Lost Boy

chapter 9

I knew that business with the pirate camp burning would cause more trouble than Peter thought it would. He’d burned their camp and fed their Captain to a Many-Eyed and thought that nothing would change between us and them. We’d come a-raiding and they would try to kill us, but it would all be in good fun.

Though none of the group that followed Peter that day had survived to tell the tale, it was a certainty that the remaining pirates knew who was at fault. I thought that meant they’d know who to come looking for when it was time for revenge, and said so.

“No,” Peter scoffed. “They’ll leave. They’ll go off sailing somewhere else. Why would they stay? Their camp and all the supplies in it are gone. I didn’t burn their ship, and I could have. I left it there so they could go away and find a new Captain. Then they’ll tell him that he can find the secret to staying young forever on this island and he’ll sail back here and then we’ll all have a grand time fighting each other again.”

He laughed, and clapped my shoulder. “Did you know that they think it’s some kind of spring? I don’t know where they could have gotten such a notion, but I heard some of them talking about it when I was setting the tents on fire. They think they’ll dump out their rum bottles and fill them with ‘the water of youth.’ Pirates are so stupid.”

I didn’t really think the pirates were all that stupid, and anyway, who was to say it wasn’t the water that kept us all young? I’d lived there for years and didn’t know for certain why I was still a boy. I didn’t think Peter knew for sure himself.

That wasn’t a secret I was interested in, anyway. I wanted to know how Peter flew. I’d not mentioned it to anyone else, not even mentioned to Peter that I’d seen him. I tried following him a few times, if I saw him sneaking off on his own, but he always disappeared before I caught him. I was reluctant to spend much time chasing him, as I was still nervous about leaving Charlie alone for too long. Nip did his best to glare death at Charlie and me whenever we drifted into his view.

Sal was the best, most reliable boy to leave Charlie with if I was away, but much as I wanted to discover Peter’s secret, keeping Charlie safe was more important. And I didn’t want Sal to fall under Nip’s fury either.

Since the day the boys had tried to hang him, the others mostly avoided Nip. He spent almost all his time in the tree, watching his purple bruises turn yellow. He tried to reset the bone of his cheek himself, pushing the broken pieces more or less in place and tying a long strip of cloth from his sleeve around his jaw.

The necessity of not being able to move his teeth too far to chew meant he couldn’t eat much besides soft fruit. That meant he was constantly hungry and roared at any boy who walked too near him.

I knew how to make a broth out of deer bones and some certain green leaves that would keep any boy strong. I’d used it plenty of times when the others had a fever and it saw them through. It would have helped Nip heal faster, but that wasn’t any secret I’d be sharing with him. If he got weak, or even if he starved to death before Battle, it would save me the trouble of killing him later.

If I worried about Peter—which I didn’t, because Peter could take care of himself—I’d have worried about the way Nip watched him too. The bigger boy resented Peter for denying their plot. More than once I caught him squeezing his fingers together while he stared at Peter, like he was daydreaming a strangling.

It didn’t trouble me as much as it ought to, for Nip couldn’t catch Peter on his best day, and Nip was far from his best day. But still he watched, and planned, and waited.

• • •

On the day we saw the pirates, Peter took us south through the dunes and to the beach near Skull Rock. This beach was a very long stretch of sand—perhaps a mile or two—with jumbled rocks at the east end. On the other side of the rocks was a wet marshy place where the swamp emptied into the sea.

At the west end was a jutting promontory of forest that curled around the mermaid lagoon. The lagoon wasn’t visible from the beach—it was on the other side of the trees, which were thick and took the best part of an hour to cross if you went from the beach to the lagoon.

Skull Rock was a flat grey rock that looked like a skull facing up out of the water—the top end of the rock curved just like a human head, and it even had two large round depressions set roughly equidistant from each other that seemed to be blank eyes staring up in the sky above the sea.

The rock wasn’t that far from shore, but you had to swim through some very deep water to get there, and the waves could be rough. It was shallow from the beach for about twenty or so steps and then suddenly the bottom dropped away, which took a lot of the boys by surprise the first time. The rock was a good place for catching fish, though, and Peter had declared he was sick of deer and rabbit meat.

Nip didn’t come with us, naturally—just stayed in the tree and brooded. It was eleven days since the almost-hanging, and he was probably well enough for the trek through the dunes, but nobody was inclined to persuade him to come along.

He’d taken to going off in the forest for short stretches, always returning with something to eat that he didn’t share with the rest of us—a rabbit or a bird or a squirrel. His jaw had healed enough for him to eat meat again, but eating it hadn’t improved his disposition.

Several of the boys were not very good swimmers, which wasn’t any trouble when splashing in the shallow mermaid lagoon but quite a bit dangerous in the water near Skull Rock. The mermaids would sometimes help boys who struggled in the lagoon, giving them piggyback rides around. Of course, sometimes they also thought it was fun to watch the boys almost drown. You never could tell with mermaids.

Sal cheerfully rolled up his trousers—he wore baggy brown wool trousers from the Other Place, and couldn’t be persuaded to cut them into something shorter and better suited to the climate of the island—and waded in as far as his ankles.

“I can’t swim at all,” he said, and turned his cap around so the brim was on the back of his head. “How about you, Charlie?”

Charlie shook his head.

“That’s all right. The water’s nice and cool here, and look, there are crabs,” Sal said, beckoning to the smaller boy.

He looked at me, then at Sal, who’d crouched in the water to peer at the crabs hidden in spiky pink shells all along the shore.

“Go on with Sal. I’m going out to the rock,” I said, taking off my coat and deerskin trousers. I carefully laid my knife belt on top of these things and dove into the water.

The sea was warm, but the first splash of it was chilly after the heat of the island. I flipped over in the water when I was halfway to the rock and just floated on my back, letting the waves push me this way and that before turning back on my stomach to swim the rest of the way.

Nod and Fog and Crow and Peter had stripped down to their skin and swum out to the rock as soon as they reached the beach, yelling about who could get there fastest.

We stashed a collection of fishing gear in one of the skull’s eyes, covered by a tarp weighted down with heavy rocks. There were nets and lines and hooks—all stolen from the pirates, of course, including the tarp. You could take almost anything from them without them noticing, really.

In the early days Peter and I used to steal things from them but not fight them, sneaking about their camp in the dead of night. They’d wake in the morning and wonder if the island was haunted, and we would watch them from the cliffs above their camp and laugh silently into our hands.

This was before they knew that we lived on the island, when the pirates first came there because it was a good place to hide from other pirates, and also from those who would hang them for their crimes.

When I climbed onto the rock, the triplets already had the net out. Peter flopped on his back with the sun on his face and let the others go to the trouble of catching the fish he wanted.

He squinted at me as I shook the water out of my hair. “Where’s your little tail?” he asked. “Did he get eaten by a shark? What a shame that would be.”

I pointed toward the shore. “He’s on the beach, crab-hunting with Sal.”

“Oh, at least that’s useful,” Peter said. “I like crabs. And perhaps he’ll lose a finger if one snaps at him.”

Kit and Ed were swimming out our way, and a few other boys had gathered around Sal and Charlie. The rest scampered over the beach, collecting coconuts that had fallen from the long-leafed beach trees. They had a fairly sizable pile, though I knew from experience that they wouldn’t last long. There was nothing sweeter on a hot day than the milk out of a coconut.

“Can’t he swim?” Peter asked, in a would-be casual voice. “All my boys must be able to swim.”

This was patently untrue and he knew that I knew it. Plenty of our boys over the years were unable to swim, and it never bothered him before.

“I won’t let you drown him, Peter,” I said, my voice mild.

“Who said anything about drowning? I just think it would be safer for him to know how to swim, being that he lives on an island and all.”

“Just like you told Nip to ‘take care’ of Charlie,” I said.

Peter had been careful not to be alone with me since that incident. His brows knitted together as though he were offended that I would even mention it after so much time—eleven whole days!—had passed.

