Tiger Lily (19 page)

“They’ve been coming too close to the burrow,” he explained. “Just one set of footprints. We’ve never seen them get so close before. They’ve tracked us as far as the edge of the glade. They can’t know where we are. But we want to know what they’re up to. Don’t worry. I’m not scared of them.”

It comforted me that he had noticed, at least, that someone had been nearby. But he didn’t seem concerned. He was more preoccupied with Tiger Lily.

Peter liked to look over every part of her: her wrists, the strands of her hair, her ears, the tiny creases in her lips. And she was no better. She memorized the tiny constellation of freckles to the left of his nose, and the scars on his knuckles, the fan of his eyelashes, the many expressions of his face. I knew them almost as well as she did, because watching him love Tiger Lily was better than not watching him at all.

She stared into the still surface of the lagoon. Nowhere near her village was the water so glassy, and she could see her face in the surface—her broad cheekbones, her strong nose, the black line of her hair. Beside her, Peter was fairer.

Peter twirled his finger into the water image of his face, making it break apart and reassemble itself over and over again. He had promised the mermaids would leave them alone on this side of the lagoon, though she expected a jealous, slimy hand to rise out of the dark wet and grab her by the neck at any moment. Still, if Peter was going to brave such proximity, so was she.

“What’s the Englander like?” he asked finally.

“He is old. He has no hair on his head.” She smiled.

Peter sighed into the water, and his breath sent a small circle of it into tiny ripples. “It seems cowardly, getting old. Don’t you think?”

She rolled onto her side to look at him, pillowing her ear with her right arm, and letting her fingers dangle in the water beyond her head. “How is it cowardly?”

Peter kept his eyes on his reflection. “You just curl up around yourself, and sit by the fire, and try to be comfortable. When you get old, you just get smaller inside, and you try not to pay attention to anything but your blankets and your food and your bed.”

“Being comfortable is not a bad thing.”

Peter shrugged and turned his head to look at her as if it was a matter of fact. “Of course it is. Old people lock out all the scary, wild things. It’s like they don’t exist.”

She wanted to say that she would have liked for those things not to exist, either, but she held her tongue, because she didn’t want to sound like a coward. She had been thinking of Giant, and the pirates. Sometimes she wished she could lock them out and just be secure.

“It’s like now, we could be in our beds, safe. Or we could be here, staring into the black water of the lagoon, listening to the sounds of the insects, with the twigs pricking our stomachs and the danger of death by mermaid at any moment.”

Tiger Lily shook her head. “But the English can’t help it if time passes and they get old.”

Peter wrinkled his nose. He yawned. “There’s no such thing as time passing. That’s an excuse.”

“No it’s not.” She sat up, smiling at him. “It’s true.”

“You can’t prove that.”

She thought. There was no way, she supposed, if you didn’t believe getting older was part of time getting older too. And then she remembered. “Yes.” She nodded. “Tik Tok’s clock. It’s a machine that tracks time with its hands.”

Peter looked suddenly curious. “What’s it like?” he asked. Everything Peter asked, his body asked too. At this moment it slumped, in defeat, at such a beautiful idea, and also leaned forward eagerly.

“The clock has little hands that point to the minutes, very steadily. It keeps a perfect record of time.”

She could see he was trying to grasp that the moments in life and everything in it could be held in a little wooden box.

“Can I see it?” he said, his face lighting up.

“I could never get it from Tik Tok. He wouldn’t let it out of his sight. It’s his most prized possession, besides his hair.” She smirked at him.

Peter sank. “I’d give anything to see time.”

She grew silent, because what could she do?

“You’re so quiet when you don’t know what to say. Always.”

“You don’t even know me always,” she said. But he was right.

She slid next to him.

Peter put his hand on her rib cage. And just looked at her. He swallowed. “I love you so much, Tiger Lily,” Peter said. Tiger Lily stiffened, stared at the ground, and said nothing. A smile spread across her face, but she didn’t show him.

They just sat in silence for a long time, until finally Peter stood, looking uncomfortable. “I’ll walk you to the bridge.” She was startled to see, about ten paces on, a lump in the water that, as the moon passed from behind a cloud, showed itself to be Maeryn, watching them. The mermaid sank silently and quickly underwater.

“Meet me at the bridge tomorrow night?” Peter said. “I don’t want you to come to the burrow, until we figure out what’s happening with the pirates.”

“Yes.”

“Are you cold?” he asked. She nodded. He pulled off his fur vest and gave it to her.

He rubbed her arms with his hands, stood his warm feet on her cold ones for a few moments so he could take the cold and she could take the warmth. “It’s okay. I’m always warm.” Then he shivered as he walked.

Up above, I listened to them. I could hear their hearts. Tiger Lily’s, I knew well: her unsure, stumbling happiness, her fear of knowing about something so beautiful as Peter. But imagine my confusion at listening to his—Peter, so perfect and courageous—and hearing a fear in him that seemed to dwarf hers.

If there was a true moment that Tiger Lily fell so in love with Peter she could never turn back, it was that night, when he shivered and walked and told her he was warm, and told her he loved her so much. She was fierce, to be sure, but she had a girl’s heart, after all. As she walked home that night, she was shaking from the largeness of it. I didn’t know why she seemed so sad and happy at the same time. To love someone was not what she had expected. It was like falling from somewhere high up and breaking in half, and only one person having the secret to the puzzle of putting her back together.

