Once we had recovered from the feast, Peter boasted that had he not overslept on the morning of Tiger Lily’s descent into the Deep Well he would have slain the monster himself. Lone Wolf said nothing. I had shamed him, and he was now my enemy. But for the moment at least I was safe, since I was a prince in Great Panther’s eyes.
I was more than that in Tiger Lily’s.
I did not see her for three days. Peter was growing restless and missing his Underground Home, and so it was decided that we should take our leave, promising to return soon. Great Panther wished to throw us one more celebratory meal before we left. Happily, we all had had our fill of crocodile, and the dinner consisted of various island flowers, stuffed with fruit mixed with honey and prepared in many ingenious ways. Tiger Lily cooked my own meal herself. Aside from being adept with bow and arrow, she made a delicious hibiscus pie.
Afterward, Great Panther stood and sang—literally sang—my praises. This made me exceedingly uncomfortable, for I could see that these laudatory verses enraged Lone Wolf. Peter shifted irritably; he was unaccustomed to anyone garnering such praise, except himself. I had always dreamed that a heroic ballad such as this might be composed about me one day, but now that that dream had become reality, I could see that every firework of glory draws to its honoree a cannonade of envy.
As the tribal drums beat in my honor, I looked around—Tiger Lily was nowhere to be seen. And then lo! the flaps of the tent opened wide and in she came, bearing a plate in the center of which lay one enormously stunning blossom—a tiger lily agleam with gold. The gold was actually pollen, a prized harvest from some rare jungle orchid that she had gathered herself for this remarkable dessert. She placed the plate in front of me and watched while I picked the flower up and gently nipped at its petals. I had never tasted anything so astonishing, a mixture of sweetness and sharp pepper that seemed to dance in my mouth. Following the rules of etiquette that I had been carefully taught, I offered a petal to the princess. She blushed and took the petal between her teeth as an exclamation of delight erupted from the crowd. Great Panther looked pleased, Sunflower began to weep with joy, and Lone Wolf stormed out of the gathering. The exchange of dessert petals that had just taken place, I later learned, was an offer and acceptance of marriage.
Once the meaning had been explained to me, I stuttered with astonishment, but did not attempt to withdraw the offer. To tell the truth, dear reader, I was thrilled. Once the supper was over, Tiger Lily and I wandered hand in hand out of the tent, returning to the spot of our first conversation. No one followed. The affianced were to be left to themselves.
We sat on the promontory cliff and looked at the night sky. It was agleam with stars sparkling in mysterious constellations, none of which I recognized. I asked their names, and she said that each person who studies the sky finds their own names for these configurations. “I might look at that one,” she explained as she pointed to a celestial grouping, “and see in it a flower and call it Tiger Lily’s Blossom, but no one else would call it that, and so it would have a very special meaning for me. You might look at it and name it something else, and so it would have another special and completely unique meaning for you.”
“But isn’t it easier if everyone calls it Tiger Lily’s Blossom?”
“Yes, it may be easier, but that’s not the point, James. The point is to take the time and study the heavens, and find your own meaning there. Why should my meaning apply to you?”
“Everything of yours applies to me.”
She squeezed my hand. I did not look at her at first, but at the horizon, where a string of five bright stars lay stretched out, like a serpent, or a belt. “Peter’s Liana,” I named it as I pointed. She laughed with delight. Its reflection was equally bright, floating on the surface of the sea.
“James,” she said after a long while. I turned to look at her.
“Yes?” I answered.
She said nothing.
Then she leaned forward very slowly until her lips touched mine. I felt the hairs on my arms and legs lift high, just as they had when I first took flight. Without moving my lips away from hers, I cupped her head in my starboard hand and pressed her closer. Our mouths opened slightly, and the soft tip of her tongue brushed mine.
* * *
The wedding was set for one full moon hence—the first time I heard the future spoken of in any words other than tomorrow. Not knowing the length of the lunar cycles in this astonishing place, I had no idea how many “tomorrows” this involved. I knew only that my future happiness awaited its arrival.
Peter and I left the following morning. He was uncharacteristically silent for the first half of our journey. When we stopped for some lunch, I asked him bluntly why he was not speaking to me. He simply shrugged his shoulders.
“Are you angry?”
He said nothing at first, and then he began to cry.
“Peter, what is it?”
“You’re leaving me. I’ve waited forever to have someone to play with, and now you’re going away.”
I took his hand.
“I’ll never leave you, Peter. I’ll always be by your side. After all, you have my shadow.” He smiled at this. I continued: “I’ll visit as often as I can. Without Tiger Lily. I promise.” This made him even happier. “We’ll frolic as we have in the past. You can teach me things I don’t know, because you’re ever so smarter than I am. We’ll swim with the mermaids, and tumble with Barnaby, and try to make friends with the lions and tigers.” He was very pleased.
For the rest of our journey he jabbered as if little had changed within the last twenty-four hours. He talked of “yesterday” and “tomorrow” and of nothing at all, and because I was happy at last, I forgave him his childish behavior. He was, after all, my first and closest friend, the very best part of myself.
* * *
Panther had given us a parting gift of tobacco, and so we shared a pipe when we arrived home. We were soon laughing tremendously at nothing at all, we were in such good spirits. Suddenly Peter looked up, cocking his ear to one side. “Well of course you could have come, but I didn’t ask you because I know you don’t care for them.”
He was speaking, I assumed, to Tink.
“Because we had a marvelous time,” he said in answer to some fairy question. “James rescued Tiger Lily from an enormous crocodile. He’s quite the hero.” He listened to a further question and smiled. “I don’t know, I’ll ask him,” he said and turned to me. “She wants to know why you didn’t rescue her. From your . . . what’s her name? Daisy.”
