Nation

without husbands, people without all those things around them that told them what they were. The wave had shaken up the world and left broken pieces. There might be hundreds more out there.
    And then, and then…from where had they come, the rumors of the Raiders? A shout from other refugees, fleeing too urgently to stop? An old woman’s dream? A corpse floating by? Did it matter when terrified people had set out again in anything that would still float, with little to eat and brackish water?
    And so the second wave came, drowning people in their own fear.
    And at last they had seen the smoke. Nearly all of them knew the Nation. It was rock! It couldn’t be washed away! It had the finest god anchors in the world!
    And what they had found was ragtag—not much better off than themselves, with one old priest, a strange ghost girl, and a chief who was not a boy and not a man and didn’t have a soul and might be a demon.
    Thank you, Ataba, Mau thought. When people are not sure what you are, they don’t know what you might do. The newcomers seemed awkward about a chief who wasn’t a man, but a touch of demon got respect.
    He’d dreamed about the island being full of people again, but in his dream it was the people who used to be there. These people didn’t belong. They didn’t know the chants of the island, they didn’t have the island in their bones. They were lost, and they wanted their gods.
    They had been talking about it yesterday. Someone asked Mau if he was sure that the Water anchor had been in its right place before the wave. He’d had to think hard about that, keeping his expression blank. He must have seen the god anchors nearly every day of his life. Were all three there when he went to the Boys’ Island? Surely he’d have noticed if one was missing? The empty space would have cried out to him!
    Yes, he’d said, they were all there. And then a gray-faced woman had said: “But a man could lift one, yes?” And he saw how it was going. If someone had moved the stone and rolled it into the water, couldn’t that have caused the wave? That would explain it, wouldn’t it? That would be the reason, wouldn’t it?
    He’d looked at all the haggard faces, all of them willing him to say yes. Say yes, Mau, and betray your father and your uncles and your nation, just so that people would have a reason.
    The Grandfathers had thundered their anger in his head until he thought his ears would bleed. Who were these beggars from little sandy islands to come here and insult them? They urged his blood to sing war chants in his veins, and Mau had to lean on his spear to stop himself from raising it.
    But his eye had stayed on the gray woman. He couldn’t remember her name. She’d lost her children and her husband, he knew. She was walking in the steps of Locaha. He saw it in her eyes and kept his temper.
    “The gods let you down. When you needed them they weren’t there. That is it, and all of it. To worship them now would be to kneel before bullies and murderers.”
    Those were the words he’d wanted to say, but with her looking at him, he’d rather bite his tongue off than say them. They would be true, he knew it, yet here and now that didn’t mean anything. He’d looked around at the anxious faces, still waiting for his answer, and remembered how shocked and hurt Pilu had been. A thought could be like a spear. You do not throw a spear at the widow, the orphan, the grieving.
    “Tomorrow,” he’d told them, “I will bring up the anchor of Water.”
    And people sat back and looked at one another in satisfaction. It wasn’t smugness, it wasn’t a look of triumph, but the world had wobbled a bit and was now back where it should be.
    And now it was tomorrow, somewhere beyond the hissing rain.
    I’ll bring the three stones together, he thought. And what will happen next? Nothing! The world has changed! But they’ll catch fish to put on the stones, and cower!
    Light was leaking slowly through the rain, and something made him turn.
    There was a figure standing a handful of paces away. It had a large head that looked, as he concentrated, as if it were more like some enormous beak. And the rain made a slightly different noise as it landed, more a click than a patter.
    There were stories about demons. They came in all shapes; they could come disguised as a human, or an animal, or anything in between, but—
    —there were no demons. There couldn’t be. If there were no gods, then there were no demons, so