Nation (18 page)

“Are you certain? She has a habit of jumping out!”

“She’s below, I assure you! Open the door! It’s freezing!”

“Are you positive?”

“For the last time, man, let us in!”

“Who’s ‘us,’ exactly?” said the voice, not to be fooled easily.

“For heaven’s sake! Mr. Red is with me!”

“Is he alone?”

“Open in the name of the Crown, Captain!”

The door opened. A hand dragged both men inside. Behind them, bolts snapped into place with a noise like gunshots.

At least it was warmer in there, and the wind was held at bay. Mr. Black felt as though some giant had stopped punching him.

“Is it always like this?” he said, shaking the water off his oilskins.

“This? This is a fine day in the Roaring Forties, Mr. Black! I was about to go and have a sunbathe! You’ve come about the signal, I dare say.”

“There was something about a tidal wave?”

“A big one. Got this from a navy ship out of Port Mercia an hour ago. Flooding throughout the Western Pelagic. Great loss of life and damage to shipping. Port Mercia safe, it says here. Source of the wave estimated as seventy miles south of the Mothering Sundays.”

“That’s still well to the north of us.”

“And this happened weeks ago!” said Mr. Red, who had been scrutinizing the penciled message.

“That is true, gentlemen. But I’ve been working things out, and I’m wondering where the
Sweet Judy
might have been about that time. Old Roberts likes to island hop, and the
Judy
isn’t the fastest ship. The king’s daughter is on board the
Judy
.”

“So the heir might have been caught up in this?”

“Could be, sir,” said the captain gravely. He coughed. “I could set a course to pass through there, but it would slow us down.”

“I need to think about this,” snapped Mr. Black.

“And I need a decision soon, sir. It’s a matter of wind and water, see? They are not yours to command, nor mine.”

“Who do the Mothering Sundays belong to?” said Mr. Black to Mr. Red, who shrugged.

“We lay claim to them, sir, to keep the Dutch and French out. But they’re all tiny and there’s no one there. No one to speak of, anyway.”

“The
Wren
could cover a lot of ocean, sir,” the captain offered. “And it sounds like the king is safe and, of course, you get some rum types fetching up in out-of-the-way places like that….”

Mr. Black stared ahead. The
Cutty Wren
was flying like a cloud. The sails boomed, the rigging sang. It sneered at the miles.

After some time he said, “For all kinds of good reasons, beginning with the fact that we cannot be certain of the
Sweet Judy
’s course, and there are many of these islands, too much time has passed, his majesty would certainly have sent out searchers—”

Mr. Red said, “He doesn’t know he is king, sir. He may well have led the search himself.”

“There’s cannibals and pirates to the northwest,” said the captain.

“And the Crown requires that we find the king as soon as possible!” said Mr. Black.
“Would either of you gentlemen like to make this decision for me?”

There was a dreadful silence, broken only by the roar of their speed.

“Very well,” said Mr. Black rather more calmly. “Then we follow our original orders, Captain. I will sign the log to this effect.”

“That must have been a hard decision to make, sir,” said Mr. Red sympathetically.

“Yes. It was.”

D
APHNE WAS EATING FOR
Mrs. Gurgle, who had no teeth. She did this by chewing her food for her, to get it good and soft. It was, she thought as she chomped dutifully on a lump of salt-pickled beef, very unlike life at home.

But life at home seemed unreal now, in any case. What home was—really was—was a mat in a hut, where she slept every night a sleep so deep that it was black, and the Place, where she made herself useful. And she
could
be useful here. She was getting better at the language every day, too.

But she couldn’t understand Mrs. Gurgle at all. Even Cahle had difficulty there and had told Daphne, “Very old speaking. From the long ago.” She was known all over the islands, but none of the survivors remembered her as anything but ancient. The boy Oto-I could remember only that she had plucked him off a floating tree and drunk seawater so that he could have the fresh water in her water bag.

The old woman tapped her on the arm. Daphne absentmindedly spat out the lump of meat and handed it over. It wasn’t, she had to admit, the most pleasant way of passing the time; there was a certain amount of
aarghaarghaargh
about it if you let your mind dwell on it, but at least the
old woman
wasn’t chewing food for
her
.

“Ermintrude.”

The word hung in the air for a moment.

She looked around, shocked.
No one
on the island knew that name! In front of her, in the garden, a few women were tending the plants, but most people were working in the fields. Beside her, the old woman sucked enthusiastically at the newly softened meat with the sound of a blocked drain.

It had been her own voice. She must have been daydreaming, to take her mind off the chewing.

“Bring the boy here. Bring the boy here now.”

There it was again.
Had
she said it? Her lips hadn’t moved—she would have felt them do so. This wasn’t what people really meant when they said “you’re talking to yourself.” This was herself talking to
her
. She couldn’t ask “Who are you?”—not to her own voice.

Pilu had said Mau heard dead grandfathers in his head, and she’d thought, well, something like that would be bound to happen after all the boy had been through.