“It’s not my fault Nip misunderstood,” Peter said, his eyes pressed to the corners of their sockets, sly and sure. “And anyway, you’ll have your chance to kill him in Battle soon enough, and take your revenge for his frightening your little duckling.”

“He killed Del,” I said.

I was trying not to lose my temper over this, trying not to let him draw me out.

“Del would have died anyway. He had that annoying coughing thing like Ambro. I can’t believe you’d fight over a boy who was half dead.”

And there was my temper, surging up, making me want to grab the nearest rock and smash it against his head until I could see the white skull underneath.

I’d had enough of Peter dismissing the boys who were dead. They loved him. It was hard for me to remember why at the moment, but they loved him, and he didn’t care what happened to them at all.

I don’t know what I would have done then—shouted or hit him or picked up that rock—but he spoke again, and it stopped me.

“I know you’ll beat him. You always do.”

He’d caught me wrong-footed, and the confusion punctured some of my anger. “What?”

“Nip,” Peter said, all earnest sincerity now as he sat up and looked at me. “I know you’ll beat him because he hurt one of the boys, and you always look out for the boys, don’t you, Jamie? Even me. Even when I don’t deserve it.”

He looked terribly contrite. I couldn’t believe my ears. Was Peter actually admitting he’d done something wrong? This had never happened before in the history of the island.

“Peter, I—” I began, wanting suddenly to mend what was torn between us, to feel the way I’d felt about him always.

Peter’s eyes widened then, and I saw something I rarely witnessed on his face—shock. He pointed over my shoulder.

“Jamie! The pirates!”

“What?” I twisted around, half certain this was a joke, expecting Peter to push me face-first in the water or some such thing as soon as my back was turned.

But Peter wasn’t lying, for a change. The pirates were there.

Their great tall-masted ship rounded the promontory that sheltered the mermaid lagoon.

“They never come to this side of the island,” I said.

It was one of the truths that seemed written into the bones of the island—the pirates stayed on their side, by their camp. They might sail away from the island, but they always returned to the same place. They didn’t sail all the way around. They didn’t trek through the mountains or the forest. They just didn’t.

And yet there they were—sailing directly toward us.

“They won’t be able to get close to the beach,” Peter said. “It’s too shallow. They’d ground the ship.”

“It’s not that shallow here by the rock,” I said. “And those cannons will reach the shore for certain from here. We’ve got to get the boys back into the forest.”

Nod and Fog and Crow hadn’t noticed yet. They were all getting along, for a wonder, and had just hauled a net full of fish onto the rock. Kit and Ed had stopped swimming halfway out to us and were wrestling in the water, splashing and pushing each other under the waves.

“None of us have weapons,” I said to Peter, for he had that look in his eye, the one that said he’d like to swim out and board the ship, the one that said there was nothing better than killing pirates.

“You take the others back,” Peter said, almost dreamily.

“What will you do?” I asked.

Peter grinned at me and dove into the water. He had nothing but his skin and his brains with him, but I’d no doubt that if he managed to make it aboard that ship, he’d cause havoc.

The other three crouched over the net, arguing how best to bring the fish back to shore. Nod and Fog wanted to pull the net of live fish behind them. The thinking was that if the net broke or some other catastrophe occurred, the fish could swim free and this was fairer for the fish.

Crow didn’t care in the least about what was fair for the fish. He wanted to smash their heads with rocks and then drag them to shore.

“You can’t do that!” Nod said, smacking Crow in the head. “If you smash them they’ll get all bloody and then sharks come cruising.”

“The sharks don’t come just because there’s a little blood in the water,” Crow scoffed.

“Yes, they do. It happened to us once,” Nod said. “Fog scraped his leg out here on the rock and when we swam back to the shore this big old shark followed him the whole way. Jamie and Peter had to beat it away from Fog or else I’d have no brother to this day.”

They could have gone on like this, and I didn’t have time to break it up the usual way. I ran across the rock to where they were crouched and kicked the fish over the side and into the water, net and all.

“Jamie!” Fog shouted. “We worked for those! Peter wanted fish! And you’ve lost the net.”

“Pirates,” I said, and pointed to the ship that was getting closer unbelievably fast.

It seemed to cast a shadow on us, a shadow that stretched from the ship back to the shore of the island. They weren’t supposed to be there. They just weren’t.

Nod and Fog stared at the ship, as astounded as I’d been.

“Pirates . . .” Fog said.

“. . . don’t come to this side of the island,” Nod said.

“I know,” I said. “Look, everyone has to get back to the forest before the cannons start. You three grab Kit and Ed on the way in and go straight back through the dunes. Don’t wait for us, all right? I’ll collect the others.”

They nodded and dove into the water. Crow followed, always happy to do what the other two did, even if he didn’t understand why it was so astonishing to see the pirates there.

I glanced back at the ship again. There was no sign of Peter—not even the bobbing of his head above the water. I hesitated, wondering if I should go after him. I would have, if Charlie wasn’t on the beach. But Charlie was on the beach, and then the first cannon boomed.

The cannonball left the ship and arced up. For a moment I was mesmerized by the shape of it, by the way it looked small and then got bigger and bigger, and then I realized that it had been launched at me.

I leapt for the water, scraping the side of my ankle on the sharp side of the rock. The ball crashed into the rock behind me. I heard it bounce once and then it hit the water, just a finger’s length away.

I stopped when I felt it whoosh by me, peered into the clear blue water and watched it fall down, down, down. My ankle bled freely, making a little cloud of red in the water, and the salt stung the wound. I would have worried about sharks except that I thought any shark would be smart enough to stay away from that pirate ship and its noisy, smoking cannon.

Several brightly colored fish darted out of my way as I resumed swimming. The triplets were all enthusiastic swimmers, though not very good ones, and I caught up to and passed them easily.

When I stumbled onto the shore I saw that the rest of the boys had gathered down the beach, where the sand ended and became that wonderful jumble of rocks to climb on. That was exactly what they were doing, playing some kind of follow-the-leader game with one in front—I thought it might be Billy; his hair was yellow like Charlie’s—and the rest strung out behind him like a long snake. Charlie and Sal were still wading in the water, their backs to the sea. I was amazed that none of them had heard the cannon shot, but then, the crash of the surf was very loud by those rocks.

I yanked on my trousers and coat and buckled my knife belt around me. Nod and Fog and Crow and Ed and Kit made it to shore while I did this and they all scrambled into their own clothing.

“Back to the tree,” I told them.

“Wait—where’s Peter?” Ed said. “Wasn’t he on the rock?”

“He’s gone to cause trouble for the pirates,” I said.

Ed grinned. “Taking all the fun for himself.”

The pirates hadn’t fired again, and I’d expected them to do so right away. It was possible that Peter was causing enough trouble that the pirates were distracted.

I waved the others in the direction of the forest and ran barefoot down the beach, leaving my moccasins behind. The scrape on my ankle didn’t hurt but the blood splashed down my foot and onto the sand, making a trail behind me.

Sal and Charlie looked up when I was about twenty lengths away from them, the two of them smiling and slightly pink from the sun.

“Jamie, look—” Charlie called, holding up a large peach-and-white shell. “You can hear the ocean in it!”

“Get away from there!” I yelled. “There are pirates!”

Sal appeared bewildered, but one glance over his shoulder had him hustling Charlie out of the water at a run.

“Take him back to the dunes and then to the tree,” I said. “I have to get the rest.”

The others were at the very top of the rocks, strung in their long snake tail. Just then Billy stopped, and it seemed he had just noticed the pirate ship. He pointed at it, and the others peeked around him. There were six of them in that row—Slightly, Billy, Terry, Sam, Jack and Jonathan.

The cannon boomed again, and a second later they were all gone.

chapter 10

I’d never seen what a cannonball could do before. I’d seen a lot of blood in my time, though, and a lot of death. But I never saw death like that.

