Nation

CHAPTER 6 A Star Is Born

DAPHNE FLIPPED DESPAIRINGLY THROUGH the medical book, which had been published in 1770, before people had learned to spell properly. It was stained and falling apart like a very crumbly pack of cards. It had crude woodcut diagrams like “How to Saw a Leg Off” — aargh aargh aargh — and “How to Set Bones” — yuck — and cutaway diagrams of — oh, no — aargh aargh aargh!

The book’s title was The Mariners’ Medical Companion, and it was for people whose medicine cabinet was a bottle of castor oil, whose operating table was a bench sliding up and down a heaving deck, and whose tools were a saw, a hammer, and a bucket of hot tar and a piece of string. There wasn’t much in there about childbirth, and what there was — she turned the page — aargh! An illustration that she really did not want to see; it was for those times when things were so bad that not even a surgeon could make them worse.

The mother-to-be was lying on a woven bed in one of the huts, groaning, and Daphne wasn’t sure if this was good or bad. But she was absolutely certain that Mau shouldn’t be watching her, boy or not. This was called the Women’s Place, and it didn’t get more womanly than it was about to be.

She pointed at the door. Mau looked astonished.

“Shoo, out! I mean it! I don’t care if you’re human or a ghost or a demon or whatever you are, but you aren’t a female one! There’s got to be some rules! That’s it, out! And no listening at the keyh — piece of string,” she added, pulling the grass curtains that did, very badly, the job of a door.

She felt better for all that. A good shouting at somebody always makes you feel better and in control, especially if you aren’t. Then she sat down by the mat again.

The woman grabbed her arm and rattled out a question.

“Er… I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Daphne said, and the woman spoke again, gripping her arm so tightly that the skin went white.

“… I don’t know what to do…. Oh, no, don’t let it go wrong….”

The little coffin, so small on top of the big one. She’d never forget it. She’d wanted to look inside, but they wouldn’t let her, and they wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t let her explain. Men came around to sit with her father, so the house was full of people all night, and there wasn’t a new baby brother or sister, and that wasn’t all that had gone from her world. So she’d sat there on the top landing all night, next to the coffins, wanting to do something and not daring to do it, and feeling so sorry for the poor little dead boy crying, all alone.

The woman arched her body and yelled something. Hold on, there had to be a song, yes? That’s what they said. A song to welcome the baby. What song? How would she know?

Maybe it wouldn’t matter what song it was, so long as it was a welcoming song, a good song for the child’s spirit to hear, so that it would hurry up to be born. Yes, that sounded like a good idea, but why did she have, just for the moment, the certainty that it was supposed to be a good one? And here came a song, so old in her mind that she could not remember not knowing it, a song her mother sang to her, in the days when she still had a mother.

She leaned down, cleared her throat carefully, and sang: “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are — ”

The woman stared at her, seemed puzzled for a moment, and then relaxed.

“Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky — ” sang Daphne’s lips, while her brain thought: She’s got a lot of milk, she could easily feed two babies, so I should get them to bring the other woman and her child up here. And this thought was followed by: Did I just think that? But I don’t even know how babies are born! I hope there’s no blood; I hate the sight of blood —

“When the blazing sun is gone,

When he nothing shines upon,

Then you show your little light,

Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the traveler in the dark

Thanks you for your tiny spark… ”

And now something was happening. She carefully pulled aside the woman’s skirt. Oh, so that’s how. My goodness. I don’t know what to do! And here came another thought, as if it had been lying in wait: This is what you do….

The men were waiting outside the gateway to the Place, feeling unnecessary and surplus to requirements, which is exactly the appropriate feeling in the circumstances.

At least Mau had time to learn their names. Milota-dan (big, the oldest, who was head and shoulders taller than anyone Mau had ever seen) and Pilu-si (small, always rushing, and hardly ever not smiling).

He found out that Pilu did all the talking: “We went on a trouserman boat for six months once, all the way to a big place called Port Mercia. Good fun! We saw huge houses made of stone, and they had meat called beef and we learned trousermen talk, and when they dropped us off back home they gave us big steel knives and needles and a three-legged pot — ”

“Hush,” said Milo, raising a hand. “She’s singing! In trouserman! Come on, Pilu, you’re the best at this!”

Mau leaned forward. “What’s it about?”

“Look, our job was to pull on ropes and carry things,” Pilu complained. “Not work out songs!”

“But you said you could speak trouserman!” Mau insisted.

“To get by, yes! But this is very complicated! Um… ”

“This is important, brother!” said Milo. “This is the first thing my son will hear!”

“Quiet! I think it’s about… stars,” said Pilu, bent in concentration.

“Stars is good,” said Milo, looking around approvingly.

“She’s saying the baby — ”

“He,” said Milo firmly. “He will be a boy.”

“Er, yes, certainly. He will be, yes, like a star, guiding people in the dark. He will twinkle, but I don’t know what that means….”

They looked up at the dawn sky. The last of the stars looked back, but twinkled in the wrong language.

“He will guide people?” said Pilu. “How does she know that? This is a powerful song!”

“I think she’s making it up!” Ataba snapped.

“Oh?” said Milo, turning on him. “Where did you come from? Do you think my son won’t be a great leader?”

“Well, no, but I — ”

“Hold on, hold on,” said Pilu. “I think… he will seek to know what the stars mean, I’m pretty sure of that. And — look, I’m having to work hard on this, you know — because of this wondering, people won’t… be in the dark,” he finished quickly, and then added, “That was really hard to do, you know! My head aches! This is priest stuff!”

“Quiet,” said Mau. “I just heard something….”

They fell silent, and the baby cried again.

“My son!” said Milo as the others cheered. “And he will be a great warrior!”

“Er, I’m not sure it meant — ” Pilu began.

“A great man, anyway,” said Milo, waving a hand. “They say the birth song can be a prophecy, for sure. That type of language at this time… it’s telling us what will be, right enough.”

