Tiger Lily

Aunt Agda, Aunt Sticky Feet, and Aunt Fire were the matrons at the fire. Aunt Sticky Feet was so named because of the time she’d walked through hot tar and gotten her foot stuck to a chicken that had run in front of her a moment later. A feather had burned itself into her foot permanently, making her sole a living fossil. Aunt Agda was a kind woman, younger looking than the other two but in actuality much older. She was self-conscious by nature, but always willing to help anyone with anything. Aunt Fire, still glancing at Tiger Lily in the strange, satisfied way she had the night before, was the ringleader, witty, full of information (it didn’t matter if it was accurate or not—she always said it with such confidence that it seemed true).

  “Here.” Aunt Agda reached out timidly and put a basket of thread at Tiger Lily’s side, making sure not to touch her.

  “Our little death bird,” Aunt Fire said, pulling her thread through her suede blanket and barely looking up. Her wedding bracelets jangled against each other—a reminder of her long-dead husband, killed by beasts. “I thought birds were supposed to be beautiful,” she said with a wry smile at the other women, then bit her thread to break it. Long ago, Aunt Fire’s delicate features had gotten lost in the folds of her skin, so that her face gave the appearance of having been mashed against a hard surface and left that way. The other women seemed to bristle at her icy comments, but kept their thoughts to themselves. It simply caught, like yawning.

  Some of the younger girls tittered. Tiger Lily turned her face down to her work. She was making a belt. The strings were all tangled up and her colors clashed. Her fingers moved like hunks of meat. Across the circle, Moon Eye gave her a lone sympathetic smile. In contrast to Tiger Lily’s, Moon Eye’s work was intricate and beautiful, her dainty hands moving like little grasshoppers, fleet and sure. She was a wisp of a thing. Sitting there, so delicate and dreamy, she looked as if someone had only given half a life to her. It was whispered among the tribe she wouldn’t live long, she was so tiny and thin, with feather-like fingers and a crackling voice. Next to her, the other young girls wove with deft hands, though their designs were much more formulaic and less imaginative than Moon Eye’s.

  The women weighed in with their own thoughts of what should be done with Tiger Lily.

  “Could have been worse,” Aunt Agda said, low and soft and barely audible. “Could have been the lost boys.” This brought ghastly smiles from the youngsters. Aunt Skip Pebble hissed and spat in a gesture of superstition. Several of the women snapped their fingers in excitement in the peculiar gesture of the tribe. But they were also all a little breathless. The lost boys figured in a favorite story for scaring the younger children, and for scaring themselves. It was like they were drawn to the idea of the monsters lurking in the woods, and at the same time horrified by it. I, too, felt my heart beat a little faster.

  “What you did was very brave,” Aunt Sticky Feet said, her words clipped but not unkind, “but men don’t want women who are brave. They want women who make them feel like men.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Tiger Lily said quietly. The girls laughed and the women all fell awkwardly silent for a while as they worked, except for Aunt Fire, who was never self-aware enough to feel awkward.

  “Tik Tok was born to be two genders,” Aunt Fire said tightly. “That’s the way he was made. But you’re a girl. Someday you’ll want to be a prisoner to someone other than yourself.”

  Tiger Lily stared down at her work and chose not to reply.

  They were just finishing up when Tik Tok emerged from his house and walked over. His heart was so heavy that everyone could feel the weight of it, and the hairs prickled on the backs of their necks. The boys, finished and exhausted from their games, came to hover.

  Tik Tok looked like he hadn’t slept, and like he had something to say. Everyone grew quiet.

  “Tiger Lily, we’ve decided that since you’ve already been exposed, you can return to visit the Englander, if he’s still alive, and learn what you can for us.”

  Tik Tok sank slightly here. He looked tired, worn down, and defeated. “But people in the village have suggested you’ve run wild too long.” Curiously, his eyelids began to tremble, as if the tiny muscles had gone weak, and his eyes became glassy with tears. Tiger Lily, who had never seen Tik Tok so distraught, was struck with a sudden, burning fear. “As shaman, I’ve decided you are to be married.” He looked around the circle and his eyes rested on Aunt Fire, then trailed back to Tiger Lily almost involuntarily. “You’ll be married to Giant at the end of the hot season.”

