“Who wants to hear a story?” Peter said.
All the boys chorused yes, because they were feeling fed and warm and because Peter wanted to tell a tale, and if Peter wanted it, then they did too.
“What kind of story? A pirate story? A ghost story? A treasure story?” Peter hopped around the circle, scooping up a handful of dirt as he did.
“Something with lots of blood and adventure,” Fog said.
“Something with a mermaid in it,” Nod said. He was partial to the mermaids, and went often on his own to the lagoon where they liked to splash and show their tail fins above the breaking waves.
“Something with a haunt walking and scaring folk to death,” Jonathan said. “I saw a story like that once. This fellow killed a king so he could be king and then the old king’s ghost stayed about and sat in the new king’s chair.”
“What would a ghost want to sit in a chair for? Ghosts don’t need chairs. They fall right through them,” Harry said. He’d been around the island for a while, and I’m sorry to say that being bashed around in Battle and at raids had done nothing very good for his brains.
“So he could scare the new king for killing him in the first place,” Jonathan said, punching Harry in the shoulder.
“Killing who in the first place?” Harry asked.
“A ghost story,” Peter said, effectively squashing the argument before it got properly started. He smeared the dirt he’d scooped up across his face. It made him a wild demon in the shadows left behind by the lowering sun.
Charlie’s cold hand grasped for mine. He stood up so my ear was close to his mouth. “I don’t like ghosts,” he whispered. “There was one in the house where we lived before. It was in the wardrobe and my brother said if I opened that door the ghost would take me away to where the dead people live.”
I squeezed his fingers, partly to comfort him and partly to cover my surprise at his words. A brother? Charlie had a brother? And an older one, by the sound of it. Where was he that day we found Charlie wandering lost and alone? Why hadn’t Charlie told us about him?
Charlie crowded closer as Peter spoke.
“Once there was a boy,” Peter began, and his eyes glinted when he looked at Charlie and me. “A very little boy with yellow hair like baby duck feathers.”
I brushed my hand over Charlie’s downy blond head and gave Peter a look that said I knew what he was about.
“This little duckling was very foolish. He was always wandering away from his mama, and his mama would squawk and find him again. And she would scold him and say that he had to mind her and stay close, but whenever they went walking in the woods he never did.”
“I thought this was a ghost story,” Harry said. “What’s all this about a duck?”
“Shush,” Jonathan said.
“One day the duckling and his brothers and sisters and mama were walking in the woods, and the foolish little duckling saw a jumping grasshopper. He laughed and followed the hopper, trying to catch it with his fat little hands, but he never could.
“He kept on chasing and laughing until he noticed, all sudden-like, that there was no quacking of mama and brothers and sisters all around him and it was silent as his grave. It was then the foolish duckling saw how he’d lost the path and there was nothing but the great big wood closing in.”
I felt that this duckling boy was shortly to be eaten by one of the Many-Eyed. I frowned at Peter, but he didn’t much care about the message I was trying to send.
“The silly little duckling quacked then, quacked loud and long, and waited for his mama to quack back, but she never did. Then the little duckling started to cry, walk and quack and cry all at the same time the way a baby will. The other creatures of the forest watched the duckling pass by and shook their heads, for the boy had been so foolish and hadn’t listened to his mama when she told him to stay close and mind her.
“It started to get dark, and the duckling was scared, but he kept walking and crying, thinking that around every corner there might be his mama, ready to scold and hug him all at the same time.”
“My mama was never like that,” Harry said to Jonathan in a low voice. “She only did the yelling and the hitting, none of the hugging.”
Peter gave no sign that he noticed this remark. “After a long time the boy came to a clear pond in a little valley. The water was so fresh and still that all the world reflected in it, like the shiniest looking glass you ever did see.”
Ah, I thought, it’s to be a gobbling by a crocodile, then. I pulled Charlie a little closer to me and put him in my lap, like I could protect him from Peter’s story with my arms.
“The little duckling went to the water and peered in, and inside the water was the valley and the trees all around and the white face of the moon and the white face of another little duckling, fuzzy yellow hair and all. The duckling quacked ‘hello,’ for he was very pleased to see a friendly face after walking and crying so long in the woods on his own. The other duckling in the pond said ‘hello’ at the same time, which made them both laugh and laugh. The duckling reached through the water, toward his new friend, and their fingertips touched.
“At that very moment the smooth surface of the pond rippled and the sneaking, peeking eyes of a crocodile broke through. The croc wasn’t far from where the little duckling and his friend were laughing together. The duckling started up and shouted to his friend, ‘Oh, get away, get away or you’ll be eaten.’
“He ran a little way and looked over his shoulder to see if his friend followed him like he hoped, but the other duckling wasn’t there. Then the little duckling’s heart was in his mouth, because he was so scared but he didn’t want to leave his friend to be gobbled up by the crocodile. Those sneaking, peeking eyes still lurked in the same place, so the duckling thought he had time to get his friend from the water.”
“How come the bird was so stupid?” Harry asked. He seemed to have forgotten that the duckling was actually a boy in Peter’s story. “Don’t he know the pond only shows what’s put in it?”
This didn’t really make sense but we all knew what Harry meant. A few of the others nodded.
Charlie hadn’t forgotten the duckling was actually a boy. He pressed his face against my chest, like he was trying to climb inside my skin, trying to find a place where he could be safe from the story. Only Charlie and I seemed to know it wasn’t to end well, and only I knew the story was meant for me. Charlie was dead scared of the crocodile pond, and he was right to be. Those beasts could gobble a little one like him in one bite.
“Haven’t I said he was a foolish little duckling?” Peter said, responding to Harry’s question. “Everyone knows we stick together in the forest.”
“If you go out alone you won’t come back,” a few of the boys said together.
“’Cept Jamie,” Fog said.
“Yeah, ’cept Jamie,” Nod said.
“Nothing in the forest would be dumb enough to try and hurt Jamie,” Peter said, with a fierce kind of pride.
That pride would have made me swell a little were it not for Charlie’s small voice. “But what about the duckling?”
“Right you are, Charlie,” Peter said. “That little duckling crept back to the so-still pond, where Mr. Crocodile waited. He gathered all his courage and looked into the water and saw his friend there, so very close to those watching eyes.”
“I thought this was a ghost story,” Billy said. He didn’t seem much impressed by the tale of the little duckling. “Where’s the ghost?”