs, and the snapping of many jaws, and then the dive underwater of the triumphant animal, and the water’s surface was glassy and silent, as if nothing had happened at all.
There was a crunching of feet approaching in the leaves, and a second later there stood James Hook. He took in the scene all at once, his mouth open in surprise.
Tiger Lily reached for her dagger, and held it in front of her body. They stared at each other; moments passed. “He came for me,” she finally said.
Hook rubbed the back of his neck, nodding. “Yes,” he said. He took one tiny step forward, looked over the place where the rail had been. “Idiot,” he whispered. He hated disobedience from his men. It always made him feel empty, like once again, the world had proven that there was no one to trust. He kicked some dirt off the bridge in disgust. He let out a sigh, because he had been down this road a million times before, and it never surprised him. “Well, Peter’s dead. Smee’s dead. It’s eat or get eaten, I guess.” He was half joking, though there was no happiness in his humor. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he bowed his head a little to Tiger Lily respectfully, and for a moment, you could see the good manners he’d worked so hard to achieve. “I’d better go before I’m eaten too.”
He turned and limped off into the woods, rubbing at his sore back.
FORTY-THREE
Like I’ve said before, in a village, ideas sweep people up like tornadoes, and leave very little room for disagreement in their path. The decision was made, among the Sky Eaters, that the Englanders must go willingly, or be chased out.
The crows had taken over the village. For a full week, they invaded the Sky Eaters’ homes and perched around their fires and excreted on their crops. And while the villagers knew it must be Tiger Lily’s doing, they also knew that the gods were behind her. And in any case, there was a difference between Tiger Lily and the Englanders. Tiger Lily, despite her otherness, belonged to them. The Englanders did not.
It would have been shocking, to anyone from outside the v
illage, to see how quickly they turned on the foreigners. And the decision was made, among the Englanders, that no one would stay behind. They said it was because of the inhospitable climate, and because of obligations at home, but everyone knew it was their fear of the way the tribe looked at them now, and because of the crows.
They began to pack up their things, and the village was once again in a flurry with their comings and goings. Their imminent departure meant two things to Tiger Lily: that her tribe would go back to the old way, of watching the world around them for signs, and that Peter would be leaving the island.
She would not look at Phillip when he came to say goodbye, extending his condolences about Tik Tok without it ever seeming to cross his mind that he had played a part.
The villagers all came out to see him go, gathering on either side of the path that led out. I didn’t see who threw first, but somewhere from the sidelines, an object hurtled at Phillip and struck him in the shoulder. It was one of Tik Tok’s hair clips. And then came a yam. And then an ear of corn. And soon he was holding his arms around his head and rushing out under a shower of vegetables.
Tiger Lily slipped out the other side of the village, without anyone noticing.
The whole burrow had been turned upside down. What the boys were taking with them, they’d put into sacks. What they weren’t, they’d left lying here and there: clay bowls, old toys, the ball that Tiger Lily had rescued from the tree. She found Peter alone in his room. He was packing things into a wooden box: his drawings; his tiny, half-finished fanciful carvings.
He turned and saw her, and then turned back to his packing. He was quiet for several moments.
“Did you hear how I rescued Wendy from drowning?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” she said, agreeing to pretend.
He kept packing, as if nothing in the world was wrong.
“You got away. I’m glad.”
“Yes. You’re going?” she asked.
“It’s funny, how fast the boys were to say yes.” He stuffed a carving of a mermaid into his box. “I never expected it. I’m an idiot.” He turned and met her eyes. “Yes, I’m going.”
“But you loved me?” she said simply.
He stared at her for a long time. He looked much older, more serious. “I’m sorry about Tik Tok.” There was no twinkle in his eyes. “Maybe I just love some of you. Maybe not enough.” Tiger Lily blinked at him, and she didn’t understand how anyone could only love a part. Her greedy heart didn’t work that way. She turned to go.
He looked down at his fingers. “Tiger Lily, I forgive you. I really do. And you came back for me.” He looked indecisive. “It’s just, I think I have to leave.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“It doesn’t make sense. Even to me,” he said. He took her in. He seemed to hover on the edge of the choice. She felt that with one strong word, she could pull him back.
There was a long moment between them that might have gone differently. Of all the times I saw the two of them together, this is the picture that is most stamped into my soul. It’s the two of them, jumbled up and broken apart into confused pieces, and not really understanding, themselves, what they were doing.
“I won’t wait for you to change your mind,” she finally said, her chin set stubbornly.
He bit his lip thoughtfully. “I understand.” And to Tiger Lily he suddenly, inexplicably, seemed older than her, and wiser, and the thought hit her hard that it wasn’t fair, because she’d suffered, and there he was, looking like he knew so much more than she ever would.
She didn’t return to the village. She walked up to what was left of the stone cottage, which had the best view of the sea. And even though she’d said she wouldn’t, she waited for Peter.
She couldn’t tell who got on or off the ship: the people below—carrying their things aboard, packing up the last of their supplies and samples and fruits and dried meats—were only little dots. Still, she felt like she would know him even from so far away. And as far as she could tell, he didn’t get on.
