Nation

all this chin-wagging about?”
    Daphne listened out of the corner of her ear. War negotiations were going rather oddly. The enemy warriors listened to Pilu but looked up at Milo when they replied, as if Pilu himself was not important.
    Mau was taking no part in things at all. He stood behind the brothers, leaning on his spear and listening. Daphne went to push her way through them and found she didn’t need to; cannibal chiefs shuffled out of her way as fast as they could.
    “What’s happening ?” she whispered. “Are they worried about the cannon?”
    “Yes. They believe in single combat, one chief against another. If our chief beats their chief, they will go away.”
    “Can you trust them?”
    “Yes. This is about belief. If their god doesn’t smile on them, they won’t fight. But Cox wants them all to fight, and they know they should obey him. He wants a massacre. He’s told them that the cannon won’t work.”
    “You think they will, though,” said Daphne.
    “I think one will,” said Mau quietly.
    “One? One! ”
    “Don’t shout . Yes, one. Just one. But that isn’t going to matter, because we don’t have enough gunpowder for more than one shot.”
    Daphne was speechless. She finally managed to say, “But there were three kegs!”
    “That’s true. The little one from your cabin was half empty. The others are full of gunpowder soup. The water got in. It’s just stinking muck.”
    “But you fired a cannon weeks ago!”
    “The little keg had enough for two firings. The first one we tried with what looked like the least-rotten gun. It worked. You saw it. But there’s a crack all along it now, and it was the best one. But don’t worry, we repaired it.”
    Daphne’s brow furrowed. “How can you repair a cannon? You can’t repair a cannon, not here!”
    “A trouserman might not be able to, but I can,” said Mau proudly. “Remember, you didn’t know how to milk a pig!”
    “All right then, how do you repair a broken cannon?” said Daphne.
    “Our way,” said Mau, beaming. “With string!”
    “With str—?”
    “ Waark! Cox is the prawn of the devil!”
    Even Daphne, mouth open to object, turned to look—
    But Cox was quicker than all of them. His hand moved fast as the parrot glided over the beach. He cocked, aimed, and fired in one movement, three shots, one after another. The parrot squawked and tumbled into the papervine thickets above the beach, leaving a few bits of feather floating in the air.
    Cox looked at the watchers, and bowed and waved like a musician who had just played a very difficult piano concerto. But the Raiders glanced at him as if he was a little boy who was proud of having wet himself.
    Daphne was still trying to deal with string, but on top of that floated: Three shots in a row! The Dutch captain’s gun was a revolver!
    “I think this is the time,” Mau said. “Pilu should have got them confused enough by now. Turn my words into Trouserman, will you?”
    And he strode off down the beach before she could argue. He pushed his way into the circle before anyone knew he was there, and faced the Raiders.
    “Who says our guns do not fire?” he bellowed. “Enough arguing! Fire! ”
    Up on the cliff, the unknown Papervine Woman, who had been crouched obediently over her green cannon, touched the slow match to the fuse and, as instructed, ran away very fast and stood behind a tree until the thunder had died away, and then ran back even faster. She ignored the cannon, which was under a cloud of steam, and looked at the lagoon.
    The ball had splashed in the middle, capsizing three boats. Figures were in the water. She smiled and turned back to the cannon. Wordless though she was, she’d begged to be allowed to fire it. Hadn’t she gathered all the papervine? Hadn’t she woven it into ropes from dawn to dust, tangling into it the inexhaustible hatred in her heart? Hadn’t Mau seen her helping Pilu shaping metal plates over the cracks in the cannon? Hadn’t he seen how she had taken care to wrap the ropes around the cannon, layer after layer, every one as strong as her longing for revenge?
    And he had, and they had held; thin little blades of papervine had bound the red thunder in.
    She went back to the tree, took up her baby from his cradle made from papervine, and kissed him, and wept.
    “We will fire again,” Pilu yelled, in the confusion. “We will destroy your big canoes. We have made the challenge of single combat. You must accept! Or do you want