She pressed her lips against my cheek, something I’d seen now and then in the Other Place. It was called a kiss, I remembered.
A kiss can be made of magic too. I’d never known that.
She blushed again when I stared as she pulled back, but she didn’t look away. Sal didn’t hide. She always looked at you directly, and made you meet her.
“I’ll grow up with you,” I said, and took her hand.
It was different from holding Charlie’s hand, or Peter pulling me along to a new adventure. Her fingers twined into mine and I held it over my heart, so I could show her all the things that I didn’t know how to say.
Then I kissed her cheek very fast and let go of her hand and ran away, and she ran after me, laughing, and all of the world seemed to rise up laughing with her. She had the most wonderful laugh you’ve ever heard, like silver music that coursed through your blood.
We were still children, for all that we thought we weren’t. We were in that in-between place, the twilight between childish things and grown-up things.
Childhood still held out a friendly hand to us, if we wanted to go back to it, while the unexplored country was ahead, beckoning us to come there and see what new pleasures were to be found.
I didn’t really understand what that country meant, not really. It had been so long since I’d been near a grown-up who wasn’t a pirate. To me pirates were not unlike children themselves, only in bigger bodies. They did as they pleased (or so it seemed to me) and they spent as much time on the island as we boys did. And their lives had just as much blood and adventuring as ours.
The country that called to me now was one I barely remembered, one in which well-dressed husbands and wives talked quietly over supper tables. I remembered, suddenly, seeing just such a pair when I pressed my face against the window of a public house.
I didn’t remember why I was there, or how old I might have been, or where my own parents were. I only remembered being cold and hungry and seeing them there, warm and clean and well-fed.
“Sal,” I said. “When we grow up we will have a very large house.”
“Of course,” she said. “For all the boys.”
I nodded, pleased that she understood. For when Sal and I left the island to grow up, of course we would take Charlie and Nod and Crow with us. I could never leave them behind with Peter.
The thought of Peter all alone on the island, with no companions to play with, didn’t make me as sad as it ought to. I felt a little thrill of pleasure that he would have no one to push or pull or feed to the maw of the island when he was bored.
“When will we leave?” Sal asked.
I explained to her that I wanted to test the tunnel before we tried to cross it without Peter. She agreed that it was a possibility that the crossing might only be there if he was.
She pursed her lips. “I don’t like the idea of you trying on your own.”
“It will be safer and quicker with just one,” I said. “And once I’m sure we can make it through to the Other Place, then we can leave as soon as Peter’s gone off on one of his trips.”
“Why not just leave when he’s there?” she asked. “You should look him in the eye and tell him that you’re going, not sneak away like a coward.”
That stung. I wasn’t a coward. I’d never been a coward.
“It’s not about cowardice,” I said. “It’s about safety. You don’t know Peter. You think that you know him, but I’ve been his companion for longer than you can understand. Peter might let all of you go, though I can’t be certain of that. But he won’t let me go. I think Peter would rather kill me himself than see me leave.”
More than that, he’d try to kill the others if he thought it would make me stay. In his Peter-boy-logic he would think that if only he got rid of what distracted me, then I would be happy to be with him instead.
But if I said that out loud, Sal would only tell me that I was trying to protect her when she didn’t need protecting.
“You’re afraid to fight him?” she asked, peering at me closely. “I can’t believe that.”
“Of course not,” I said.
“Then this is about me or Charlie or some other such thing,” Sal said.
It cut me, it really did, the way she just seemed to know everything.
“Can’t you let me look after you?” I said. “If we’re together, then that means we take care of each other.”
“Yes, that means I look after you, too, and not allow you to act foolish.”
“It’s not foolish to keep you away from Peter’s anger,” I said. “You’ve never seen it.”
“I saw him at the Battle arena,” she said.
“That’s not anger,” I said. Why would she not comprehend? Everything about this plan was much more dangerous than she thought it was.
If Peter caught us . . .
“Please,” I said. “Please, don’t make me put you or Charlie or Nod or Crow at risk just because it offends your sense of honesty. You can be as honest and forthright as you like, Sal, but you should know that Peter won’t be. This is his island. He’ll do anything to keep it exactly as he wants it.”
There must have, finally, been something in my face or voice that convinced her, for she gave a reluctant nod.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll do it your way.”
“And don’t mention anything to the others yet,” I said. “Not until it’s time to go.”
“Yes,” she said, and then her hand came up suddenly, blocking her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“Something bright,” she said, lowering her hand and pointing behind me. “Like a flash.”
I twisted around, looking for what had startled her, but I didn’t see anything. I thought I heard a faint tinkling sound on the wind.
“Where did it come from?” I asked, suddenly worried that pirates might be roaming the forest searching for us. The flash might have been the sun off a blade, and the tinkling the sound of buckles jingling as they walked.
She showed me, and we carefully explored all around checking for any sign of pirates—footprints, broken brush, the smell of rum that they left behind them in a cloud.
After I assured myself that there was nothing to find, we agreed to go back.
“It must have been a bird,” I said.
“What sort of bird flashes in the sun?” she asked.
“You’d be surprised,” I said. “Some of the birds here have feathers so white that they shine. You haven’t seen all of the island, Sal. I have.”
She would have liked to argue about this, I thought, except there was no denying that on this one subject alone I was more knowledgeable than she. The only person in the world who knew the island better was Peter.
• • •
I returned to camp feeling more lighthearted and hopeful than I’d felt in a long time. I even smiled at Peter when I saw him sitting at the fire with the other three. Peter took that grin in stride, but Nod looked sharply from Sally to me and back again, which made my smile fade. I wondered how much he could see there, and how much he understood.
Charlie was sitting beside Peter, which surprised me very much. He was holding a little piece of carved wood in his hand, and I recognized the thing Peter had been whittling the day I killed the Many-Eyed. That day seemed so long ago, a lifetime ago.
So very many boys ago, when they were all still alive.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Charlie’s eyes shone as he held up the wood. “Peter made me a toy! Look, he said it’s a little fairy to keep me safe.”