  Aunt Fire’s glance showed itself for what it was: triumph. Of all the people sitting at the fire, she was the only one unsurprised by the news.

  Tiger Lily went as still as if she were prey and her life depended on blending with her surroundings. But for the widening of eyes, the opening and gasping of lips, everyone was still. There was only one real movement. One figure moved next to Tiger Lily, and one set of fingers slipped themselves between her own.

  No one seemed to notice that Pine Sap had taken his life into his hands by holding hers.

  FOUR

  I moved into the village permanently that week. Up till then, I’d been shuttling my things from here to there, never sleeping in the same place more than a few days in a row. But now I felt the need to stay close to Tiger Lily. I don’t know if I thought I could protect her or if I just needed to see how it would end for her. But somehow it felt important to be there. Faeries can be unfailingly loyal, even, apparently, to someone who doesn’t seem to notice them. And I felt loyal to the girl with the crow feather in her hair.

  Aunt Fire wasted no time putting Tiger Lily to work, now that she was going to be her mother-in-law. She forbade Tiger Lily’s rambles in the woods, and her solitary hunts. She made her take on chores for both herself and her son, though Tiger Lily had never even been good at keeping her own house and clothes in order. The one thing Aunt Fire couldn’t forbid was Tiger Lily’s return to the Englander.

  Tiger Lily caught sight of Giant on her way out of the village the next morning, for the first time since their engagement.

  When Giant had stopped aging, his growth in years seemed to have been replaced with a spurt in outward growth: he was enormous—every bit of him. It was easy to mistake him for a boulder walking through the village; sometimes that seemed more believable than that the shape coming toward you was actually a man. He met her gaze now, his eyes dull. The only acknowledgment he gave her was to suck his teeth in her general direction. As she walked away from him, the village’s pity trailed her, the same way their fear always had.

  She entered the woods in a daze. I heard wisps of her bewilderment with each breath she took as she walked, and even smelled it in the breeze after it ruffled her hair. In Neverland, the year was divided into three seasons: the dry, followed by the wet, and then the hot season, when everything bloomed and grew in the humid heat. The end of the hot season was nine full moons away. She hadn’t yet come to fully grasp what it meant or how largely things had changed, and how in nine moons she would be married. Most of all, she couldn’t understand Tik Tok.

  It was an hour’s walk to her destination. The house where she had left the Englander was a remnant of visiting missionaries who—unable to cope with the heat and the beasts and the pirates—had died somewhere in the forest. The roof still stood intact, along with three of the stone walls, but the fourth had crumbled badly from years of the harsh wind. From the house’s back window there was a view of the ocean beyond Neverland, and below, hungry waves lapped against a thin slip of coastline. Wind buffeted the house constantly; in the rainy season it could be deadly. All in all, the place was windswept and lonely.

  The house smelled musty and the coolness stroked Tiger Lily’s cheeks. Against one wall was a rough cot with a straw mattress. There, in a lump, lay the Englander. His bald head glinted in the dim light. He blinked at us from behind a pair of crooked but intact spectacles, but didn’t move or say a word. Tiger Lily unwrapped the food she’d brought and sat at t
he edge of his bed, and tried to feed him, but he wouldn’t eat. She checked his ankle, which she’d bandaged to stabilize a broken bone. She’d bandaged his chest too, but was unsure how many ribs he’d broken. She poured some water into his mouth. Then she sat and watched him, and waited. He slept, on and on.

  Listless and eager for a task, she soon made the difficult climb down to the beach to gather the many things that had washed ashore, making the immense physical effort to pack them up to the house while I hid among the branches that overhung the cliffs, watching for the hawks who liked to scan the edges of the ocean for prey. A canvas trunk. Some clothes. The bodies had disappeared, eaten by sharks or taken by mermaids to use the bones for their dwellings in the deep.

  When she returned, she sat in the darkness awhile longer, waiting and listening. And then simply went to work. She pounded a clay-and-hay mixture to stuff into the holes in the walls to protect against the wind. She sweated and cooked and dried food and belongings.

  The Englander was awake the next time I looked, and he watched her come and go. He had begun to eat. His round cheeks puffed out and he stuttered one word, his lips shaking: “Phillip.” He held a frail hand to his chest.

  She laid her hand on her own chest and said, “Tiger Lily.”