Could she be hearing his ancestors?

“Yes,” said her own voice.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because this is a sacred place.”

Daphne hesitated. Whoever was doing this knew her name, and
no one
here knew her real name, no one. It wasn’t a secret you’d like to put about. And she wasn’t mad, because surely a mad person wouldn’t have spent the last half hour chewing food for Mrs. Gurgle…er, perhaps that wasn’t the best example, because her grandmother and people like her would say that for a girl who would be queen if 139 people died to be chewing up the food of someone who looked, sounded, and smelled like Mrs. Gurgle was just about as mad as you could get without actually drooling.

Maybe it was God, but that didn’t feel right. She’d listened hard for God in church, especially after that horrible night, but of course He was a busy person. Apparently there were lesser gods here, though. Perhaps this was one of them.

She looked around her. There were no pews, and certainly no polished brass, but there was a quiet busyness about it, a silence with a texture of breezes. The wind never seemed to blow hard in here, and loud noises got lost among the trees.

It
was
a sacred place, and not because of some god or other. It was just…sacred, because it existed, because pain and blood and joy and death had echoed in time and made it so.

The voice came again. “Quickly, now!”

Daphne looked at the Place. A couple of women were gardening and didn’t even glance up. But there had been something about that “Quickly, now!” that went straight to her feet.

I must have been talking to myself, she thought as she hurried out of the Place. People often do that. It’s perfectly normal when you are a shipwrecked sailor, I’m sure.

She ran down the hill. There was a small crowd there. At first she thought some more survivors had turned up, and then she saw the figure slumped against the corner of the new hut.

“What have you done to him?” she shouted as she ran. Pilu turned, while the rest of the group drew back hurriedly in the face of her anger.

“Us? I’ve tried to make him lie down, but he fights me! I’d swear he’s asleep, but I’ve never seen anyone sleep like
that
!”

Daphne hadn’t, either. Mau’s eyes were open wide, but she got the uneasy feeling that if they were looking at a beach, it certainly wasn’t this one. His arms and legs were twitching as if they wanted to move but couldn’t.

She knelt down beside Mau and put her ear to his chest. She hardly needed to get that close. His heart was trying to break free.

Pilu stepped closer to her and whispered, “There’s been trouble!” He managed to suggest that the trouble had not been made by him, very definitely not by him, and that he was against trouble of any kind, particularly any trouble up close. Ever since the Twinkle song, he had always been a little nervous of Daphne. She was a woman of power.

“What kind of trouble?” she said, looking around. But she didn’t need an answer, because Ataba was standing with a ferocious expression. By the look of it there had been, as Cook back home would have put it,
words
.

He turned to look at her, his face like a smacked bottom (Cook again), and then snorted and turned toward the lagoon.

At that moment the water mounded and Milo walked up the sloping, white sand, water pouring off him. He had a god stone on his shoulder.

“I want to know what’s been going on!” said Daphne. She was ignored. Everyone was watching the approaching Milo.

“I told you! I forbid you to bring that ashore!” Ataba yelled. “I am a priest of Water!”

Milo gave him a long, slow look and then kept on coming, his muscles moving like oiled coconuts under his skin. Daphne could hear the sand being crushed under his feet as he plodded over to the god anchors and set his burden down with a grunt. It sank a little into the beach.

There were already four lying in the sand. That isn’t right, is it? she wondered. Weren’t there supposed to be three but one got lost? Where did the other ones come from?

She saw the big man stretch himself out with a cracking of joints before turning to the little crowd and saying, in the slow and solemn voice of a man who tests the truth of every word before letting it go: “If anyone touches the stones, they answer to me.”

“That one was made by a demon!” shouted Ataba. He looked at the crowd for some support here but didn’t find any. The people weren’t on anyone’s side, as far as Daphne could tell. They just didn’t like shouting. Things were bad enough as they were.

“Demon,” rumbled Milo. “You like that word? Demon boy, you call him. But he saved you from the shark, right? And
you
said we made the god anchors. You did! I heard you!”

“Only
some
,” said Ataba, backing away. “Only some!”

“You never said
some
!” said Milo quickly. “He never said
some
,” he announced to the crowd. “He was speaking for his life an’ he never said
some
! I have good ears and he never said
some
!”

“Who cares what he said?” said Daphne. She turned to the nearest woman. “Get Mau some blankets! He’s as cold as ice!”

“Mau did rescue Ataba from a shark,” said Pilu.

“That is a lie! I was in no danger—” the priest began, and stopped, because Milo had started to growl.

“You should have seen it!” said Pilu quickly, turning to the crowd with his eyes wide open and his arms outspread. “It was the biggest one I have ever seen! It was as long as a house! It had teeth like, like, like huge teeth! As it came toward us, its speed made waves that almost sank the canoe!”

Daphne blinked and looked sideways at the people. Their eyes were as wide as Pilu’s. Every mouth hung open.