“Do the trousermen have gods?” asked Mau.

“Sometimes. When they remember — Hey, here she comes!”

The outline of the ghost girl appeared in the stone entrance to the place.

“Mr. Pilu, tell your brother he is the father of a little boy and his wife is well and sleeping.”

That news was passed on with a whoop, which is easy to translate.

“And he be called Twinkle?” Milo suggested, in broken English.

“No! I mean, no, don’t. Not Twinkle,” said the ghost girl quickly. “That would be wrong. Very, very wrong. Forget about Twinkle. Twinkle, NO!”

“Guiding Star?” said Mau, and that met with general approval.

“That would be very auspicious,” said Ataba. He added, “Is there going to be beer, by any chance?”

The choice was also translated for the ghost girl, who indicated that any name that wasn’t Twinkle was bound to be good. Then she asked — no, commanded — that the other young woman and her baby be brought up and all sorts of things carried to the Place from the wreck of the Sweet Judy. The men jumped to it. There was a purpose.

… And now it was two weeks later, and a lot had happened. The most important thing was that time had passed, pouring thousands of soothing seconds across the island. People need time to deal with the now before it runs away and becomes the then. And what they need most of all is nothing much happening.

And this is me, seeing all that horizon, Daphne thought, looking at the wash of blue that stretched all the way to the end of the world. My goodness, Father was right. If my horizon was any broader it would have to be folded in half.

It’s a funny saying, “broaden your horizons.” I mean, there’s just the horizon, which moves away from you, so you never actually catch up with it. You only get to where it’s been. She’d watched the sea all around the world, and it had always looked pretty much the same.

Or maybe it was the other way around; maybe you moved, you changed.

She couldn’t believe that back in ancient history, she’d given the poor boy scones that tasted like rotting wood and slightly like dead lobster! She’d fussed about napkins! And she’d tried to shoot him in the chest with poor Captain Roberts’s ancient pistol, and in any book of etiquette that was a wrong move.

But then, was that her back there? Or was this her, right here, in the sheltered garden that was the Women’s Place, watching the Unknown Woman sitting by the pool but holding her little son tightly, like a little girl holds a favorite dolly, and wondering if she shouldn’t take the child again, just to give it some time to breathe.

It seemed to Daphne that the men thought all women spoke the same language. That had seemed silly and a bit annoying, but she had to admit that in the Place, right now, the language was Baby. It was the common language. Probably everyone makes the same sort of cooing noises to babies, everywhere in the world, she thought. We kind of understand it’s the right thing to do. Probably no one thinks that the thing to do is to lean over it and hit a tin tray with a hammer.

And suddenly, that was very interesting. Daphne found herself watching the two babies closely, in between the chores. When they didn’t want feeding, they turned their heads away, but if they were hungry, their little heads bobbed forward. It’s like shaking your head for no and nodding it for yes. Is this where it comes from? Is it the same everywhere? How can I find out? She made a note to write this down.

But she was really worried about the mother of the baby whom, in the privacy of her head, Daphne called the Pig Boy. The woman was sitting up now, and sometimes walked around, and smiled when you gave her food, but there was something missing. She didn’t play with her baby as much as Cahle, either. She let Cahle feed it, because there must have been some lamp still burning in her brain that knew it was the only way, but afterward she’d grab it and scuttle off to the corner of a hut, like a cat with a kitten.

Cahle was already bustling round the place, always with her baby under her arm, or handed to Daphne if she needed to use both hands. She was a bit puzzled about Daphne, as if she wasn’t quite sure what the girl was but was going to be respectful anyway, just in case. They tended to smile at each other in a slightly wary “we’re getting on fine, I hope” kind of way when their eyes met, but sometimes, when Cahle caught Daphne’s attention, she made a little motion toward the other woman and tapped her own head sadly. That didn’t need a translation.

Every day one of the men brought some fish up, and Cahle showed Daphne some of the plants in the Place. They were mostly roots, but there were also some spicy plants, including a pepper that made Daphne go and lie with her mouth in the stream for three minutes, although she felt very good afterward. Some of the plants were medicines, as far as she could tell. Cahle was good at pantomime. Daphne still wasn’t sure whether the little brown nuts on the tree with the red leaves made you sick or stopped you from being sick, but she tried to remember everything anyway. She was always superstitious about remembering useful things she had been told, at least outside lessons. You would be bound to need it one day. It was a test the world did to make sure you were paying attention.

She tried to pay attention when Cahle showed her cookery stuff; the woman seemed to think it was very important, and Daphne tried hard to hide the fact that she’d never cooked anything in her life. She’d learned how to make some kind of drink, too, that the woman was… emphatic about.

It smelled like the Demon Drink, which was the cause of Ruin. Daphne knew this because of what happened when Biggleswick the butler broke into her father’s study one night and got Rascally Drunk on whiskey and woke up the whole house with his singing. Grandmother had sacked him on the spot and refused to relent even when Daphne’s father said that Biggleswick’s mother had died that day. The footmen pulled him out of the house and carried him to the stables and left him crying in the straw with the horses trying to lick the tears off his face, for the salt.

What upset Daphne, who had quite liked Biggleswick, especially the way he walked with his feet turned out so that he looked as if he might split in two at any moment, was that he lost his job because of her. Grandmother had stood at the top of the stairs like some ancient stone goddess, pointed at Daphne (who had been watching with interest from the upper landing), and screamed at her father: “Will you stand there doing nothing when your only child is exposed to such Lewdness?”

And that had been it for the butler. Daphne had been sorry to see him go, because he was quite kind and she’d very nearly mastered his waddle. Later she’d heard via the dumbwaiter that he’d met a Bad End. And all because of the Demon Drink.

