Nation Page 5

  He reached out for it, she screamed and turned her head away, something went click, there was a small fountain of sparks from near one end of the metal thing, and, quite slowly, a little round ball rolled out of a hole in the other end and landed in the mud in front of the girl. There were…things on her feet, he noticed with a sort of horrified fascination; they were like black pods and had no toes.

  The girl was watching him in round-eyed terror.

  Mau gently took the thing away from her, and she flattened herself against the side of the canoe as if he were the ghost.

  The metal stank of something bitter and foul, but that wasn’t the important thing. It had sparked. Mau knew what to do with a spark.

  “Thank you for this gift of fire,” he said, and picked up his axe and ran for it before she could do anything dreadful to him.

  In the wreckage on the beach Mau crouched over his work. The punk branch was only the start. He had combed the forest for dry twigs and bark. There was always some, even after heavy rain, and he’d carefully made little piles of everything from grass to quite thick twigs. He’d made a small heap of crumbled dried-up papervine bark and punk and now, with great care, he picked up the spark-maker.

  If you pulled back the piece of metal at the top until it went click, and then pulled the piece of metal at the bottom, and made certain—at least the second time—to keep your fingers out of the way, then a sort of metal claw scraped a dark stone down some metal and sparks would be born.

  He tried it again, holding the spark-maker just above the punk heap, and held his breath as a few sparks dropped onto fine dust, which went black where they fell.

  Mau blew across the heap, which he shielded in his cupped hands, and a tiny wisp of smoke went up. He kept his breath steady, and a little flame crackled into life.

  This was the hard part. He fed the flame with great care, teasing it along with grass and bark until it grew fat enough for its first twig. Every move was thoughtful, because fire is so easily scared away. It wasn’t until it was crackling and hissing and spitting that he tried the first thin branch. There was a nasty moment when the flames seemed to choke on it, and then they came up stronger and before long were asking for more. Well, there was no shortage of fuel. Broken trees were everywhere. He dragged them into the flames, and they burst as the heat boiled the water in them. Mau threw more wood on, piling it up so that sparks and steam soared into the dark. Shadows jumped and danced across the beach and, while the flames burned, there was a sort of life.

  After a while he dug out a hole on the edge of the fire, buried the mad-root tubers just under the sand, and scraped glowing embers over them.

  Then he lay back. When was the last time he had sat by a fire, here at home? The memory rushed in before he could stop it. It was his last meal as a boy, with all his family there, and in the Nation all his family meant, sooner or later, just about everyone. It was his last meal because the next time he ate on the island it would be as a man, no longer living in the boys’ hut but sleeping in the house of the unmarried men. He hadn’t eaten much, because he’d been too excited. He’d been too scared, too, because he could just about get the idea that this wasn’t only about him; it was also about his family. If he came back ready for a man’s tattoos and, obviously, the…thing with the knife where you must not scream, then it would be a triumph for them, too. It would mean that he had been brought up in the right way and had learned the Right Things.

  The fire crackled and sent smoke and steam up into the darkness, and he saw his family in the firelight, watching him, smiling at him. He closed his eyes and tried to force the clamoring memories away, into the dark.

  Had he sent any of them into the dark current when he’d walked in the steps of Locaha? Perhaps. But there was no memory there. He’d been curled up in the gray body of the Locaha-Mau, as a part of him trudged back and forth, doing what was needed, taking the dead to become dolphins so that they wouldn’t become food for the pigs. He should have sung a burial chant, but he’d never been taught the words, so instead he’d straightened limbs on the bodies as tidily as he could. Perhaps he had seen faces, but then that part of him had died. He tried to remember the face of his mother, but all he could see was dark water. He could hear her voice, though, singing the song about the god of Fire, and how the Papervine Woman got fed up with him chasing her daughters and bound his hands to his sides with great coils of vine; and Man’s younger sister used to laugh at that and chase him with coils of—But a wave passed over his mind, and he was glad it washed the bright memory away.

