The Islanders

Winho CATHEDRAL

WINHO is the so-called island of whores. It is a place of thrilling natural beauty, with a towering range of mountains rising from the western coast and occupying much of the interior. Thick forest covers the remaining plain and the lower slopes of the mountains. The island is reefed, with a series of encircling shallow lagoons, rich and diverse in sea-life. Many small towns have been built on the fertile strip between forest and sea. Until the second Faiandland invasion the traditional activities in this area were farming and fishing. Set in a subtropical latitude, Winho rejoices in warm and dry weather for most of the year. The rainy season lasts for only two months. The prevailing wind on the island is known locally as the KADIA, ‘blowing upwards to the mountains’ — in reality it is part of the system of equatorial trade winds.

Winho was invaded twice by Faiand forces in the days before the Covenant of Neutrality had been ratified or could be enforced. The first invasion led to occupation and fortification by Faiandland and it lasted for almost a decade. After a violently resisted counter-invasion by Federation forces, Winho was eventually liberated and demilitarized. Loss of civilian life was on a disastrous scale, and there was extensive damage to property.

For about ten years Winho existed under a relatively benign Federation suzerainty, but as the Covenant took shape and gained global recognition the Glaundians had to leave.

Faiandland almost immediately re-occupied Winho, allegedly because of an administrative error but in reality because of its strategic position. There were also unfounded Faiand suspicions that the Federation was continuing to use the island as a base. By this time, the Federation forces were engaged elsewhere and Winho was left unprotected. In the name of retribution horrifying atrocities were performed on many of the inhabitants, including pseudo-scientific experiments on human subjects, physical mutilation of most of the women of child-bearing age and the deportation of all males over the age of ten years. In deep poverty, many of the surviving women were forced either to flee the island, or as large R&R camps were set up for Faiand troops they went into prostitution.

Even after the Covenant rules once again removed the Faiandland occupying force, the impoverished island became renowned for its brothel culture, heavily dependent on the passage of troopships to sustain the economy. Major efforts by people from neighbouring islands to lend assistance came to nothing, because the central problem remained unresolved: the abducted menfolk of Winho could not be located, and even in the present day no mass grave has ever been found. It is clear that they were massacred. The grim search for the final resting place continues.

Winho has been for many years a focus of concern throughout the Archipelago. Caurer visited Winho and set up one of her special schools, which still exists and is regarded as a beacon of hope for the long-term regrowth of Winho culture. Caurer said she was desolated by what she found, and said afterwards that if ever her work had to be directed towards one island instead of to them all, it would be to Winho.

At another time, both Chaster Kammeston and Dryd Bathurst were on Winho, during the period when Kammeston was researching his biography of the artist. He was on the island for nearly two weeks. This is the only known series of meetings between the two. Bathurst had set up a studio on the waterfront of Winho Town, where he was tackling three of the main canvases in his Ruination sequence. We have only Kammeston’s account of what happened when the two men met, which he describes in taut and restrained language in the pages of the biography. What Kammeston does not reveal there is what he wrote in his diary, and later in one of his letters to Caurer: he was so disgusted by Bathurst’s private life that he abandoned work on the biography for nearly two years, only resuming it when Bathurst’s reputation as a painter of apocalyptic landscapes was without precedent. Persuaded by the greatness of the man’s artistic gift, and of course by pressure from his publisher, Kammeston completed his biography. He said later that it was the least of his books. To this day it is never included in official listings of his published works.

Another visitor to Winho, whose presence on the island was not known until long after she had left, was the novelist Moylita Kaine. She and her husband moved to Winho Town and rented a house in the hills overlooking the main bay while she conducted detailed research into what had happened during the two terrible periods of occupation. When she and her husband left Winho, two of the women she had met in the course of her researches travelled back with them to Muriseay, where they remained afterwards with their two families of seven children.

Three years later, Kaine published the novel that was to establish her reputation: Hoel Vanil. It is an unchallenged masterpiece. HOEL VANIL is the local name for the steep valley in the hills behind Winho Town in which the Faiand KZ was built. It was from here the men-folk were shipped away, and it was inside its low, concrete buildings that the brutal experiments on the women were conducted.

Hoel Vanil is now known prosaically as River Valley, and all external trace of the camp has long been removed. Two underground shelters remain. These were built by the slave labour of the Winho men, before the remainder who survived the underground workings were taken away. The shelters were used for a short period by the Faiandlanders as an ammunition store. The people of Winho Town never go anywhere near River Valley.

The island’s economy is still sustained mainly by the arrival of troopships heading north or south. As these belong to the combatant powers they are beyond the laws of the Archipelago. Winho remains in crisis, a tragic, deep-rooted problem with no foreseeable solution.

Strict shelterate laws exist, rigidly enforced. Recently, visa laws have been revised, allowing visitors to remain for a maximum of forty-eight hours only. Deserters are not allowed entry and are forcibly returned to their units if discovered.

Currency: all acceptable, including paper money paid to the troops. This is exchangeable at par with the Archipelagian simoleon.