After, we sat on the ground near her grave, and all of us kept one hand on the freshly turned sand, as if we could keep her with us as long as we stayed there. And if we stayed there watching long enough, maybe she would push her way out of the sand, fresh and new and young again, for we knew the island could do that if it wanted.
I glanced down the beach where the rowboat was lodged so unexpectedly.
I was so tired. I hadn’t slept properly for two days and my ankle hurt from just the short walk to the coconut tree. My head lolled toward my chest.
I shook myself awake again. I couldn’t fall asleep. We needed to leave. Peter would be nursing his wound—the first he’d ever gotten, and the shock of it might keep him away longer than usual—and now was our chance. If we waited, then Peter would return, and he wouldn’t play with crocodiles this time. He’d stab Charlie and be done with it.
Looking at Nod, I thought Peter would have no luck trying to kill him. Nod was tough as a boy, and now he was almost a man. He’d already managed to score off Peter by injuring him, and Peter hadn’t been able to take Nod down when they were the same size.
I stared, startled, at Nod’s hands. I’d just remembered that Peter tried to cut Nod’s hand off, and the right wrist had been fiercely ruined the night before.
Now all the skin there was whole and pink and fresh and new.
He noticed me staring and turned his wrists this way and that in the sun.
“It happened while I was growing,” he said. “It just healed up so fast I didn’t even notice it happening. I don’t think that would happen again, though.”
“It was because you were growing so fast that all your body was making itself new,” I said, nodding in understanding. “Once you’re completely grown-up you’ll only get better the regular way.”
Nod narrowed his eyes, like he was thinking something very hard. “Do you think I’ll stop growing up soon? Or will I just keep going until I’m old and grey and hobbled, and then I’ll die?”
This hadn’t occurred to me at all. I supposed I’d thought we’d only grow to adulthood quickly and then stop. But Nod and I, we were older than even we knew. What if the island’s magic, once reversed, would unravel until it reached the end of the skein? What if Nod was right, and we would just get older and older and older every hour until we died?
“No,” I said. I had no reason for saying that. It was only a feeling. I thought it would be enough for the island if we grew up, if we felt the creep of old age on our bones the usual way. “You and me aren’t even growing up at the same time. You’re already older than me, and I’ve been here longer.”
“I think,” Nod said, “it’s because of what’s in our heart. My heart hasn’t been young since Fog died.”
“It’s not such a wonderful thing, to be young,” I said. “It’s heartless, and selfish.”
“But, oh, so free,” Nod said sadly. “So free when you have no worries or cares.”
I smiled a little then. “I always had worries and cares, mostly so the rest of you wouldn’t.”
I glanced again at the rowboat. “Do you think you could find the supplies I dropped last night?” I asked Nod.
He followed my gaze. “I’ll help you to the boat; then I’ll go see if I can find them.”
“If you can’t, then we should gather some coconuts and push off anyway. We can drink their water when we’re at sea.”
I didn’t like to think how far away the nearest land might be, or what would happen to us if there was a storm on the ocean. But even an ocean storm seemed better than staying one more day on the island, trying not to be killed by a mad child.
He helped me to my feet. My ankle was even more tender than it had been earlier. Nod put his shoulder under mine, acting like a crutch, so I could let the injured foot drag in the sand.
Charlie soon grew impatient with my slow pace but I wouldn’t let him run ahead. I wasn’t letting him go more than an arm’s length from me ever again.
If I did I was sure that Peter would swoop out of the sky and take him away and all I would be able to do was watch, for I couldn’t run and I couldn’t fly.
We reached the rowboat, and we all stared inside it.
The boat was all torn up, an enormous hole where the bottom of it used to be. It looked like it had been hacked apart with an axe.
Peter had gotten there before us, again, just as he had with the tree.
There was no way for us to leave the island.
PART IV PETER & JAMIE
chapter 18
The only plan left to us was the original one Sally and I’d thought of—swimming out to the pirate ship and taking one of their rowboats.
“Or,” Nod said, when I’d made this suggestion, “to join the pirates and let them take us on their ship away from here.”
We were roasting fish over a small campfire on the beach. Charlie was asleep in the sand beside me, curled on his side.
We’d decided to stay there until we knew what to do next. I was sure that the tree would be occupied by Peter, and I didn’t want to risk roaming over the island on my sore ankle looking for a better place to hide.
There didn’t seem to be any better place to hide, anyway. Peter would always find us. As he told us over and over, it was his island. All its secrets belonged to him. I used to think they belonged to me too, but that wasn’t true anymore. There were so many things I didn’t know about the island, like fairies and flying and how the magic of it all stayed in your heart. Peter knew those things.
I stared at Nod. “Join the pirates? After what they did to the boys? After what they did to Fog?”
Nod’s face reddened. “I know what they did to him. To them. But Jamie—aren’t the pirates better than Peter? I’m grown-up now, and you’re nearly so. They can’t hold what Peter did against us. We’re not boys anymore.”
“Charlie is,” I said.
“We could look after Charlie,” Nod said. “You were always the best fighter, Jamie. You don’t think you will be now that you’re big?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
The truth of it was that I didn’t have much desire left to fight. I was always angry when I was a boy, even if I didn’t seem it, even when I seemed unruffled. Part of me was always silently raging, always looking for blood to spill. I never knew why I felt that way, but it made me merciless. It made it easy for me to cut and to hurt, to arrogantly slice pirates’ hands from their wrists so I could leave my mark.
It made it easy for me to defeat all the other boys in Battle. It made it easy for me to smash Nip’s head open with a rock.
I didn’t think I had that anymore. I wasn’t angry, not the way I used to be. There was only one person I wanted to kill now, and when he was dead I never wanted to lift a weapon again for the rest of my life.
“Think on it,” Nod said. “About going to the pirates, I mean. We can’t run about dodging Peter forever, you know.”
“I know,” I said.
That night I dreamed, but it was a different dream from one I’d ever had before. I didn’t dream of my mother, of finding her in the darkness, of my own hands covered in her blood.
• • •
Fog and Crow and Sally were inside the rowboat, the one that had been destroyed by Peter. It was new and whole again, and they were just a few feet off the shore. The three of them sat in the boat and waved at me.