Nation (19 page)

Now she crawled around Mau carefully, touching him gently here and there. She listened intently at his ears and lifted each of his legs in turn, watching the twitching as closely as if she was observing a new species of wild animal.

“He can’t die!” Daphne blurted out, unable to bear the suspense. “He just doesn’t sleep! He spends all night on guard! But you can’t die of not sleeping! Can you?”

The ancient woman gave her a wide grin and picked up one of Mau’s feet. Slowly she ran a stubby black fingernail along his twitching sole and seemed disappointed in whatever it was she learned by it.

“He isn’t dying, is he? He can’t die!” Daphne insisted again as Cahle came in. Other people crowded around the door.

Mrs. Gurgle ignored them and gave Daphne a look that said, unmistakably, “Oh? And who are you, who knows everything?” and did some more leg lifting and prodding just to make the point that she was in charge. Then she looked up at Cahle and spoke at high speed. At one point Cahle laughed and shook her head.

“She says he is in the—” Cahle stopped, and her lips moved as she tried to find a word she thought Daphne might understand. “The place between,” she said. “Shadow place. Not alive. Not dead.”

“Where is it?” said Daphne.

This was another difficult one. “A place with no place—you cannot walk there. Cannot swim there. On sea, no. On land, no. Like shadow. Yes! Shadow place!”

“How can I get there?” This one was relayed to Mrs. Gurgle, and the reply was abrupt.

“
You?
Cannot!”

“Look, he saved me from drowning! He saved my life, do you understand? Besides, it’s your custom. If someone saves your life, it’s like a debt. You must pay it back. And I want to!”

Mrs. Gurgle seemed to approve of this when it was translated. She said something.

Cahle nodded. “She says that to get to the shadow world, you have to die,” she translated. “She is asking if you know how to.”

“You mean it’s something you have to
practice
?”

“Yes. Many times,” said Cahle calmly.

“I thought you only got one go!” Daphne said.

Mrs. Gurgle was suddenly in front of the girl. She stared at her fiercely, moving her head this way and that as if she were trying to find something in Daphne’s face. Then, before Daphne could move, the old woman suddenly grabbed her hand, dragged it onto her own heart, and held it there.

“Boom-boom?” she said.

“Heartbeat? Er…yes,” said Daphne, trying very hard and very unsuccessfully not to feel embarrassed. “It’s quite faint—I mean, you’ve got a very…a lot of—”

The heartbeat stopped.

Daphne tried to pull her hand away, but it was held tight. Mrs. Gurgle’s expression was blank and slightly preoccupied, as if she was trying to do a mildly complicated sum in her head, and the room seemed to darken.

Daphne couldn’t help herself. She started to count under her breath.

“…fifteen…sixteen…”

And then…
boom
…so faint you could easily have missed it…
boom
…a little stronger this time…
boom-boom
…and it was back. The old woman smiled.

“Er…I could try it—” Daphne began. “Just show me what to do!”

“There is no time to teach you, she says,” said Cahle. “She says it takes a lifetime to learn how to die.”

“I can learn very fast!”

Cahle shook her head. “Your father looks for you. He is a trouserman chief, yes? If you are dead, what do we say? When your mother weeps for you, what do we say?”

Daphne felt the tears coming, and tried to shut them out. “My mother…cannot weep,” she managed.

Once more Mrs. Gurgle’s dark little eyes looked into Daphne’s face as if it were clear water—and there Daphne was, on the stairs in her nightdress with the blue flowers on it, hugging her knees and staring in horror at the little coffin on top of the big one, and sobbing because the little boy would be buried all alone in a box instead of with his mother, and would be so frightened.

She could hear the lowered voices of the men, talking to her father, and the clink of the brandy decanter, and smell the ancient carpet.

There was the sound of a busy stomach, and there was Mrs. Gurgle, too, sitting on the carpet chewing salt-pickled beef, and watching her with interest.

The old woman stood up and reached for the little coffin, laying it gently on the carpet. She reached up again and lifted the lid of the big coffin and looked at Daphne expectantly.