On the other hand, she’d always wondered what the Demon Drink was like, having heard her grandmother talk about it so much. This particular Demon Drink was made very methodically out of a red root that grew in one corner of the Place; Cahle peeled it very carefully with a knife, and then washed her hands just as carefully in the pool, at the place where it overflowed into the little stream again. The root was mashed with a stone and a handful of small leaves was added. Cahle stared at the bowl for a moment and then cautiously added another leaf. Water was poured in from a gourd, taking care not to splash, and the bowl was left on a shelf for a day.

By next morning the bowl was full of a churning, hissing, evil-looking yellow foam.

Daphne went to climb up to see if it smelled as bad as it looked, and Cahle gently but firmly pulled her back, shaking her head vigorously.

“Don’t drink?” Daphne had asked.

“No drink!”

Cahle took the bowl down and set it down in the middle of the hut. Then she spat in the bowl. A plume of what looked like steam went up to the thatched roof of the hut, and the churning mixture in the bowl hissed even more.

This, thought Daphne, watching in a kind of fascinated shock, is not at all like Grandmother’s sherry afternoons.

At that point, Cahle began to sing. It was a jolly little song, with the kind of tune that sticks in your mind even when you don’t know the words. It bounced along and you just knew you wouldn’t be able to get it out of your head. Even with a chisel.

She was singing to the beer. And the beer was listening. It was calming down, like an excited dog being reassured by its master’s voice. The hissing began to grow less, the bubbles settled, and what had looked like a foul mess was actually becoming transparent.

Still Cahle sang, beating time with both hands. But they weren’t just beating time; they made shapes in the air, following the music. The beer-calling song had lots of little verses with the same chorus between each one, so Daphne started to sing along and wave her hands in time. She got the feeling that the woman was pleased about this because she leaned over, still singing, and moved Daphne’s fingers into the right positions.

Strange, oily ripples passed across the stuff in the bowl, which got a bit clearer with each verse. Cahle watched it closely, still singing… and then stopped.

The bowl was full of liquid diamond. The beer sparkled like the sea. A small wave rolled across it.

Cahle dipped a shell into it and offered it to Daphne with an encouraging nod.

Well, refusing would certainly be what Grandmother called a Faux Pas. There was such a thing as good manners, after all. It might cause offense, and that would never do.

She tried it. It was like drinking silver, and it made her eyes water.

“For man! Husbun!” said Cahle, grinning. “For when too much husbun!” She lay on her back and made very loud snoring noises. Even the Unknown Woman smiled.

Daphne thought: I’m learning things. I hope I find out soon what they are.

The next day she worked it out. In a language made up of a few words and a lot of smiles, nods, and gestures — some very embarrassing gestures, which Daphne knew she should be shocked about, except that here on this sunny island there was just no point — she, Cahle, was teaching her the things she needed to know so that she would be able to get a husband.

She knew she shouldn’t laugh, and tried not to, but there was no way to explain to the woman that her way to get a husband was to have a very rich father who was governor of a lot of islands. Besides, she was not at all certain that she even wanted a husband, since they seemed a lot of work, and as for children, after seeing the birth of Guiding Star, she was certain that if she ever wanted children she’d buy some ready-made.

But this wasn’t something she could tell two new mothers, even if she knew how, so she tried to understand what Cahle was trying to tell her, and she even let the nameless woman do her hair, which gave the poor woman some comfort and, Daphne thought, looked pretty good but far too grown-up for thirteen. Her grandmother would not approve, in italics, although seeing to the other side of the world was probably too much even for her beady eyes.

At any moment her father’s ship would come into view, of course. That was a certainty. It was taking some time because there were so many islands to search.

And supposing he didn’t come?

She pushed that thought out of her mind.

It pushed back. She could see thoughts that were waiting on the other side of it, waiting to drag her down if she dared to think them.

More people had arrived on the day after Guiding Star had been born, a small boy called Oto-I and a tiny wizened old lady, both of them parched and hungry.

The old lady was about the same size as the boy and had taken over a corner of one of the huts, where she ate everything that was given to her and watched Daphne with small bright eyes. Cahle and the other women treated her with great respect and called her by a long name that Daphne couldn’t pronounce. She called her Mrs. Gurgle because she had the noisiest stomach Daphne had ever heard, and it was a good idea to keep upwind of her at all times.

Oto-I, on the other hand, had recovered in the speedy way that children do, and she had sent him off to help Ataba. From here she could see the old man and the boy working on the pig fence, just below her, and if she walked to the edge of the fields, she could see a steadily growing pile of planks, spars, and sailcloth on the beach. Since there was going to be a future, it would need a roof over its head.

The Judy was dying. It was sad, but they were only finishing what the wave had begun. It would take a long time, because a boat is quite hard to take to bits, even when you’ve found the carpenter’s toolbox. But what a treasure it was on an island that, before the wave, owned two knives and four small three-legged cauldrons. Together, Mau and the brothers pecked away at the boat like grandfather birds at a carcass, dragging everything to the shore and then all the way along the beach. It was hot work.

Pilu swanked a bit about knowing the names of the tools in the box, but it seemed to Mau that when you got right down to it, a hammer was a hammer whether it was made of metal or stone. It was the same with chisels. And skateskin was as good as this sandpaper, wasn’t it?

“All right, but what about pliers?” said Pilu, holding up a pair. “We’ve never had pliers.”

“We could have,” said Mau, “if we’d wanted to. If we’d needed them.”

“Yes, but that’s the interesting thing. You don’t know you need them until you haven’t got them.”

“We’ve never had them to want to need!” said Mau.

“You don’t have to get angry.”

“I’m not angry!” snapped Mau. “I just think we manage all right!”

Well, they did. The island always had. But the little galley of the Sweet Judy was annoying him in ways he didn’t quite understand, which was making him feel even worse. How did the trousermen get to have all this stuff? They’d piled it up where the low forest met the beach, and it was heavy. Pots, pans, knives, spoons, forks… there was a big fork that, with the simple addition of a shaft, would make the finest fishing spear ever, and there were lots like it, and knives as big as swords.

