Nation Read online

  They looked up at the dawn sky. The last of the stars looked back, but twinkled in the wrong language.

  “He will guide people?” said Pilu. “How does she know that? This is a powerful song!”

  “I think she’s making it up!” Ataba snapped.

  “Oh?” said Milo, turning on him. “Where did you come from? Do you think my son won’t be a great leader?”

  “Well, no, but I—”

  “Hold on, hold on,” said Pilu. “I think…he will seek to know what the stars mean, I’m pretty sure of that. And—look, I’m having to work hard on this, you know—because of this wondering, people won’t…be in the dark,” he finished quickly, and then added, “That was really hard to do, you know! My head aches! This is priest stuff!”

  “Quiet,” said Mau. “I just heard something….”

  They fell silent, and the baby cried again.

  “My son!” said Milo as the others cheered. “And he will be a great warrior!”

  “Er, I’m not sure it meant—” Pilu began.

  “A great man, anyway,” said Milo, waving a hand. “They say the birth song can be a prophecy, for sure. That type of language at this time…it’s telling us what will be, right enough.”

  “Do the trousermen have gods?” asked Mau.

  “Sometimes. When they remember—Hey, here she comes!”

  The outline of the ghost girl appeared in the stone entrance to the place.

  “Mr. Pilu, tell your brother he is the father of a little boy and his wife is well and sleeping.”

  That news was passed on with a whoop, which is easy to translate.

  “And he be called Twinkle?” Milo suggested, in broken English.

  “No! I mean, no, don’t. Not Twinkle,” said the ghost girl quickly. “That would be wrong. Very, very wrong. Forget about Twinkle. Twinkle, NO!”

  “Guiding Star?” said Mau, and that met with general approval.

  “That would be very auspicious,” said Ataba. He added, “Is there going to be beer, by any chance?”

  The choice was also translated for the ghost girl, who indicated that any name that wasn’t Twinkle was bound to be good. Then she asked—no, commanded—that the other young woman and her baby be brought up and all sorts of things carried to the Place from the wreck of the Sweet Judy. The men jumped to it. There was a purpose.

  …And now it was two weeks later, and a lot had happened. The most important thing was that time had passed, pouring thousands of soothing seconds across the island. People need time to deal with the now before it runs away and becomes the then. And what they need most of all is nothing much happening.

  And this is me, seeing all that horizon, Daphne thought, looking at the wash of blue that stretched all the way to the end of the world. My goodness, Father was right. If my horizon was any broader it would have to be folded in half.

  It’s a funny saying, “broaden your horizons.” I mean, there’s just the horizon, which moves away from you, so you never actually catch up with it. You only get to where it’s been. She’d watched the sea all around the world, and it had always looked pretty much the same.

  Or maybe it was the other way around; maybe you moved, you changed.

  She couldn’t believe that back in ancient history, she’d given the poor boy scones that tasted like rotting wood and slightly like dead lobster! She’d fussed about napkins! And she’d tried to shoot him in the chest with poor Captain Roberts’s ancient pistol, and in any book of etiquette that was a wrong move.

  But then, was that her back there? Or was this her, right here, in the sheltered garden that was the Women’s Place, watching the Unknown Woman sitting by the pool but holding her little son tightly, like a little girl holds a favorite dolly, and wondering if she shouldn’t take the child again, just to give it some time to breathe.

  It seemed to Daphne that the men thought all women spoke the same language. That had seemed silly and a bit annoying, but she had to admit that in the Place, right now, the language was Baby. It was the common language. Probably everyone makes the same sort of cooing noises to babies, everywhere in the world, she thought. We kind of understand it’s the right thing to do. Probably no one thinks that the thing to do is to lean over it and hit a tin tray with a hammer.

  And suddenly, that was very interesting. Daphne found herself watching the two babies closely, in between the chores. When they didn’t want feeding, they turned their heads away, but if they were hungry, their little heads bobbed forward. It’s like shaking your head for no and nodding it for yes. Is this where it comes from? Is it the same everywhere? How can I find out? She made a note to write this down.