There were footsteps below in the hallway as a maid crossed the tiled floor and disappeared through the green baize door to the kitchens, sobbing.

She knew what to do. She’d done it in her imagination a thousand times. She lifted the small, cold body from his lonely coffin, kissed his little face, and tucked him in beside their mother. The crying stopped—

—she blinked at Mrs. Gurgle’s bright eyes, there in front of her again. The sound of the sea filled her ears.

The old woman turned to Cahle, and she rattled and spluttered out what sounded like a long speech, or perhaps it was some kind of command. Cahle started to reply, but the old woman raised a finger, very sharply. Something had changed.

“She says it is you who must fetch him back,” said Cahle, a bit annoyed. “She says there is a pain taken away, there at the other end of the world.”

Daphne wondered how far those dark eyes could see.
There at the other end of the world
. Maybe.
How did she do that?
It hadn’t felt like a dream; it felt like a memory! But a pain was fading….

“She says you are a woman of power, like her,” Cahle went on reluctantly. “She has walked often in the shadow world. I know this to be true. She is famous.”

Mrs. Gurgle gave Daphne another little smile.

“She says she will send you into the shadows,” Cahle continued. “She says that you have very good teeth and have been kind to an old lady.”

“Er…it was no trouble,” said Daphne, and thought furiously:
How did she know? How did she do it?

“She says there is no time to teach you, but she knows another way, and when you come back from the shadows, you will be able to chew much meat for her with your wonderful white teeth.”

The little old woman gave Daphne a smile so wide that her ears nearly fell into it.

“I certainly will!”

“So now she will poison you to death,” Cahle said.

Daphne looked at Mrs. Gurgle, who nodded encouragingly.

“She will? Er…really? Er, thank you,” said Daphne. “Thank you very much.”

Mau ran. He didn’t know why; his legs were doing it all by themselves. And the air was…not air. It was thick, as thick as water, and black, but somehow he could see through it a long way, and move through it fast, too. Huge pillars rose out of the ground around him, and seemed to go up forever to a roof of surf.

Something silvery and very quick shot past him and disappeared behind a pillar, and was followed by another one, and another.

Fish, then, or something like fish. So he
was
underwater. Underwater, looking up at the waves…

He was in the Dark Current.

“Locaha!” he shouted.

Hello, Mau
, said the voice of Locaha.

“I’m not dead! This is not fair!”

Fair? I’m not sure I know that word, Mau. Besides, you are
nearly
dead. Certainly more dead than alive, and dying a little more every moment.

Mau tried to go faster, but he was already running faster than he had ever run before.

“I’m not tired! I can keep going forever! This is some kind of a trick, right? There must be rules, even to a trick!”

I agree
, said Locaha.
And this
is
a trick.

“This is safe, isn’t it?” said Daphne. She was lying down on a mat by Mau, who still seemed as limp as a doll apart from the twitching legs. “And it
will
work, won’t it?” She tried to keep the wobble out of her voice, but it was one thing to be brave, and—
two
things to be brave
and
determined when it was really only an idea at the moment—and definitely another matter entirely when you could see Mrs. Gurgle out of the corner of your eye, busy at work.

“Yes,” said Cahle.

“You are sure, are you?” said Daphne. Oh, it sounded so
weedy
. She was ashamed of herself.

Cahle gave her a little smile and went over to Mrs. Gurgle, who was squatting by the fire. Baskets of dried…
things
had been brought down from their hanging place in one of the huts, and Daphne knew the rule: the nastier and more dangerous, the higher. These had practically been on the roof.

When Cahle spoke to her, acting like a pupil talking to a respected teacher, the old woman stopped sniffing at a handful of what looked like dusty bean pods and looked across at Daphne. There was no smile or wave. This was Mrs. Gurgle at work. She said something out of the corner of her mouth and threw all the pods into the little three-legged cauldron in front of her.

Cahle came back. “She says safe is not sure. Sure not safe. There is just do, or do not do.”