She was standing on the cliffs, two days after they’d spoken, when she saw the ship pull up anchor.
Sailing ships like this one were a dying breed. Even steamships were being replaced with newer and quicker machines. They were carrying people faster, spreading them all around the globe so that there were no dark, undiscovered places anymore. Tiger Lily didn’t know she was watching an extinction.
The ship drifted away from port, raised its sails, and picked up speed, taking the Englanders with it. It got smaller and smaller and farther away. Hours passed before it was only a speck disappearing into the horizon.
Tiger Lily went back into the house, from which she kept watch of the ocean. She held her arms around her stomach and stayed awake. She didn’t want him to catch her sleeping.
Peter did not come that night, or the next day, and she stayed awake. She did not believe he could have really gone, because for her, to leave the person you loved was impossible.
For three days, she kept on studying the horizon, even speaking to it, as if a ship that had already disappeared could hear her. “Choose me.”
And Peter did choose. But he chose something else.
FORTY-FOUR
This is my one small part. This is the one small thing I was able to change in a human life, ever.
I pulled Tiger Lily back from the brink.
After Peter left, she lay down on the mattress in the empty house, and forgot to eat.
She kept trying, in her head, to make someone right. To make Peter right or herself right or Tik Tok, because that was the only way the world could be a circle again. But they were all wrong. They had all broken each other. And this wrongness was what took her spirit away.
By the time she remembered to drink, she couldn’t stand up without getting dizzy, and couldn’t make it to the water. That’s when she started talking to me. Her hand reached out, and she said Peter’s name for me, Tinker Bell. And smiled. And told me about growing up in the village, as if I hadn’t seen it myself, and talked about what it was like to be a person who everyone said was cursed by crows, and how she didn’t care what they thought anyway. She told me how Pine Sap had brought the crows to scare all the Englanders away, using his bird calls to summon and keep them close, and I didn’t know if it was true or false, and I don’t think she did either. She said she wondered why I never went home, but that she didn’t want me to.
Maybe it was the delirium that made her talk to me that way. But it kept her awake, and I think her staying awake kept her alive. I brought things I’d found for her to eat and get water from—tiny nuts and berries I knew were edible—and she let me force them between her lips. And before long, someone came looking for her, and tracked her up to the cliffs.
It was early morning when Pine Sap stood in the doorway. He sat on the bed beside her. She let herself sink against his lap. She could feel his spindly legs, smell his familiar smell.
“I could have been stronger,” she said. “I wasn’t enough to keep something so important.”
“Tiger Lily, you’re a fool,” he said, and kissed her forehead. And despite his size, and the fact that a boy like him was not built to shoulder much of anything, he shouldered her weight, and carried her home.
FORTY-FIVE
Sometimes I think that maybe we are just stories. Like we may as well just be words on a page, because we’re only what we’ve done and what we are going to do. I know I’m only a faerie, a tiny speck in the world, but then I look at the things I’ve seen and done, and I become a long scrawly line of something important. And I think it’s the same for Tiger Lily and Peter and even Tik Tok and for my father and for Belladonna, the faerie he ran away with, and for Maeryn and maybe every fish in the sea.
I know that there are different kinds of stories with different kinds of endings. But I can’t say that, for Tiger Lily, it worked that way, with any kind of ending I could pin down. And there were still things I didn’t expect.
It was like every other wedding that had happened in the village, though a shaman from another village had to come to perform the ceremony. There was dancing and binding and promising. She wore the dress Tik Tok had made her, and Giant looked sullen and ravenous at the same time. But he did not touch her that night. It was as though the arrival of the crows had finally put the fear into him that all the others had felt long ago.
Another thing I didn’t expect was that within two weeks of his wedding night, Giant was dead.
He had been taking a nap alone in his house, but he never woke up. People ascribed it to Tiger Lily’s curse. But they also whispered that he had gotten what he deserved. Aunt Sticky Feet whispered something different. She said she’d seen Moon Eye walking out of his house that afternoon, with an old clay jar of Tik Tok’s. But Aunt Sticky Feet was known to be an alarmist. And even I never knew for sure.
Things were quiet for a long time. We passed the hours the way we always had, and one day leaked into another, and the quiet lasted and lasted. It was fifty years before another ship docked near Neverland’s shores. But what is fifty years when you’re not growing any older?
It was by this time that even the remotest corners of the globe were no longer remote. The mermaids had retreated into the deepest parts of the ocean, lucky to be able to go somewhere they would never be found. The faeries hid, too, in the island’s thickest swamps, and far away from the shore. The tribe didn’t have to. The visitors never came near them.
Still, I noticed a curious sight one morning when I was down on the beach, looking for pieces of the best sand to go in my hair: Tiger Lily in a canoe, paddling out to talk to them. She was still curious. Phillip had not killed her restlessness to know. And they offered for her to go with them if she was so curious. There would be ships coming back this direction in a year or so.