“I was asleep,” I answered, a bit annoyed. “I didn’t even know she was in my pocket. Tink, I mean. I knew Daisy was. Besides, she didn’t need rescuing. She obviously wasn’t eaten, in spite of what she tells you.”
Peter listened again. He was getting a great kick out of acting as translator. “She says that of course she was eaten. You saw the blood.”
“She was wounded, perhaps. But it could have been a mouse’s blood. Or my own. Daisy sometimes feeds on me, you know.”
Peter seemed surprised. “No, I didn’t. Where is she, by the way?”
“I left her at the lagoon. She was happier there.” And Peter, I admit, seemed relieved. “At any rate, please tell Tink that I apologize for not warning her about Daisy, or pulling her from the jaws of death. I couldn’t even see her—please remind her of that. I still can’t. But I’m glad she survived, and I hope I can someday be her friend.”
That, I prayed, was the end of the matter.
But there is no end of the matter with Tink, once she has a notion in her little skull. At least that’s what Peter told me.
He now shook his head in exasperation as she apparently rattled on and on. “That’s not possible,” he finally said to her. She continued, obviously making some childish demand—Peter was rolling his eyes as if he were a music hall comedian playing to the back of the house. “No, Tink, absolutely not, we have to go back,” he stated emphatically, barely concealing his annoyance. “Because James is engaged.” Another beat. “To be married, yes. To Tiger Lily.” Another silence, longer this time. “Oh, Tink,” he said, cajoling her. Then he sighed. “Hopeless,” he muttered.
“What is?”
“She’s upset. She’s crying now. Sulking and crying.”
“Whatever for?”
He didn’t answer.
“Is she jealous?”
He looked at the Cotswold Cottage, to which, I presumed, Tink had retired. “To be perfectly frank,” he whispered, “I think she’s in love.”
“With whom?” I exclaimed in astonishment.
“With you, of course.”
* * *
That night I dreamed the most marvelous dream. Tiger Lily had become quite small, and was dancing on my lips. She tiptoed to the precipice of my chin and slid down my neck to the hollow of my throat, which had become a tiny lagoon filled with water. She drank, then climbed the hillock of my breastbone and rolled down the other side to my stomach. I laughed in my sleep, it was such fun. Then she went exploring in my pockets. In the starboard one she found a firecracker, and here for a moment the dream became a bit frightening, for the firecracker’s fuse was burning and I tried to warn her to leave before an explosion happened, but when I opened my mouth to speak no words would come. She examined the cracker quite closely, for she had never seen anything like it. The fuse sparked as it burned shorter and shorter until, with a fizzle, it suddenly died. She’s safe, I thought, and I relaxed. Ever curious, she drew an arrow from her quiver and pricked the tip of the cracker to see what lay inside. Quite suddenly it blew its top like Mount Vesuvius. Tiny plumes of flame scorched my pocket lining; lava flowed, burning holes wherever it touched. I searched for Tiger Lily everywhere, expecting to find her a heap of charred ash and bones. But there she stood, laughing, only it wasn’t Tiger Lily, it was Tink, Tink clad only in cinders and soot. She bent forward and blew me a kiss, then turned and did a naughty little dance with her behind before tunneling into my blanket. I awoke, I must confess, with a smile on my face. I was admired by the ladies! And not just by one, but by two! Never in my most romantic fantasies did I imagine this could happen! Peter, sound asleep beside me, seemed to be smiling too.
* * *
Having been gone from their company for some time, I asked Peter the next morning if we could revisit the mermaids. He readily agreed. To be polite I inquired if Tink might wish to join us, but he said that she was nowhere in sight at the moment, which was just as well (he said) as she didn’t care for either water or fish, especially fish who thought of themselves as half-human. (If she liked neither mermaids nor tribal folk, I wondered, was there anyone at all—other than Peter and myself—whose company she did enjoy?) He got a fistful of Sand, peppered both of us, and we were off.
The mermaids were delighted to see us. They waved skyward as we approached. No sooner had our feet touched pebbles than we shed our clothing and dove into the delicious warmth.
I had by this time become special friends with one of them, whom Peter called Josephine. Her hair was red as the sunset, and her breasts were quite enormous. I loved to press myself against her, and now she clasped me to her bosom and called me her “handsome little man.” Here was a third lady I had charmed! Still, like all successful lotharios, I worried how she would react when I told her that I was soon to be married. Certainly nothing like love had passed between us, but it’s difficult (or so my Eton housemates often said) to know the mind of a woman. I decided the best way was to be truthful, and so when we lay on Marooner’s Rock, basking in the sun, I told her everything.
“I’m going to be married to Tiger Lily the native princess whom I met recently and then saved from certain death at the jaws of an enormous crocodile which she shot full of arrows while I stabbed it to death and which we both ate.”
This statement, made in one breath without pause, was followed by her silence. Oh dear, I thought. She’s going to drown me.
Then a smile broke through, and her sharp little teeth gleamed in the sun and she laughed with delight. “How wonderful for you!” Josephine said (her accent was decidedly French) and pressed me close to her bosom once again. “I will give you a wedding gift! What would you like?”
Taken aback by her generous response, I was speechless at first. “Your blessing,” I finally answered.
“But of course, of course, I bless you, all over,” and she began kissing me and I laughed whenever her whiskers brushed against a place that was especially ticklish.
After that we swam again, and soon found Peter chasing half a dozen of Josephine’s sisters. We played Slippery Otter together, and Where’s the Shrimp, which Peter always won. Then the ladies retired for their underwater nap and Peter and I lay on the pebbled beach, where we ate mangoes and dozed.
Throughout the frolicsome morning I thought more than once of Daisy, wondering what had happened to her. Had she left the lagoon to swim back to Long Tom? I worried that something might have eaten her, and then fretted that the beating sun had baked her into a crocodile mummy. I stood on the edge of the lagoon and called out her name. Peter stirred, but sank back into Dreamland. Daisy did not respond.