  He could feel the hole inside, blacker and deeper than the dark current. Everything was missing. Nothing was where it should be. He was here on this lonely shore, and all he could think of was the silly questions that children ask…Why do things end? How do they start? Why do good people die? What do the gods do?

  And this was hard, because one of the Right Things for a man was: Don’t ask silly questions.

  And now the little blue hermit crab was out of its shell and scuttling across the sand, looking for a new shell, and there wasn’t one. Barren sand stretched away on every side, and all it could do was run….

  He opened his eyes. And now there was just him and the ghost girl. Had she been real? Was he real? Was that a silly question?

  The smell of the tubers came up through the sand. His stomach suggested that they might be real, at least, and he burned his fingers digging them up. One would keep until tomorrow. The other one he broke open and stuck his face into the fluffy, crunchy, hot, savory heart of, and he went to sleep with his mouth full, while the shadows danced in circles around the fire.

  CHAPTER 3

  Calenture

  IN THE DARKNESS OF the wreck of the Sweet Judy, a match flared. There were some pings and scraping noises and at last the lamp was alight. It wasn’t broken, but she had to be sparing with it because she hadn’t found any more oil yet. It was probably underneath everything else. Everything was under everything else. It was a mercy she’d wrapped the mattress around her before the Sweet Judy tried to sail through trees. She’d remember the snapping and the screams as long as she lived. She’d heard the hull split and the masts crack, and worst of all she had heard the silence.

  And she’d climbed out into a steaming morning full of birdsong, with most of the Judy back on the smashed trail behind her and one word in her head.

  The word was Calenture.

  It meant a special kind of madness, brought on by the heat. First Mate Cox had told her about it, probably hoping to frighten her because he was that sort of person. Sailors got calenture when they’d been becalmed at sea for too long. They’d look over the side and see, instead of the ocean, cool green fields. They’d leap down into them and drown. First Mate Cox said he’d seen grown men do it. They’d jumped into a meadow full of daisies and drowned or, as he put it, drownded. And he’d probably pushed them in, too.

  And there she was, stepping off a boat into the middle of a green jungle. It was like the…opposite of madness, in a way. She was quite sane, she was sure of that, but the world itself had gone mad. There were dead men back on the track. She’d seen dead people before, when her uncle had broken his neck while hunting, and of course there had been that terrible accident with the harvesting machine. Neither of the dead seamen was Cookie, she was shamefully glad to say, and she’d said a quick prayer over them and had run back to the ship to be sick.

  Now she rummaged in the mess that had been a neat cabin and found her writing box. She balanced it on her knees and opened it, taking out one of the gold-edged invitation cards she had gotten for her birthday, and stared at it for a moment. According to her book of etiquette (another birthday present), there should be a chaperone present if she invited the young man to visit, and the only person she could think of was poor Captain Roberts. He was a real captain, which counted for something, but he was unfortunately dead. On the other hand, the book didn’t actually say the chaperone had to be alive, only present. Anyway, she stil
l had the sharp machete stuffed down behind her bunk. It had not been a happy voyage after First Mate Cox had come aboard.

  She glanced at the blanket-covered shape in the corner, from which came a continual muttering. She had to keep it covered up or else it’d start to swear again. Some of the words it came out with a respectable young lady should not know the meaning of. The words she didn’t know the meaning of worried her even more.

  She had been unkind to the boy, she knew. You weren’t supposed to shoot people, especially if you hadn’t even been introduced to them, and it was only a mercy the gunpowder had got wet. It was sheer panic, and he’d been working so hard burying those poor people in the sea. At least her father was alive and he would come looking for her, even though there were more than eight hundred places to look in the Mothering Sunday Islands.

  She dipped her pen in the ink and crossed out Government House, Port Mercia at the top of the card, and carefully wrote underneath: “The Wreck of the Sweet Judy.”

