The Boy was not expecting a trap of any sort, although he had thought to divest himself of his pirate garb so the Piccas would see him in his more familiar green tunic and leggings. He reasoned that was all the Piccas would require to accept his change in attitude. Gwenny, however, voiced definite concerns. “My understanding, Boy,” she reminded him as they trekked through the underbrush, “is that the last encounter the Picca tribe had with you, you were doing them some mischief.”
He waved it off dismissively. “That means nothing,” he said with confidence. “They will know that something was amiss. What better, greater, more splendid friend have the Piccas ever had than I?”
Suddenly an arrow was poking out from the brush, aimed squarely at The Boy’s face. He took a step back, his eyes wide—not in fear but in surprise.
Gwenny let out an involuntary shriek and then another as she saw she had her very own arrow aimed at her very own head. Paul, Irregular, and Porthos reacted with their own exclamations of surprise, although thankfully none of them shrieked like a girl, for The Boy would never have let them hear the end of that.
Sensing that they were surrounded, and wanting to avoid a battle that would likely not end well, Paul called out, “Do nothing! Make no attempt to fight them!” The Boy chafed under this pronouncement but—somewhat to Paul’s surprise—he made no move.
“Good plan,” said Gwenny.
“I can do that,” said Irregular.
Porthos’s mouth was moving, but nothing was coming out.
“Show yourselves!” Paul said in his most commanding voice, hoping that valor would carry the day. “Or are you braves so lacking in bravery that you have to hide from people who are unarmed?”
“What ‘unarmed’?” came a rough voice from the underbrush. “Boy have sword on hip.”
The Boy glanced down at the sword, then looked up at Paul and shrugged. Thinking quickly, if not well, Paul said, “It’s purely for style.”
There was a pause, followed by a confused “Oh.” Then, slowly, the braves emerged from the underbrush. They were fiercely decked out in war paint, and their bare torsos glistened in the early morning sun.
One of the Picca braves stepped forward…presumably the leader of the war party. He was the one with his arrow leveled squarely at The Boy. Like all Picca males, he had been named for the first thing that his mother saw outside her wigwam after he had been born. “What you do here?” said Pouring Rain. “Boy now enemy of Piccas.”
“You have no enemy in me,” The Boy said with considerable command and remarkable calm. One would never know he was one slightly twitchy finger away from an arrow splitting his face in twain.
“That news,” said Pouring Rain. “Boy attack braves. Boy command pirates.”
“Do you see any pirates anywhere around?” Gwenny said.
The Picca warriors glanced around suspiciously. “Could be hiding,” another brave said. “Could be trick.”
Pouring Rain said, “Dog Licking Self speak truly. Could be trick.”
“Look around,” said Paul. “Take your time. Search the entire area. We’re not going anywhere. We’re here looking for you, so why would we?”
Pouring Rain considered, then said brusquely to The Boy, “If Boy so much as twitches…arrow will go into eye.”
“I’m not moving. You have my word,” said The Boy. And, true to his word, he remained precisely where he was, without moving so much as a muscle, while the Picca braves spread out through the woods and sought some sign—any sign—that an ambush was afoot.
None was, of course, and when Dog Licking Self and the other braves reported back that they were alone in the woods, Pouring Rain slowly lowered his arrow, although suspicion still radiated from him. “You attack braves. With guns. With sword.”
“It wasn’t him. Well, not exactly,” said Paul and he quickly described the circumstances that had brought them to this situation.
The Boy listened and nodded with approval. “You’re getting very good at telling that tale,” he said. “I would like it if next time I could sound more heroic, though.”
“Well…you were the villain. Or at least possessed by the villain.”
“I suppose,” said The Boy, “but it stings.”
“How so?”
“Because,” The Boy said with a bit of his sauciness reasserting itself, “nothing happens in the Anyplace that I don’t want to have happen. That’s the way it has always been. Ultimately the realm is subject to my imagination.”