  But she was really worried about the mother of the baby whom, in the privacy of her head, Daphne called the Pig Boy. The woman was sitting up now, and sometimes walked around, and smiled when you gave her food, but there was something missing. She didn’t play with her baby as much as Cahle, either. She let Cahle feed it, because there must have been some lamp still burning in her brain that knew it was the only way, but afterward she’d grab it and scuttle off to the corner of a hut, like a cat with a kitten.

  Cahle was already bustling round the place, always with her baby under her arm, or handed to Daphne if she needed to use both hands. She was a bit puzzled about Daphne, as if she wasn’t quite sure what the girl was but was going to be respectful anyway, just in case. They tended to smile at each other in a slightly wary “we’re getting on fine, I hope” kind of way when their eyes met, but sometimes, when Cahle caught Daphne’s attention, she made a little motion toward the other woman and tapped her own head sadly. That didn’t need a translation.

  Every day one of the men brought some fish up, and Cahle showed Daphne some of the plants in the Place. They were mostly roots, but there were also some spicy plants, including a pepper that made Daphne go and lie with her mouth in the stream for three minutes, although she felt very good afterward. Some of the plants were medicines, as far as she could tell. Cahle was good at pantomime. Daphne still wasn’t sure whether the little brown nuts on the tree with the red leaves made you sick or stopped you from being sick, but she tried to remember everything anyway. She was always superstitious about remembering useful things she had been told, at least outside lessons. You would be bound to need it one day. It was a test the world did to make sure you were paying attention.

  She tried to pay attention when Cahle showed her cookery stuff; the woman seemed to think it was very important, and Daphne tried hard to hide the fact that she’d never cooked anything in her life. She’d learned how to make some kind of drink, too, that the woman was…emphatic about.

  It smelled like the Demon Drink, which was the cause of Ruin. Daphne knew this because of what happened when Biggleswick the butler broke into her father’s study one night and got Rascally Drunk on whiskey and woke up the whole house with his singing. Grandmother had sacked him on the spot and refused to relent even when Daphne’s father said that Biggleswick’s mother had died that day. The footmen pulled him out of the house and carried him to the stables and left him crying in the straw with the horses trying to lick the tears off his face, for the salt.

  What upset Daphne, who had quite liked Biggleswick, especially the way he walked with his feet turned out so that he looked as if he might split in two at any moment, was that he lost his job because of her. Grandmother had stood at the top of the stairs like some ancient stone goddess, pointed at Daphne (who had been watching with interest from the upper landing), and screamed at her father: “Will you stand there doing nothing when your only child is exposed to such Lewdness?”

  And that had been it for the butler. Daphne had been sorry to see him go, because he was quite kind and she’d very nearly mastered his waddle. Later she’d heard via the dumbwaiter that he’d met a Bad End. And all because of the Demon Drink.

  On the other hand, she’d always wondered what the Demon Drink was like, having heard her grandmother talk about it so much. This particular Demon Drink was
made very methodically out of a red root that grew in one corner of the Place; Cahle peeled it very carefully with a knife, and then washed her hands just as carefully in the pool, at the place where it overflowed into the little stream again. The root was mashed with a stone and a handful of small leaves was added. Cahle stared at the bowl for a moment and then cautiously added another leaf. Water was poured in from a gourd, taking care not to splash, and the bowl was left on a shelf for a day.

  By next morning the bowl was full of a churning, hissing, evil-looking yellow foam.

  Daphne went to climb up to see if it smelled as bad as it looked, and Cahle gently but firmly pulled her back, shaking her head vigorously.

  “Don’t drink?” Daphne had asked.

  “No drink!”

  Cahle took the bowl down and set it down in the middle of the hut. Then she spat in the bowl. A plume of what looked like steam went up to the thatched roof of the hut, and the churning mixture in the bowl hissed even more.

