Peter, naturally, watched me running to and fro while he continued to whittle at his piece of wood. Each time I passed him I tried to get a good look at it, but he would cover it with his hand or tuck it away so I couldn’t.
As soon as I realized this game was amusing him, I stopped trying to sneak a peek. Thereafter both he and I would feign indifference when I passed, though Peter looked sulky when I stopped playing.
An enormous column of black smoke rose in the sky. I wondered if the pirates would see it and come investigate.
They never strayed too far from the camp, at least as much as we could tell—and certainly never as far as the mountains. But perhaps the smoke would draw them. If it did, all the better. They would lie in their own scent trail and do half my work for me.
“Peter,” I said, wiping my forehead with my arm. I’d taken off my red coat and laid it to one side, for the work was hot and we were exposed on the rock shelf.
He didn’t respond, seemingly absorbed in the whittling, but I knew Peter. His hands might be busy but he watched me intently from under his eyelashes.
“Peter,” I said again, sharply so he would know I was on to him.
“Mmm?” His knife flashed in the sunlight, winking silver.
“What if you went ahead of me to the pirate camp, and drew some of them out along the trail?”
Peter looked up then and frowned. “They never leave their camp, because that Captain is a cowardly codfish. Anyway, even if I could get them out, I wouldn’t want them so close to the forest. They might get ideas about where our tree is.”
“Not likely,” I said. “You’ve said yourself that this is the dumbest lot that’s been at the camp in many a year. Besides, we don’t want them to come all the way to the cave. I just want them to follow you partway, to make a scent trail for the Many-Eyed.”
Peter’s eyes gleamed as he understood. “And then their scent trail will meet your blood trail, and when they go back to camp they’ll take some of the blood with them.”
I nodded.
“What fun!” he said, tucking his knife and his whittling project in the pouch he wore at his belt. Then he scowled at me. “But you might have thought of this before, so I wouldn’t be so bored watching you burn this thing.”
Sometimes I thought I would bite my tongue bloody not saying the things that Peter needed to hear. Needed to hear, but wouldn’t hear, so I saved my breath and didn’t point out that he might have helped.
“I’ll bring them out to the marking rock,” Peter said. He was already off the rock shelf and bounding toward the path that led down the other side of the cliffs, the side the Many-Eyed had climbed up in the first place.
The marking rock was a boulder that was taller than me and Peter stacked on top of each other. It was on the path that ran alongside the plains of the Many-Eyed, and it was close enough to the pirate camp that Peter might be able to lure them there.
“How will you get them out of the camp?” I shouted after him.
His voice floated up from the path, echoing off the rock, full of mischief. “Oh, I’ll find a way!”
And then I was alone, and glad that he was gone. I’d never been glad at Peter’s absence before, and something inside me seemed to shift. My legs hurt like fire for a minute, and then it was over, and I distinctly felt that I was taller than I’d been a moment before.
chapter 6
I wondered whether Peter would notice. I wondered whether I should worry about growing up. I hadn’t grown for such a long time, and never in such a dramatic way. It was more a creeping sort of growing, usually, the kind you didn’t realize had happened until one day you noticed Peter’s eyes were below yours and they didn’t use to be.
Then I realized I hadn’t time to worry about getting taller, for Peter could run fast and light when he was on his own and if I didn’t hurry, the trail wouldn’t be laid in when he got to the marking rock.
I didn’t want to leave Harry in the cave, nor the remains of the deer, both of which would attract bears or big cats. Though I was loath to put Harry in the fire with the thing that had killed him, I knew I must. There wasn’t time for burying, and burning was better than being picked over by whatever creature sniffed out the rotting meat that used to be a boy.
I dragged Harry over to the bonfire of the Many-Eyed and heaved him atop the monster’s corpse, getting a mouthful of smoke for my trouble. Coughing and pounding my chest, I backed away from the fire and went back for the charred remains of the deer.
Harry and the deer and the Many-Eyed burned. I collected blood in a coconut half shell that I carried in my coat pocket for cupping water from streams, so I wouldn’t have to touch the blood and possibly be burned. There were pools of it that had splashed around the Many-Eyed in its death throes. Then I left Bear Cave and the rock shelf behind, following the path Peter had taken.
The mark of his foot was barely visible in the dirt track and sometimes not present at all for several steps, as if he’d taken a huge leap and landed soft as down floating on the wind. I ran quickly, and though I was not as light as Peter, I could travel nearly as fast.
With a troop of boys crossing to the pirate camp, this path would take hours to traverse, but the sun was just past overhead by the time I reached the path that bordered the foothills on one side and the plains of the Many-Eyed on the other. Several times I marveled that the juvenile Many-Eyed had made it to Bear Cave in the first place. The trail was narrow in several spots, occasionally bordered on both sides by sheer faces of rock. How the creature had managed to make it through and sniff us out at the cave was a wonder.
I balanced the coconut shell in my hand and dropped no blood until I reached the plains. It was important that the other Many-Eyed not consider the hill path at all, but think that the pirates had killed their young here on the border and dragged it back to the camp.
This part of the trail was the most dangerous, for while almost all Many-Eyed stayed in the central plains, there was always a chance of coming upon a soldier walking near the edge of their territory. They might even be looking for the one that was now dead and burning in the distance.
The smoke was barely visible above the foothills from here, but it would be clearer from other parts of the island. It might make the pirates curious, and help Peter in his task.
I listened, hearing nothing but the sounds of the wind, the cries of the birds, and the buzzing of the Many-Eyed ever present but distant, as it should be. When they gathered together in any group larger than two, they would naturally make this noise—a steady kind of buzz that seemed incongruous with their fangs. Still, it was useful as it kept us from being overwhelmed by their numbers. The buzzing that preceded them made it easy to avoid a large pack.
The distance of the noise forced me to wonder if I’d been overcautious about the juvenile in the first place. Perhaps with so many babies (and they did have so many—I’d snuck close to their camp once to get an idea of their numbers and later wished I hadn’t) one missing young was no nevermind to them.
Still, it didn’t pay to take risks with the boys’ lives, especially if this business of a treaty was true. I would follow through with the original plan.
I splashed some blood along the trail, then deliberately ran to and fro, dragging my heels in the dirt and making a lot of footmarks. I pulled out handfuls of tall yellow plains grass so it would appear to the pirates or the Many-Eyed that there was some kind of struggle. It wasn’t certain how much the Many-Eyed would understand of my charade, but they were smarter than they appeared; that, I knew. They weren’t just dumb animals.