It was then that I decided to look for her underwater. Thanks to Josephine and her friends, my swimming skills had improved considerably, and the warmth of the sun made the lagoon as comfortable as a bath. My ability to dive and remain under the surface while holding my breath was markedly improved too: for some inexplicable reason I could stay below for several minutes at a time without strain. I breaststroked to the middle of the lagoon, and dove.
The sunlight penetrated the water to a remarkable depth; I could see for hundreds of feet in every direction. There were rainbow-hued fish and colorful coral; long strands of seaweed waved up at me from the bottom, where Josephine and her sisters lay curled around one another, dreaming watery dreams. But there was no sign of Daisy.
I surfaced and formed a reconnaissance plan.
The lagoon was bordered on one side by a tall limestone cliff, and now I swam to its base before diving again. I planned on making a complete underwater circuit around the edge of the lagoon, hoping that this might be the best way to seek Daisy out, if indeed she was still here. But before I had advanced more than a dozen feet I spied, perhaps ten feet below the surface, what appeared to be a hollow in the cliff face. Curious, I swam toward it, only to be met on the way by a very excited Daisy.
She was delighted to see me. How can a crocodile show delight? you might ask. She swam around my head, nipping at my ears, my nose, then snapping at my lower lip and drawing blood. A Daisy kiss? I laughed to myself: my fourth female conquest! She turned and headed in the direction of the hollow. Was she asking me to follow?
I trailed behind her. She kept turning and looking back, as if to make sure that I was taking her lead. I began to worry about my breath, but I figured that I had perhaps another forty-five seconds, possibly a minute, of comfort remaining, and so I trusted my instincts while giving in to curiosity. On arriving at the hollow I discovered that it was an entrance to a narrow tunnel in the rock. What boy could resist?
My lungs were about to explode.
I raced to the surface, where I gasped for air. I should return to Peter, I thought, if only to tell him where I was headed. Perhaps he would join me. But curiosity and Daisy’s urgency got the better of me. I sucked in several deep breaths and kicked under the surface once again.
Daisy was waiting for me by the tunnel entrance. On seeing my approach, she turned and entered. It was then that I made a courageous—and possibly very foolish—decision. My hips could barely fit through the opening. Once inside, would I be able to turn around in order to return? Daisy disappeared into the darkness ahead of me. I followed.
The tunnel was lined with rocks and coral. Their sharp edges cut me as I advanced. I wanted to cry out in pain, but I could not open my mouth for fear of losing air. I began to panic.
I could not go on. My lungs would not hold. I tried to turn around, but it was impossible. I could only move forward. Daisy paddled ahead of me. Then it occurred to me: how could I see her? If this was an underwater cave, what was the source of its light? Furthermore, how could she breathe? I knew nothing about a crocodile’s ability to hold its breath, if that is in fact what it did, but she had been underwater much, much longer than I. Did she know of something that I didn’t, of some ray of hope that lay ahead? I could do nothing but follow her.
Gradually the light seemed to grow brighter. It must be my dying brain playing tricks, I thought. I could no longer see my reptilian friend. What had become of her? I gave one or two final kicks, pushing onward, then turned onto my back in order to see the heaven to which I was about to ascend. My lungs were screaming, and the time had come for me to end the agony. Swimming with my face pressed to the rock ceiling, I had no choice but to suck in my watery Death. An awfully big adventure indeed! Peter, alas, would never know what had happened to me. Peter, alas, would forget me by tomorrow.
I opened my mouth to take in water, and filled it instead with the sweetest air I had ever breathed.
My face had found a pocket of atmosphere trapped under the rock, a treasure chest of oxygen acting as a buffer between limestone and lagoon. Was it luck or instinct that made me flip onto my back? No matter. This pocket, but several inches in height, was enough to renew my hope. Ah, but what now? I inched forward a bit, still sucking in air as though I could never get enough of it. And miraculously the pocket continued onward, expanding, increasing in height. My goodness, there was now nearly a foot of open space above me! I pushed forward with my hands, dragging my body along the sharp rock ceiling, razoring my chest and thighs with a dozen tiny cuts. The air pocket continued to climb and grow until—God be praised! A miracle!
It was a small cave, perhaps twenty feet high, lit from above by a hole in the rock ceiling. I looked around. A shoreline! If my strength allowed, I might be able to pull myself out of the water and onto damp earth. I lowered my feet in preparation for an enormous effort of will, and they met bottom. Lo! I could stand with ease.
Once I was out of the water, I lay on this underground beach for several minutes, gasping for breath. I heard a soft peep, and turning my head I discovered Daisy sitting on a rock, either cheering me on or laughing at me.
It seemed that since we had last met she had learned to talk. She peeped again. “I’m coming,” I said, “just give me a moment. You’re as impatient as Peter.”
She waited a few moments more. Carefully I stood. Rivulets of blood ran down my chest and legs. Daisy lapped the blood as it puddled at my feet. This seemed to me only fair and rather eased my guilt: after all, had I not dined quite recently on every bit of edible crocodile imaginable?
Once she had quenched her thirst, she turned and scampered deeper into the cave. Again I followed. Cracks in the ceiling let in sunlight, so that I was never in danger of losing my way. We walked on and on, seemingly for miles. At one point, thinking she must be tired, I picked up Daisy. I had no pocket in which to carry her (my trousers being back on the shore with Peter), so I placed her on top of my head. She rode there for a while, and after a time—seeing, I suppose, that I was headed in the right direction—she curled up and fell asleep.