  This, thought Daphne, watching in a kind of fascinated shock, is not at all like Grandmother’s sherry afternoons.

  At that point, Cahle began to sing. It was a jolly little song, with the kind of tune that sticks in your mind even when you don’t know the words. It bounced along and you just knew you wouldn’t be able to get it out of your head. Even with a chisel.

  She was singing to the beer. And the beer was listening. It was calming down, like an excited dog being reassured by its master’s voice. The hissing began to grow less, the bubbles settled, and what had looked like a foul mess was actually becoming transparent.

  Still Cahle sang, beating time with both hands. But they weren’t just beating time; they made shapes in the air, following the music. The beer-calling song had lots of little verses with the same chorus between each one, so Daphne started to sing along and wave her hands in time. She got the feeling that the woman was pleased about this because she leaned over, still singing, and moved Daphne’s fingers into the right positions.

  Strange, oily ripples passed across the stuff in the bowl, which got a bit clearer with each verse. Cahle watched it closely, still singing…and then stopped.

  The bowl was full of liquid diamond. The beer sparkled like the sea. A small wave rolled across it.

  Cahle dipped a shell into it and offered it to Daphne with an encouraging nod.

  Well, refusing would certainly be what Grandmother called a Faux Pas. There was such a thing as good manners, after all. It might cause offense, and that would never do.

  She tried it. It was like drinking silver, and it made her eyes water.

  “For man! Husbun!” said Cahle, grinning. “For when too much husbun!” She lay on her back and made very loud snoring noises. Even the Unknown Woman smiled.

  Daphne thought: I’m learning things. I hope I find out soon what they are.

  The next day she worked it out. In a language made up of a few words and a lot of smiles, nods, and gestures—some very embarrassing gestures, which Daphne knew she should be shocked about, except that here on this sunny island there was just no point—she, Cahle, was teaching her the things she needed to know so that she would be able to get a husband.

  She knew she shouldn’t laugh, and tried not to, but there was no way to explain to the woman that her way to get a husband was to have a very rich father who was governor of a lot of islands. Besides, she was not at all certain that she even wanted a husband, since they seemed a lot of work, and as for children, after seeing the birth of Guiding Star, she was certain that if she ever wanted children she’d buy some ready-made.

  But this wasn’t something she could tell two new mothers, even if she knew how, so she tried to understand what Cahle was trying to tell her, and she even let the nameless woman do her hair, which gave the poor woman some comfort and, Daphne thought, looked pretty good but far too grown-up for thirteen. Her grandmother would not approve, in italics, although seeing to the other side of the world was probably too much even for her beady eyes.

  At any moment her father’s ship would come into view, of course. That was a certainty. It was taking some time because there were so many islands to search.

  And supposing he didn’t come?

  She pushed that thought out of her mind.

  It pushed back. She could see thoughts that were waiting on the other side of it, waiting to drag her down if she dared to think them.

  More people had arrived on the day after Guiding Star had been born, a small boy called Oto-I and a tiny wizened old lady, both of them parched and hungry.

  The old lady was about the same size as the boy and had taken over a corner of one of the huts, where she ate everything that was given to her and watched Daphne with small bright eyes. Cahle and the other women treated her with great respect and called her by a long name that Daphne couldn’t pronounce. She called her Mrs. Gurgle because she had the noisiest stomach Daphne had ever heard, and it was a good idea to keep upwind of her at all times.

  Oto-I, on the other hand, had recovered in the speedy way that children do, and she had sent him off to help Ataba. From here she could see the old man and the boy working on the pig fence, just below her, and if she walked to the edge of the fields, she could see a steadily growing pile of planks, spars, and sailcloth on the beach. Since there was going to be a future, it would need a roof over its head.