“And Mau just waited, treading water,” the boy went on. “He did not turn and flee! He did not try to get away! He looked it in the eye, there in its own world! He waved at the shark, the shark with the teeth like machetes, the shark with teeth like needles, to call it to him! He called it to him! Yes, he did! I was in the water and I saw! He was waiting for it! And the shark came faster! It came like a spear! Faster and faster it came!”

In the audience, someone started to whimper.

“And then I saw an amazing thing!” Pilu went on, his eyes wide and gleaming. “It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen! I will never see anything like it if I live to be a hundred! As the shark charged through the water, as the shark with the huge teeth sped toward him, as the shark as long as a house came through the water like a knife, Mau—he pissed himself!”

The little waves of the lagoon lapped at the sand with small
sup-sup
noises, suddenly loud in the bottomless moment of silence.

The woman bringing a grubby blanket from the hut almost walked into Daphne because she couldn’t bear to take her eyes off Pilu.

Oh, thank you, Pilu, Daphne thought bitterly as the magic drained away. You were doing so well, you had their hearts in the palm of your hand, and then you had to go and spoil it by—

“And that was when I saw,” whispered Pilu, lowering his voice and staring around the circle of faces, catching every eye. “That is when I knew. That is when I understood. He was no demon! He was no god, no hero. No. He was nothing but a man! A man who was frightened! A man like you and me! But would we wait there, full of fear, as the shark with huge teeth came to eat us?
He
did! I saw him! And as the shark was upon him, he shouted at it in scorn! He shouted these words:
Da! Na! Ha! Pa!
”

“Da! Na! Ha! Pa!” several people mumbled, as if they were in a dream.

“And the shark turned and fled from him. The shark could not face him. The shark turned about and we were saved. I was there. I saw this.”

Daphne realized that her hands were sweating. She had felt the shark brush past her. She had seen its terrible eye. She could draw a picture of its teeth.
She
had been there.
She
had seen it. Pilu’s voice had
shown
it to her.

She remembered when Mr. Griffith from the Nonconformist chapel had been invited to speak in the parish church. The sermon was rather damp, because he spat a fine spray when he shouted, but the man was so full of God that it overflowed everywhere.

He preached as if he had a flaming sword in his hand. Bats fell out of the rafters. The organ started up by itself. The water sloshed in the font. All in all, it was very unlike the sermons of the Reverend Fleblow-Poundup, who on a fine day could get through a mumbled service in half an hour, with his butterfly net and collecting jar leaning against the pulpit.

When they had got home, her grandmother had stood in the hallway, taken a deep breath, and said, “Well!” And that was that. Normally people tended to be very quiet in the parish church. Perhaps they were afraid of waking God up in case He asked pointed questions or gave them a test.

But Pilu had unfolded the story of the shark like Mr. Griffith had preached. He had unfolded a picture in the air and then made it move. Was it true? Had it really happened like that? But how could it not be true, now? They had been there. They had
seen
it. They had
shared
it.

She looked down at Mau. His eyes were still open and his body was still twitching. And then she looked up, and into the face of Cahle, who said: “Locaha has taken him.”

“You mean he’s dying?”

“Yes. The cold hand of Locaha is on him. You know him. He does not sleep. He eats not enough. He carries all weights, runs every distance. In his head, too much thinking. Has anyone here seen him not working, guarding, digging, carrying? He tries to carry the world on his back! And when such people weaken, Locaha springs.”

Daphne leaned down to Mau. His lips were blue. “You’re not dying,” she whispered. “You can’t be dying.”

She shook him gently, and there was a rush of air from his lips, faint as a spider’s sneeze:
“Does…”

“Does not happen!” she said triumphantly. “See? Locaha hasn’t got him yet! Look at his legs! He is
not
dying! In his head he is
running
!”

Cahle looked carefully at Mau’s twitching legs and put her hand on his forehead. Her eyes widened. “I have heard of this,” she said. “It’s shadow stuff. It will kill him, even so. The Sky Woman will know what to do.”

“Where is she, then?”

“You chew her food for her,” said Cahle, smiling. The Unknown Woman appeared behind her, staring at Mau in horror.

“Mrs. Gurgle?”
said Daphne.

“She is very old. A woman of great power.”

“Then we’d better hurry!”

Daphne put her hands under Mau’s shoulders and pulled him up. To her astonishment the Unknown Woman handed her baby to Cahle and took Mau’s feet. She looked at Daphne expectantly.

Together they ran up the hill, leaving everyone else behind after they had gone a little way. By the time they arrived in the hut, Mrs. Gurgle was waiting for them with her little black eyes gleaming.

As soon as Mau was laid on a mat, she changed.

Until now Mrs. Gurgle had been rather a strange, half-sized person to Daphne. She had lost most of the hair on her head, moved on all fours like a chimpanzee, and looked as if she’d been made out of old leather bags. Also, she was, frankly, grabby when it came to food, and tended to fart in an unladylike way, although that was mostly the fault of the salt-pickled beef.