Faeries can’t speak to each other, but of course we read each other’s thoughts. Mirabella was thinking that I’d been gone long enough. And I was thinking I needed to stay, to look after Tiger Lily and Peter, especially now. To Mirabella, I knew, it seemed pathetic. She was convinced they didn’t deserve me; they didn’t notice me enough for me to even be able to help them, or warn them, she reasoned.
But my mind was made up. Mirabella lingered for a few minutes, waiting for me to regain my sanity. She sat on a twig and glowered at me. But finally, she flew off, annoyed. I flew off to find Tiger Lily, who was down by the river.
Aunt Sticky Feet was trying on shawls. Phillip had found them on the beach, washed up from the shipwreck, and she had dried them—moldy and threadbare though they were—by the fire.
“Do I look like an English lady?” she asked. Tiger Lily, sitting beside Moon Eye and Phillip on a rock, nodded. Beside her, Moon Eye was quiet, and picked at the threads between her hands.
“Are most people dressed English in heaven?” Aunt Sticky Feet asked.
Phillip laughed. “Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s what’s in your heart that matters.”
“What about if, in your heart, you wish bad on someone else?” Moon Eye asked, surprising everyone. She barely ever talked to Phillip. “Does that mean you can’t go to heaven?”
They all looked at Moon Eye for a moment. She looked around at them, then said, by way of explaining, “If someone is a bad person?”
“It’s not for you to judge someone else,” Phillip said. “Judging isn’t what God created us to do.” Moon Eye took this in.
“But you judge Tik Tok for wearing dresses,” Tiger Lily said. “You don’t think God created him to dress like a woman.”
Phillip looked sad. “We all have roles, Tiger Lily. You are a woman and you have a role. I as a man have a role. We all have to be the best we can be at the roles we have. We can’t decide to switch. I feel sad for Tik Tok’s confusion, but I know he will find his way.”
Tiger Lily considered this. It didn’t fully make sense to her. “But Tik Tok believes everything’s circular, including men and women. He says nature seems to go around and around, and that we all have bits of everything.”
Phillip smiled. “There is a beginning and an end,” he said with certainty.
Tiger Lily tried to picture God in heaven, making laws and having things end with him. It didn’t seem circular at all.
Later that afternoon, she walked into Tik Tok’s house and sat on the floor. He was sitting with his eyes closed, smoking his pipe. He had done his hair in an ingenious crisscross pattern down his back, but messier than usual.
He was puffing on his pipe. Tiger Lily smiled. “Phillip says smoking is a sin.”
He seemed to ruminate on this. “I don’t believe it. I don’t even believe in that good and evil. Oh—”
He had burned his finger holding the edge of his pipe. He looked at her sheepishly. “That felt evil.” He settled back down, blew smoke from his pipe. “Maybe it’s easier,” he said, “to believe what someone else says is absolutely right.”
“He thinks you shouldn’t wear women’s clothes.”
This was no surprise to Tik Tok. He had known it for quite some time. He was quiet for a few moments, then turned to Tiger Lily. “Maybe you should talk to him.”
“Me?” Tik Tok had never asked her for anything. It took her by surprise.
“He won’t listen to me. Of course,” he said with a weary smile, “we may both be too much like women for him to listen to either one. The only God is a man, apparently.” He smiled wryly, but sadly.
Seeing Tiger Lily’s concern, he patted her hand. “Don’t worry,” he said, laying down his pipe and arranging things. “I trust this village. Everyone will figure it out for themselves. But”—he looked at her and for a moment, the veil of his confidence lifted and revealed a foreign uncertainty underneath—“maybe you could say something for me. Just in case.” It was such an uncharacteristic request that Tiger Lily didn’t know what to say.
“Tik Tok …” She looked around the room, feeling nervous. “Do you ever think Phillip is right? Do you think maybe it’s better if you don’t wear dresses?”
Tik Tok looked at her for a long time.
