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 li
ved 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.
Lost Boy Page 3
