Pirates. Her father read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island with her after they went to see the ships in the harbor. She’d loved the story, and asked her mama to tell her a story about pirates too. Her mother’s stories were always made up from her head instead of out of a book, but they felt just as real as anything written down, like they’d always existed and her mother was just remembering them.

She used to beg her mother to show her the book the stories came from, certain she must be hiding it somewhere, just knowing it would be full of the most wonderful and terrifying illustrations. All the stories fit together, all of them about the adventures of a Little White Bird and a Clever Tailor. Absolutely anything could happen in her mother’s stories.

Once she understood there really was no book her mother pulled them from, she didn’t see why the Little White Bird or Clever Tailor couldn’t meet a band of dastardly pirates in their next story. As soon as she’d suggested it though, her mother’s face had changed, a cloud coming down over her eyes, and she’d said that was enough stories for one night. She’d been afraid to ask for stories about pirates ever again.

There aren’t quite as many bedtime stories now that she’s older, but sometimes something she says will bring that same cloud-cover look into her mother’s eyes. She never knows which things those will be though, and what not to ask about. It isn’t that her mother yells, or even gets angry with her, but the silence that results is worse. It’s like her mother goes away in those moments, to somewhere where she might not be able to find her way back again.

“Come on.” Peter tugs her arm again, dragging her toward a line of trees.

High above them, a faint smudge like the palest of smoke hangs against the blue of the sky. Then the ground changes from sand to dirt, beaten flat by a thousand footsteps. It’s like entering a completely different world, a clear line drawn between the beach and beneath the trees. She glances up into the thick canopy overhead, catching a brief flash of red and blue that might be a bird. She tries to identify the trees by their leaves and bark, but nothing looks familiar, and Peter moves too quickly for her to get a proper look.

“This is where we live.” Peter stops so suddenly she crashes into him.