The ball tore through Billy first. The rest of them might have been all right except that they were directly behind him, and so that cannonball just ripped through all the boys like a finger flicking over a line of dominoes.

It hardly seemed to slow at all, just smashed in their ribs and pulled their hearts and guts out and then all that was left of them were heads on their bloodied bodies. The ball bounced off the rocks and tumbled in the direction of the marsh.

I cried out, and ran for them, unable to believe what my eyes told me. They couldn’t all be gone. But when I reached the top of the rocks, all six of them were nothing but mangled meat.

The pirate ship had anchored near Skull Rock, and I saw a rowboat with five or six of them lowering in the water. I didn’t see Peter, and the rest of the boys had disappeared into the forest.

I took off my red coat and covered the dead boys, then climbed back down and into the water. I didn’t know whether the pirates had seen me up there on the rocks and I didn’t care. I wasn’t thinking of anything except killing all of the pirates, every last one.

The pirates were not going to follow the boys into the dunes. I would not lose any more of my friends. I would not.

I don’t remember swimming out to their rowboat. I don’t know how I got there so quickly, or how they missed seeing my shadow in the water. They must have been looking into the dunes for the boys who had run that way.

I surged out of the water and grabbed one of the pirates closest to me, and he was in the water with his throat slit before the others knew he was gone. I swam under the boat while they were all yelling and shouting and looking for their sinking fellow, and I took another from the other side and did for him the same as the first.

There were four of them left now, but they’d been spooked and none of the remaining pirates had managed to see me yet. I swam around under the boat while they peered like idiots over the sides and then gave it a great push. Two of them must have been standing for they fell in the water and made my task easier.

Blood churned everywhere in the water now, spewing from the bodies of the pirates. They couldn’t see me in that red fog. I was nothing but a shadow, a sharp-toothed hungry thing, and when I climbed over the side of the boat one of them was so terrified by my appearance that he jumped in the water and tried to swim back to the pirate ship.

I say “tried to,” because by then the sharks were coming in. He screamed, high and thin, and then the water churned and the scream was gone.

The last pirate was stringy and toothless and looked like he might have survived a lot of battles. Any other day he could have beaten me, maybe. Any other day but that one.

My dagger was in my hand and his throat tore into that long open smile and then I kicked him over the boat so the sharks could have him.

I stood there, breathing hard, and wished for someone else to kill.

After a moment I was glad of the boat, for the rage burst and my legs shook and I had to sit down on the bench. All around me the sharks—there were three or four of them—tore into my gifts. Chunks of flesh and bone that the sharks had missed bobbed to the surface for a moment before sinking again. Their huge silver bodies bumped the boat as they swam by, close enough for me to touch.

Any other day I might have had the sense to be afraid, but not that day.

The pirate ship pulled anchor and sailed away again, into the horizon this time. I wondered how many of them were left on that ship. Had they seen me kill all the ones on the rowboat? Had Peter killed more on the ship? I wondered if the pirates were going away forever, deciding that it was no longer worth staying on this island, promise of eternal youth or not.

I wondered, in a vague and unworried way, what had happened to Peter.

I put my hands to the oars and pulled back to shore. The sharks stayed all around me until I was past the drop-off and the rowboat scraped against the sand. I stumbled out of the boat and through the water to the dry beach, where I fell facedown.

I breathed in the smell of the sea salt and the clean sand and the green of the forest and the coppery blood all over my hands and choked back the cries that wanted to erupt from my throat.

“Jamie?” A little voice, a sweet voice.

“Charlie?” I said, picking myself up to my knees.

Charlie and Sal stood a few feet away. Charlie clung to the striped shell he’d tried to show me before the cannonball shot.

“He wouldn’t go without you,” Sal said. His face was white and drawn.

I scowled at Charlie. “I thought you were going to mind.”

He shook his head yes, and then no, and then yes again. “I am. I will. I’ll mind you, I promise, ’cept I didn’t want to leave you all alone. We watched from that coconut tree. Sal showed me how to go up and we were safe there if the pirates got to the beach. But the pirates didn’t get to the beach.”

There was a fierce kind of pride in his voice. I realized then they’d seen everything, seen me slaughter all the pirates and throw them in the water as shark food. Sal’s eyes darted from my face to my blood-covered hands, and something in them made me feel vaguely ashamed of myself.

“The pirates,” I said, and then the lump rose in my throat and I could feel the unshed grief there and I swallowed it because I didn’t cry in front of the boys. “The pirates—the cannonball . . .”

“We saw,” Sal said. “We saw.”

I stood up then, and dusted all the sand from me. “I wouldn’t lose any more of you,” I said.

Sal nodded, but I could tell that some of the shine was off the island for him, just like it was for Charlie. He’d heard us talk about the upcoming Battle, and how it was a fight to the death, but somehow I thought he didn’t really believe there would be a death. Until that day Sal thought it was all just in fun, for Peter said it was fun.

Sal didn’t understand that Peter’s idea of fun was considerably more savage than his.

“We’ll help you bury them,” Charlie said.

It made me sad then, terribly sad, that this tiny boy was already so inured to death that he knew what came after.

I shook my head. “I don’t want you to see them. They’re all in pieces.”

“But—”

“No,” I said, and this time it was gentle. “No, I want you to mind me now. Go back to the tree with Sal. The others should already be there.”

Charlie’s mouth set in a stubborn little line, but I found I couldn’t lose my temper with him as I’d done before.

“It’s my lot, Charlie, not yours,” I said. “I look after the boys, and I bury them when they’re dead.”

“Peter should look after us,” he said, and I’d never heard him so fierce. “He’s the one who brings us here. He’s the one who says we’ll have adventures and be happy forever.”

He was only saying what I’d thought many times, and things I’d felt in my own heart. Still it seemed a betrayal, somehow, to agree with him.

“Peter only has a mind to play,” I said. “So I’m here to look after you all.”

“We’ll help you bury them,” Sal said suddenly.

“I don’t want Charlie to—”

“To see. You said,” Sal said. “But you can’t keep him small forever. He’s got to learn to survive here, and so do I. And you can’t always be alone, Jamie.”

You won’t be alone, Jamie. I’ll stay with you always.

Peter had said that to me, a long time before, and he’d smiled at me and I’d followed him.

Sal and Charlie, they didn’t smile. They didn’t promise me they’d stay with me always. But they helped me dig six graves that day, and we didn’t weep when we covered the boys, though no one would have blamed us if we had.

• • •

Peter didn’t return until the next day, and he was surprised to find only nine of us left. Nip was inside the tree but the rest of us were gathered around the fire, watching Nod and Fog and Crow perform a kind of story they’d thought up, something that had to do with a bear falling in love with a mermaid. I’d no idea where this particular inspiration had struck them.

Like everything involving the triplets, it had quickly devolved into meaningless shouting and punching. I felt that me and Kit and Ed and Sal and Charlie were trying to find this funnier than it was.

Peter strolled into the clearing whistling like he hadn’t been gone for almost a day.

“Peter!” Ed shouted, standing up.

The triplets heard Ed’s cry and immediately stopped pummeling one another. They ran to surround Peter.

“Peter, where have you been?”

“Peter, did you kill all the pirates?”

“Peter, were you on the pirate ship? How did you get back again?”

He didn’t answer any of their questions, only frowned around at the small circle of adoration around him.

“Where is everybody?”

“Oh, all the others were killed,” Nod said. “Except for Nip, of course. He’s in the tree being boring, as usual.”

“A cannonball hit them,” Fog said.

“Jamie said it made a big mess,” Crow added.

“All of them?” Peter said. “One cannonball killed all of them?”

Even Peter was taken aback by this. We’d always fought the pirates hand-to-hand, though we’d understood that the cannons were supposed to be a threat. Still, we’d never seen them fired until the day before. And Peter clearly hadn’t known what happened onshore while he was off adventuring on the pirate ship.

“Did you kill any pirates, Peter?”

“Mmm,” Peter said, by way of answer. He was looking around at the sparse audience for his adventures and not liking it.

“How many pirates, Peter? Jamie killed six. Well, he says one of them jumped off the boat and got eaten by a shark, but he was running from Jamie at the time so that counts, doesn’t it?” Nod said.

“Six pirates? That’s nothing,” Peter said. “Jamie’s killed more than that before.”

“Not all at once like that,” Nod said. “He’s always fought them one or two at a time only.”

I felt that this was probably true, but I couldn’t be certain. The thing I would never tell Charlie or Sal or even Nod or Fog was that I’d killed so many pirates over the years that I couldn’t remember how many of them I’d taken on at one time or another.

Nod was impressed not only that I’d slaughtered the pirates but that I’d swum out to the rowboat and taken them by surprise. That was the best part for him. He’d made me tell it all through three times already, and every time I’d left out more details, aware of Sal and Charlie’s eyes on me.

Each time I did this Charlie would add back in all the bits I’d left out, and generally make me sound more heroic than I was.

I wasn’t a hero. I’d just been angry.

Only I didn’t realize at the time who, exactly, I was angry with. I’d thought it was the pirates, for firing a cannonball that took away six of my mates in one fierce swipe.

But it wasn’t the pirates. It was Peter.

It was Peter’s fault all the boys were dead. Peter had burned the pirate camp. Peter had fed their Captain to the Many-Eyed. All of this was because of Peter.

Because Peter promised them adventures and happiness and then took them away to the island where they died. They weren’t forever young, unless dying when you were young kept you that way for always.

In all that time, and all those years, only four boys had not died or grown up—which was the same thing, really, for growing up meant death was closer every day.

Four boys—Nod, Fog, Peter. And me.

And then Peter glanced around and saw that his band wasn’t big enough for him, and he said, “I’ll be back soon.”

He turned and left the camp as suddenly as he came, and the other boys slumped in disappointment.

“But, Peter, where are you going? Can’t we come too?”

He waved his arm back at them, and the few who’d started to follow stopped.

I knew what he was about, and I wasn’t having any of it.

“Stay together,” I told Sal and Charlie.

I was more worried about Nip since we’d lost so many boys. There were fewer eyes about to watch him. But Sal and Charlie were getting better at looking out for themselves every day, and I had to trust them to do so.

Peter was distracted, and thinking about his plans, and so I caught up with him after several minutes’ hard running. I was lucky he hadn’t decided to fly, else I wouldn’t have been in time.

I grabbed his shoulder and jerked him around. He raised his eyebrows at me.

“No, Peter,” I said.

“No, what?”

“No more boys from the Other Place,” I said. “You can’t look after the ones we have now. I won’t let you bring them here just to have them die.”

“I don’t bring them here to die,” he said, clearly insulted. “I bring them here so they’ll live forever.”

“But they don’t,” I said. “Can’t you see? The island takes them and chews them up.”

Peter shrugged. “And then I get new ones. It’s always been like this, Jamie. I don’t see why it should bother you now.”

“You didn’t see them,” I said. I could see them, just as sure as if they were laid out before me at that moment. I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to see anyone like that ever again. “You didn’t see all the boys with a hole in their middle, their insides torn out. There was nothing left of them, Peter.”

“It’s a good thing the pirates went away, then, so that won’t happen anymore.”

“It won’t happen anymore because you’re not getting any more,” I said, my teeth gritted. “I won’t let you.”

He laughed then, and my dagger was in my hand. I hadn’t thought about it. I just wanted to make that laugh go away forever. It wasn’t his happy-Peter-come-play-with-me laugh. It was Peter laughing at me.

Laughing at me.

He didn’t think I could stop him. He thought it was funny.

That was the first time I hated him.

His laugh faded when he saw my dagger, and he squinted at me. “What are you going to do, Jamie? Stab me?”

“If I have to,” I said. Oh, how I want to. I wanted to make that laugh go away forever.

Peter looked at me for a long time. I let him look.

I couldn’t guess what he might be thinking. All I knew was that I would stop him if he tried to go to the Other Place. I was tired of burying boys. A permanent sense of grief had settled over me, and every time I saw Charlie or Sal smile, all I could think was that I would lose them too.

Was this, I wondered, what it felt like to be a grown-up? Did you always feel the weight of things on you, your cares pressing you down like a burden you could never shake? No wonder Peter could fly. He had no worries to weight him to the earth.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and the biting flies buzzed all around our heads. I didn’t wave them away, because I wanted to be ready if Peter decided to fight. Peter could be very, very tricky in a fight.

A fly landed behind my ear and bit, and blood rolled down the back of my neck to mix with sweat, and still I waited.

Finally Peter sighed, a long, long sigh. “Very well.”

“Very well what?” I asked suspiciously.

“I won’t go and get any more boys.”

My grip loosened on the dagger. I’d held it so hard that it left a bruise on my palm, I found later. “You won’t?”

“No, I won’t,” he said. “But you have to do something for me.”

“What?” Just the fact that Peter was asking for something immediately made me suspicious.

“I want you to play with me more. Just me. Not with the others all the time,” Peter said, and he sounded very young then. “You hardly play anymore, always worrying about chores and keeping the other boys safe. I brought you here to play and lately you’ve been acting like a grown-up.”

He spit out the last word. I could almost see his disdain dripping from his tongue.

I didn’t know how to explain to him that for all that I still looked young, I had been feeling old. The years had passed, so many of them, and they were starting to wear on me. After a while it wasn’t fun to always feel like you had to have fun.

And as I thought this, I felt a little twinge in my legs, like the muscles and bones were stretching.

“Well? Do we have a bargain?” Peter asked.

“I won’t leave Charlie alone all the time just to play with you,” I said. “If this is some kind of trick so you can set Nip on him again . . .”

“No harm will come to your little duckling,” Peter said. I checked both hands to make sure they weren’t crossed behind his back.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll play more, and you don’t get any new boys from the Other Place.”

Peter held out his hand and we shook on it.

“Now,” he said, and his eyes gleamed. “How about we bother the crocodiles?”

• • •

The day before the Battle, Nip went off in the woods early in the morning and didn’t come back until well after dusk. He returned sweaty and scratched from his exertions, but overall he looked much healthier than he had been. His broken cheekbone appeared to be mending, though an ugly ridge had formed where the two pieces joined together.

He was gone so long that day that I wondered if he had gotten lost, or perhaps just decided to keep going straight across the island and join the pirates. It would be better for him if he didn’t fight me, though he didn’t seem to realize that.

The pirates, surprisingly, had returned to the island a few days before. Peter and I had been out scouting in the mountains (just the two of us, as Peter wanted) and had seen their ship anchored in their usual cove.

We’d crept down for a closer look and found that the previous first mate was now wearing the Captain’s coat, and that he’d managed to replace the men he’d lost to Peter and me and the Many-Eyed. They set up a new camp while Peter and I watched from a cliff just above the beach.

“The new pirates look a good deal younger and healthier than the others,” I said.

“That means they’ll fight better,” Peter said. “We should have a raid, and welcome them to the island.”

I chose my next words carefully, not wanting to irritate Peter. He’d been in a better mood since our bargain, mostly because he seemed to think he had me on a string that he could tug anytime he liked.

“Maybe we should wait on a raid until after Battle,” I said. “After all, I could get hurt in a raid, and then the fight wouldn’t be fair.”

“You wouldn’t get hurt, Jamie,” Peter scoffed. “When have you ever gotten hurt in a raid?”

I had, plenty of times. There was a long scar on my right thigh where one of the first mates had managed to slice open the skin and muscle there. That was probably the worst I’d ever gotten.

A boy had lived with us at that time called Rob, and he said he’d once been a servant to a doctor. He told me the doctor sewed flaps of skin together so they would heal, so I tried that with some deer gut I stretched into thin strings. It seemed to work all right, except that the place where the skin and muscle joined was swollen and tender for a long time after, and cutting the deer gut out after the wound healed was more miserable than sewing it together in the first place.

