Nation

the rock again, and the light was brilliant.
    The rest of what happened he watched from inside himself as he dragged the girl onto the rocks, and tipped her upside down and slapped her on her back until she coughed up water. Then it was a run along the beach to lay her down by the fire, where she vomited up more water and groaned. Only then did Mau’s mind explain that his body was far too weak to have managed all this, and let it fall backward into the sand.
    He managed to turn over in time to throw up what was left of the dreadful cakes and stared down at the mess. Does not happen, he thought, and the words became a declaration of triumph and defiance. “Does not happen,” he said, and the words got bigger and dragged him to his feet, and “Does not happen!” he shouted at the sky. “Does not happen!”
    A little sound made him look down. The girl was shaking, there on the sand. He knelt beside her and held her hand, which was still clutching the captain’s hat. Her skin was white, and as cold as the touch of Locaha, even in the heat of the fire.
    “Cheat! I got her back!” he shouted. “Does not happen!”
    Mau ran farther along the beach and onto the track that led into the low forest. Red crabs scuttled out of the way as he bounded along the trail of broken trees. He reached the big canoe and scrambled up the side. There had been—yes, there was that big blanket in the corner. He grabbed it and pulled, and something pulled back. He pulled harder, and something landed on the deck with a splintering noise.
    A voice said: “ Waark! Roberts is a dreadful boozer! Show us yer drawers!”
    This time the blanket had come away, revealing a broken wooden cage on the floor and a very angry gray bird. It glared at Mau.
    “ Waark! Blessed are the meek, my sainted aunt!”
    Mau had no time for birds now, but this one had a worrying glint in its eye. It seemed to demand a reply.
    “Does not happen!” he shouted, and ran out of the cabin, the blanket flapping behind him.
    He was halfway down the track when there was a flutter of wings overhead and a shriek of “Does not happen!”
    Mau didn’t even look up. The world had become too strange. He ran to the fire and wrapped the girl as tight as he could in the blanket. After a while the shivering stopped, and she seemed to be asleep.
    “Does not happen!” screamed the bird from a broken tree. Mau blinked. He’d understood it! And he’d understood it before, and not realized it.
    Oh, there were some birds that could speak a few words, like the gray raven and the yellow parakeet, but you could hardly understand them. This bird talked as if it knew what it was saying.
    “Where’s my grub, you vinegar-faced old piss pot?” said the bird, bouncing up and down eagerly. “Give me my rations, you ol’ hypocrite!”
    That sounded like trouserman talk, right enough.
     
    The sun was low but still a hand’s span above the sea. A lot had happened in a short space of time that, on the inside, had lasted nearly forever.
    Mau looked down at the sleeping girl. “Does not happen” was not enough. You couldn’t trust Locaha. There were no bargains. Now he had to think about will not happen. Death was not going to rule here.
    He found his spear and stood guard until morning.

Bargains, Covenants, and Promises

    E RMINTRUDE HAD HEARD THAT when you drown, your whole life passes in front of your eyes.
    In fact it’s when you don’t drown that this happens, as life races back from the start to get to the last known living moment. Mostly it’s a blur, but every life has its important moments that get more and more colorful the longer they are remembered.
    In hers, one of them was about the map. Every life should have a map.
    The map. Oh yes, the map. She’d found it in the big atlas in the library one wet winter afternoon. In a week she could have drawn it from memory.
    And the name of it was the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean.
    It was half a world of blue sea, but it was stitched together with seams of little marks, tiny dots that her father had called island chains. There were hundreds and thousands of islands and a lot of them were just about big enough for a coconut tree, he’d said. There had to be one coconut tree on every tiny island, by law, so that if someone was shipwrecked, then at least he’d have some shade to sit in. * He drew a picture of her sitting in the shade of a coconut tree, with her white dress and her parasol, but he quickly added, on the penciled