  “A ship will come looking for us,” he said, with effort. He licked his lips a few times, then nodded, reassuring himself. He reached out and patted Tiger Lily’s hand. She didn’t flinch.

  I wondered about the man’s ship. Neverland was so deeply and snugly tucked into a remote corner of the Atlantic, so far from anything else of interest and so surrounded by violent and usually impassable tides and currents, that the ships that did end up here usually only did so by accident. To find the island on purpose, I’d heard pirates claim over the years, was next to impossible. The pirates themselves had stumbled upon the island long ago during an escape, and now sheltered in a cove on the remote northwest side in between raids on the far-off trade routes.

  Tiger Lily opened a trunk, its contents surprisingly, immaculately dry. She pulled out a few books, which, to her, contained only nonsensical symbols.

  Phillip made an eager gesture and muttered, “Take it.” He made an attempt at an encouraging smile. “It’s a wonderful book. You deserve it.” Tiger Lily stared at the cover, then at him unsurely. “Do you know how to read?” he asked. She shook her head. She didn’t, but Tik Tok did. He had tried to teach her, years before, but she had had no patience for it.

  As it grew dark, Tiger Lily built a fire. She tried to imagine where the Englander had come from, but all the world outside the island seemed impossible, like a story. I hid behind a log to stand close to the flames and watch them dance. I played with the sparks, throwing them against pebbles.

  Finally, she squatted by Phillip’s bed to say good-bye. “I’ll come back,” she said. “I promise you, I’ll look after you,” He nodded. Just as she was about to stand, he pushed something into her hands. A tiny box that had come out of one of the trunks. Inside was a thin gold necklace, with an ornate gold pendant that held a small pearl dangling at its end. “You should have it.” His brown eyes lit up for a moment, from behind his spectacles. He licked his lips, swallowed. “It was my wife’s. It’s precious to me.” Again, his cracked lips widened in a frail smile.

  Tiger Lily held the necklace, deeply curious. While old shells washed in all the time, she’d never seen a pearl before. The necklace was the most exquisite object she’d ever held. Wincing, Phillip rested his hands on his stomach. He was a portly man, but clearly malnourished now. “Don’t lose it,” he said. And made a feeble attempt at a smile. Tiger Lily hung the necklace around her neck.

  Out in the open, it had cooled off a little, but the air still felt wet and warm when we set off just before dusk.

  She made her way down the hill to the edge of the woods, holding the book, which she planned to give to Tik Tok. Her thoughts turned back to the village.

  The sky fell away as she entered the thick of the forest, and I had flown up high to get a good look at the stars. She was soon wrapped in a cocoon of night noises … insects nibbling on plants or chirping, leaves rustling. The still, thick heat wrapped us in a fine layer of sweat, and Tiger Lily was tying her long black braids up to the back of her head when a low voice caught her ears, close enough to startle her.

  She hid instantly, holding her body close to a tree, its rough life breathing beneath her hands. Then, gauging the voice’s location, she moved on toward it, utterly silent, her senses sharp. She didn’t notice she’d wandered into the tangled lowlands of the forbidden territory until afterward, when it was too late.

  Almost immediately, she came to a deep, black lagoon. She stopped short at the water’s edge.

  She waited for several minutes, and was about to turn around and continue home, when there was a movement among the branches to her left.

  In the dark, I could barely see him. He was covered in mud, and blended in with the trees. He had an ungainly walk, like something unconscious of itself. His hair was caked in dirt and none of his features were visible, except his eyes glinted in the glow of the moonlight, and I got a yellow-lit glimpse of his features: a pale face, smooth and animate. He wasn’t terribly large in frame. There was a delicateness to his shoulders; they were like chicken wings. Below me, Tiger Lily was frozen as well.

  A baby was tucked beside him in the shadows. The baby cooed.

  Clearly, he hadn’t seen us yet. He was working on something, and I could see as my eyes adjusted that it was a spear.

  I had never seen a creature like him. He was nothing like the men of the villages—orderly and well-postured, dignified and stiff. Nor was he like the men of tribes across the island—the Cliff Dwellers or the Bog Dwellers. He seemed very young, and also fragile.

