Nation Page 8

  He’d piled on even more logs. They roared and crackled and exploded with steam, sending a thick cloud of smoke and vapor into the sky. And he was guarding the beach. What from? This was a real island, much bigger than many that she had seen on the voyage. Some had been not much more than a sandbank and a reef. Could anyone be left alive within a hundred miles? What was he frightened of?

  Mau stared at the sea. It was so flat that all night he had been able to see the stars in it.

  Somewhere out there, flying to him from the edge of the world, was tomorrow. He had no idea what shape it would be, but he was wary of it. They had food and fire, but that wasn’t enough. You had to find water and food and shelter and a weapon, people said. And they thought that was all you had to have, because they took for granted the most important thing. You had to have a place where you belonged.

  He’d never counted the people in the Nation. There were…enough. Enough to feel that you were part of something that had seen many yesterdays and would see many tomorrows, with rules that everyone knew, and that worked because everyone knew them, so much so that they were just part of the way people lived. People would live and die but there would always be a Nation. He’d been on long voyages with his uncles—hundreds of miles—but the Nation had always been there, somewhere over the horizon, waiting for him to come back. He’d been able to feel it.

  What should he do with the ghost girl? Maybe some other trousermen would come looking for her? And then she’d go, and he’d be alone again. That would be horrible. It wasn’t ghosts that frightened him, it was memories. Perhaps they were the same thing? If a woman followed the same path every day to fill a calabash from the waterfall, did the path remember?

  When Mau closed his eyes, the island was full of people. Did it remember their footsteps and their faces, and put them in his head? The Grandfathers said he was the Nation, but that couldn’t be true. Many could become one, but one could not become many. He would remember them, though, so that if people came here, he would tell them about the Nation, and it would come alive again.

  He was glad she was here. Without her, he’d walk into the dark water. He’d heard the whispering as he had dived down after her in that scream of silver bubbles. It would have been so easy to heed the wily words of Locaha and sink into the blackness, but that would have drowned her, too.

  He was not going to be alone here. That was not going to happen. Just him and the voices of the old dead men, who gave orders all the time and never listened? No.

  No…there would be two of them to stay here, and he would teach her the language, so they would both remember, so that when people came, they could say: Once there were many people living here, and then the wave came.

  He heard her stir and knew she was watching him. He knew one other thing, too—the soup smelled good, and he probably wouldn’t have made it just for himself. It was whitefish off the reef and a handful of shellfish and ginger from the Women’s Place and taro chopped up fine to give it all some body.

  He used a couple of twigs to drag the pot out of the embers and gave the girl a big half shell to use as a spoon.

  And it was…funny, mostly because they both had to blow on the soup to get it cool, and she seemed very surprised that he spat out fish bones into the fire while she very carefully coughed them into a piece of frilly cloth that was very nearly stiff with salt and sand. One of them started giggling, or maybe it was both of them at the same time, and then he was laughing so much, he couldn’t spit the next bone at all and, instead, coughed it out into his hand with the same little noise that she made, which was “uh-pur,” which made her nearly choke. But she managed to stop laughing long enough to try to spit out a bone, which she couldn’t get the hang of at all.

  They didn’t know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because you’ve got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you’re alive, when you really shouldn’t be.

  And then they lay back looking up at the sky, where the star of Air sparkled yellow-white in the east and Imo’s Campfire was a sharp red overhead, and sleep hit them like a wave.

  Mau opened his eyes.

  The world was full of birdsong. It was everywhere, and every kind of song, from the grandfather birds honking up last night’s leftovers to—from the direction of the low forest—something that really should not count as birdsong at all, because it went: “Polly wants a fig, you Bible-thumping ol’ fool! Waark! Show us yer drawers!”

  He sat up.

  The girl had gone, but her strange toeless prints led toward the low forest.

  Mau looked into the clay pot. There had been hardly anything left by the time the shells had scraped it out, but while they had been sleeping something small had licked it clean.

