Nation

about the four brothers, all sons of Air, who one day decided to race around the huge belly of their father to see which of them would court the woman who lived in the Moon, and the tricks each one played on the others so that he could be first. Babies learned it. Everyone knew it. And, for some reason, singing that song turned the poison into beer. It really did.
    The beer foamed in the bowl. Mau watched the big round stone, just in case, but the Grandfathers probably had a way of drinking beer from the spirit world.
    He sang his way through the song, taking care not to miss any verse, especially the one that was very funny when you did the right gestures. When he finished, the beer had gone clear, with golden bubbles rising to the top. Mau took a sip, to check. His heart didn’t stop after one beat, so the beer was probably fine.
    He took a few steps back and said, to the wide open sky: “Here is your beer, Grandfathers!”
    Nothing happed. It was a bad thought, but a thank you might have been nice.
    Then the world drew a breath and the breath became voices: YOU HAVE FAILED TO DO THE CHANT!
    “I have sung the song! It is good beer!”
    WE MEAN THE CHANT THAT CALLS US TO THE BEER!
    A couple more grandfather birds crash-landed in the trees.
    “I didn’t know there was one!”
    YOU ARE A LAZY BOY!
    Mau grabbed at this. “That’s right, I’m just a boy! There is no one to teach me! Can you—?”
    HAVE YOU RIGHTED THE GOD ANCHORS? NO! And with that the voices snapped into silence, leaving only the sighing of the wind.
    Well, it looked like good beer. What was a chant needed for? Mau’s mother had made good beer, and people had just turned up.
    With a flapping of wings, a grandfather bird landed on the edge of the beer stone and gave him the usual stare that said: If you are going to die, hurry up. Otherwise, leave.
    Mau shrugged and walked away. But he hid behind a tree, and he was good at hiding. Maybe the big round stone would roll.
    It didn’t take long for several more grandfather birds to alight on the bowl. They squabbled for a while and then, with the occasional pause for another brief fight, settled down to some serious boozing, rocking backward and forward because that is how birds move when they drink, then rocking backward and forward and forward and falling over a lot, which is how birds move when they have been drinking fresh beer. One took off and flew backward into some bushes.
    Mau walked back thoughtfully to the beach, stopping on the way to cut himself a spear from the forest. Down on the beach he sharpened it to a point, which he hardened in the fire, occasionally glancing up at the sun.
    He did all this slowly, because his mind was filling up with questions. They came out of the black hole inside him so fast that they made it hard to think in a straight line. And soon he would have to see the ghost girl. That was going to be…difficult.
    He looked at the white oblong again. The shiny metal around the edge was quite soft and useless, and scraped off easily. As for the picture, he thought it might be some kind of magic or charm, like the blue bead. What was the point of throwing a spear at the big canoe? It wasn’t something you could kill. But the ghost girl was the only other person on the island, and she had, after all, given him the spark-maker. He didn’t need it now, but it was still a wonderful thing.
    When the sun was getting close to the Little Nation, he set off along the beach and entered the low forest.
    You could smell things growing. There was never much light down here, but the big canoe had left a wide trail, and daylight was shafting down into spaces that hadn’t seen it for years, and the race was on for a rare place in the sun. New green shoots were fighting for their piece of the sky, fronds were unfolding, seeds were cracking open. The forest was coming back with its own green tide; in six months no one would ever guess what had happened here.
    Mau slowed down when the wreck of the big canoe came in sight, but he could see no movement. He would have to be careful about this. It would be so easy to get things wrong.
     
    It was so easy to get things wrong.
    She hated the name Ermintrude. It was the trude really. Ermin, now that wasn’t bad at all. Trudy, too, sounded quite jolly, but her grandmother had said it sounded fast, whatever that meant, and banned her from using it. Even Gertrude would have done. You still had your trude , of course, but one of the royal