Tiger Lily

  This was in the time when spice was no longer king, when ships were crowding the ports with loads of cotton instead of cinnamon. People sat in parlors and talked about the unknowns. And there were so many. Where would expansion end? What was left to be invented? If there had been one symbol to define the minds and hearts of London at that time, it would have been a question mark. Smee had often gravitated to the docks, this question mark pushing him there.

  That was where the captain found him. I don’t know how he managed to single him out, or how he managed to be the only person in London who guessed that Reginald and the South Bank Strangler were one and the same.

  To Reginald, the captain appeared at first to be an outline in the fog, in a long wig. He looked about as wealthy and refined an English gentleman as Reginald himself. But something made Reginald shiver at the sight of him—perhaps it was that the frills at his throat appeared to be out of place, old and slightly frayed, and his shirtsleeves seemed to be twilling apart at the cuffs, and then, beneath the cuffs, something was uneven, and Reginald finally understood what it was: the missing hand.

  There were no pirates anymore. Not like this one—arrayed in Louis XVI garb and with a wig like a barrister, only powdered black with coal. The loss of his hand was recent, the wound crisscrossed with thick, black, crooked stitches. Up close, there was nothing refined about him at all. The many lines in his face were caked with dirt, his lips were crusty, and his flat blue eyes were bloodshot but friendly. He stank of cheap tobacco and whiskey, and clutched a cup of it in his left hand. He looked broken, and deadly.

  He said, “Reginald Smee, I can see you’re a born hunter. So I am requesting the pleasure of your company elsewhere.” Then he grasped him around the arm and pulled him forward. He waved the stump at Smee. “Come now. No time to hesitate. We have hunting to do.”

  “W-what do you hunt, sir?” Reginald asked.

  “Not sir. Just Hook.” The stranger smiled, friendly. “I used to hunt ships. But recently I’ve switched. Now I hunt boys.” He clapped Reginald on the back. “Now we both do.”

  It had been a rude awakening for Smee to leave England with a promise of paradise, and to end up in the thick, insect-infested, dirty, hot danger of the jungle. And while he’d been treated to a few amazing sights of creatures different from any in England—clusters of white-lit faeries hovering over a bog, furry beasts with tusks and horns—Neverland was mostly a tangle: of trees, of weeds, of predators, of quick deaths. Not to mention he was now bound to a man turning yellow from drink, not one-tenth so polished as he’d appeared on the docks of London, and half crazy.

  The fact was, the captain was two men: one when he was sober, and one when he wasn’t. Sober, Hook was charming, erudite, well-read, sharp, well-spoken, and thoughtful. Hook would be the first one to notice your water was empty, or that you needed another helping on your plate, or to make you feel like his favorite and most honored guest. Drunk, Hook was angry and sloppy. His eyes turned red and glassy almost as soon as spirits touched his lips. He went from rational to illogical, and most of all enraged. It was not hard to imagine that he had once been terrifying. He could still be scary, murderous in fact, but he was a broken man.

  Still, a strong desire to please the captain, and be loved by him, was evident in all of the men around him, and Smee was turning out to be no exception. As they ate, he kept a solicitous eye on the captain’s cup, and filled it each time it ran out. He, like the others, laughed loudly at the captain’s jokes, making him smile with smug satisfaction. I guess it was Hook’s rare combination of charm and utter intimidation that won not just fear from the crew, but love. Everyone clearly longed to be the captain’s favored man, partly because it was such a difficult position to hold on to for long. And it was obvious that Smee was currently it. In the moonlight, the captain threw his arm around him from time to time, as he talked about his favorite drunken subjects—his missing hand, and the lost boys.

  Sometimes he wore the hook from which he’d gotten his nickname, to substitute for his missing hand so that it was easier for him to grab things, and sometimes he didn’t. It rarely stayed in place, and seemed to chafe and irritate him. He said he liked how it made him look but that it often rendered him more clumsy. Most of the men, he confided, believed he’d lost his hand in a fight, and that it had fallen into the ocean and been eaten by a crocodile.

