Cloud Permutations (2 page)

‘Until we came
here
!’ Teua, awake now, called excitedly from his corner.

Mr. Henri gave him a guarded look and responded with a tired smile. ‘Indeed. The world she found was perfect. And we called it—’ He waited. ‘Heven!’ Teua called again. Mr. Henri smiled. ‘
Tru
,’ he said. ‘Because it was. Or seemed to be. It was a place we could live according to
kastom
. A world of the sea, a world of islands. A world …’ he hesitated. ‘Of clouds. Although what that meant, exactly, we only found out a long time afterward.’

Somewhere in the distance, a faint bell rang. The children waited. Mr. Henri shrugged, and said, ‘Go.’

Kal went.

Lunch would be long, and Mr. Henri sleepy afterwards; and no one would miss him, Kal, nor Vira, if they failed to return that afternoon. Kal, hands dangling happily at his sides, went towards the
nambanga
—the banyan tree—and the shade. They would swim, he thought; and maybe catch a fish to roast over a small fire for lunch. And afterwards …

Hilda Lini
waited for them on top of the cliff.

— Chapter 3 —

REN LUKEM YU, REN I KAM

AFTERWARDS, it was hard to explain what had happened. Kal’s memory felt scrubbed and raw as if washed by heavy rain. Sharp moments of pain appeared, but seemed disconnected from an internal narrative, from any sort of cause-and-effect linkage. What had happened, the way it was told, later, in the
nakamal
, when the adults, the elders all gathered under the great banyan tree, was this:

Kal and Vira had climbed the cliff and had stopped at the top, and looked out to sea.

From this high, the village below seemed like a deserted ants’ nest, with only a few, sluggish figures wandering slowly across the shady parts as if befuddled by the heat. From up here, the land below went on, sloped down until it became white sand, then poured out into a calm blue ocean that reached out across the world and disappeared, eternal, on the horizon. From here, too, you could see far, out to the large islands of Nouvelle Ambrym and Northern Efate, and even further:
there
, a small shape on the horizon, was the island of Pentecost, and even further, Kal imagined he could see the chain of the Tusk like a string of pearls stretched until it broke. They were all Earth names, old names,
kastom
names. But this, Kal thought, was not Earth. This was Heven. It was a new world,
his
world, and he would not bow down to
kastom
.

He wanted—desired—to fly. And flying had been forbidden by
kastom
.

‘Come
on
, Kal!’ Vira said, but not harshly. For a moment he felt her hand, resting lightly on his shoulder, and closed his eyes, willing the two of them to stay that way, if only for a little while longer. ‘I think it’s ready,’ Vira announced. Her hand was no longer on his shoulder. Her voice came from a distance, sounding hollow. He turned and smiled at her; she was standing at the entrance to the cave.

He turned back and looked for one moment longer over the view. There, below, were the islands, small specks of dust in the distance. There was the great sea, planet-wide and ancient, yet familiar, comfortable like a blanket.

He raised his head. There—they were almost level with him, or so he fancied. The giant ancient clouds moved in the sky, almost imperceptibly—dark and bright woven into each other, shifting, changing, but slowly, so slowly. They looked asleep, restful. For a fleeting moment, he thought about the man he had seen when he was younger. A man the colour of the sky. He opened his lungs and sucked in a deep breath. ‘I’m ready,’ he said, turning, and ran to help Vira with the kite.

How it happened, then, no one was certain, and least of all Kal. As to the
why
, that question did not even arise. Kal and Vira had broken
kastom
; not, as they had perhaps thought, old Earth
kastom
, but
kastom
of this world, a
kastom
of Heven, and made such for a reason.

They had dared to fly.

The kite was not large enough for two. Light wood and cloth, it was a glider, a moth, a toy enlarged to kid-size. They tossed stones for it, and Kal had lost.

Vira held on to one side of the kite, its canoe-shaped body. Her eyes flashed. Kal held the other side. Together, they ran.

As they neared the edge of the cliff Vira hopped onto the seat. Kal pushed. For a sickening moment the kite tottered on the edge of the cliff …

Then it took flight.

