Nation

people didn’t notice. Thinking about it, Mau had wondered why any god would curse someone like that. He’d been born with that leg. What had a baby done to make the gods angry?
    One day he’d plucked up the courage to ask him. Nawi was sitting out on the rocks, occasionally staring out to sea in between carving something, but he’d given Mau a look that indicated company would not be objected to.
    The old man had laughed at the question.
    “It was a gift, boy, not a curse,” he said. “When much is taken, something is returned. Since I had a useless leg, I had to make myself a clever brain! I cannot chase, so I learn to watch and wait. I tell you boys these secrets and you laugh. When I hunt, I never come back empty-handed, do I? I think the gods looked at me and said to themselves, Well this one is a sharp one, eh? Let’s give him a gimpy leg so he can’t be a warrior and will have to stay at home among the women (a fate which has something to recommend it, my boy, believe me), and I thank them.”
    Mau had been shocked at this. Every boy wanted to be a warrior, didn’t he?
    “You didn’t want to be a warrior?”
    “Never. It takes a woman nine months to make a new human. Why waste her effort?”
    “But then when you died, you could be taken up to the cave and watch over us forever!”
    “Hah! I think I’ve seen enough of you already! I like the fresh air, boy. I’ll become a dolphin like everyone else. I’ll watch the sky turn and I will chase sharks. And since all the great warriors will be shut up in their cave, it occurs to me there will be rather more female dolphins than male ones, which is a pleasing thought.” He leaned forward and stared into Mau’s eyes. “Mau…,” he said. “Yes, I remember you. Always at the back. But I could see you thinking. Not many people think, not really think. They just think they do. And when they laughed at old Nawi, you didn’t want to. But you laughed anyway, to be like them. I’m right, yes?”
    How had he spotted that? But you couldn’t deny it, not now, not with those pale eyes looking through you.
    “Yes. I’m sorry.”
    “Good. And now that I have answered your questions, I think you owe me a favor.”
    “Do you want me to run an errand? Or I could—”
    “I want you to remember something for me. Have you heard that I know a word that drives away sharks?”
    “People say so, but they laugh.”
    “Oh, yes. But it works. I’ve tried it three times. The first was when I discovered it, which was when I was about to have my good leg bitten off, and then I tried it out from a raft, just to see if I’d been lucky the first time, and then I swam off the reef one day and frightened away a hammerhead.”
    “You mean you went looking for a shark?” said Mau.
    “Yes. Quite a big one, as I recall.”
    “But you might have been eaten!”
    “Oh, I’m not bad with a spear, and I had to find out,” said Nawi, grinning. “Someone had to eat the first oyster, you know. Someone looked at half a shell full of snot and was brave.”
    “Why doesn’t everybody know?”
    Nawi’s permanent smile turned down a little. “I’m a bit strange, yes? And the priests don’t like me much. If I told everyone, and someone died, I think things would be very tricky for me. But someone should know, and you are a boy who asks questions. Don’t use it until I’m dead, all right? Or until you are about to be eaten by a shark, of course.”
    And there on the rocks, as the sunset made a path of red across the sea, Mau learned the shark word.
    “It’s a trick!” he said, without thinking.
    “Not so loud,” snapped Nawi, glancing back at the shore. “Of course it’s a trick. Building a canoe is a trick. Throwing a spear is a trick. Life is a trick, and you get one chance to learn it. And now you know another one. If it saves your life one day, catch a big fish and throw it to the first dolphin you see. With luck, it will be me!”
    And now the old man and his leg were only a memory, along with everyone Mau had ever known. Mau wanted to scream with the weight of it. The world had emptied.
    He looked down at his hands. And he’d made a club. A weapon for what? Why did it make him feel better? But he had to stay alive. Yes! If he died, then the Nation would never have been. The island would be left to the red crabs and the grandfather birds. There would be no one to say that anyone had been there.
    There was a fluttering overhead. A grandfather bird had landed