Nation

if—
    “Does not happen!” The scream was like lightning through his head, because it came from a beak about six inches from his ear. “Show us your”—here the parrot muttered to itself, then went on, rather sullenly—“underthings.”
    “Ah, good. How are you?” said the ghost girl, stepping inside.
    Mau sat bolt upright. “You’ve got blood all over you!”
    “Yes. I know. There goes the last good blouse,” said Daphne. “Still, he’s much better now. I’m pretty proud of myself, actually. I had to saw a man’s leg off below the knee! And I sealed the wound with a bucket of hot tar, exactly according to the manual!”
    “Doesn’t that hurt?” asked Mau, lying back on the mat again. Sitting up had made him dizzy.
    “Not if you pick it up by the handle.” She looked at his blank expression. “Sorry, that was a joke. Thank goodness for Mrs. Gurgle; she can make someone sleep through anything . Anyway, I think the man is going to live now, which is more than he would have with that terrible wound in it. And this morning I had to cut off a foot. It’d gone all…well, it was awful. Those captives were treated very badly.”
    “And you’ve been sawing the bad bits off them?”
    “It’s called surgery, thank you so very much! It’s not hard if I can find someone to hold the instruction manual open at the right page.”
    “No! No, I don’t think it’s wrong!” said Mau quickly. “It’s just that…it’s you doing it. I thought you hated the sight of blood.”
    “That’s why I try to stop it. I can do something about it. Come on, let’s get you up.” She put her arms around him.
    “Who was that woman who was feeding me? I’ve seen her before.”
    “Her real name is Fi-ha-el, she says…,” said Daphne, and Mau clutched at the wall for support. “We used to call her the Unknown Woman. And now we call her the Papervine Woman.”
    “Her? But she looked completely different—”
    “Her husband was in one of those canoes. She went right up to it and dragged him out by herself. I’m blessed if I know how she knew which one he was in. I sent her to look after you because, well, it was his leg I had to saw off.”
    “Newton was greatest!” screamed the parrot, bouncing up and down.
    “And I thought the parrot was dead!” said Mau.
    “Yes, everyone thought the parrot was dead,” said Daphne, “except the parrot. He turned up yesterday. He is minus one toe and a lot of feathers, but I think he will be fine when his wing heals. He runs after the grandfather birds now. They really hate that. I’ve, er, started doing something about his language.”
    “Yes, I thought you had,” said Mau. “What’s New-Tan?”
    “Newton,” Daphne corrected absentmindedly. “Remember I told you about the Royal Society? He was one of the first members. He was the greatest scientist there has ever been, I think, but when he was an old man, he said he felt that he had been like a little boy playing with pebbles on the beach while a great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before him.”
    Mau’s eyes widened, and she was shocked to realize that it had been a long time since she’d seen him look so young.
    “He stood on this beach?”
    “Well, er, not this beach, obviously,” said Daphne. “Possibly not even any beach. It’s what trousermen call a metaphor. A kind of lie to help you understand what’s true.”
    “Oh, I know about those ,” said Mau.
    “Yes, I think you do.” Daphne smiled. “Now come out into the fresh air.”
    She took Mau’s hand. There were a few nasty grazes that he didn’t remember getting, his whole body felt stiff, and there was a ragged wound where the flesh of his ear had been, but it could have been a lot worse. He remembered the bullet in the water, slowing down and dropping into his hand. Water could be hard—you only had to belly flop from a height to know that —but even so…
    “Come on !” said Daphne, dragging him into the light.
    The Women’s Place was full. There were people in the fields. The beach was busy. There were even children playing in the lagoon.
    “We’ve got so much to do,” said Mau, shaking his head.
    “They are already doing it,” said Daphne.
    They watched in silence. Soon people would spot them and they would be back in the world again, but right now they were part of the scenery.
    After a while the girl said: “I remember when it was…just nothing, and there was a boy who didn’t even see me.”
    And the boy said: