I didn’t care if it was even or not. I just wanted to beat the piss out of somebody.
So Nip put his fists up and I smiled at him. And when I smiled he dropped his fists a little and asked, “What are you smiling about?”
His nose was broken before he realized why I was smiling.
Then his cheekbone—I heard it crack—then I kicked in his stomach and he staggered back, puking his guts up.
I would have done more. I could have done more. The red haze was riding hard in my blood and I wanted to peel his eyelids back and pop his eyeballs out. I wanted to put Nip down for good.
But then I heard Charlie’s tiny gasp as the bigger boy retched out what little he’d eaten that day. When I looked back I saw his eyes as giant pools of blue in a face as white as a seabird’s wing feather.
There was blood on my knuckles from where I’d busted Nip’s nose open, but I knelt and opened my arms to Charlie and he ran into them. I felt that hard anger receding—not disappearing, for it never disappeared entirely but waited for the right feeding to bring it back to life.
Nip retched again, his breath harsh and shallow. He started to speak but I stopped him.
“You leave off the other boys, you hear?” I said. “Else there’ll be more of the same for you.”
Nip’s eyes narrowed at me, full of resentment. “What’s it to you? Who do you think you are, anyway? Peter picked me himself.”
“Don’t go thinking that makes you special,” I said. They were all the same. They all thought they were special, but only I was. I was first and none of them could take that from me. I was first and best and last and always. Peter could do without them but not without me. Never without me. “You’re here to be part of our band, and we all work together here.”
“I’m not taking orders from you,” Nip said.
“Then you can leave,” I said. “Go live with the pirates and see how you like that.”
“Try and make me,” Nip said, and sneered. His face was spattered with blood from his nose, and his left cheekbone moved in a very wrong way when he talked. He must have been full of vinegar to keep gabbing at me through that. “Don’t see how you can when you’re playing nanny.”
Charlie was nothing to do with this, and I wasn’t going to let this new boy bring him in.
“I can kill you with one hand,” I said, and let Nip see it in my eyes.
“Can you really?” Charlie whispered in my ear.
I nodded once, and wondered if Charlie would be scared of me now. But instead he gripped my neck tighter, like he knew for certain I was strong enough to look after him, to keep him safe. And I was.
Nip watched me, his mean little eyes going from my face to the back of Charlie’s head resting on my shoulder. I saw him working something out that I didn’t care for.
All this happened while Peter watched and waited by the dying embers of the fire. The sun’s slanting rays were longer and longer by the minute. I wasn’t keen on starting off after the others in the dark.
“Leave off the other boys, and do as you’re told,” I said to Nip. “Or else you’ll pay for it.”
I turned away then, for he was the sort of boy who would learn his lesson only after hard knocks, so there wasn’t any point in standing there bandying words with him all day.
“Now can we go a-raiding?” Peter asked in a singsong voice, skipping around me like a child asking his father for a sweet. “If we don’t catch up to the rest soon they’ll get eaten by the Many-Eyed without you there.”
“Nod and Fog can look out for them,” I said mildly, though I privately agreed. Nod and Fog could take orders, but too often they got caught up in their own concerns to take proper care of the other boys. “Besides, they’ll stop at the cave for the night before they get to the fields.”
“Then let’s go!” Peter cried, and ran into the woods after the others.
Nip had pushed up to his feet. He looked a right mess and none too steady. I hoped he fell off a cliff or wandered into the mouth of a bear on the way and saved me some future trouble, for he was staring at me with that trouble in his eyes.
“Are you coming or not?” I shouted to him.
He didn’t say a word to me, only went after Peter.
Charlie had picked up his head to watch the bigger boy. “Maybe he’ll get lost,” he whispered hopefully.
“Maybe he will,” I said, and rumpled his hair. “You don’t like Nip, do you?”
“He tried to take Del’s food,” Charlie said as I placed him on the ground. He immediately grabbed the hem of my coat as we went toward the path after the others. “He would have eaten mine if you weren’t there.”
He understood this instinctively, understood that because he was small there would always be those who tried to use their size against him.
Nip and Peter weren’t far ahead of us on the trail and I didn’t fancy the four of us walking together like a happy family. “Do you want me to show you something, Charlie?”
“What?” he asked.
“A shortcut,” I said.
“A shortcut to what?”
“I know where they’ll stop for the night,” I said. “And anyway, all those boys don’t know how to be quiet when they’re together. We’ll hear them before we see them.”
“And we won’t have to walk with Nip,” Charlie said, his eyes lit up at the thought of a shortcut, a secret for only him and me.
That was the magic the island had—rocks to scramble over and trees to climb and mermaid lagoons to swim in and, yes, pirates to fight. I didn’t want to take the boys there today, but fighting pirates was some of the best fun you could have. The whole island was a great wide playground for boys like us to run in, to make secret places, to go where we wished and when we wanted with no adults to stop us or make us mind.
And Charlie, he needed that magic. I was pretty certain that we’d taken this little duckling from a mama who loved him.
Peter didn’t think very much of mothers—it had been far too long since he’d had one to remember, and most of the boys had the kind of mothers you wanted to forget.
Peter said mine was like that too, that she’d harangued and beaten me, but I didn’t remember her. I didn’t remember too much from before, only flashes, and sometimes the songs that made my heart ache and Peter frown.
I knew the boys would stop at Bear Cave for the night, so named because the first time Peter and I went there we found the bones of a huge bear. Peter had loved that snarling skull so much that he mounted it on the wall and we dug a fire pit beneath it like some altar to an ancient god. When the fire was lit the flames played strangely on the skull, making it seem that at any moment it would live again, devouring us all.
I spared a thought for how those dancing shadows would frighten Charlie, then let it pass. I couldn’t keep things from scaring him, only from harming him.
The boys would stop at the Bear Cave, because there was good cover there and it was well before the fields of the Many-Eyed.
Nod and Fog, for all that they both seemed fearless, were both terrified of the Many-Eyed. I’d never shame them for this; nor would anyone on the island with sense. Even Peter, who liked to tease and play on the others’ fears, wouldn’t mock this.
The boys wouldn’t try to cross the fields without Peter or me, and it was pure foolishness to try at night in any case. That was asking to get eaten.
Charlie followed me off the path and into the dark thicket of trees. It was cooler away from the main walk where the sun beat down on the exposed trail. Here under the canopy of leaves the small flies didn’t buzz and bite, and the shifting shadows welcomed those with a heart to explore.