And there were people, tangled in broken branches, half buried in mud and leaves, just another part of the ruined world.
It took him a few long seconds to realize what he was looking at, to see that what he had thought was a broken branch was an arm.
He looked around slowly and realized why there were so many birds, and why they were fighting.
He ran. His legs took him and he ran, screaming out names, up the long slope, past the lower fields, which were covered with debris, past the higher plantations, too high even for the wave, and almost to the edges of the forest. And there he heard his own voice, echoing back from the cliffs.
No one. But there must be someone….
But they had all been waiting, for someone who was no longer a boy but had yet to become a man.
He walked up to the Women’s Place — totally forbidden for any man, of course — and risked a quick peek through the big hedge that surrounded the gardens, untouched up here by the water. But he saw nothing moving, and no voice called out in answer to his cry.
They had been waiting on the beach. He could see them all so clearly in his mind, talking and laughing and dancing in circles around the fire, but there was no silver line, nothing to pull them back.
They had been waiting for the new man. The wave must have hit them like a hammer.
As he went back down to the fields, he grabbed a broken branch and flailed ineffectively at the birds. There were bodies everywhere in the area just above the scoured place where the village had been. At first they were hard to see, tangled as they were with debris and as gray as the ashen mud. He’d have to touch them. They had to be moved. The pigs would come down soon. The thought of pigs eating — No!
There was some brightness behind the clouds in the east. How could that be? Another night had passed? Had he slept? Where had he been? But tiredness certainly had him now. He dragged some leafy branches up against a big rock for shelter, crawled inside, and felt the gray of the mud and the rain and the bruised-looking sky sneak in silently and fill him up and close over him.
And Mau dreamed. It had to be a dream. He felt himself become two people. One of them, a gray body made of mud, began to look for the bodies that the wave hadn’t taken. It did this carefully and as gently as it could, while the other Mau stayed deep inside, curled in a ball, doing the dreaming.
And who am I, doing this? thought the gray Mau. Who am I now? I am become like Locaha, measuring the contours of death. Better be him than be Mau, on this day… because here is a body. And Mau will not see it, lift it, or look into its eyes, because he will go mad, so I will do it for him. And this one has a face Mau has seen every day of his life, but I will not let him see it now.
And so he worked, as the sky brightened and the sun came up behind the plume of steam in the east and the forest burst into song, despite the drizzle. He combed the lower slopes until he found a body, dragged it or carried it — some were small enough to carry — down to the beach and out to the point where you could see the current. There were usually turtles there, but not today.
He, the gray shadow, would find rocks and big coral lumps, and there were plenty of those, and tie them to the body with papervine. And now I must take my knife and cut the spirit hole, thought the gray Mau, so that the spirit will leave quickly, and pull the body out into the waves where the current sinks, and let it go.
The dreaming Mau let his body do the thinking: You lift like this, you pull like this. You cut the papervine like that, and you don’t scream, because you are a hand and a body and a knife, and they don’t even shed a tear. You are inside a thick gray skin that can feel nothing. And nothing can get through. Nothing at all. And you send the body sinking slowly into the dark current, away from birds and pigs and flies, and it will grow a new skin and become a dolphin.
There were two dogs, too, and that almost broke him. The people, well, the horror was so great that his mind went blank, but the twisted bodies of the dogs twisted his soul. They had been with the people, excited but not knowing why. He wrapped them in papervine and weighed them down and sent them into the current anyway. Dogs would want to stay with the people, because they were people, too, in their way.
He didn’t know what to do with the piglet, though. It was all by itself. Maybe the sow had legged it for the high forest, as they did when they sensed the water coming. This one hadn’t kept up. His stomach said it was food, but he said no, not this one, not this sad little betrayed thing. He sent it into the current. The gods would have to sort it out. He was too tired.
It was near sunset when he dragged the last body to the beach and was about to wade out to the current when his body told him: No, not this one. This is you and you are very tired but you are not dead. You need to eat and drink and sleep. And most of all you must try not to dream.
He stood for a while until the words sank in, and then trudged back up the beach, found his makeshift shelter, and fell into it.
Sleep came but brought no good thing. Over and over again he found the bodies and carried them to the shore because they were so light. They tried to talk to him, but he could not hear them because the words could not get through his gray skin. There was a strange one, too, a ghost girl, totally white. She tried to talk to him several times but faded back into the dream, like the others. The sun and moon whirled across the sky, and he walked on in a gray world, the only moving thing in veils of silence, forever.
And then he was spoken to, out of the grayness.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MAU?
He looked around. The land looked odd, without color. The sun was shining, but it was black.
When the voices spoke again, they seemed to come from everywhere at once, on the wind.
THERE IS NO TIME FOR SLEEPING. THERE IS SO MUCH THAT MUST BE DONE.
“Who are you?”
WE ARE THE GRANDFATHERS!
Mau trembled, and trembling was all he could manage. His legs would not move.
“The wave came,” he said. “Everyone is dead! I sent some into the dark water!”
YOU MUST SING THE DARK WATER CHANT.
“I didn’t know how!”
YOU MUST RESTORE THE GOD ANCHORS.
“How do I do that?”
YOU MUST SING THE MORNING SONG AND THE EVENING SONG.
“I don’t know the words! I am not a man!” said Mau desperately.
YOU MUST DEFEND THE NATION! YOU MUST DO THE THINGS THAT HAVE ALWAYS BEEN DONE!
“But there is just me! Everyone is dead!”
EVERYTHING THE NATION WAS, YOU ARE! WHILE YOU ARE, THE NATION IS! WHILE YOU REMEMBER, THE NATION LIVES!
There was a change in the pressure of air, and the Grandfathers… went.
Mau blinked and woke up. The sun was yellow and halfway down the sky, and beside him was a flat round metal thing, on top of which was a coconut with the top sliced off and a mango.
He stared at them.
He was alone. No one else could be here, not now. Not to leave him food and creep away.
He looked down at the sand. There were footprints there, not large, but they had no toes.
He stood up very carefully and looked around. The creature with no toes was watching him, he was sure. Perhaps… perhaps the Grandfathers had sent it?
“Thank you,” he said to the empty air.
The Grandfathers had spoken to him. He thought about this as he gnawed the mango off its huge stone. He’d never heard them before. But the things they wanted… how could a boy do them? Boys couldn’t even go near their cave. It was a strict rule.
But boys did, though. Mau had been eight when he’d tagged along after some of the older boys. They hadn’t seen him as he’d shadowed them all the way up through the high forests to the meadows where you could see to the edge of the world. The grandfather birds nested up there, which was why they were called grandfather birds. The older boys had told him that the birds were spies for the Grandfathers and would swoop on you and peck your eyes out if you came too close, which he knew wasn’t true, because he’d watched them and knew that — unless there was beer around — they wouldn’t attack anything bigger than a mouse if they thought it might fight back. But some people would tell you anything if they thought you’d be scared.