I was vaguely aware of the other boys shouting, of Peter saying, “That’s not fair play! That’s not fair play!” over and over.
Nip didn’t care in the least about fair play. He wanted me dead.
As Nip ran at me I ducked away from the whistling blade and slammed my rock-filled fist into his stomach. This startled him into dropping the axe as the breath left him, and then I was on him in an instant. I heard the boys cheer and call my name, clapping and screeching with glee every time I landed a blow.
I pummeled him fast with both hands, and the one with the rock did more damage but the other one did plenty. In a few moments Nip was on the bottom of the arena, flat on his back, his face an unrecognizable mess. My knees were in his shoulders and I raised the rock once more for a final blow.
The boys all chanted, “Finish him, finish him, finish him.”
Nip’s little mean eyes looked from the rock to me, and then he laughed. It was a bloody, wheezy laugh, but it made me pause.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter . . .” he said, and it took him a long time to say it. “. . . what happens to me. Because they are coming.”
“Who’s coming?” I asked as Nip closed his eyes. I slapped him and he opened them again. “Who’s coming?”
“Pirates,” he said.
In an instant I remembered Nip’s long trek the day before, and the way he kept looking over his shoulder while he stood at the top of the track.
Like he was waiting for someone to arrive.
Nip had told the pirates where we would be. And in the arena, we’d be trapped. There was no way out except the track back up to the meadow.
I brought the rock down on his head so hard that I caved in the front of his skull.
The boys erupted in cheers—all except Charlie, who looked pleased but shaky, and Sal, who turned away and retched.
“We have to leave now!” I shouted, but they didn’t hear me.
They hadn’t heard Nip’s words either, because they were too busy cheering me on. They didn’t know the pirates were coming.
I had to get them out.
I ran toward Peter, who had stood on the seat and was leading a “hip-hip-hurrah” for me. Nod and Fog and Crow and Kit and Ed were gathered around him with their backs to me.
The shot rang out, and it didn’t seem real, the way it echoed all around the rock walls. We didn’t use pistols—didn’t have them, or the means to fill them with gunpowder, so what was the point? And the pirates had never used them on us before that day.
Everything changed after Peter burned their camp down. They didn’t want us for our secrets anymore. They wanted only revenge.
The shot rang out. Then blood bloomed on Fog’s back, an opening flower that revealed the hole that passed through his body.
Not Fog, I thought. Nod and Fog had been on the island almost as long as me. How could there be an island without the two of them together, always together? It couldn’t be.
Fog fell backward, and the pirates swarmed in.
There were only six of them; else it might have been worse. As it was I think they were tired from the climb—Nip couldn’t have described the path very well, having never been there before.
They were tired, and had counted on surprise. And they still thought of us as children.
We were not ordinary children.
Nod saw his brother fall and howled a noise that no human should ever hear, a howl of pain that came from his heart instead of his throat.
I flung my rock, still coated in Nip’s blood, at the first pirate down the track. He was the one holding the pistol with smoke curling out of its tip. The rock hit him square in the nose and he staggered to one side, swiping at the blood that erupted there. I grabbed my dagger and leapt over the rim of the arena, landing on top of him. He twisted and fell face-first to the ground. I jammed the blade into the base of his neck and he stilled.
I rolled to my feet, searching for Charlie and Sal. Sal stood over a dead pirate that had Del’s sword sticking out of his chest. Charlie was behind Sal, and he didn’t seem to be harmed at all.
The other boys had stampeded past me while I dispatched the first pirate, and they’d chased the others up into the meadow. I heard the sounds of their weapons clashing, the hollering of the boys and the curses of the pirates.
It was only Sal and Charlie and me, and four bodies, left in the arena.
Sal was pale and sweaty and had his hands crossed over his stomach like he was going to be sick again.
Then I saw the red seeping between his fingers.
“Sal!” I said, and ran to him just as he fell.
I reached for the button of his waistcoat, a funny affectation of his like the woolen trousers and cap. He batted my hands away weakly.
“Leave it,” he said thickly.
“Don’t be a fool. I have to see how bad it is,” I said.
Sal was too shaky to stop me. I ripped open the waistcoat buttons and then the white shirt beneath, both now sticky with blood.
And stopped.
The wound was in the upper left part of the belly, just below the ribs. It wasn’t that deep, though it bled profusely. It looked like the pirate had just got the tip of his sword into Sal.
That wasn’t what stopped me, though.
Just above his ribs Sal had wound several pieces of cloth tightly around his chest. It was enough to disguise the truth when his shirt and waistcoat were buttoned, but there was no hiding it once those were off.
Sal wasn’t a boy at all. She was girl.
Her face was now terrified and defiant all at once, and she said, very coolly though her voice was weak, “How bad is it?”
I think I fell in love with her then, when she pretended that everything was just the same as it had always been.
“What are those?” Charlie asked, pointing at Sal’s chest.
Sal laughed, then coughed. “Getting stabbed hurts. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Did you think it would be an adventure?” I said, with a levity I did not feel.
“That’s how you and Peter always made it out to be,” she said, and coughed again.
I didn’t like that coughing. It made me worry that the wound was worse than it looked. I fumbled with shaking hands in the pockets of my coat, where I always had something handy hidden, and yanked out a pirate’s head cloth that I’d stolen some time ago. It was covered in dust but it was the best I could do.
I folded the cloth and pressed it over the wound, hoping to staunch the bleeding. Sal cried out when I put pressure on it.
“That hurts too!” she shouted, and hit my arm.
“Do you want to bleed to death?” I said.
“Don’t bleed to death, Sal,” Charlie said.
“Is that your real name?” I asked.
Her dancing blue eyes looked away. “It’s Sally.”
Charlie looked from Sally to me and back again to the strips of cloth around her chest. He’d just made the connection. “You’re a girl!”
“Who’s a girl?” Peter’s voice, behind me.
I twisted around. Nod and Crow and Peter had returned to the arena. The three of them were painted in spattered blood. Peter’s face said he’d had the time of his life. Nod stared at his dead brother’s body.
“Sal’s a girl!” Charlie said, standing up and pointing at her.
“You couldn’t hide it for long,” I said. “Not on the island, surrounded by boys.”
“I’ve hid it for three years, surrounded by boys on the streets, ever since I was ten years old,” she said, her eyes sparking. “I’m no fool, Jamie.”