Lost Boy

by Christina Henry

  I’d forgotten the girl who wanted to grow up with me.

  Now she never would.

  I managed to stand very slowly, every part of me stiff and sore. The crocodile’s blood had dried on my hands and arms and fell off in flakes.

  “You don’t look good, Jamie,” Charlie said. “You look sick. Maybe you ought to sit down again.”

  I shook my head, unable to speak. I walked slowly, limping because my right ankle was swollen. I had no memory of how or why this might have happened. Charlie trotted along beside me, holding out his hands toward me when he thought I might fall, as though he might be able to stop me.

  Nod was at the place under the coconut tree where I had buried the others the day that the cannonball took them. He had a wide flat stick that he was using to dig a hole in the sand.

  On the ground beside the hole was what was left of her.

  Nod paused for a moment and saw me coming. He scrambled out of the hole and ran toward me, waving his hands and shaking his head no.

  Nod had gotten taller since last night. He was almost as tall as me, though he’d always been a lot smaller when we were children. His blond beard was thicker than mine. He seemed almost completely grown-up, not in-between as I was. There was no more of the boy about him at all.

  He put his hand on my chest to stop me from going any farther. That hand was big and thick-knuckled and covered with curling yellow hair.

  “No,” he said. His voice was all grown-up too, deep-throated and rumbly. “I don’t want you to see her.”

  “I need to see her,” I said.

  “You don’t want to,” Nod said. “I wish I hadn’t.”

  “The crocodile ate her,” Charlie said in a very little voice, his eyes downcast. “I’m sorry, Jamie. It only ate her because she was watching out for me like she said she would.”

  I rumpled his hair, his little yellow duckling hair, and watched it stand up in the sunlight. Charlie was still a small boy, because he hadn’t been on the island long enough to stop growing the usual way and then start again like me and Nod. He was very tiny now compared to us.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Charlie,” I said. “It was Peter’s.”

  Charlie kicked the sand, his fists clenched. “It’s always Peter’s fault. Always, always. It’s because of him that Sally’s gone.”

  Nod’s restraining hand was still on my chest. I looked at him for a long time, and he looked back, and finally he let me pass.

  There wasn’t much left of her, not really. The crocodile had taken most of one leg entirely, nothing there except some ragged skin and sheared-off bone. The opposite arm was stripped of flesh, and there was a big chunk torn out of her middle. Everywhere there were claw and bite marks, on her hands and face and chest.

  She’d fought. I didn’t need Charlie to tell me that she’d stood in the way of the crocodile and told him to run. It was what she would do. It was what I would do, and our hearts were the same where Charlie was concerned.

  Her blue eyes were milky grey and empty. Her laughing blue eyes, the eyes that promised me we’d be together for always, the eyes that promised me things I didn’t really understand—there was no Sally in them anymore, no fierce happy girl that I loved.

  I should have cried, but all my tears had been wrung from me already. My grief couldn’t overwhelm me anymore because it was a part of me forever, all the names and all the faces and all the boys that I hadn’t protected from Peter.

  All the boys, and one girl.

  Charlie and me, we helped Nod dig the hole and then I carefully laid her in there, and we covered her face with sand.

  After, we sat on the ground near her grave, and all of us kept one hand on the freshly turned sand, as if we could keep her with us as long as we stayed there. And if we stayed there watching long enough, maybe she would push her way out of the sand, fresh and new and young again, for we knew the island could do that if it wanted.

  I glanced down the beach where the rowboat was lodged so unexpectedly.

  I was so tired. I hadn’t slept properly for two days and my ankle hurt from just the short walk to the coconut tree. My head lolled toward my chest.

  I shook myself awake again. I couldn’t fall asleep. We needed to leave. Peter would be nursing his wound—the first he’d ever gotten, and the shock of it might keep him away longer than usual—and now was our chance. If we waited, then Peter would return, and he wouldn’t play with crocodiles this time. He’d stab Charlie and be done with it.

  Looking at Nod, I thought Peter would have no luck trying to kill him. Nod was tough as a boy, and now he was almost a man. He’d already managed to score off Peter by injuring him, and Peter hadn’t been able to take Nod down when they were the same size.

  I stared, startled, at Nod’s hands. I’d just remembered that Peter tried to cut Nod’s hand off, and the right wrist had been fiercely ruined the night before.

  Now all the skin there was whole and pink and fresh and new.

  He noticed me staring and turned his wrists this way and that in the sun.

  “It happened while I was growing,” he said. “It just healed up so fast I didn’t even notice it happening. I don’t think that would happen again, though.”

  “It was because you were growing so fast that all your body was making itself new,” I said, nodding in understanding. “Once you’re completely grown-up you’ll only get better the regular way.”

  Nod narrowed his eyes, like he was thinking something very hard. “Do you think I’ll stop growing up soon? Or will I just keep going until I’m old and grey and hobbled, and then I’ll die?”

