Nation

everywhere. According to quite a good pantomime from Cahle, you could make a so-so soup of it, or wash your hair in its juice, but mostly you used it as string or made clothes and bags out of it. Like this skirt the Unknown Woman had made. Daphne knew she had to wear it, because it was quite something for the poor woman to let go of her baby for any reason other than to let Cahle feed it, and that was a good thing and ought to be encouraged.
    The skirt rustled when she walked, in a most disconcerting way. She thought she sounded like a restless haystack. The wonderful breeze got in, though.
    This must be what Grandmother called “Going Native.” She thought that being foreign was a crime, or at least some sort of illness that you could catch by being out in the sun too much, or eating olives. Going Native was giving in and becoming one of them. The way to not go native was to act exactly as if you were at home, which included dressing for dinner in heavy clothes and eating boiled meat and brown soup. Vegetables were “unwholesome,” and you should also avoid fruit because “you don’t know where it’s been.” That had always puzzled Daphne because, after all, how many places could a pineapple go?
    Besides, wasn’t there a saying, When in Rome, do as the Romans do ? But her grandmother would probably say that meant bathing in blood, throwing people to the lions, and eating peacocks’ eyeballs for tea.
    And I don’t care, Daphne thought. This is rebellion! But obviously she wasn’t going to take off her bodice or her pantaloons or her stockings. This was no time to go totally mad. You had to Maintain Standards.
    And then she realized she had thought that last thought in her grandmother’s voice.
     
    “You know, on you they look good!” said Pilu, down in the low forest. “The ghost girl will say, ‘Aha, it’s a trouserman.’ And then you can kiss her.”
    “I told you, this is not about kissing the ghost girl!” snapped Mau. “I…just want to see if they have any effect on me, that’s all.”
    He took a few steps. The trousers had been swirled around in the river and bashed on a rock a few times to get the stiffness out of them, but they still made creaking noises as he walked.
    This was foolish, he knew, but if you couldn’t put your trust in gods, then trousers might do. After all, in the Song of the Four Brothers, didn’t the North Wind have a cloak that carried him through the air? And if you couldn’t believe in a song that turned poison into beer, what could you believe in?
    “Do you feel anything?” said Pilu.
    “Yes, they really chafe the sresser!”
    “Ah, that would be because you’re not wearing long johns,” Pilu pointed out.
    “Long john’s what?”
    “It’s what they call soft trousers that you wear underneath the outside trousers. I think they are named after a pirate.”
    “So even the trousers wear trousers?”
    “That’s right. They think you can’t have too much trouser.”
    “Hold on, what are these things called?” said Mau, fumbling around in them.
    “I don’t know,” said Pilu cautiously. “What do they do?”
    “They’re like little bags inside the trousers. Now, that’s clever!”
    “Pockets,” said Pilu.
    But trousers alone weren’t something that changed the world. Mau could see that. Trousers would be useful if you were hunting in thorny scrub, and the bags for carrying things were a wonderful idea, but it wasn’t the trousers that gave the trousermen their metal and their big ships.
    No, it was the toolbox. He’d been cool about it in front of Pilu, because he did not like to admit that the Nation was behind the trousermen in any way, but the toolbox had impressed him. Oh, everyone could invent a hammer, but there were things in that box—beautiful, gleaming wooden and metal things—that not even Pilu knew the use of. And they spoke to Mau somehow.
    We never thought of pliers because we didn’t need them. Before you make something that is truly new, you first have to have a new thought. That’s the important thing. We didn’t need new things, so we didn’t think new thoughts.
    We need new thoughts now!
    “Let’s get back to the others,” Mau said. “But we’ll take the tools this time.” He stepped forward, and fell over. “Aargh, there’s a huge stone here!”
    Pilu pulled aside the ever-growing papervine as Mau tried to rub some life back into his foot.
    “Ah, it’s one of the Judy ’s cannon,” he