Now there was some truth to that, but also some falsehood, as is typically the case with The Boy. We shall go into it in more detail later when matters are not quite as tense, for the Picca are liable to become trigger happy—or bow happy, as it were—if we compel them to wait much longer.
“You have opportunity to tell story again,” Pouring Rain informed him, caring nothing about either The Boy’s pride or existential angst, “to Princess Picca.” He paused and then added curiously, “You know story about princess in tower with long hair?”
“Rapunzel? I do, yes.”
“You tell later,” Pouring Rain said so firmly that one would have thought it a dictate from on high.
Again The Boy nodded, and he patted Paul on the shoulder. “Keep doing what you’re doing. You tell stories better than Gwenny. I wonder why she stopped telling us stories.”
“Because you flew off to be a pirate and left me behind,” Gwenny reminded him, sounding not a little annoyed.
“Oh. Well, yes, there’s that, I suppose,” he said carelessly.
In short order they were brought to the Picca camp. Somehow word must have been sent ahead, for the Piccas were waiting for them and looked none too happy to see them. Princess Picca was foremost among those waiting, standing with her arms crossed and her savage expression fixed upon The Boy. Paul did not think she was even paying attention to The Boy’s companions. Perhaps they simply were not important enough for her. It was hard for Paul to get a fix on her age. She might have been as young as fifteen or as remarkably ancient as thirty, for her physique seemed youthful but her bearing added many years. Her hair hung in girlish black braids, but her face was stern and unforgiving, her round chin defiantly outthrust and her dark eyes like the storm before a calm.
“You,” she said, and pointed at The Boy, “betrayed Picca. Betrayed us all.”
“Actually, I didn’t. He’ll tell you”—and he indicated Paul. “He’s a storyteller.”
Princess Picca turned and looked at Paul as if seeing him for the first time, which she probably was. “You know story of girl with glass moccasin?”
“Cinderella? Why…yes, actually.”
“Always like that one. You tell later. Now speak of Boy’s betrayal.”
So Paul did. By this point he had gotten down the pacing of his story so that it flowed smoothly. There were no hesitations or stammers or pauses as he tried to figure out the best way to describe what happened next. He was rather pleased with himself over his accomplishment.
As it happened, it was the worst thing he could have done.
When he finished, Princess Picca—rather than smiling and nodding with interest as others had—scowled fiercely and fearsomely. “You,” she announced, “too smooth of tongue. Spin tale like spider spins web. Seek to ensnare us as well. Devour us, perhaps.”
“No!” Paul said with alarm. “No, that’s not the case at all. Tell her, Boy!”
“It really was a good story. Do you know the one about—”
“It wasn’t just a story! It’s what happened!”
The Boy looked at him wide-eyed. “Aren’t all stories?”
Paul was not at all sure how any of this was coming across to the Piccas. He was aware, though, that there was a good deal of scowling among them, and he was not certain how to address it.
The Boy, however, did not hesitate. He stepped toward Princess Picca. This prompted a number of the braves to bring their bows and arrows to bear as quickly as they could. The Boy paid them no mind at al
l. Instead he threw his arms wide and said, “If you choose to disbelieve our storyteller…if you reject our tale…then you reject me as well. If that is the case, then do with me as you will.”
“Even if it mean you must die?”
As amazing as it seemed to Paul, The Boy really, truly appeared indifferent to the prospect. To underscore his laissez-faire attitude, he added an apathetic shrug.
Princess Picca frowned at his lack of more dramatic response. As long as she had known him, one would have thought that his history of bravado combined with his devil-may-care attitude would have prepared her for his daring the braves to fill him full of arrows. The trick was, she and her tribe had been allies with him for so long that they had quite forgotten what it was like to face him as an opponent. The Anyplace tended to do that to all people, not just The Boy. When you get down to it, the Anyplace very much existed for the now that reflected the children from whose imagination it was torn.