  He could try clearing some more of the debris off the fields today. There could be more crops to—

  REPLACE THE GOD ANCHORS! SAY THE CHANTS!

  Oh, well…up until now it had been a good day, in a horrible kind of way.

  The god anchors…well, they were things. If you asked about them, you’d be told you were too young to understand. All that Mau knew was that they kept the gods from floating away into the sky. Of course, the gods were in the sky in any case, but asking about that was a silly question. Gods could be anywhere they wanted. But somehow, for reasons that were perfectly clear, or at least perfectly clear to the priests, the gods stayed near the god anchors and brought good luck to the people.

  So which god brought the great wave, and how lucky was that?

  There had been a great wave before, everyone said. It turned up in stories of the Time When Things Were Otherwise and the Moon Was Different. Old men said it was because people had been bad, but old men always said that kind of thing. Waves happened, people died, and the gods did not care. Why had Imo, who had made everything and was everything—? Would He have made useless gods? There it was, out of the darkness inside, another thought that he wouldn’t even have known how to think a few days ago, and so dangerous he wanted to get it out of his head as soon as possible.

  What did he have to do to the god anchors? But the Grandfathers didn’t answer questions. There were little mud or wood god stones all over the island. People placed them for all sorts of reasons, from watching over a sick child to making sure a crop didn’t spoil. And since it was seriously bad luck to move a god stone, no one did. They were left to fall apart naturally.

  He’d seen them so often that he didn’t look at them anymore. The wave must have moved hundreds of them, and washed them away. How could he put them back?

  He looked up and down the beach. Most of the branches and broken trees had gone now, and for the first time he saw what wasn’t there.

  There had been three special god stones in the village—the god anchors. It was hard, now, to remember where they had been, and they certainly weren’t there now. Those anchors were big cubes of white stone, almost too heavy for a man to lift, but the wave had even snapped the house posts and thrown lumps of coral the size of a man across the lagoon. It wouldn’t have worried about some stone blocks, no matter what they anchored.

  He walked along the beach, hoping to see signs leading him to one almost buried in the sand. He didn’t. But he could see a god stone on the floor of the lagoon, now that the water had cleared a bit. He dived in to fetch it, but it was so heavy that bringing it out needed several tries. The lagoon had been scoured by the wave and shelved quite deeply at the west end. He had to carry the stone along the bed, sometimes leaving it behind and coming up to fill his lungs with air, until he found a place shallow enough to bring it out. And of course it weighed more out of the water for some magical reason no one understood; he was out of breath by the time he’d rolled it end over end up the beach.

  He remembered this one. It had been next to the chief’s house. It was the one with the strange creature carved on it. The creature had four legs, like a hog but much longer, and a head like an elas-gi
-nin. People called it the Wind, and gave it fish and beer for the god of Air before they went on a long journey. Birds and pigs and dogs took the fish, and the beer soaked into the sand, but that didn’t matter. It was the spirit of the fish and the spirit of the beer that mattered. That’s what they said.

  He dived in again. The lagoon was a mess. The wave had scattered house-size bits of the reef everywhere, as well as tearing a new entrance for the sea. But he had seen something white over there.

  As he got near, he saw how big the new gap was. A ten-man canoe could have got through it sideways.

  Another god stone was right under Mau’s feet. He dived, and a school of small silver fish fled from him.

  Ah, the Hand, the anchor for the Fire god. This one was smaller, but it was deeper, and farther from the beach. It took him more than an hour to steal it back from the sea, in short slow underwater bounds across the white sand.

  There was another one he’d glimpsed right in the new gap, where the surf swirled dangerously. But that would be Water, and right now he felt that Water had taken too many sacrifices lately. Water could wait.

  GATHER THE STONES AND GIVE HUMBLE THANKS OR YOU WILL BRING BAD LUCK ON THE NATION! said the Grandfathers in his head.

