Tiger Lily (21 page)

It was almost finished, except for the roof. It overlooked a quiet bend in the river, where the water slowed and collected in a small, calm pool, deep enough to swim in.

“It’s beautiful, Pine Sap.”

“You like it?”

She thought of the hours it must have taken him—while she’d been running wild, playing games with the boys, making the journey to the cove—and tried to understand how all that time, Pine Sap had been here in this same patch of forest, working on the same thing, day after day. “You have so much patience,” she finally said, her voice falling tellingly.

“You say that as if it were a bad thing.”

“No,” she said, but the lie was detectable. “It’s just … don’t you get restless?”

Pine Sap looked nervous, and swallowed deeply. “Yes, but … it’s worth it. To have something to show in the end.”

“Yes.” Tiger Lily nodded as if unconvinced.

He seemed to sense her disapproval, because he turned back to his work, his smile having sunk away.

Tiger Lily looked around. Up on the roof, a pair of crows were perched, curiously watching Pine Sap work.

“Are those your friends?” she asked.

He smiled softly, then let out a tiny, eerily perfect caw and reached into his pocket, laying a handful of dark-purple berries on the ground beside him. “They love these,” he said. The crows were there in a heartbeat, there by his side, gobbling down the berries. They had no fear of Pine Sap at all. But when Tiger Lily moved to kneel beside them, they flew off to a nearby branch.

She stood and laid a hand on one of the walls, tracing the designs of it with her fingers. “Why have you kept this a secret?”

Pine Sap sat back on his knees. “I don’t want people to give me their opinions on it. It’s where I want to live, when I’m married. I want it to be close to home, but far enough away from the gossip and everyone’s eyes. Just a place to be ourselves.”

She crouched beside him. “It’s beautiful, Pine Sap. Really.” She put her hand on his shoulder. She thought of Moon Eye in the house. How peaceful she would think it was.

He looked up at her a long while. “You think I wasted my time?”

“No, no. It’s just, you and I are so different.” She was thinking how bored she would have been, working on the same monotonous task.

“I hear you,” Pine Sap said. He had heard more than she wanted him to hear.

She changed the subject abruptly, to what she had come to say. “I’m sorry I didn’t come this morning.”

Pine Sap nodded. “You’re still going off at night,” he said.

“I can’t sleep. I go for walks.” She let him infer the rest. She didn’t lie all the way.

“Be careful,” he said. He didn’t believe her. But he didn’t believe she would lie to him about anything important. “You could always run into something you can’t handle. A jaguar or the lost boys or something.”

Tiger Lily looked at her hands; the depth of her guilt seemed bottomless. “I will.”

I talked myself into flying back toward the cove a few days later. I wanted to see the pirates’ reaction to their lookout’s death, and see if there was anything they planned to do about it.

I was surprised though, just beyond the forbidden territory, near the berry patch the boys often liked to visit, to run into Smee—far from the grotto and barely recognizable. He was tattered, swaying on his feet, tromping along loudly. I followed him until he sank down onto a rock, and I listened to his thoughts.

He had barely escaped the cove with his life. Hook had been drunk since the morning they’d found Spotty strangled on the forest floor. Of course, they all knew who’d done it. And Hook had proceeded to get drunk immediately, murmuring that at any minute Pan would materialize from the trees to murder him. He hadn’t even picked up a weapon; he’d just gone into a bleak depression.

Finally, two days into his binge, he’d become convinced Smee was betraying him in some way. “I don’t know what you’re lying about,” he’d said, “but I know you’re lying.” He had been too drunk to kill Smee. He hadn’t been able to find his knife. So he’d cast him out instead.

Now Smee, huddled on the boulder below me, was alone. His frantic thoughts flitted from his inability to hunt to the fact that there was no one who would possibly take him in. He had come here because it was where he’d last seen Tiger Lily. It was the only thing he could think to do.

He was still lost in this thought when I heard loud footsteps crookedly winding their way among the berry bushes a few yards away. Smee ducked into the greenery. I lifted up into the air a few feet to see Tootles, trawling for berries. For every berry he dropped into his leather pouch to bring home, he shoved two into his mouth, staining his lips red. He was humming Slightly’s French song.

He wasn’t looking around him like the other boys would have. I flew over to land on his shoulder, to try to warn him. He recognized me, but flicked me away, shoving more berries between his lips. I tugged on his earlobe. He swatted at me.

Finally, he swiveled back in the direction of home. He walked, and Smee followed. My heart began to race. When Tootles didn’t turn around, I flew to him, yanked on his hair, but he kept brushing me off and nearly pulverized me against a tree. And behind him I heard Smee’s thoughts: that the boys were the way back into Hook’s good graces, and his way to Tiger Lily, and that this was all too good to be true. When we reached the burrow, poor, dumb, hapless Tootles pulled up the tree stump so he could enter underground, without even a glance in any other direction. He happily climbed down into the hole, still humming.

I turned to look, but Smee was gone.

M
irabella showed up one morning to convince me to come home. I was drinking water from a rose petal when she appeared at the edge of my nook above Tiger Lily’s bed.

Back home, she had the worst nook in the worst log, where we’d once lived together. The holes in the bark looked out on a swampy piece of land full of mosquitoes. Together, before I’d left for good, we’d conspired to make our home more homey, hunting out sparkly rocks and flower dyes. But then I’d left and failed to come back.

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.