Lost Boy Page 8

  “Okay, Jamie,” Charlie said, his voice very small. “I’ll mind you. I’ll be good.”

  I smiled at him, and rumpled his duckling-fuzz hair, and he smiled at me in return.

  “Stay with Del,” I said. “Don’t wander off on your own.”

  “I won’t,” he said, and there was the shadow of a sneaking, peeking crocodile on his face.

  I went to have a word with Del. “Keep Charlie close to you.”

  He was the only one of the boys who were left that I could trust completely to follow his task and not get distracted like a magpie.

  Del coughed, a cough that started off low and ended with him spitting out a great gob of blood on the cave floor. His cheekbones were sharp enough to slice you open but his eyes were steady as he said, “I will.”

  “Nip’s got it in for Charlie and for you,” I said. “I’ll be back as quick as I can, but watch yourself until I am.”

  “I’m not afraid of Nip,” Del said, his fingers wrapped tight around the pirate’s sword. “But come back soon, anyway, Jamie.”

  Del went to Charlie, who stood exactly where I’d left him, watching me. Del took Charlie’s hand and then called to the other boys to follow as he led them back down the path.

  Nod and Fog, who were supposed to be leading the group at Peter’s decree, were squabbling over something in the back of the cave.

  Charlie glanced back at me as Del led him away, and I felt a stab of fear. He was so little, so vulnerable, and so much could happen while I was gone. I was the only one who could really look after him properly.

  And we never should have taken him in the first place. That was what ate at me, really. Charlie wasn’t one of our boys. He wasn’t lost, not in the way that Peter preferred. He had a family.

  That, I couldn’t solve. Once you came to the island you could not leave—that was one of Peter’s most fixed rules. If you weren’t happy, then you could go to the pirates or feed yourself to the Many-Eyed or toss yourself into the mermaid lagoon and drown, but you could never go back to the Other Place.

  So I went to Nod and Fog, because I would need them to keep Del and Charlie and the others safe from that look in Nip’s eye, the one that said he was only waiting for his chance.

  The twins hadn’t noticed the others departing. They were arguing (I really did not care to know about what), and while they hadn’t gotten to the point of rolling on the ground punching each other, experience told me this was in the offing.

  Before they could get started I smacked them both in the back of the head. They looked up at me with innocent eyes.

  “We weren’t doing anything,” Nod said.

  “Yes, we were. He took . . .” Fog started, but I cut him off.

  “Listen to me,” I said, and lowered my voice though no one was about. Peter could be outside, lurking, listening. “What do you think of that new boy, Nip?”

  “Don’t like him,” Fog said immediately.

  “He’s a bully,” Nod agreed. “And he wants a fight with you, Jamie. We all can tell. Do you want me to put biting bugs in his clothes? I can do that. He’ll go mad from the itching.”

  “Never mind that,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. It’s Del and Charlie I’m worried about.”

  “Charlie’s never done nothing to him,” Nod said. “But Del got that Nip good.”

  “He was roaring around just like a big old bear when Del threw the fire in his eyes,” Fog said.

  He jumped to his feet and started on a credible imitation of Nip staggering around with coals in his eyes.

  This was precisely why I couldn’t leave Charlie alone with these two. They went off on their own adventures and forgot everything around them.

  “Stop,” I said.

  Fog quit his antics and Nod stopped laughing and sat up straight.

  “I want you to keep an eye on Nip,” I said.

  This was better than asking them to watch Charlie, which they were unlikely to do well. They’d forget about him in an instant. But if they thought there was a chance they might get to tease Nip or harry him or fight him, they wouldn’t forget.

  “If he tries for Del or Charlie, you stop him.”

  “How do you want us to stop him, Jamie?” Nod asked.

  I knew what he was asking. Did I want them to hurt Nip or kill him? If they killed Nip outside of Battle, then Peter would come down on them—might even try to exile them, despite all the time they’d been on the island. I’d never let it come to that, of course. I’d never let them take a punishment meant for me.

  Besides, if someone was going to kill Nip, then I wanted to do the deed myself. Nip, I felt, had brought something rotten to the island. He was a worm inside the sweet fruit, and when you found a worm you tossed it to the ground and stomped on it.

  “Don’t make it forever,” I said. “But I don’t mind if you bloody him while you’re at it.”

  They grinned at each other, already planning their sport.

  “Now get on,” I said. “The rest of the boys are already gone.”

  “We’ll catch up to them faster than a mermaid can flip her tail,” Fog said.

  “Don’t let Nip do anything to Charlie,” I warned. “Or there’s always Battle.”

  The twins never fought me at Battle. Never. It had likely contributed to their long life on the island.

  The same fear blazed up in two identical sets of eyes. I knew they would mind me, and keep a sharp watch on Nip. They collected their things and chased out after the others.

  The bonfire had burned down to nothing but glowing coals, but a few pieces along the edge of the pit were unburned at one end and burning on the other. They’d serve my purpose.

  The first seeking fingers of dawn were stretching over the plains when I rounded the cave wall. Peter was perched on the little rock shelf, whittling at a piece of wood.