  How did they get into his mind? How did they know things? And why didn’t they understand?

  The Nation had been strong. There were bigger islands, but they were a long way off and weren’t as favored. They were too dry, or the winds were bad, or they didn’t have enough soil, or they were at places where the currents were wrong and the fishing was poor, or they were too close to the Raiders, who never came this far into the islands these days.

  But the Nation had a mountain, and fresh water all the time. It could grow lots of vegetables, ones that most of the islands couldn’t grow. It had plenty of wild pigs and jungle fowl. It grew maniac roots and had the secret of the beer. It could trade. That was where the jade bead had come from, and the two steel knives, and the three-legged cook pots, and cloth from far away. The Nation was rich and strong, and some said it was because it had the white stone anchors. There was no stone like that anywhere else in the islands. The Nation was blessed, people said.

  And now a little boy wandered around on it, doing the best he could, always getting things wrong.

  He tumbled the block called the Hand onto the sand near the fire. You left something on the anchor of the Hand if you wanted success in hunting or war. If you were lucky, it was probably a good idea to give it something else when you got back, too.

  Right now he gave it his bum. I fished you out of the sea, he thought. The fishes wouldn’t have left you offerings! So excuse me if I offer you my tiredness. He heard the rage of the Grandfathers but tried to ignore it.

  Give thanks to the gods or you will bring bad luck, he thought. What, right now, would be bad luck? What could the gods do to him that was worse than they had done already? A wave of anger rose like bile, and he felt the darkness in him open up. Had the people called on the gods when the wave broke? Had his family clung to these stones? Did the gods watch them as they tried to reach higher ground? Did the gods laugh?

  His teeth chattered. He felt cold under the hot sun. But fire filled his head, burning up his thoughts.

  “Did you hear their screams?” he yelled to the empty sky. “Did you watch them? You gave them to Locaha! I will not thank you for my life! You could have saved theirs!”

  He sat down on the Hand, trembling with anger and apprehension.

  There was no reply.

  He looked up into the sky. There were no storm clouds, and it didn’t look as if it was about to rain snakes. He glanced at the blue bead on his wrist. It was supposed to work for only a day. Could a demon have crept in while he’d slept? Surely only a demon could have thought those thoughts!

  But they were right.

  Or maybe I have no soul at all, maybe the darkness inside is my dead soul…. He sat with his arms around himself, waiting for the trembling to stop. He had to fill his mind with everyday things—that was it. That would keep him safe.

  He sat and looked along the naked beach and thought: I’d better plant some coconuts—there’s plenty being washed up. And pandanuses, I’ll plant some of those, too, for shade. That didn’t sound demonic. He could see the picture of what it would be in his mind’s eye, overlaid on the horrible mess that the beach had become, and in the middle of the image was a white dot. He blinked, and there was the ghost girl, coming toward him. She was covered in white and carried some kind of round white thing above her head, to keep the sun off, perhaps, or to stop the gods from seeing her.

  She had a determined expression on her face, and he saw, under the arm that wasn’t holding the sunshade, what looked like a slab of wood.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Daphne,” said Mau, the only word he was certain of.

  She looked down meaningfully at the block he was sitting on and gave a little cough. Then her face went bright pink. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I am the one who’s being bad mannered, aren’t I! Look, we need to be able to talk, and I had this idea because you’re always looking at the birds….”

  The wooden slab…wasn’t. It split open when Daphne pulled at it. Inside, it looked like sheets of papervine, rolled flat instead of being twisted up. There were marks on it. Mau couldn’t read them, but Daphne ran her finger over them and said loudly:

  “Birds of the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean,

  by Colonel H. J. Hookwarm, M.R.H, F.R.A.

  With sixteen hand-colored illustrations by the Author.”

  Then she turned over the sheet….

  Mau gasped. Her words were gibberish to his ears, but he knew how to speak pictures…. It was a grandfather bird! There, right on the paper! It looked real! In wonderful colors! No one on the island had been able to make colors like that, and they never turned up in trade. It looked as though someone had pulled a grandfather bird out of the air!