Under my left ribs there was a hard knot of skin where another mate had almost got me, except that I danced away at the last moment before he managed to plunge the knife all the way in. There were assorted other small marks and scars, many of them faded white, but they existed. Peter had just forgotten, the way that Peter did forget about anything that wasn’t right in front of him at the moment.

“Still,” I said, not liking to remind Peter that he was wrong. “I could get injured. And if I was, you’d have to put off Battle until I was better.”

“Why?” Peter asked.

“Because you put it off until Nip was better, so you’d have to do the same for me. It’s only fair.”

“Oh,” Peter said, his mouth twisting to one side the way it did when he was thinking hard. He wanted the raid, was excited about the return of the pirates.

At the same time, I sensed that the ongoing tension of Nip’s presence in the camp was beginning to wear even on Peter. Nip never spoke to anyone except to insult them, and he certainly did not come along for games or adventures. He was secretive and angry, and that did not make for Peter’s idea of fun. Delaying Battle, even for a few more days, was not appealing to him. Peter wanted the trouble with Nip to be resolved.

“I suppose we could wait until after Battle,” Peter said slowly. “But not too long after. I don’t want these new pirates getting ideas. The island belongs to me.”

Not to us, I noticed. Not to all the boys, or even to Peter and me. Just to him. It was Peter’s island.

But I didn’t let this irritate me. Peter was doing what I wanted. There would be no raid until after Battle.

• • •

On the morning of Battle we all woke early. It was a half-day walk to the Battle place and Peter wanted to reach it before midday. It wasn’t so far as the crow flies, but it was nestled right in the mountains to the southeast and there was a good deal of climbing to do to get there.

This meant that Peter was cock-crowing us awake before the moon had set. All the boys except for Nip and Sal and Charlie (who were the only new boys left after the terrible day with the cannonball) had been to the Battle place before, and so were familiar with Peter’s routine. We rolled out of sleep and collected our things while Peter scampered around shouting for us to hurry.

I’d carefully prepared all my weapons the night before and packed them—except my dagger, which always went on my waist—in a kind of sling-bag I’d made from deerskin.

Ever since the day Battle had been announced I’d quietly picked up useful rocks that I saw here and there—smooth round ones that would fit inside my slingshot. Those stones were in my bag, along with my freshly strung shot.

I had also found a couple of larger rocks, ones that would just fit inside my hand, with spiky bits on them. They were worth carrying the extra weight. If I got Nip’s skull with one of them he’d go down in an instant and then I’d just have to finish him off.

After Del died I’d taken his pirate sword, though I didn’t prefer swords, generally. I was good with them, and would take a sword from whatever pirate I fought and use the sword against him, but I mostly found swords unwieldy. The dagger suited me better—I liked to be quick, to dart in and out again, to kill before my enemy knew I was even there.

Swords weren’t permitted in Battle, nor daggers either, because Peter liked Battle to be about the boys who were the best fighters—not who was able to steal the best weapons from the pirates. Still, I put Del’s sword inside my sling-bag, because I had a hunch that Nip might cheat.

I’d been teaching Sal and Charlie swordplay with it, anyhow. The necessity of keeping Peter company meant that I hadn’t taught them as much as I’d have liked, but I’d feel better if they had the sword with them while I battled Nip.

There was a voice whispering to me that Peter was being too nice, too good, that he hadn’t forgotten the way Charlie and Sal took me away from him. Going after them while I was distracted by Battle was a distinct possibility.

Nip was cross, as usual, when Peter woke him. This might have had something to do with Peter treading on Nip’s hand instead of shaking his shoulder. The other boy woke with an angry shout, and spent several minutes swearing words I’d never heard before while he packed. I’ve listened to pirates too, and still I hadn’t heard some of those words.

Soon enough the ten of us were trekking through the last hours of night toward the mountains. The Battle place was a crater that seemed carved for our exact purpose. It was a bowl-like depression in the rock—the southeastern mountains were rockier and spikier, generally, than the northeastern ones—and about twenty-five boy lengths across. All around the rim of the bowl was a protruding lip that seemed just like a bench for watching what happened inside. When Peter and I found it, so long ago, it seemed as if the island had made an arena especially for us.

Peter took the lead, of course, and I let the other boys get between us so I could walk with Charlie and Sal. Nip, surprisingly, wanted to walk near Peter. I guessed that perhaps he was thinking of what might happen if he beat me. He would have to find his way into Peter’s favor again, and from my view it appeared he was laying it on thick.

I didn’t mind. I knew that Nip was unlikely to win without cheating, and I was glad of the chance to spend a few hours free from Peter’s expectation that I amuse him.

“Jamie,” Sal asked quietly, for the night was still and voices carried. “How many of these Battles have you fought?”

I frowned. “I’m not sure. The first one, the first real one, wasn’t until maybe twenty or thirty seasons after I came to the island. Until then Peter and I used it as a place to practice fighting, but just for fun.”

“Nod said Battle is for fun,” Sal said, and I heard the question in his voice. How could it be for fun when one of you dies?

“Sometimes it is for fun,” I said. “Usually Peter sets a Battle day once or twice a year. He picks two teams of boys and then we fight hand-to-hand, no weapons, first in groups and then one-to-one. Whoever wins is the Battle champion until the next Battle.”

“How many times have you been Battle champion?” Charlie asked.

I was thankful for the moonlight, which hid the blood that rushed to my face at Charlie’s question. Sal looked at me curiously when I didn’t answer right away.

“I, um . . . I’m always Battle champion.”

“Always?” Charlie’s eyes glowed in the moonlight.

“Always,” I said. Why should I be embarrassed about this? I was the best fighter. But something about the way Sal cocked his head to one side made me feel silly about it.

“So Battle is a way to practice fighting,” Sal said. “For when you raid the pirates and things like that.”

I nodded. “Yes, and it also helps the boys work things out. When you’ve got a big group of boys like this, sometimes they go too far with one another, and it’s good for them to have a place to fight and clear the air. Else they spend all their time spitting at each other and it causes too many problems.”

“The triplets spend all their time spitting at each other,” Charlie said.

“Yes,” I said, rumpling his hair. I liked the way the yellow strands stood up and caught the light of the moon. “But the triplets like to argue and punch each other. For them it’s not clearing the air. It’s just as natural as breathing.”

“But sometimes, like today, Battle isn’t a practice,” Sal said. “Today it’s real fighting.”

“Yes,” I said. “Though there are still rules. You can’t carry a bladed weapon, only rocks or sticks or things you made yourself, like a slingshot.”

“Yes, because it’s obviously better if you beat each other to death with rocks instead of stabbing each other like civilized human beings,” Sal muttered, looking away.

“You’re not worried, are you?” I asked, trying to peer around to see his face. “Because I’ve never lost Battle before, and I’m not going to start today.”

“Those were play Battles,” Sal said, and he was definitely angry. I could hear it.

“Not all of them,” I said.

He gave me a sharp look then. “This isn’t your first Battle to the death?”

“I’ve been here a long, long time, Sal,” I said, and I felt all the years roll over me when I said it.

I felt that twinge again, the one in my legs, the one I hadn’t felt since that day Peter promised he would not bring back any more boys.

“How long?” Sal asked.

I shrugged. “A hundred and fifty seasons, maybe more. I can’t really remember.”

“You don’t remember the Other Place?”

“It doesn’t look the same as it was when I was there. Every time I go back with Peter it’s different. And we didn’t get Nod and Fog here until after I’d been here for many seasons already.”

Sal gave me another one of his piercing looks, the ones that made me feel all twisted up inside. It was almost as if he felt sorry for me.

“You’re very old, Jamie,” Charlie said, and he was so solemn about it that it made me laugh.

He made Sal laugh too. That laugh rang out in the night and seemed to bring on the dawn faster, as if the sun wanted to hear Sal laughing.