  “But,” he confessed to Smee, “it came off in an assembly line.” He gazed into Smee’s eyes unsteadily. Smee knew he would never admit this while sober. “I worked on shoes, you see, to pay for school. It was my job to insert the leather into the machine, to be cut into the shape of the sole. You see?” He moved his hands in the air to imitate how he had done his work; then he stopped short and leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes glistening and red. “I was staying up nights to study. I thought I could study my way into being a gentleman. Well, I fell asleep. My hand went in instead of the leather.” He grinned, almost as if it were a good joke. “You can see that the cut’s shaped like a heel.” He held up his rounded stump. His eyes seemed to focus. Then he quickly looped his arm around Smee’s neck. Smee felt his breath on his cheek, steady and fast. “You tell anyone, I’ll kill you.”

  Smee nodded. Hook licked his lips and sat back, relaxed again. “They think Peter chopped it off. Never. I named the lost boys, you know. I lost one, two, three of them. I started asking around, to all the tribes. ‘Have you seen my lost boys?’ And the name stuck.”

  Hook’s fingers always twitched when he spoke of Pan. It turned him dark and antsy, and his jaw clenched and unclenched. It was an old grudge, and Smee still didn’t understand where it had begun. All he knew was that Hook was stuck on it: he sometimes repeated a conversation over and over again, that he imagined he was having with Peter.

  “Now that I have you, we’ll have them,” Hook said, and clapped Smee on the back. “You and I are thinkers. It’s our minds that will allow us to thrive at what we do.” Hook smiled. He was in a glowing mood after flinging the Englander into the sea. “We know he’s in the area. He rescued the girl. Or took her to kill her. Not sure.”

  “I wouldn’t mind strangling that girl myself.” Smee stroked his cheek wound, almost lovingly.

  Hook frowned. “Out of the question. I can’t have trouble from the Sky Eaters. We have a truce. Don’t touch her. Ever.”

  When Smee was silent, Hook turned a searching, piercing look on him. And it sent visible chills through Smee. But I was the one who could see how deeply Tiger Lily had affected Smee. A brave, strong girl; a powerful creature; a hunter. And though her looks were striking, they weren’t what he was thinking of, but her big, wild, beating heart. She had held him in her hands, and spared him. What a magnificent creature. He would have to kill her.

  I could see that even the threat of the captain’s gaze couldn’t dissuade him from the idea that he’d have to find the girl when she was unprotected, and strike.

  It was Pan that Hook wanted, not Tiger Lily. But I knew, from a long night of listening, that Reginald Smee simply wouldn’t be able to help himself.

  ELEVEN

  “I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

  “I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.”

  “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

  “If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.”

  Pine Sap leaned over Tik Tok’s book in deep concentration. Pine Sap was one of the few villagers who had learned to read, from Tik Tok, who’d learned from a Bog Dweller who’d learned from a pirate over a hundred years before. Pine Sap, who had a knack for mental challenges and puzzles, had taken to it with ease.

  Outside, the forest was deafening with rain, and about nine of the women, plus Pine Sap, were gathered in a drying hut staying warm and out of the wet. The rains had set in so that the days were waterlogged and the tribe had to take to shelter and entertain themselves. This was often done throug
h singing and storytelling. Now Pine Sap, left out of a game the boys were having, was doing it with a book.

  “What is he talking about?” Tiger Lily asked.

  “Dying,” Pine Sap said. “He’s saying we live forever, but in different forms.”

  Tiger Lily’s forehead bunched together in a crease. She didn’t understand these things that Pine Sap seemed to get so easily. It frustrated her. And she didn’t see the point of his obsession with knowing and reading and thinking.

  Some of the women occasionally leaned over and rubbed his head, or patted his arm, and he squirmed and smiled politely and tried to move a bit farther away. The women liked to pamper and fuss over Pine Sap. Their maternal hearts were unable to resist his crookedness, his thin arms, the dimple under his squintier eye. He hated it. It was inexplicable that he braved the whole group of them on days like this.

