Nation

trails. And there was light on the dark horizon. It looked like buildings, like white buildings as big as the ones Pilu had told him about in Port Mercia. What were buildings doing down here?
    Something white flashed past under his feet. He glanced down and almost stumbled. He was running over white blocks. They were blurred by his speed, and he didn’t dare to slow down, but they looked exactly the right size to be god anchors.
    This is wonderful, wonderful , said Locaha. Mau, did you bother to wonder if you are running the wrong way ?
    Two voices had said those words and now arms grabbed him.
    “ This way! ” screamed Daphne, right in his ear as she tugged him back the way he had come. “Why didn’t you hear me?”
    “But—” Mau began, straining to look back at the white buildings. There was something like a twist of smoke coming out of them…or perhaps it was a clump of weeds, flapping in the current…or a ray, skimming toward them.
    “I said this way! Do you want to die forever? Run! Run!”
    But where was the speed in his legs? It was like running through water now, real water. He looked at Daphne, who was half towing him.
    “How did you get here?”
    “Apparently I’m dead—will you try to keep up! And whatever you do, don’t look back!”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I just did! Run faster!”
    “Are you really dead?”
    “Yes, but I’m due to get well soon. Come on, Mrs. Gurgle! The drop was falling!”
    Silence fell like a hammer made of feathers. It left holes in the shape of the sound of the sea.
    They stopped running, not because they intended to, but because they had to. Mau’s feet hung uselessly above the ground. The air turned gray.
    “We are in the steps of Locaha,” he said. “He has spread his wings over us.”
    Words seized Daphne’s tongue. It was only a few weeks since she’d heard them before, at the funeral of Cabin Boy Scatterling, who had been killed in the mutiny. He’d had red hair and pimples and she hadn’t liked him much, but she’d cried when the sailcloth-wrapped body had disappeared under the waves. Captain Roberts was a member of the Conducive Brethren, who accepted a version of the Gospel of St. Mary Magdalene as, well, gospel. * She’d never heard this piece read down at Holy Trinity, but she had tucked it into her memory and now it came out, screamed like a battle cry:
“And those that perish in the sea, the sea shall not hold them!

Tho’ they be broken and scattered, they will be made whole!

They will rise again on that morning, clad in new raiment!

In ships of the firmament they will climb among stars!”
    “Mrs. Gur—!”

Rolling the Stone

    W ATER SPLASHED ON D APHNE’S face. She opened her eyes, and her mouth said: “—gle!”
    Cahle and the old woman looked down on her, smiling. As she blinked in the light, she felt Mrs. Gurgle gently pulling something out of her hair. But something else was happening. Memory was flowing out of her mind in a tide. The face of death…the great pillars of the world…the white slabs…they sped into the past like silver fish, fading as they went.
    She turned to the mat beside her. Mau lay still and snored.
    No reason to get excited, she thought, feeling a little lightheaded. He had been so cold, and she’d brought him up here to keep him warm. There had been…something that happened. The shape of it was still in her head, but she couldn’t fill it in. Except…“There was a silver fish?” she wondered aloud.
    Mrs. Gurgle looked very surprised and said something to Cahle, who smiled and nodded.
    “She says you are indeed a woman of power,” Cahle said. “You pulled him out of a dark dream.”
    “I did? I can’t remember. But there was a fish in it.”
    The hole in her memory was still there when Cahle had gone, and there was still a fish in it. Something big and important had happened and she had been there, and all she could remember was that there had been a fish in it?
    Mrs. Gurgle had curled up in her corner, and it looked as if she was asleep. Daphne was certain that she wasn’t. She’d be peeking through eyelids that were almost closed and listening so hard that her ears would try to flap. All the women took far too much interest in her and Mau. It was like the maids back home gossiping. It was silly and quite unnecessary, it really was!
    Mau looked quite small on the mat. The twitching had stopped, but he had curled up in a ball. It was a shock, now, to see him so