Nation (26 page)

She read it aloud. In the circle, people were getting restless. There was a lot of loud whispering that she couldn’t understand, and it looked as if some sort of agreement was being arrived at. The nods and whispers ran around the circle of people in opposite directions until they met at Mau, who cracked a thin smile.

“These were men who would shoot a brown man for no reason,” he said. “And they would shoot dolphins, which even trousermen respect. You could see inside their heads, ghost girl. Isn’t that right? You could see how they thought?”

Daphne couldn’t look at his face. “Yes,” she said.

“Savages, we are to them. Some sort of animal.
Darkies
.”

“Yes.” She still did not dare to look up, in case she met his gaze. She’d pulled the trigger, she remembered, on that first day. And he had
thanked
her for the gift of fire.

“When the ghost girl first met me—” Mau began.

Oh, no, he’s not going to
tell
them, is he? she thought. Surely he won’t. But that little smile of his, that’s the smile he smiles when he’s really angry!

“—she gave me food,” Mau went on, “and later she gave me a gun to help me light a fire, even though she was far from home and frightened. She was thoughtful enough, too, to take out the little ball that flies and kills, so that I would come to no harm. And she invited me into the
Sweet Judy
and gave me wonderful lobster-flavored cakes. You all know the ghost girl.”

She looked up. Everyone was staring at her. Now Mau stood up and walked into the center of the circle.

“These men were different,” he said, “and the ghost girl knew how their minds worked. They would not sing the beer song because they thought we were a sort of animal, and they were too proud and great to sing an animal’s song. She knew this.” He looked around the circle. “The ghost girl thinks she killed a man. Did she? You must decide.”

Daphne tried to make out what was said next, but people all started talking at once, and because everyone was talking at once, everyone started talking louder. But something was happening. Little conversations got bigger, and then were picked up and rolled from tongue to tongue around the circle. Whatever the result was going to be, she thought, it probably was not going to be one simple word. Then Pilu wandered around the circle, hunkering down here and there, joining in for a little while, and then strolling on to another point and doing the same thing again.

No one stuck up their hands and there was no voting, but she thought, I wonder if it was like this in ancient Athens? This is pure democracy. People don’t just get a vote; they have a say.

And now it was settling down. Pilu got up from his last conversation and walked back to the center of the ring. He nodded to Mau and started to speak: “A man who will kill a priest, or kill a man for the pleasure of seeing him die, or kill a dolphin”—this one got a big groan from the circle—“could not be a man at all. It must have been an evil demon haunting the shell of a man, they say. The ghost girl could not have killed him, because he was already dead.”

Mau cupped his hands over his mouth. “Is this what you think?” There was a roar of agreement.

“Good.” He clapped his hands together and raised his voice. “We’ve still got to finish the pig fence, everyone, and we still need timber from the
Judy
, and the fish trap is not going to build itself!”

The circle rose and became a crisscrossing of hurrying people. No one had banged a table with a wooden hammer, or worn a robe. They had just done a thing that needed doing, without much fuss, and now, well, there was the pig fence to repair.

“Is this what you wanted?” asked Mau, suddenly beside her.

“Sorry? What?” She hadn’t even seen him approaching. “Oh, yes. Er, yes. Thank you. That was a very good, er, judgment,” she said. “And you?”

“I think they have decided and I think it is settled,” said Mau briskly. “The man brought Locaha here and his pistols serve him. But Locaha is no one’s servant.”

M
AU SAT DOWN ON
a god stone.

“Where is Cox now, do you think?”

“I hope to goodness the wave drowned him!” said Daphne. “I know I shouldn’t, but I do.”

“And you fear that it did not,” said Mau. It wasn’t a question.

“That’s true. I think it would take more than a wave. Hah, Foxlip said he killed Cox. That was just because he wanted to look big, I’m sure. But Polegrave said something about Cox having cannibal chums. Could that happen?”

“I don’t know. The Raiders kill for glory and skulls. You say he kills for no reason. He kills things because they are alive. He sounds like a bad dream, a monster. They will not know what to make of him.”

“Soup?” Daphne suggested.

“I doubt it,” said Mau. “A cannibal has to be careful who he eats. Milo would make them strong, Pilu would give them a magic voice, and I would give them…indigestion. Who would want to eat a madman?”

Daphne shuddered. “Just so long as they don’t eat me!”

“No, they would never eat a woman,” said Mau.

“That’s very gentlemanly of them!”

“They would feed you to their wives, so that they become beautiful.”

There was one of those pauses that are icy-cold and red-hot at the same time. It was stuffed with soundless words, words that should not be said, or said another time, or in a different way, or could be said or needed to be said but couldn’t be said, and they would go on tumbling through the pause forever, or until one of them fell out—

“Ahem,” said Daphne, and all the other words escaped forever. Much later, and many times, she wondered about what might have happened if she hadn’t chosen a word that clearly belonged to her grandmother. And that was that. For some people, there is only one right moment for the right word. This is sad, but there seems to be nothing that can be done about it. “Well, I don’t see him being eaten by anybody, or even left on the side of the plate,” she went on quickly, to drown out the last echoes of “Ahem” in her head. “I’m sure the captain was right when he said Cox will take over any vessel that finds him, like an disease. It’s amazing what you can do if you don’t care who you kill. And he
will
kill. Those two were sent as scouts, I’m sure of it. And that means he’s found a
bigger
boat.”