  This hadn’t occurred to me at all. I supposed I’d thought we’d only grow to adulthood quickly and then stop. But Nod and I, we were older than even we knew. What if the island’s magic, once reversed, would unravel until it reached the end of the skein? What if Nod was right, and we would just get older and older and older every hour until we died?

  “No,” I said. I had no reason for saying that. It was only a feeling. I thought it would be enough for the island if we grew up, if we felt the creep of old age on our bones the usual way. “You and me aren’t even growing up at the same time. You’re already older than me, and I’ve been here longer.”

  “I think,” Nod said, “it’s because of what’s in our heart. My heart hasn’t been young since Fog died.”

  “It’s not such a wonderful thing, to be young,” I said. “It’s heartless, and selfish.”

  “But, oh, so free,” Nod said sadly. “So free when you have no worries or cares.”

  I smiled a little then. “I always had worries and cares, mostly so the rest of you wouldn’t.”

  I glanced again at the rowboat. “Do you think you could find the supplies I dropped last night?” I asked Nod.

  He followed my gaze. “I’ll help you to the boat; then I’ll go see if I can find them.”

  “If you can’t, then we should gather some coconuts and push off anyway. We can drink their water when we’re at sea.”

  I didn’t like to think how far away the nearest land might be, or what would happen to us if there was a storm on the ocean. But even an ocean storm seemed better than staying one more day on the island, trying not to be killed by a mad child.

  He helped me to my feet. My ankle was even more tender than it had been earlier. Nod put his shoulder under mine, acting like a crutch, so I could let the injured foot drag in the sand.

  Charlie soon grew impatient with my slow pace but I wouldn’t let him run ahead. I wasn’t letting him go more than an arm’s length from me ever again.

  If I did I was sure that Peter would swoop out of the sky and take him away and all I would be able to do was watch, for I couldn’t run and I couldn’t fly.

  We reached the rowboat, and we all stared inside it.

  The boat was all torn up, an enormous hole w
here the bottom of it used to be. It looked like it had been hacked apart with an axe.

  Peter had gotten there before us, again, just as he had with the tree.

  There was no way for us to leave the island.

  PART IV

  PETER & JAMIE

  chapter 18

  The only plan left to us was the original one Sally and I’d thought of—swimming out to the pirate ship and taking one of their rowboats.

  “Or,” Nod said, when I’d made this suggestion, “to join the pirates and let them take us on their ship away from here.”

  We were roasting fish over a small campfire on the beach. Charlie was asleep in the sand beside me, curled on his side.

  We’d decided to stay there until we knew what to do next. I was sure that the tree would be occupied by Peter, and I didn’t want to risk roaming over the island on my sore ankle looking for a better place to hide.

  There didn’t seem to be any better place to hide, anyway. Peter would always find us. As he told us over and over, it was his island. All its secrets belonged to him. I used to think they belonged to me too, but that wasn’t true anymore. There were so many things I didn’t know about the island, like fairies and flying and how the magic of it all stayed in your heart. Peter knew those things.

  I stared at Nod. “Join the pirates? After what they did to the boys? After what they did to Fog?”

  Nod’s face reddened. “I know what they did to him. To them. But Jamie—aren’t the pirates better than Peter? I’m grown-up now, and you’re nearly so. They can’t hold what Peter did against us. We’re not boys anymore.”

  “Charlie is,” I said.

  “We could look after Charlie,” Nod said. “You were always the best fighter, Jamie. You don’t think you will be now that you’re big?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  The truth of it was that I didn’t have much desire left to fight. I was always angry when I was a boy, even if I didn’t seem it, even when I seemed unruffled. Part of me was always silently raging, always looking for blood to spill. I never knew why I felt that way, but it made me merciless. It made it easy for me to cut and to hurt, to arrogantly slice pirates’ hands from their wrists so I could leave my mark.

  It made it easy for me to defeat all the other boys in Battle. It made it easy for me to smash Nip’s head open with a rock.

  I didn’t think I had that anymore. I wasn’t angry, not the way I used to be. There was only one person I wanted to kill now, and when he was dead I never wanted to lift a weapon again for the rest of my life.

  “Think on it,” Nod said. “About going to the pirates, I mean. We can’t run about dodging Peter forever, you know.”

  “I know,” I said.

  That night I dreamed, but it was a different dream from one I’d ever had before. I didn’t dream of my mother, of finding her in the darkness, of my own hands covered in her blood.

  • • •

  Fog and Crow and Sally were inside the rowboat, the one that had been destroyed by Peter. It was new and whole again, and they were just a few feet off the shore. The three of them sat in the boat and waved at me.

  “Don’t go,” I said, and splashed out into the water.

  The boat drifted on the current. I reached for the edge, wanting to climb in, but every time it was just out of reach.

  Fog and Crow and Sally watched me with curious eyes.

  “Wait!” I cried. “I want to come with you!”

  I followed the boat into the deeper water, and soon I was swimming instead of wading, and the boat was drifting away faster and faster.

  The sea rose up then, pushing me back, pushing me back to the shore no matter how hard I fought.

  The boat disappeared on the horizon.

  • • •

  I woke suddenly, my face wet, the fire burned down to nothing but coals. Nod and Charlie were asleep. I sat up and poked at the fire, feeling my skin prickle.

  Peter watched me from the sky.

  His eyes were shrouded by the dark, and his skin glowed silvery-white in the moonlight. He just floated there, bobbing up and down on the air, with his little fairy light darting around his head. I could see the tiny flutters of golden dust that drifted down on him.

  “Tink is very angry with you,” he said. “You burned all of her family when you burned the fields. Now she’s the only fairy left.”

  “I didn’t know they were there,” I said. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “It’s not my fault you never found them,” Peter said. “You shouldn’t have burned the fields in the first place. What did the Many-Eyed ever do to you?”

  “You shouldn’t have taken Charlie in the first place,” I said. “What did Charlie ever do to you?”

  “He took you from me,” Peter said. “And so did Sally. Now you won’t play with me ever again.”

  “So you thought it was fine to feed him to the Many-Eyed?” I asked.

  Peter shrugged. “It would have saved me a lot of trouble. Anyway, all this happened because you killed that Many-Eyed in the first place when you weren’t supposed to, the one at Bear Cave. That was your doing.”

  I shook my head at him. “This is all your doing. You brought the boys here. You didn’t care for them. You used them and then you tossed them in the rubbish pile and you expected me to feel the same.”

  “You should have!” Peter said. He’d been calm up until then but now I saw the spark of anger. “You were supposed to feel the same as me! All this place, all the fun, all the boys—it was only for you. I did everything for you.”

  I stood then, and wished like mad that I could grab him out of the sky. “Including kill my mother?”

  He gave me a sly look. “I didn’t kill your mother. You did. Don’t you remember? I found you standing over her and her throat was cut and there was blood all over your hands. You must not have liked your mother very much.”

  “I don’t think it was like that at all,” I said. “You killed her so that I would follow you here. You knew I would never leave her.”

  “That only shows how much I loved you, Jamie,” he said, changing tack. “I took your mother away because I never wanted anyone to love you as much as me.”

  “That’s not how you show someone love, Peter,” I said. “But you’re only a boy, and you’ll never understand.”

  Peter narrowed his eyes at me, and crossed his arms.

  “There’s only one way to settle this.”

  “Yes,” I said. “The way we always settle quarrels on the island.”

  “You know where to go, then,” he said. “I’ll be waiting.”

  He flew away then, and the night was blacker than it had been before.

  “You won’t be able to watch this time, Peter,” I said. “This time, you’ll have to fight me.”

  Nod sat up and stared at me as I poked the fire.

  “Are you going to fight Peter at Battle?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, wondering how much he’d heard.

  “Peter killed your mother?”

  He’d heard plenty, then.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I thought you didn’t remember her,” he said.

  “I didn’t, until yesterday.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I still don’t remember mine. I wish I did. I only remember Fog, and he’s starting to fade already. It must be nice to remember your mother. If she was nice.”

  “Mine was,” I said. “But Peter tangled me up and made me forget her.”

  “He must have made me do that too.”

  His expression was terribly sad, then, and terribly old.

  After a moment he shook his head, as if shaking away the memory, and said, “How will you get to the Battle place with your ankle like that?”

  I flexed it, and discovered that it had healed while I slept. I rub
bed my hand across my face. My beard was thicker, though not as full-grown as Nod’s.

  “It’s better now,” I said.

  He looked at my ankle and then my beard and nodded in understanding. “You grew a bit more.”

  “I want you to take Charlie and go across the island to Bear Cave and wait for me there,” I said.

  “I don’t think you should go to Battle with Peter on your own,” he said. “Someone should watch, and judge, like we’ve always done. He’s likely to cheat. You know that. He only cares about fair play when it’s not fair to him.”

  “I don’t want Charlie anywhere near Peter,” I said. “And we’re not going to leave him alone on the beach.”

  “And what happens if you don’t come back?” Nod said, his eyes bright.

  “You’ll know what that means,” I said. “If I’m not back in two days you follow your idea, and take Charlie and go to the pirates.”

  • • •

  When the sun rose I took up my dagger and a pirate sword, and I went toward the mountains where the Battle place was, and the other two went toward the forest and Bear Cave.

  I felt stronger and better than I had the day before, and my new body was a wonderful thing. I could run faster and climb easier. When I reached the meadow before the Battle place I wasn’t even winded.

  It wasn’t such a terrible thing, then, growing up. Peter was still a boy, and I was big and strong now, stronger than I’d ever been.

  I could hurt him with this body. I could kill him.

  Peter waited there for me, in the middle of the arena, his hands on his hips.

  “You took a very long time,” he said crossly, looking me up and down. “I imagine it’s because you’re old now.”

  “Not all of us can fly,” I said.

  I put the pirate sword down on the bench but carried my dagger. Peter already had his knife in his hand.

  “This Battle isn’t like the other Battles,” he said. “There are no rules.”