It was all so… arrogant. The wonderful tools had been treated by the crew as if they were worth hardly anything, thrown in together to rattle around and get scratched. On the island, a fork like that would have been hung on a hut wall and cleaned every day.

There was probably more metal on this one boat than there was in all the islands. And according to Milo there had been lots of boats in Port Mercia, and some of them had been much bigger than the Judy.

Mau knew how make a spear, from picking a shaft to chipping a good sharp point. And when he’d finished, it was truly his, every part of it. The metal spear would be a lot better, but it would just be a… a thing. If it broke, he wouldn’t know how to make another one.

It was the same with the pans. How were they made? Not even Pilu knew.

So we’re not much better than the red crabs, Mau thought, as they dragged a heavy box down to the beach. The figs fall out of the trees, and that’s all they know. Can’t we be better than them?

“I want to learn trouserman,” he said as they sat down to rest before going back inside the stifling, smelly heat of the wreck yet again. “Can you teach me?”

“What do you want to say?” said Pilu, and then he grinned. “You want to be able to talk to the ghost girl, right?”

“Yes, since you ask. We talk like babies. We have to draw pictures!”

“Well, if you want to talk to her about loading and unloading and pulling ropes, I might be able to help,” said Pilu. “Look, we were on a boat with a lot of other men. Mostly they grumbled about the food. I don’t think you want to say ‘This meat tastes like you cut it off a dog’s arse,’ do you? I know that one.”

“No, but it would be nice to be able to talk to her without asking you for words all the time.”

“Cahle is saying the ghost girl is learning to speak our language very well,” Milo rumbled. “And she makes better beer than anyone.”

“I know! But I want to talk to her like a trouserman!”

Pilu grinned. “You and her all by yourselves, eh?”

“What?”

“Well, she’s a girl and you are a — ”

“Look, I’m not interested in the ghost girl! I mean I — ”

“Leave it to me — I know just what you need.” Pilu rummaged in the heap of things they had already taken from the wreck and held up what looked to Mau to be just another plank but, after Pilu had banged at them and hammered at them for a while, turned out to be —

“Trousers,” said Pilu, winking at his brother.

“Well?” said Mau.

“The trousermen ladies like to see a man in trousers,” said Pilu. “When we were in Port Mercia, we weren’t allowed to go ashore unless we wore some, otherwise the trousermen women would give us funny looks and scream.”

“I’m not going to wear them here!”

“The ghost girl might think you’re a trouserman and let you — ” Milo began.

“I’m not interested in the ghost girl!”

“Oh, yeah, you said.” Pilu pulled at the trousers for a moment and then stood them on the beach. They were so encrusted with mud and salt that they stayed up by themselves. They looked fearsome.

“They’re powerful magic, they are,” Milo said. “They’re the future, sure enough.”

Mau tried to avoid crunching the red crabs when they went back along the track to the wreck. They probably didn’t know if they were alive or dead, he thought. I’m certain they don’t believe in little sideways crab gods, and here they are, after the wave, as many as ever. And the birds knew it was coming, too. We didn’t. But we are smart! We make spears and trap fish and tell stories! When Imo made us out of clay, why didn’t he add the bit that tells us that the wave would come?

Back in the Sweet Judy, Pilu whistled cheerfully as he levered up planks with a long metal bar from the toolbox. It was a jaunty tune and unlike anything Mau had heard before. They used to whistle the dogs when they were hunting, but this sounded… complicated.

“What is that?” he said.

“It’s called ‘I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts,’” said Pilu. “One of the men on the John Dee taught it to me. It’s a trouserman song.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means I’ve got a lot of coconuts and I want you to throw things at them,” said Pilu as a piece of the deck began to come free.

“But you don’t have to throw things at them if you’ve already got them down from the tree,” Mau pointed out, leaning on the toolbox.

“I know. The trousermen take coconuts back to their own country and stand them on sticks and throw things at them.”

“Why?”

“For fun, I think. It’s called a coconut shy.” The plank came up with a long-drawn-out scream of nails. It was a horrible noise. Mau felt that he was killing something. All canoes had a soul.

“Shy? What does that mean?” he said. It was better to talk about nonsense than about the death of the Judy.

“It means coconuts want to hide from people,” Milo volunteered, but he looked a bit uncertain at this.

“Hide? But they are in the trees! We can see them.”

“Why do you ask so many questions, Mau?”

“Because I want so many answers! What does shy really mean?”

Pilu looked serious, as he always did when he had to think; generally he preferred talking.

“Shy? Well, the crew said to me, ‘You’re not shy like your brother.’ That was because Milo never said anything much to them. He just wanted to earn a three-legged cauldron and some knives, so he could get married.”

“Are you telling me the trousermen throw things at coconuts because coconuts don’t talk?”

“Could be. They do crazy things,” said Pilu. “The thing about the trousermen is, they are very brave and they sail their boats from the other end of the world, and they have the secret of iron, but there is one thing that they are frightened of. Guess what it is?”

“I don’t know. Sea monsters?” Mau wondered.

“No!”

“Getting lost? Pirates?”

“No.”

“Then I give up. What are they afraid of?”

“Legs. They’re scared of legs,” said Pilu triumphantly.

“They are scared of legs? Whose legs? Their own legs? Do they try to run away from them? How? What with?”

“Not their own legs! But trousermen women get very upset if they see a man’s leg, and one of the boys on the John Dee said a young trouserman fainted when he saw a woman’s ankle. The boy said the trousermen women even put trousers on table legs in case young men see them and think of ladies’ legs!”

“What’s a table? Why does it have legs?”

“That is,” said Pilu, pointing toward the other end of the big cabin. “It’s for making the ground higher.”

