Tigerlilja Read online

He only nodded, listening to the fighting outside. Suddenly he spun and dashed across the way, then dove through the strong timbers of the lodge’s doorway and rolled to his feet. Tigerlilja watched with her heart in her throat, but he made it without getting hit. She took her own deep breath and then spun her shoulders out into the commons, exactly as Mother had.

  The village had become a nightmare.

  Fire burned all along the outer row of homes, thick smoke belching into the early morning air. Painted skull-faces hovered beneath dead animal heads, grinning sickly in the dancing light of the flames. And, everywhere, men and women screamed. In terror. In defiance. In anguish.

  She saw Father at the edge of the village. An opening appeared for the space of three heartbeats, and one of the skull-men raised an axe over his head. That was all she needed. Tigerlilja shot without hesitation, hitting him once through his exposed armpit and again through his leg, and the man fell. Then the fighting closed in again, and Father disappeared.

  She fired whenever she found a clean shot, but it wasn’t nearly as often as she would have liked. The men and women fighting by hand moved fast, ducking and dodging and raising shields that saved their lives, but that also got in Tigerlilja’s way. And then the skulls began to appear closer, ducking between the rows of buildings, coming for the archers.

  Coming for her and for Vegard and for Mother.

  She killed one just three buildings away. And then another, even closer. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a third, sprinting out beside the lodge, heading straight for Vegard. Tigerlilja gasped and fired on pure instinct, felling the man at Vegard’s feet, but then she screamed and leaped backward as a fourth materialized right in front of her. She hadn’t seen him at all, focused instead on her brother.

  She grabbed desperately for her axe, but the man fell to his knees and toppled face-first in front of her, with two of Vegard’s arrows protruding from the back of his neck. Her heart was beating so fast it felt like it might burst out of her chest, and she struggled to steady her nerves from the shock of it. She stared at the body, lying half in and half out of the house. She hadn’t even seen him.

  And then Vegard was there, beside her, saying something. What was he saying?

  “Grab his other arm,” Vegard repeated.

  She shook herself and reached for the skull-man. Together, they dragged him in to clear the doorway, until he lay fully inside, oozing blood onto the floor of their home. Draining. Like a deer, after its heart had stopped. She was glad he was still facedown.

  “We can’t let them get the sword.”

  Tigerlilja looked at her brother, breathed deeply, and brought him into focus. It’s all right, she told herself. I only missed the skull-man because I was protecting Vegard. And Vegard protected me in return. We stood together. It wasn’t a mistake.

  But it still felt like a mistake. She should have at least known the man was coming.

  “What?” she asked him. “What sword?”

  “Taiga’s sword!” Vegard said, grabbing her shoulders. “We have to keep it safe!”

  “The sword?” He couldn’t be serious. That old relic? They had to protect their people! She picked up her axe, but Vegard stopped her.

  “Yes. The sword. Take it and get to the docks. I’ll hold them off until I’m sure you can make it. Then, I’ll follow you.”

  “You’re just sending me on a stupid errand because I almost died,” Tigerlilja protested. “I’m fine. I can fight!”

  “It’s not a stupid errand! It’s the heart of the clan! Tigerlilja, please! I promise I’ll follow you! It’s been our sacred duty for generations! Think! What would Amma say?”

  Tigerlilja knew what she would say, and she knew Vegard was right.

  “All right. But you have to meet me at the docks! You have to promise!”

  “I already promised,” he told her, releasing a hard breath in relief, “and I promise again. Get the sword, and wait for my signal.”

  She raced to Mother and Father’s bedroom and opened the sturdy wooden chest at the foot of the bed. Reverently, she pulled out the sword, and then she caught her breath.

  It was glowing. Faintly, but without question, a blue aura shimmered along its edge. It had never done that before.

  “Vegard,” she said, bringing it to him. “Look!”