Think on it: How often do youngsters thrust themselves into situations that they know are wrong for them? Their parents warned them many times that they should not get involved in such endeavors. And they know that if and when they are caught out, certainly there will be swift and terrible punishment brought down upon their heads…provided, of course, that they survive the experience in the first place, which is not always a guaranteed thing.
But they care not for what was said to them earlier, nor do they dwell on what is to come. They live for the moment, for the now. And in that heartbeat—or, more precisely, in between each heartbeat—is where The Boy resides, egging them on to greater and more monumental disasters. In that way does his fundamentally tricksterish nature overlap with the fundamentally self-destructive nature of children.
So, parents, be a bit more understanding of your children, now that I have told you not only what I know but also what you probably already knew deep down. The Boy can be most convincing, for that is part of his charm. Therefore, whenever you are inclined to shake your head in despair and wring your hands and muse aloud, “What in the world gets into children’s heads?” the answer is, like as not, The Boy. Which is why young boys are more susceptible to his blandishment than girls, the latter tending to remain more sensible, while the former hurl themselves headlong into danger.
We have wandered from the point. As we recall, Princess Picca was saying, “Even if it mean you must die?” and The Boy was delivering an apathetic shrug in reply.
Princess Picca frowned at his lack of more dramatic response. In the intervening silence, as she considered allowing her braves to release their pointed ambassadors of death, Gwenny decided that someone had to do something that would not result in a quick and brutal demise. She did not step forward, concerned that any movement might trigger the itchy fingers of the archers. She did, however, say in a calm but firm voice, “Princess. There must be another way. Some means by which The Boy can prove his trustworthiness and usefulness to the Picca tribe.”
“Are you sure, Gwenny?” The Boy said, one elegant eyebrow arched. “I mean, certainly the death business is much quicker and far less involved.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she said, making no effort to hide her annoyance. “You’ll find in life that, more often than not, the easiest way to solve a problem isn’t the best.”
“It isn’t?” The Boy looked thunderstruck.
“That’s what my mother often says,” Paul said, prompting an eye roll from The Boy, who thought that it was quite simply the silliest thing he had ever heard, but he also knew that arguing with mothers was a futile endeavor.
Princess Picca, meanwhile, was considering Gwenny’s words. “Must speak with braves,” she decided, for she was a wise and thoughtful ruler, and did not like to reach decisions in a precipitous manner if it could be at all avoided. The braves promptly lowered their weapons once more and gathered in a circle around Princess Picca. Not having to make their sentiments known to the outsiders, they reverted to their native tongue. It sounded rather a bit like pig Latin to Paul, but he said nothing about it since he did not want to risk doing anything else to annoy the Indians.
Finally the circle of braves separated and Princess Picca strode forth. She gave The Boy a look that Paul considered a rather challenging one, and said, “How anxious are you, prove worth to Piccas?”
“I don’t know,” The Boy said, which might have been an annoying answer as far as both Gwenny and the princess were concerned, but at least it had the merit of being an honest one. The Boy really had not given it all that much thought.
Wisely choosing to ignore what The Boy had just said, Princess Picca continued, “For if you want prove worth…we have dangerous task give you.”
“Dangerous?” Clearly The Boy’s interest was piqued. “How dangerous?”
Her face darkened, and her voice dropped to a tremulous warning. “Could mean…your life.”
“Excellent!” crowed The Boy. “That being the case, I’m most anxious indeed!”
He started jumping about enthusiastically. He had removed his sword from his belt, whipping it around artfully. It was fortunate for him that he was pointing away from the Piccas as he was doing so, lest they consider it a threat and fill him with arrows, thus aborting the mission before it even got started. “What needs to be done?” The Boy said. “Does it require killing?”
“Yes.”
This prompted The Boy to bound into the air and ricochet off several tree branches. When he landed, his lips were pulled back in a feral snarl, displaying his perfect ivory teeth. Paul could not help but feel a twinge of pity for whoever it was that The Boy was to go up against. “Bring him here!” said The Boy, making a couple of thrusts with his blade for good measure. “His day is done!”