“The boat they came in is still here, but a canoe was stolen last night,” said Mau. “I think we are not good at understanding this sort of thing.”

“I don’t think it will make any difference.”

“That’s true. The Raiders are following—hunting the survivors. They will get here sooner or later. But I want to—”

“Er…”

It was a small boy. Daphne could not remember his name but he was hopping up and down like someone who does not want to intrude but needs to, well, intrude.

“Yes, Hoti?” said Mau.

“Er…please, they say they are running out of thorns to fence the big field,” said the child nervously.

“Run and tell them there is a big stand to the west of the Grandfathers’ cave.” As the boy ran off, Mau shouted after him, “Tell them I said to cut the lengths much longer! It’s a waste to cut them short!”

“You must defend your island,” said Daphne.

He reacted as if he’d been struck. “Do you think I won’t, ghost girl? Do you think that?”

“It’s not just your people! You must defend your gods!”

“What? How can you say this to me?”

“Not the metaphysical…the ones with the god stones and the sacrifices and all the rest of it! I mean the statues and all the other things in the cave!”

“Those? Just more stones. Worthless…stuff.”

“No! No, they aren’t worthless. They tell you who you are!” She sagged a little. Things had been quite busy lately, and “ghost girl” said so sharply had hurt. It did. Of course, they all called her ghost girl, even Mau sometimes, and it had never worried her. But this time it told her to go away, trouserman girl, you are not one of us.

She pulled herself together. “You didn’t look. You didn’t see what I saw in the cave! You remember Air, Fire, and Water all with their globes? And the headless statue?”

“I’m sorry,” said Mau, putting his head in his hands.

“Pardon?”

“I’ve upset you. I know when you’re upset. Your face goes shiny, and then you try to act as if nothing has happened. I’m sorry I shouted. It’s all been…well, you know.”

“Yes. I know.”

They sat in the silence you get when thoughts are too tangled to become words. Then Daphne coughed.

“Anyway, you saw the broken one? And that arm sticking out of the water?”

“Yes. I saw everything,” said Mau, but he was watching a woman hurrying toward them.

“No! You didn’t! The air was getting too foul! The broken statue had been holding something. I found it while you were arguing with Ataba. It was the world. The world turned upside down. Come and see.” She took his hand in hers and pulled him toward the path up the mountain. “Everyone must see! It’s very—”

“Yes, Cara?” said Mau to the woman, who was now hovering where she was sure to be noticed.

“I’m to tell you the river’s gone all cloudy,” the woman said, with a nervous look at Daphne.

“A pig’s got into the east meadows and is wallowing in the spring,” said Mau, standing up. “I will go and—”

“You are going to come with me!” shouted Daphne. The woman backed away quickly as Daphne turned and went on, “Get a stick and walk up to the valley until you find a pig in the water and prod the pig! It’s not hard! Mau, you are the chief. What I want to show you is not about pigs! It’s important….”

“Pigs are impor—”

“This is more important than pigs! I want you to come and see!”

By the end of the day everyone saw, if only for a few minutes. People moving up and down the long cave were shifting the air around, and it was nothing like as foul as it had been, but the lamps were used a lot. Every single lamp from the
Judy
had been pressed into service.

“The world,” said Mau, staring. “It’s a ball? But we don’t fall off?”

The ghost girl seemed to be on fire with words. “Yes, yes, and you know this! You know the story about the brother who sailed so far he came back home?”

“Of course. Every child knows it.”

“I think people from this island sailed around the world, a long, long time ago. You remembered, but over the years it became a story for little children.”

Even down in the dark, Mau thought. He ran a hand over what Daphne called “the globe,” the biggest one, which had rolled onto the floor when the statue had broken. Imo’s globe. The World. He let his fingertips just brush the stone. It came up to his chin.

So this is the world, he thought, his fingers following a line of gleaming gold across the stone. There were a lot of these lines, and they all led to the same place—or, rather, away from it, as though some giant had thrown spears around the world. And he was my ancestor, Mau told himself as he lightly touched the familiar symbol that told him this was no place built by trousermen. His people carved the stone. His people
carved
the gods.

In his memory he could hear the spirit of Ataba, roaring, “That doesn’t mean a thing, demon boy! The gods themselves guided their tools.” And Mau thought, Well, it means something to me. Yes, it means a lot.

“Your land was a big place, as big as Crete, I think,” said the ghost girl behind him. “I’ll show you Crete on the map later. Your people went everywhere! Mostly Africa and China and the middle Americas, and you know what? I think Jon Croll’s theory about the ice sheets is right! I went to his lecture at the Royal Society. That’s why so much of Europe and North America is just not there—er, not because he gave his lecture, I mean, but because it was covered in ice! Do you know what ice is? Oh. Well, it’s when water goes very cold until it becomes like crystal. Anyway, the other end of the world was a snowball, but down here it was still warm, and you did
amazing
things!”

