It was going too fast to stop, and I don’t think it quite realized what had happened in any case. I jumped on its back before it realized I was above it and not in front.
I mirrored the slashing action I’d used on its belly, this time stabbing hard in the center of its body and sliding over it and down, just like I really was on a pirate’s sail this time.
More of the creature’s blood and venom spurted out, shooting upward in fountains. I crashed to the ground behind it, narrowly avoiding the stinger, and scrambled out of the way before it decided to sit on me.
The Many-Eyed thrashed its legs in all directions as it screeched, all of its insides erupting out. I flattened against the cave wall, covering my ears as it shrieked out its final death throes.
That noise will bring every Many-Eyed on the island, I thought in despair.
I had to get the boys away from there, back to the tree. And maybe I could lay a false trail with the dead Many-Eyed’s blood back to the pirate camp, so if any of its fellows came looking for it they would go after the pirates, not us.
I felt a little sick at the thought of the pirates paying for my deed, turning into meat for the Many-Eyed’s children. But truly—it would be better that it was the pirates, who just stayed on the island to torment us or to try to nab one of us to discover the secret of our youth. Better the pirates than one of my boys.
I thought all this as the Many-Eyed shook out its last drops of blood and then stilled. I could send Nod and Fog back to the tree with the others while I laid the trail to the pirate camp. I could burn the body first, too, and stink up the area, make the Many-Eyed confused about just who and how many had been here.
And then a voice rang across the rock shelf, sharp and clear and angry.
“What have you done?”
chapter 5
It was Peter, his words like frost on the air. I’d half forgotten he was on his way, likely delayed on the path by Nip and his injuries. Peter’s green, green eyes burned in the moonlight.
Most of the other boys stood silently behind him, their faces unsure. Everyone’s expressions said they were glad the Many-Eyed was dead, but Peter quite obviously was not glad and so they didn’t know how to feel about this.
“It attacked Harry,” I said, feeling angry and slightly ashamed, and then angrier because I thought I shouldn’t have to feel sorry about the Many-Eyed. “I thought it was going to kill him.”
“It did kill him,” Peter said.
His tone said this was of no consequence to him whatsoever. I closed my eyes for a moment so I wouldn’t scream at him in front of all the other boys.
“You should have left and taken the rest of the boys with you while it ate him,” Peter continued.
“Why? So it could follow us and eat the rest when it realized just how delicious we are? Peter, it was calling the rest of them. They would have swarmed all over this place.”
“Now they are going to swarm all over,” Peter said. “Because of what you did they will follow us into the forest and hunt us until we are all dead, and that will be the end of Peter and his boys.”
He was making me feel more foolish and embarrassed with every word. This was the first time any of us had killed a Many-Eyed, though we had fought them before and the monsters had eaten their fair share of boys over the years. I’d never understood why Peter only let us wound them, or why he would never explain.
“Why?” I shouted, unable to restrain my temper before the boys. I kept hearing Harry’s scream fading away, the last breath leaving his body. “Why are they allowed to take as many of us as they like but we’re not permitted to do the same for them? They should have been burned out years ago. We should have scorched the plains and chased the rest of them to the sea. We should never have let monsters stay on this island.”
“They’ve been here as long as I have,” Peter hissed. “We had a treaty! And you, you fool, you broke it and now they’ll come for all of us.”
I went very still. “What treaty, Peter?”
Peter’s eyes shifted away.
“How can we have a treaty with monsters, Peter? How can you have a bloody damned treaty that none of us have heard about before when we don’t even know how to talk to them?”
I saw it in his face—he’d said something he hadn’t meant to, and it was bad enough that I knew but worse that it was revealed in front of the others.
How had I not known this? How could I have lived on this island for scores of years and not known that Peter could actually speak to the Many-Eyed?
Worse, how could he treat with them like they were our equals? They ate us. They didn’t fight us fair and face-to-face like the pirates. They treated us like dumb animals, nothing but blood bags for their survival. They’d eaten more of the boys than I could remember all down the years.
And yet, and yet . . . Peter never let me kill one of them. Not one, no matter how many of my boys they took screaming to the plains.
The others were murmuring now, as some of the brighter ones fitted the jigsaw together.
“I never said I could talk to them,” Peter said in that careless way of his. Sometimes I could ignore it, but just then it made me see red.
I stalked toward him, splattered in the Many-Eyed’s burning blood, still gripping the knife that had saved the others and me from being eaten alive. I wondered, for the first time, why I’d ever followed him through the door in the Other Place, all those years ago.
When he’d smiled at me and told me we would have adventures, I thought we would be friends always, that it would just be Peter and me, like brothers. But now I saw—and it was so strange that after all this time I finally did see—that I wasn’t enough for him, had never been enough.
I didn’t mean anything to him, and not even I was special if he could keep a secret like this. And it made me love him a little less, and the memory of that smile hurt deep down in the place where I kept all my secrets and my sorrows.
Peter must have seen some of this on my face, or guessed it by my silence. I saw a little flare of panic in his cool eyes, where he thought no one could see. If he wasn’t careful, he would lose the boys. The others would follow me and he knew it, for I was the one who looked after them, looked out for them—not Peter.
His adventures wouldn’t matter when it came down to it. The boys wouldn’t enjoy starving to death just because Peter didn’t want to be troubled about gathering food.
“Well,” he said, as if I were not standing less than an eyelash’s length from him, covered in blood and fury. “It’s all done now and I suppose I will have to forgive you. After all, you didn’t know about the treaty and I really think I could make an argument to their chief that you were provoked. I must speak with him about his soldiers coming into the forest anyway.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t talk to them,” I said through gritted teeth, and I was certain I’d never sounded quite like that before.
The boys knew it too, for they went completely still and silent, as if abruptly aware of the presence of a bear, or something else large and sharp-toothed and hungry.
I felt something coming off Peter—not anger, exactly, but something strong and powerful, something I’d never felt him direct at me before. That power rolled off him, pushed against the haze of red all around me, sparked against it.