I couldn’t help but wonder: was this path indeed leading to some satisfying end? Why would any sane human trust a crocodile to lead him anywhere? What if I eventually became lost, to die in a maze of underground tunnels? But then again, what choice did I have, other than to turn around? Finally, exhausted, I entered what appeared to be an enormous grotto but dimly lit by the vanishing sun. I’ll lie down, I thought, just for a moment and close my eyes. I gently removed Daisy from my hair and stretched out on the rock, nestling her in a small cavity in the floor beside me. The next thing I knew I was awakened by a thin shaft of daylight. I sat up and looked around. Darkness was everywhere, but for this blinding shaft.
Daisy peeped a good morning. She seemed content to remain where I had placed her. Was this room our final destination?
I decided to explore. The air was quite damp; I sensed that there was water here, perhaps the source of the underground stream. As I moved along the wall, farther and farther from the opening through which I had entered, a thought—a fear, actually—began to gnaw at me. I pushed it away, refusing to believe until I had proof. And soon enough I did: my hand came upon something protruding from a crevasse in the wall—a torch! One of several left by Lone Wolf and the other young men when I returned with them down the Deep Well! Daisy had led me along a back-door pathway to the very cavern in which Tiger Lily and I had met our nemesis.
The monster was dead, I knew, but were there others like her? (And it was female—a discovery proudly announced by Sunflower when she and the native matrons butchered the carcass.) We had sighted no mate when we came back for the carcass. But now, alone in the dark, I felt a presence. The monster’s husband, larger than the she-dragon, lay licking its jaws at the edge of the water—I was sure of it. Naked as I was, I had not even Peter’s blunt stick to wield as weapon! I was a dead man.
Daisy had led me here, to the crocodile’s underground home.
Daisy had led me, quite possibly, to my death.
As I calmed my breath, I tried to think of what to do. I could run, of course, out of the cavern and up the tunnel to the bottom of the well, but if there were a giant lizard here he would be on me as soon as he heard me scrambling across the rocky shore. I assumed he was sightless like his wife, and had been for many years, making his blindness an asset; whereas my blindness was new, and made me all the more vulnerable. I then recalled that the native men on our descent had left some flint and steel on a ledge nearby, to be used if one of the torches were accidentally extinguished. Fire was a weapon and my only recourse. I stretched out a hand and found the ledge. And yes, there they were! Happily, in my days at the camp, Tiger Lily had instructed me in the intricacies of using flint and iron pyrite to start a flame. (I had watched Peter do it many times, though he had no patience as an instructor.) The steel, I knew, was even more effective, but would it be enough? How damp was the torch? Would the pitch in which it had been dipped still be effective?
I struck flint against steel, holding both near the torch’s head. I feared that the sound would draw the creature to me, but I had to risk it. I struck a spark. It had no effect. I struck again. Another spark. And lo! the pitch took the bait, as it were, and in a moment the torch was ablaze.
I wrenched it from the crevasse and held it high, hoping to spot the enemy before he attacked. There was the lake. There was the islet in its center. There were the she-monster’s bloodstains on the rocks, her scratch marks in the sand where she had writhed in her final death throes. But there was nothing else—no dragon, no enemy, not even so much as a bat to be feared, save for my overwrought imagination.
Why had Daisy come here? Was she in search of her birth mother? Was the monster that I had slain—oh horrors!—my little Daisy’s ma? Daisy’s sandy incubator had been located far, far away—could the leviathan have left the cavern by the very path I had followed in arriving? Were there other paths? Once outside, she might have swum to Long Tom, quite a long journey but perhaps one dictated by Nature or Habit, and deposited her load of eggs. Something, of course, had fertilized those eggs, and perhaps someday I would meet Daisy’s father, but he certainly didn’t seem to be here. (Perhaps he was off in the depths of the ocean, eating mermen.) At any rate, Daisy had returned to her mother’s lair, and now she had brought me here, possibly to introduce me to the fierce dame. (I had heard of similar tales involving cats and kittens, and remembered reading of astonishing bird and mammal migrations. Why should I doubt that a reptile could do this too?) Following this logic, did Daisy know, in some inner core of her primitive brain, that I had murdered her parent? Had eaten her mother? Yet she seemed happy in my company. She peeped her joy again and again and again.
And then I wondered: what had brought the mother here? I remember reading as a child the myths of Rome and Greece, of Arthur and the Norse gods. Wherever a treasure lay buried, a monster inevitably guarded it. Was this the location indicated on my father’s treasure map? I recalled the crudely drawn creature that resembled a dragon. Was it meant to be a crocodile? Of course! Here lay the treasure my father, and so many others, had sought!
I was hungry, but I knew a way out: the Deep Well would easily bring me back to sunlight and Tiger Lily. On my first venture here, I had vowed to return one day and explore. Well, here I was, returned! Why not take this opportunity to uncover a treasure, quite possibly the Never-Isle’s “deepest” secret?
* * *
The water was frigid. I waded in quickly, then swam the thirty feet or so to the islet. I was shivering terribly when I emerged, and so went to work at once. The islet, as I had guessed, was more or less a mound of sandy soil. The mass of it was no wider than fifteen feet across, and now I walked to the center of the mound, fell onto my knees, and with my bare hands began to dig. The soil was wet and easy to move, and within minutes I was in it to my elbows. The light was not good here. I couldn’t bring the torch across the water with me and had returned it to its crevasse. Consequently I was dependent on its distant ambient light, and trusted more to the feel of things as I dug and sifted. The soft soil wedged itself under my fingernails and in between my toes. But that’s all I found—wet sandy soil. No treasure chest, no ingots of gold or pouches of diamonds—until my thumb bumped against something round and thick and solid, which I pried out of the dirt. Another something came along with it, a chain of sorts, and I quickly discovered—by feel, mind you, not by sight—that I had uncovered a pocket watch. I held it to my ear—it was still ticking! I dug further. Nothing more. Nothing but sand, wet and useless.
