An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature
By: Alyson Tait
From low tide of the pirate cove all the way back to our camp, me and Peter ran, ignoring everything except each other and the traps we’d set because those weren’t for us. They were for grown-ups and other beasts: bear traps, swinging nets, and hidden pits with sticks we’d spent weeks sharpening. We didn’t stop until we reached our home tree. Staccato laughter punctuated gasps of air.
Peter boosted me, my foot pushing off his hands so I could grab a branch and climb. He jumped as if he weighed nothing and beat me to the top where we lay next to each other on thick branches and planks of wood, gulping air.
When we could breathe again, he turned to me, grinning. “They thought—” The rest of his sentence vanished beneath roaring laughter.
It’s impossible to know how long we stayed there laughing, catching our breaths, and talking in half-finished sentences about the raid on the pirates. The only marker of time was the sun disappearing, and in its place, the moon arrived, bringing friends with it. A hundred thousand million stars, and those were just the visible ones.
I asked Peter how many stars he thought there were. “Not just the obvious ones. How many total in all the universe?”
He shrugged. “Who cares? Wendy, you should leave that kinda stuff to the philosophers.” He stood and climbed down the tree, whistling a tune as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
And really, he didn’t. It was the best thing about him.
He didn’t care that he’d lost when we played cards that night, numbers barely visible in the moonlight—even when I’d played the queen of hearts. He never cared. Maybe because he never got tired, injured, or lost anything of great importance.
Sometimes, I wondered if he considered me of great importance. Was I worth him getting upset about? Would he grab that play sword of his and swing it at a pirate? Or a canyon if I fell in?
I almost asked but I knew what he’d say. The same thing he always said about questions like where the other kids were, how many stars there were, or why we never grew.
Leave it to the philosophers.
I didn’t need the philosophers for that one though—I just wanted his attention.
When dawn came, he didn’t sleep. Instead, he suggested we go swimming after breakfast.
The sun was bright overhead when our toes dipped into the water. I sat on the sand, nursing a stitch that pinched at my side because we’d traveled from one end of the island to the other with no dreams in between.
“The water’s warm!” Peter sang—taunted—from chest-deep in the lagoon.
“The water’s always warm!” I yelled back.
He shook his head. I could hear his thoughts. “Stop thinking so much.”
“So swim with me,” he said instead and grinned.
There was never any arguing with him, and I didn’t want to, I liked him too much.
So I swam.
We splashed and called out for the mermaids that liked to play sometimes and ignored everything else until my arms got tired and heavy. When I was halfway to the shore, Peter yelled. I assumed it was about me leaving his game, but something sharp scraped against my leg.
I picked up my pace.
The sharpness came again. A thin burning pain ripped across my calf from some wayward shark that’d ventured into the shallower water.
My fatigue drained away—my tiredness vanished as if it had never even been there.
Water splashed behind me, and impossibly, my aching arms pumped faster despite my lungs burning from the effort until I was safe on land.
“Peter!” I screamed, voice cracking.
I didn’t see him anywhere. Not a limb, finger, or single strand of hair.
The water went still.
I held my breath.
“Come up.” My heart thundered in my ears.
Panic came in waves. My vision went dark at the edges.
I’d escaped. Was it because the shark had feasted on Peter instead?
That meant my guide—my best friend—was gone.
A choking sob left my throat. “What do I do?” The thought was unfinished, swept out to sea with my heart and lungs.
Only the wind moved.
“Always so many questions, Wendy,” a laughing voice said behind me.
A startled scream tore out of me before I turned.
There he was.
My chest tightened and he grinned, as if the ocean hadn’t just threatened to take us away from each other. I slapped his arm for always scaring me.
His grin widened. “Too many questions, actually. Save some for the—”
“Maybe I’m the philosopher!” I said although I wasn’t sure what it meant. Not really.
I wanted to push him back into the water so he could feel fear too.
But then Peter laughed, and just like always, the sound took all my anger away.
When he caught his breath, we ran.
I ignored the scrape in my leg, and we ran all the way from the lagoon back to our tree. We didn’t slow down, not even to take a breath or watch the beasts that ran by. We tagged each other’s shoulders anytime the other got too far ahead, and both of us jumped over hidden pits, and we veered around the traps along the way so we didn’t get hurt because injuries meant less adventures—the worst possible thing to happen on Peter’s island.
When we reached the tree again, we flopped onto the grass, Peter laughing like always while I watched the sky. Clear, blue, and endless, like the ocean had been flipped upside down above us.
How many days of careless running did we have left? I glanced over, catching him staring at me with a grin. Maybe he was right. Maybe I didn’t need all the answers if I could still run with him, and maybe I should leave all those hard questions to the grown-ups.
And so with a grin, I decided I would.
About the author:
Alyson Tait was born and raised in the Southwest USA, where she walked alongside cactuses and scorpions before moving to Maryland. She now lives among the crabs with her partner, daughter, and multiple judgmental pets. She has appeared in (mac)ro(mic), HAD, and Pseudopod. She has chapbooks published by Querencia Press, Bottlecap Press, and Fahmidan Publishing, one book forthcoming with Graveside Press, and several novellas on Amazon.