Mau had noticed it before but paid it no attention. It was nothing more than a few short planks held off the deck by some bits of wood. It sloped, because the wreck of the Sweet Judy lay on her side and the table was nailed to it. There were twelve pieces of dull metal nailed to the wood. These turned out to be called plates (“What are they for?”), which were nailed down so that they didn’t slip off in stormy weather and could be washed up by someone sloshing a bucket of water (“What’s a bucket?”) over them. The deep marks in the plates were because mostly the food was two-year-old salt-pickled beef or pork, which was very hard to cut even with a steel knife, but Pilu had loved it because you could chew it all day. The Sweet Judy had big barrels of pork and beef. They were feeding the whole island. Mau liked the beef best; according to Pilu, it came from an animal called a cattle.

Mau rapped on the tabletop. “This table doesn’t wear trousers,” he said.

“I asked about that,” said Pilu, “and they said there was nothing in the world that would stop a sailor thinking about ladies’ legs, so it would be a waste of trousers.”

“A strange people,” said Mau.

“But there’s something about the trousermen,” Pilu went on. “Just when you think they are mad, you see something like Port Mercia! Great big huts made of stone, higher than a tree! Some of them are like a forest inside! More boats than you can count! And the horses! Oh, everyone should see the horses!”

“What are horses?”

“Well, they’re… well, you know hogs?” said Pilu, ramming the bar under another plank.

“Better than you can imagine.”

“Oh, yes. Sorry. We heard about that. It was very brave of you. Well, they are not like hogs. But if you took a hog and made it bigger and longer, with a longer nose and a tail, that’s a horse. Oh, and much more handsome. And much longer legs.”

“So a horse is not really like a pig at all?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so. But it’s got the same number of legs.”

“Do they wear trousers?” asked Mau, thoroughly confused.

“No. Just people and tables. You should try them!”

They made her do it. That was probably a good thing, Daphne admitted. She’d wanted to do it but hadn’t dared do it, but they’d made her do it, although really they’d made her make herself do it, and now that she’d done it, she was glad. Glad, glad, glad. Her grandmother would not have approved, but that was all right because: a) she wouldn’t find out; b) what Daphne had done was entirely sensible in the circumstances; and c) her grandmother really wouldn’t find out.

She had removed her dress and all but one of her petticoats. She was only three garments away from being totally naked! Well, four if you included the grass skirt.

The Unknown Woman had made it for her, much to Cahle’s approval; she’d used lots of the strange vine that grew everywhere here. It seemed to be a sort of grass, but instead of growing upward it just unrolled itself, like an endless green tongue. It tangled up with other plants, blew up into the trees, and generally just got everywhere. According to quite a good pantomime from Cahle, you could make a so-so soup of it, or wash your hair in its juice, but mostly you used it as string or made clothes and bags out of it. Like this skirt the Unknown Woman had made. Daphne knew she had to wear it, because it was quite something for the poor woman to let go of her baby for any reason other than to let Cahle feed it, and that was a good thing and ought to be encouraged.

The skirt rustled when she walked, in a most disconcerting way. She thought she sounded like a restless haystack. The wonderful breeze got in, though.

This must be what Grandmother called “Going Native.” She thought that being foreign was a crime, or at least some sort of illness that you could catch by being out in the sun too much, or eating olives. Going Native was giving in and becoming one of them. The way to not go native was to act exactly as if you were at home, which included dressing for dinner in heavy clothes and eating boiled meat and brown soup. Vegetables were “unwholesome,” and you should also avoid fruit because “you don’t know where it’s been.” That had always puzzled Daphne because, after all, how many places could a pineapple go?

Besides, wasn’t there a saying, When in Rome, do as the Romans do? But her grandmother would probably say that meant bathing in blood, throwing people to the lions, and eating peacocks’ eyeballs for tea.

And I don’t care, Daphne thought. This is rebellion! But obviously she wasn’t going to take off her bodice or her pantaloons or her stockings. This was no time to go totally mad. You had to Maintain Standards.

And then she realized she had thought that last thought in her grandmother’s voice.

“You know, on you they look good!” said Pilu, down in the low forest. “The ghost girl will say, ‘Aha, it’s a trouserman.’ And then you can kiss her.”

“I told you, this is not about kissing the ghost girl!” snapped Mau. “I… just want to see if they have any effect on me, that’s all.”

He took a few steps. The trousers had been swirled around in the river and bashed on a rock a few times to get the stiffness out of them, but they still made creaking noises as he walked.

This was foolish, he knew, but if you couldn’t put your trust in gods, then trousers might do. After all, in the Song of the Four Brothers, didn’t the North Wind have a cloak that carried him through the air? And if you couldn’t believe in a song that turned poison into beer, what could you believe in?

“Do you feel anything?” said Pilu.

“Yes, they really chafe the sresser!”

“Ah, that would be because you’re not wearing long johns,” Pilu pointed out.

“Long john’s what?”

“It’s what they call soft trousers that you wear underneath the outside trousers. I think they are named after a pirate.”

“So even the trousers wear trousers?”

“That’s right. They think you can’t have too much trouser.”

“Hold on, what are these things called?” said Mau, fumbling around in them.

“I don’t know,” said Pilu cautiously. “What do they do?”

“They’re like little bags inside the trousers. Now, that’s clever!”

“Pockets,” said Pilu.

But trousers alone weren’t something that changed the world. Mau could see that. Trousers would be useful if you were hunting in thorny scrub, and the bags for carrying things were a wonderful idea, but it wasn’t the trousers that gave the trousermen their metal and their big ships.

No, it was the toolbox. He’d been cool about it in front of Pilu, because he did not like to admit that the Nation was behind the trousermen in any way, but the toolbox had impressed him. Oh, everyone could invent a hammer, but there were things in that box — beautiful, gleaming wooden and metal things — that not even Pilu knew the use of. And they spoke to Mau somehow.

We never thought of pliers because we didn’t need them. Before you make something that is truly new, you first have to have a new thought. That’s the important thing. We didn’t need new things, so we didn’t think new thoughts.

We need new thoughts now!

“Let’s get back to the others,” Mau said. “But we’ll take the tools this time.” He stepped forward, and fell over. “Aargh, there’s a huge stone here!”

Pilu pulled aside the ever-growing papervine as Mau tried to rub some life back into his foot.

“Ah, it’s one of the Judy’s cannon,” he announced.

“What’s a cannon?” said Mau, peering at the long black cylinder.

Pilu told him.

The next question was: “What’s gunpowder?”

Pilu told him that, too. And Mau saw the little silver picture of the future again. It wasn’t clear, but cannon fitted into it. It was hard to believe in gods, but the Judy was a gift from the wave. It held what they needed — food, tools, timber, stone — so perhaps they needed what it held, even if they didn’t know it yet, even if they didn’t want it yet. But now they should be getting back.

They each took a handle of the toolbox, which even by itself was almost too much to carry. They had to stop every few minutes to get their breath back, while Milo trudged on with the planks. In fact, Mau got his breath back while Pilu chatted. He talked all the time, about anything.

Mau had learned this about the brothers: It wasn’t a case of big stupid Milo and little clever Pilu. Milo didn’t talk as much, that was all. When he did talk, he was worth listening to. But Pilu swam through words like a fish through water, he painted pictures in the air with them, and he did it all the time.

Eventually Mau said, “Don’t you wonder about your people, Pilu? About what happened to them?”

And, for once, Pilu slowed down. “We went back. All the huts were gone. So were the canoes. We hope they made it to one of the stone islands. When we have rested and the baby is fine and strong, we’ll go looking for them. I hope the gods took care of them.”

“Do you think they did?” asked Mau.

“The best of the fish were always taken to the shrine,” said Pilu in a flat voice.

“Here they are — I mean they were — left on the god anchors,” said Mau. “The pigs ate them.”

“Well, yes, but only what’s left.”

“No, the whole fish,” said Mau bluntly.

“But the spirit goes to the gods,” said Pilu, his voice seeming to come from a distance, as if he was trying to draw back from the conversation without actually backing away.

“Have you ever seen it happen?”

“Look, I know you think there are no gods — ”

“Perhaps they do exist. I want to know why they act as if they don’t — I want them to explain!”

“Look, it happened, all right?” said Pilu wretchedly. “I’m just grateful I’m alive.”

“Grateful? Who to?”

“Glad, then! Glad that we are all alive, and sad that others died. You are angry, and what good is that going to do?” said Pilu, and now his voice had a strange kind of growl to it, like some small harmless animal that has been trapped in a corner and is ready to fight back in a fury.

To Mau’s astonishment Pilu was crying. Without knowing why, but also knowing, absolutely knowing, down to his bones, that it was the right thing to do, Mau put his arms around him as enormous shuddering sobs escaped from Pilu, mixed with broken words and tangled in snot and tears. Mau held him until he stopped shaking and the forest was given back to birdsong.

“They went to be dolphins,” Pilu murmured. “I am sure of it.”

Why can’t I do this? Mau thought. Where are my tears when I need them? Maybe the wave took them. Maybe Locaha drank them, or I left them in the dark water. But I can’t feel them. Perhaps you need a soul to cry.

After a while the sobbing became coughs and sniffs. Then Pilu very gently pushed Mau’s arms away and said: “Well, this isn’t getting things done, is it? Come on, let’s get going! You know, I’m sure you gave me the heavy end to carry!”

And there was the smile, as if it had never gone away.

You didn’t have to know Pilu for long to see that he floated through life like a coconut on the ocean. He always bobbed up. There was some sort of natural spring of cheerfulness that bubbled to the surface. Sadness was like a cloud across the sun, soon past. Sorrow was tucked away somewhere in his head, locked up in a cage with a blanket over it, like the captain’s parrot. He dealt with troubling thoughts by simply not thinking them; it was as if someone had put a dog’s brain in a boy’s body, and right now, Mau would have given anything to be him.

“Just before the wave came, all the birds flew up into the air,” Mau said as they walked out from under the canopy and into the full light of the afternoon. “It was as if they knew something, something that I didn’t!”

“Well, birds fly up when hunters go into the forest,” said Pilu. “It’s what they do.”

“Yes, but this was nearly a minute before the wave came. The birds knew! How did they know?”

“Who knows?” And that was the other thing about Pilu: No thought stayed in his head for very long, because it got lonely.

“The ghost girl has got a — a thing called a book, you know? Made out of something like papervine. And it’s full of birds!” He wasn’t sure what he was trying to do now. Perhaps he just wanted to see the light of interest in Pilu’s eyes.

“Squashed?”

“No, like… tattoos, but the proper colors! And the trouserman name for grandfather bird is ‘pantaloon bird’!”

“What’s a pantaloon?”

“Trouserman trousers for trouserwomen,” Mau explained.

“Silly to have a different name,” said Pilu.

And that was it. Pilu had a soul to fill him, so he lived happily enough. But Mau looked into himself and found questions, and the only answers seemed to be “because,” and “because” was no answer at all. Because… the gods, the stars, the world, the wave, life, death. There are no reasons, there is no sense, only “because”… “because” was a curse, a struck blow, it was putting your hand in the cold hand of Locaha —

WHAT WILL YOU DO, HERMIT CRAB? WILL YOU PULL DOWN THE STARS? WILL YOU SMASH THE MOUNTAINS LIKE SHY COCONUTS TO FIND THEIR SECRETS? THINGS ARE AS THEY ARE! EXISTENCE IS ITS OWN “BECAUSE”! ALL THINGS IN THEIR RIGHT PLACE. WHO ARE YOU TO DEMAND REASONS? WHO ARE YOU?

The Grandfathers had never been as loud as this before. Their thundering made his teeth ache and he collapsed to his knees, the box of tools crashing into the sand.

“Are you all right?” asked Pilu.

“Ugh,” said Mau, and spat bile. It wasn’t just that the old men got into his head, although that was bad enough, but they left everything in a mess when they went away again. He stared at the sand until the bits of his thoughts came back together again.

“The Grandfathers spoke to me,” he mumbled.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Then you’re lucky! Ugh!” Mau clutched at his head. It had been really bad this time, the worst ever. And there was something extra, too. It had sounded as though there had been more voices, very weak or a long way off, and they had been shouting something different, but it had got lost in the clamor. More of them, he thought gloomily. A thousand years of Grandfathers, all shouting at me, and never shouting anything new.

“They want me to bring up the last of the god anchors,” he said.

“Do you know where it is?”

“Yes, it’s in the lagoon, and it can stay there!”

“All right, but what actual harm would it do to bring it up?”

“Harm?” said Mau, trying to understand this. “You want to thank the god of Water?”

“You don’t have to mean it, and people will feel better,” said Pilu.

Something whispered in Mau’s ear, but whatever it was trying to say was far too faint to be understood. It’s probably some ancient Grandfather who was a bit slow, he thought sourly. And even though I am the chief, my job is to make people feel better, is it? Either the gods are powerful but didn’t save my people, or they don’t exist and all we’re believing in is lights in the sky and pictures in our heads. Isn’t that the truth? Isn’t that important?

The voice in his head answered, or tried to. It was like watching someone shouting at the other end of the beach. You could see them jumping up and down and waving their arms and maybe even make out their lips moving, but the wind is blowing through the palms and rustling the pandanuses and the surf is pounding and the grandfather birds are throwing up unusually loudly, so you can’t hear but you do know that what you can’t hear is definitely shouting. In his head it was exactly like that, but without the beach, the jumping, the waving, the lips, the palms, the pandanuses, the surf, and the birds, but with the same feeling that you are missing something that someone really, really wants you to hear. Well, he wasn’t going to listen to their rules.

“I’m the little blue hermit crab,” said Mau under his breath. “And I am running. But I will not be trapped in a shell again, because… yes, there has to be a because… because… any shell will be too small. I want to know why. Why everything. I don’t know the answers, but a few days ago I didn’t know there were questions.”

Pilu was watching him carefully, as if uncertain whether he should run or not.

“Let’s go and see if your brother can cook, shall we?” said Mau, keeping his voice level and friendly.

“He can’t, usually,” said Pilu. He broke into his grin again, but there was something nervous about it.

He’s frightened of me, Mau thought. I haven’t hit him or even raised my hand. I’ve just tried to make him think differently, and now he’s scared. Of thinking. It’s magic.

It can’t be magic, Daphne thought. Magic is just a way of saying “I don’t know.”

There were quite a few shells of beer fizzing on the shelves in the shed. They all had little bubbles growing and bursting from the seals at the top. It was beer that hadn’t been sung to yet. Mother-of-beer, they called it at that stage. She could tell quite easily, because there were dead flies all around it. They didn’t drown in it; they died and became little fly statues as soon as they drank it. If you were looking for the real Demon Drink, this was it.

You spit in it, you sing it a song, you wave your hands over it in time to said song, the demon is magically sent back to, er, wherever, and there’s just the good drink left. How does that happen?

Well, she had a theory; she’d spent half the night thinking it up. The ladies were at the other end of the Place, picking blossoms. They probably wouldn’t hear her if she sang quietly. The spitting… well, that was for luck, obviously. Besides, you had to be scientific about these things, and test one bit at a time. The secret was in the hand movements, she was sure of it. Well, slightly sure.

She poured a little of the deadly pre-beer into a bowl and stared at it. Or perhaps it was in the song, but not in the words? Perhaps the frequency of the human voice did something to the tiny atomic substances, such as happened when the famous operatic soprano Dame Ariadne Stretch broke a glass by singing at it? That sounded very promising, especially when you knew that only women were supposed to make beer and they, of course, had higher voices!

The Demon Drink stared back at her, rather smugly in her view. Go on, it seem to say, impress me.

“I’m not sure I know all the words to this one,” she said, and realized that she had just apologized to a drink. That was the trouble with being brought up in a polite household. She cleared her throat. “Once my father took me to the music hall,” she said. “You might enjoy this one.” She cleared her throat again and began:

“Let’s all go down to the Strand,

(’ave a banana!)

Oh! What a happy land,

I’ll be the leader, you can march behind — ”

No, that sounded a bit complicated for a beverage, and the banana only confused matters. What about…? She hesitated, and thought about songs. Could it be that simple? She started to sing again, counting on her fingers as she sang.

“Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full — ”

She sang sixteen verses, counting all the time, singing to the beer as it bubbled, and noted when it was suddenly as clear and sparkly as a diamond. Then she tested her conclusion, like a proper scientist would, on another bowl of mother-of-beer, feeling rather certain and more than a little pleased with herself. Now she had a working hypothesis.

“Baa, baa, black — ”

She stopped, aware of people trying to be quiet. Cahle and the Unknown Woman were standing in the doorway, listening with interest.

“Men!” said Cahle cheerfully. She had a flower tucked in her hair.

“Er… what?” said Daphne, flustered.

“I want to go and see my husbun!”

Daphne understood that, and there was no rule against it. Men weren’t allowed into the Place, but women could come and go as they pleased.

“Er… good,” she said. She felt something touch her hair, went to brush it away, and realized that the Unknown Woman was undoing her plaits. She went to stop her and caught Cahle’s warning look. In her head the Unknown Woman was coming back from somewhere bad, and every sign of her being a normal person again was to be encouraged.

She felt the plaits being gently teased apart.

Then she smelled a whiff of perfume, and realized the woman had stuck a flower behind her ear. They grew everywhere in the Place, huge floppy pink and purple blooms that knocked you down with their scent. Cahle generally wound one into her hair in the evenings.

“Er, thank you,” she said.

Cahle took her gently by the arm, and Daphne felt the panic rise. She was going to the beach as well? But she was practically naked! She had nothing under the grass skirt but one petticoat, her pantaloons, and a pair of Unmentionables! And her feet were bare right up to the ankles!

Then it went strange, and forever afterward she never quite understood how it had happened.

She should go down to the beach. The decision floated there in her head, clear and definite. She had decided it was time to go down to the beach. It was just that she couldn’t remember deciding. It was a strange sensation, like feeling full even though you can’t recall having had lunch. And there was something else, fading away fast like an echo without a voice: Everyone has toes!

Milo was a pretty good cook, Mau had to admit. He really knew how to bake fish. The smell hung over the camp when they got back, and the air practically drooled.

There was still plenty of the Sweet Judy left. It would take months, maybe years to break her down. They had the tools now, yes, but not enough people; it would need a dozen strong men to shift some of the bigger timbers. But there was a hut, even if its canvas sides rattled in the wind, and there was fire, and now there was a hearth. And what a hearth! The entire galley had been dragged here, every precious metal bit of it, except for the big black oven itself. That could wait, because there was already a fortune in pots and pan and knives.

And we didn’t make them, Mau thought as the tools were passed around. We can build good canoes, but we could never build the Sweet Judy —

“What are you doing?” he said to Milo. The man had taken up a hammer and a metal chisel and was bashing away at a smaller chest among the pile of salvage.

“It is locked,” said Milo, and showed him what a lock was.

“There’s something important inside, then?” Mau asked. “More metal?”

“Maybe gold!” said Pilu. That had to be explained, and Mau remembered the shiny yellow metal around the strange invitation the ghost girl had given him. Trousermen loved it almost as much as trousers, said Pilu, even though it was too soft to be useful. One small piece of gold was worth more than a really good machete, which showed how crazy they were.

But when the hasp broke and the lid was thrown back, the chest was found to contain the smell of stale water and —

“Books?” said Mau.

“Charts,” said Pilu. “That’s like a map but, well, looks like this.” He held up a handful of the charts, which squelched.

“What good are they?” said Ataba, laughing.

A soggy chart was laid out on the sand. They inspected it, but Mau shook his head. You probably had to be a trouserman to begin to understand.

What did it all mean? It was just lines and shapes. What good were they?

“They are… pictures of what the ocean would look like if you were a bird, high in the sky,” said Pilu.

“Can trousermen fly, then?”

“They have tools to help them,” said Pilu uncertainly. Then he brightened and added: “Like this.” Mau watched as Pilu pulled a heavy round item from his pile of spoils. “It’s called a compass. With a compass and a chart, they are never lost!”

“Don’t they taste the water? Don’t they watch the currents? Don’t they smell the wind? Don’t they know the ocean?”

“Oh, they are good seamen,” said Pilu, “but they travel to unknown seas. The compass tells them where home is.”

Mau turned it around in his hand, watching the needle swing.

“And where it isn’t,” he said. “It has a point at both ends. It shows them where unknown places are, too. Where are we on their chart?” He pointed to a large area of what was, apparently, land.

“No, that’s Nearer Australia,” said Pilu. “That’s a big place. We are” — he rummaged through the damp charts and pointed to some marks — “here. Probably.”

“So where are we, then,” said Mau, straining to see. “It’s just a lot of lines and squiggles!”

“Er, those squiggles are called numbers,” said Pilu nervously. “They tell the captains how deep the sea is. And these are called letters. They say ‘Mothering Sundays.’ That’s what they call us.”

“We got told that on the John Dee,” said Milo helpfully.

“And I’m reading it here on the chart,” said his brother, giving him a sharp look.

“Why are we called that?” Mau asked. “We are the Sunrise Islands!”

“Not in their language. Trousermen often get names wrong.”

“And the island? How big is the Nation?” said Mau, still staring at the chart. “I can’t see it.”

Pilu looked away and mumbled something.

“What did you say?” said Mau.

“It’s not actually drawn here. It’s too small….”

“Small? What do you mean, small?”

“He’s right, Mau,” said Milo solemnly. “We didn’t want to tell you. It’s small. It’s a small island.”

Mau’s mouth was open in astonished disbelief. “That can’t be right,” he protested. “It’s much bigger than any of the Windcatcher Islands.”

“Islands that are even smaller,” said Pilu, “and there’s lots of them.”

“Thousands,” said Milo. “It’s just that… well, as big islands go — ”

“ — this is one of the smaller ones,” Pilu finished.

“But the best one,” said Mau quickly. “And no one else has got the tree-climbing octopus!”

“Absolutely,” said Pilu.

“Just so long as we remember that. This is our home,” said Mau, standing up. He pulled at the trousers. “Aargh. These really itch! All I can say is trousermen don’t walk about much!”

A sound made him look up, and there was the ghost girl — at least, it looked like the ghost girl. Behind her stood Cahle with a big grin, and the Unknown Woman, smiling her faint, faraway smile.

Mau looked down at his trousers, and then up at her long hair with the flower in it, while she looked down at her toes and then up at his trousers, which were so much longer than his legs that he appeared to be standing in a pair of concertinas, and the captain’s hat floated on his curls like a ship at sea. She turned to look at Cahle, who stared up at the sky. He looked at Pilu, who looked down at his feet, although his shoulders were shaking.

Then Mau and the ghost girl looked directly into each other’s eyes and there was only one thing they could do, which was to laugh themselves silly.

The others joined in. Even the parrot squawked, “Show us yer drawers!” and did its doo-dahs on Ataba’s head.

But Milo, who took things sensibly, and who happened to be facing the sea, stood up and pointed and said: “Sails.”