They didn’t even ask why. They just took the torches and ran, lighting the grass as they went.
I pulled some cloth out of my pocket to wrap around my face. Sal took it from my hand and tore it so she could do the same.
“I’m not staying behind,” she said. “Don’t ask me to. It’s down to me that Peter got away with him.”
There was no time to disagree, no time to talk about what she ought to do or who was at fault. Maybe it was Sal, for sleeping when she ought to be watching. Maybe it was me, for underestimating Peter.
Or maybe it was Peter, because he was a monster.
We ran, and we set fire to everything.
Soon the smoke billowed and surrounded us, and the flames were curling at our heels, trying to catch us, to drag us down, to eat us alive. Sweat poured off my face and over my body, soaking my clothes. My throat was parched, scorched by the smoke despite the cloth I’d tied to prevent that.
The fire roared all around, a hungry, mad thing that swallowed everything before it, and I realized that we needed to run for our own lives, not just Charlie’s.
Then I heard, just above the howl of the flames, the terrified screeching of the Many-Eyed, and I smelled them burning.
We ran straight into the nest. The egg sacs were all aflame, and any adults that were in their silks had caught fire as well. Most of them were running ahead—I heard their mad buzzing as they tried to escape the fire.
There was so much smoke, so much heat.
I didn’t know it would be like that.
I didn’t understand fire was that kind of monster.
We kept running. The nest was enormous, a series of spun silk caves connected by longer threads, one after another. If Peter dropped Charlie, it would be here.
But if he was here, how would I find him? I hadn’t reckoned on the smoke, a black billowing cloud that was drowning everything.
And the noise. The fire was so noisy, a roaring, howling thing. Calling out for Charlie was pointless.
Then Sal grabbed my shoulder. Her eyes were streaming from the smoke and so were mine, but she pointed to the ground ahead of us.
There was my Charlie, half wrapped in Many-Eyed’s silk, his arms and head exposed.
“Not dead,” I moaned. “No, not dead.”
I ran to him, and picked him up, and held his little body to mine.
And felt his heart beat.
Sal tugged me up. The fire was already there, hunting us, relentless.
We ran and ran and ran toward the sea, and I held Charlie close to me and promised that I would keep him safe. Over and over I promised that, if only he would live.
And then somehow we were out of the grass and falling on the dry sand of the beach. Before us were the Many-Eyed that had outrun the fire.
There were so many of them. So many I couldn’t count. I’d never really understood.
They filled the space between the plains and the water, and they didn’t seem to notice us at all. The ones that were closest to the sea were screeching in terror, as were the ones that were being burned by flame. All the Many-Eyed in between were pushing and buzzing and trying to find a way out when there was none.
I scrambled, exhausted, toward some jumbled rocks on the west end, and Sal followed me. We stayed low, crawling, avoiding the Many-Eyed’s teeth and legs and stingers. I clutched at Charlie with one arm and pulled myself along with the other.
We reached the rocks and I made Sal go up first, so I could pass Charlie to her. Then I followed, taking Charlie again, and we climbed until we were well above the sand. Sal collapsed at the top, pulling the cloth off her face and coughing. There was no flat space to rest on—all those rocks were jumbled and sharp—but the sea air was fresh and we were away from the madness of the Many-Eyed.
I took the cloth off my own face and then cut the silk off Charlie’s body with my dagger. I pressed my ear against his chest and listened. His heart still beat, but slowly, and his breath wasn’t easy.
Sal watched me with frightened eyes. “Is he . . . ?”
“He’s still alive,” I said.
My voice was strange and croaking and my lungs burned. I felt like I was still inside the smoke, even though it was billowing away from us, up above the island. I wondered what the pirates made of all this.
I wondered where Peter was now.
I propped my back against one of the rocks and pulled Charlie into my lap, his head on my shoulder.
Below us the Many-Eyed were now in a frenzy. At first I was too exhausted to realize why. Then I saw about a dozen of them knocked off their feet and swept into the ocean.
The tide was coming in.
The tide was coming in and the fire in the plains had reached its peak fury, the flames twice as high as the grass that burned. As the Many-Eyed in front ran from the seeking ocean, the Many-Eyed in the rear caught fire. Some in the middle were trampled as others panicked and tried to run.
There was nowhere for them to run.
We stayed on the rocks for a long, long time, watching the destruction of the Many-Eyed. It should have given me more satisfaction than it did. I’d always wanted to rid the island of that vermin. I’d finally succeeded.
Soon the beach was littered with the bloated, stacked corpses of the Many-Eyed as far as my eye could see. Some of the dead ones closest to the fire caught and burned, and the air filled with the acrid smoke from their flesh.
Charlie’s eyes did not open. And I didn’t know how to tell Sally about the tree.
We’d thwarted Peter. He hadn’t been able to kill Charlie, and he wouldn’t have another chance. The smaller boy wouldn’t believe in him a second time.
But we were still trapped on the island. The tunnel to the Other Place was gone.
