Lost Boy

chapter 18

The only plan left to us was the original one Sally and I’d thought of—swimming out to the pirate ship and taking one of their rowboats.

“Or,” Nod said, when I’d made this suggestion, “to join the pirates and let them take us on their ship away from here.”

We were roasting fish over a small campfire on the beach. Charlie was asleep in the sand beside me, curled on his side.

We’d decided to stay there until we knew what to do next. I was sure that the tree would be occupied by Peter, and I didn’t want to risk roaming over the island on my sore ankle looking for a better place to hide.

There didn’t seem to be any better place to hide, anyway. Peter would always find us. As he told us over and over, it was his island. All its secrets belonged to him. I used to think they belonged to me too, but that wasn’t true anymore. There were so many things I didn’t know about the island, like fairies and flying and how the magic of it all stayed in your heart. Peter knew those things.

I stared at Nod. “Join the pirates? After what they did to the boys? After what they did to Fog?”

Nod’s face reddened. “I know what they did to him. To them. But Jamie—aren’t the pirates better than Peter? I’m grown-up now, and you’re nearly so. They can’t hold what Peter did against us. We’re not boys anymore.”

“Charlie is,” I said.

“We could look after Charlie,” Nod said. “You were always the best fighter, Jamie. You don’t think you will be now that you’re big?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

The truth of it was that I didn’t have much desire left to fight. I was always angry when I was a boy, even if I didn’t seem it, even when I seemed unruffled. Part of me was always silently raging, always looking for blood to spill. I never knew why I felt that way, but it made me merciless. It made it easy for me to cut and to hurt, to arrogantly slice pirates’ hands from their wrists so I could leave my mark.

It made it easy for me to defeat all the other boys in Battle. It made it easy for me to smash Nip’s head open with a rock.

I didn’t think I had that anymore. I wasn’t angry, not the way I used to be. There was only one person I wanted to kill now, and when he was dead I never wanted to lift a weapon again for the rest of my life.

“Think on it,” Nod said. “About going to the pirates, I mean. We can’t run about dodging Peter forever, you know.”

“I know,” I said.

That night I dreamed, but it was a different dream from one I’d ever had before. I didn’t dream of my mother, of finding her in the darkness, of my own hands covered in her blood.

• • •

Fog and Crow and Sally were inside the rowboat, the one that had been destroyed by Peter. It was new and whole again, and they were just a few feet off the shore. The three of them sat in the boat and waved at me.

“Don’t go,” I said, and splashed out into the water.

The boat drifted on the current. I reached for the edge, wanting to climb in, but every time it was just out of reach.

Fog and Crow and Sally watched me with curious eyes.

“Wait!” I cried. “I want to come with you!”

I followed the boat into the deeper water, and soon I was swimming instead of wading, and the boat was drifting away faster and faster.

The sea rose up then, pushing me back, pushing me back to the shore no matter how hard I fought.

The boat disappeared on the horizon.

• • •

I woke suddenly, my face wet, the fire burned down to nothing but coals. Nod and Charlie were asleep. I sat up and poked at the fire, feeling my skin prickle.

Peter watched me from the sky.

His eyes were shrouded by the dark, and his skin glowed silvery-white in the moonlight. He just floated there, bobbing up and down on the air, with his little fairy light darting around his head. I could see the tiny flutters of golden dust that drifted down on him.

“Tink is very angry with you,” he said. “You burned all of her family when you burned the fields. Now she’s the only fairy left.”

“I didn’t know they were there,” I said. “You didn’t tell me.”

“It’s not my fault you never found them,” Peter said. “You shouldn’t have burned the fields in the first place. What did the Many-Eyed ever do to you?”

“You shouldn’t have taken Charlie in the first place,” I said. “What did Charlie ever do to you?”

“He took you from me,” Peter said. “And so did Sally. Now you won’t play with me ever again.”

“So you thought it was fine to feed him to the Many-Eyed?” I asked.

Peter shrugged. “It would have saved me a lot of trouble. Anyway, all this happened because you killed that Many-Eyed in the first place when you weren’t supposed to, the one at Bear Cave. That was your doing.”

I shook my head at him. “This is all your doing. You brought the boys here. You didn’t care for them. You used them and then you tossed them in the rubbish pile and you expected me to feel the same.”

“You should have!” Peter said. He’d been calm up until then but now I saw the spark of anger. “You were supposed to feel the same as me! All this place, all the fun, all the boys—it was only for you. I did everything for you.”

I stood then, and wished like mad that I could grab him out of the sky. “Including kill my mother?”

He gave me a sly look. “I didn’t kill your mother. You did. Don’t you remember? I found you standing over her and her throat was cut and there was blood all over your hands. You must not have liked your mother very much.”

“I don’t think it was like that at all,” I said. “You killed her so that I would follow you here. You knew I would never leave her.”

