“People say I'm not much of a girl either," Tiger Lily said.She thought of Tik Tok, who was fond of saying that people were all bits of each thing, boy and girl.”

“But Tik Tok believes everything's circular, including men and women. He says nature seems to go around and around, and that we all have bits of everything.”

“Later, Wendy would tell people on the ship that they had battled pirates. But she would never say that Tiger Lily had betrayed them, or that she had rescued them either. Because that would have meant asking a question she couldn't comprehend asking: why the native girl might have wanted her dead. It didn't fit her ideas of who was bad, and who was good, and what was a happy ending, and what wasn't.”

“He even listened to more than her sounds, because Tiger Lily was a girl of few words. He listened with his eyes, watched her facial expressions, judged body language, and therefore read Tiger Lily better than anyone else.”

“I'm not myself," she offered, guiltily. She softened around Tik Tok, and when she did she was, for those rare moments, girlish.He smiled. "You can never say that. You're just a piece of yourself right now that you don't like.”

“Everyone will think I'm ugly."Tik Tok smiled. "That's true. But we are a small village. We have narrow tastes. There's no telling who else in the world would think you're beautiful.”

“I began to see that Wendy had something Tiger Lily hadn't even known she was supposed to have. Of all the things Tiger Lily had thought she might have to be for Peter-strong, brave; to be big and to keep up-she had never thought that the one thing he wanted most from her was simply to show that she believed in him, always and without fail.”