“Not a ‘he.’ An ‘it.’”
Curiously, this pronouncement gave The Boy pause. Paul had a feeling that he knew why. According to what his father had told Paul in his tales, The Boy supposedly had a superstitious streak about him. True, he had no fear of death, but he had a healthy wariness of anything that returned from the dead. He misliked monsters of any ilk and things that went bump in the night. Not that he would have admitted such to anyone. He had far too vast an ego for that. Still, as noted, it gave him pause…in this case, the pause being about three seconds. “What sort of ‘it’?” he said finally, although he tried to add a careless toss of his head at the end of the question so he could appear casual.
Princess Picca looked at him oddly, since the answer was self-evident to her (what with her being a girl and not at all superstitious). “An animal,” she said.
Realizing how painfully self-evident that should have been, The Boy strutted about momentarily saying “Tut-tut. Of course an animal. What else could it be but an animal?”
“An undead zombie?” said Paul, who felt that the aptly named Anyplace was the perfect territory for just about anything the mind could conjure.
The Boy fired him an annoyed look, but he was saved from having to respond when Princess Picca said dismissively, “Nonsense. Although may wish for zombie when see animal. Great murderous beast it is. Kill several of my tribe. Many braves try to hunt it. None return.”
“Make ready your cooking fires,” said The Boy, “for I am on the hunt now, and I always return! What sort of beast do I seek?”
Something within Paul knew. Before the princess even spoke, he knew the words that were about to tumble from her mouth, like a story that is suddenly coming back to you after not having heard it for many a year.
“A tiger,” Princess Picca said. “A tiger—”
“With fur white as a drift of snow,” Paul said, as if speaking from very far away, “and eyes that glisten with power, and a tail that snaps like a whip. And where he treads, everything around him stops and listens, even the trees and the bushes and the smallest mushrooms. He is the mightiest predator in the Anyplace.”
“Not mightier than I,” The Boy said with confidence.
“Mightier than anyone or anything,” Paul shot back, fe
eling unaccountably as if his pride had been stung.
“How do you know that?” said Irregular, feeling a bit forgotten in all the proceedings.
“Because he’s mine.”
“Yours?” The Boy looked at him askance. “What mean you by that?”
“I mean he’s mine. In my dreams, I run with him. I ride on his back and feel his powerful muscles and silken fur. And he would never hurt me, and he would never hurt any of you. I asked him not to hunt humans, and he told me he wouldn’t.”
“Then he has lied to you,” Princess Picca said with quiet certainty, although she did look a bit sympathetic. For some reason, that very sympathy outraged Paul all the more, for he did not feel as if he needed her sympathy or anyone’s for that matter. Moreover, the way she was staring at him, it was as if she could see straight into his uncertainties. For, as you may recall, Paul suspected even at the time that the snow tiger’s claims of never hunting humans might well be slightly false. Paul had glossed over it in his mind, wanting to give his beloved friend the benefit of the doubt. Now those doubts were no longer beneficial.
“The beast hunts my people,” said the Princess. “The beast kills my people. For hunger. For sport. Matters not. Must be stopped. If Boy stop the killing, then will be great service to Picca. We will be in debt. We in debt, we can be allies.”
“You don’t have to kill my tiger!” Paul said. “This is a mistake! A misunderstanding! I’m telling you, if it’s the same tiger—”
“Only kind like it in the Anyplace,” said the princess.
“—then he can be reasoned with! He’s…” Paul thumped his chest with his fist. “He’s a part of me. A part of who I am. He always has been. I’ll talk to him. He’s not the one attacking your people. I know it. I just know it.”
Once again Princess Picca felt the need to confer with her people. This conference, however, took a good deal less time. “Very well,” said the princess. “Storyteller go with The Boy. You see for self. And when you see, then you help Boy kill snow tiger.”