  Just then, a skull-woman wearing a wolf pelt burst through the door, and the sword came alive in her hands. Tigerlilja stepped forward, almost as though pulled by it, lunging past Vegard. The sword sliced its way through the chainmail of the skull-woman’s chest guard as though it were mere cloth, and the woman fell to the ground, already dead.

  Tigerlilja and Vegard stared down at the body, and then at the sword in Tigerlilja’s hands.

  “It’s real,” Tigerlilja whispered.

  Vegard’s eyes locked onto hers. “Keep it safe.”

  Tigerlilja could only nod.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She nodded again.

  “Then go!”

  Tigerlilja felt as though gentle hands had taken hold of her, guiding her as calmly as a mother lifting a child from a warm bath. She moved quickly, but with no sense of speed, racing through the village and then bursting out between two burning buildings. Not even a cinder fell upon her shoulders.

  There they were: the docks, and the boats. She looked back over her shoulder to see Vegard fire a protective shot, and then he was running behind her, trying to catch up.

  She reached the docks well before him, her boot heels clomping along the wooden planks. But before she could reach the boat, the sword stopped her, right in the middle of the dock, and it pulled her arms toward the sky.

  There was a strange scent in the air. It smelled of cool water in the back of a cave. And of the taste of pickles. And of the color green.

  What?

  Tigerlilja looked up to find a man hovering in the air before her. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, with features as clean and perfect as though the gods themselves had chiseled him out of stone, and hawk-like wings that extended from his shoulders.

  But then he smiled at her, and his fangs gleamed in the morning light.

  “I believe you have what I’ve been looking for,” he told her, and his eyes ran along the length of Taiga’s blade.

  “No!” she shouted, returning to her senses. She pulled the sword back, preparing to fight him if he attacked, and even though the sword seemed to resist her, she wrestled it to her will. “Don’t come any closer!”

  “Challenge accepted!” he shouted, and then he laughed.

  But it wasn’t the laugh she expected. It wasn’t cruel, or vicious. It was a laugh just like Vegard’s, when they used to play with their carved toy boats in the river. When they were children.

  It surprised her so much that she stopped to stare at him in wonder. And then he moved. Faster than any man she had ever seen. In the blink of an eye he had descended before her. She heard Vegard yelling her name, and she saw the strange flying man reach for the sword. Before she could pull away, his hand closed around the hilt, directly over her own.

  And then everything disappeared.

  f you have never been magically transported in a single instant from one place to another, suffice it to say that it’s a lot to take in. Especially if you weren’t expecting it. So for a long moment, both Tigerlilja and Peter Pan did nothing at all. They simply stood where they were, stunned, his hand still closed over hers on the hilt of the sword.

  The dock upon which Tigerlilja had been standing had been replaced by a beach, wide and empty. The river was gone, and in its stead lay a brilliant green jungle, spread out before her, with mountains rising in the distance. Bare mountains, without a hint of snow, even on their highest peaks.

  She caught a glimpse of movement at the edge of her vision and flicked her eyes toward it, turning her chin just a bit, without moving anything else. She realized with a start that it was the ocean, spread out behind her in an endless blue horizon, its gentle
waves caressing the shore upon which she stood.

  Her eyes snapped back to glare at the flying man. “What have you done?” she demanded, but he spoke to her in the exact same moment.

  “Where are we?” he wanted to know.

  Her gaze narrowed. She hadn’t done this. What game was he playing?

  A hundred of Amma’s tales, wild and ancient, ran through her mind at once, and she wondered if this was all an illusion. She hoped it was an illusion. But she suspected that it wasn’t. The air was warm and humid here, without any of the bite she was used to. And it smelled of the sea.

  “Who are you?” she asked him.

  “Me?” he replied, although there was no one else present whom she might have been asking. “Why, I’m Peter! Peter Pan!” He released the sword and bowed deeply, holding her gaze and grinning all the while.

  Tigerlilja snatched the weapon away as soon as he let it go, twisting her body to shield it from him, but he made no move to grab it again. He just straightened up from his bow, watching her with a look of mild curiosity.

  “This is the part,” he told her, “where you’re supposed to tell me who you are.”

