Nation

this out will deserve to be called a man.
    “Men help other men!” he shouted as the stone hit the bark.
    He’d meant it to have an effect. It did, far more than he expected. From every corner of the little island, birds exploded into the air like a cloud of bees. Finches and waders and ducks rose out of the bushes and filled the air with panic and feathers. Some of the larger ones headed out to sea, but most of them just circled, as though terrified to stay but with nowhere else to go.
    Mau walked through them as he went down to the beach. Bright wings zipped past his face like hail, and it would have been wondrously pretty if it weren’t for the fact that every single bird was taking this opportunity to have a really good crap. If you’re in a hurry, there is no point in carrying unnecessary weight.
    Something was wrong. He could feel it in the air, in the sudden calm, in the way the world felt suddenly as though something heavy was pressing down on it.
    And now it hit Mau, knocking him flat on the sand. His head was trying to explode. It was worse even than that time when he’d played the stone game and had hung on too long. Something was weighing down on the world like a big gray rock.
    Then the pain went as fast as it had it come, with a zip, leaving him gasping and dazed. And still the birds swarmed overhead.
    As Mau staggered to his feet, all he knew was that here was not a good place to be anymore, and if it was the only thing he knew, then at least he knew it with every nail and hair of his body.
    Thunder rolled in the clear sky, one great hard jolt of it that rattled off the horizon. Mau staggered down to the tiny lagoon while the noise went on, and there was the canoe waiting for him in the white sand of the water’s edge. But the usually calm water was…dancing, dancing like water danced under heavy rain, although no rain was falling.
    He had to get away. The canoe sloped easily into the water, and he paddled frantically for the gap in the reef that led to the open sea. Beneath him and around him, fish were doing the same thing—
    The sound went on, like something solid, smashing into the air and breaking it. It filled the whole of the sky. For Mau it was like a giant slap on the ears. He tried to paddle faster, and then the thought rose in his mind: Animals flee. His father had told him so. Boys flee. A man does not flee. He turns to look at his enemy, to watch what he does and find his weakness.
    Mau let the canoe slide out of the lagoon and easily rode the surf into the ocean, and then he looked around, like a man.
    The horizon was one great cloud, boiling and climbing, full of fire and lightning and growling like a nightmare.
    A wave crashed in the coral, and that was wrong too. Mau knew the sea, and there was also something wrong with that. The Boys’ Island was falling way behind him, because a terrible current was dragging him toward the great bag of storms. It was as if the horizon was drinking the sea.
    Men looked at their enemy, yes, but sometimes they turned around and paddled like mad.
    It made no difference. The sea was sliding and then, suddenly, was dancing again, like the water in the lagoon. Mau, trying to think straight, fought to get the canoe under control.
    He’d get back. Of course he would. He could see the picture in his head, small and clear. He turned it around, savoring the taste of it.
    Everyone would be there. Everyone. There could be no exceptions. Old, sick men would prefer to die on mats at the water’s edge rather than not be there; women would give birth there if they had to, while watching for the homecoming canoe. It was unthinkable to miss the arrival of a new man. That would bring down terrible bad luck on the whole Nation.
    His father would be watching for him at the edge of the reef, and they’d bring the canoe up the beach, and his uncles would come running, and the new young men would rush to congratulate him, and the boys he’d left behind would be envious, and his mother and the other women would start on the feast, and there would be the…thing with the sharp knife, where you didn’t scream, and then…there would be everything.
    And if he could just hold it in his mind, then it would be so. There was a shining silver thread connecting him to that future. It would work like a god anchor, which stopped the gods from wandering away.
    Gods, that was it! This was coming from the Gods’ Island. It was over the horizon and you couldn’t see it even