If Peter were there, he might say they needed to learn on the run. I said that left a lot of dead boys and that was wasteful even if he didn’t care about any of them. But Peter wasn’t there. I was.
Charlie and I rounded the lip of the cave and at once I saw why they hadn’t noticed the noise or anything else.
Somebody had killed a deer—Nod, by the look of it, for he wore the deer’s head and part of its skin over his shoulders. They’d made quick work of the dressing and were roasting the deer’s haunches over the fire.
Somewhere along the way they’d all stripped down to their bare skin and painted themselves with blood. They were dancing and jumping and whooping around the fire.
I thought, Peter will be sorry to have missed this, for Peter loved it when the boys were wild things. It tied them to him better, made them forget the Other Place, made them belong to Peter and the island.
Then I thought, All the blood will bring the Many-Eyed right up to our door. It might have already.
I put my fingers between my teeth and whistled, a sound that echoed into the depths of the cave and made Charlie clap his hands over his ears.
All the boys stopped, staring at Charlie and me in the entry.
“There’s a Many-Eyed coming,” I said.
For a moment they paused, and I thought how vulnerable they looked, without their clothes and their weapons, and how the fresh blood looked like paint, like a dress-up game, not like they were the mighty warriors they thought they were.
Then Nod pushed off the deerskin and ran for his breeches and his sling and his knife, and Fog did too. The other boys who’d been on the island for a time followed, their eyes reflecting various degrees of fear, grim determination or panic. The new boys—Billy and Terry and Sam and Jack—milled together, mostly confused.
“What’s a Many-Eyed?” Terry asked.
“A monster,” I said, pulling Charlie into the cave.
I brought him over to Del, who could be trusted to be sensible. Besides, I wanted Del to avoid making himself any sicker. If he coughed out blood it would attract the Many-Eyed right to him.
“You stay here with the new boys,” I said to Del.
I put Charlie’s hand in Del’s free one, for he had just straightened up holding a small metal sword. He was proud as the devil of that sword, and well he should be, for he’d taken it out of a pirate’s scabbard while the fool slept on the watch.
Del’s brow wrinkled, and I could see in his face the question he wanted to ask—Why do I have to stay here and nanny?
“I need you to look after them,” I said. “In case the Many-Eyed gets past me.”
Del gave me a look that said he thought that was unlikely and he knew what I was about, but he rounded up the new boys anyway and pushed them to the back of the cave. Charlie looked slightly panicked at being separated from me but he went without protest.
“You too,” I said, pointing to Kit, Jonathan and Ed. “Help Del look after the others.”
The other three looked relieved. That left Nod, Fog, Harry and me.
I wished Peter were there. Me and Peter, we could take one Many-Eyed by ourselves, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about the others.
Harry wasn’t any too bright but he was strong and followed directions without question, which was why I’d kept him with me. Nod and Fog were terrified of the Many-Eyed but they were also brave as anything. They wouldn’t run from the fight.
I indicated they should follow me out of the cave. We crept to the mouth, listening, me in front, then Harry, Nod and Fog. I had my dagger in my left hand, though I didn’t remember taking it off my belt.
Now that the boys were quiet the clicking of the Many-Eyed’s fangs seemed incredibly loud, filling up all the empty space, crawling inside our ears and down our throats and into our hearts. It was the sound of something hunting, something hungry.
The echoing quality of the sound made it impossible to tell whether the creature was still on the foothill track or just on the other side of the cave wall, ready to turn in on us at any moment. I stepped forward and my foot slid in something slick.
Unlike Peter, who preferred to go barefoot, I wore ankle-high moccasins made from elk hide. The bottom of the right one was now coated in deer offal I’d trod in without noticing. That gave me an idea.
“Fog,” I whispered, as he was now standing in it himself. “Pass me some of that.”
Fog obligingly scooped up two handfuls of guts and carried them to me. I took the unidentifiable mess from him and peered around the cave wall.
The Many-Eyed was just clambering on the rock shelf. Its full body hadn’t cleared the edge yet. One of its hairy legs was testing the space, ensuring there was room for the rest of it.
For a brief moment I contemplated rushing the beast with the other boys, grabbing hold of that leg and pushing it from the side of the cliff. Its bloated body would burst on a protruding rock, and the Many-Eyed wouldn’t be any the wiser about why one of its own had died.
But Peter would know. Just because he wasn’t there wouldn’t mean not finding out, and he didn’t want to be at war with the Many-Eyed. He’d made that very clear. He would happily be at war with the pirates, and he didn’t mind—no, he even encouraged in the form of Battle—fighting among ourselves.
But we were not to start trouble with the Many-Eyed, no matter that they were a monstrous and unnatural scourge that was clearly (to my mind) creeping farther into the forest every day. Soon enough, I thought, we’d have a war with them whether we wanted it or not.
There was something about the Many-Eyed that stirred a primal sense of wrongness in me, though they were nothing more than part of the island to Peter. Their fat round bodies, covered in shaggy hair and swollen with the blood of their meals; their legs—eight of them, far too many, and the strange bent way they moved, gliding and awkward at the same time. They were alien, everything a boy was not.
“Harry, get a torch from the fire,” I said.
I squeezed the deer organs in my hand. The wet flesh slid between my fingers.
Harry darted back in place behind me, holding a long, thick piece of wood blazing at one end.
“Right,” I said. “I’m going to toss this mess to it and see if it will take it. Harry, you use the fire if it seems like it’s getting too close. Nod, Fog, you spread out behind me with your slings. If it gets going past me or Harry, then you take out its eyes with rocks.”
Even Peter couldn’t object, I reasoned, if a Many-Eyed fell over a cliff and died because it was blind. At least, he could object (and usually did, loudly, when not getting his way), but we wouldn’t have actively killed the thing and therefore would have followed the strict letter of Peter’s law.
My own inclination to wipe the Many-Eyed off the island would, too, be at least partially satisfied.
With my knife in my left hand and the deer guts dripping through my right, I jerked my chin toward the opening of the cave. The others followed me. I heard Harry’s breath coming in short, sharp pants. The torch he held dripped sparks on my neck, but I couldn’t cry out.
The Many-Eyed had cleared the cliff face and was fully on the rock shelf. There wasn’t very much space between it and us, and it seemed bigger to me than any Many-Eyed out in the plains with the wide blue sky above.
Here the darkness pressed down, and the rocks and cave made it feel like we were trapped in a closed room with the thing. The deer guts in my hand reeked, making my eyes water.
The Many-Eyed gave a long hiss when it saw us and pounded each one of its eight legs on the ground in a kind of ripple, starting with the back leg on each side and circling up to the front leg. I’d seen Many-Eyed do this before, when they were scared or uncertain.