Peter and the Starcatchers (36 page)

“Wh…who
are
you?” he said.

The mermaid did not answer, but blinked and looked at Peter, as if seeing him for the first time.

Those eyes!

She drew a sharp breath, her expression suddenly fearful.

“It’s okay,” said Peter, softly, kneeling again. “I won’t hurt you.”

The mermaid’s expression remained wary, but her large eyes closed again. Peter saw she was weakening rapidly as her blood, dark in the moonlight, continued to ooze onto the sand.

“I’m going to put a bandage on you,” Peter said, untucking his shirt. “You’l be fine.”

But she didn’t seem to hear him; her head had slumped sideways now, and the life seemed to be slowly draining from her face. Peter felt certain it was too late for a bandage to do much good, but, not knowing what else to do, he began to pul his shirt over his head, only to get it tangled in…

The locket.

Peter slipped it off his neck and looked at it. He’d meant to give it back to Mol y, but then Ammm had appeared, and in the excitement he’d forgotten. He had no idea how much, if any, starstuff was left in it. If there was any, it likely wasn’t much.

Should I save it? I might need it, against the pirates. Molly might need it….

The mermaid moaned again, a weak sound. A dying sound. Peter looked at her face, then at the locket, then down the stil -empty beach toward the rocky point.

“I’m sorry, Mol y.” He whispered the apology and then snapped open the locket.

Immediately a sphere of golden light blinded him; first his hands, then the rest of his body, experienced the now-familiar warmth and feeling of wel -being. Peter wanted to luxuriate in that feeling, but forced himself to invert the locket and pour its contents onto the mermaid’s wounded forehead. The warmth quickly drained out of him. The glow spread over the girl’s body, then disappeared, like water absorbed by a sponge.

It’s working….
In a moment, the glow was gone.

Peter picked up the locket; it stil hung open, but was now just lifeless metal. He snapped it shut, and put it back around his neck. He found himself aware of the silence; the splashing and shouting from down the beach had stopped. He started to rise to have a look, when he felt a hand grip his forearm.

Startled, he whirled and saw that the mermaid was sitting up, her eyes open and focused on Peter. Her wound was gone.

“Are you…al right?” Peter asked.

The girl said nothing, but reached her hand out and gently traced her fingers along the side of Peter’s face. He blushed. She smiled, a stunningly beautiful smile.

As they stared at each other, Peter heard a splash a few yards offshore and, looking up, saw not one…but two…no
three
more mermaids. Waist high in the shal ow water, they hissed at him and dragged themselves forward. Peter tried to scramble away, but the blond mermaid made an odd, deep-throated sound, and they stopped their advance. An exchange of strange sounds fol owed. The three other mermaids smiled at Peter, who blushed even more.

This pleasant scene was interrupted by the sudden surfacing of yet another mermaid, who, with barely a glance at Peter, emitted a rapid series of throaty sounds that clearly excited and alarmed the three others. They whirled and, with a flash of their green tails, were gone, underwater. The mermaid whom Peter had rescued hesitated only a moment longer, giving Peter’s arm one final squeeze. She offered another radiant smile, slid graceful y forward into the water, and then she, too, was gone.

Seconds later, the whole group of mermaids surfaced twenty yards to Peter’s left, making sounds, gesticulating excitedly to one another. Peter stood on his tiptoes but couldn’t see. He ran up the beach, and looked back. The mermaids were trying to work their way through the shal ows to a dark form lying, wave-lapped, at the water’s edge.

Peter blinked, not believing his luck.

The trunk. Unguarded.

Racing through the shal ow water, he reached it in seconds. There was no question; even in the bril iant moonlight, he could see the glow through the cracks; the moment his hand touched the rough wood, he felt the familiar warmth.

His attention was drawn away by urgent sounds out in the lagoon. The mermaids, struggling frantical y to make their way to him, were waving their arms, and flopping their now-useless tails through the shal ow water. The blond mermaid he’d saved was in front. Her eyes met his as she made a series of urgent, but incomprehensible sounds, clearly trying to tel him something.

“What is it?” cal ed Peter. “Wh
UNNNH
.”

The clublike wooden handle of Little Richard’s whip, two feet of two-inch-diameter oak, slammed into Peter’s skul from behind. Peter instantly crumpled to the shal ow water, unable to break his fal , and lay facedown, motionless. The mermaids, hissing, lunged forward with teeth bared, but were at a hopeless disadvantage in the shal ow water, and scurried back as the whip cracked out at them.

“Forget them,” said Slank. “They can’t reach us here. Get the trunk. We’re going back to the longboat.”