When we reached the steep parts of the mountain, Charlie began to struggle. There were places where there was no path at all, and we had to climb using handholds we found in the rock. Charlie’s arms and legs were far too short for this exercise, and he was terrified of falling in any event.

Sal and I took it in turns to carry him on our backs through these parts. It was much, much harder for Sal, who was almost as tall as me but a great deal more slender and not as hardened to life on the island. He refused to let me carry Charlie on my own, though.

“You’ve got to save your strength for Battle,” he said.

I didn’t tell him that I could probably carry Charlie on my back throughout Battle and still beat Nip. Sal wasn’t impressed, I thought, by my accomplishments at Battle.

Charlie, on the other hand, took my news of permanent Battle champion as proof positive that I was the best boy in the world, something he’d already been mostly convinced of anyhow.

I think that this was, deep down, why Peter disliked him so much. It wasn’t just that Charlie took me away from Peter. It was that Charlie preferred me to Peter. Peter was used to all the boys thinking he was the best, most wonderful boy there ever was.

Despite the necessity of carrying Charlie, we kept up with the others and we all reached the Battle place by midmorning. Peter wanted to be annoyed that we’d piggybacked the smaller boy, but since we hadn’t fallen behind, there wasn’t much he could do about it except scowl at Charlie.

The Battle arena was just past a little mountain meadow filled with small white flowers that bobbed in the wind. Though this part of the range was rockier than the northern end, there were still a few green places. A skinny stream full of cold water ran along the edge of the meadow before tumbling over the rocks on the other side, heading down to the crocodile pond and then the sea.

We reached the meadow after a hard climb on a bit of trail that switched back and forth along the side of the mountain. To reach the Battle place we crossed the meadow, heading due east. The carved-out bowl was directly on the other side, a hole that was dropped in between the meadow and the jagged rock wall that rose up on the other side. A dirt track ran from the meadow down to the bowl, and on the fourth side the view opened to the rest of the mountains and a sheer drop down for the unwary.

The rock of the Battle arena was smooth and white, veined with grey, and this rock was different from the rest of the mountains. It was one of the reasons why Peter had declared it special and important.

No matter how many times we fought there, or how much blood was spilled, the rock remained white and smooth.

It was like the island swallowed up that blood and pushed it out again as magic, magic that kept us boys forever. It was a fanciful thought, but no more fanciful than that of the pirates thinking we drank from some magic spring for eternal youth.

Nod and Fog and Crow and Ed and Kit ran across the meadow and into the bowl, whooping and dancing in circles. Nod and Fog promptly bumped into each other and a heartbeat later their fists were where they always were—in each other’s faces. Crow couldn’t bear to be left out. He jumped on top of Fog and soon the three of them were doing what they did best. Kit and Ed ran around the three of them, shouting encouragement.

“It seems like it would be exhausting,” Sal whispered to me. “To fight like that all the time.”

“Strangely enough, they seem to get more energy out of it,” I said.

Peter settled himself right at the center of the rim on one side, so he could have a good view of the proceedings. Peter always judged Battle; he never participated.

I put Charlie and Sal a little away from Peter, on the side of the arena that had the security of the mountain wall rising behind it. It would be far too easy to knock the two of them off the open side if anyone (like Nip or Peter, I thought) had such things in their mind.

I drew Del’s sword out of my sling-bag and handed it to Sal. He took it with obvious reluctance. Charlie watched with some jealousy in his eyes. He enjoyed learning how to use a sword far better than Sal did.

“What will I need this for?” he asked.

“You keep yourself safe,” I said. “You and Charlie.”

“I won’t have to,” he said. “Because you’re going to win, aren’t you?”

“Jamie always wins,” Charlie said.

“But in case I don’t,” I said. “You keep yourself safe.”

I bent down then, and whispered in Sal’s ear the thing that I hadn’t let myself think. “If Nip kills me, then you and Charlie won’t have a chance here. Peter will find some way to get rid of the two of you. You go as fast as you can to the door to the Other Place and you go back, you understand?”

Sal looked at me, stricken. “I . . . don’t know if I can find the way back. We came here in the night. I don’t remember the way.”

“Then go to the pirates,” I said.

“The pirates?” Sal was horrified. “After what they did to the others?”

“You’ll be safer with the pirates than you will be here with Nip alive.”

I wasn’t certain of this at all. It was only a hope. If they stayed with Peter and Nip, then Sal and Charlie would die. If they went to the pirates, then they might live. That was all I could give them, if I didn’t make it.

chapter 11

Peter stood and clapped his hands then, and the wild boys running and rolling in the center came to a halt.

“It’s time for Battle to begin. Fighters, bring your weapons here to be inspected.”

Nip had been lurking on the dirt track behind Peter, just at the edge where the meadow dipped down to the arena. I wondered if he was having second thoughts about Battle. He kept glancing back over his shoulder like he was calculating how quickly he could run away.

When Peter called us he trudged—with some reluctance, I thought—down to the arena to join me.

The other five collected on the seats between Peter and Sal and Charlie. Charlie’s legs swung back and forth in excitement. Sal gripped the scabbard of the sword and couldn’t disguise his worry.

I took my slingshot and the rocks out of my bag and placed them on the bench for Peter to look over. He carefully checked each one like he was searching for treasure hidden inside, and then took my bag and turned it inside out to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything.

“Leave your dagger here,” Peter said.

I took it out of my belt and placed it on the seat. Then I collected all my rocks and slingshot in the bag again.

“Here, why’s he leaving his dagger?” Nip asked.

“Because we don’t use bladed weapons in Battle,” Peter said.

“Nobody told me!” Nip shouted. “All I’ve got is bloody bladed weapons.”

He turned out his own bag, and a clatter of knives and axes spilled out.

“You’re telling me I’m not to use any of this against him? I thought this was a Battle to the death!”

“It is, but we have rules about how you’re allowed to kill each other. This is about skill,” Peter said; then he gave Nip a sly sideways glance. “You had thirty sleeps to ask any of us about the rules. Why didn’t you?”

Nip’s face turned a kind of blotchy red, like there was a thunderstorm in him about to burst.

I peered more closely at the pile of metal that Nip had dumped out. “Where did you get these?”

Some of the objects were quite new and shiny, but most of them were rusted. The axe handle looked like it might rot away from the blade at any moment. There was something about that axe . . . something familiar . . . It looked like an axe a boy called Davey used to carry when he was alive.

“Found them,” Nip said defiantly. “There was this field with all these pointed sticks in it and I saw this knife in the dirt so I took it. Then I thought there might be pirate treasure buried there so I dug around some more and found these other things. Found a lot of bones too.”

“That’s because it’s where I buried the boys,” I said, anger blossoming in my chest, turning into a red haze before my eyes. He stole from the boys, my boys, my boys that I carried in pieces and covered in dirt. “You took all of these from dead boys, you damned grave thief.”

“You stole these from graves?” Peter said, looking appropriately horrified.

I knew Peter didn’t give a toss where Nip got the weapons. He just wanted to wind Nip up even more.

The other boy seemed torn between fury and embarrassment, especially when Nod and Fog and Crow chimed in.

“That’s not right, Nip.”

“Yeah, there should be respect for the dead.”

“Respect for the dead. That’s what Jamie always says.”

“And that means you don’t go taking things from dead bodies.”

“That’s against the rules.”

“Sod you and sod your bloody rules!” Nip shouted. He pointed at Peter. “I only came here because he said there wouldn’t be any rules! And all he’s done is lie and make me look a fool.”

“Peter didn’t make you a fool, Nip,” I said. “You did that yourself.”

“I’ll show you who’s a fool,” he said, and grabbed the axe.

I wasn’t ready for this, though I should have been. Somehow I’d thought he’d take his anger out on Peter, whom he blamed for his troubles. I didn’t know that he blamed me just as much, or maybe more.

He swung out at me with the axe and I only just got away, though my movement took me toward the center of the arena and away from my dagger, which waited on the bench because I’d been ready to follow Peter’s rules.