  Usually, Tik Tok would have been here too, among the women, but he liked to use the rain as an opportunity to make a special salve for his hair, to keep it shining and soft. Across a log he had left the beginning of Tiger Lily’s wedding dress, which he’d pieced together from an exquisite suede he’d cured over several long days, skinning the deer himself—as all tribespeople knew how to do—boiling its hooves for a paste to help remove the fur, pulverizing its brains, and rubbing them on to soften the leather before hanging it over a fire for hours. He’d begun an intricate pattern of beadwork that would take several more months to finish. Like everything he did, the dress was being patiently and intricately constructed.

  Moon Eye was curled against the wall next to Pine Sap, her knees pulled up to her chin, her long limbs prominent and folded around her like a dead spider’s. She seemed to be growing longer all the time—twig thin, her legs didn’t carry her forward these days; she just unwound in each direction she walked. She was another one who had taken up reading easily, and she peered over Pine Sap’s shoulder, entranced. The women sat focused on their work, Aunt Agda and Aunt Sticky Feet, a woman named Bat Wing and the younger women, shaking their heads at the words of the poem to show it mystified them. Only Moon Eye seemed moved. But in her quiet, meek way, she kept silent.

  “I’ve heard a lot of poetry now, and I’ve decided I don’t like it,” Tiger Lily said impulsively. Truly, it made her feel foolish, but she didn’t say that.

  “You’re always so impatient,” Pine Sap said.

  Tiger Lily closed her lips hard and looked down at her work. And Pine Sap clearly realized he’d hurt her feelings, and regretted it. Pine Sap was one of the few people who could recognize what hurt feelings looked like on Tiger Lily’s smooth, closed face.

  A fog had come down on Neverland, and the path to Giant’s was filled with it. The rain would come by midday. Now that the rainy season had arrived, it would be relentless.

  Moon Eye fell in step with Tiger Lily as she walked to Giant’s house. “I’ll come help you,” she said.

  “Don’t,” Tiger Lily said quietly. But Moon Eye silently followed along anyway.

  Giant was sleeping when they got there. I flew up into the rafters to get out of the way of his smell. He reeked of clove oil, which, from the look of his glistening, enormous bare chest, he’d rubbed all over himself before bed.

  He woke with a start, and stood slowly. He seemed even bigger indoors. His head looked heavy on his body. He had the dull face of someone who thought little. He sat down to let Tiger Lily brush his hair.

  Whatever lice didn’t live in the forest had apparently migrated to Giant’s head. Tiger Lily stood behind him, combing the little bugs out one by one, expressionless.

  Everyone whispered it wasn’t wise for him to incur the wrath of the crows. But, perhaps because of his size, Giant was oblivious to all sorts of fear, including a fear of pushing Tiger Lily too hard. That was why he made her come to brush his hair every day, and why he left his house as messy as possible, for her to clean. He didn’t have the audacity yet to touch her, and in all truth, it was obvious to everyone that she wasn’t his type—that from the way he watched Moon Eye, he liked girls small and delicate. Still, he would very clearly have the audacity when they were married. This was the only reaction Tiger Lily showed to any of it: that when Giant stared at Moon Eye, a lustful smile on his half-open lips, Tiger Lily protectively stepped in front of her to block his view.

  Aunt Fire soon appeared, as she was never far from her son. She lounged across a pillow on the floor, sucking on a chicken bone and occasionally pointing out bugs Tiger Lily had missed.

  Since the day the pirates had disposed of Phillip, Tiger Lily was like a hide scraped bare. She berated herself for failing to protect him.

  There was a hollow sound wherever she went. Pine Sap was always there trying to fill it with himself, hovering five steps behind her. Perhaps it was because of him that Moon Eye hovered too. The two followed her about like twins, and seemed to grow a regard for each other, but their concern made her feel smothered.

  She tried to throw them off her trail. She ducked out of their sight after dinners. She left things for Pine Sap to trip on. She rigged a trap near her door that poured dirty, used laundry water on him twice. I worried for his feelings, and felt mortified by Tiger Lily’s mean-spiritedness. But I didn’t need to. Pine Sap was undeterred.