“Ice,” murmured Mau. He felt as if he was on an unfamiliar sea, with no map and no familiar smells, while her voice washed over him. The globe was a kind of map, like the
Judy
’s charts. Where his island was now, where all the islands in the chain had been, it showed a mighty land, made of gold. People from here had sailed everywhere. And then…something had happened. The gods got angry, as Ataba had said, or as the ghost girl said, the crystal world of the trousermen melted. It meant the same thing. The sea rose.

If he closed his eyes, he could see the white buildings under the sea. Had it come in a rush, that great wave? Did the land shake and the mountains catch fire? It must have been sudden, because the water rose and the land became a pattern of islands, and the world changed.

“When the world was otherwise,” he whispered.

He sat down on the edge of what everyone was calling the god pool. His mind was too full of thoughts; he needed a bigger head. The…ancestors had brought the milk stone here and used it to make steps and wall carvings and gods, perhaps all out of the same piece of stone. And there was the broken statue of Imo. His head was probably in the depths of the pool. Imo had fallen, and so had the world.

Something had been returned. The Nation had been old, older than the reef, she was saying. The people of the Nation had sailed beyond the seas they knew, under unfamiliar stars.

He looked up and saw unfamiliar stars. The light shifted as groups of people moved around the hall. The roof glittered, just like statues. They were made of glass, she’d said. They looked like stars in the night sky, but they were not his stars. They were crystal stars, stars of a different sky.

“I want the right people to see this,” said Daphne behind him.

“The right people
are
seeing it,” said Mau.

After a few moments’ silence he heard the girl say, “I’m sorry. I meant that there are learned men in the Royal Society who could tell us what it means.”

“Are they priests?” asked Mau suspiciously.

“No. Very much no! In fact some of them don’t get on with priests
at all
. But they search for answers.”

“Good. Send them here. But I know what this place means. My ancestors wanted to tell us that they were here—that’s what it means,” said Mau. He could feel the tears welling up, but what was propelling them was a fierce, burning pride. “Send your wise trousermen,” he said, trying not to let his voice shake, “and we will welcome the brothers who traveled to the other end of the world, and came back at last to the place they had left behind. I am not stupid, ghost girl. If we sailed to those places long ago, wouldn’t we have settled there? And when your learned men come here, we will say to them: The world is a globe—the farther you sail, the closer to home you are.”

He could barely see Daphne in the gloom, but when she spoke her voice was shaking. “I will tell you something even more amazing,” she said. “All around the world people have carved stones into gods. All around the world. And all around the world people have said that the planets are gods, as well. But your ancestors knew things that nobody else knew. Mau, the god of Air has four little figures sitting on his shoulders. They are his sons, yes? They raced around their father to see which of them would court the woman who lives in the Moon? It’s in the beer song.”

“And what do you want to tell me about them?”

“We call the Air planet Jupiter. Jupiter has four moons that race around it. I’ve seen them in my telescope at home! And then there is Saturn, which you call Fire. The Papervine Woman tied his hands to his belt to stop the god from stealing her daughters, yes?”

“It’s just another god story for babies. I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true. Oh, well. In a way—I don’t know about the Papervine Woman, but the planet Saturn has rings around it, and I suppose they do look like a belt when you see them at the right angle.”

“It’s just a story.”

“No! It’s been
turned
into a story. The moons are real! So are the rings! Your ancestors saw them, and I wish I knew how. Then they made up these songs and mothers sing them to their children! That’s how the knowledge gets passed down, except that you didn’t know it was knowledge! See how the gods shine? There are little plates of glass all over them. Your ancestors made
glass
. I’ve got an idea about that, too. Mau, when my father comes and I get back home, this place will be the most famous cave in—”

It was horrible to watch her face change. It went from a kind of desperate excitement to dark despair, in gentle slow motion. It was as though a shadow had drifted across a landscape.

He caught her before she fell, and he felt her tears on his skin. “He will come,” he said quickly. “There is so much ocean.”

“But he would know the course of the
Judy
, and this is a big island! He should have gotten here by now!”

“The ocean is much bigger. And there was the wave! He could be looking south, thinking the
Judy
capsized. He could be looking north, in case you were swept along. Oh, he will come. We must be ready.” Mau patted her on the back and looked down. The children, who had soon gotten fed up with looking at big dark things they didn’t understand, had gathered around and were watching them with interest. He tried to shoo them away.

The sobbing stopped. “What was that little boy holding?” said Daphne hoarsely.

Mau beckoned the child over and borrowed the new toy from him. Daphne stared at it and started to laugh. It was more like a panting noise, in fact, the noise made by someone too astonished to draw breath. She managed to say: “Where did he get these, please?”

“He says Uncle Pilu gave them to him. He has been diving in the god pool.”

Uncle Pilu, Daphne noted. There were lots of uncles and aunts on the island now, and not many mothers and fathers.

“Tell the little boy I will give him an arm’s length of sugarcane for them,” she said, “and he can stretch his arm as long as he likes. Is that a trade?”