Lost Boy

by Christina Henry

  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 st
ay 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 neve
r 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.