Nation (11 page)

Every boy tried to lift the trophy club. Every boy listened wide-eyed to the descriptions of the big dark canoes, their prows hung with bloody skulls, their oars rowed by captives who were near skeletons themselves, and tales of how those prisoners were lucky, because when they were too weak to row anymore, they were beheaded just for their skulls. The prisoners who were taken back to the Land of Fires weren’t treated quite so well, even
before
they got turned into dinner. You got told this in detail.

At this point, when you were sitting there with your mouth open or perhaps your fingers over your ears, you were just trying not to wet yourself.

But then you were told about Aganu, the chief who fought the leader of the Raiders in single combat, as was their custom, and took the shark-tooth club from his dead hand, and the Raiders had run back to their war canoes. They worshipped Locaha himself, and if He was not going to give them a victory, there was no point in staying, was there?

After that you were given another chance to lift the club, and Mau had never heard of a boy failing to lift it this second time. And only now did he wonder: Was it really because the story made boys stronger, or did the old men have some way of making the club heavier?

YOU INSULT THE MEMORY OF YOUR ANCESTORS!

Aargh. They had been quiet all day. They hadn’t even said anything about him milking the pig.

“It’s not insulting,” he said aloud. “I’d use a trick, if it was me. A trick to give them hope. The strong boys wouldn’t need it and the boys who are not so strong would feel stronger. Every one of us dreamed of being the one who’d beat their champion. Unless you believe that you might, you can’t! Weren’t you ever boys?”

There was no grumbling roar in his head.

I don’t think they
think
, he thought. Perhaps they used to really think, but the thoughts have worn out from being thought so often?

“I will keep the baby alive if I have to milk every pig on this island,” he said, but it was horrible to think that he might have to.

No reply.

“I thought you might like to know that,” he said, “since he will be taught about you. Probably. He’ll be a new generation. He’ll call this place home. Like I do.”

The reply came slowly and sounded grinding and cracked: YOU SHAME THE NATION! HE IS NOT OF OUR BLOOD….

“Do you have any?” snapped Mau out loud.

“Do you have any?” a voice echoed.

He looked up into the ragged crown of a coconut tree. The gray parrot looked down on him with its mouth open. “Show us yer drawers! Do you have any? Do you have any?” it squawked.

That’s what they are, Mau thought. They’re just parrots.

Then he stood up, grasped his spear, turned to face the sea, and guarded the Nation from the darkness.

He didn’t sleep, of course, but at some point Mau blinked, and when he opened his eyes again the stars were bright and it was not long before dawn. That was not too much of a problem. A snoring old sow would be easy enough to find. She wouldn’t ask any questions if she found a nice big beery mash in front of her, and when the time came to run, he might even be able to see where he was going.

He told himself this to cheer himself up, but you couldn’t get away from it: Milking a pig would be much harder the second time, because you’d have to forget how horrible it had been the first time.

In the dark the surf shone where it broke over the reef, and it was time to go through it all again. He’d rather have been going into battle.

The Grandfathers certainly thought he should. They’d had time to pull some pig thoughts together. IS THIS THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR? they growled. DOES THE WARRIOR ROLL IN THE MUCK WITH HOGS? YOU SHAME US!

Mau thought, as loudly as he could: This warrior is fighting Death.

The baby was already whimpering. The young woman gave Mau a sad little smile when he took the empty calabash and washed it out. She never said anything even now.

Once again, he didn’t bother to take the spear. It’d only slow him down.

The old man was sitting on the slopes above the beach, staring up at the fading night. He nodded at Mau. “Going milking again, demon boy?” he said, and grinned. He had two teeth.

“Want to try it, sir? You’ve got the mouth for it!”

“Ha! But not the legs! I did my bit, though. Last night I begged the gods to let you succeed!”

“Well, have a rest tonight,” said Mau, “and I’ll go and lie in the muck without a prayer. And tomorrow I’ll get some sleep and you can pray to the gods to make it rain milk. I think you will find lying in the muck is more reliable.”

“Are you trying to be smart, boy?”

