Tiger Lily (18 page)

Peter was working on a wooden flute for Tootles one night in the burrow. He was increasingly frustrated with the wood in his hands. It was obvious he wanted to finish it, but he hated sitting still. And the work looked painstaking.

“He won’t finish it,” Slightly whispered to her. “He never finishes anything.” He shook his head, long-suffering and annoyed. “Trust me.
Anything
.”

I was carrying different tools to Peter, hoping they might help. Every once in a while he’d look up and say, “Thanks, Tink,” focusing on me for a joyful moment. I treasured these seconds when Peter acknowledged me, and I tried to seek out other things he might need or want, in order to get more of his momentary glances.

“Did you notice life has gotten better?” Tootles asked, out loud, to anyone.

“It’s Tiger Lily,” Slightly said, as if Tootles was being an idiot. They didn’t say anything about me, but I decided to believe they meant both of us. “Life’s better with girls. Boys need girls. That’s why things are so boring in the burrow.”

“You should move in with us,” Nibs said to Tiger Lily.

Tootles snaked his hand behind her elbow and leaned against her, innocently and thoughtlessly, but when Peter’s eyes darted to his fingers, Tootles let go, then just patted her on the shoulder.

“I want to see buildings sometimes,” Curly said, out of the blue.

“I dream of living in a house. And girls,” Slightly said, then added solemnly, “and also … did I mention girls?”

“Shut up.” Peter stood suddenly; let out a loud, angry sigh; and stalked off. As predicted, he left the unfinished flute behind.

Then he came back, shoulders stooping. “I’m sorry,” he said, to the ground. Then walked out again.

“It must be you,” Nibs whispered to Tiger Lily, who sat erect against the burrow wall, uncomfortable. “He never comes back and apologizes.”

Tootles picked up the pieces of his abandoned flute.

One morning at home, Tik Tok had Tiger Lily try on her wedding dress. He seemed disappointed that it fit so well. Despite their expectations, it became her. Its simplicity and sleekness were subtle enough to highlight her strong, high cheeks, the shine of her hair. It was a dress made by someone who knew her. It was her freedom and her silence sewn into a dress.

She hated what it meant. But she loved the dress because it was from Tik Tok’s hands and because it made her feel like herself. She took it off.

At night, Tiger Lily tossed and turned, feeling like Peter was beside her all the time.

P
hillip surrounded the villagers with stories, and whether they were make-believe or not, the people of the village wanted them to be true, because they were hungry for someone to tell them the way things were outside. He enraptured them with talk of England, and mapping the world, but mostly what they wanted to hear about was heaven, and they argued late into the night with each other about what it looked like and what and who was there. They began saying their prayers. I could hear them at it, their thoughts lifting up above the rooftops, promising God they loved him best, which Phillip said was important, though they muttered, in whispers so that God wouldn’t hear, that it seemed God must be unsure of himself to need so much reassurance. Still, Phillip said God could see them all the time, so they were careful.

Almost no villager, in those days, liked to start their day without going to listen to Phillip tell his stories after breakfast. The women came and embroidered and shucked corn as he talked, and the men stood respectfully and absorbed his words before going off to hunt. Pine Sap was one of the exceptions. He came to listen once, early on, and then chose to go into the woods instead whenever Phillip was giving his talks.

“You see, your island is so isolated, things have come to live here that don’t live anywhere else,” he explained. He told them about the animals in England. But mostly he talked about things of the spirit.

He said God meant things. So when a baby was lost in childbirth, he said God had meant it. To the villagers, this seemed to indicate that God had meant for Aunt Fire to die too. So everyone began to fear God was a vindictive spirit, but Phillip said that wasn’t correct, that he was protecting everyone.

“It’s all part of a plan,” he said, and smiled. “Our reward isn’t here on earth. Earth barely matters. It’s just practice. This life is only a passing place, a stopping point, on our journey.”

Tiger Lily thought about Peter and his wild ways and wondered if he ever suspected he was just inhabiting a passing place, and whether those ways would keep him from going to heaven. Though even with all the danger that seemed to surround him, it was impossible to think Peter could ever die. She shivered at the idea.

There were a few things that Phillip said God didn’t like. He didn’t like naked women running around in public. He didn’t like people thinking about other gods. And he didn’t like people loving objects. So the Sky Eaters packed up their beloved carvings and engraved rocks and trundled them off to bury them so they could come back and find them later should their entry to heaven be assured. God didn’t like that Tik Tok wore women’s clothes, either, though Phillip hadn’t said this. Still, everyone began to guess.

Phillip scratched his bald head and smiled often at these gatherings. His baldness glinted in the sun. Tiger Lily wondered that God didn’t whisper to him about her visits to Peter, because he seemed to talk to God often, and to know exactly what God thought and wanted, whereas the villagers never knew what the gods wanted at all, though they had listened and listened and still found that the gods’ wills were always a mystery.