I was drowning, and he saved me, thought Daphne. Why did I ask that stupid question?

“Make it sure,” she said. “Really sure.” On the other side of the room, Mrs. Gurgle grinned. “Can I ask another question? When I’m…you know,
there
, what should I do? Is there anything I should say?”

The reply came back: “Do what is best. Say what is right.” And that was it. Mrs. Gurgle did not go in for long explanations.

When the old woman hobbled across with half an oyster shell, Cahle said: “You must lick up what is on the shell and lie back. When the drop of water hits your face you…will wake up.”

Mrs. Gurgle gently put the shell in Daphne’s hand and made a very short speech.

“She says you will come back because you have very good teeth,” Cahle volunteered.

Daphne looked at the half shell. It was a dull white, and empty except for two little greeny-yellow blobs. It didn’t seem much for all that effort. She held it close to her mouth and looked up at Cahle. The woman had put her hand in a gourd of water, and now she held it high over Daphne’s mat. She looked down with a drop of water glistening on the end of her finger.

“Now,” she said.

Daphne licked the shell (it tasted of nothing) and let herself fall back.

And then there was the moment of horror. Even as her head hit the mat, the drop of water was falling toward it.

She tried to shout, “That’s not enough ti—”

And then there was darkness, and the boom of the waves overhead.

Mau ran onward, but the voice of Locaha still sounded very close.

Are you tiring, Mau? Do your legs ache for rest?

“No!” said Mau. “But…these rules. What are they?”

Oh, Mau…I only agreed there must be rules. That doesn’t mean I have to tell you what they are.

“But you must catch me, yes?”

You are correct in your surmise
, said Locaha.

“What does that mean?”

You guessed right. Are you
sure
you are not tiring?

“Yes!”

In fact strength flowed into Mau’s legs. He had never felt so alive. The pillars were going past faster now. He was overtaking the fish, which panicked away, leaving silvery trails. And there was light on the dark horizon. It looked like buildings, like white buildings as big as the ones Pilu had told him about in Port Mercia. What were buildings doing down here?

Something white flashed past under his feet. He glanced down and almost stumbled. He was running over white blocks. They were blurred by his speed, and he didn’t dare to slow down, but they looked exactly the right size to be god anchors.

This is wonderful, wonderful
, said Locaha.
Mau, did you bother to wonder if
you are running the wrong way
?

Two voices had said those words and now arms grabbed him.

“
This way!
” screamed Daphne, right in his ear as she tugged him back the way he had come. “Why didn’t you hear me?”

“But—” Mau began, straining to look back at the white buildings. There was something like a twist of smoke coming out of them…or perhaps it was a clump of weeds, flapping in the current…or a ray, skimming toward them.

“I said
this
way! Do you want to die forever? Run! Run!”

But where was the speed in his legs? It
was
like running through water now, real water. He looked at Daphne, who was half towing him.

“How did you get here?”

“Apparently I’m dead—will you
try
to keep up! And whatever you do, don’t look back!”

“Why not?”

“Because I just did! Run faster!”

“Are you really dead?”

“Yes, but I’m due to get well soon. Come on, Mrs. Gurgle! The drop was falling!”

Silence fell like a hammer made of feathers. It left holes in the shape of the sound of the sea.

They stopped running, not because they intended to, but because they had to. Mau’s feet hung uselessly above the ground. The air turned gray.

“We are in the steps of Locaha,” he said. “He has spread his wings over us.”

Words seized Daphne’s tongue. It was only a few weeks since she’d heard them before, at the funeral of Cabin Boy Scatterling, who had been killed in the mutiny. He’d had red hair and pimples and she hadn’t liked him much, but she’d cried when the sailcloth-wrapped body had disappeared under the waves. Captain Roberts was a member of the Conducive Brethren, who accepted a version of the Gospel of St. Mary Magdalene as, well, gospel.
*
She’d never heard this piece read down at Holy Trinity, but she had tucked it into her memory and now it came out, screamed like a battle cry: