Tiger Lily (14 page)

Tik Tok smiled. “That’s true. But we are a small village. We have narrow tastes. There’s no telling who else in the world would think you’re beautiful.”

He rethreaded his needle, and they sat in comfortable silence for many minutes. Tiger Lily stared at Tik Tok’s clock, mesmerized by its methodical ticking.

“Speaking of your wedding, Pine Sap is planning to poison Giant,” he suddenly said, almost as an afterthought, like he was making a comment on the weather or what they were having for dinner. “You had better talk to him.”

“I will.” The punishment, of course, would be death. But it was clear neither of them truly feared Pine Sap would poison anybody. “He’s a fool.”

Tik Tok smiled again, indulgently this time. “Far less foolish than you. To not know what it’s like to care for a friend enough to behave foolishly …”

But Tiger Lily was distracted, not concentrating on anything he was saying. It seemed like things were coming down fast. Her restlessness for life had disappeared, and now it seemed life was piling up on itself: Marriage. Phillip. The lost boys. Peter. She wanted to follow the kiss away from the village to the burrow. She wanted to escape in the ship that Phillip said would come for him. In either dream, one thing stayed constant. She smiled at the thought of Giant standing on the shore, wifeless.

She hovered on these thoughts all the time. I hovered around lives I couldn’t have. And at night, I heard her whispering to the ceiling of her house.

“Forget him. Forget him.”

Y
ou may think my jealousy would have been enormous during those days after Peter gave Tiger Lily the smallest kiss on the neck. And you would be right. But these moments were swallowed by a bigger emotion, my tenderness for Tiger Lily, which had grown to take up most of the space in my body, without me knowing it. I can’t say I didn’t dream that this was a passing moment of infatuation, and that eventually Peter would notice and pick me—as impossible as that might have seemed considering my size. But I felt protective of Tiger Lily. I felt that just by watching over her, I could somehow keep her safe. And I wanted to keep Peter safe too. So I did the one thing I didn’t want to do. I flew to the cove to watch the pirates.

From above, the world looks orderly. That is one of the primary benefits of having wings. Being high shapes everything below into peaceful patterns. And even though you know there is chaos below, messiness everywhere, it is reassuring to sometimes think that it all eventually sorts itself out into something that looks elegant. My mother always told me I was too much like my father. That I had restless wings and that I was too nosy. But it wasn’t curiosity that sent me to the cove, and I didn’t think I’d like what I saw.

The pirates had chosen the cove partly because no one else had claimed it. It was located at the end of a partially bald tooth of land only slightly covered by scrubby trees, too swampy and mosquito-infested and ugly for any of the tribes to want it … though it did make a passable port. And it offered privacy. Here, the pirates could be as sloppy as they wanted. It had the smell of decay, discarded remnants of animals they’d eaten and worse. I surveyed it all with disgust, and held my breath until I got to the settlement itself, which was a smattering of roughly built log houses, and a central square for fires and meals.

I was surprised to see Hook with an emerald necklace on his head, the glittering piece of jewelry perched above his graying black hair. I recognized it from a pile of valuables in the stone house. I suspected that Hook wanted to see if any of the men would laugh, or ask him why he was wearing it. But the men just glanced at him sideways, nervously, and went about their work, which consisted mostly of drinking, sleeping, eating, and fighting.

“What do you think?” Hook asked, startling a man they called Spotty (because he was their default lookout) midstride. Spotty—thin, gap-toothed, and sunburned—looked visibly shaken.

“It’s very handsome,” Spotty finally said.

Hook pulled off the necklace, defeated. No one was ever honest with him. Smee appeared beside him with a plate of food in his hands, and suddenly he brightened. He motioned for Smee to sit.

“I don’t see you enough, Smee,” he said. “How
are
you?”

“Fine, sir.” Smee was dabbing pork grease off his mouth with a napkin. It was a relief for Hook to be around someone with manners.

Hook patted him on the back. “You enjoying your drink?” he asked. Smee nodded.

“Well, frankly, I’ve lapped better off the floor of a bar,” Smee said. “But I do appreciate it.” Hook laughed.

I didn’t like listening to Hook’s mind. It tasted bitter and sounded scratchy. But I gathered a few pieces from his memory anyway. I learned that he used to care about a lot of things. He’d been well educated, self-taught. He used to have a passion for art. The world he had been born into had been a green one—farms, villages, and fields—and the one he had left in London had been gray, full of factories and grime.

Neverland had called to him out of legends. A green place. A wild place. And most of all, a place where he’d never grow old. Most people in London hadn’t believed it existed, but some still insisted it did, and Hook had cast his lot with them.

To get to the island, he’d begged, stolen, and eventually murdered. He’d searched for years. He’d become the things he’d hated as a younger man. So imagine his surprise when he’d arrived at long last, and realized … it didn’t work. He was still growing older. The wilderness—so vibrant in his mind—was itchy and hot and deadly. And he, himself, had turned out to be more of a frayed, mediocre thief and a killer than an artist. Time had revealed to James Hook a different kind of James Hook from the one he had thought he was. And he had told all of this to Smee, over drinks, mostly failing to remember anything he’d said the next morning. And Smee had decided he was one of the most brokenhearted and miserable creatures he had ever known.

Down the hill, some of the men were getting drunk. Smee observed them dejectedly. A man named Alf was slurring endlessly about his father to anyone who would listen. Someone called Bill was trying to teach himself to read. Mullins and Noodler were bickering (Noodler, Smee remembered, still had a cut by his eye from the last time he and Mullins argued, with bottles). Cookson, addlebrained and in need of medical help, was looking for ants to eat, and Cecco was staring into a glass of cane liquor. Spotty was trying to play cards and having a difficult time because he was developing a cataract. And these were some of their strongest sailors. It was a pathetic group. Who else would have followed Hook all over the world’s great oceans to live on a hot, hostile island? Smee wondered. Who else but him?

And yet, Smee had learned Hook had high expectations for people, and for himself: efficiency, courage, honesty. It seemed they never lived up.

It was Peter who’d been the last straw, when Hook had finally let his disappointment swallow him completely. Peter’d shown up, and stolen one of the boys Hook had taken on from London as a swab. And then he’d lingered over the years, stealing more boys, but also, and worse, reminding Hook of what he should have been. Because Peter appeared to be stuck at sixteen.

“It’s the injustice I hate, more than anything,” he’d said to Smee one night, his eyes red and glassy, slurring his words, his head lolling as he tried to focus. He’d vomited, and then promptly passed out on a bush. “I hate that the world does not work out fair.”

Now, sober, Hook smiled at a man named Murphy as he passed, yelled, “You’re the picture of health, Murphy! How do you do it?” then turned to Smee. “Murphy’s an idiot, you know, classifiable. Anyway, I don’t get to see you enough, Smee. Did I say that already?”

“It’s nice to hear twice,” Smee said.

“You’ve been out scouting. Any sign of the boys?”

“No.” Smee shook his head. But there was something he wasn’t saying. And Hook could tell. The captain had passed his prime, but he was far from unintelligent. He could read faces. Even silences.

“You’re holding something back, Smee? Tell me. I won’t get angry.” But the truth was, Hook could get very angry. Just last week, he’d killed the cook, suddenly and without warning. He’d been sorry afterward, but by then it was too late.

“I’ve seen the girl,” Smee said. “She visits Peter, I am almost sure of it.” I shuddered, making the patch of lichen I’d been resting against crackle, but of course no one heard. This, I hadn’t known. I hadn’t listened in the right direction to Smee’s thoughts. But now I caught patches of the memory: Smee, hiding behind a ficus bush as Tiger Lily crossed into the forbidden territory. His fear at knowing if he followed her for more than a few steps, she would notice and most likely kill him. His frustration at having her so close and having no plan of how to obtain her.

“You’re being careful, so she doesn’t notice you?” Hook asked, then went on before waiting for an answer. “Sky Eaters don’t ask for explanations. If she feels endangered, they show up and break the truce. We get beheaded. That’s how it works.”

Smee nodded. “I’m careful. I think she’s keeping him secret.”

Hook studied him for a long time, and Smee began to prickle all over, nervously. I could see a shadow of awareness pass over Hook, that Smee was keeping a secret too.

“You aren’t interested in the girl still, are you, Smee?” Hook asked. Smee shook his head furiously.

“I’m not a fool,” he asserted. I was the only one who knew for sure that he was lying. Hook sank back, and seemed to relax.

“I don’t care if the boy is drowned, stabbed, or smothered … as long as he is gone.” He ran his hands through his graying hair. “Keep watching her.”

Smee dared to say it. “Of course, sir.”

T
iger Lily didn’t forget Peter. And I didn’t forget what I’d heard among the pirates. But how could I tell her?

I reassured myself that her instincts were sharp, and that the likes of Smee would never be a match for her. Really, this was true. But it didn’t stop a worry that threaded through me sometimes, that she or Peter would get themselves hurt. I hoped she’d spend more time with Pine Sap, around whom I always felt she was safe, even with his weaknesses. But the two barely crossed paths except at meals, when Tiger Lily was far away and Pine Sap clearly sensed his presence wasn’t needed or cared for.

It took her two weeks to get back to the burrow. When she arrived, long after dark, a warm dot of light was bursting through the cracks in the ground, welcoming her. We descended down the passage, and found the boys in the den, playing a game of dice. Peter stood at the edge of the room with a saw, bent over a giant twisted root.

“He’s building an addition,” Slightly said.

Peter looked over his shoulder at her. He straightened up. “Welcome back,” he said politely. He stepped forward and shook her hand, but he didn’t look her in the eyes. And then, coolly, he turned back to what he was doing.