Nation

minute before the wave came. The birds knew! How did they know?”
    “Who knows?” And that was the other thing about Pilu: No thought stayed in his head for very long, because it got lonely.
    “The ghost girl has got a—a thing called a book, you know? Made out of something like papervine. And it’s full of birds!” He wasn’t sure what he was trying to do now. Perhaps he just wanted to see the light of interest in Pilu’s eyes.
    “Squashed?”
    “No, like…tattoos, but the proper colors! And the trouserman name for grandfather bird is ‘pantaloon bird’!”
    “What’s a pantaloon?”
    “Trouserman trousers for trouserwomen,” Mau explained.
    “Silly to have a different name,” said Pilu.
    And that was it. Pilu had a soul to fill him, so he lived happily enough. But Mau looked into himself and found questions, and the only answers seemed to be “because,” and “because” was no answer at all. Because…the gods, the stars, the world, the wave, life, death. There are no reasons, there is no sense, only “because”…“because” was a curse, a struck blow, it was putting your hand in the cold hand of Locaha—
    WHAT WILL YOU DO, HERMIT CRAB? WILL YOU PULL DOWN THE STARS? WILL YOU SMASH THE MOUNTAINS LIKE SHY COCONUTS TO FIND THEIR SECRETS? THINGS ARE AS THEY ARE! EXISTENCE IS ITS OWN “BECAUSE”! ALL THINGS IN THEIR RIGHT PLACE. WHO ARE YOU TO DEMAND REASONS? WHO ARE YOU?
    The Grandfathers had never been as loud as this before. Their thundering made his teeth ache and he collapsed to his knees, the box of tools crashing into the sand.
    “Are you all right?” asked Pilu.
    “Ugh,” said Mau, and spat bile. It wasn’t just that the old men got into his head, although that was bad enough, but they left everything in a mess when they went away again. He stared at the sand until the bits of his thoughts came back together again.
    “The Grandfathers spoke to me,” he mumbled.
    “I didn’t hear anything.”
    “Then you’re lucky! Ugh!” Mau clutched at his head. It had been really bad this time, the worst ever. And there was something extra, too. It had sounded as though there had been more voices, very weak or a long way off, and they had been shouting something different, but it had got lost in the clamor. More of them, he thought gloomily. A thousand years of Grandfathers, all shouting at me, and never shouting anything new.
    “They want me to bring up the last of the god anchors,” he said.
    “Do you know where it is?”
    “Yes, it’s in the lagoon, and it can stay there!”
    “All right, but what actual harm would it do to bring it up?”
    “Harm?” said Mau, trying to understand this. “You want to thank the god of Water?”
    “You don’t have to mean it, and people will feel better,” said Pilu.
    Something whispered in Mau’s ear, but whatever it was trying to say was far too faint to be understood. It’s probably some ancient Grandfather who was a bit slow, he thought sourly. And even though I am the chief, my job is to make people feel better, is it? Either the gods are powerful but didn’t save my people, or they don’t exist and all we’re believing in is lights in the sky and pictures in our heads. Isn’t that the truth? Isn’t that important?
    The voice in his head answered, or tried to. It was like watching someone shouting at the other end of the beach. You could see them jumping up and down and waving their arms and maybe even make out their lips moving, but the wind is blowing through the palms and rustling the pandanuses and the surf is pounding and the grandfather birds are throwing up unusually loudly, so you can’t hear but you do know that what you can’t hear is definitely shouting. In his head it was exactly like that, but without the beach, the jumping, the waving, the lips, the palms, the pandanuses, the surf, and the birds, but with the same feeling that you are missing something that someone really, really wants you to hear. Well, he wasn’t going to listen to their rules.
    “I’m the little blue hermit crab,” said Mau under his breath. “And I am running. But I will not be trapped in a shell again, because…yes, there has to be a because…because…any shell will be too small. I want to know why. Why everything . I don’t know the answers, but a few days ago I didn’t know there were questions.”
    Pilu was watching him carefully, as if uncertain whether he should run or not.
    “Let’s go and see if your brother can cook,