If I had my dagger, it would be over in a thrice, for I was certain I could hit him even while he was swinging that axe in a wild rage. But I didn’t, and I didn’t have time to load up my slingshot while I was dodging the axe.

But I had the big rocks, the ones that fit just inside my fist. I reached into the bag, feeling around for the spiky surface, and my hand closed around one. Nip charged at me again, the axe held high like he wanted to bury it in my head.

I was vaguely aware of the other boys shouting, of Peter saying, “That’s not fair play! That’s not fair play!” over and over.

Nip didn’t care in the least about fair play. He wanted me dead.

As Nip ran at me I ducked away from the whistling blade and slammed my rock-filled fist into his stomach. This startled him into dropping the axe as the breath left him, and then I was on him in an instant. I heard the boys cheer and call my name, clapping and screeching with glee every time I landed a blow.

I pummeled him fast with both hands, and the one with the rock did more damage but the other one did plenty. In a few moments Nip was on the bottom of the arena, flat on his back, his face an unrecognizable mess. My knees were in his shoulders and I raised the rock once more for a final blow.

The boys all chanted, “Finish him, finish him, finish him.”

Nip’s little mean eyes looked from the rock to me, and then he laughed. It was a bloody, wheezy laugh, but it made me pause.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter . . .” he said, and it took him a long time to say it. “. . . what happens to me. Because they are coming.”

“Who’s coming?” I asked as Nip closed his eyes. I slapped him and he opened them again. “Who’s coming?”

“Pirates,” he said.

In an instant I remembered Nip’s long trek the day before, and the way he kept looking over his shoulder while he stood at the top of the track.

Like he was waiting for someone to arrive.

Nip had told the pirates where we would be. And in the arena, we’d be trapped. There was no way out except the track back up to the meadow.

I brought the rock down on his head so hard that I caved in the front of his skull.

The boys erupted in cheers—all except Charlie, who looked pleased but shaky, and Sal, who turned away and retched.

“We have to leave now!” I shouted, but they didn’t hear me.

They hadn’t heard Nip’s words either, because they were too busy cheering me on. They didn’t know the pirates were coming.

I had to get them out.

I ran toward Peter, who had stood on the seat and was leading a “hip-hip-hurrah” for me. Nod and Fog and Crow and Kit and Ed were gathered around him with their backs to me.

The shot rang out, and it didn’t seem real, the way it echoed all around the rock walls. We didn’t use pistols—didn’t have them, or the means to fill them with gunpowder, so what was the point? And the pirates had never used them on us before that day.

Everything changed after Peter burned their camp down. They didn’t want us for our secrets anymore. They wanted only revenge.

The shot rang out. Then blood bloomed on Fog’s back, an opening flower that revealed the hole that passed through his body.

Not Fog, I thought. Nod and Fog had been on the island almost as long as me. How could there be an island without the two of them together, always together? It couldn’t be.

Fog fell backward, and the pirates swarmed in.

There were only six of them; else it might have been worse. As it was I think they were tired from the climb—Nip couldn’t have described the path very well, having never been there before.

They were tired, and had counted on surprise. And they still thought of us as children.

We were not ordinary children.

Nod saw his brother fall and howled a noise that no human should ever hear, a howl of pain that came from his heart instead of his throat.

I flung my rock, still coated in Nip’s blood, at the first pirate down the track. He was the one holding the pistol with smoke curling out of its tip. The rock hit him square in the nose and he staggered to one side, swiping at the blood that erupted there. I grabbed my dagger and leapt over the rim of the arena, landing on top of him. He twisted and fell face-first to the ground. I jammed the blade into the base of his neck and he stilled.

I rolled to my feet, searching for Charlie and Sal. Sal stood over a dead pirate that had Del’s sword sticking out of his chest. Charlie was behind Sal, and he didn’t seem to be harmed at all.

The other boys had stampeded past me while I dispatched the first pirate, and they’d chased the others up into the meadow. I heard the sounds of their weapons clashing, the hollering of the boys and the curses of the pirates.

It was only Sal and Charlie and me, and four bodies, left in the arena.

Sal was pale and sweaty and had his hands crossed over his stomach like he was going to be sick again.

Then I saw the red seeping between his fingers.

“Sal!” I said, and ran to him just as he fell.

I reached for the button of his waistcoat, a funny affectation of his like the woolen trousers and cap. He batted my hands away weakly.

“Leave it,” he said thickly.

“Don’t be a fool. I have to see how bad it is,” I said.

Sal was too shaky to stop me. I ripped open the waistcoat buttons and then the white shirt beneath, both now sticky with blood.

And stopped.

The wound was in the upper left part of the belly, just below the ribs. It wasn’t that deep, though it bled profusely. It looked like the pirate had just got the tip of his sword into Sal.

That wasn’t what stopped me, though.

Just above his ribs Sal had wound several pieces of cloth tightly around his chest. It was enough to disguise the truth when his shirt and waistcoat were buttoned, but there was no hiding it once those were off.

Sal wasn’t a boy at all. She was girl.

Her face was now terrified and defiant all at once, and she said, very coolly though her voice was weak, “How bad is it?”

I think I fell in love with her then, when she pretended that everything was just the same as it had always been.

“What are those?” Charlie asked, pointing at Sal’s chest.

Sal laughed, then coughed. “Getting stabbed hurts. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Did you think it would be an adventure?” I said, with a levity I did not feel.

“That’s how you and Peter always made it out to be,” she said, and coughed again.

I didn’t like that coughing. It made me worry that the wound was worse than it looked. I fumbled with shaking hands in the pockets of my coat, where I always had something handy hidden, and yanked out a pirate’s head cloth that I’d stolen some time ago. It was covered in dust but it was the best I could do.

I folded the cloth and pressed it over the wound, hoping to staunch the bleeding. Sal cried out when I put pressure on it.

“That hurts too!” she shouted, and hit my arm.

“Do you want to bleed to death?” I said.

“Don’t bleed to death, Sal,” Charlie said.

“Is that your real name?” I asked.

Her dancing blue eyes looked away. “It’s Sally.”

Charlie looked from Sally to me and back again to the strips of cloth around her chest. He’d just made the connection. “You’re a girl!”

“Who’s a girl?” Peter’s voice, behind me.

I twisted around. Nod and Crow and Peter had returned to the arena. The three of them were painted in spattered blood. Peter’s face said he’d had the time of his life. Nod stared at his dead brother’s body.

“Sal’s a girl!” Charlie said, standing up and pointing at her.

“You couldn’t hide it for long,” I said. “Not on the island, surrounded by boys.”

“I’ve hid it for three years, surrounded by boys on the streets, ever since I was ten years old,” she said, her eyes sparking. “I’m no fool, Jamie.”

“Then you shouldn’t have gotten yourself stabbed,” I said.

“I was trying not to let Charlie get stabbed,” she muttered.

Peter and Crow came over to us. Crow seemed only mildly curious, but Peter’s face was thunder. “You’re a girl.”

He said it like he was saying Sally was a slimy thing he’d found under a rock.

“We’ve already figured that out,” I said, getting irritated on her behalf. After all, so what if she was a girl? She’d been here a month and gotten on fine.

“There are no girls on my island!” Peter shouted. His face was red. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so angry. His mouth contorted in rage. “No girls! None! None! None! Girls are trouble and they aren’t allowed here. You tricked me.”

“I was keeping myself safe,” Sally retorted. “It’s more dangerous for girls than for boys when you sleep out in the street at night. I cut my hair after I ran away and I lived like a boy. You liked me fine when you thought I was a boy.”

“No, no, no, no, no! You can’t stay! There are no girls allowed here and so you have to leave.”

“Where will she go?” I asked. I was astonished at his behavior. He was like a small baby having a tantrum. I’d never seen him like this. Never.

“Back to the Other Place!” Peter shouted.

“But, Peter,” Crow said. “Nobody’s allowed to go back to the Other Place. You said so yourself. It’s one of your rules.”

