I took off my red coat and covered the dead boys, then climbed back down and into the water. I didn’t know whether the pirates had seen me up there on the rocks and I didn’t care. I wasn’t thinking of anything except killing all of the pirates, every last one.
The pirates were not going to follow the boys into the dunes. I would not lose any more of my friends. I would not.
I don’t remember swimming out to their rowboat. I don’t know how I got there so quickly, or how they missed seeing my shadow in the water. They must have been looking into the dunes for the boys who had run that way.
I surged out of the water and grabbed one of the pirates closest to me, and he was in the water with his throat slit before the others knew he was gone. I swam under the boat while they were all yelling and shouting and looking for their sinking fellow, and I took another from the other side and did for him the same as the first.
There were four of them left now, but they’d been spooked and none of the remaining pirates had managed to see me yet. I swam around under the boat while they peered like idiots over the sides and then gave it a great push. Two of them must have been standing for they fell in the water and made my task easier.
Blood churned everywhere in the water now, spewing from the bodies of the pirates. They couldn’t see me in that red fog. I was nothing but a shadow, a sharp-toothed hungry thing, and when I climbed over the side of the boat one of them was so terrified by my appearance that he jumped in the water and tried to swim back to the pirate ship.
I say “tried to,” because by then the sharks were coming in. He screamed, high and thin, and then the water churned and the scream was gone.
The last pirate was stringy and toothless and looked like he might have survived a lot of battles. Any other day he could have beaten me, maybe. Any other day but that one.
My dagger was in my hand and his throat tore into that long open smile and then I kicked him over the boat so the sharks could have him.
I stood there, breathing hard, and wished for someone else to kill.
After a moment I was glad of the boat, for the rage burst and my legs shook and I had to sit down on the bench. All around me the sharks—there were three or four of them—tore into my gifts. Chunks of flesh and bone that the sharks had missed bobbed to the surface for a moment before sinking again. Their huge silver bodies bumped the boat as they swam by, close enough for me to touch.
Any other day I might have had the sense to be afraid, but not that day.
The pirate ship pulled anchor and sailed away again, into the horizon this time. I wondered how many of them were left on that ship. Had they seen me kill all the ones on the rowboat? Had Peter killed more on the ship? I wondered if the pirates were going away forever, deciding that it was no longer worth staying on this island, promise of eternal youth or not.
I wondered, in a vague and unworried way, what had happened to Peter.
I put my hands to the oars and pulled back to shore. The sharks stayed all around me until I was past the drop-off and the rowboat scraped against the sand. I stumbled out of the boat and through the water to the dry beach, where I fell facedown.
I breathed in the smell of the sea salt and the clean sand and the green of the forest and the coppery blood all over my hands and choked back the cries that wanted to erupt from my throat.
“Jamie?” A little voice, a sweet voice.
“Charlie?” I said, picking myself up to my knees.
Charlie and Sal stood a few feet away. Charlie clung to the striped shell he’d tried to show me before the cannonball shot.
“He wouldn’t go without you,” Sal said. His face was white and drawn.
I scowled at Charlie. “I thought you were going to mind.”
He shook his head yes, and then no, and then yes again. “I am. I will. I’ll mind you, I promise, ’cept I didn’t want to leave you all alone. We watched from that coconut tree. Sal showed me how to go up and we were safe there if the pirates got to the beach. But the pirates didn’t get to the beach.”
There was a fierce kind of pride in his voice. I realized then they’d seen everything, seen me slaughter all the pirates and throw them in the water as shark food. Sal’s eyes darted from my face to my blood-covered hands, and something in them made me feel vaguely ashamed of myself.
“The pirates,” I said, and then the lump rose in my throat and I could feel the unshed grief there and I swallowed it because I didn’t cry in front of the boys. “The pirates—the cannonball . . .”
“We saw,” Sal said. “We saw.”
I stood up then, and dusted all the sand from me. “I wouldn’t lose any more of you,” I said.
Sal nodded, but I could tell that some of the shine was off the island for him, just like it was for Charlie. He’d heard us talk about the upcoming Battle, and how it was a fight to the death, but somehow I thought he didn’t really believe there would be a death. Until that day Sal thought it was all just in fun, for Peter said it was fun.
Sal didn’t understand that Peter’s idea of fun was considerably more savage than his.
“We’ll help you bury them,” Charlie said.
It made me sad then, terribly sad, that this tiny boy was already so inured to death that he knew what came after.
I shook my head. “I don’t want you to see them. They’re all in pieces.”
“But—”
“No,” I said, and this time it was gentle. “No, I want you to mind me now. Go back to the tree with Sal. The others should already be there.”
Charlie’s mouth set in a stubborn little line, but I found I couldn’t lose my temper with him as I’d done before.
“It’s my lot, Charlie, not yours,” I said. “I look after the boys, and I bury them when they’re dead.”
“Peter should look after us,” he said, and I’d never heard him so fierce. “He’s the one who brings us here. He’s the one who says we’ll have adventures and be happy forever.”
He was only saying what I’d thought many times, and things I’d felt in my own heart. Still it seemed a betrayal, somehow, to agree with him.
“Peter only has a mind to play,” I said. “So I’m here to look after you all.”
“We’ll help you bury them,” Sal said suddenly.
“I don’t want Charlie to—”
“To see. You said,” Sal said. “But you can’t keep him small forever. He’s got to learn to survive here, and so do I. And you can’t always be alone, Jamie.”
You won’t be alone, Jamie. I’ll stay with you always.
Peter had said that to me, a long time before, and he’d smiled at me and I’d followed him.
Sal and Charlie, they didn’t smile. They didn’t promise me they’d stay with me always. But they helped me dig six graves that day, and we didn’t weep when we covered the boys, though no one would have blamed us if we had.
• • •
Peter didn’t return until the next day, and he was surprised to find only nine of us left. Nip was inside the tree but the rest of us were gathered around the fire, watching Nod and Fog and Crow perform a kind of story they’d thought up, something that had to do with a bear falling in love with a mermaid. I’d no idea where this particular inspiration had struck them.
Like everything involving the triplets, it had quickly devolved into meaningless shouting and punching. I felt that me and Kit and Ed and Sal and Charlie were trying to find this funnier than it was.
Peter strolled into the clearing whistling like he hadn’t been gone for almost a day.