“Trying not to be dumb, sir.”

“Games with words, boy, games with words. The gods are in everything we do. Who knows? Perhaps they see a use for your sorrowful blasphemy. You mentioned beer yesterday…,” he added hopefully.

Mau smiled. “Do you know how to
make
beer?” he said.

“No,” said Ataba. “I have always seen it as my duty to do the drinking part. Making beer is women’s business. The trouserman girl does not know how to make beer, no matter how much I shout at her.”

“I’ll need all that is left,” said Mau firmly.

“Oh, dear, are you sure?” said Ataba, his face falling.

“I’m not going to try to suck milk out of a sober pig, sir.”

“Ah yes,” said Ataba sadly. “Well, I shall pray…and for the milk, also.”

It was time to go. Mau realized that he had just been putting things off. He should have been listening to himself; if you didn’t believe in prayer, then you had to believe in hard work. There was just enough time to make a dash and find a sow before they woke up. But the old man was still staring at the sky.

“What are you looking for?” asked Mau.

“Omens, portents, messages from the gods, demon boy.”

Mau looked up. Only the star of Fire was visible this close to dawn. “Have you seen any?” he asked.

“No, but it would be terrible to miss one, wouldn’t it?” said Ataba.

“Was there one before the wave? Was there a message in the sky?”

“Quite possibly, but we were not good enough to know what it meant.”

“We would have, if they had shouted a warning. We’d have understood that! Why didn’t they just
shout
?”

“HELLO!” It was so loud it seemed to echo off the mountain.

Mau felt the shock down his body, and then his brain cut in with: It came from the sea! There’s a light on the water! And it’s not Raiders, because they wouldn’t shout “Hello!”

But the old man was on his feet, mouth open in a horrible grin. “Aha, you believed!” he crowed, waving a skinny finger at Mau. “Oh yes you did, just for a second! And you were fearful, and rightly so!”

“There’s a canoe with a lobster-claw sail!” said Mau, trying to ignore him. “They’re coming around the point! Look, they even have a torch burning!”

But Ataba hadn’t finished gloating. “For just one moment you—”

“I don’t care! Come on! There’s more
people
!”

The canoe was coming through the new gap in the reef. Mau made out two figures, still shadowy against the rising light, lowering the sail. The tide was right and the people knew what they were doing, because the craft slid easily into the lagoon, as if it were steering itself.

It nudged the beach gently, and a young man jumped down and ran toward Mau.

“Are there women here?” he said. “Please, my brother’s wife is going to have a baby!”

“We have one woman, but she is sick.”

“Can she sing the calling song?”

Mau glanced at the Unknown Woman. He’d never heard a word from her, and he wasn’t at all sure she was right in the head.

“I doubt it,” he said.

The man sagged. He was young, only a few years older than Mau. “We were taking Cahle to the Women’s Place on the Overshoal Islands when the wave hit,” he said. “They’re gone. So many places have…gone. And we saw your smoke. Please, where is your chief?”

“I’m here,” said Mau firmly. “Take her up to the Women’s Place. Ataba here will show you the way.” The old priest sniffed and scowled but didn’t argue.

The young man stared at Mau. “
You
are the chief? But you are just a boy!”

“Not just. Not even. Not only. Who knows?” said Mau. “The wave came. These are new days. Who knows what we are? We survived, that’s all.” He paused, and thought: And we become what we have to be…. “There is a girl who can help you. I will send her up to the Women’s Place,” he said.

“Thank you. It is going to be very soon! My name is Pilu. My brother is Milo.”

“You mean the ghost girl?” hissed Ataba in Mau’s ear as the boy ran back down the beach. “That’s not right! She doesn’t know the birthing customs!”

“Do
you
?” asked Mau. “Can
you
help her?”

Ataba backed away as if he’d been burned. “Me? No!”

“Then stay out of the way. Look, she
will
know what to do. Women always do,” said Mau, trying to sound certain. Besides, it was true, wasn’t it? Boys had to live on the island and build a canoe before they were officially men, but with girls it just happened somehow. Then they magically knew things, like how to hold babies the right way up and how to go “Ooozeewididwidwden?” without the baby screaming until its little face went blue. “Besides, she’s not a man, she can talk, and she’s alive,” he finished.