I was shivering from cold, and so decided to return to shore and thence to the lovely warm sun of the Never-Isle. I could come back another day, with a pick and shovel and a better source of light. Holding the watch above the water, I paddled one-armed back to where I had entered the lake. The going was slow, and I thought that my blood might very well turn to ice before my feet touched ground again. Yet I gritted my teeth and paddled on. Dripping wet, I knew I had to get to the surface before I collapsed from the chill. I said my farewell to Daisy, who peeped in return—she clearly had no desire to leave this wretched place—then headed back up the Deep Well’s winding stair to the native village above.
It occurred to me only as my head was about to appear above the lip of the well that I had left my trousers back with Peter and the mermaids. I was completely naked.
What to do? I was always somewhat shy about things like this (unlike Peter). I suppose the natives would not have cared a whit; nevertheless, I made sure that no one was in sight before I scampered to some nearby bushes. I soon heard a woman singing to herself, and peering out of the fronds that covered me, I spied Blue Bonnet gathering banana leaves.
“Pssst. Blue Bonnet,” I whispered.
She looked around, and when she saw my face her eyes lit up. “James! You’ve come back!”
“Yes, I—I need a favor. I—I’ve lost my—my trousers. Could you do me a kindness and please—bring me—something?”
She laughed at this. The old women of the village were known for cracking ribald jokes that made even the bravest of the braves blush with shame. She said something to me which I will not repeat, dear reader, except to say that it had to do with the large banana leaves she was gathering, and then she handed me one. I asked for several more, and a rope, please. Still laughing, she undid her own belt and passed it to me along with a few more leaves, and thus I fashioned a sort of skirt that for the moment served its purpose. I emerged from hiding, thanked Blue Bonnet, and then quick as I could I hastened to pay my respects to Great Panther before seeking out my fiancée. Several of the natives stared, astonished at my dress.
To my surprise he was not pleased to see me. Nor was Tiger Lily, who sat at his feet.
“James, what are you doing here?” she exclaimed.
“I—I found a secret way. I’ll tell you about it over dinner. In the meantime— What?”
I could see the alarm on her face. Great Panther jumped in to explain.
“You shouldn’t be here, lad. Lone Wolf is angry, jealous, and insulted that he has lost the hand of the princess to an outsider. A boy without a shadow, he complains, but I think that’s beside the point. At any rate, he demands a meeting.”
“Well, of course I’ll meet with him,” I replied. “But he won’t change my mind.”
“You don’t understand, James,” Tiger Lily explained. “By ‘meeting’ he means ‘battle.’ In this case a battle between rival suitors. To the death.”
“Oh.”
“It’s his right, because I threw him over for you.”
“Oh.” All I could think of was how much older and bigger and stronger Lone Wolf was, compared to my fourteen-year-old musculature.
Panther continued: “We were hoping to hold him off until you returned for the wedding. It would be Bad Form to kill a bridegroom on his wedding day. But of course, any time before then . . .” He left the sentence unfinished.
“I could hide, and then sneak away tonight. He doesn’t need to know I’m here.”
“Too late for that,” said a voice behind me. Turning, I saw Lone Wolf standing in the entrance to the tent, his bronzed muscular arms folded resolutely across his broad muscular chest. He smiled.
* * *
It was decided that we would meet two days hence on the savanna at noon. We each were allowed up to two weapons of our own choosing, although the two must “act as one.” A bow and arrows, for example, would fit the description. I could, of course, choose to ignore the challenge and hide in Peter’s Underground Home, but that would mean not only that I would lose Tiger Lily forever but that she would then have to marry Lone Wolf against her will. (That, at least, was the tradition, and Pa-Ku-U-Na-Ini took pride in their traditions.) If, however, Lone Wolf and I met in battle and I was killed defending her honor, she could choose another suitor, or even decide to keep her maidenhood. Her free will and happiness depended on my showing up for the “meeting,” and either beating Lone Wolf to a bloody pulp (which was absurdly unlikely) or being horribly murdered while whispering my undying love for her with my dying lips.
* * *
I returned home to Peter the following day. He seemed remarkably unconcerned about my absence, and absolutely thrilled (once I told him) about the forthcoming combat to the death.
“To die will be an awfully big adventure,” he answered. This phrase was becoming something of an annoying cliché.
Tink was the only being who evinced sympathy. “She’s very worried,” Peter remarked that evening over a pipe. “You know she loves you, and she’d rather see you married to that terrible girl than have you lying dead in a puddle of your own gore. She’ll deal with the girl later.”
“Thank her for me,” I said rather glumly, “I guess.”
“Thank her yourself,” he said. “She’s right here.”
“Thank you, Tink,” I repeated, even more glumly.
* * *
I couldn’t sleep, of course. I tossed and turned, and it was only then that I remembered the watch I had found on the islet. Tiger Lily had given me a pouch in which to carry it home, as there was no buttonhole in my banana-leaf skirt through which to thread the fob. All I could think of, at any rate, was my impending death—watches be d—mned—but now that it was only hours away, I could do nothing but sigh deeply and turn my thoughts to anything at hand that might be distracting.
I lit a candle, then pulled the watch from the pouch. Peter slept soundly.
It was solid gold, or so it appeared. The chain and fob were gold too. I held it to my ear once again to hear its tiny heartbeat. I supposed that, if people didn’t age, or aged very slowly, on the Never-Isle, then the same principle might apply to inanimate objects. The watch could have been wound centuries before.
I checked the fastening—a simple clasp—and flipped it open.
The watch face was unadorned, but its simplicity was a thing of beauty. On the verso of the cover I found an engraving.
To J.C. with love from A.D. it read. J.C.? A date followed: January 1860. The month before my birth. Was this my father’s watch? If so, who was A.D.? Not my mother, for those were not her initials. Nor could she have afforded such an extravagance. Beneath the date was a phrase: Tempus Regit Omnes. Time Rules All.