  Tigerlilja said nothing. She twisted her left foot back and forth just the tiniest bit, hoping against hope that she would feel the wooden planks of the dock. But the sand was all too real. She could feel it moving beneath her boot. She even heard its faint swishing as it shifted and slid, the sound almost lost beneath the motion of the water behind her.

  But she still should have heard the village, shouldn’t she? Even if this was all some sort of vision. The waves weren’t strong enough to drown out the sounds of battle. The roar of the flames. And Vegard’s voice, shouting her name.

  Vegard! And Father, fighting hand-to-hand against the skull-men! The memories came flooding in as the shock began to recede.

  “Send me back!” she demanded, but Peter only tilted his head, watching her quizzically.

  “Don’t you want to explore this place?” he asked.

  “Look, send me back and you can have the sword,” she tried again. “I need to get back to my family. That’s all that matters.” She didn’t like making the offer. The sword had been in her family for generations. But nothing was worth risking the lives of her clan.

  “Family?” he asked. “What’s that?”

  Tigerlilja wanted to scream in frustration. She didn’t have time to waste with this winged man, whoever or whatever he was.

  “Father. Mother. Sister. Brother. The people you live with,” she tried, but he showed no sign of understanding. “The people you can always count on, no matter what. I have to get back to them!”

  Just then, several creatures burst through the foliage at the far edge of the beach, flying toward them over the sand at an alarming rate. They were quite small, she soon realized—small enough to curl up in the palm of her hand—but there was a whole swarm of them, which made them seem frightening, despite their size.

  As they drew closer, they split into three groups. Four flew to her left, five to her right, and another four approached Peter, who did not seem intimidated in the slightest.

  Once they were close, Tigerlilja could see that they looked like tiny, perfect humans with wings, very much like Peter himself, except that these wings looked more like a dragonfly’s than a hawk’s, thin and glistening in the sun. One of them flew straight up to her nose and began chittering away, clearly angry, her hair shimmering from gold to blood red.

  Tigerlilja jerked her head back in surprise, and then a tiny line formed between her brows as she stared at the creature in wonder. The miniature tirade sounded like an entire chorus of jingling bells.

  “What are you?” Tigerlilja whispered.

  The creature paused and scowled, her tiny chest heaving, then launched back into her scolding, her hair turning an even deeper shade of red.

  “Can you really not understand her?” Peter Pan asked.

  “What?” Tigerlilja turned toward him.

  “She’s an innisfay,” he told Tigerlilja. “Or, at least, that’s what you would call her. They all are. They’re the guardians of this island, here to help me, appointed to the task by my mother. You just mentioned that word. What is that?”

  “A mother?” Tigerlilja asked. It seemed a strangely common word not to know, no matter how foreign he was.

  “Yes,” he affirmed.

  “She’s part of a family. The one who…” Tigerlilja trailed off. The one who gave birth to you, she thought. Suddenly, she realized just how vulnerable she was, standing on this deserted beach in front of a full-grown man (a winged man, to be sure, but a man nonetheless) without the strength of the clan to protect her. She decided she wasn’t about to bring up the subject of babies. “She’s one of the people you can always count on, no matter what,” she said instead.

  “Well, that sounds grand! I shall have to find her, whoever she is.” Without warning, he turned and addressed the angry innisfay. “In the meantime, I intend to explore this island. If you’d like to help, as you say, you can get me my sword back and then show me your village.”

  “No!” Tigerlilja pulled the sword in closer to her hip. “You can’t have it until you send me back!”

  “It’s a fair offer,” he acknowledged, “but I have no idea how to do that.”

  As he spoke, the angry creature turned into a miniature dragon and darted down to bite Tigerlilja in the thumb, her razor-sharp teeth chomping straight to the bone.

  Tigerlilja cried out in pain and dropped the sword, reaching for the creature with her other hand, but the thing let go of her thumb and flew out of reach. The dragon turned back into a natural innisfay, flitted down to the sword, which now lay on the ground at Tigerlilja’s feet, and blew a tiny fistful of dust onto its blade. To Tigerlilja’s amazement, the sword rose into the air and flew to Peter’s hand.

