Tiger Lily
things he’d obviously collected. Drawings. Feathers and shells. Another half carving of a mermaid that looked like it had come from the stern of one of the Englanders’ ships. Beside his bedroll, a little clay hand-fashioned cup. Scratchy spun blankets were piled at one corner. A flute. And lots of tiny carvings lying all over the place, whittled out of wood. They were all of birds. There must have been thirty or forty of them, but none quite done.
    “I hate sitting still. I can’t sit still long enough to come close to finishing anything.” He looked around the room self-consciously. “The boys want to sleep here too, but I can’t stand anyone sleeping next to me. It makes me itch,” he said.
    I flitted over to a carving of a seagull, and rested against its wing.
    A book of some sort, perhaps stolen from the stone house, sat in a place of honor on a rough-hewn bench by the door as a decoration.
    “Where are your families?” Tiger Lily asked.
    Peter smiled, ran a hand through his bed-smushed hair so that it spiked to the left, then shrugged and slouched. “We don’t have them. We don’t want them.”
    Tiger Lily studied him evenly. He was a mystery to both of us. His thoughts were still a dark jumble, and I had a feeling they were always that way, even when he felt peaceful. “Where did you come from?” she asked.
    “Some of the boys were brought from England,” Peter said, and a shadow came and went across his pale face as he looked over at Slightly. Then he brightened. “My parents died in a sinking and I floated to shore on a luggage trunk. Nibs and I have been here for years.” He seemed to remember something, and disappeared from the room.
    “We hide from the pirates here,” Slightly said, speaking low, clearly so that Peter wouldn’t hear.
    “If they found us,” Tootles murmured, “we’d all be dead.”
    Slightly thwacked him on the shoulder, and Tootles winced.
    “They hate us,” one of the twins said. “They want us exterminated.”
    I heard now the fear in their brightness. It trickled along underneath them like a secret spring.
    They all got quiet. Tiger Lily wondered why the pirates hated them, but didn’t find her voice to ask. Then Peter returned and they all brightened. Curly’s eyes drifted to me, and I could tell that he was never happy unless he was fiddling with something or smushing something or breaking something. Nibs reached up and touched the feather in Tiger’s Lily hair. She jerked away.
    “Did you find that feather yourself?” Nibs asked, undeterred. She nodded.
    “You should keep it.” He smiled. “It suits you.” She softened.
    “You have hairy arms,” Tootles said. “Girls aren’t supposed to.”
    “She’s hairier than you,” Slightly said to Tootles.
    A blush ran across Tiger Lily’s face, though she kept her gaze even. She thought of the photos of the English ladies she’d seen, smooth and white, and for a moment, it made her sad.
    “Quiet!” Peter said, glancing at her expression. The boys looked abashed. “Get out of here. Go find something to do.” The boys shuffled off forlornly. “I’m sorry,” Peter said, his shoulders slumped self-consciously. “Don’t leave. They don’t know any girls. That’s why I invited you.”
    “I don’t care what they say,” she said, though she did care.
    “I think your arms are lovely, Tiger Lily,” Nibs said loudly over his shoulder on his way out, making it worse.
    “I have to go,” she said. Through a tiny smoke hole in the room, she could see that the sky was darkening with the afternoon rain on the way. And she had what she’d come for. And she was still alive. She didn’t know why she felt suddenly sad.
    Peter looked regretful. He peered around the room, seemed to be thinking of how he could change her mind. But finally he said, “I’ll walk you.”
    I considered trying to regurgitate that morning’s gnat breakfast on Curly’s head before we left, but I followed Peter and Tiger Lily out

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