Indeed.
* * *
I met Lone Wolf on the savanna at noon the following day. Peter was my second, and a native known as Sly Fox was Lone Wolf’s. Great Panther was there, as were many members of the tribe, but Tiger Lily could not bear to come. My heart broke a little on learning this, though I understood her reasons.
His weapon was a six-foot spear accompanied by a fishing net. (Did I mention that Lone Wolf was the fishing champion of the tribe?) The spear was headed by an iron spike that looked to be nearly a foot long. I pictured him entangling me in the fishing net, then easily sliding the spear through my body until it poked out of my back. The blade bore several smaller blades sticking out at right angles, so that once the spike was securely inside me Lone Wolf might twist it around in either direction and thus shred whatever organs had come in contact with the aforesaid spike. I hoped that this “meeting of Lone Wolf with the boy James to resolve a preconjugal dispute” (which was how it was described in the official proclamation) would be over so quickly that I would feel very little pain, but I had my doubts.
I was wearing my trousers again (Peter had worn them on his return from the lagoon); my weapons lay concealed, one in each of my pockets, so it appeared at first that I was weaponless. This puzzled all but Lone Wolf, who smiled mockingly.
“Do you hope to beg for your life?” he asked with an Etonian sneer. “Is that your weapon of choice, coward—a plea for my mercy?”
“Well,” I answered, “I’m not counting that as a weapon, but yes, I will beg. Not only for my life but for common sense. Your pride has been hurt and I’m sorry for that, Lone Wolf, but it was Tiger Lily’s choice, not mine.”
“You offered her the flower,” he declared. “Which is the custom.”
“I didn’t know that, I swear. I do love her, and I’m glad she answered the way she did, but I didn’t mean it as an offense to you. I assumed at the time that she was already yours—there was no choice to be made. I was simply being polite, like my mother taught me.”
“You truly love Tiger Lily?” he scoffed. “You—a boy without a shadow, let alone any noble blood or family titles—think you’re in love?” Clearly he was stuck on this point of “love.”
“I’m descended from the Great and Historically Important Captain James Cook, though I doubt you would know who he was,” I said in as imperious a manner as I could muster. I thought I heard a faint gasp from some in the crowd, but I ignored it and plowed on: “But I am in love, and she is too. She admires you, Lone Wolf—I mean, who wouldn’t? You’re very brave and strong. You could have killed the crocodile easily, if you had so chosen. But you didn’t, and do you know why? Because you’re a coward.”
An even louder gasp emerged from the crowd.
“It is you who are the coward, dear boy, as I will demonstrate shortly. You will beg for mercy as your blood spurts forth. You will scream like a woman as I decimate your guts. You will whimper like a little girl as I pull out your spleen—and eat it.” His imagination was somewhat overcharged, but it had the desired effect.
And with that he raised the spear.
* * *
We circled each other at first. He seemed in no hurry. He knew his triumph was inevitable, and the showman in him wished to draw the moment out for the crowd’s (and his own) enjoyment. After all, those who came to see the massacre had traveled far, and it simply would not do for me to be skewered in a matter of seconds.
Once we were in a good position, I reached into my starboard pocket and pulled out the pocket watch. I had polished it that morning to a brilliant sheen, and now I aimed it so that it caught the rays of the sun and bounced them back into Lone Wolf’s eyes. He blinked, briefly blinded, and I knew I had but a moment to effectively deploy Weapon Number 2. I raced toward him as fast as I could, simultaneously reaching into my port-side pocket and withdrawing a handful of sand. I flung it into his face, then made a very hasty retreat. He screamed in frustration and brought the hand holding the net to his eyes, which were now gritty with grains. He rubbed, he blinked, and—doubly angry—he turned to face me again.
“I will kill you even more slowly for that,” he hissed.
Slowly he approached.
Slowly I circled.
Slowly he countered and moved closer.
Slowly I prayed.
Slowly he whirled the net above his head, preparing to cast it.
Slowly I prepared to die.
Slowly he rose from the earth and ascended to the treetops.
For, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, dear reader, it was Flying Sand I flung at him.
Helpless, he began to scream.
I had hoped to catch him off guard. To my great good luck, and unbeknownst to me at the time (I swear it!), he had a terrible fear of heights.
He dropped the net.
He dropped the spear.
He screamed for his brothers to help him down.
He was actually only thirty feet or so above the savanna. Sly Fox seized hold of the net and flung it back up to him. Lone Wolf reached for it, but the reaching threw him off balance.
He plummeted to earth, his head bounced off the grassy plain, and he soared even higher.
“Lone Wolf, breathe deeply, calm yourself!” I shouted up to him.
He was now hovering upside down. A few curious lions appeared on the edge of the plain and studied him.
“Get me down, boy!” he screamed again. “Get me down, get me down, GET ME DOWN!” And then he began to cry.
“I don’t want to die,” he squeaked in a very high falsetto.
I spoke quietly to him.
“Lone Wolf, take a breath—relax—tuck your knees to your chest and bring your feet below your hips.” I repeated this three more times before he heard me. After several tries he managed to turn himself upright. “Now will yourself to earth.” He looked down, tensed once again, closed his eyes, and very slowly, very very slowly, descended until he was but a foot or so above Sly Fox, who reached up, grabbed an ankle, and gave a sharp tug. Lone Wolf fell on top of his second, and both men toppled to the earth in a tangle of arms and legs and fishing net.
Sadly, Lone Wolf suffered an accident of the bowels.
* * *
And so Peter and I returned to the Underground Home that night, triumphant.
“You should have seen it, Tink!” Peter cried. “You would have loved it!”
He listened for a moment.
“She says you owe her your undying gratitude.”
“Whatever for?”