“I just mean, maybe it would be easier? Then you don’t have to worry about God.” She immediately felt like she had said the wrong thing. But Tik Tok only nodded. His smile returned, but it wasn’t real.
“You go out and enjoy the day,” he finally said. “Don’t worry about an old man like me.”
Tiger Lily bent and kissed the top of his head and reluctantly moved to leave. As she walked out, she felt unsettled. She reasoned with herself. Tik Tok should do what made life easiest for him, and what would make things easiest was for him to change just one thing. But as she walked down the dirt path to her own house, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had let him down, and she didn’t know how to change it.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Tiger Lily was especially restless when she escaped to the burrow a few mornings later, when she was supposed to be out harvesting manioc at a nearby field. Peter beamed when he saw her.
I whispered into Peter’s ear that the pirates could be coming after him, right this moment, but of course my whisper made no sound. I tugged on Tiger Lily’s hair. But I was only a nuisance to them. Smee hadn’t resurfaced, and I didn’t see signs of him anywhere near the burrow. There was a distinct possibility he’d starved before he could get to the cove, been eaten by some forest creature, or been killed by one of the other pirates. Still, I watched the woods, constantly, for signs of the pirates.
“We’ve been wanting to show you something,” Peter said to Tiger Lily.
The lost boys raced through the woods, Peter and Tiger Lily in the lead. I kept up as best I could, thankful that I had wings, as Peter and Tiger Lily were tireless, and even the other boys began to drop behind, panting and clutching their sides.
They came to the bottom of a rise. Peter raced Tiger Lily to the top, each of them intent on beating the other one, their heels digging into the soft, crumbly clay as they climbed. Tiger Lily reached the top—a flat, wide, grassy plateau—a moment ahead of Peter, but he tackled her, pushing into her so that she fell onto his shoulder, and he carried her a few feet, dropping her and standing back to show her the view.
The plateau was a giant meadow, covered in tall grass and wide, smooth stones. The boys all collapsed, flattening the grass around them until they had a beautiful 360-degree view of the island below them. We could see to the shore in two directions, patches of green forest and the brown expanse of the swamp, even—very small and dark—the lagoon.
“It’s beautiful,” Tiger Lily said. Neverland lay before them as if it were theirs, and she could see the thinnest trail of smoke spiraling up from her village, and the sparkling line of the river. From above, it looked like you could walk across it all with a few giant steps.
The boys had packed food, and they pulled out every bit they had and ate ravenously. Then they played a game Slightly remembered, where you hid a piece of cloth, and guarded it with your life from the opposite team. Curly played a pair of wooden spoons he produced from his pocket, and all the boys took turns dancing with Tiger Lily across the smooth surface of stone.
By the time their bellies were verging on full, the sun was setting. Tiger Lily had seen many sunsets. The Sky Eaters knew every sunset by heart, because they’d watched each one, every night of their lives. They kept lists of them in their minds, and could even remind each other of a certain day by saying, “It was the day the sky was purple all the way up to the one cloud, the one shaped like a bird.” Or, “That was the day the sunset was pink only behind Bear Mountain.” But this was the most beautiful one Tiger Lily could remember. The sky went red and orange and pink and purple. The puffy clouds, shot through with the last rays of the sun, grew an inviting depth, so that they looked like they could be the caverns of Phillip?
??s heaven. She imagined souls roaming the tunnels of the clouds.
“Look,” Peter said.
To the north was a series of vast grassy plains, and there, just looking like specks at first, was a herd of horses, a species that in Neverland had never been tamed. They were beautiful, flashes of brown and black and tan, their coats gleaming. There was no reason for them to be running that Tiger Lily could see. It was likely that they just loved to run.
“That’s what I want my life to be,” Peter said, staring down at the horses.
Tiger Lily sank against him and watched the herd, and thought that was what she wanted too.