Kal watched. The kite flew straight, flew true. Vira, perhaps terrified, perhaps ecstatic, held onto the beams that fastened to and controlled the slight wings. Below, sleepy folks perhaps looked up to the sky and saw something amazing, a flying girl.

Then, close by, lighting flashed, so close as it hit that earth flew, and fragments of stone shot through the air and hit Kal. He touched his hand to his cheek and it was wet, though there had been no rain. Later, much later, though the doctor had done her best, a scar remained there.

Thunder came second. It rolled over the cliff, a slow deep sound that Kal felt in his bones. Above his head the clouds darkened. The sun disappeared. The sea, now agitated, crashed with growing force against the shore.

Vira, the
Hilda Lini
, flesh and bones and wood and glue and nails and cloth, animate and inanimate made into one thing, flew through strange, calm air. For a moment, Kal thought Vira had turned her head back, was looking at him. She was too far away (though still so close! he thought. She had barely made it to the border of land and sea) for him to see her face. He raised his arms, and was suddenly reminded again of the man he had seen, the man who came from the bush. The man who could speak to clouds.

Afterwards, he remembered the silence. There was the lightning, and then thunder, and then a strange, solemn quiet, the sound of solitude before it is broken. His heart was beating in his chest like an outboard engine struggling against muddy water. He was not afraid before, but now the silence scared him, and he didn’t know why.

The wind, on this everyone agreed, seemed to have come out of nowhere. In the scientific language one could speak of high and low pressure, of localised weather systems, of abrupt barometric changes and freak conditions; but in all other respects, everyone agreed, it was the anger-wind of clouds.

It hit the kite in mid-flight, the way a bat may hit a ball, and then again, and again. The kite dived, swooned, rose and fell. Kal could do nothing but watch.

The kite was higher now, the winds that tossed it kicking it up, until it seemed to over-reach even the clouds. Vira was a tiny freckle on its face, holding on to a thing that, for a short time, seemed to have become a part of her and was now breaking beneath her, as useless as a discarded toy.

The kite broke in mid-air.

The winds, abruptly, stopped.

The kite fell, pieces of it like motes of dust falling down. Kal cried, though he didn’t know he was doing it. Beside the falling wreckage, distinct from it, a small figure, plunging down into raging grey ocean. Vira and the kite fell, both broken.

They dropped down through still, clear air. When they hit the waves, heavy rain began to fall.

Kal tasted salt, as if the spray of the waves had somehow reached him, high and alone on the cliff. From somewhere outside himself words came. ‘Ren lukem yu’—the words those of an old, old song—’ren i kam.’

The rain looked at you, Vira, he thought, numb. And the rain came.

He stood on top of the cliff and watched her body disappear in the waves.

— Chapter 4 —

MAN TANNA

THE PEOPLE OF TANNA have always, even in the days before the Exodus, been fiercely independent. The island of Tanna, wide, mountainous and remote, weathered, in days long gone, the misrule of missionaries, blackbirders and the British Empire. It was an island of strange beliefs and even stranger truths, heavily-populated in a region where population density was nearly non-existent. When the time came, the people of Tanna, first from that remote corner of the world that was once called the New Hebrides and later Vanuatu, went out into space, to seek work with the mining corporations in the Asteroid Belt. From one archipelago of distant islands, each isolated from the other, each with its own languages, its own
kastom
and beliefs, they were the first to seek out that other tranquillity, that other isolation that is space. The others followed: Man Efate and Man Epi and Man Malekula, they came too, shipped off-Earth by the giant Malay and Chinese corporations. When the time of the Exodus came, the people of Tanna were instrumental in acquiring the
Hilda Lini
.

In the event, it was decided that Kal would be exiled. It seemed a reasonable enough decision, in light of what happened.

The decision was reached, as was
kastom
, and as was right, in the
nakamal
.

