Nation

“Getting lost? Pirates? ”

“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 www.collectingstore.ru 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? ”