“Because it will punish you if I kill him,” Peter said. “I know you, Jamie. I know your heart, even if you think I don’t. It will hurt you more if you can’t save him than it would if I killed you outright.”
“Why not just let us go?”
“Because who would I play with if you all were gone?” Peter said. “No, you have to stay here with me, Jamie, the way you said you would always. And for you to stay here with me means the rest of them must die. They keep you from me.”
“I’m not going to stay a boy, Peter. I’m going to grow up,” I said. “I already am.”
He seemed to look at me then for the first time, really look at me. He hadn’t, not properly, since before he took Charlie to the Many-Eyed. Now he took in my taller body and my bigger hands and the hair on my face that hadn’t been there before.
His face twisted into something awful then, something monstrous and terrifying. He pulled Charlie tighter to his body and the younger boy cried out in pain.
“No,” Peter said, stalking closer to me. “No, no, no, no, no! You’re not allowed to grow up. You’re supposed to stay here with me forever, for always. Who am I to play with if you grow up, Jamie?”
His eyes, I saw, glittered with tears, but I couldn’t believe in them. Peter wasn’t really hurt. He only wanted to have his way, like always. But he was coming closer to me, closer and closer, and I waited for my chance. The dagger was still in my hand.
“It’s over, Peter,” I said. “No one wants to play with you anymore. And you destroyed the tunnel to the Other Place, so you can’t bring any more boys here. You’re going to be alone here forever unless you grow up.”
“No, I’m not growing up! I’m never growing up!” Peter screamed.
Then he screamed again, this time in surprise, and he dropped Charlie. I lunged to scoop him up as Peter flailed at the back of his thigh, reaching for something.
Nod had snuck up behind Peter while he talked to me, so quiet and careful I hadn’t even noticed Nod there, and had thrown his knife at Peter, right into his leg.
Peter pulled the knife from his thigh and howled in pain and also, I think, in shock that he was actually hurt. He rose straight up from the ground, cursing all the terrible words he’d ever heard from the pirates.
A little golden firefly light bobbed around his head as he shouted his fury at us. Then he abruptly soared away, leaving us on the beach.
Nod’s expression was fierce and proud. “I got him back. He got me but I got him back.”
“And you saved Charlie,” I said.
I sank to the ground then, the world gone all wobbly, and Charlie rolled out of my arms.
Nod ran to me, pushing me over so I didn’t collapse on my face but on my back instead. I shook all over, every muscle trembling from exertion and shock.
I’d been running and running and running for days, it seemed, trying to stop the inevitable, trying to stop Peter from slaughtering them all.
My breath came in thready gasps. Nod and Charlie leaned over me, identical expressions of worry on their faces.
“Jamie?” Charlie asked.
I flopped my hand at him. It was all I had the energy to do. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” Nod said. “You’re white as bone under all that blood and sand.”
I tried to nod my head yes, to say that I was fine. I must have fainted then, for the next thing I knew the stars were gone and the sky above me the pale blue of just after dawn.
Charlie held my right hand in his smaller one. Tears streamed down his face. My left hand was still closed around my dagger.
“Charlie? Where’s Nod?”
“Burying Sally,” Charlie said, and pointed behind me.
I sat up straight then. I’d forgotten, forgotten the long trails of blood in the sand, forgotten the thing that I saw out of the corner of my eye as I sprinted down the beach to save Charlie from the crocodile.
I’d forgotten the girl who wanted to grow up with me.
Now she never would.
I managed to stand very slowly, every part of me stiff and sore. The crocodile’s blood had dried on my hands and arms and fell off in flakes.
“You don’t look good, Jamie,” Charlie said. “You look sick. Maybe you ought to sit down again.”
I shook my head, unable to speak. I walked slowly, limping because my right ankle was swollen. I had no memory of how or why this might have happened. Charlie trotted along beside me, holding out his hands toward me when he thought I might fall, as though he might be able to stop me.
Nod was at the place under the coconut tree where I had buried the others the day that the cannonball took them. He had a wide flat stick that he was using to dig a hole in the sand.
On the ground beside the hole was what was left of her.
Nod paused for a moment and saw me coming. He scrambled out of the hole and ran toward me, waving his hands and shaking his head no.
Nod had gotten taller since last night. He was almost as tall as me, though he’d always been a lot smaller when we were children. His blond beard was thicker than mine. He seemed almost completely grown-up, not in-between as I was. There was no more of the boy about him at all.
He put his hand on my chest to stop me from going any farther. That hand was big and thick-knuckled and covered with curling yellow hair.
“No,” he said. His voice was all grown-up too, deep-throated and rumbly. “I don’t want you to see her.”
“I need to see her,” I said.
“You don’t want to,” Nod said. “I wish I hadn’t.”
“The crocodile ate her,” Charlie said in a very little voice, his eyes downcast. “I’m sorry, Jamie. It only ate her because she was watching out for me like she said she would.”
I rumpled his hair, his little yellow duckling hair, and watched it stand up in the sunlight. Charlie was still a small boy, because he hadn’t been on the island long enough to stop growing the usual way and then start again like me and Nod. He was very tiny now compared to us.
“It wasn’t your fault, Charlie,” I said. “It was Peter’s.”
Charlie kicked the sand, his fists clenched. “It’s always Peter’s fault. Always, always. It’s because of him that Sally’s gone.”
Nod’s restraining hand was still on my chest. I looked at him for a long time, and he looked back, and finally he let me pass.
There wasn’t much left of her, not really. The crocodile had taken most of one leg entirely, nothing there except some ragged skin and sheared-off bone. The opposite arm was stripped of flesh, and there was a big chunk torn out of her middle. Everywhere there were claw and bite marks, on her hands and face and chest.
She’d fought. I didn’t need Charlie to tell me that she’d stood in the way of the crocodile and told him to run. It was what she would do. It was what I would do, and our hearts were the same where Charlie was concerned.
Her blue eyes were milky grey and empty. Her laughing blue eyes, the eyes that promised me we’d be together for always, the eyes that promised me things I didn’t really understand—there was no Sally in them anymore, no fierce happy girl that I loved.
I should have cried, but all my tears had been wrung from me already. My grief couldn’t overwhelm me anymore because it was a part of me forever, all the names and all the faces and all the boys that I hadn’t protected from Peter.
All the boys, and one girl.
Charlie and me, we helped Nod dig the hole and then I carefully laid her in there, and we covered her face with sand.