Tiger Lily (6 page)

“Yes, I know.” He frowned. “But you shouldn’t have to. You should have someone to love and take care of you. Not like him.”

Tiger Lily didn’t want someone to take care of her. But I heard the longing in Tik Tok’s heart too, and the loneliness of being such a singular type of person, without another like himself to hold at night. He didn’t want the same for his daughter.

“You love me,” she said. “That’s enough. We love each other.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s true.” He smiled. “We are a love story.”

That night from my perch, I heard something behind the house, like footsteps, circling from behind the cover of the woods. But when I looked out, there was nothing there.

I
’ve seen Tiger Lily move through the forest as a deadly predator, duck easily through briar patches and over boulders, this fallen rock, that noisy leaf, under that branch, so silently it seemed she was made of air. But I’d never seen her so intent on something as she was on the stone house.

She returned there whenever she could. The moment she finished weaving leggings for Giant, or scraping the dead skin off Aunt Fire’s toes, she would disappear into the trees, without anyone really noticing she was gone. For a while I was too busy to follow her, dealing with some faeries from back home who came to try to convince me to return where I belonged. When they finally left and I did have time to go with her, I noticed that on the walk both ways, we peered into the trees, always thinking of Pan, and wondering whether he was somewhere there watching us.

But the trips were worth it, because Phillip was improving. We had found him this last time sitting up in bed and peeling a star apple from a bunch Tiger Lily had left for him. He’d greeted us with a strong voice. “I’ll be out of bed soon,” he promised sheepishly. “Then you won’t have to wait on me all the time.” Tiger Lily had left with a smile.

That night, just approaching the fire in the main square, she was startled when she saw that Aunt Fire was waiting for her, her sagging body lit by the light of the flames, where several of the villagers were gathered, digesting their food and talking their way into sleepiness before they went off to bed. They all looked up as Tiger Lily approached.

Aunt Fire stepped close to her, holding something behind her back. In a flash, she pulled it out, and struck Tiger Lily across the face with a bamboo cane.

Tiger Lily fell backward, and the people around the fire went silent.

“You belong to me, and your duties will be to take care of my son. Not straggling home late at night. I need you to myself for the next few days. No house in the woods.”

She hobbled off to bed.

The last of the dry season passed. When the first rains started arriving, the way to the house on the cliffs was impassable. Every afternoon a fog fell on the whole island, and threatened to swallow it up. We were unable to return to the stone house for six days. It was too long.

T
iger Lily was trying to work on a water pouch for Giant that Aunt Fire had demanded she make. She kept on peering up at Pine Sap and Moon Eye over her work, her eyebrows knitted darkly. Her work was a mere shadow of Moon Eye’s, and for some reason, it embarrassed her for Pine Sap to see it.

I was in the rafters dealing with troubles of my own. I was carrying a raindrop to keep in a little hole in the wood, so I could drink from it at my leisure. But each raindrop I lifted kept falling apart. Water is so delicate.

Tiger Lily worked stoically on her pouch as if sewing was the worst thing to have ever befallen anyone.

Then, outside, there was a shift in the sounds of the village. The women all looked at each other, surprised and on alert.

Suddenly, Stone poked his wet face in through the window.

“Pirates,” he said breathlessly, the rain dripping down his cheeks and eyelids, and hurried away.

They were all up in a moment and out of the hut into the deluge. I flew out toward where a crowd of men and boys had gathered near the front entrance of the village. The women and girls were all retreating to the houses. Tik Tok directed Tiger Lily to do the same. But as soon as he stopped looking, she followed behind him.

Before the braves stood a ragtag crew of men, in torn, scraggled clothes.

Tiger Lily slowly sidled up beside Tik Tok, silently, and he made an unconscious, protective gesture to hold her back. It was the only movement he made that evinced any fear or discomfort. There was a truce between the pirates and the Sky Eaters, based on the agreement that neither side wanted trouble from the other. But there was little trust between them.

“We don’t know about the boys,” Tik Tok was saying. “We hear sounds sometimes. Nothing more.”

The pirates’ captain was not a large man. Yet the others were clearly in thrall to him, their bodies turned toward him nervously. His wavy black hair was just going gray; he had high bony cheeks, and a piece of old, stained cloth tied around his head to hold back his hair. The whole group stank of sourness, old spirits, and filth.

“We would very much like to find them,” the captain said politely.

“We cannot help you, friend.”

The captain smiled; it broke through his lips and stayed there, masklike. “No, of course not. Yes, okay.”

They turned to go, and shuffled a few feet backward. Suddenly the captain seemed to remember something, or sense something, and he swiveled, only instead of facing Tik Tok again, he trained his gaze on Tiger Lily. His eyes were flat disks, bloodshot around the empty blue, and they studied the braiding in her hair, grazed her neck, and settled on her necklace. “That’s lovely; did someone give that to you?” he asked. Tik Tok took a protective step toward Tiger Lily. She stared at the pirate silently. “It looks English,” he said, bemused. He smiled again, and I felt the smile in my fingers and in the soles of my feet; it invaded me like a bad spirit, and Tiger Lily shivered. As he turned, his flat eyes scanned the ground, so subtly it was barely noticeable. But only barely. Tiger Lily saw.

“Well, thank you for your time.” He seemed pleased.

It was later that day, sitting around the women’s circle in the drying hut, that suddenly Tiger Lily jolted. And in that one moment, I knew what she did.

T
he leaves cut at her face. Her breath came in gasps. Even in her mad rush, she leaped the rocks without missing a step. She was at the bottom of the rise when she saw the smoke. I didn’t fly ahead of her. I stuck to her shoulder, and in her state she never knew I was there.

The trunks were in the front yard, burning. The house had been torn apart, even the walls knocked down. The Englander was gone. Tiger Lily searched the ground for the path they’d taken, and her eyes followed footprints to the cliff’s edge, and a shudder ran through her.

She knew what lay below. Pirates.

Tiger Lily sank onto the rocky ledge. The ocean was at high tide and crashed right against the rocks. It had washed away whatever the pirates had thrown onto the shore.

She stood. She followed their tracks. A cooler head would have remembered the truce.

Pirates were fierce adversaries, but they weren’t stealthy ones. With little effort, and within half a mile, we were close enough that I could hear them up ahead.

One man, balding and slow, straggled behind the others. He was muttering to himself compulsively.

Tiger Lily had her arm around his neck before he knew she was behind him, and had him against a tree. Her knife was at his throat, and she moved to slice, but first she looked in his eyes, to let him know of his death. And she paused. He was crying. By the redness of his eyes and face, she could tell he’d been crying for some time.

She watched the tears in wonder.

He didn’t say a word. No one turned to come back for him—or even paused on their way, not noticing he was gone.

Hovering behind her, I could see where Tiger Lily’s pulse throbbed. The tears ran over the knuckles of the hand that held his neck.

And she couldn’t make her hand move to kill him. She let go. He fell back against the tree, and down onto his hands and knees, then recovered himself and looked up at her. He turned and lunged into the woods, and she let him go.

She staggered the other way, back toward the stone house.

She wasn’t herself. She left such easy footprints in the mud. She didn’t look behind her, keep her mind on her peripheral vision like all Sky Eaters were taught to do. She stumbled through the woods, and she didn’t hear him behind her until he had his arm around her waist. She bucked. They slammed against a tree. She kicked and kicked. But it was too late.

Peter Pan dragged her into the bushes.

I
n the chaos, I didn’t see him tie her. I bit him, but he, quick as a blink, grasped me between his fingers and flicked me away. Then forgot me as he turned back to Tiger Lily.