Nation

announced.
    “What’s a cannon?” said Mau, peering at the long black cylinder.
    Pilu told him.
    The next question was: “What’s gunpowder?”
    Pilu told him that, too. And Mau saw the little silver picture of the future again. It wasn’t clear, but cannon fitted into it. It was hard to believe in gods, but the Judy was a gift from the wave. It held what they needed—food, tools, timber, stone—so perhaps they needed what it held, even if they didn’t know it yet, even if they didn’t want it yet. But now they should be getting back.
    They each took a handle of the toolbox, which even by itself was almost too much to carry. They had to stop every few minutes to get their breath back, while Milo trudged on with the planks. In fact, Mau got his breath back while Pilu chatted. He talked all the time, about anything.
    Mau had learned this about the brothers: It wasn’t a case of big stupid Milo and little clever Pilu. Milo didn’t talk as much, that was all. When he did talk, he was worth listening to. But Pilu swam through words like a fish through water, he painted pictures in the air with them, and he did it all the time.
    Eventually Mau said, “Don’t you wonder about your people, Pilu? About what happened to them?”
    And, for once, Pilu slowed down. “We went back. All the huts were gone. So were the canoes. We hope they made it to one of the stone islands. When we have rested and the baby is fine and strong, we’ll go looking for them. I hope the gods took care of them.”
    “Do you think they did?” asked Mau.
    “The best of the fish were always taken to the shrine,” said Pilu in a flat voice.
    “Here they are—I mean they were —left on the god anchors,” said Mau. “The pigs ate them.”
    “Well, yes, but only what’s left.”
    “No, the whole fish,” said Mau bluntly.
    “But the spirit goes to the gods,” said Pilu, his voice seeming to come from a distance, as if he was trying to draw back from the conversation without actually backing away.
    “Have you ever seen it happen?”
    “Look, I know you think there are no gods—”
    “Perhaps they do exist. I want to know why they act as if they don’t—I want them to explain!”
    “Look, it happened, all right?” said Pilu wretchedly. “I’m just grateful I’m alive.”
    “Grateful? Who to?”
    “Glad, then! Glad that we are all alive, and sad that others died. You are angry, and what good is that going to do?” said Pilu, and now his voice had a strange kind of growl to it, like some small harmless animal that has been trapped in a corner and is ready to fight back in a fury.
    To Mau’s astonishment Pilu was crying. Without knowing why, but also knowing, absolutely knowing , down to his bones, that it was the right thing to do, Mau put his arms around him as enormous shuddering sobs escaped from Pilu, mixed with broken words and tangled in snot and tears. Mau held him until he stopped shaking and the forest was given back to birdsong.
    “They went to be dolphins,” Pilu murmured. “I am sure of it.”
    Why can’t I do this? Mau thought. Where are my tears when I need them? Maybe the wave took them. Maybe Locaha drank them, or I left them in the dark water. But I can’t feel them. Perhaps you need a soul to cry.
    After a while the sobbing became coughs and sniffs. Then Pilu very gently pushed Mau’s arms away and said: “Well, this isn’t getting things done, is it? Come on, let’s get going! You know, I’m sure you gave me the heavy end to carry!”
    And there was the smile, as if it had never gone away.
    You didn’t have to know Pilu for long to see that he floated through life like a coconut on the ocean. He always bobbed up. There was some sort of natural spring of cheerfulness that bubbled to the surface. Sadness was like a cloud across the sun, soon past. Sorrow was tucked away somewhere in his head, locked up in a cage with a blanket over it, like the captain’s parrot. He dealt with troubling thoughts by simply not thinking them; it was as if someone had put a dog’s brain in a boy’s body, and right now, Mau would have given anything to be him.
    “Just before the wave came, all the birds flew up into the air,” Mau said as they walked out from under the canopy and into the full light of the afternoon. “It was as if they knew something, something that I didn’t!”
    “Well, birds fly up when hunters go into the forest,” said Pilu. “It’s what they do.”
    “Yes, but this was nearly a