  After she’d finished at Giant’s, she walked to Tik Tok’s house and sat to sew with him. Some of the women came there sometimes to get away from the wet weather.

  Beside her, he worked with limitless patience, often stopping to help others with their work. Tiger Lily kept pricking her own fingers.

  “You are cruel to Pine Sap,” he said.

  “He smothers me,” she said.

  “He’s trying to be what you need.”

  “Constantly.” She scowled at her work.

  “Having someone who is constant isn’t such a bad thing. In fact, it can be rare.”

  A thought of Pan flashed through Tiger Lily’s mind, but she kept silent. She worried that if she mentioned him, she’d never be allowed into the woods again.

  Tik Tok put down his work and stretched. He pulled his clock down off of his shelf and wound it thoughtfully.

  “I’m not myself,” she offered, guilty. She softened around Tik Tok, and when she did she was, for those rare moments, girlish.

  He smiled. “You can never say that. You’re just a piece of yourself right now that you don’t like.”

  Afterward, chastened, she sought out Pine Sap and Moon Eye near a boulder by the river, lost in the book she’d brought back.

  “I’m sorry I’m not a nicer person,” she said, to both of them.

  “It’s all right,” Moon Eye said in a voice thin as a reed; she played demurely with the flowers in her hands, which she was weaving into garlands for her mother. Pine Sap smiled with pleasure, and playfully poked at the crow feather in Tiger Lily’s hair.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

  Aunt Fire appeared behind her. “I need you,” she barked. “Giant has a boil on his big toe you need to lance.”

  Pine Sap winced. Moon Eye turned pale at the thought of Giant’s feet. But Tiger Lily showed nothing but indifference, and turned and followed her future mother-in-law to her fate.

  In the days that followed, I often wondered if Tiger Lily thought about Pan like I did. Sometimes her mind was foggy to me.

  Was he a boy? A ghost? A cannibal? How many people had he killed? Would she ever try to go back and retrieve her necklace? And if so, how would she find him?

  But Tiger Lily didn’t have to track her way back to Peter Pan. Four days later, she was invited.

  TWELVE

  It was a piece of paper on her bed, when she walked in after dinner.

  On it was a map, but one only Tiger Lily could understand, because it began at the tree where Pan had held her captive.

  It said two simple words: Find us.

  For the next several days, she debated whether to go or not. Most likely, it was a trap. The lost boys were known to be vicious
and cunning. But I knew Tiger Lily, and I knew her curiosity would win out.

  Tiger Lily’s house was on the edge of the village, more in the woods than not. And the village was large, and scattered. Some people spent the day at the river, fishing. Some hunted in the low brush that bordered the woods. Some worked in drying huts and some worked in the dusty fields far to the west of the main square. Aside from Aunt Fire, no one would notice her absence. And this morning, Aunt Fire was busy in the manioc fields.

  Tiger Lily slipped into the woods and left the village behind. She tracked landmarks she’d noted even when running from Pan. The leaves had been smoothed back over the spot where she’d been tied, but she bent to smell the mud.

  From here, she followed his tracks, only consulting the map rarely. All but the most trained eye would have passed over the subtle signs: a rip in a leaf, an inch-long indent in the dirt. Even Tiger Lily’s eyes failed in some places, a rarity. It was clear Pan and whoever else had taken great care to hide themselves. The tracks led deeper and deeper into the forbidden territory.

  Soon, the number of these signs picked up, to show a commonly trodden area, touched by many sets of feet.

  These footprints led into a deep trench that would have been easy to walk by without noticing at all, even for a tracker. Here she became confused. There was a tree stump rooted into the ground, and tracks scuttled around it, but the trench ended, gradually rising back to ground level.

  She heard the vaguest rumble of something underneath her. It was barely a whisper. She looked at the stump. Its roots were all exposed.

  Uncertainly, she pulled at the stump, and let out a gasp when it came loose easily. She pulled harder, tilting it onto its side.