“Peter!” Ed shouted, standing up.
The triplets heard Ed’s cry and immediately stopped pummeling one another. They ran to surround Peter.
“Peter, where have you been?”
“Peter, did you kill all the pirates?”
“Peter, were you on the pirate ship? How did you get back again?”
He didn’t answer any of their questions, only frowned around at the small circle of adoration around him.
“Where is everybody?”
“Oh, all the others were killed,” Nod said. “Except for Nip, of course. He’s in the tree being boring, as usual.”
“A cannonball hit them,” Fog said.
“Jamie said it made a big mess,” Crow added.
“All of them?” Peter said. “One cannonball killed all of them?”
Even Peter was taken aback by this. We’d always fought the pirates hand-to-hand, though we’d understood that the cannons were supposed to be a threat. Still, we’d never seen them fired until the day before. And Peter clearly hadn’t known what happened onshore while he was off adventuring on the pirate ship.
“Did you kill any pirates, Peter?”
“Mmm,” Peter said, by way of answer. He was looking around at the sparse audience for his adventures and not liking it.
“How many pirates, Peter? Jamie killed six. Well, he says one of them jumped off the boat and got eaten by a shark, but he was running from Jamie at the time so that counts, doesn’t it?” Nod said.
“Six pirates? That’s nothing,” Peter said. “Jamie’s killed more than that before.”
“Not all at once like that,” Nod said. “He’s always fought them one or two at a time only.”
I felt that this was probably true, but I couldn’t be certain. The thing I would never tell Charlie or Sal or even Nod or Fog was that I’d killed so many pirates over the years that I couldn’t remember how many of them I’d taken on at one time or another.
Nod was impressed not only that I’d slaughtered the pirates but that I’d swum out to the rowboat and taken them by surprise. That was the best part for him. He’d made me tell it all through three times already, and every time I’d left out more details, aware of Sal and Charlie’s eyes on me.
Each time I did this Charlie would add back in all the bits I’d left out, and generally make me sound more heroic than I was.
I wasn’t a hero. I’d just been angry.
Only I didn’t realize at the time who, exactly, I was angry with. I’d thought it was the pirates, for firing a cannonball that took away six of my mates in one fierce swipe.
But it wasn’t the pirates. It was Peter.
It was Peter’s fault all the boys were dead. Peter had burned the pirate camp. Peter had fed their Captain to the Many-Eyed. All of this was because of Peter.
Because Peter promised them adventures and happiness and then took them away to the island where they died. They weren’t forever young, unless dying when you were young kept you that way for always.
In all that time, and all those years, only four boys had not died or grown up—which was the same thing, really, for growing up meant death was closer every day.
Four boys—Nod, Fog, Peter. And me.
And then Peter glanced around and saw that his band wasn’t big enough for him, and he said, “I’ll be back soon.”
He turned and left the camp as suddenly as he came, and the other boys slumped in disappointment.
“But, Peter, where are you going? Can’t we come too?”
He waved his arm back at them, and the few who’d started to follow stopped.
I knew what he was about, and I wasn’t having any of it.
“Stay together,” I told Sal and Charlie.
I was more worried about Nip since we’d lost so many boys. There were fewer eyes about to watch him. But Sal and Charlie were getting better at looking out for themselves every day, and I had to trust them to do so.
Peter was distracted, and thinking about his plans, and so I caught up with him after several minutes’ hard running. I was lucky he hadn’t decided to fly, else I wouldn’t have been in time.
I grabbed his shoulder and jerked him around. He raised his eyebrows at me.
“No, Peter,” I said.
“No, what?”
“No more boys from the Other Place,” I said. “You can’t look after the ones we have now. I won’t let you bring them here just to have them die.”
“I don’t bring them here to die,” he said, clearly insulted. “I bring them here so they’ll live forever.”
“But they don’t,” I said. “Can’t you see? The island takes them and chews them up.”
Peter shrugged. “And then I get new ones. It’s always been like this, Jamie. I don’t see why it should bother you now.”
“You didn’t see them,” I said. I could see them, just as sure as if they were laid out before me at that moment. I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to see anyone like that ever again. “You didn’t see all the boys with a hole in their middle, their insides torn out. There was nothing left of them, Peter.”
“It’s a good thing the pirates went away, then, so that won’t happen anymore.”
“It won’t happen anymore because you’re not getting any more,” I said, my teeth gritted. “I won’t let you.”
He laughed then, and my dagger was in my hand. I hadn’t thought about it. I just wanted to make that laugh go away forever. It wasn’t his happy-Peter-come-play-with-me laugh. It was Peter laughing at me.
Laughing at me.
He didn’t think I could stop him. He thought it was funny.
That was the first time I hated him.
His laugh faded when he saw my dagger, and he squinted at me. “What are you going to do, Jamie? Stab me?”
“If I have to,” I said. Oh, how I want to. I wanted to make that laugh go away forever.
Peter looked at me for a long time. I let him look.
I couldn’t guess what he might be thinking. All I knew was that I would stop him if he tried to go to the Other Place. I was tired of burying boys. A permanent sense of grief had settled over me, and every time I saw Charlie or Sal smile, all I could think was that I would lose them too.
Was this, I wondered, what it felt like to be a grown-up? Did you always feel the weight of things on you, your cares pressing you down like a burden you could never shake? No wonder Peter could fly. He had no worries to weight him to the earth.
It was the middle of the afternoon, and the biting flies buzzed all around our heads. I didn’t wave them away, because I wanted to be ready if Peter decided to fight. Peter could be very, very tricky in a fight.
A fly landed behind my ear and bit, and blood rolled down the back of my neck to mix with sweat, and still I waited.
Finally Peter sighed, a long, long sigh. “Very well.”
“Very well what?” I asked suspiciously.
“I won’t go and get any more boys.”
My grip loosened on the dagger. I’d held it so hard that it left a bruise on my palm, I found later. “You won’t?”
“No, I won’t,” he said. “But you have to do something for me.”
“What?” Just the fact that Peter was asking for something immediately made me suspicious.
“I want you to play with me more. Just me. Not with the others all the time,” Peter said, and he sounded very young then. “You hardly play anymore, always worrying about chores and keeping the other boys safe. I brought you here to play and lately you’ve been acting like a grown-up.”