Sally didn’t speak for a long time. She stared dully out at the slow massacre of the Many-Eyed. Then she said, “Did you know he could fly?”
“I saw him once,” I said, and the words seemed thick and heavy in my mouth. I was so tired. “I never could catch him at it again.”
“How?” she said.
“If I knew, I would have flown after him,” I said.
“Maybe Charlie will tell us,” Sally said, and stroked his yellow hair.
It seemed so overwhelming then, so impossible. How could I defeat a boy who could fly, a boy who had destroyed our best means of escape?
I wanted to tell Sally—so she could understand, so she could help me. She would be angry with me if I tried to solve it all on my own, if I didn’t let her stand by me as she said she would.
But I was tired. So tired.
I closed my eyes, and I remembered.
chapter 15
Mama? Mama?”
She wasn’t in the kitchen. She liked to be there by the fire, in her chair, mending clothes or polishing cook pots or just rocking while she stared into the flames. She liked it because it was far away from Him, the He who stalked through our house like an angry shadow, the He who staggered home from the pubs stinking of ale and searching for a reason to be angry at us.
He would never hit me if she was there, because she would stand in front of me and tell him to leave off her boy, her blue eyes sparking fury.
My eyes were not blue. They were black like His, dark and pupilless, like the eyes of the sharks that swam in the sea. But my hair was like hers, soft and dark, and I would put my head on her knee while she stroked my head and we would both cry and pretend that we hadn’t. She would sing a little song, a song that went into my heart and stayed there, a song that I would sing all the long years of my life.
He had gone out as He always did every evening, before I came home from the bookbinders’. Mama hoped I would apprentice there when I was older, but for now I fetched and carried and cleaned up after the older men, and at the end of the day they would give me a coin or two to bring home to her.
She was saving all those coins in a secret place, a place He didn’t know about, and no matter how hard He hit her she wouldn’t tell. I wouldn’t tell, either, because I didn’t know where it was. But she was saving them, so that one day we could run away to a place where there were no fists and no fear, just me and Mama, happy for always.
I went into the cottage and called for her, but she didn’t come to the door with a smile the way she always did.
He wasn’t home, I knew for certain, for when He was in the house He filled up all the empty space. Even when He slept He did this, the sound of His drunken snores echoing through the cottage, the smell of drink and sick overwhelming any fresh air that might come in the open window.
“Mama?” I called, and when I went through to the kitchen she wasn’t there, and I started to worry.
Our cottage was only four rooms, and when I went through all of them I didn’t know what to do. She might have gone to the market, except that it was late and the market was closed. She would never have gone out with Him, for she said that drink made Him disgusting, and He didn’t want her with Him anyhow.
I stood in the kitchen and wondered if I should look for her, or if I should stay exactly where I was so she wouldn’t worry if she came back. I hated to make her worry, for she already had so many cares and I didn’t like to add to them.
Then I noticed that the back door of the cottage was open, just a little.
Mama would never go out and leave the door open like that. There were rats that lived in the narrow way behind our home, and Mama hated rats, and an open door was an invitation to them—she always said so.
And the candles were lit and so was the fire. Candles were dear, and Mama wouldn’t waste them. She wouldn’t go out and leave the fire untended.
I went to the door, and pushed it all the way open. I trembled all over as I peered in the dark, the flickering light of the kitchen behind me. I couldn’t see anything except the shifting shadows, but I heard the scurrying of the rats and I shuddered. I didn’t like rats either, though I wouldn’t tell Mama that. I wanted Mama to think I was brave.
I didn’t want to let the rats in the cottage, but I didn’t want to go out into the dark either, so I stood there and called, “Mama?”
She didn’t answer.
I wasn’t certain what to do. The door was open, so Mama must have come this way. And the candles were lit, so she must have meant to return soon. But she didn’t answer.
She might be hurt, I decided. And if Mama was hurt I would have to be brave, so that she would be proud of me.
I took a candle from the kitchen, and walked out into the night, closing the door behind me. The sound of the door closing made me jump. Candle wax dripped on my hand with a hiss.
It smelled funny, not like the smell of rotting and rats like it usually did. There was something else, something that made my nose itch.
I walked out carefully, the stones ringing under my boot heels. They were so loud in the darkness, though from out on the street in front of the cottage came the noise of people laughing and talking and shouting at one another. Those people seemed very far away from me.
The circle of light cast by the candle was small, so that the dark pressed all around it. I thought I saw, just for a moment, a wink of silver ahead of me, a flash that reflected the faint light and then disappeared.
First my foot trod on something, something soft. Then the glow from the candle found it, and she was there.
Her eyes were blue and empty and her dark hair was all around her head in a tangle. She lay on her side and her arms were thrown out in the direction of the cottage, like she was reaching for something, like she was reaching for me.
Her mouth was open and so was her throat and the blood was all over her blue dress, seeping from the smile where no smile should be.
“Mama?” I said, and my voice was very, very small.
