Nation

CHAPTER 8 It Takes a Lifetime to Learn How to Die

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

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

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

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

“Ermintrude.”

The word hung in the air for a moment.

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

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

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

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

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

Could she be hearing his ancestors?

“Yes,” said her own voice.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because this is a sacred place.”

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

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

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

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

The voice came again. “Quickly, now!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the audience, someone started to whimper.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You mean he’s dying?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Where is she, then?”

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

“Mrs. Gurgle?” said Daphne.

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

“Then we’d better hurry!”

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

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

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

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

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.[!Daphne was quite sure that there had been a female disciple because, as she explained to a surprised Captain Roberts, “Our Lord is always shown wearing white, and someone must have seen to it that he always had a clean robe.”!] 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:

“Mrs. Gur —!”