Nation

requirements, which is exactly the appropriate feeling in the circumstances.
    At least Mau had time to learn their names. Milota-dan (big, the oldest, who was head and shoulders taller than anyone Mau had ever seen) and Pilu-si (small, always rushing, and hardly ever not smiling).
    He found out that Pilu did all the talking: “We went on a trouserman boat for six months once, all the way to a big place called Port Mercia. Good fun! We saw huge houses made of stone, and they had meat called beef and we learned trousermen talk, and when they dropped us off back home they gave us big steel knives and needles and a three-legged pot—”
    “Hush,” said Milo, raising a hand. “She’s singing! In trouserman! Come on, Pilu, you’re the best at this!”
    Mau leaned forward. “What’s it about?”
    “Look, our job was to pull on ropes and carry things,” Pilu complained. “Not work out songs!”
    “But you said you could speak trouserman!” Mau insisted.
    “To get by, yes! But this is very complicated! Um…”
    “This is important , brother!” said Milo. “This is the first thing my son will hear!”
    “Quiet! I think it’s about…stars,” said Pilu, bent in concentration.
    “Stars is good,” said Milo, looking around approvingly.
    “She’s saying the baby—”
    “He,” said Milo firmly. “He will be a boy.”
    “Er, yes, certainly. He will be, yes, like a star, guiding people in the dark. He will twinkle, but I don’t know what that means….”
    They looked up at the dawn sky. The last of the stars looked back, but twinkled in the wrong language.
    “He will guide people?” said Pilu. “How does she know that? This is a powerful song!”
    “I think she’s making it up!” Ataba snapped.
    “Oh?” said Milo, turning on him. “Where did you come from? Do you think my son won’t be a great leader?”
    “Well, no, but I—”
    “Hold on, hold on,” said Pilu. “I think…he will seek to know what the stars mean, I’m pretty sure of that. And—look, I’m having to work hard on this, you know— because of this wondering, people won’t…be in the dark,” he finished quickly, and then added, “That was really hard to do, you know! My head aches! This is priest stuff!”
    “Quiet,” said Mau. “I just heard something….”
    They fell silent, and the baby cried again.
    “My son!” said Milo as the others cheered. “And he will be a great warrior!”
    “Er, I’m not sure it meant—” Pilu began.
    “A great man, anyway,” said Milo, waving a hand. “They say the birth song can be a prophecy, for sure. That type of language at this time…it’s telling us what will be, right enough.”
    “Do the trousermen have gods?” asked Mau.
    “Sometimes. When they remember—Hey, here she comes!”
    The outline of the ghost girl appeared in the stone entrance to the place.
    “Mr. Pilu, tell your brother he is the father of a little boy and his wife is well and sleeping.”
    That news was passed on with a whoop, which is easy to translate.
    “And he be called Twinkle?” Milo suggested, in broken English.
    “ No! I mean, no, don’t. Not Twinkle,” said the ghost girl quickly. “That would be wrong. Very, very wrong. Forget about Twinkle. Twinkle, NO!”
    “Guiding Star?” said Mau, and that met with general approval.
    “That would be very auspicious,” said Ataba. He added, “Is there going to be beer, by any chance?”
    The choice was also translated for the ghost girl, who indicated that any name that wasn’t Twinkle was bound to be good. Then she asked—no, commanded —that the other young woman and her baby be brought up and all sorts of things carried to the Place from the wreck of the Sweet Judy . The men jumped to it. There was a purpose.
     
    …And now it was two weeks later, and a lot had happened. The most important thing was that time had passed, pouring thousands of soothing seconds across the island. People need time to deal with the now before it runs away and becomes the then. And what they need most of all is nothing much happening.
    And this is me, seeing all that horizon, Daphne thought, looking at the wash of blue that stretched all the way to the end of the world. My goodness, Father was right. If my horizon was any broader it would have to be folded in half.
    It’s a funny saying, “broaden your horizons.” I mean, there’s just the horizon, which moves away from you, so you never actually catch up with it. You only get to where it’s