Nip didn’t come with us, naturally—just stayed in the tree and brooded. It was eleven days since the almost-hanging, and he was probably well enough for the trek through the dunes, but nobody was inclined to persuade him to come along.
He’d taken to going off in the forest for short stretches, always returning with something to eat that he didn’t share with the rest of us—a rabbit or a bird or a squirrel. His jaw had healed enough for him to eat meat again, but eating it hadn’t improved his disposition.
Several of the boys were not very good swimmers, which wasn’t any trouble when splashing in the shallow mermaid lagoon but quite a bit dangerous in the water near Skull Rock. The mermaids would sometimes help boys who struggled in the lagoon, giving them piggyback rides around. Of course, sometimes they also thought it was fun to watch the boys almost drown. You never could tell with mermaids.
Sal cheerfully rolled up his trousers—he wore baggy brown wool trousers from the Other Place, and couldn’t be persuaded to cut them into something shorter and better suited to the climate of the island—and waded in as far as his ankles.
“I can’t swim at all,” he said, and turned his cap around so the brim was on the back of his head. “How about you, Charlie?”
Charlie shook his head.
“That’s all right. The water’s nice and cool here, and look, there are crabs,” Sal said, beckoning to the smaller boy.
He looked at me, then at Sal, who’d crouched in the water to peer at the crabs hidden in spiky pink shells all along the shore.
“Go on with Sal. I’m going out to the rock,” I said, taking off my coat and deerskin trousers. I carefully laid my knife belt on top of these things and dove into the water.
The sea was warm, but the first splash of it was chilly after the heat of the island. I flipped over in the water when I was halfway to the rock and just floated on my back, letting the waves push me this way and that before turning back on my stomach to swim the rest of the way.
Nod and Fog and Crow and Peter had stripped down to their skin and swum out to the rock as soon as they reached the beach, yelling about who could get there fastest.
We stashed a collection of fishing gear in one of the skull’s eyes, covered by a tarp weighted down with heavy rocks. There were nets and lines and hooks—all stolen from the pirates, of course, including the tarp. You could take almost anything from them without them noticing, really.
In the early days Peter and I used to steal things from them but not fight them, sneaking about their camp in the dead of night. They’d wake in the morning and wonder if the island was haunted, and we would watch them from the cliffs above their camp and laugh silently into our hands.
This was before they knew that we lived on the island, when the pirates first came there because it was a good place to hide from other pirates, and also from those who would hang them for their crimes.
When I climbed onto the rock, the triplets already had the net out. Peter flopped on his back with the sun on his face and let the others go to the trouble of catching the fish he wanted.
He squinted at me as I shook the water out of my hair. “Where’s your little tail?” he asked. “Did he get eaten by a shark? What a shame that would be.”
I pointed toward the shore. “He’s on the beach, crab-hunting with Sal.”
“Oh, at least that’s useful,” Peter said. “I like crabs. And perhaps he’ll lose a finger if one snaps at him.”
Kit and Ed were swimming out our way, and a few other boys had gathered around Sal and Charlie. The rest scampered over the beach, collecting coconuts that had fallen from the long-leafed beach trees. They had a fairly sizable pile, though I knew from experience that they wouldn’t last long. There was nothing sweeter on a hot day than the milk out of a coconut.
“Can’t he swim?” Peter asked, in a would-be casual voice. “All my boys must be able to swim.”
This was patently untrue and he knew that I knew it. Plenty of our boys over the years were unable to swim, and it never bothered him before.
“I won’t let you drown him, Peter,” I said, my voice mild.
“Who said anything about drowning? I just think it would be safer for him to know how to swim, being that he lives on an island and all.”
“Just like you told Nip to ‘take care’ of Charlie,” I said.
Peter had been careful not to be alone with me since that incident. His brows knitted together as though he were offended that I would even mention it after so much time—eleven whole days!—had passed.
“It’s not my fault Nip misunderstood,” Peter said, his eyes pressed to the corners of their sockets, sly and sure. “And anyway, you’ll have your chance to kill him in Battle soon enough, and take your revenge for his frightening your little duckling.”
“He killed Del,” I said.
I was trying not to lose my temper over this, trying not to let him draw me out.
“Del would have died anyway. He had that annoying coughing thing like Ambro. I can’t believe you’d fight over a boy who was half dead.”
And there was my temper, surging up, making me want to grab the nearest rock and smash it against his head until I could see the white skull underneath.
I’d had enough of Peter dismissing the boys who were dead. They loved him. It was hard for me to remember why at the moment, but they loved him, and he didn’t care what happened to them at all.
I don’t know what I would have done then—shouted or hit him or picked up that rock—but he spoke again, and it stopped me.
“I know you’ll beat him. You always do.”
He’d caught me wrong-footed, and the confusion punctured some of my anger. “What?”
“Nip,” Peter said, all earnest sincerity now as he sat up and looked at me. “I know you’ll beat him because he hurt one of the boys, and you always look out for the boys, don’t you, Jamie? Even me. Even when I don’t deserve it.”
He looked terribly contrite. I couldn’t believe my ears. Was Peter actually admitting he’d done something wrong? This had never happened before in the history of the island.
“Peter, I—” I began, wanting suddenly to mend what was torn between us, to feel the way I’d felt about him always.
Peter’s eyes widened then, and I saw something I rarely witnessed on his face—shock. He pointed over my shoulder.
“Jamie! The pirates!”
“What?” I twisted around, half certain this was a joke, expecting Peter to push me face-first in the water or some such thing as soon as my back was turned.
But Peter wasn’t lying, for a change. The pirates were there.
Their great tall-masted ship rounded the promontory that sheltered the mermaid lagoon.
“They never come to this side of the island,” I said.
It was one of the truths that seemed written into the bones of the island—the pirates stayed on their side, by their camp. They might sail away from the island, but they always returned to the same place. They didn’t sail all the way around. They didn’t trek through the mountains or the forest. They just didn’t.
And yet there they were—sailing directly toward us.
“They won’t be able to get close to the beach,” Peter said. “It’s too shallow. They’d ground the ship.”