Nation

CHAPTER 3 Calenture

IN THE DARKNESS OF the wreck of the Sweet Judy, a match flared. There were some pings and scraping noises and at last the lamp was alight. It wasn’t broken, but she had to be sparing with it because she hadn’t found any more oil yet. It was probably underneath everything else. Everything was under everything else. It was a mercy she’d wrapped the mattress around her before the Sweet Judy tried to sail through trees. She’d remember the snapping and the screams as long as she lived. She’d heard the hull split and the masts crack, and worst of all she had heard the silence.

And she’d climbed out into a steaming morning full of birdsong, with most of the Judy back on the smashed trail behind her and one word in her head.

The word was Calenture.

It meant a special kind of madness, brought on by the heat. First Mate Cox had told her about it, probably hoping to frighten her because he was that sort of person. Sailors got calenture when they’d been becalmed at sea for too long. They’d look over the side and see, instead of the ocean, cool green fields. They’d leap down into them and drown. First Mate Cox said he’d seen grown men do it. They’d jumped into a meadow full of daisies and drowned or, as he put it, drownded. And he’d probably pushed them in, too.

And there she was, stepping off a boat into the middle of a green jungle. It was like the… opposite of madness, in a way. She was quite sane, she was sure of that, but the world itself had gone mad. There were dead men back on the track. She’d seen dead people before, when her uncle had broken his neck while hunting, and of course there had been that terrible accident with the harvesting machine. Neither of the dead seamen was Cookie, she was shamefully glad to say, and she’d said a quick prayer over them and had run back to the ship to be sick.

Now she rummaged in the mess that had been a neat cabin and found her writing box. She balanced it on her knees and opened it, taking out one of the gold-edged invitation cards she had gotten for her birthday, and stared at it for a moment. According to her book of etiquette (another birthday present), there should be a chaperone present if she invited the young man to visit, and the only person she could think of was poor Captain Roberts. He was a real captain, which counted for something, but he was unfortunately dead. On the other hand, the book didn’t actually say the chaperone had to be alive, only present. Anyway, she still had the sharp machete stuffed down behind her bunk. It had not been a happy voyage after First Mate Cox had come aboard.

She glanced at the blanket-covered shape in the corner, from which came a continual muttering. She had to keep it covered up or else it’d start to swear again. Some of the words it came out with a respectable young lady should not know the meaning of. The words she didn’t know the meaning of worried her even more.

She had been unkind to the boy, she knew. You weren’t supposed to shoot people, especially if you hadn’t even been introduced to them, and it was only a mercy the gunpowder had got wet. It was sheer panic, and he’d been working so hard burying those poor people in the sea. At least her father was alive and he would come looking for her, even though there were more than eight hundred places to look in the Mothering Sunday Islands.

She dipped her pen in the ink and crossed out Government House, Port Mercia at the top of the card, and carefully wrote underneath: “The Wreck of the Sweet Judy.”

There were other changes that needed to be made. Whoever had designed the cards had completely overlooked the possibility that you might want to invite someone whose name you didn’t know, who lived on a beach, wore hardly any clothing, and almost certainly couldn’t read. But she did her best, on both sides of the card,[! Where it said “Dress,” she’d written: “Yes, please.”!] and then signed it “Ermintrude Fanshaw (the Honorable Miss)” and wished she didn’t have to, at least about the Ermintrude.

Then she put on the big oilskin coat that had belonged to poor Captain Roberts, pocketed the last of the mangoes, picked up a cutlass, unhooked the oil lamp, and set out into the night.

Mau awoke with the Grandfathers shouting in his head and the fire a big glowing heap.

REPLACE THE GOD ANCHORS! WHO IS GUARDING THE NATION? WHERE IS OUR BEER?

I don’t know, Mau thought, looking up at the sky. The women made beer. I don’t know how.

He couldn’t go into the Women’s Place, could he? He’d already been up there to take a look, although men couldn’t go to the Women’s Place, and women couldn’t go into the valley of the Grandfathers. If these things happened, there would be the end of everything. It was that important.

Mau blinked. How much more of an end could everything have? There were no more people, so how could there be rules? Rules couldn’t float around by themselves!

He stood up and saw the golden glitter. A white oblong had been wedged in a piece of broken wood, and there were toeless footprints in the sand. Next to the wood was another mango.

She’d been creeping around while he slept!

There were meaningless marks on the white oblong, but on the other side were some pictures. Mau knew about messages, and this one wasn’t difficult:

“When the sun is just above the last tree left on Little Nation, you must throw a spear at the big wrecked canoe,” he said aloud. It didn’t make any sense, and nor did the ghost girl. But she had given him the spark-maker, although she’d been very frightened. He’d been frightened too. What were you supposed to do about girls? You had to keep away from them while you were a boy, but he’d heard that when you were a man you got other instructions.

And as for the Grandfathers and the god anchors, he hadn’t seen them at all. They were big stones, but the wave hadn’t cared. Did the gods know? Had they been washed away? It was too complicated to think about. Beer was simpler, but not by much.

Women made the beer, and he knew that there was a big bowl in front of the Cave of the Grandfathers where an offering of beer was poured every day. He knew this, and it had just stayed in his head as a thing that he knew, but now questions were rising, like: Why did the dead need beer? Wouldn’t it… trickle through? If they didn’t drink it, who did? And would he get into trouble for even thinking these questions?

Who from?

He remembered going into the Women’s Place from when he was very small. Around about the time he was seven or eight he started to become unwelcome there. Women shooed him away, or stopped what they were doing when he came near and watched him very hard until he left. The very old women in particular had a way of glaring at you that made you want to be somewhere else. One of the older boys told him that they could mutter words that made your wingo fall off. After that he kept away from the Women’s Place, and it became like the moon; he knew where it was but didn’t even think about going there.

Well, there were no old women now. He wished there were. There was no one to stop him doing anything. He wished there was.

The path to the Women’s Place turned off from the track into the forest and then went downhill and southwest and down into a narrow gulley. At the end of it were two big stones, taller than a man, splashed with red paint. That was the only way in, back when there were rules. Now, Mau pulled out the thornbush that blocked the entrance and pushed through.

And there was the Place, a round bowl of a valley full of sunlight. Screens of trees kept out the wind, and thorn and briar bushes were woven so thickly among them that nothing except maybe a snake could get through, and today the valley looked as though it was asleep. Mau could hear the sea, but it seemed to be a long way off. There was the tinkle of a little stream that dribbled out of the rock at one side of the bowl, filled a rocky hollow that was a natural bathing place, and lost itself in the gardens.

The Nation grew the big crops in the large field. That was where you found aharo, sugarcane, tabor, boomerang peas, and black corn. There men grew the things that made you live.

In the Place, the gardens of the women grew the things that made the living enjoyable, possible, and longer: spices and fruits and chewing roots. They had ways of making crops grow bigger or more tasty. They dug up or traded plants and brought them here, and knew the secrets of seeds and pods and things. They raised pink bananas here and rare plantains and yams, including the jumping yam. They also grew medicines here, and babies.

Here and there around the edges of the gardens were huts. Mau approached them carefully, beginning to feel nervous. Someone should be shouting at him, some old woman should be pointing and mumbling, and he should be running away very fast with his hands cupped over his groin, just in case. Anything would be better than this sunny, empty silence.

So there are still rules, he thought. I brought them with me. They’re in my head.

There were baskets in some of the huts, and bunches of roots hung from the ceiling, out of reach of small fingers. They were maniac roots. You learned about them very early on. They made the best beer of all or they killed you as dead as a stone, and the secret ingredient that decided which of these happened was a song that everybody knew.

He found what he was looking for in the hut by the spring. A whole bowl of chopped root was hissing and bubbling gently to itself under a pile of palm leaves. The sharp, prickly smell filled the hut.

How much did some dead men drink? He filled a calabash with the stuff, which should be enough. He was careful how he poured it, because it was very dangerous at this stage, and he hurried away before a ghost could catch him.

He reached the valley of the Grandfathers without spilling much, and tipped the contents of the calabash into the big stone bowl in front of the sealed cave. From the gnarly old trees a couple of grandfather birds watched him carefully.

He spat into the bowl, and the beer seethed for a while. Big yellow bubbles burst on the surface.

Then he sang. It was a simple little song, easy to remember, about the four brothers, all sons of Air, who one day decided to race around the huge belly of their father to see which of them would court the woman who lived in the Moon, and the tricks each one played on the others so that he could be first. Babies learned it. Everyone knew it. And, for some reason, singing that song turned the poison into beer. It really did.

The beer foamed in the bowl. Mau watched the big round stone, just in case, but the Grandfathers probably had a way of drinking beer from the spirit world.

He sang his way through the song, taking care not to miss any verse, especially the one that was very funny when you did the right gestures. When he finished, the beer had gone clear, with golden bubbles rising to the top. Mau took a sip, to check. His heart didn’t stop after one beat, so the beer was probably fine.

He took a few steps back and said, to the wide open sky: “Here is your beer, Grandfathers!”

Nothing happed. It was a bad thought, but a thank you might have been nice.

Then the world drew a breath and the breath became voices: YOU HAVE FAILED TO DO THE CHANT!

“I have sung the song! It is good beer!”

WE MEAN THE CHANT THAT CALLS US TO THE BEER!

A couple more grandfather birds crash-landed in the trees.

“I didn’t know there was one!”

YOU ARE A LAZY BOY!

Mau grabbed at this. “That’s right, I’m just a boy! There is no one to teach me! Can you —?”

HAVE YOU RIGHTED THE GOD ANCHORS? NO! And with that the voices snapped into silence, leaving only the sighing of the wind.

Well, it looked like good beer. What was a chant needed for? Mau’s mother had made good beer, and people had just turned up.

With a flapping of wings, a grandfather bird landed on the edge of the beer stone and gave him the usual stare that said: If you are going to die, hurry up. Otherwise, leave.

Mau shrugged and walked away. But he hid behind a tree, and he was good at hiding. Maybe the big round stone would roll.

It didn’t take long for several more grandfather birds to alight on the bowl. They squabbled for a while and then, with the occasional pause for another brief fight, settled down to some serious boozing, rocking backward and forward because that is how birds move when they drink, then rocking backward and forward and forward and falling over a lot, which is how birds move when they have been drinking fresh beer. One took off and flew backward into some bushes.

Mau walked back thoughtfully to the beach, stopping on the way to cut himself a spear from the forest. Down on the beach he sharpened it to a point, which he hardened in the fire, occasionally glancing up at the sun.

He did all this slowly, because his mind was filling up with questions. They came out of the black hole inside him so fast that they made it hard to think in a straight line. And soon he would have to see the ghost girl. That was going to be… difficult.

He looked at the white oblong again. The shiny metal around the edge was quite soft and useless, and scraped off easily. As for the picture, he thought it might be some kind of magic or charm, like the blue bead. What was the point of throwing a spear at the big canoe? It wasn’t something you could kill. But the ghost girl was the only other person on the island, and she had, after all, given him the spark-maker. He didn’t need it now, but it was still a wonderful thing.

When the sun was getting close to the Little Nation, he set off along the beach and entered the low forest.

You could smell things growing. There was never much light down here, but the big canoe had left a wide trail, and daylight was shafting down into spaces that hadn’t seen it for years, and the race was on for a rare place in the sun. New green shoots were fighting for their piece of the sky, fronds were unfolding, seeds were cracking open. The forest was coming back with its own green tide; in six months no one would ever guess what had happened here.

Mau slowed down when the wreck of the big canoe came in sight, but he could see no movement. He would have to be careful about this. It would be so easy to get things wrong.

It was so easy to get things wrong.

She hated the name Ermintrude. It was the trude really. Ermin, now that wasn’t bad at all. Trudy, too, sounded quite jolly, but her grandmother had said it sounded fast, whatever that meant, and banned her from using it. Even Gertrude would have done. You still had your trude, of course, but one of the royal princesses was named Gertrude, and some of the newspapers called her Princess Gertie, and that sounded like the name of a girl who might have some fun in life.

But Ermintrude, she thought, was exactly the kind of name that would invite a young man to tea and mess it all up. The coal stove kept smoking, the flour she’d tried to make the scones of had smelled funny because of the dead lobster in the barrel, and she felt sure some of the flour shouldn’t have been moving about, either. She’d managed to open the last tin of Dr. Poundbury’s Patented Ever-Lasting Milk, which said on the tin that it would taste as good after a year as it did on the day it was tinned, and, sadly, that was probably true. It smelled like drowned mice.

If only she’d been taught properly! If only someone had thought to spend an afternoon teaching her a few things that would be handy to know if she was shipwrecked on a desert island! It could happen to anyone! Even some hints on making scones would have been a help! But no, her grandmother had said that a lady should never lift anything heavier than a parasol and should certainly never set foot in a kitchen unless it was to make Economic Charitable Soup for the Deserving Poor, and her grandmother didn’t think there were very many of them.

“Always remember,” she used to say, far too often, “that it only needs one hundred and thirty-eight people to die and your father will be king! And that means that, one day, you might be queen!”

Grandmother used to say this with a look in her eye that suggested that she was planning 138 murders, and you didn’t have to know the old lady for long to suspect that she’d be quite capable of arranging them. They wouldn’t be impolite murders, of course. There wouldn’t be any of that desperate business with daggers and pistols. They would be elegant and tactful. A block or stone would fall out of someone’s stately home here, someone would slip on a patch of ice in the castle battlements there, a suspicious blancmange at a palace banquet (arsenic could so easily be confused with sugar) would take care of several at once…. But she probably wouldn’t go that far, not really. Nevertheless, she lived in hope, and prepared her granddaughter for a royal life by seeing to it, wherever possible, that Ermintrude was not taught anything that could possibly be of any practical use whatsoever.

Now here she was, with her wrong name, struggling to make afternoon tea in a wrecked boat in the middle of the jungle! Why hadn’t anyone thought this might happen?

And the young man was what her grandmother would have called a savage, too. But he hadn’t been savage. She had watched him bury all those people in the sea. He had picked them up gently, even the dogs. He wasn’t someone throwing away garbage. He had cared. He had cried tears, but he hadn’t seen her, not even when she’d stood in front of him. There had been just one point when his streaming eyes had tried to focus on her, and then he had stepped around her and gotten on with his work. He’d been so careful and gentle, it was hard to believe he was a savage.

She remembered First Mate Cox shooting at monkeys with his pistol when they had moored in that river mouth in the Sea of Ceramis. He had laughed every time a small brown body dropped into the river, especially if it was still alive when the crocodiles caught it.

She’d shouted at him to stop it, and he’d laughed, and Captain Roberts had come down from the wheelhouse and there had been a terrible row, and after that things had gone very sour on the Sweet Judy. But just as she had begun the first part of her journey around the world, there had been a lot in the newspapers about Mr. Darwin and his new theory that people had a kind of monkey as their distant ancestor. Ermintrude did not know if this was true, but when she’d looked into First Mate Cox’s eyes, she’d seen something much worse than any monkey could be.

At which point a spear crashed through the cracked porthole, hissed across the cabin, and left via the porthole on the other side, which had lost all its glass to the wave.

Ermintrude sat very still, first out of shock and then because she was remembering her father’s advice. In one of his letters to her, he had said that when she joined him in Government House, she would be his first lady and would be able to meet all kinds of people who might act in ways she found strange at first, and perhaps would even misunderstand. And so she would have to be gracious and make allowances.

Very well. This was about the time the boy would be here. What had she expected him to do when he arrived? Even on a boat that isn’t wrecked, it’s hard to find a doorbell. Perhaps throwing a spear means: Look, I’ve thrown away my spear! I’m not armed! Yes, that sounds right. It’s just like shaking hands, after all, to show you are not holding a sword. Well, I’m glad that’s one little mystery solved, she thought.

For the first time since the spear had hissed across the cabin, she breathed out.

Outside, Mau was beginning to wonder if something had gone wrong when there were some wooden noises and the ghost girl’s head appeared over the side of the big canoe.

“So kind of you to be punctual,” she said, trying to smile, “and thank you very much for breaking the window, it was getting very stuffy in here!”

He didn’t understand any of this, but she was very nearly smiling and that was a good thing. She wanted him to come into the wreck, too. He did so, very cautiously. The Sweet Judy had keeled over a bit when the wave had dropped her at ground level, so everything sloped.

Inside was just a mess, made of many different messes all jumbled up. Everything stank of mud and stale water. But the girl led him into another space that looked at least as though someone had tried to clean things up a bit, even if they had failed.

“I’m afraid the chairs all got smashed,” said the girl, “but I’m sure you will find poor Captain Roberts’s sea chest an adequate substitute.”

Mau, who had never sat on anything but the ground or a hut floor when he ate, edged his bottom onto a wooden box.

“I thought it would be nice to get properly acquainted, since we haven’t been introduced,” said the ghost girl. “Obviously the fact that we cannot understand each other will be something of a drawback….”

While this gibberish was going on, Mau stared at the fire in its little cave. Steam was coming out of a round black pipe. Next to it was a flat round thing. Pale things on it looked like some kind of bread. This is a Woman’s Place, he thought, and I don’t know the rules. I must be careful. She might do anything to me.

“… and the butter had gone runny, but I threw away the flour that had gone really green. Would you like some tea? I expect you don’t take milk?”

He watched as a brown liquid was poured into a blue-and-white bowl. Mau watched it carefully, while the girl went on talking faster and faster. How do you know what’s right and wrong? he wondered. What are the rules when you are all alone with a ghost girl?

He’d not been alone on the Boys’ Island. Oh, there hadn’t been anyone else there, but he’d felt the Nation around him. He was doing the Right Thing. But now? What were the Right Things? The Grandfathers bellowed and complained and ordered him about and didn’t listen.

He couldn’t find the silver thread either, or the picture of the future. There was no picture now. There was just him and this girl, and no rules to fight the darkness ahead.

Now she had taken the bready things off the fire, and put them on another of the round metal things, which he tried to balance on his knees.

“Most of the crockery got smashed in the wreck,” said the girl sadly. “It’s a miracle I could find two cups. Will you have a scone?” She pointed at the bread things.

Mau took one. It was hot, which was good, but on the other hand it tasted like a piece of slightly rotten wood.

She was watching anxiously as he moved the lump around in his mouth, looking for something to do with it.

“I’ve done it wrong, haven’t I?” she said. “I thought the flour was too damp. Poor Captain Roberts used to keep a lobster in the flour barrel to eat the weevils, and I’m sure that can’t be right. I’m sorry, I won’t mind if you spit it out.”

And she started to cry.

Mau hadn’t understood a word, but some things don’t need language. She weeps because the bread is awful. She should not cry. He swallowed, and took another bite. She stared, and sniffed, not certain if it was too early to stop crying.

“Very nice food,” said Mau. He swallowed the thing with a fight and was sure he felt it hit the bottom of his stomach. And then he ate the other one.

The girl dabbed at her eyes with a cloth.

“Very good,” Mau insisted, trying not to taste rotted lobster.

“I’m sorry, I can’t understand you,” she said. “Oh, dear, and I completely forgot to lay out the napkin rings. What must you think of me….”

“I don’t know the words you say,” said Mau.

There was a long, helpless pause, and Mau felt the two lumps of bad, dreadful bread sitting in his stomach, planning their exit. He was drinking the cup of sour, hot liquid to drown them when he became aware of a faint murmur coming from a corner of the cabin, where a big blanket covered — what? It sounded as though someone under there was muttering angrily to itself.

“It’s good to have someone to talk to,” said the girl loudly. “I see you walking around and it’s not so lonely.”

The flour balls in Mau’s stomach didn’t like the brown drink. He kept very still, fighting to keep them down.

The girl looked at him nervously and said: “My name is, um… Daphne.” She gave a little cough and added, “Yes, Daphne.” She pointed to herself and held out her hand.

“Daphne,” she said again, even more loudly. Well, she’d always liked the name.

Mau looked obediently at her hand, but there was nothing to see. So… she was from Daphne? In the islands the most important thing about you was the name of your clan. He hadn’t heard of the place, but they always said that no one knew all the islands. Some of the poorer ones disappeared completely at high tide and the huts were built to float. They would have gone now… so how many were left? Had everyone in the world been washed away?

The ghost girl stood and walked up the sloping deck to the door. Mau thought this looked promising. With any luck he didn’t have to eat any more wood.

She said: “Could you please help me with poor Captain Roberts?”

She wanted him to go outside, that was clear, and Mau got up quickly. The bad bread wanted to escape, and the smell of the fire was giving him a headache.

He staggered up and out into the fresh afternoon air. The girl was standing on the ground, by the big gray roll Mau had seen yesterday. She looked at him helplessly.

“Poor Captain Roberts,” she said, and prodded it with her foot.

Mau pulled away the heavy cloth and saw the body of an old trouserman with a beard. He was lying on his back, his eyes staring up at nothing. Mau pulled the cloth down farther and found that the man’s hands were holding a big circle of wood, with things like wooden spikes all around the edge of it.

“He tied himself to the ship’s wheel so that he wouldn’t get washed away,” said the girl behind him. “I cut the ropes but his poor hands wouldn’t let go, so I found a hammer and knocked the pin out of the wheel, and I tried and tried to bury him but the ground is too hard and I can’t move him by myself. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind being buried at sea,” she finished, all in one breath.

Mau sighed. She must know I can’t understand her but she goes on talking, he thought. She wants this body buried, I can tell. I wonder how long it took her to scrape that pathetic little hole in the rock? But she’s lost and far from home, like me.

“I can send him into the dark water,” he said. He made wave noises and wave shapes with his hand. She looked terrified for a moment, and then laughed and clapped her hands.

“Yes! Yes! That’s right! The sea! Whoosh, swoosh! The sea!”

The man and the wooden wheel together were too heavy to lift, but the cloth was very thick and Mau found he could drag the body quite well over the crushed vegetation of the track. The girl helped him with the difficult bits, or at least tried to, and once they reached the shore, the gray roll slid well enough on the damp sand, but it was a long tiring drag to the western end of the beach. At last Mau managed to get the captain into the waist-deep water at the very edge of the reef.

He looked into the dead eyes, staring straight ahead, and wondered what they would see down in the dark current. Would they see anything? Did anyone see anything?

The shock of the question hit him like a blow. How could he think it?

Once we were dolphins and Imo made us into men! That was true, wasn’t it? Why did he even wonder if it wasn’t? And if that wasn’t true, then there was just the dark water and nothing was anything….

He stopped those thoughts before they could run away with him. The Daphne girl was watching him, and this was no time to be uncertain and hesitant. He twisted papervine together to fasten stones and pieces of broken coral to poor Captain Roberts and his wheel. Papervine got tighter when it was wet and didn’t rot for years. Wherever poor Captain Roberts was going, he was going to stay there. Unless he turned into a dolphin, of course. Then, quickly, Mau made the cut to release his spirit.

On the rocks behind him, the girl sang a song. It wasn’t all na-na-na this time. Somehow Mau could hear her voice better, now he’d heard her speak. There were words, probably, although they had no meaning to Mau. But he thought: It’s a trouserman chant for the dead. They are like us! But if Imo made them, why are they so different?

The captain was almost underwater now, still holding on to the wheel. Mau held the last stone in one hand and pushed the floating captain forward, feeling all the time with his toes for the edge of the rock. He could sense the cold of the deeps below him, too.

The current was down there. No one knew where it came from, although there were stories of a land to the south where the water fell like feathers. But everyone knew where it went. They could see it. It became the Shining Path, a river of stars that flowed across the night sky. Once in a thousand years, it was said, when Locaha looked among the dead for those who should go to the Perfect World, they would climb that path and send the rest back to be dolphins until it was time for them to be born again.

How does that happen? Mau thought. How does water become stars? How does a dead man become a living dolphin? But those were a child’s questions, weren’t they? The kind you shouldn’t ask? The kind that were silly or wrong, and if you asked why too much you were given chores to do and told that’s how the world is.

A wavelet broke over the captain. Mau fastened the last stone to the wheel and, as the captain slid gently under the water, gave him a push out into the current.

A few bubbles came up as the captain sank, very slowly, out of sight.

Mau was just turning away when he saw something rising through the water. It broke the surface and turned over slowly. It was the captain’s hat, and now that it had filled with water, it began to drift back down again.

There was a splash from behind him and the girl of the Daphne clan floundered past, her white dress floating around her like a huge jellyfish.

“Don’t let it sink again!” she shouted. “He wants you to have it!” She plunged forward, grabbed the hat, waved it triumphantly — and sank.

Mau waited for her to come back up, but there were just bubbles.

Could it possibly be that there was someone in the world who couldn’t —

His body worked without thinking. He ducked under the surface, grabbed the biggest lump of coral he could see, and dived over the edge and into the dark water.

There below him was poor Captain Roberts, drifting gently down toward posterity. Mau went past in a rip of silver.

There were more bubbles below, and a pale shape disappearing at the farthest reach of the sunlight.

Not this one, Mau thought, as loudly as he could. Not now. No one goes alive into the dark. I served you, Locaha. I walked in your steps. You should owe me this one. One life back from the dark!

And a voice returned from the gloom: I recall no arrangement, Mau, no bargain, covenant, or promise. There is what happens, and what does not happen. There is no should.

And then he was tangling in the sea anemone of her skirts. He let the stone continue into the dark, found her face, breathed the air from his bursting lungs into hers, saw her eyes open wide, and kicked for the surface, dragging her behind him.

It took forever. He could feel the long, cold fingers of Locaha grabbing at his feet and squeezing his lungs, and surely the light was fading. The sound of the water in his ears began to sound like whispering: Would it hurt to stop now? To slide back down into the dark and let the current take him? It would be the end of all grief, a blanking of all bad memories. All he had to do was let her go and — No! That thought brought back his anger, and the anger brought strength.

A shadow fell across the light and Mau had to swim out of the way as the gently sinking captain went on past, on the last voyage he’d ever make.

But the light was no nearer, never any nearer. His legs were like stones. Everything stung. And there it was, the silver line, coming back to him again, pulling him forward into a picture of what could be —

— and rock was under his feet. He kicked down, and his head broke through the surf. His feet touched the rock again, and the light was brilliant.

The rest of what happened he watched from inside himself as he dragged the girl onto the rocks, and tipped her upside down and slapped her on her back until she coughed up water. Then it was a run along the beach to lay her down by the fire, where she vomited up more water and groaned. Only then did Mau’s mind explain that his body was far too weak to have managed all this, and let it fall backward into the sand.

He managed to turn over in time to throw up what was left of the dreadful cakes and stared down at the mess. Does not happen, he thought, and the words became a declaration of triumph and defiance. “Does not happen,” he said, and the words got bigger and dragged him to his feet, and “Does not happen!” he shouted at the sky. “Does not happen!”

A little sound made him look down. The girl was shaking, there on the sand. He knelt beside her and held her hand, which was still clutching the captain’s hat. Her skin was white, and as cold as the touch of Locaha, even in the heat of the fire.

“Cheat! I got her back!” he shouted. “Does not happen!”

Mau ran farther along the beach and onto the track that led into the low forest. Red crabs scuttled out of the way as he bounded along the trail of broken trees. He reached the big canoe and scrambled up the side. There had been — yes, there was that big blanket in the corner. He grabbed it and pulled, and something pulled back. He pulled harder, and something landed on the deck with a splintering noise.

A voice said: “Waark! Roberts is a dreadful boozer! Show us yer drawers!”

This time the blanket had come away, revealing a broken wooden cage on the floor and a very angry gray bird. It glared at Mau.

“Waark! Blessed are the meek, my sainted aunt!”

Mau had no time for birds now, but this one had a worrying glint in its eye. It seemed to demand a reply.

“Does not happen!” he shouted, and ran out of the cabin, the blanket flapping behind him.

He was halfway down the track when there was a flutter of wings overhead and a shriek of “Does not happen!”

Mau didn’t even look up. The world had become too strange. He ran to the fire and wrapped the girl as tight as he could in the blanket. After a while the shivering stopped, and she seemed to be asleep.

“Does not happen!” screamed the bird from a broken tree. Mau blinked. He’d understood it! And he’d understood it before, and not realized it.

Oh, there were some birds that could speak a few words, like the gray raven and the yellow parakeet, but you could hardly understand them. This bird talked as if it knew what it was saying.

“Where’s my grub, you vinegar-faced old piss pot?” said the bird, bouncing up and down eagerly. “Give me my rations, you ol’ hypocrite!”

That sounded like trouserman talk, right enough.

The sun was low but still a hand’s span above the sea. A lot had happened in a short space of time that, on the inside, had lasted nearly forever.

Mau looked down at the sleeping girl. “Does not happen” was not enough. You couldn’t trust Locaha. There were no bargains. Now he had to think about will not happen. Death was not going to rule here.

He found his spear and stood guard until morning.