I took another deep breath, waiting for the red to recede, so that I wouldn’t turn on Peter.
For a moment I’d thought about pulling my own knife, the metal one I’d stolen from the pirates. Then I’d knock Peter to the ground, grab his jaw and squeeze it together until Peter’s tongue lolled out, and slice it off as neat as the edge of a pirate’s sail.
Then the mist drew back a bit, the crazed burning in my blood cooled, and Peter stood there, grinning, unharmed, unaware of what had passed in my mind.
It startled me, it surely did, for I loved Peter—at least most of the time—and spent the better portion of my life trying to make him smile at me the way he did when we first met.
“They try me sometimes,” I said, after a bit. I was returning to myself again, the Jamie I knew.
Peter slung his arm around my shoulder. “You’ll whip the new boys into shape. And we’ll have an excellent raid.”
“There should not be a raid at all,” I said, trying once more, though I knew it was in vain.
“It’ll be a lark,” Peter said, and he nudged me toward the notch in the tree.
Outside a few boys scampered in the clearing around our tree, chasing and tagging one another. Some of them had plucked the fruit from the trees and stacked it in a pile. Del showed the new boys how to peel the skin from the orange-yellow fruit before eating it.
“The outside bit, that’ll make you sick if you eat it. But the inside is nice and sweet,” Del said, holding the fruit up to his lips and biting into it. Juice spilled over his chin. The sticky yellow stuff stood out against his white skin, like a warning.
I paused, my hand on the trunk of the tree. Peter emerged beside me and followed my gaze.
“Del won’t last much longer,” I said. “He won’t last a raid—that’s for certain.”
Peter shrugged. “If he’s sick he can stay behind. Better he coughs out that muck when I’m not here. I don’t want to listen to it.”
This was more or less what I expected, but I felt a surge of that same strange anger I’d felt a few moments before. It made me speak when I would have held my tongue.
“What if I was the one sicking out my lungs?” I said. I felt the temper perilously close to the surface, lurking just underneath my skin, hot and wild. “Would you leave me behind?”
Peter looked at me, just the faintest of questions in his eyes. “You never get sick, Jamie. All the time you’ve been here you’ve never had so much as a sniffle.”
“But what if I was?” I persisted.
I wasn’t sure whether I should be angry with Peter or not. There was no harm in his feelings. Peter would like it if Del was alive, but it wouldn’t bother him if Del wasn’t. He didn’t wish the other boy harm.
“You won’t be,” Peter said, and he ran off to join the running boys. They were practicing swordplay with sticks now, jabbing and slashing at one another with the long branches that fell from the fruit trees.
I stared after him, felt that familiar mix of love and worship and frustration that I often felt with Peter. You couldn’t change him. He didn’t want to be changed. That was why Peter lived on the island in the first place.
I crossed to the circle of boys gathered around the pile of fruit. Most of the lads were fine, but Charlie struggled with the small stone knife that one of the older boys had lent him.
I knelt beside him on one knee, took the unpeeled fruit from Charlie’s little hand.
“Like this, see?” I said, making quick work of it and handing it back to Charlie.
The smaller boy looked up at me with shining eyes as he bit into the fruit. “’S good,” he said.
I ruffled Charlie’s hair, yellow-white in the sunlight. He was like a little duckling with his head all covered in fuzz, a little duckling who’d follow behind me and expect me to keep him safe. There was nothing to be done about it now. I would just have to make sure to keep him with me until the smaller boy got bigger, or smarter.
I stood and called Nod and Fog to me. The twins were busy beating at each other with sticks, but they quit as soon as they heard my voice, coming to attention before me like soldiers.
“Take Kit and Harry and check the traps,” I said.
We’d need the meat while crossing the island. Some to eat, and some for the things we might meet on the way. I didn’t like the way the Many-Eyed had been acting lately. They were bolder than they’d ever been before.
“’Kay,” the twins said.
“And take the new boy, Nip, with you,” I said.
Nip looked like he might be working up the gumption to come at me, and I was not in the mood for fighting just then. Best if the other lad were busy.
Nod and Fog collected the others, including an obviously reluctant Nip, and disappeared into the trees. I looked up at the sky, calculated they would be back by midday.
I rounded up the other boys and set them to tasks—cleaning and collecting the knives and bows, rigging up carrying pouches for food, laying out strips of fruit to dry in the sun. Peter frowned when he realized all his playmates had been taken from him for chores.
“What’s the idea?” he said.
“You want a raid, don’t you?” I said, turning away so he wouldn’t see the gleam of satisfaction in my eye. If he wanted his raid he could have all that came with it, including the work.
“Aye,” Peter said.
“Then there’s work to be done.”
“Not for me,” Peter said. He planted himself defiantly in the shade of a fruit tree and took out the piece of wood he’d whittled at the night before, one he’d turned into a little flute. He whistled, watching me from the corner of his green eyes.
I gave Peter my back, and went about my business. Peter watched me closely, though I pretended not to notice, watched me as a mother might watch over her child, or a wolf might watch something that was between it and its prey.
chapter 2
The trap-checking party was back just before the sun was highest, as I had expected. All the traps were full, which was an excellent surprise. It meant we could do less hunting on the way to the pirate camp. There was always plenty of food in the forest, but much less once we reached the border of the mountains and the plains.
Peter, of course, wanted a bit of rabbit for lunch as long as there was so much to go around. And I, though my inclination was to save for the upcoming journey, didn’t argue.
I was pleased to see Nip looking so bedraggled after trekking around the forest with the twins, who’d doubtless kept up an unaccustomed pace for the tall boy. If Nip were tired out from exercise, he would, I hoped, be too tired to cause trouble.
Soon we had a fire crackling in the clearing and a couple of the fattest rabbits on spits, watched over carefully by Del, who was the best thing we had for a cook. Del sprinkled a bit of sweet-smelling leaf he’d collected over the rabbits, and my mouth watered.
The best of the meat was given to Peter first, and then me, followed in order by the size of the boy, the length of time he’d been on the island, and his current position of favoritism in Peter’s mind. Thus Nip and Charlie were the last two to get fed, and they had the smallest portions.
Charlie bit into the rabbit with relish. The tiny piece of meat was more than enough for a boy his size, especially as he’d been eating as much yellow fruit as he could get his hands on all morning.
Nip narrowed his eyes at the scrap Del held out to him. “What’s all this, then? Where’s the rest of it?”