“But if we’re in the boat, those things’l swamp us again,” said Little Richard, gesturing at mermaids.

“Not this time,” said Slank. “With what’s in the trunk, we can leave the way we come in, flying over them she-devils.” He laughed at the mermaids, who were highly agitated; he noticed that one of them, the blond one, was, despite the risk of the whip, crawling toward Peter, who had not moved.

“Oh, you fancy this lad, do you?” he asked. “You’re welcome to him.” With his right foot, he gave Peter’s motionless form, stil facedown, a shove toward the deeper water.

“Get the trunk,” said Slank to Little Richard, “and let’s get off this miserable island.”

Little Richard hoisted the trunk to his shoulder, then glanced down at Peter. “Shouldn’t we turn the boy over?” he cal ed to Slank. “If we leave him like that, he’l surely drown.”

“Oh, yes,” said Slank, not looking back. “He surely wil .”

“C
OME ON,” CALLED MOLLY TO THE OTHERS, for what felt to her like the hundredth time. “Can’t you go
any
faster?” They were picking their way with agonizing slowness along the rocky, wave-lashed point, trying to keep from fal ing on the slippery, irregular, razor-sharp coral, their legs now covered with scrapes and bleeding cuts.

Right behind Mol y, as he had been from the start, walked James, steady James. But the others lagged at a considerable distance—Prentiss and Thomas, both miserable but gamely struggling forward, and Alf, far to the rear, now essential y carrying Tubby Ted. Mol y had been tempted more than once to leave them behind, but could not bring herself to abandon them. Even with the big sailor to look after them, this strange and scary island required everyone to stick together.

Peter should never have gone off on his own….

She looked ahead and to the right, her eyes searching just beyond the breakers until she caught sight of Ammm, his snout appearing almost white in the moonlight, chittering at her to come, come, come. Peter had been right: Ammm had led them around the point only because he could not lead them by land. The destination was clearly the broad lagoon that now came into view. Mol y assumed this meant that Peter was ahead of them, somewhere on the beach by now. She hoped that for once he would show some patience, and wait for her as planned.

At last, the terrain improved, the unforgiving lava giving way to rock and sand. Mol y scanned the broad, sweeping curve of beach, but saw no sign of Peter.

Where are you?
she wondered.

She glanced back at the others.

“Come
on,
” she cal ed out, for what felt like the hundred-and-first time. Then, urged on by the chittering Ammm, she began trotting along the hard-packed sand, stil searching through the night for Peter.

I hope you haven’t gotten yourself into trouble.

P
ETER HAD NEVER KISSED A GIRL. He had never kissed anybody, at least not technicaly. Not that he remembered. He did have a memory, dim and dreamlike, of
being
kissed, but that was by a grown-up, a lady. When he recal ed this memory, which he sometimes did as he was fal ing off to sleep, he thought that perhaps the lady might have been his mother. He tried to see her face, but the memory wouldn’t al ow it. It felt more like a shadow, old and faded by the light. But he had never kissed a girl. He’d read of it, this girl-kissing; he had heard the older boys at St. Norbert’s snicker about it. For most of his life Peter had not understood why anyone, girl or boy, would want to do such an unappetizing thing as put their mouth together with someone else’s. Lately, though, since he’d met Mol y, the idea seemed less and less repulsive, and more and more intriguing. But stil , he had never done it; had never come close.

So he was sure that he was dreaming now, in this strange and unreal moment, in this weightless watery tumble, in this swirl of light, in this burble of strange noises. He must be dreaming, because he was in the arms of a girl, a very beautiful girl, with blond hair and green eyes—
Molly has green eyes
—and this beautiful girl was holding him, and her mouth was touching his mouth, and—the strangest thing—
her breath was becoming Peter’s breath.

The strangest thing. A dream, certainly. But it was a pleasant dream, and Peter decided the best thing to do was simply let go and enjoy it.

SOMETHING

S
LANK LOOKED BACK AT LlTTLE RlCHARD, expecting to see him complaining under the weight of the trunk. Instead, the big man had a wide grin on his face, and his strides were enormous—

six or eight feet at a step—as if…

“Are you al right?” Slank said.

“Never better!” said Little Richard, taking a step that easily carried him fifteen feet before he drifted to a gentle landing.

That did it. Slank, trotting alongside, grabbed Little Richard’s shirt to prevent him from flying away. With the contact, Slank’s arm immediately felt warm, a little ticklish.

“I’m
fine,
real y!” Little Richard said. “Perfect!”