Tiger Lily (20 page)

Tiger Lily thought about what Tik Tok had said, about promises, and who she was if she didn’t live up to her duties. She didn’t notice Pine Sap jogging up the hill until he was standing in front of them, dripping, a large salmon dangling from his right hand.

“For my mother,” he said, holding it up. “I’ll smoke it, so it keeps for a while.” He ignored the look that crossed Tiger Lily’s face. She was disappointed in his weakness, his eagerness to appease his mother, and it embarrassed him. “Hey,” he went on, falsely bright, “will you help me practice spearing tomorrow morning, before everyone’s up? I have to go on the hunt, day after. It’d be nice if I made it through the day without being a laughingstock.” He smiled abashedly, his brows knit together.

Tiger Lily nodded. “Yes, I promise,” she said.

“Great. I owe you.” Pine Sap beamed. He winked at Moon Eye, then hurried off with his fish, his wet feet slapping on the path. Moon Eye watched him go, but Tiger Lily didn’t. She stared down at the bird on the skirt. She wondered if there was any way she could fly away too.

I
woke in the night to a figure by Tiger Lily’s bed. It was Peter kneeling beside her in the dark, watching her. She woke with a prickling feeling.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t meet you at the bridge, Tiger Lily. I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, fear running like lightning down her legs.

“Come with me.”

Tiger Lily wanted to say no. But she got up and followed him. The village was sound asleep, and the only light was a faint orange glow from the dying coals of the main fire. They didn’t make a sound, though I could hear Peter’s breathing, and they didn’t speak until they’d crossed the threshold of the forest into the trees. And then, he only said, “The boys are waiting up ahead.”

The boys stood in a gaggle by a creek a safe distance from the village, and huddled around a tiny fire they’d built. In the firelight I realized Peter had painted his face. They all had.

“Why are we—”

“It’s an adventure.” Peter gave her a big, hardened smile and started walking. It chilled her. They all followed behind him.

After a few minutes, Nibs fell in step with Tiger Lily. “We’re going to the pirates,” he whispered, giving her a meaningful look and swallowing nervously. “They’ve gotten too close. We saw more tracks, just on the edge of the territory, but we lost him. We’re sending a warning.” Startled, Tiger Lily looked to Peter for confirmation. He didn’t meet her eyes. He wore an unrecognizable expression: his pupils were huge, and his face was cold, like a mask of himself. The others looked scared, and Tootles seemed like he was going to be sick. One twin kept glancing at his pale, green-hued face. The other twin, Nibs explained, had stayed home to take care of Baby.

Tiger Lily didn’t tell Peter that she couldn’t go, that she’d never get home before morning and that a Sky Eater breaking the truce and provoking the pirates was dangerous for her whole tribe. If he was going somewhere dangerous, she wanted to be there with him. He smiled his strange, cold smile at her, from far away. She’d never seen him look so frightening.

They slowly entered the part of the island that was lower lying than the rest, and more empty and rocky. The boys’ fear became tangible as we saw the first landmarks of the cove—a few torches stuck in the ground, unlit, with skulls on top. I hate to say that just below them, like a kind of trim, were several hundred faerie skulls. I wondered if they belonged to anyone I knew or had known, and shuddered. The sight of the skulls slowed the boys’ feet, too, and Tootles began to shake. Peter pushed forward at the same pace, seeming to forget we were behind him. Tiger Lily hurried to stay beside him. Unconsciously, she kept a hand on her hatchet.

As we came to the outskirts of the cove, Peter finally slowed, became stealthier and even more silent, and grinned at the boys, looking more in his element than maybe I had ever seen him. I could tell we’d come within range because it smelled like rotting meat, and within a few minutes we arrived at the place where the pirates threw their animal carcasses. They’d clearly been lazy about their butchering, and left some valuable parts of the animals to rot, as if the killing—of something as “lowly” as an animal—made no difference. Tiger Lily found this shameful, and her heart hardened a little more as she walked.

We came to a long narrow walk between tangled mangrove trees. Peter walked ahead. Tiger Lily followed just behind him, keeping her eyes trained on the thick foliage. I could hear Peter’s familiar breath.

And then he came to a stop. Tiger Lily saw a split second after he did.

The man was curled up on the ground, his dirty white shirt just visible through the trees. He lay behind an intricate construction of bamboo and spiked spears, cocked and ready to release at whoever was walking down the path.

A bottle was curled into his elbow. He was asleep.

It was all so quick that Tiger Lily didn’t have time to stop it.

Peter pulled back a branch, whether to see better or to move closer, it was hard to say. The man woke. It took him a second to make sense of what was before him, but the moment was too long. Before he was upright, Peter had a thin rope around his neck. The man jerked, reached for his neck, struggled, kicked, and made a gurgling, tortured noise. It lasted for what seemed like forever, though it could have only been seconds. And then, almost just as quickly as waking, he quieted, and his life ebbed out of him.

