Nation

“Supposing she marries a sailor! ”

“Like Auntie Pathenope did? ” Daphne could imagine her father’s faint smile, which always made his mother angry, but then, so did practically everything else.

“He was a rear admiral! ” her grandmother snapped. “That’s not the same thing at all! ”

“Mother, there is no need for this fuss. I have told the king that I will go. Ermintrude will follow in a month or two. It will do us good to be away for a while. This house is too cold and too big. ”

“Nevertheless, I forbid — ”

“It is also too lonely. It has too many memories! It has too much silenced laughter, too many unheard footsteps, too many soundless echoes since they died! ” The words came out like slabs of thunder. “I have made my decision and it will not be unmade, even by you! I have told the palace to send her out to me as soon as I am settled in. www.storekidworld.ru Do you understand? I believe my daughter would! ! And perhaps at the other end of the world there is a place where the screaming can’t be heard, and I may find it in my heart to grant God absolution! ”

She heard him walk to the door, while tears met on her chin and soaked her nightgown.

And Grandmother said: “And the child’s schooling, may I ask? ”

How did she manage it? How did she come out with something like that, when the silverware and the chandeliers were still jingling with tinny echoes. Didn’t she remember the coffins?

Perhaps she did. Perhaps she thought that her son needed to be anchored to the Earth. It worked, then, because he stopped with his hand on the door handle and said, in a voice that almost didn’t shake, “She will have a tutor in Port Mercia. It will do her good, and broaden her horizons. You see? I have thought about this. ”

“It won’t bring them back, you know. ” That was her grandmother. Daphne put her hand over her mouth in sheer shock. How could the woman be so… stupid?

She could imagine her father’s face. She heard him walk to the dining-room door. She waited for the slam, but that wouldn’t be her father. The sharp little click of the door shutting was louder in her head than any slam could be.

At which point Daphne awoke, glad that she had. The broadened horizon was red but the back of the sky was full of stars; she was stiff to her very bones, and she felt that she’d never eaten in her life, ever. And this was very convenient, because the smell coming out of the pot was fishy and spicy and was making her drool.

The boy was standing some way off, holding his spear and looking out to sea. She could just see him in the firelight.

He’d piled on even more logs. They roared and crackled and exploded with steam, sending a thick cloud of smoke and vapor into the sky. And he was guarding the beach. What from? This was a real island, much bigger than many that she had seen on the voyage. Some had been not much more than a sandbank and a reef. Could anyone be left alive within a hundred miles? What was he frightened of?

Mau stared at the sea. It was so flat that all night he had been able to see the stars in it.

Somewhere out there, flying to him from the edge of the world, was tomorrow. He had no idea what shape it would be, but he was wary of it. They had food and fire, but that wasn’t enough. You had to find water and food and shelter and a weapon, people said. And they thought that was all you had to have, because they took for granted the most important thing. You had to have a place where you belonged.

He’d never counted the people in the Nation. There were… enough. Enough to feel that you were part of something that had seen many yesterdays and would see many tomorrows, with rules that everyone knew, and that worked because everyone knew them, so much so that they were just part of the way people lived. People would live and die but there would always be a Nation. He’d been on long voyages with his uncles — hundreds of miles — but the Nation had always been there, somewhere over the horizon, waiting for him to come back. He’d been able to feel it.

What should he do with the ghost girl? Maybe some other trousermen would come looking for her? And then she’d go, and he’d be alone again. That would be horrible. It wasn’t ghosts that frightened him, it was memories. Perhaps they were the same thing? If a woman followed the same path every day to fill a calabash from the waterfall, did the path remember?

When Mau closed his eyes, the island was full of people. Did it remember their footsteps and their faces, and put them in his head? The Grandfathers said he was the Nation, but that couldn’t be true. Many could become one, but one could not become many. He would remember them, though, so that if people came here, he would tell them about the Nation, and it would come alive again.

He was glad she was here. Without her, he’d walk into the dark water. He’d heard the whispering as he had dived down after her in that scream of silver bubbles. It would have been so easy to heed the wily words of Locaha and sink into the blackness, but that would have drowned her, too.

He was not going to be alone here. That was not going to happen. Just him and the voices of the old dead men, who gave orders all the time and never listened? No.

No… there would be two of them to stay here, and he would teach her the language, so they would both remember, so that when people came, they could say: Once there were many people living here, and then the wave came.

He heard her stir and knew she was watching him. He knew one other thing, too — the soup smelled good, and he probably wouldn’t have made it just for himself. It was whitefish off the reef and a handful of shellfish and ginger from the Women’s Place and taro chopped up fine to give it all some body.

He used a couple of twigs to drag the pot out of the embers and gave the girl a big half shell to use as a spoon.