Nation

what was standing there in the rain was not a creature with a beak bigger than a man’s head that looked quite capable of slicing Mau in two. It couldn’t exist, and he had to prove it. Somehow, though, rushing up and shouting at it didn’t seem the sensible next thing to do.
    I’ve got a brain, haven’t I? he thought. I will prove it’s not a monster.
    There was a small gust of wind and the creature flapped a wing.
    Ugh…but remember the toolbox. There was nothing special about the trousermen. They’d just been lucky. Pilu said they came from a place where, sometimes, the weather could get so cold, the sky shed freezing feathers, like the hail you sometimes got in storms, but more fluffy, and so they had to invent trousers to stop their wingos getting frozen and big boats to find places where the water never got hard. They had to learn new ways of thinking: a new toolbox.
    This isn’t a demon. Let’s find out what it is.
    He stared. The feet looked human. And what he thought was that thing flapping didn’t really look like a wing; when you watched carefully, it was more like cloth blowing in the breeze. The only demon was in his fear.
    The thing made a cooing noise. This was so undemonic that Mau splashed over to it and saw someone who’d draped themselves in a tarpaulin from the Sweet Judy that was so stiff that it had formed a sort of hood.
    It was the Unknown Woman, cuddling her baby in the dry while the rain trickled around them. She gave him her haunted little smile.
    How long had she been there? Before the light began to rise, he was certain. What was she doing there? Well, why was he there, if it came to that? It just felt right. Someone had to watch over the Nation. Perhaps she thought the same thing.
    The rain was slackening off now and he could see the surf. Any minute now, the—
    “Show us yer drawers! Roberts is on the gin again!”
    —parrot would be waking up.
    Pilu said that cry meant “Show me your small trousers.” Perhaps it was the way trousermen recognized one another.
    He had small trousers now. He’d cut the legs off at the knee and used the material to make more of what made trousers really worthwhile, which were pockets. You could keep so many things in them.
    The Unknown Woman had walked back up the beach, and there were the sounds of people waking up.
    Do it now. Give them their gods.
    He slipped out of the half trousers with their so-useful pockets, ran forward, and dived into the lagoon.
    The tide was just about to turn, but the water around the break was calm. The wave had really pounded through here; he could see deep blue water beyond the gap.
    The anchor of Water gleamed below him, right in the gap. It was deeper than the others had been, and farther from the shore. It would take ages to bring it back. Better start now, then.
    He dived, got his arms around the stone cube, and heaved. It didn’t budge.
    Mau brushed aside some weeds. The white block was trapped by a piece of coral. Mau tried to move that, too.
    About five seconds later his head broke water and he swam back, slowly and thoughtfully, to the shore. He found Ataba using a metal hammer from the toolbox on a slab of salt-pickled beef. The stuff went down well with nearly everyone except the priest, who didn’t have enough teeth and couldn’t often find anyone prepared to do the chewing for him. He sat down and watched the old man in silence.
    “You’ve come to laugh at me in my infirmity, demon boy?” said Ataba, looking up at him.
    “No.”
    “Then you might at least have the decency to take over the hammering.”
    Mau did so. It was hard work. The blows just bounced off it. You could make a shield out of the stuff.
    “Something on your mind, demon boy?” said the priest after a while. “You haven’t insulted the gods for at least ten minutes.”
    “I need some advice, elderly one,” said Mau. “It’s about the gods, actually.”
    “Yes? But you do believe in them today? I watched you yesterday night; you learned that belief is a complicated matter, yes?”
    “There are three gods, yes?”
    “Correct.”
    “Not four, ever?”
    “Some say Imo is the fourth god, but he is the All in which they and we, and even you, exist.”
    “Imo has no god anchors?”
    “Imo Is, and since He Is, He Is everywhere. Since He Is everywhere, He is not anywhere. The whole universe is His anchor.”
    “What about the star Atindi, which is always close to the sun?”
    “That is the son of the moon. Surely