“That only shows how much I loved you, Jamie,” he said, changing tack. “I took your mother away because I never wanted anyone to love you as much as me.”

“That’s not how you show someone love, Peter,” I said. “But you’re only a boy, and you’ll never understand.”

Peter narrowed his eyes at me, and crossed his arms.

“There’s only one way to settle this.”

“Yes,” I said. “The way we always settle quarrels on the island.”

“You know where to go, then,” he said. “I’ll be waiting.”

He flew away then, and the night was blacker than it had been before.

“You won’t be able to watch this time, Peter,” I said. “This time, you’ll have to fight me.”

Nod sat up and stared at me as I poked the fire.

“Are you going to fight Peter at Battle?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, wondering how much he’d heard.

“Peter killed your mother?”

He’d heard plenty, then.

“Yes,” I said.

“I thought you didn’t remember her,” he said.

“I didn’t, until yesterday.”

“Oh,” he said. “I still don’t remember mine. I wish I did. I only remember Fog, and he’s starting to fade already. It must be nice to remember your mother. If she was nice.”

“Mine was,” I said. “But Peter tangled me up and made me forget her.”

“He must have made me do that too.”

His expression was terribly sad, then, and terribly old.

After a moment he shook his head, as if shaking away the memory, and said, “How will you get to the Battle place with your ankle like that?”

I flexed it, and discovered that it had healed while I slept. I rubbed my hand across my face. My beard was thicker, though not as full-grown as Nod’s.

“It’s better now,” I said.

He looked at my ankle and then my beard and nodded in understanding. “You grew a bit more.”

“I want you to take Charlie and go across the island to Bear Cave and wait for me there,” I said.

“I don’t think you should go to Battle with Peter on your own,” he said. “Someone should watch, and judge, like we’ve always done. He’s likely to cheat. You know that. He only cares about fair play when it’s not fair to him.”

“I don’t want Charlie anywhere near Peter,” I said. “And we’re not going to leave him alone on the beach.”

“And what happens if you don’t come back?” Nod said, his eyes bright.

“You’ll know what that means,” I said. “If I’m not back in two days you follow your idea, and take Charlie and go to the pirates.”

• • •

When the sun rose I took up my dagger and a pirate sword, and I went toward the mountains where the Battle place was, and the other two went toward the forest and Bear Cave.

I felt stronger and better than I had the day before, and my new body was a wonderful thing. I could run faster and climb easier. When I reached the meadow before the Battle place I wasn’t even winded.

It wasn’t such a terrible thing, then, growing up. Peter was still a boy, and I was big and strong now, stronger than I’d ever been.

I could hurt him with this body. I could kill him.

Peter waited there for me, in the middle of the arena, his hands on his hips.

“You took a very long time,” he said crossly, looking me up and down. “I imagine it’s because you’re old now.”

“Not all of us can fly,” I said.

I put the pirate sword down on the bench but carried my dagger. Peter already had his knife in his hand.

“This Battle isn’t like the other Battles,” he said. “There are no rules.”

“But it is a fight to the death,” I said.

“Oh, Jamie.” He sighed, and there was a strange tenderness in the way he said my name. “Do you think I could ever kill you? Look at all I’ve done for you.”

I lunged at him then, not wanting to talk anymore with this child, this mad child who thought that he was showing his love by killing anyone who took my attention away from him.

But though my new body was strong and fast, I couldn’t fly, and he darted into the air and around behind me before I could blink.

“Not fair play,” I said, in hopes of appealing to his better nature—what little there was of it.

“There are no rules in this Battle,” Peter said, laughing. “You agreed to that yourself.”

It was his laugh that made me want to kill him, made me want to break open his ribs and carve out his heart, the way he’d done to me so many times before.

He flew in circles above me, laughing and laughing. His laughter echoed off the walls and fed my rage and made me wild, wild as him, wild as he’d always wanted me to be.

That wildness, strangely, also made me calm. I saw some rocks in the arena, left there from previous Battles. I found a small smooth one just near my foot, likely one dropped from my sling-bag the day I fought Nip. It was almost as if it was waiting there for me to pick it up.

Peter didn’t notice. He was too busy flying around, feeling so very pleased with his own cleverness.

I watched him carefully for a moment; then I aimed it for his right eye.

I didn’t miss. And I can throw very, very hard.

Peter screamed and tumbled down in shock, and then I was on him.

He was so much smaller than me that it was nothing for me to put my knee in his chest and punch him in the face. Two of his teeth—all baby teeth still, like little white pearls—spilled out of his mouth, and blood spilled out of his nose, and his eye was shot through with red.

He wasn’t laughing anymore.

I’d dropped my dagger so I could hit him in the face with both hands. I picked it up then, holding his jaw in my right hand and the knife in my left, and I slashed toward his throat.