  The shape of his creation was just forming—a round ball at the top that spread down into a kind of bell shape. It looked like a child’s toy—a doll, perhaps.

  We didn’t have any toys on the island, for all that we were a band of boys. Despite his fear of growing up, Peter likewise disdained child’s toys, which were from the country of babies. Our toys were knife and sword and stick and rock, the kind of playthings that bit.

  I stopped and narrowed my eyes in suspicion. Was he planning some trick on Charlie?

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Peter tucked it away and resheathed the knife before I could get a good look at it.

  “Nothing really,” he said easily, and his too-unconcerned manner set the hair on the back of my neck rising. Before I could say anything he spoke again. “Didn’t you want to burn that mess and lay a false trail? Are you going to wait until the whole tribe of Many-Eyed are climbing the cliff in search of it?”

  Of course he was right, and I did want to return to the others. But he was hiding something. He had that look.

  The sun was halfway to its zenith before I got the Many-Eyed burning well. It’s not as easy as you’d think, burning a dead creature. Flesh and skin want to cook and crisp and char rather than ignite. If you want to get a body burning, you’ve got to build up the fire around it good and hot and then keep watching it to make sure it stays aflame. Once that fire is hot enough, though, the body will burn right down to the bones.

  Peter, naturally, watched me running to and fro while he continued to whittle at his piece of wood. Each time I passed him I tried to get a good look at it, but he would cover it with his hand or tuck it away so I couldn’t.

  As soon as I realized this game was amusing him, I stopped trying to sneak a peek. Thereafter both he and I would feign indifference when I passed, though Peter looked sulky when I stopped playing.

  An enormous column of black smoke rose in the sky. I wondered if the pirates would see it and come investigate.

 
; They never strayed too far from the camp, at least as much as we could tell—and certainly never as far as the mountains. But perhaps the smoke would draw them. If it did, all the better. They would lie in their own scent trail and do half my work for me.

  “Peter,” I said, wiping my forehead with my arm. I’d taken off my red coat and laid it to one side, for the work was hot and we were exposed on the rock shelf.

  He didn’t respond, seemingly absorbed in the whittling, but I knew Peter. His hands might be busy but he watched me intently from under his eyelashes.

  “Peter,” I said again, sharply so he would know I was on to him.

  “Mmm?” His knife flashed in the sunlight, winking silver.

  “What if you went ahead of me to the pirate camp, and drew some of them out along the trail?”

  Peter looked up then and frowned. “They never leave their camp, because that Captain is a cowardly codfish. Anyway, even if I could get them out, I wouldn’t want them so close to the forest. They might get ideas about where our tree is.”

  “Not likely,” I said. “You’ve said yourself that this is the dumbest lot that’s been at the camp in many a year. Besides, we don’t want them to come all the way to the cave. I just want them to follow you partway, to make a scent trail for the Many-Eyed.”

  Peter’s eyes gleamed as he understood. “And then their scent trail will meet your blood trail, and when they go back to camp they’ll take some of the blood with them.”

  I nodded.

  “What fun!” he said, tucking his knife and his whittling project in the pouch he wore at his belt. Then he scowled at me. “But you might have thought of this before, so I wouldn’t be so bored watching you burn this thing.”

  Sometimes I thought I would bite my tongue bloody not saying the things that Peter needed to hear. Needed to hear, but wouldn’t hear, so I saved my breath and didn’t point out that he might have helped.

  “I’ll bring them out to the marking rock,” Peter said. He was already off the rock shelf and bounding toward the path that led down the other side of the cliffs, the side the Many-Eyed had climbed up in the first place.

  The marking rock was a boulder that was taller than me and Peter stacked on top of each other. It was on the path that ran alongside the plains of the Many-Eyed, and it was close enough to the pirate camp that Peter might be able to lure them there.

  “How will you get them out of the camp?” I shouted after him.

  His voice floated up from the path, echoing off the rock, full of mischief. “Oh, I’ll find a way!”

  And then I was alone, and glad that he was gone. I’d never been glad at Peter’s absence before, and something inside me seemed to shift. My legs hurt like fire for a minute, and then it was over, and I distinctly felt that I was taller than I’d been a moment before.

  chapter 6

  I wondered whether Peter would notice. I wondered whether I should worry about growing up. I hadn’t grown for such a long time, and never in such a dramatic way. It was more a creeping sort of growing, usually, the kind you didn’t realize had happened until one day you noticed Peter’s eyes were below yours and they didn’t use to be.

  Then I realized I hadn’t time to worry about getting taller, for Peter could run fast and light when he was on his own and if I didn’t hurry, the trail wouldn’t be laid in when he got to the marking rock.

  I didn’t want to leave Harry in the cave, nor the remains of the deer, both of which would attract bears or big cats. Though I was loath to put Harry in the fire with the thing that had killed him, I knew I must. There wasn’t time for burying, and burning was better than being picked over by whatever creature sniffed out the rotting meat that used to be a boy.

  I dragged Harry over to the bonfire of the Many-Eyed and heaved him atop the monster’s corpse, getting a mouthful of smoke for my trouble. Coughing and pounding my chest, I backed away from the fire and went back for the charred remains of the deer.