  The Judy was dying. It was sad, but they were only finishing what the wave had begun. It would take a long time, because a boat is quite hard to take to bits, even when you’ve found the carpenter’s toolbox. But what a treasure it was on an island that, before the wave, owned two knives and four small three-legged cauldrons. Together, Mau and the brothers pecked away at the boat like grandfather birds at a carcass, dragging everything to the shore and then all the way along the beach. It was hot work.

  Pilu swanked a bit about knowing the names of the tools in the box, but it seemed to Mau that when you got right down to it, a hammer was a hammer whether it was made of metal or stone. It was the same with chisels. And skateskin was as good as this sandpaper, wasn’t it?

  “All right, but what about pliers?” said Pilu, holding up a pair. “We’ve never had pliers.”

  “We could have,” said Mau, “if we’d wanted to. If we’d needed them.”

  “Yes, but that’s the interesting thing. You don’t know you need them until you haven’t got them.”

  “We’ve never had them to want to need!” said Mau.

  “You don’t have to get angry.”

  “I’m not angry!” snapped Mau. “I just think we manage all right!”

  Well, they did. The island always had. But the little galley of the Sweet Judy was annoying him in ways he didn’t quite understand, which was making him feel even worse. How did the trousermen get to have all this stuff? They’d piled it up where the low forest met the beach, and it was heavy. Pots, pans, knives, spoons, forks…there was a big fork that, with the simple addition of a shaft, would make the finest fishing spear ever, and there were lots like it, and knives as big as swords.

  It was all so…arrogant. The wonderful tools had been treated by the crew as if they were worth hardly anything, thrown in together to rattle around and get scratched. On the island, a fork like that would have been hung on a hut wall and cleaned every day.

  There was probably more metal on this one boat than there was in all the islands. And according to Milo there had been lots of boats in Port Mercia, and some of them had been much bigger than the Judy.

  Mau knew how make a spear, from picking a shaft to chipping a good sharp point. And when he’d finished, it was truly his, every part of it. The metal spear would be a lot better, but it would just be a…a thing. If it broke, he wouldn’t know how to make another one.

  It was the same with the pans. How were they made? Not even Pilu knew.

  So we’re not much better than the red crabs, Mau thought, as they dragged a heavy box down to the beach. The figs fall out of the trees, and that’s all they know. Can’t
we be better than them?

  “I want to learn trouserman,” he said as they sat down to rest before going back inside the stifling, smelly heat of the wreck yet again. “Can you teach me?”

  “What do you want to say?” said Pilu, and then he grinned. “You want to be able to talk to the ghost girl, right?”

  “Yes, since you ask. We talk like babies. We have to draw pictures!”

  “Well, if you want to talk to her about loading and unloading and pulling ropes, I might be able to help,” said Pilu. “Look, we were on a boat with a lot of other men. Mostly they grumbled about the food. I don’t think you want to say ‘This meat tastes like you cut it off a dog’s arse,’ do you? I know that one.”

  “No, but it would be nice to be able to talk to her without asking you for words all the time.”

  “Cahle is saying the ghost girl is learning to speak our language very well,” Milo rumbled. “And she makes better beer than anyone.”

  “I know! But I want to talk to her like a trouserman!”

  Pilu grinned. “You and her all by yourselves, eh?”

  “What?”

  “Well, she’s a girl and you are a—”

  “Look, I’m not interested in the ghost girl! I mean I—”

  “Leave it to me—I know just what you need.” Pilu rummaged in the heap of things they had already taken from the wreck and held up what looked to Mau to be just another plank but, after Pilu had banged at them and hammered at them for a while, turned out to be—

  “Trousers,” said Pilu, winking at his brother.

  “Well?” said Mau.

  “The trousermen ladies like to see a man in trousers,” said Pilu. “When we were in Port Mercia, we weren’t allowed to go ashore unless we wore some, otherwise the trousermen women would give us funny looks and scream.”

  “I’m not going to wear them here!”

  “The ghost girl might think you’re a trouserman and let you—” Milo began.

  “I’m not interested in the ghost girl!”