I am only a faerie. I don’t have grand ideas, or grand dreams, or long for grand freedoms like people do. But I wanted to be part of their dream too, even if I was only a flea riding on their tails. To run and run and never worry—that was what they wanted, and I wanted to go with them.
I could hear the quiet in Tiger Lily’s heart. I had never heard it so soft, so at peace, as I did that evening, as she sat with Peter and watched those horses, and dreamed for a moment that she would never have to lose him, or herself.
No sooner had the sun dipped below the water than a dim crescent moon began to rise. The boys were silent—everyone lost in thought, watching it make its slow climb upward. Peter put his arm around Tiger Lily and gently pulled her back onto the grass so that her head was in the crook of his arm and she was staring at the bluish-purple sky as it deepened, and the stars began to prick their way through the night.
She felt the warmth of Peter’s arm under her neck, and it almost felt like he was an extension of her, and like if they had souls, they lay somewhere snug between their two bodies. Maybe all of her strangeness, her curse, her always feeling like an outsider, had all existed so that she could belong here, with Peter.
They watched until the stars filled the sky, as if there were more stars than darkness, and then someone finally moved, and they stood and stretched without a word, and made the long, listening walk home in the dark.
When we got back to the burrow, Peter announced he was going to bed.
“Can you stay?” he asked.
She stood there, bewildered.
“Where am I supposed to sleep?” she asked.
“Well, there are plenty of blankets everywhere.”
The boys stood staring at them with open mouths. Tiger Lily looked at the pile of blankets on the floor, considered leaving. Then she felt Peter take her hand. Behind them the boys whispered, and Tootles giggled at something until Nibs shushed him with a pinch on the arm.
She let him lead her down the hall to his room.
He lay down on the bed and she lay down beside him, on her stomach. At first, Peter seemed unsettled. He wasn’t used to sharing his space. He tried to stretch out diagonally, almost kicking her off the bed by accident, and then he seemed to collect himself into a tighter package, pulling his arms into his sides. “Sorry,” he said, “it’s a small bed.”
She stared at all the little knickknacks he’d scattered about. Unlike the first time she’d seen his room, when everything seemed messy, she noticed now they were all carefully placed: the half-carved mermaid was watching over him from her spot in the corner, and I settled down next to her. The tiny wooden birds he’d never finished all faced the direction of the door, as if they were about to escape, or to protect Peter from whoever might walk in.
“You need to eat more, Tootles, you look like a ghost,” they heard Slightly say from the hallway.
“Eat this,” Tootles said, followed by a thud and the sounds of struggling.
Peter poked his head out the door. “Hey, you guys, shut up!” The hallway went silent, then the whispering of the boys retreated.
He came back. “They’re like children,” he said. “I’m not a great model.”
He turned on his side and tentatively put his arms around her, as stiff as lobster claws. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. She turned to face him. She let him lean his forehead against hers. She thought about going.
“I’ve had girls sleep over before. Maeryn came and we put her in a big tub. But I don’t know about you. What do I do?”
“I don’t know.”
He kissed her cheek.
Soon they could hear some of the boys snoring down the hall, and the stirring of the restless as they fought sleep for a last few minutes. And then it was quiet.
She turned her back to him, and Peter held her, hooking his chin over her shoulder, warmth coming from his chest.
“You’ll be my wife,” he said. He was trying to sound sure, but there was a fear on the last syllable, and she felt his heart beat harder. “Forever.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. She held his arms tighter around her. When Peter said wife, it didn’t sound like being a prisoner at all. She thought about Giant. Would they wonder where she was? What if she didn’t wake early enough to sneak home?
He waited for her to say something back, but she held her breath. Peter looked up at the ceiling for a long time, waiting, but in vain. His shoulders sank slightly against her, and he didn’t let her go.
Finally she felt his breath go slow and steady, and knew he was asleep.
