Peter gave me a curious look, one that I couldn’t read. “Why should you be the one, Jamie? You weren’t even here for the first part of it.”
“Aye,” Nod said. “It ought to be me.”
“No,” Fog said, “it ought to be me.”
Of course the expected thing happened. I shouted over the noise of them punching and arguing.
“It will be me, because I’m the one who passed judgment,” I said, and they stopped trying to hurt each other to stare at me. “I stand for all the boys.”
“But, Jamie—” Fog said.
“No,” I said. “It’s me.”
They both sighed.
“I suppose it’s only fair since you were the judge,” Nod said.
“But, Jamie, I could take him,” Fog said. Fog knew—or thought he knew—why I was putting myself in front of him.
“I know you could,” I said. “But it will be me all the same.”
Nip squinted at me, and I could tell he was already working out the best way to kill me. His thoughts were so plain anyone could read them without trying.
I showed him nothing. I knew better. Anyway, he’d have a hard go of it, trying to kill me. I’d been on the island much, much longer than he knew.
Peter looked from me to Nod to Fog to Nip and then heaved a great sigh, as though he hadn’t intended for it to end that way all along. Me against Nip, his right hand against the boy who wanted to take my place.
“Very well,” he said, in that pretend grown-up voice he used when he wanted to be serious. “Nip against Jamie, thirty sleeps from now. Sam, you’re in charge of marking off the days. When you wake up in the morning put a line on that board with a rock.”
Sam nodded. He looked eager to be a part of this, but glad that he had a meaningful part to play that wouldn’t involve blood or death.
The circle of boys broke up, and nobody seemed to know quite what to do with himself. The game was supposed to end with Nip kicking from the end of a rope until he was still.
Since it hadn’t ended that way, none of the boys wanted to look Nip in the eye. I wondered what would become of Nip until Battle day. He hadn’t made a place for himself among the boys before this, and he seemed unlikely to now. It’s hard to make friends with someone who tried to hang you.
Del’s body lay in the center of the clearing and Peter pretended it wasn’t there as he walked by.
“Who wants to swim with the mermaids?” he shouted, just as if nothing of import had happened.
There was a loud “hurrah” from Billy, and the others joined in the chorus. They appeared relieved that Peter was giving them something to do besides think about recent events.
I didn’t point out that it was nearly sundown, and that sharks sometimes swam into the lagoon after dark, making the mermaids scatter. I didn’t say that the boys had just returned from a long, pointless trek to Bear Cave and back and needed to sleep and eat so they wouldn’t do foolish things that might get them killed.
I didn’t say anything at all, though it was clear Peter expected me to do so. He wanted so badly to tell me off for babying them, for spoiling their fun, but I wouldn’t bite his bait.
I watched them go, Peter in the lead, the rest already forgetting Del.
Soon the only boys left in the clearing were Charlie and Nip and me. Nip turned and limped inside the tree to lick his wounds, just like a bear—and just as dangerous.
I picked up Del’s body—he was already cold and stiff—and carried him out to the place where I buried the boys we lost.
Charlie trailed behind me, a little yellow-feathered duckling, and he patted my shoulder when I put Del in the ground and wept like I would never stop.
chapter 8
The boys didn’t return until almost morning. Charlie and I chose to sleep outside in the clearing by the fire. Nip was likely too damaged to be much of a threat, but I wasn’t risking Charlie over that belief. It was only sense to stay away from him when the others were gone.
The night was fine and cool, the never-birds calling to one another in long singsong cries. Charlie tucked himself right up against me like a roly-poly bug and went to sleep. I lay awake for a while, listening to him and the night breathing all around me, and wondered how Peter could fly.
• • •
I thought we would take a boat to the island, but Peter took me to a secret place, so-so-so secret that it didn’t look like anything at first and I thought he was teasing me. We had to go outside the city, a long way, and I was tired when we got there, so tired, but Peter kept smiling and clapping and telling me it would be wonderful, so I kept going even when I wanted to close my eyes and fall down. When we got to the secret place, there was a big tree, and a hole between two thick roots that jutted out of the ground.
“In there,” he said, and pointed.
I thought for sure then that he had tricked me. “That’s nothing but a hole in the ground,” I said, and could hear the tears in my voice.
“No, no, it’s not!” he said, and he was so earnest that I believed him again. “It’s magic, and only we know that it’s here.”
He came next to me and put his arm around my shoulder and pointed up over the top of the tree. The tree was very big, bigger than some of the houses in the city, and right above it were two stars. One of them was very bright and one of them was smaller.
“It’s because of that star,” he said. “The second star to the right. That star shines over my island, and shines over this tree, and if you go inside you’ll come out on the island on the other side.”
He must have seen me doubting, because he said, “I’ll go first, and you follow.”
That seemed a little better to me. If he went first, that meant that he wouldn’t stand outside the hole and pour dirt on me and laugh, which had seemed a possibility. He dashed into the hole and slithered inside so fast I hardly saw him. I stood there, unsure if I should follow or not as there still seemed the chance of a trick.
His head popped out of the hole again like a jack-in-the-box, and his green eyes gleamed in the starlight. “Come on, Jamie, follow me. Follow me and you’ll never grow up!”
I took one step, and then another, and then I was inside and the earth seemed to close all around me.
• • •
The whooping and hollering woke me first, and then the wind brought the smell of the sea ahead of them. They tumbled wild-eyed out of the forest, and many of them just collapsed once they were within sight of the tree.
I sat up and grabbed Fog’s ankle as he danced by, full of mermaid songs. “Where’s Peter?”
“Went to the Other Place,” Fog said. “Said he had to find new boys to make up for Harry and Del.”
I let Fog go, and he fell to his knees and then flat on his face, snoring before his nose even touched the dirt.
Peter had gone to the Other Place without me—again. The last time he’d brought back Nip, a choice he’d known I would never approve. It was clear now that the reason for that was to find a boy with just the right qualities, one who wouldn’t be troubled about slashing a five-year-old’s throat.