Peaches

be, and that rushing through anything would be an insult and a waste. “And you should be thinking of other things. You’re getting too old to run wild like you do. Clean yourself up. Brush your hair. Try to look like a girl.”
    “I will, if you try to look like a man.”
    He smiled wryly, because they both knew how impossible that was; he didn’t have it in him. Tik Tok was as womanly as a man could ever be, and everyone just accepted it, like they accepted the color of the sky, and the fact that night followed the daytime. Grudgingly, he gave Tiger Lily a puff of his pipe. They sat and watched the colors outside the window. From my perch on a shelf, I inhaled the unfurling wisps as they dissipated: the tobacco made the colors thick, the smells richer. Outside, visible through the window, everyone was dispersing from the fire. The girls were walking ahead and the boys were running to catch up. There was, as always, a dance going on between them, one that I’d never seen Tiger Lily take part in.
    She lay on her back and pushed her feet against the wall, wiped a layer of sweat from her neck though the air was chilly. She tapped her feet at the wall in a troubled rhythm.
    Tik Tok gave her a knowing look. “You’re restless. Everything is too small for you, including your own body. That’s what it’s like to be fifteen. I remember.”
    There was a noise in the doorway and they both glanced up to see Pine Sap, pale, with Moon Eye behind him looking pensive and sorry, the way she often did.
    “They’ve decided to let the Englander die,” he said.

    I was asleep on a leaf by the main fire when I heard her come out of her hut.
    She went to the river to wash, after everyone else had gone to bed. Crocs sometimes made their way this far inland, but I knew she wasn’t as scared of them as some of the others, and that she liked to swim alone, after dark. Following her back to her house, I saw there was one candle burning among the huts. Pine Sap’s. He was probably up working on a project, or thinking his deep thoughts. I knew, from nights I’d slept in the village, that he was an insomniac.
    When Tiger Lily emerged again from her house and into the square, she’d gathered up a bagful of food.
    She set out before the sun came up, her arrows strapped to her back.
    I watched her go, intrigued, but also sleepy, comfortable and content. I fell back to sleep before I even thought of following her.

Chapter Two
    B efore he ran out on me and my mother for a twinkly-eyed nymph named Belladonna, my father told me a few things. He said rotten logs were the best places for mosquitoes. He told me humans weren’t to be trusted. And he warned me to stay clear of Peter Pan.
    It was when he was tracing for me which parts of the island were forbidden territory, and which weren’t. He had called him Pan first. He signaled to me, in a form of language only faeries know: He can fly. He has horns. He eats men. And he will kill you if he sees you.
    I learned more from the other faeries after that. My childhood friend Mirabella and I used to think about it before bed. We had never seen the lost boys; we didn’t know quite what they were—ghosts or demons or living men. They were the only creatures in the forest we couldn’t find to spy on, but they left evidence of themselves: carcasses of beasts and prey in their wake, and sometimes a pirate skull dangling from a tree. They left their tracks everywhere and sometimes left muddy handprints and the occasional curious artifact—like a papier-mâché mask or a tiny wooden sailing ship—to remind us of their presence. Sometimes the wind carried their yells and hoots to us while we lay in our cozy nooks, deep inside rotting hollow logs. They seemed to know the forest better than we did, and we knew the forest like we knew our own wings. These boys were famous for their violence; they were known to eat wild animals raw with their bared teeth, and to steal girls who wandered alone. Imagining what happened to these human girls once they were stolen made me shudder. My father had told me never to go near their territory. Faeries and tribes alike called that part of the forest “Forbidden.”
    But after my father left, I had the irresistible urge to disobey every rule he’d ever given me. I’d fly all over the area I was supposed to avoid, looking for a thrilling glimpse of the boys, and when I got tired or hungry, I’d make a stop at the Sky Eaters’ village nearby, to eat the fleas