Like Pine Sap, Tik Tok did not stay for these talks. He escaped to the nearby meadows to gather roots. One afternoon, Tiger Lily went to help him. She had missed the last two times he’d gone. Every time she looked up, he was watching her, and then he quickly looked down at his work again.

“Tik Tok, why don’t you listen to the stories?” she asked.

Tik Tok leaned back on his haunches, and thought for a moment. “Everyone wants to be sure, but I never am. I’d rather sit here and not know things. It’s bad of me, I know.” He gave her a conspiratorial wink. Tik Tok had limitless patience, but he was a poor listener when he didn’t like what he was listening to.

They stopped to eat two strips of deer meat he had brought in his sack. He’d misplaced the bigger sack in which he’d packed a fuller meal.

“You look happy,” he said suddenly, and met her gaze. She quickly looked down at the roots again, sorting them into her leather waist pouches. “But tired.”

Her late nights with the boys, and her duties during the day, were taking their toll. She walked through the village oblivious and even clumsy. She’d dropped a wooden bowl on Red Leaf’s head the previous morning. She had nicked Giant while cutting his hair, and infuriated him to the point where he struck her in the face. Moon Eye had stood watching like a statue, and then insisted on taking the knife up instead, because she said she had more sure hands, even though they’d trembled the whole time.

“For someone who is marrying someone she hates, you look very alive.”

She silently chewed her food. Tik Tok studied her—but his gaze was so open that it didn’t make her uncomfortable.

“Pine Sap is a nice boy, and he loves you, but remember, you are engaged to someone else.”

Tiger Lily looked up, shocked. “Pine Sap?” She watched the expectation on Tik Tok’s face. “I wouldn’t think of it. And he wouldn’t think of me.”

Tik Tok stared at her a long time, then shook his head, as if to himself. He allowed himself to be befuddled for a few moments, and then he gathered himself and spoke.

“Whatever you’re doing, whatever is making you so happy, I’m glad about it. But if it’s something that can’t fit with your marriage, if you’re not honoring yourself and us, you’ll have to give it up. What are we if we aren’t people who keep our promises? We’re nothing. We’re like bugs,” he said, pointing to an ant on a piece of bark, scurrying along mindlessly.

Tiger Lily looked down at her dirty hands. Her fingers trembled, just slightly, but enough for a loving, observant man like Tik Tok to see.

“Oh, my little beast, I’m sorry.” He suddenly looked uncertain. “I trust you. I want you to be happy. Maybe I don’t know what I’m saying. Maybe I’m not so wise.”

I’ll tell you a terrible secret. I was down at the water washing my wings that evening when I saw two figures, just as the sun was going down. Moon Eye, going down to bathe when she thought she would be unwatched, and Giant, a moment later. She struggled, but this time she didn’t get away.

After he was gone, she dipped herself in the river—a shivering, frail, skinny creature—resolved to hide better, to stay farther away. But over the next weeks, there was nowhere he wouldn’t find her.

She never told.

S
ometimes Peter and Tiger Lily fought. A fight between them looked like this: Peter, head swirling with anger, waving his arms around and expressing five thoughts at once about why she was wrong and he was right; Tiger Lily, curling up inside like a rock, stone-faced, listening but at the same time refusing to hear. She hated his need to always win and he hated her coldness during their arguments. They fought about the exact color of the sky and which path they should take on a hunt. They disagreed passionately about whose fish was the best tasting. They could work up extreme hatred for each other at a moment’s notice. “I’m nothing to you, am I?” Peter said once in a particularly intense argument about where to find wild turnips. To these kinds of accusations, Tiger Lily would reply that he was trying to make her into his little chicken, and that she would never be anyone’s “little obedient chicken”—as if there were such a thing as an obedient chicken. The lost boys were befuddled by these fights, but came to roll their eyes and sigh and make themselves disappear at the appropriate time. I, too, learned to ignore them, even when one of them stalked off in the opposite direction of the other one and headed for home. When they made up, it was as if nothing had happened at all. In fact, it was like they were stuck even closer together, like they had gotten even more tangled in each other.

One night, after making up, they found themselves across the lagoon, on a thin slip of ground between a bubbling hot spring and the lagoon’s flat water, lying on their bellies, staring at their reflections in the water. Throwing rocks onto lily pads.

Steam rose up and coated their faces with moisture. Phosphorescents floated under the water. I sat on a dead leaf and relaxed, keeping an ear to the night noises.

The heat of the water made Tiger Lily feel like the night air was cool. A breeze gave them goose bumps. They could see the stars above, between the branches of some thin trees. Here, Tiger Lily felt for the moment safe, like nothing could ever touch her or them. But Peter spoke of the pirates.