Free Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

about the same age as some of the teenage warriors of Tiger Lily’s tribe, they moved and spoke like they were of a different species altogether. In her tribe, the boys were very determined to act like men. They stood straight, didn’t talk much to girls, and followed a strict code. These boys were more like animals than boys, even in the way they pushed and muttered at each other as they moved in a gaggle behind Peter. There were weapons perched in nooks and crannies—some of the blades with old browned bloodstains—next to decks of cards, dreamy drawings in charcoal, and little exquisite but half-finished carvings of beasts and faeries. Straw beds had been separated haphazardly into different areas of the burrow, as if the boys hadn’t counted on wanting to live separately when they’d first built it, and only recently pushed themselves as far apart from each other as possible. Still, on one of the beds there was a worn home-sewn toy in the shape of a rabbit, and lying on a pillow, as if it had just been played with, a model of a ship.
    Peter moved as if he couldn’t get to each place quickly enough. He chopped his words off at the last consonant, as if it took too long to get the whole word out. And he had a habit of rubbing his index and middle finger back and forth across his bottom lip, which constantly drew my attention there and made me slightly giddy. The others clearly felt it too, because as they walked he was completely surrounded—the boys gravitated wherever he moved. He let out several loud rough laughs at their jokes, then turned to Tiger Lily to see if she was upset by the laughter.
    I had heard rumors all my life that the lost boys could fly, and that they kept and tortured prisoners, but so far, I saw no evidence of either. They kept their feet on the ground, and they seemed only too happy to show every corner of the burrow, which looked to be prisonerless.
    In the room where, Nibs explained, they prepared their meals, we suddenly came upon a baby, just lying on a lump of blankets in a trough.
    “Oh”—Nibs’s eyes widened—“I forgot. Sorry, Baby.” He picked up the baby, then held it out to Tiger Lily. “This is Baby. Our baby. It seemed too much of a commitment to name him anything else.”
    He reached toward her, and Tiger Lily immediately crossed her arms to avoid having the bundle put into her hands. She was terrified of holding babies. She didn’t like the way they squirmed, like holding a worm.
    “Why do you have a baby?” she asked. Her voice was almost as low and deep as the boys’.
    “She speaks,” one of the twins said to the other.
    “Peter found him after a pirate raid,” Nibs said. “He’s softhearted. Couldn’t let him starve to death. We love him, but it’s hard. Sometimes we forget him someplace and have to go back for him. Curly loves to dress him up. Today he’s supposed to be a maggot.” I had run into my share of maggots burrowing through rotten logs. Other than wearing brown, the baby looked nothing like a maggot, but Curly grinned with pride.
    Suddenly, while Tiger Lily was unguarded, Nibs thrust Baby into her arms. He squirmed, blinked up at her sleepily, then began to scream. The boys all watched, waiting for her to do something, but she stood stiff. “Don’t cry,” she said finally, holding the baby out at arm’s length. “Don’t cry, Baby.” Her words only seemed to make him scream louder. Finally, Tiger Lily lunged toward the trough and put the baby back into it and backed away, trying to pretend like he didn’t exist. One of the twins appeared with a bottle and leaned over him, and soon he was quiet.
    Pan didn’t seem to notice any of it—he was studying a hangnail on his thumb and chewing on it. Finally he looked up and walked on, in his half-graceful, half-ungainly walk, and we came to his room.
    It was separate from the others, with a piece of cloth over the entranceway and candles stuck into nooks in the walls. It was stuffed with