“It was her Flying Sand you used.”
“Yes, well, I thank her for the use of her Sand, but it was my idea.”
“No it wasn’t.” Peter spoke as if he were Tink, without the regular pause needed for translation.
I looked at him.
“But it was, Peter. You didn’t tell me what to do, nor did Tink. I thought of it myself.”
He looked hurt, and a little bit astonished.
“So you’re still going through with it?”
“With what?”
“The wedding. Tink wants to know.”
“Of course I am. I love her. Tiger Lily, I love Tiger Lily.”
“But you owe Tink.”
“I don’t owe her a d—mned thing.”
There was a decidedly long silence.
“So you’ll be leaving us then?” His lower lip trembled.
“Peter, I told you, did you forget? I will come back to visit. As often as possible. We’ll play together. We’ll visit the mermaids. We’ll wrestle with Barnaby.”
“What about Tink?”
“What about Tink?”
“She loves you. She wants you for herself.”
I sighed.
“Peter, to be perfectly honest, I’ve never even seen Tink.”
He said nothing for a moment.
“Do you not believe in fairies?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, if Tink is real, then—” I stopped midsentence. “Peter, this is beside the point. This is not about Tink being real or not. I’m sure she is. I’m sure that, in time, my eyes will grow accustomed to things here, and she’ll be as plain as day. But what this is about is my love for Tiger Lily. I never thought it possible that I would ever love anyone, or anyone would ever love me.”
“I love you.”
“Not in this way. It’s all I’ve ever hoped for.”
He searched for another angle of attack. “But—Tiger Lily could be lying. Tink lies all the time. It’s common for women to lie and betray you. My mother betrayed me. You and I will always be true to each other.”
“What do you mean your mother betrayed you? I thought you didn’t remember your mother, except that she was bigger than you.”
Silence.
“I do remember some things.”
“Yes, well—” I didn’t know what else to say. Finally: “Peter, you’re my friend. I care for you in one way and I care for Tiger Lily in another way. I’m not betraying you by marrying her. I’ll always be your friend.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Hope to die?”
“I never hope to die. Living here, I hope to never die.”
He looked at me, then at Tink’s Cottage. Then he lay down and closed his eyes. I lay down beside him. Exciting as the day had been, I was exhausted.
As we both were drifting off to sleep, he said to no one in particular: “Things change. I hate that.” He sounded very sad.
* * *
Over the next week, our relationship returned to normal. Peter forgot everything, or so it seemed. He was cheerful, playful, filling every waking moment with fun. We Barnabyed, we mermaided, we even rode on the back of a tiger (very briefly). Finally the moon reached its fullness, and it was time for the wedding.
I wanted to walk to the village, but Peter said he would wait and fly that evening. I was to warn the natives that he would be coming by air, so that they should not shoot him. I set off at dawn.
It was a glorious hike, that walk alone. I thought of where I’d come from and what I was to become. I thought of my mother and my father on their wedding day. Had they been excited? Nervous? Did they love each other as much as Tiger Lily and I did?
As I crossed the Serpentine I spotted the rainbow serpent and nodded hello. It hissed a friendly hello in return. I passed Barnaby and his two cubs. I waved and they waved back. I wondered then where Barnaby’s mate was, and why he was raising the children. There seemed to be a tremendous number of motherless children on these islands. I thought of Daisy, and wondered if perhaps I might retrieve her before the ceremony and bring her as my honored guest, but I was certain she wouldn’t understand. Besides, her presence might cause confusion among those (and there were many) who distrusted crocodiles.
I arrived in the village late in the afternoon. A great pit had been dug for the wedding feast fire. An enormous spit was in place, waiting for whatever fish were to be roasted. The women were busy chopping, baking, preparing. The men were practicing the wedding dance, a complicated ritual involving high kicks, head butts, and a peculiar wiggling motion of the buttocks. Lone Wolf was off netting the Catch of the Night. The wedding was to take place at midnight, under the full moon. I retired to Blue Bonnet’s thatched hut to prepare.
I was given a native-dyed cloth of indigo to wrap around my waist. My trousers by now were pretty well worn out, and when I handed them to Blue Bonnet (I was modestly concealed behind a partition), I realized that in saying goodbye to them I was bidding farewell to the last remnant of my English life. I was an island child now—no, an island man. I kept the pocket watch, of course, tucked in the pouch Tiger Lily had given me. The bag was dangling like a locket over the center of my chest. I called the watch “my father’s watch”—which it very well may have been—and I imagined that its constant ticking was a reminder to my heart that my father, in spirit, was always with me.
Once I had finished dressing, Blue Bonnet—as my surrogate mother—presented me with the ceremonial Wedding Knife, a short sharp blade I would use to cut the Wedding Liana that symbolically bound Tiger Lily to her parents. She then gave me back my trousers and told me to cast them into the small fire burning in the center of her tent. I suddenly remembered my mother’s wedding ring and used the Wedding Knife to slice open the stitching of my starboard trouser cuff. I took out the ring and tucked the knife into the waist of my indigo wrap. I promised to burn my trousers after the ceremony. I was anxious to meet my bride.
Great Panther was in mourning, a ritual seclusion enacted by every bride’s father for three days before the service. As the sun set and cast a beautiful hibiscus shade of pink over the sea, I was to spend the final hours of bachelorhood with my future mate—we were called the “individuals-not-yet-as-one”—so that we could share any secrets from our past that needed to be told and carefully consider one last time whether the choice to join together was the right one. There was no shame in calling off the wedding, even at this late stage. Once the vows were said, however, we were not permitted to hold anything back from each other.
I met her on the promontory. She was even lovelier than the hibiscus-pink sunset.
“You’re the first person I ever kissed,” I confessed. “Apart from my mother, of course. But I thought about kissing others. Before I met you.”