When Peter stood to face the others, he was panting and triumphant and shaking with fear. Tiger Lily stood staring at him, in shock.

They walked toward home in silence, and the Peter who had killed a man began to fade, so that the Peter we knew emerged. He became quieter, slower, more thoughtful in his movements, noticing the dark, angry presence beside him.

“You’re unhappy with me,” he said flatly.

Tiger Lily lifted her chin. Her anger was so palpable, even the boys took a few steps away from her. Her heart was as cold as ice.

“He was ready to kill us.” Peter smiled hopefully, but it bounced off the steel of her face and dropped.

They didn’t speak for the rest of the walk. The other boys were uncomfortable with their discord and walked on ahead in silence. Nibs kept glancing back at them. Slightly and Curly argued in a hushed whisper over who was going to eat a coconut Curly had pulled from his sack, their appetites undeterred by recent events.

Tiger Lily walked with Peter to the burrow but, once there, changed her mind about being there, and walked into the darkness. Peter let her go, but then came after her a few moments later, startling her as she reached the top of a small rise.

“Please, Tiger Lily.” He pushed his hand into hers and she let the fingers stay loose. “You think I’m a monster.”

“No.” She shook her head, keeping her own thoughts.

“But you believe in killing. If your tribe was attacked.”

She turned her eyes on him. They were so full of disappointment that Peter flinched. “There are rules to killing,” she said. The Sky Eaters, when they went to war with someone, sent a series of warnings. To sneak, to ambush, was so foreign to someone like Tiger Lily, she couldn’t fathom it.

Peter looked desperate. He held tighter to her hand. “Tiger Lily, the pirates take young boys. They’re usually orphans. They snatch them up and put them to work on their ships. They’re slaves. They beat them and worse. Slightly was nine when he was taken. He still remembers....”

Peter’s voice trailed off, and he swallowed. She listened in silence.

“When I met him, he’d escaped. I saw him in the woods, and he was so skinny and lost. But I took care of him. We rescued the others, over the years. And now … I have to scare the pirates. To protect the burrow.”

I felt Tiger Lily thaw, but only slightly.

“Peter, how did you get here?” she asked.

Peter looked down at his hands. “I don’t remember. I have a bad memory. You know how people remember a few things that happened to them when they were small? Slightly does, even Nibs and the others do. I don’t remember those things at all. I just remember being here.”

“But to sneak up on someone and attack them is cowardly.”

“To not do what you can to protect someone, that’s cowardly. You wouldn’t understand. You don’t have to be afraid of anything.” He kicked a root protruding from the ground, then sighed and gave her a softening look. “I need you to think I’m okay,” he said.

Tiger Lily was silent beside him. She took hold of his hand. She wasn’t sure what love was, but maybe she was supposed to bend. “I think you’re okay,” she whispered. From the burrow behind them, they heard a burp echo out and reverberate in the trees. They couldn’t help but smile.

“I think that’s the biggest compliment you’ve ever given me,” Peter said ruefully. It gave Tiger Lily a twinge of guilt. She regretted that she wasn’t better at telling people how much she cared about them. But Peter looked as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

Tiger Lily sighed. She was wrapped in Peter now, and she didn’t know how to extract him from herself.

Peter went back to the burrow to see to the boys, and she departed alone. The sun was just coming up. And there, like last time, was Maeryn, just her eyes above the water, staring at her.

She lifted her mouth above the water. “You’re being watched,” she said.

I realize now that she must have meant Smee. But that wasn’t who Tiger Lily thought of. She remembered suddenly that she had broken a promise.

“You’ve lost your feathers,” Maeryn said behind her. But rushing away, Tiger Lily didn’t hear it.

T
iger Lily hurried along the river, looking for Pine Sap. She didn’t often walk this far upstream, as it became tangled and impassable. But now she heard a hammering, camouflaged by the sound of the water. Following the sound, she came up to a small structure, crafted even more carefully than Tik Tok’s house.

Pine Sap was on his knees, twining a piece of sinew around two poles. His attention was so wrapped in his work that he didn’t hear her approach until she was almost above him. He startled. Then smiled up at her in his crooked, slow way and stood, brushing the dirt from his knees.

“What do you think?” he asked. He gestured to all of the poles and pieces of wood, the carefully scraped bark, the scrollwork, four walls.

“This is what you’ve been doing in the woods?” she asked.

He nodded, clearly excited for her to see. “It took a while, I’m slow at these things.” But he was being modest. The work was astoundingly intricate. It was a proper house—with four walls intact, curved inward, and sitting on stilts. “I was going to wait a little longer to show you.”