  Harry and the deer and the Many-Eyed burned. I collected blood in a coconut half shell that I carried in my coat pocket for cupping water from streams, so I wouldn’t have to touch the blood and possibly be burned. There were pools of it that had splashed around the Many-Eyed in its death throes. Then I left Bear Cave and the rock shelf behind, following the path Peter had taken.

  The mark of his foot was barely visible in the dirt track and sometimes not present at all for several steps, as if he’d taken a huge leap and landed soft as down floating on the wind. I ran quickly, and though I was not as light as Peter, I could travel nearly as fast.

  With a troop of boys crossing to the pirate camp, this path would take hours to traverse, but the sun was just past overhead by the time I reached the path that bordered the foothills on one side and the plains of the Many-Eyed on the other. Several times I marveled that the juvenile Many-Eyed had made it to Bear Cave in the first place. The trail was narrow in several spots, occasionally bordered on both sides by sheer faces of rock. How the creature had managed to make it through and sniff us out at the cave was a wonder.

  I balanced the coconut shell in my hand and dropped no blood until I reached the plains. It was important that the other Many-Eyed not consider the hill path at all, but think that the pirates had killed their young here on the border and dragged it back to the camp.

  This part of the trail was the most dangerous, for while almost all Many-Eyed stayed in the central plains, there was always a chance of coming upon a soldier walking near the edge of their territory. They might even be looking for the one that was now dead and burning in the distance.

  The smoke was barely visible above the foothills from here, but it would be clearer from other parts of the island. It might make the pirates curious, and help Peter in his task.

  I listened, hearing nothing but the sounds of the wind, the cries of the birds, and the buzzing of the Many-Eyed ever present but distant, as it should be. When they gathered together in any group larger than two, they would naturally make this noise—a steady kind of buzz that seemed incongruous with their fangs. Still, it was useful as it kept us from being overwhelmed by their numbers. The buzzing that preceded them made it easy to avoid a large pack.

  The distance of the noise forced me to wonder if I’d been overcautious about the juvenile in the first place. Perhaps with so many babies (and they did have so many—I’d snuck close to their camp once to get an idea of their numbers and later wished I hadn’t) one missing young was no nevermind to them.

  Still, it didn’t pay to take risks with the boys’ lives, especially if this business of a treaty was true. I would follow through with the original plan.

  I splashed some blood along the trail, then deliberately ran to and fro, dragging my heels in the dirt and making a lot of footmarks. I pulled out handfuls of tall yellow plains grass so it would appear to the pirates or the Many-Eyed that there was some kind of struggle. It wasn’t certain how much the Many-Eyed would understand of my charade, but they were smarter than they appeared; that, I knew. They weren’t just dumb animals.

  Proceeding with caution, I followed the path and kept my ears open for sounds of the Many-Eyed or the pirates that Peter was to entice out of camp. I splashed more blood here and there and scratched up the ground in different places.

  The blood was not as skin-burningly potent as it had been coursing fresh from the Many-Eyed, but it hissed a little when it touched a rock or leaves or dirt, and sometimes a small curl of steam emitted from a tiny droplet.

  Even though I was listening close, I didn’t hear Peter’s approach. I crouched just inside the long grass across from the marking rock, waiting for him. The last of the Many-Eyed’s blood was splashed at the foot of it.

  One moment I was alone and the next Peter appeared, seemingly out of nothing. He saw the blood around the rock and turned on the spot, looking for me.

  “Here, Peter,” I whispered, parting t
he grass so he could see my eyes.

  He dashed in beside me, his face wilder and fiercer and happier than I’d seen it in a long while.

  “Are they coming?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Peter said, and it seemed he was resisting the urge to clap and scream with joy.

  “What did you do?”

  “Set the camp on fire!” And then he did chortle, delighted with himself and unable to hide it.

  “Set the . . .” I started; then my voice trailed away.

  I hadn’t noticed the smell of smoke on him at first for my nose was full of the reek of burning bodies, but I caught it now.

  “You burned their camp down.”

  Peter caught the disapproving tone. “What’s the matter? You don’t think it was a wonderful notion? It got that fat old Captain good and riled, all right. He’s waddling after me now, waving his sword and cursing about what he’s going to do when he catches me. Which he never will, of course. He looks just like a plump never-bird egg, rolling along.”

  He laughed again, and my frown deepened, which made Peter’s laugh fade away.

  “Come, now, Jamie, how is burning their camp any worse than stealing from them or killing them?”

  “Well . . . it’s not fair play, is it?” I said slowly.

  I wasn’t sure if I could explain my feelings, even to myself. Yes, we and the pirates fought and killed each other. But that was man-to-man, as it were. We faced one another and we all had a fair shot.

  Burning the camp—it was sneaky, somehow sneakier than a little theft. And it was cruel. Peter hadn’t just taken their jewels or their swords—he’d taken their home.

  The pirates would have a much greater motivation to leave the seaside and hunt us across the island if their camp was gone.

  Peter’s actions put us all in danger—much more so, I thought, than anything I might have done to anger the Many-Eyed.

  I was about to tell him all this when he clamped his hand over my mouth. “They’re coming,” he whispered.