Proceeding with caution, I followed the path and kept my ears open for sounds of the Many-Eyed or the pirates that Peter was to entice out of camp. I splashed more blood here and there and scratched up the ground in different places.
The blood was not as skin-burningly potent as it had been coursing fresh from the Many-Eyed, but it hissed a little when it touched a rock or leaves or dirt, and sometimes a small curl of steam emitted from a tiny droplet.
Even though I was listening close, I didn’t hear Peter’s approach. I crouched just inside the long grass across from the marking rock, waiting for him. The last of the Many-Eyed’s blood was splashed at the foot of it.
One moment I was alone and the next Peter appeared, seemingly out of nothing. He saw the blood around the rock and turned on the spot, looking for me.
“Here, Peter,” I whispered, parting the grass so he could see my eyes.
He dashed in beside me, his face wilder and fiercer and happier than I’d seen it in a long while.
“Are they coming?” I asked.
“Yes,” Peter said, and it seemed he was resisting the urge to clap and scream with joy.
“What did you do?”
“Set the camp on fire!” And then he did chortle, delighted with himself and unable to hide it.
“Set the . . .” I started; then my voice trailed away.
I hadn’t noticed the smell of smoke on him at first for my nose was full of the reek of burning bodies, but I caught it now.
“You burned their camp down.”
Peter caught the disapproving tone. “What’s the matter? You don’t think it was a wonderful notion? It got that fat old Captain good and riled, all right. He’s waddling after me now, waving his sword and cursing about what he’s going to do when he catches me. Which he never will, of course. He looks just like a plump never-bird egg, rolling along.”
He laughed again, and my frown deepened, which made Peter’s laugh fade away.
“Come, now, Jamie, how is burning their camp any worse than stealing from them or killing them?”
“Well . . . it’s not fair play, is it?” I said slowly.
I wasn’t sure if I could explain my feelings, even to myself. Yes, we and the pirates fought and killed each other. But that was man-to-man, as it were. We faced one another and we all had a fair shot.
Burning the camp—it was sneaky, somehow sneakier than a little theft. And it was cruel. Peter hadn’t just taken their jewels or their swords—he’d taken their home.
The pirates would have a much greater motivation to leave the seaside and hunt us across the island if their camp was gone.
Peter’s actions put us all in danger—much more so, I thought, than anything I might have done to anger the Many-Eyed.
I was about to tell him all this when he clamped his hand over my mouth. “They’re coming,” he whispered.
His hand was dirty and his body vibrated with excitement. I didn’t hear so well as Peter—a few moments passed before the shouting and cursing of the pirates reached me.
The marking rock (so called because Peter or I scraped a mark on it every time we went on a pirate raid) was at a place where the trail to the beach rounded the foot of the mountains, turning east; we heard them long before we saw them.
The Captain’s voice was loudest, booming, “Get on, you dogs, and FIND THAT BLASTED BOY! I’ll string him from the yardarm and keep him there until his face turns blue! Catch him! Catch him!”
From the ruckus they made it seemed like the whole camp was turned out to find Peter, but as they passed our hiding place I saw there were only five, plus the Captain. The first mate was not among them.
I hadn’t cut off the new mate’s hand yet, but the previous first mate (a man they called Red Tom because he had red hair—pirates are very unimaginative) was with them. I’d taken his hand some months before. The stump was wrapped in a striped bandanna, though, like it was still fresh—or like he was ashamed of it. Perhaps he was just ashamed that a boy had done it.
The group of pirates continued on, cutlasses drawn, and I felt sure that if they found Peter, there would be no dragging him back to the camp. They’d surround him and cut him to pieces and carry his head back as a trophy. Peter had gone too far this time.
The Captain panted along behind the others. He wasn’t truly as fat as Peter made him out to be, though his belly did seem to get in his way when he fought and he wasn’t very fast.
Given this, it was a certainty that Peter could have killed the Captain several times over, but he hadn’t. Peter could be a cat sometimes, letting a mouse think it was all right to crawl out of the mouse hole until one day it suddenly was not and the mouse found itself pinned by sharp claws.
“How far do you think they’ll go?” I whispered once all the pirates had missed our hiding place.
They had never come so far before, all the way out here to the plains, and they appeared very determined. What if they went through the foothills and tracked our steps back to the Bear Cave? From there it wouldn’t take much to find the trail that went back to our tree. Dozens of boys had walked that trail for dozens of years. It was a clue that even a foolish pirate Captain couldn’t miss.
“They won’t cross the mountains,” Peter said. “Can you imagine that Captain even climbing up to Bear Cave? His face will turn red and his heart will blow up before he gets halfway there.”
“He might send the others on,” I said, trying to make him feel the urgency of the situation. The boys would be in danger. But Peter didn’t care about the boys. He only cared about his fun.
So I would make it fun—at least, Peter’s idea of fun.
“What if they went into the plains instead?” I said.
Peter’s eyes glowed. “Now, that would be an adventure. They’d stumble right into the Many-Eyed’s nest.”
“And then the Many-Eyed would never think it was us that killed their child,” I said.
“It wasn’t us. It was you,” Peter said.
Peter enjoyed laying blame, particularly if he hadn’t earned any in the process.
“But you’re right—the pirates would distract them,” he continued. “I’d better be the one to go into the fields, though, since the Many-Eyed don’t know you.”
It wasn’t like Peter to express interest in the well-being of others. I stared at him.
“I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, Jamie. You were the first, and you’re still my favorite.”
Then he smiled, and oh, that smile. It was that smile that had stolen me away from the Other Place, the smile that made me want to do anything for him.
I was suddenly sorry I’d grown, even if it was only a little, and wished I could be smaller again and that it was just Peter and me, running and climbing and laughing, back when the island was ours.
He clapped me on the back. “You can help me, though. I’ll go ahead here in the grass until I’m in front of them. You creep up behind and kill any that try to go back to the camp for help. The best thing will be if the other pirates don’t even know what happened. They’ll think the island ate up their crewmates.”
Peter’s grin grew wider and fiercer. “How I’ll love to feed that Captain to the Many-Eyed. He’s grown so boring.”
I could have pointed out that he could slay the Captain anytime he wanted a new one (that was how we always got new ones) but I didn’t. I didn’t care how Peter did it so long as he kept the threat of the pirates away from the boys.