She learned that night what I already knew: that in his sleep Peter was a different person. He tossed and turned and worried out loud, making small groaning noises and, every once in a while, a cry. Sometime deep in the night, after keeping her awake with his fitfulness, he woke with a start, and in the near pitch-black he pulled her in tight, like they were in the ocean and she was keeping him afloat.
She felt his body going slack again, drifting back into sleep. She kept her arms around him, even though the bottom one, her right, began to ache. The smell of the burrow was alive in her nostrils, the mustiness and the smell of Peter. And she felt defeated. Because she could not leave him. She couldn’t give him up. All of the strength she’d always felt had gone into her arms so that she could hold Peter better. There was no getting it back from him.
She watched him dream, and after a while, she slept. But, in case the pirates came in the night, I kept my eyes on the doorway. Me, and a hundred wooden birds.
TWENTY-NINE
There were small signs that the dry season was approaching. Certain patches of trees held leaves just going brown at the edges. Afternoon showers—which were common even well into the hot season—seemed to be dissipating. Tiger Lily noticed these small signals, as all Sky Eaters did. But she noticed them with a feeling of dread. As soon as the afternoon rains let up completely, there would be a relentless dry heat on the island. The villagers would look at the sun and the moon and the trees and announce that without a doubt the dry season had arrived. And then she would be married.
The mood in the village these days was foreign to her. It seemed to have happened without her noticing, and it emphasized how far away her attention had been for so long. Because rather than show up at Tik Tok’s door looking for advice and medicine, the villagers now gathered at Phillip’s door. Some of them had even adopted the same loving but pitying glance when they looked at Tik Tok, as if they weren’t quite sure he was living as nature had intended. Even Aunt Sticky Feet was overheard asking the other women why he was being so stubborn. She wanted Tik Tok to go to heaven, too, where there was always someone to build your fire for you, where you never had to sew, and where fish and meat cooked themselves. Tiger Lily wondered how much of this she had heard from Phillip, and how much she had conjured herself. Aunt Sticky Feet was known to have a vivid imagination.
Tiger Lily found Tik Tok one morning sitting in his house when all the elders were gathered at the fire.
“Why aren’t you with the council?” she asked.
He was mixing herbs, and he moved his hands expertly even as he spoke. “I was uninvited.”
“Why?” she asked, surprised.
Tik Tok filled pouch after pouch with his herb mixture. “Phillip says when I’m ready to do the right thing, I can come.”
The thought o
f Giant being at the council fire, with all his idiocy, and Tik Tok being excluded, was too strange to be real. “What does that mean?” she asked.
Tik Tok looked at her deeply.
“They’ll get past it,” she said. “Once they think it through, they’ll realize they need you.”
Tik Tok was silent, like he wasn’t sure. She’d never seen him truly unsure of anything.
That evening at the burrow she arrived to a beautiful sight: the trees had been festooned with candles. The twins were hauling bundles and boards up into the high limbs. Peter was directing it all while carrying Baby under one arm and making funny faces at him. The sight of him holding Baby always seemed like it fit and didn’t fit at the same time.
He smiled up at her; clearly he’d heard her coming.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“We’re sleeping in the trees tonight. I thought you’d like it.”
She smiled, and Peter seemed pleased with himself.
“The twins are in charge of our bed. I’ve got to make sure they’re doing it right, though. Hold this.” He dropped Baby into her hands and shinnied up the tree quick as a monkey.
She stared at Baby, but he didn’t cry. He was warm and soft. And though she knew she wasn’t holding him quite right, she had gotten used to him enough that it was nice feeling his little squirming body in her hands.
As the dusk deepened, they gathered up their food and drinks and games and ascended into the trees, climbing limb to limb. They were so high they could see the shadow of Bear Mountain silhouetted against the last light of the setting sun. The air smelled of pine needles and oak. I kept glancing down at the forest below, but I had begun to relax.
The boys and Tiger Lily stayed up late playing cards. Tiger Lily had never played, and Slightly taught her the rules. She beat them three out of four times.