“I kissed Lone Wolf. Many times,” she confessed. “I think I liked it. A little bit. I know he did.”
“There’s a mermaid I frolicked with. We didn’t do anything naughty, but I thought about it.”
“Was it Josephine?”
“How did you know?”
“She frolics with everyone. Every man, I mean. She’s very fond of Lone Wolf. He’s told me all about her bosom.”
“I’m glad yours isn’t as—enormous. She frightens me sometimes.”
Tiger Lily lowered her face to hide her blush.
“I thought for a moment of running away,” she confessed. “When the crocodile attacked you. I knew I could escape, but I also knew that if you had died, I would never be able to live with myself. I had to risk staying with you, perhaps dying with you, if I hoped to stay true to me. Can you forgive me for wavering?”
“We all waver. What’s important is making the right choice in the end. I love you, Tiger Lily. For me, that is the right choice. I would have died happy, knowing I saved you.”
She said nothing further. She took my hand and we gazed out to sea. The moon had risen, and the path of its reflection led across the water like a trail to heaven.
“Here,” I said to her and held out my mother’s wedding ring.
“James, it’s beautiful. Where did you get it?”
“It belonged to my mother. My father gave it to her on their wedding day. I want you to have it.”
She studied it in the moonlight.
“It says something. It’s difficult to read—”
“To My Eternal Love.”
“Is that me?” she asked with a teasing smile.
“Oh yes.”
She was quiet for a moment. “What’s ‘eternal’?” she asked.
“It means ‘forever.’ It means that something will never change. Like here. Like this place. Everyone who lives here, it seems, will live forever.”
She caught the hesitation in my voice.
“But that’s good, isn’t it?”
“It is for us. It is for our love. I know with all my heart and being that, wherever we are, my love for you will never change.”
She smiled. She leaned in close and kissed me softly on the lips.
It was then that Peter struck.
* * *
He swooped down from the heavens, planting the flats of his palms on our shoulders, and pushing us out into the air. Tiger Lily screamed. We plummeted toward the rocks below.
I reached for my pockets, hoping to find some Flying Sand that might save us, but of course there were no pockets, there was no sand. Just before we struck, he swooped under me to lift me up, as he had lifted me from the crow’s nest, and in his arms I flew heavenward. Tiger Lily did not.
“Peter! No! What are you doing?” I pushed against him.
“They were going to eat you! They were going to roast you on a spit and eat you! Tink heard them planning it! She flew ahead and raced back to tell me! Tiger Lily was going to betray you!”
I hit him. I clenched my hands into fists and struck him in the face again and again. He looked astonished, and finally released me. I dropped ten feet to the promontory, knocking the wind from my chest. Peter landed beside me. There were tears on his cheeks. His nose was bleeding from my furious fists, and his tears mixed with the blood.
I scrambled on hands and knees to the promontory edge and looked down. I saw only jagged rocks in the moonlight, and the waves lashing against them. “Tiger Lily!” I cried. Then I turned to Peter and drew forth the Wedding Knife.
“Liar! You’re not my friend! You killed her! You’re my enemy!”
I raised the knife to stab him.
He was shocked. “I saved you, James,” he said ever so softly.
I did not strike. I should have, but I did not.
* * *
I raced back to Blue Bonnet’s tent, to search my trouser pockets for any grains of Flying Sand that remained. I rubbed what I found over my chest, into my hair. Then I took off, flying out of the tent into the air across to the promontory and down to the rocks below.
Tiger Lily lay among them, broken, not yet dead. I held her and sobbed. She reached up and touched my cheek, catching a tear on the tip of her finger and then bringing it to her lips, as if to taste me one final time. Then she opened her hand and held out the wedding ring.
“To My Eternal Love,” she whispered.
* * *
Carrying her in my arms, I returned to the camp, and placed her broken body at her father’s feet. Now he had an honest reason to mourn.
It was Sunflower who spoke.
“You’ve come back,” she said with bitterness. “You who are One with the Great White Father. He came among us, bringing Death. He descended in the Well and now has risen again. Bringing Death. Always bringing Death.”
I could not meet her eyes. My eyes instead met Lone Wolf’s, and I knew he hated me forever now. They all did. I never told them what had happened or who had done this to their beloved—I was still in too great a shock. Instead I looked one last look at Tiger Lily, then turned and marched to the lip of the Deep Well.
On the third finger of my starboard hand I placed the wedding ring.
Then I descended once again, never to return.
* * *
I know that the Scotsman’s book claims that I tried to drown her in the lagoon, and that Peter saved her life. Can you imagine what I felt on reading such a lie? It was he who betrayed me, not I her. I will never trust a man or boy again, I thought, or love another woman.
Never. Never again.
* * *
By the underground lake I met Daisy. She came to me at once, as if she understood. I could tell she had been nesting on the little island, for she was covered with sand. She floated in the air before me now and nestled in the hollow of my clavicle.
It was then I realized—you, dear reader, may have guessed long ago, but only now did I guess—that the treasure of the island, the treasure marked on my father’s map and guarded by the dragon, was not buried in the sand; it was the Sand itself.
I swam to the islet and scooped some up, filling the pouch that held the watch (which I now fastened by its chain around my neck), then peppering myself with as many grains as I thought would last the night. Daisy followed as I flew from the islet to the ceiling of the cavern, then squeezed through the narrow crack. Its passage led to a rocky ledge below the promontory, several hundred feet above the sea. Inviting Daisy to join me, I turned toward the stars of Peter’s Liana and willed myself up. It was the second star I was aiming for, not the starboard one (on the right) but the one that was port side, to the left, the sinister guiding light. I would fly until dawn, if that were possible, and perhaps I would die on the way. But if I did not die I might succeed in leaving this wretched archipelago forever.
When the sun rose, God willing, I would be in England.