“Well, I suppose, in the circumstances—” Ataba conceded.

Mau turned to look at the two brothers, who were helping a very pregnant woman onto the beach. “Show them the way. I’ll be quick!” he said, and ran off.

Are
trousermen women the same as real women? he wondered as he ran. She got very angry when I drew that picture! Do they ever take their clothes off? Oh, please, please don’t let her say no!

And his next thought, as he ran into the low forest, which was alive with birdsong, was: Who did I just say “please” to?

Daphne lay in the dark with a towel around her head. It was stuffy in the wreck, and damp and smelly. But you had to maintain standards. Her grandmother had been very keen on Maintaining Standards. She positively looked for Standards to Maintain, and if she didn’t find any, she made some up and Maintained them.

Sleeping in the captain’s hammock probably wasn’t Maintaining Standards, but her mattress was damp and sticky with salt.
Everything
was damp. Nothing dried properly down here, and of course she couldn’t hang her washing out up above the beach, in case men saw her underthings, which would definitely not Maintain any Standards at all.

The hammock swung gently back and forth. It was very uncomfortable, but it had the big advantage that the little red crabs couldn’t get onto it. She
knew
they would be scuttling around on the floor again, getting into everything, but at least with the towel around her head she couldn’t hear the little
scrittle scrittle
noise they made as they ran about.

Unfortunately, it didn’t cut out what, back home, would have been called the dawn chorus, but that just wasn’t the right word for the explosion of noise that was happening outside. It was like a war with whistles; everything with a feather on it went crazy. And the wretched pantaloon birds’ suppers also came up as the sun rose (she could hear them pattering on the deck above her) and, by the sound of it, Captain Roberts’s parrot still hadn’t run out of swear words. Some of them were foreign, which made it worse. But she could still tell it was swearing. She just could.

Sleep came and went in patches, but in every fuzzy half-awake dream the boy moved.

When she had been younger, she’d been given a book full of patriotic pictures about the Empire, and one had stuck in her mind because it was called “the Nobbly Savage.” She hadn’t understood why the boy with the spear and the skin as golden-brown as freshly poured bronze was called nobbly, since he looked as smooth as cream, and it wasn’t until years later that she realized how you were supposed to pronounce the word that was spelled
noble
.

Mau looked like him, but the boy in the picture had been smiling, and Mau didn’t smile, and he moved like something trapped in a cage. She was sorry now that she had shot at him.

Her memory swirled in the ripples of her sleepy brain. She remembered him on that first dreadful day. He’d walked around as though he were some kind of engine, and hadn’t heard her, hadn’t even
seen
her. He was carrying the bodies of dead people and his eyes were looking into another world. Sometimes she thought they still were. He seemed angry all the time, in the way that Grandmother got angry when she found out that Standards were not being Maintained.

She groaned as there was a pattering overhead. Another pantaloon bird had thrown up the remains of last night’s dinner, vomiting little bones all over the deck. Time to get up.

She unwrapped the towel from her head and sat up.

Mau was standing by the bed, watching her. How’d he gotten in? How had he walked across the deck without treading on a crab? She would have heard! Why was he staring like that? Why, oh why, hadn’t she worn her one clean nightshirt?

“How dare you walk in like—?” she began.

“Woman baby,” said Mau urgently. He had only just arrived, and had been wondering how to wake her up.

“What?”

“Baby come!”

“What’s wrong with it now? Did you get the milk?”

Mau tried to think. What was that word she used to mean one thing after another thing. Oh yes…

“Woman
and
baby!” he said.

“What about them?”

He could see that it hadn’t worked, either. Then an idea struck him. He held his arms out, as if there was a huge pumpkin in front of him. “Woman, baby.” Then he folded his arms and rocked them.

The ghost girl stared at him. If Imo made the world, Mau thought, why can’t we understand one another?