  And then there was a muddy, wet sound behind him. He turned, and as he did, I studied the sweeping black lagoon he now faced, still and mirrorlike under the moon. And then a bubble from the surface, and a figure slithered out of the dark water. Effortlessly, it beached itself on a rock protruding not far from the shore. A patch of moonlight coming through the clouds raked over it, revealing half of a woman—a mermaid. Her long hair was wet and pasted to her back. She waved at him in the dark, and he waved back. He walked over to the water, and said something in a low voice, and she laughed. He took another step toward the water’s edge. And she said his name.

  “Pan.”

  Below me, Tiger Lily startled. The tree shook, almost imperceptibly, in her arms. It was nothing. But enough for him to sense she was there. He lifted his face up, his glittering eyes. Tiger Lily ducked behind a tree and disappeared, and I fluttered up into the branches.

  He moved toward us.

  I watched from above as he hunted her. I could hear him breathing, listening for whatever it was that was hiding from him. Tiger Lily set her sights on a tree a few feet away, and came silently out, hiding behind the next. She chose another tree, and again, ran toward it on silent feet. They waited each other out. He disappeared into the trees beyond a small clearing to her left. She took the opportunity to veer right, behind a boulder. And in this way, they zigzagged toward the edge of the forbidden territory, where the scrubby, tangled lowlands gave way to high ground and taller trees. Her feet found the bare spots between rocks and over branches. And then she was beyond the line of low swampy growth and rising into familiar territory.

  She knew how to fade into this forest. Long afterward, I heard him walking back and forth through the trees, but we slipped along the shadows, and in this way made the slow journey home, arriving long after nightfall.

  FIVE

  Tik Tok closed the book that Tiger Lily had brought. His hair was a revelation this morning, a glossy braid he had started on at dawn, woven with tiny seashells. He put the book on the shelf right next to his clock. He had been reading it many hours at a time for days. “I love it,” he said. “Thank you again.” He seemed to be bearing up the weight of the air as he stood, slow
and tired. “Are you ready?”

  Tiger Lily nodded.

  Since she had been a child, Tik Tok had often taken her with him on his gathering expeditions, saying that he needed one person to help. But secretly, it was their private time to just be together in comfortable silence. Now, the silence was thick and tense. Tiger Lily was confused and hurt, but she preferred to stay that way rather than question him.

  She kept her mouth closed as they walked, so that none of her anger would tumble out. Besides her clandestine swims with Pine Sap, she had never kept anything from Tik Tok. She avoided his eyes, and kept her gaze on his heels as he took the lead.

  Tik Tok shambled along in front of her as they entered the forest. From behind, he was shaped like an eggplant, his hips swaying under his deep-green tunic, the shells in his hair bright in the morning sun.

  After several minutes, they knelt in the dead leaves and rooted around.

  Today they were looking for taro root, which Tik Tok used to treat insect bites.

  “It’s for the best if the Englander dies,” he said. “Better than him suffering longer.”

  Tiger Lily swallowed. She had been to the house twice since our first visit together, and Phillip didn’t seem to be getting any better. Clearly, Tik Tok thought she was holding out false hope. But hope wasn’t exactly what it was. She, too, believed the man was doomed, and she couldn’t explain to herself why she kept going back. She pulled at the taro root fiercely, holding it up in clumps.

  “If he dies, it was all for nothing,” she said. Tik Tok winced, and she hurried to change the subject. “Do you really need all of this?” she asked.

  “You always want to be prepared,” he said. “You don’t want someone to come to you needing help, and you can’t give it because you didn’t gather that herb.”

  I had watched Tik Tok minister his potions to almost every person in the village: the old and young, the meddling, the generous and the petty, equally. I alone had seen him sitting up nights with those with fevers, sitting patiently next to people covered in salves for burns or cuts or animal bites, when Tiger Lily had tried to stay awake and fallen asleep, strong willed, but still a child after all. Twice, I had seen him nurse people back from the brink of death in secret, so the rest of the tribe wouldn’t think the person was weak. And once he had slaved over Giant himself for four nights, who had never been nice to anyone, least of all Tik Tok. He would sit there, his wrinkled face immovable, his eyes steady. I’d often stayed awake in my nook as long as I could, until my eyes drooped, and more than once, I’d fallen asleep behind his clock, and I’d woken to find him still wide-awake beside his patient. His collections—including the clock I slept behind—and his hair were his only indulgences, the sole things he did for himself.