  “How is this done?” he asked.

  Daphne tapped it with a finger. “Pantaloon bird!” she said. She looked expectantly at Mau, then pointed to her mouth and made a sort of snapping motion with her thumb and forefinger.

  What does that mean? Mau wondered. “I’m going to eat a crocodile”?

  “Pant-aa-loooon birddd,” she said very slowly.

  She thinks I’m a baby, thought Mau. That’s how you talk to babies when you want them to un-der-stand. She wants me to say it!

  “Pant-aaa-looooon birrrrdd,” he said.

  She smiled, as if he’d just done a good trick, and pointed to the thickly feathered legs of the bird. “Pantaloons,” she said, and this time she pointed to her frilly trousers, peeking from under her torn skirt. “Pantaloons!”

  All right, it looks as though “pantaloon bird” means “trouser bird,” Mau told himself. Those frilly legs did look just like the bird’s strange feathered legs. But she’s got the name wrong!

  He pointed to the picture again and said, in a talking-to-babies voice: “Graaaandfaaather birrrrd!”

  “Grandfather?”

  Mau nodded.

  “Grandfather?” The girl still looked bewildered.

  Oh. She needed to be shown one. Well, he wasn’t going to roll away the big stone for anyone but…

  It was quite a performance. Mau stroked an invisible long beard, staggered around leaning on a nonexistent walking stick, muttered angrily while waving a finger in the air, and—he was proud of this bit—tried to chew a tough piece of pork with invisible nonexistent teeth. He’d watched the old men eating, and he made his mouth look like two rats trying to escape from a bag.

  “Old man?” shouted Daphne. “Oh yes! Very droll! The old man bird! Yes, I see what you mean! They always look so annoyed!”

  After that, things happened quite fast, with the aid of the sand, a stick, and some pebbles, and a lot of acting. Some things were easy, like canoe, sun, and water. Numbers were not too bad, after a false start (one pebble is, in addition
to being a pebble, one). They worked hard. Bird, big bird, small bird, bird flying…Nest! Egg!

  Fire, cook, eat, good, bad (good was a mime of eating followed by a big smile, bad was Daphne’s unladylike but realistic pantomime of throwing up). They got the hang of here and there, and probably something that did the job of this is or here is. Mau wasn’t too sure of a lot of it, but at least they had the start of…something.

  Back to the sand. Mau drew a stick figure and said “Man.”

  “Man,” said Daphne, and took the stick from him. She drew another figure, but the legs were thicker.

  Mau thought about it. “Pantaloon man?” he tried.

  “Trouser man,” said Daphne firmly.

  What does that mean? Mau wondered. Only trousermen are proper men? I don’t wear trousers. Why should I? Imagine trying to swim in them!

  He took the stick and carefully drew a stick woman, which was like a stick man with a woven papervine skirt and two added circles and two dots. Above the skirt.

  The stick was snatched out of his hand and, at speed, Daphne hastily drew a new figure. It was a woman, probably, but as well as the skirt there was another skirt thing covering the top of her body, with only the arms and head sticking out. Then she stuck the stick in the sand and crossed her arms defiantly, her face red.

  Ah, right. This was like the time before his older sister went off to live in the unmarried girls’ hut. Suddenly everything he said and did had been wrong, and he never knew why. His father had just laughed when he told him, and said he’d understand one day, and it was best to keep away.

  Well, he couldn’t keep away here, so he grabbed the stick and tried, as best he could, to draw a second skirt on the top half of the stick woman in front of him. It wasn’t very good, but Daphne’s look told him he’d done the right thing, whatever it was.

  But it put a cloud in the sky. It had been fun, playing with the words and pictures, a sort of game that filled his world and kept the visions of dark water away. And now he’d hit a rule he didn’t understand, and the world was back to what it was before.