I reached for her then because it couldn’t be, it couldn’t be that my mama, my mama who kissed me and hugged me and held me so tight, was there on the stones with her throat cut and blood on her dress.
I tried to pick her up, to make her wake up, to make her stop pretending to be gone forever. The candle fell from my hand and went out.
“What have you done?” A voice ringing through the darkness.
“My mama,” I sobbed.
A boy appeared from nowhere, a boy I thought at first I’d never seen before and then realized I had. He was a little older than me and had green eyes and ginger hair, and more than once I’d seen him on the street near our cottage. He didn’t seem to belong to anyone and sometimes I thought he was watching me when I went home at the end of the day but when I tried to get a good look at him he would be gone.
Now he stood over Mama and me and looked sternly down at me.
“What have you done?” he said again.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I found her.”
“There’s blood all over your hands and when the constable comes he’ll think you killed her and then they’ll hang you,” he said.
“But—” I said.
“You have a very bad temper, don’t you?” he said. “Don’t you sometimes run at your father and hit him with your fists? Don’t you sometimes get so angry that you break the crockery in the kitchen?”
I did, but I didn’t see how this boy could know that. I sometimes ran at Him and punched Him as hard as I could, when I couldn’t bear letting my mama stand between us any longer, and it would make me angrier because He seemed to like me better then. He would say that I had spirit and that at least I wasn’t hiding behind Mama’s skirts. I hated to do anything that made Him happy but I hated it when my mama was hurt too, and sometimes all these feelings would push and pull inside me until I wouldn’t know what to do and I would smash and break things until they went away. Then when it was all over Mama would put her arms around me and hold me until I was better.
“Everyone around these parts knows you have a bad temper, and when they find her”—here the boy jerked his chin at the thing that used to be my mama—“they’ll know it was you because you get so angry all the time and because your hands are covered in blood.”
I looked at my hands then, and though it was dark I could see the stains on them, and I was terrified that what this boy said would be true.
“But I didn’t hurt her,” I said. “I would never hurt her. I love her so much.”
Tears rolled out then, and the other boy smacked me hard.
“Stop crying,” he said. “Boys don’t cry like that. Now listen—you have to come with me. I know a place where you’ll be safe and they’ll never catch you.”
He had me all confused now, tangled up and turned around. I believed that when the constable came they would arrest me and they would throw me in a dark, dark place full of rats until it was time for me to hang.
“If you come with me we’ll go to my island. It’s a special place, only for boys like you and me. And there you can run and play and no one will hit you and you’ll never, never grow up.”
“How can you never grow up?”
“The island is magic,” he said, and he smiled. “And I live all alone there, and I want you to come there and play with me and be my friend for always.”
He tugged me up, tugged me away, and I was confused and scared and already forgetting my mama and her empty blue eyes and her arms thrown out, reaching for me. Peter pulled me away and told me all about the wonderful place that we were to go to, a place that was only for us.
We walked all night and reached the tree and tunnel and then I was so tired, and Mama seemed like she was a story from a far-off time.
We went through the tunnel and I smelled the island for the first time, smelled the trees and the sea and the sweet fruit, and the scent of the city was washed away. And later Peter and I were picking fruit from a meadow and h
e showed me how to take the skin off with his knife. There were red stains on the knife but I didn’t wonder about them at all, for all I could see was Peter smiling at me.
• • •
Jamie, you’re squashing me.”
“Jamie, let go of him. He can’t breathe.”
I opened my eyes, and found Charlie awake in my lap. Sal leaned over me, tugging at my arms.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re squashing me!” Charlie said, and he pushed at my chest.
“You were dreaming,” Sal said.
I let Charlie go and he scrambled free. I scrubbed at my face with my hands. My face was wet, though I couldn’t tell whether it was from sweat or tears.
“What were you dreaming of?” Sal asked.
“The same thing I always dream. A woman with blue eyes and black hair with her throat cut,” I said. “I didn’t know until today that it was my mother.”
“And?” Sal said, for she knew there was more.
“And it was Peter who killed her.”
I don’t know how I could have forgotten her, forgotten the mama who loved me so much, forgotten how she stood between my father and me and kept me safe. I felt a wrench of shame, that she would be lost to me so easily, that I would run away with a strange boy and leave her there.
I’d left her alone. Alone with the rats who would gnaw at her until someone found her—maybe my father, maybe a neighbor, maybe a happy drunk stumbling into the alley to take a piss.
But Peter had confused me. He had. He’d told me that it would be my fault, that I would be blamed. I was scared and confused and the only person who ever mattered to me was staring up at me with blank blue eyes and his hand offered an escape from the hanging I was sure would come. Who would believe a little boy, especially a boy covered in his mother’s blood?
So when he took my hand it was easy to leave her there, easier to run away from the horror, easier to forget that she loved me, especially with Peter telling me all the time to forget, that nothing from the Other Place mattered, that it was just him and me now.
Lost Boy Page 19