Just like he’d done to Crow.

Just like he’d done to my mother.

I hadn’t noticed that he still had his own knife, and that one of his arms had worked free.

He stabbed the knife into my thigh and ripped it down, tearing open the old wound. Blood ran everywhere, spurted in Peter’s face, and he wriggled away from me as I fell sideways, my own knife slash never touching his throat.

It was only then he seemed to realize that it was not a game to me, that I was in earnest.

I meant to kill him.

My blood poured into the rock of the Battle arena and as always, it disappeared, almost as if it had never been.

I struggled to stand again, panting with the effort. Peter watched me struggle, watched the blood that ran from my thigh, and then he smiled.

All his teeth were there again.

His nose stopped flowing. His eye returned to its normal size.

In a moment he was Peter again, whole, unchanged, eleven years old.

“You can’t kill me, Jamie,” he said. He sounded sorry for me that I would even try.

“The island made me,” he continued. “The island made me, and the island keeps me alive. And every drop of blood spilled here keeps me whole and young forever, just like it did for you, when you believed in me. But when you stopped loving me, when you stopped believing—the island let you go, because the island knows your heart and so do I.”

“It can’t be,” I panted. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t—that all my rage, all my anger would have nowhere to go and no way to end. How could it be that I’d never be able to kill the one person who, above all, deserved it?

I tried to stand, but my leg wouldn’t support me, and the blood was pouring out of me too fast. All that blood that was keeping Peter alive. All my blood had made him whole again.

It was like I’d never touched him in the first place.

I would never be able to kill him. As long as there were boys on the island, as long as blood was spilled here, Peter would live forever.

“That’s why you brought me here?” I asked. “So I could keep you alive? That’s why we all were brought here? For you?”

“Not you, Jamie!” Peter said. “Never you! I wanted to share all this with you, so you could have fun. You were always sad and angry and that mama of yours didn’t do anything to make you happy or make it better. I know, Jamie. I watched you a long time to make sure that you were the right one for me.”

“She kissed me and hugged me and held me so tight,” I said, echoing the words Charlie had said to me long, long ago.

Peter scoffed. “What’s a hug? What’s a kiss? Those things aren’t like running free or swimming in the ocean or laughing and playing all day with your greatest friend in all the world. You were sad, Jamie, and I wanted you to be happy, and me too. I brought you here so I’d have a friend. I brought the others so I could keep that friend forever.”

I laughed then, a horrible angry laugh that sounded nothing like myself.

“Well, I’d say your plan failed, Peter. Because I won’t be your friend forever. I haven’t been your friend for some time now.”

“I know,” Peter said. “But that doesn’t mean that you’re allowed to leave. You know my rules, Jamie. You can’t ever leave the island. And I won’t let you die either. You won’t be able to escape me that way.”

I fell over then, unable to stand on my ripped-up leg, and rolled to my back. There should have been a pool of blood all around me but the rock was absorbing it as fast as it came out of me. Everything was going white, then black, then white again before my eyes.

Then Peter stood over me, and he held the pirate sword.

“I curse you, Jamie. I curse you to live forever on this island, but as a grown-up. You’ll never be a boy again, but you’ll never grow old and die either. If you’re hurt you’ll always survive. The island won’t let you go, and the island will keep you alive because I say so. And so you’ll never forget me and my curse, I leave my mark on you.”

He raised the sword, and then my right hand was gone.

chapter 19

Peter flew away and left me there, bleeding from my leg and my wrist. I was sure that I would die, despite everything Peter said. I blacked out for a while, and when I woke again the moon was lit and the bleeding had stopped.

I sat up and examined my leg, which was too torn to stand on, even if it wasn’t bleeding. White bone protruded from my wrist, and stringy bits of muscle and vein. I didn’t want to look at it. I tore a bit of hide from my pants and wrapped the stump up tight.

Then I crawled out of the arena.

As I crawled I remembered every boy I’d fought there. There were some I’d fought in fun—or, at least, Peter’s idea of fun, for his idea of fun still meant some blood was spilled, even if it was only from a broken nose.

I remembered every boy that I’d killed when it wasn’t for fun. I remembered smashing Nip’s skull in with a rock until I saw the gleam of bone beneath.

I remembered how Peter sat there and watched, when it was in fun and when it was not, and how it pleased him to see us there.

How it must have pleased him to see us feeding our blood to the island, keeping him alive.

And every drop of blood had kept me alive too, though I didn’t know it. Because I’d believed in Peter. Because he’d smiled at me.

I felt sick and ashamed, and sorry that I’d ever lifted a hand against any boy that came here, thinking they would live forever. I was sorry, but they would never hear me say it.

They were all dead. They were all dead, but I would go on and on, and remember all their faces, and remember how I’d hurt them.