  The innisfay flashed a devilish smile at Peter, making him laugh.

  “From now on, you shall be my mother!” Peter told the small creature. “I can count on you already, and we’ve only just met!”

  “That isn’t how it works,” Tigerlilja growled, gripping the wound with her other hand as blood dripped down her wrist.

  “No?” Peter asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, no matter. You can be my family, regardless,” he told the innisfay. “Not my mother, but one of those other things she said. My first family. The one I can count on, no matter what.”

  The innisfay chimed again—a happy trill of notes that ran up and down the scale like wildfire—and her hair shimmered back into gold.

  ome,” said Peter to the innisfay. “Show me the island and all its many wonders!”

  “No!” Tigerlilja shouted. “We’re going back! Right now!”

  She let go of her thumb and grabbed the wrist of his hand that now held the sword, smearing his skin with her blood in the process. He looked down at it, apparently unconcerned, and a strange expression flitted across his face, disappearing just as quickly.

  The tiny creature that was now Peter’s family flew up at her again, but Tigerlilja tried to snatch her out of the air with her free hand and the creature shot away.

  “If you bite me again, I swear on Thor’s hammer I will crush the life out of you!”

  Peter’s face darkened at that, and he took a step toward her, baring his fangs, but Tigerlilja was too angry to let go.

  “Do not threaten my family,” he snarled.

  “Then don’t threaten mine!” Tigerlilja snapped back. “That was my brother on the dock! My whole family is fighting for their lives while we stand here talking! I could lose them all! Send me back!”

  She leaned toward him and screamed the final words into his face, overcome with her growing sense of desperation. Peter’s eyes widened, and he tried to step away from her in surprise. But Tigerlilja gripped his wrist even harder.

  “Lose them,” Peter whispered, the words barely loud enough for her to hear. That look crossed his face again—a brief
window onto stunned devastation and unspeakable loss. But then, just as quickly, it disappeared.

  “A battle would be a grand adventure!” he announced with a grin. “I have decided to help you!”

  “What?” Tigerlilja stared at him, confused.

  “With your battle, of course! We must go at once!”

  He looked around for the little creature and found her hovering behind his head, where she had been glaring at Tigerlilja over the top of his left ear.

  “You,” he said. “Family. What is your name?”

  She answered in bells and chimes.

  “Why, that’s a lovely name!” Peter said, and the creature's hair took on a new sparkle. He turned back to Tigerlilja. “You may call her Tinker Bell, since you can’t speak like the innisfay.”

  “Are you serious? It doesn’t matter what her name is. Stop wasting time and tell her to take me back home.”

  “That isn’t a very nice way to ask,” Peter told her.

  “Now!” Tigerlilja shouted.

  Peter narrowed his eyes at her but then turned his attention back to Tinker Bell. “Tinker Bell, my beloved family.” He bowed to the tiny creature, and Tigerlilja was finally forced to let go of his wrist. She placed her hands on her hips, mindless of the blood, and glared at them both.

  “Would you be so kind,” he continued, “as to accompany me on an epic adventure to save the family of…”

  He turned back to Tigerlilja. “You still haven’t told me your name.”

  “Tigerlilja,” she snapped.

  “To save the family of Tigerlilja?” he finished.

  Tinker Bell turned bright red and chittered away in angry, discordant chimes.

  “Well, if you don’t like her, and she wants to leave anyway,” Peter suggested, “this would be an excellent chance to be rid of her, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Tinker Bell’s hair dulled a bit while she considered Peter’s logic. When she finally did reply, the rest of the innisfay who still hovered all around them exploded into a cacophony of terrifying proportions, the hair on all their heads turning a horrible shade of purplish red.

  “Now, just who’s supposed to be in charge here? You, or me?” Peter demanded, looking from one to another of the small flying creatures.