  There were other changes that needed to be made. Whoever had designed the cards had completely overlooked the possibility that you might want to invite someone whose name you didn’t know, who lived on a beach, wore hardly any clothing, and almost certainly couldn’t read. But she did her best, on both sides of the card,* and then signed it “Ermintrude Fanshaw (the Honorable Miss)” and wished she didn’t have to, at least about the Ermintrude.

  Then she put on the big oilskin coat that had belonged to poor Captain Roberts, pocketed the last of the mangoes, picked up a cutlass, unhooked the oil lamp, and set out into the night.

  Mau awoke with the Grandfathers shouting in his head and the fire a big glowing heap.

  REPLACE THE GOD ANCHORS! WHO IS GUARDING THE NATION? WHERE IS OUR BEER?

  I don’t know, Mau thought, looking up at the sky. The women made beer. I don’t know how.

  He couldn’t go into the Women’s Place, could he? He’d already been up there to take a look, although men couldn’t go to the Women’s Place, and women couldn’t go into the valley of the Grandfathers. If these things happened, there would be the end of everything. It was that important.

  Mau blinked. How much more of an end could everything have? There were no more people, so how could there be rules? Rules couldn’t float around by themselves!

  He stood up and saw the golden glitter. A white oblong had been wedged in a piece of broken wood, and there were toeless footprints in the sand. Next to the wood was another mango.

  She’d been creeping around while he slept!

  There were meaningless marks on the white oblong, but on the other side were some pictures. Mau knew about messages, and this one wasn’t difficult:

  “When the sun is just above the last tree left on Little Nation, you must throw a spear at the big wrecked canoe,” he said aloud. It didn’t make any sense, and nor did the ghost girl. But she had given him the spark-maker, although she’d been very frightened. He’d been frightened too. What were you supposed to do about girls? You had to keep away from them while you were a boy, but he’d heard that when you were a man you got other instructions.

  And as for the Grandfathers and the god anchors, he hadn’t seen them at all. They were big stones, but the wave hadn’t cared. Did the gods know? Had they been washed away? It was too complicated to think about. Beer was simpler, but not by much.

  Women made the beer, and he knew that there was a big bowl in front of the Cave of the Grandfathers where an offering of beer was poured every day. He knew this, and it had just stayed in his head as a thing that he knew, but now questions were rising, like: Why did the dead need beer? Wouldn’t it…trickle through? If they didn’t drink it, who did? And would he get into trouble for even thinking these questions?

  Who from?

  He remembered going into the Women’s Place from when he was very small. Around about the time he was seven or eight he started to become unwelcome there. Women shooed him away, or stopped what they were doing when he came near and watched him very hard until he left. The very old women in particular had a way of glaring at you that made you want to be somewhere else. One of the older boys told him that they could mutter words that made your wingo fall off. After that he kept away from the Women’s Place, and it became like the moon; he knew where it was but didn’t even think about going there.

  Well, there were no old women now. He wished there were. There was no one to stop him doing anything. He wished there was.

  The path to the Women’s Place turned off from the track into the forest and then went downhill and southwest and down into a narrow gulley. At the end of it were two big stones, taller than a man, splashed with red paint. That was the only way in, back when there were rules. Now, Mau pulled out the thornbush that blocked the entrance and pushed through.

  And there was the Place, a round bowl of a valley full of sunlight. Screens of trees kept out the wind, and thorn and briar bushes were woven so thickly among them that nothing except maybe a snake could get through, and today the valley looked as though it was asleep. Mau could hear the sea, but it seemed to be a long way off. There was the tinkle of a little stream that dribbled out of the rock at one side of the bowl, filled a rocky hollow that was a natural bathing place, and lost itself in the gardens.

  The Nation grew the big crops in the large field. That was where you found aharo, sugarcane, tabor, boomerang peas, and black corn. There men grew the things that made you live.

  In the Place, the gardens of the women grew the things that made the living enjoyable, possible, and longer: spices and fruits and chewing roots. They had ways of making crops grow bigger or more tasty. They dug up or traded plants and brought them here, and knew the secrets of seeds and pods and things. They raised pink bananas here and rare plantains and yams, including the jumping yam. They also grew medicines here, and babies.

  Here and there around the edges of the gardens were huts. Mau approached them carefully, beginning to feel nervous. Someone should be shouting at him, some old woman should be pointing and mumbling, and he should be running away very fast with his hands cupped over his groin, just in case. Anything would be better than this sunny, empty silence.

  So there are still rules, he thought. I brought them with me. They’re in my head.

  There were baskets in some of the huts, and bunches of roots hung from the ceiling, out of reach of small fingers. They were maniac roots. You learned about them very early on. They made the best beer of all or they killed you as dead as a stone, and the secret ingredient that decided which of these happened was a song that everybody knew.

  He found what he was looking for in the hut by the spring. A whole bowl of chopped root was hissing and bubbling gently to itself under a pile of palm leaves. The sharp, prickly smell filled the hut.

  How much did some dead men drink? He filled a calabash with the stuff, which should be enough. He was careful how he poured it, because it was very dangerous at this stage, and he hurried away before a ghost could catch him.

  He reached the valley of the Grandfathers without spilling much, and tipped the contents of the calabash into the big stone bowl in front of the sealed cave. From the gnarly old trees a couple of grandfather birds watched him carefully.

  He spat into the bowl, and the beer seethed for a while. Big yellow bubbles burst on the surface.

  Then he sang. It was a simple little song, easy to remember, about the four brothers, all sons of Air, who one day decided to race around the huge belly of their father to see which of them would court the woman who lived in the Moon, and the tricks each one played on the others so that he could be first. Babies learned it. Everyone knew it. And, for some reason, singing that song turned the poison into beer. It really did.

  The beer foamed in the bowl. Mau watched the big round stone, just in case, but the Grandfathers probably had a way of drinking beer from the spirit world.

  He sang his way through the song, taking care not to miss any verse, especially the one that was very funny when you did the
right gestures. When he finished, the beer had gone clear, with golden bubbles rising to the top. Mau took a sip, to check. His heart didn’t stop after one beat, so the beer was probably fine.

  He took a few steps back and said, to the wide open sky: “Here is your beer, Grandfathers!”

  Nothing happed. It was a bad thought, but a thank you might have been nice.

  Then the world drew a breath and the breath became voices: YOU HAVE FAILED TO DO THE CHANT!

  “I have sung the song! It is good beer!”

  WE MEAN THE CHANT THAT CALLS US TO THE BEER!

  A couple more grandfather birds crash-landed in the trees.

  “I didn’t know there was one!”

  YOU ARE A LAZY BOY!

  Mau grabbed at this. “That’s right, I’m just a boy! There is no one to teach me! Can you—?”

  HAVE YOU RIGHTED THE GOD ANCHORS? NO! And with that the voices snapped into silence, leaving only the sighing of the wind.

  Well, it looked like good beer. What was a chant needed for? Mau’s mother had made good beer, and people had just turned up.

  With a flapping of wings, a grandfather bird landed on the edge of the beer stone and gave him the usual stare that said: If you are going to die, hurry up. Otherwise, leave.

  Mau shrugged and walked away. But he hid behind a tree, and he was good at hiding. Maybe the big round stone would roll.

  It didn’t take long for several more grandfather birds to alight on the bowl. They squabbled for a while and then, with the occasional pause for another brief fight, settled down to some serious boozing, rocking backward and forward because that is how birds move when they drink, then rocking backward and forward and forward and falling over a lot, which is how birds move when they have been drinking fresh beer. One took off and flew backward into some bushes.

  Mau walked back thoughtfully to the beach, stopping on the way to cut himself a spear from the forest. Down on the beach he sharpened it to a point, which he hardened in the fire, occasionally glancing up at the sun.