Soon enough the ten of us were trekking through the last hours of night toward the mountains. The Battle place was a crater that seemed carved for our exact purpose. It was a bowl-like depression in the rock—the southeastern mountains were rockier and spikier, generally, than the northeastern ones—and about twenty-five boy lengths across. All around the rim of the bowl was a protruding lip that seemed just like a bench for watching what happened inside. When Peter and I found it, so long ago, it seemed as if the island had made an arena especially for us.
Peter took the lead, of course, and I let the other boys get between us so I could walk with Charlie and Sal. Nip, surprisingly, wanted to walk near Peter. I guessed that perhaps he was thinking of what might happen if he beat me. He would have to find his way into Peter’s favor again, and from my view it appeared he was laying it on thick.
I didn’t mind. I knew that Nip was unlikely to win without cheating, and I was glad of the chance to spend a few hours free from Peter’s expectation that I amuse him.
“Jamie,” Sal asked quietly, for the night was still and voices carried. “How many of these Battles have you fought?”
I frowned. “I’m not sure. The first one, the first real one, wasn’t until maybe twenty or thirty seasons after I came to the island. Until then Peter and I used it as a place to practice fighting, but just for fun.”
“Nod said Battle is for fun,” Sal said, and I heard the question in his voice. How could it be for fun when one of you dies?
“Sometimes it is for fun,” I said. “Usually Peter sets a Battle day once or twice a year. He picks two teams of boys and then we fight hand-to-hand, no weapons, first in groups and then one-to-one. Whoever wins is the Battle champion until the next Battle.”
“How many times have you been Battle champion?” Charlie asked.
I was thankful for the moonlight, which hid the blood that rushed to my face at Charlie’s question. Sal looked at me curiously when I didn’t answer right away.
“I, um . . . I’m always Battle champion.”
“Always?” Charlie’s eyes glowed in the moonlight.
“Always,” I said. Why should I be embarrassed about this? I was the best fighter. But something about the way Sal cocked his head to one side made me feel silly about it.
“So Battle is a way to practice fighting,” Sal said. “For when you raid the pirates and things like that.”
I nodded. “Yes, and it also helps the boys work things out. When you’ve got a big group of boys like this, sometimes they go too far with one another, and it’s good for them to have a place to fight and clear the air. Else they spend all their time spitting at each other and it causes too many problems.”
“The triplets spend all their time spitting at each other,” Charlie said.
“Yes,” I said, rumpling his hair. I liked the way the yellow strands stood up and caught the light of the moon. “But the triplets like to argue and punch each other. For them it’s not clearing the air. It’s just as natural as breathing.”
“But sometimes, like today, Battle isn’t a practice,” Sal said. “Today it’s real fighting.”
“Yes,” I said. “Though there are still rules. You can’t carry a bladed weapon, only rocks or sticks or things you made yourself, like a slingshot.”
“Yes, because it’s obviously better if you beat each other to death with rocks instead of stabbing each other like civilized human beings,” Sal muttered, looking away.
“You’re not worried, are you?” I asked, trying to peer around to see his face. “Because I’ve never lost Battle before, and I’m not going to start today.”
“Those were play Battles,” Sal said, and he was definitely angry. I could hear it.
“Not all of them,” I said.
He gave me a sharp look then. “This isn’t your first Battle to the death?”
“I’ve been here a long, long time, Sal,” I said, and I felt all the years roll over me when I said it.
I felt that twinge again, the one in my legs, the one I hadn’t felt since that day Peter promised he would not bring back any more boys.
“How long?” Sal asked.
I shrugged. “A hundred and fifty seasons, maybe more. I can’t really remember.”
“You don’t remember the Other Place?”
“It doesn’t look the same as it was when I was there. Every time I go back with Peter it’s different. And we didn’t get Nod and Fog here until after I’d been here for many seasons already.”
Sal gave me another one of his piercing looks, the ones that made me feel all twisted up inside. It was almost as if he felt sorry for me.
“You’re very old, Jamie,” Charlie said, and he was so solemn about it that it made me laugh.
He made Sal laugh too. That laugh rang out in the night and seemed to bring on the dawn faster, as if the sun wanted to hear Sal laughing.
When we reached the steep parts of the mountain, Charlie began to struggle. There were places where there was no path at all, and we had to climb using handholds we found in the rock. Charlie’s arms and legs were far too short for this exercise, and he was terrified of falling in any event.
Sal and I took it in turns to carry him on our backs through these parts. It was much, much harder for Sal, who was almost as tall as me but a great deal more slender and not as hardened to life on the island. He refused to let me carry Charlie on my own, though.
“You’ve got to save your strength for Battle,” he said.
I didn’t tell him that I could probably carry Charlie on my back throughout Battle and still beat Nip. Sal wasn’t impressed, I thought, by my accomplishments at Battle.
Charlie, on the other hand, took my news of permanent Battle champion as proof positive that I was the best boy in the world, something he’d already been mostly convinced of anyhow.
I think that this was, deep down, why Peter disliked him so much. It wasn’t just that Charlie took me away from Peter. It was that Charlie preferred me to Peter. Peter was used to all the boys thinking he was the best, most wonderful boy there ever was.
Despite the necessity of carrying Charlie, we kept up with the others and we all reached the Battle place by midmorning. Peter wanted to be annoyed that we’d piggybacked the smaller boy, but since we hadn’t fallen behind, there wasn’t much he could do about it except scowl at Charlie.
The Battle arena was just past a little mountain meadow filled with small white flowers that bobbed in the wind. Though this part of the range was rockier than the northern end, there were still a few green places. A skinny stream full of cold water ran along the edge of the meadow before tumbling over the rocks on the other side, heading down to the crocodile pond and then the sea.
We reached the meadow after a hard climb on a bit of trail that switched back and forth along the side of the mountain. To reach the Battle place we crossed the meadow, heading due east. The carved-out bowl was directly on the other side, a hole that was dropped in between the meadow and the jagged rock wall that rose up on the other side. A dirt track ran from the meadow down to the bowl, and on the fourth side the view opened to the rest of the mountains and a sheer drop down for the unwary.
The rock of the Battle arena was smooth and white, veined with grey, and this rock was different from the rest of the mountains. It was one of the reasons why Peter had declared it special and important.