“There are no girls allowed on this island!” Peter screamed. “That’s a rule too!”

I was less worried about Sally’s future home than I was about her living to see a future at all. The blood from the wound had soaked through the cloth and I couldn’t really see why. It was just a little stab wound, but it wouldn’t stop bleeding.

“Charlie, give me your shirt,” I said.

The smaller boy took off the shirt he’d been wearing since the day he’d arrived on the island. I made all the boys wash their clothes as well as themselves every several days or so; otherwise the smell in the tree became unbearable. Luckily we’d had a wash day not long before, so Charlie’s shirt wasn’t as filthy as it might have been.

“I’ll make you a new one,” I said, as I tore the shirt into strips.

“Out of deer hide?” Charlie asked. His upper body was thin and pale, though his arms and neck and face were brown from the sun. “Like your pants?”

“Of course,” I said, knotting the strips together into a long rope.

“Who the devil cares about your stupid shirt!” Peter shouted. “She’s a girl and I want her out. Out, out, out, out, out!”

There’s nothing worse than having a fit and no one giving you the proper attention for it. Crow seemed to find Peter’s behavior unseemly—he’d backed away and come to kneel next to Charlie and me. Peter ran around the arena, kicking Nip’s dead body several times and throwing whatever he could find.

Nod was sitting next to Fog’s body, holding his brother’s hand and crying, and not caring who saw him.

That was when Fog’s death was real to me, real in a way it hadn’t been before. I’d never seen Nod cry. I wanted to look after him, but I had to look after Sal first.

I wrapped the strips around Sally’s middle, pulling them tight so there would be pressure on the wound.

“I can’t breathe when you do that,” Sally said. Her face was dead white now and covered in sweat.

“Sorry,” I said. “I think you must choose between breathing or bleeding to death.”

“Oh, well, when you put it that way,” Sally said.

Her natural cheerfulness kept reasserting itself even though she was in a dire situation. I knew many boys who screamed and cried when they took wounds like Sally’s, and she’d done none of that.

I closed her shirt and waistcoat around her again and felt the tips of my ears heating. I don’t know why it was more embarrassing to cover her up when we’d all been staring at her exposed body for several minutes, but somehow it was.

“Crow, help me get her up,” I said.

We each put an arm around Sally until she was standing between us, breathing hard.

“Do you think you can walk?” I said.

“I’ll have to, unless I want to sleep alone on this mountain,” Sally said. Her hair was soaked with sweat and her cap had fallen off.

Charlie picked up the cap and presented it to her. She shook her head. “Can you wear it for me, Charlie?”

The little boy seem thrilled, turning the cap around so the brim was on the back of his neck, the way he’d seen Sal do it.

“Where are the others?” I said to Crow.

We were all pretending that Peter wasn’t screaming and throwing things. It seemed the best course of action at the moment. Charlie couldn’t stop himself staring, though, and then looking quickly away before Peter caught him at it.

“Are no others,” Crow said. “Just me and Nod and Peter made it.”

“Then it’s only us,” I said.

I wanted to run around in a circle and kick and throw things too. We’d come up the mountain with ten, and now four more were gone—Kit, Ed, Fog and Nip. From sixteen our band was down to six in less than a month.

Nip was no loss, and would have never gone back to the tree in any case, but losing Fog hurt. And the other two had been on the island long enough for me to give a damn for their own sakes, not just because it was a stupid loss of life.

“What I don’t see is how the pirates knew to come up here anyway,” Crow said as we slowly moved toward the track.

“Nip told them where we would be,” I said. “He was always going out on those long walks on his own. I should have known he was up to something.”

“You can’t always know everything, Jamie,” Crow said philosophically.

Peter dragged the corpse of the pirate who’d stabbed Sal over to the edge of the arena and threw it into the drop below, screaming his frustration the whole time. Del’s sword was still sticking out of the dead pirate’s chest when Peter did this, and I was annoyed that he’d wasted a perfectly good weapon.

We stopped next to Nod, who had not moved or acknowledged anything except Fog’s body since reentering the arena.

“Nod,” I said. “We’ve got to go now.”

He looked up at me slowly, very slowly, like he wasn’t sure what the words I said meant.

“We’re going back to the tree,” I said.

“What about Fog?” he asked, and his voice was a tiny broken thing.

“I can’t stay to bury him,” I said. “Sal’s been cut and she needs to get back to the tree.”

“She?” Nod asked, but it was only a vague curiosity about something out of place.

“She,” I said. “Sal’s a girl.”

“Oh,” Nod said. It didn’t seem to bother him very much.

“If you want to bury Fog you can do it in the meadow, and catch up to us later,” I said. “He’d like that. He’d be near the Battle place.”

“Battle was his favorite thing to do,” Nod said, rubbing at his dripping nose and eyes with his wrist.

He stood and lifted his brother over his shoulder. We let them go ahead of us on the track. Charlie followed Nod, though whether it was to help or to witness I didn’t know. Probably he thought Nod shouldn’t be alone.

As I passed the pile of weapons that Nip had brought to Battle, I hesitated, and Sal felt me pause and stopped moving. Crow looked curiously at both of us.

“He took them from the boys’ graves,” I said.

“But you don’t want to waste them,” Sal said, nodding.

“The pirates won’t stop,” I said. “We’ve killed a bunch of their lot again.”

Crow let Sally go, and she leaned all her weight on me. There wasn’t much to her, really—none of the boys were anything but skinny and strong from all their adventuring—but it felt different, somehow, when she was pressed up against me. Was it because I knew she was a girl, or because I could feel the tiny curves at her chest that I wasn’t aware of before?

For her part, I think Sal only wanted to rest. The short hike across the arena seemed to have drained her.

Crow gathered up the weapons and put them in the bag Nip had carried, then slung it over his shoulder. He took up his place on Sal’s other side and we continued our slow, deliberate way.

Behind us, Peter was still screaming.

Nod had found a place for Fog in the meadow. I think Charlie wanted to stay there with him, see it through until the end, but I told him to come along with us. Nod needed to be alone with his twin, this one last time.

It took us a long while to get back to the tree. I carried Sal on my back down all the parts where climbing was necessary, and Crow took Charlie. Nod caught up with us fairly soon (he had Fog’s knife slung at his waist, the one they’d fought over) so he and Crow took it in turns to carry the smaller boy.

Peter did not return with us.

It was night when we staggered into the clearing, numb and exhausted. Nod and Crow and Charlie collapsed in a heap together just inside the tree, all three clinging to one another. Sal muttered incoherently, and I was afraid she might be building a fever.

I got her settled in a pile of skins and then lifted her shirt to check the wound. The blood had soaked through the bandage, and it was still fresh and red.

This might have been because the wound was so much worse than it looked, or it might have been because Sally hadn’t been able to rest since she’d been injured. I took off her shirt and waistcoat entirely, carefully ignoring the wraps around her chest, and cut off the strips of Charlie’s shirt that I’d tied around the wound. Some scabbing came away when I lifted the cloth and Sal cried out.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said.

I ran outside to get some water from the skins that collected rainwater. These were hung all about the tree on the branches. The water was warm but it would do.

I poured some water in Sally’s mouth, holding her head up so she wouldn’t choke. She coughed and spluttered anyway and half of the water ended up on my face. I released her head back and she closed her eyes, drifting into sleep.

My own eyes were gritty from sleepiness and worry, but I washed out the wound as best I could and then put some spicy-smelling green leaves on it that I knew would make it stop bleeding. That boy Rob had also showed me this when he’d lived on the island.

How long ago was that? Fifteen seasons? More? It didn’t matter. I wrapped the wound again and hoped it would stop bleeding in the night. It was one thing to experiment with sewing up myself. I didn’t think I could do it to Sal.

Sally. Her name was Sally, not Sal.

I covered her up with one of the best skins, a nice soft fox-fur one. Then I lay beside her on my side, and watched her breath rise and fall until I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep for the first time since I’d lived on the island.