The
nakamal
was located just outside the village. Its hub was a giant
nambanga
tree, the first planted on New Epi, by the men and women of old Earth. Around the tree the ground lay bare, open to the sky. The people of Epi gathered there before sunset. The clouds, soft and white, glided against the dimming blue horizon. The first star appeared in the sky.
Kava
, that most precious of roots brought back from old Earth, was brewed into a sour brown drink and handed out in shells. Everyone drank. As the kava took effect a silence settled over the
nakamal
.

‘The boy,’ said Toro, who was chief of Kal’s village, and a second or third (Kal had never been sure which) cousin to Kal’s mother, ‘has become a liability.’

He said it without malice. Kal was a problem. There had been a death. Worse,
tabu
had been broken. And the clouds … if clouds were capable of anger (which was still, centuries after landing, open to debate), then they had shown anger.
Kastom
had been ignored.

With fatal results.

Vira’s father, John Zebedee, stood up. He was a short man, running to fat, and his face was fatigued. ‘I do not ask for justice,’ he said, and there was a murmur of approval at his words. ‘I do not ask for justice, because justice is often cruel, and never dignified. We have learned that long ago.’

Again, a quiet murmur of approval.

‘I ask only for peace,’ John Zebedee said. His left hand massaged his brown, balding scalp. ‘Peace must be maintained.’

At this, Toro nodded. ‘Peace must be maintained,’ he said.

‘There can be no
sori seremoni
,’ John Zebedee said. ‘The boy is young. His guilt is strong. But it cannot change what has happened. Olgeta we oli i stap long skae—’
those who live in the sky
, he said ‘— have been offended. My daughter—’ here he stopped, and his shoulders seemed to shake before he recovered ‘—my daughter is gone. The … the
plane
she and Kal built, it too is gone.’ He spread out his arms. ‘Only the boy remains.’

‘Yes,’ the chief murmured.

‘The boy must go,’ John Zebedee said, and he seemed to shrink into himself. ‘Mi sori tumas.’
I am very sorry
.

And he was. Kal was a nice young boy. But he could no longer stay. At that time, by reasons fortuitous or otherwise, the island of Tanna passed close by to Epi. It was … it could be said it was not
kastom
, that island, yet this was, after all, a new world, with new
kastom
alongside the old. In any case, the majority of people felt that whatever the Tannese did, it was, in the last count, up to the Tannese themselves.

Tanna was a floating island.

Where Man Efate and Man Epi and all the rest had merely found themselves suitable islands, hardy underwater mountains with their peaks peaking—as it were—out of the sea, the Tannese had preferred to construct their own abode. The story of the making of New Tanna—a story spanning just under a century, several violent deaths, at least one famous love affair, and recorded in several well-known songs and over one hundred sand-drawings, several of which were still secret and known only to the Tannese themselves—that story belongs elsewhere. Suffice it to say that, at the time of Vira’s death and the breaking of the kite—the time, therefore, of Kal’s exile from Epi—the island of Tanna passed close by, for reasons fortuitous or otherwise.

In the
nakamal
, Kal’s grandfather, his face twisted in sorrow, was the first to propose it. ‘I have, as you know,’ he said, his voice wavering only slightly, ‘relatives on Tanna.’

Several people murmured at this. The cloud cover that had hung over the island for over three days broke at that moment, and the moon’s white light shone briefly through. ‘My uncle’s second cousin, on my mother’s side, has married a Tannese man. I will speak to her family. Kal has offended
olgeta blong skae
—and Man Tanna, I think, understand their ways better than we do. They will take him.’ He stopped, looked at the silent, assembled people. His people. He was a grandfather, but he was Man Epi also, and had to do what was right for his people first. ‘Peace,’ he said heavily, ‘will be maintained.’

‘Peace will be maintained,’ his people replied.

Kal’s future, then, and his journey to the tower (neither of which he knew anything of at that moment), were decided then, in the
nakamal
, the way matters had been for thousands of years, born out of a desire for peace. Kal, at that moment, was lying in bed. He had cried when Vira fell from the sky. But he did not cry now. Remorse mixed inside him with anger, and overwhelming both was simple fear. He did not know what would happen to him. He lay in bed and looked out of the window into the dark, cloudy sky.

For a second moment, the cloud cover broke, and the moon shone through.