And I would remember the ones who were taken by pirates or crocodiles or sickness or Many-Eyed, and no death would ever bring me relief.

Peter had cursed me, and I would never escape those faces. All the boys and all their bodies were fastened to my heart now, weighing me to the earth.

It took me what seemed like hours just to reach the stream that ran alongside the meadow. I rolled into the cold water and stayed there, letting it wash all over me. The coldness made my leg feel better, and I remained in the water until I started to shiver.

I tried to stand up, and couldn’t. If I didn’t get help, didn’t get the leg sewn up as I’d done before, then it wouldn’t heal properly and I would never walk right on it again.

I found a tall stick to use as a crutch, and managed to prop myself up on it. Then slowly, ever so slowly, I limped across the meadow.

I was halfway there when a figure rose out of the darkness from the trail below. I squinted; then a smaller figure appeared beside the larger one.

Nod and Charlie.

Charlie ran to me, crying, “Jamie! Jamie!”

“You didn’t listen,” I murmured. “You didn’t mind.”

“We came to take care of you,” Charlie said. “The way that you always take care of us.”

“Didn’t you believe that I could beat him?” I asked, but there was no rancor in it. “I was always Battle champion, you know.”

“Yes,” Nod said. “But we knew that Peter would cheat.”

The tears came then, the tears that were for everything I loved and everything I lost, the tears that I’d been unable to cry for Sally, the tears that I’d never known to cry for my mama.

All those boys. All those bodies. All that weight on my heart.

Sally.

My mother.

And the one person I wanted dead that could never, ever die.

“He did cheat,” I sobbed. “He did.”

“He always does,” Nod said. “He would never have let you win.”

• • •

Nod and Charlie looked after me until I was well again. We never saw Peter in those days, nor Tink, nor anyone. Nod showed us the place where he’d buried Fog, and we often found him there just before the sun went down, talking quietly to his brother. I tried not to listen to what he said at those times. It was just between Nod and Fog.

We lived in the meadow until I could walk without the stick. I considered it my punishment to be trapped there near the place where I’d killed so many boys at Peter’s behest, killed them because we’d thought it was fun.

Every day I looked at my wrist, at the place where my hand used to be, at the mark that once was mine to give and now belonged to Peter.

On the day I could walk unencumbered again we went away from that place of blood, that place where Peter’s life was fed by the boys who died in Battle. I’ve never returned there since the day me and Nod and Charlie left it.

We went, of course, to the pirates.

• • •

They don’t call me Jamie anymore. I covered the stump of my hand with a hook, and so that became my name.

It’s all right, really, for Jamie was a boy. A foolish boy, one who thought he could do right, who thought he could escape a monster called Peter.

He brings new boys to the island again, for Peter must have playmates. He flies through the night and past the stars and finds them, and when he finds them he gives them the gift he never gave me, and sprinkles them with fairy dust.

When I see their shadows silhouetted against the moon, my heart burns and my teeth gnash and I want to point the ship’s cannon at them and shoot them out of the sky.

Mostly I don’t, because it’s not those boys I want to kill. I’ve had enough of killing boys. There’s only one person I want to die—the person who never will.

And sometimes, sometimes, he even lets them go home again if they don’t want to stay. And sometimes he doesn’t, and they die up in that mountain so Peter can live.

But that’s a freedom I will never have. Peter’s curse means that though we sail the ship away from the island we will always return again, no matter what direction we sail.

If we head north, with the island behind us, we will soon find it again, peeking over the horizon. If we sail south or east or west, the same will happen. It’s as if we sail upside down and around in a circle, and find ourselves at the top of it over and over and over again.

The other pirates don’t know why they’re cursed to return to the island, though I think Nod suspects. Nod is the only one who truly understands what happened between Peter and me. Even Charlie doesn’t understand it completely.

Peter will never let me go. If I’m not his playmate and friend, then I am to be his playmate and enemy. He brought me to the island and he swore I would never leave and so I haven’t.

It will always be Peter and me, like it was in the beginning, like it will be in the end. Peter, who took everything from me and gave everything too.

Peter, who loved me best of everyone except himself.

He tells the new boys I am a villain, and they call me Captain Hook.

If I am a villain, it’s because Peter made me one, because Peter needs to be the shining sun that all the world turns around. Peter needed to be a hero, so somebody needed to be a villain.

The anger that I carried with me all the days of my childhood is for only one person now, and if I ever catch him again he’ll be sorry.

I know I can find a way. He’s given me so much time, all the time in the world, and there must be a way.

Someday. Someday, he’ll be sorry he crossed me.

When I hear him laughing, out there in the sky and in the night, and that laugh burns me deep down in my heart, I know I’ll find a way to make him sorry.

I will make him so sorry.

I hate Peter Pan.