She began to plan how she would give him up.

S
he waited for Peter at the bridge the next night, turning over what she would say, and I played tag with the fireflies. But Peter didn’t come. Since he had asked her not to go to the burrow without him, she walked just to the edge of the lagoon to see if she could spot him.

Tiger Lily noticed Maeryn after I did. She stepped closer to a tree, defensively. The mermaid was sitting in the mud just at the shoreline, staring at her. She had a skull cradled in her arms. “Pirate,” Maeryn said, smiling, as Tiger Lily lowered her hand near her hatchet.

“I don’t want to kill you. I’m curious about you.” She was the very picture of feminine mystery. All sharp teeth and soft lips.

“Watch that boy,” she said. “You’re stronger in many ways, but that doesn’t mean he can’t take you apart.”

The first thought that went through Tiger Lily’s mind was that she was not stronger than Peter. “He wouldn’t do that,” she said.

“He won’t mean to. He just won’t be able to help it. It’ll be an accident. It’s in his nature, just like it’s in my nature to live underwater.” Tiger Lily knew she couldn’t trust Maeryn. Wasn’t she the mermaid who supposedly loved Peter most of all? And now Peter loved Tiger Lily. Still, she couldn’t help being fascinated.

Maeryn eyed her, then seemed to ascertain something surprising. “You’re keeping a secret.”

Tiger Lily stepped back, halfheartedly shook her head.

Maeryn waved a hand above the water carelessly. “Oh, I don’t care. It doesn’t concern me. Only Peter does.”

She glanced in the direction of the burrow. “Peter loves to make promises. He has the best intentions of keeping them. It makes it worse, somehow, that he doesn’t know how to. He thinks he’s a nice boy, that’s the worst part.”

Tiger Lily didn’t understand. Instinct told her to go back the way she’d come, and she did. But before she was out of earshot, Maeryn said, in a low, perfectly confident voice, “I’ll be here if you need me. And you will.”

Almost everyone was down at the river the next afternoon, catching salmon. The island had slipped into the thick of the hot season, a time when the salmon swam upstream and it was easy to catch them. You could dip your basket into the water and it would come up filled with fish, which the villagers would then spend the next several days smoking and drying.

Down on the banks, everyone who wasn’t fishing was gathered around Phillip. The village seemed to have forgotten their fear of him completely. He was talking about how only fish should be eaten on Fridays, and how Tiger Lily’s marriage should happen indoors, in a chapel they would build. People laughed at first, because they thought he was joking. How would God see them if they were indoors?

Tiger Lily came across Moon Eye sitting on a rock off the path to the water, with her needle and thread, Midnight ensconced beside her and hanging on her every movement with his yellow wolfy eyes.

“Why aren’t you down at the river?” Tiger Lily asked.

Moon Eye usually liked to do her work by the water, on a fallen tree where she could watch the fish and listen to the hawks eat their midday meals. She shrugged. “Why aren’t you?” she asked.

Tiger Lily looked down at where Giant sat by the river, part of the group and apart from it. She didn’t need to say why.

Moon Eye made a spot beside herself for Tiger Lily. Tiger Lily sat and studied her beautiful work: a long suede skirt, adorned with a bird flying skyward.

“It’s your wedding present,” Moon Eye said. The bird looked like it was escaping, transcending earth. But Tiger Lily’s attention was drawn to Moon Eye: she looked disheveled, as if she hadn’t bathed for a few days. She was usually as meticulously clean as Tik Tok.

Moon Eye looked down at the group by the water. “You should talk to them. It seems they want to believe anything that man says. I don’t trust him.”

“You sound just like Pine Sap,” Tiger Lily said. Their eyes traveled to Pine Sap, who was in the river up to his waist, fishing. His chest was so skinny and frail compared to all the other boys’.

“And why would I be the one to convince them not to?” Tiger Lily asked.

“People are nervous about you, but they respect you.”

Tiger Lily shook her head. “No.”

“And you’re Tik Tok’s daughter. They respect that. Though …,” she added, “they turn to Phillip for advice now.”

Tik Tok was not near the river; Tiger Lily didn’t know where he was. But she had a feeling he wanted to be somewhere away from Phillip’s lessons.

“I wish I were brave like you,” Moon Eye said suddenly.

“Why do you say that?”

Moon Eye shrugged. If Tiger Lily hadn’t been distracted, she might have noticed the seriousness in her tone. As it was, she just shrugged it off. Moon Eye was often incomprehensible to her. It was no wonder Pine Sap had grown such a fondness for her; they were so much alike. And Tiger Lily felt a moment of comparison in which her bullish ways came up short against Moon Eye’s thoughtful, gentle ones. At the moment, she didn’t feel very brave. She was trying to think of a way she could possibly bear giving up Peter.

In the water, catching their fish, the villagers looked so happy. Aunt Sticky Feet put her arm around Red Leaf and gave her a squeeze. Pine Sap was kneeling in the current, helping some of the children position their baskets under the water. He rarely came back from these fishing forays with a catch because he spent most of the time like this, helping the little ones. With them, he seemed at his most confident and lively, and the children of the village—who were always so scared to come close to Tiger Lily—flocked to him like bees to a flower.