Nation

I know the difference!” said Mau.
    “That’s good, because the Grandmothers have been talking to me.”
    “Who are the Grandmothers?”
    Blibi, if that was really her name, had caught up with them long before Daphne had finished talking and Mau had finished understanding. She sat at their feet, playing with pantaloon bird feathers.
    Mau picked up a feather and twiddled it in his fingers. “They don’t like warriors, then.”
    “They don’t like people being killed. Nor do you.”
    “Have you heard of the Raiders?” asked Mau, brushing a feather off his face.
    “Of course. Everyone’s talking about them. They have great war galleys, and they hang the skulls of their enemies along the sides of them. Oh, and enemy means everyone else.”
    “We have perhaps thirty people here now. Some more arrived this morning, but most of them can hardly stand. They survived the wave, but they weren’t going to wait for the Raiders to come.”
    “Well, you’ve got enough canoes. Can’t we just head east?” She said that without thinking, and then sighed. “We can’t, can we?”
    “No. If we had more able-bodied people, and time to get provisions together, then we could try it. But it’s eight hundred miles of open ocean.”
    “The weaker people would die. They came here to be safe!”
    “They call this island ‘the place where the sun is born’ because it’s in the east. They look to us.”
    “Then we could hide until the Raiders go away. Roll away the stone, the Grandmothers said.”
    Mau stared at her. “And hide among the dead men? Do you think we should?”
    “No! We should fight!” She was amazed at how fast the words came out. They had been pushed out by her ancestors, all those calm stone knights down in the crypt. They’d never ever thought about hiding, even when it was the sensible thing to do.
    “Then I will think of a way,” said Mau.
    “What do the Grandfathers say?”
    “I don’t hear them anymore. I just hear…clicks, and insect noises.”
    “Perhaps the Grandmothers have told them off,” said Daphne, giggling. “My grandmother was always telling my grandfather off. He knew everything there is to know about the fifteenth century but he was always coming down to breakfast without his teeth in.”
    “They fell out in the night?” asked Mau, puzzled.
    “No. He used to take them out to clean them. They were new teeth made out of animal bone.”
    “You trousermen can give an old man new teeth? What will you tell me next? That you can give him new eyes?”
    “Um…yes, actually something very much like that.”
    “Why are you so much smarter than us?”
    “I don’t think we are, really. I think it’s just that you have to learn to make things when it’s cold for half the year. I think we got our empire because of the weather. Anything was better than staying at home in the rain. I’m pretty certain people looked out of the window and rushed off to discover India and Africa.”
    “Are they big places?”
    “Huge,” said Daphne.
    Mau sighed and said, “With the people who leave stones.”
    “Who?”
    “The god anchors,” said Mau. “I understand Ataba now. I don’t think he believes in his gods, but he believes in belief. And he also thinks trousermen came here a long time ago,” he added, shaking his head. “Maybe they brought the stones as ballast. It must have happened like that. Look at all the stone Judy the Sweet brought. Worthless rock to you, all kinds of tools to us. And maybe they gave us metal and tools, like giving toys to children, and we carved the stones because we wanted them to come back. Isn’t that how it would go? We are a little island. Tiny.”
    The Phoenicians, thought Daphne glumly. They went on long, long voyages. So did the Chinese. What about the Aztecs? Even the Egyptians? Some people say they visited Further Australia. And who knows who might have been around thousands of years ago? He’s probably right. But he looks so sad.
    “Well, you might be a small island,” she said, “but you are an old one. The Grandmothers must have some reason for telling you to roll away the big stone.”
    They looked at the stone, which glowed a golden yellow in the afternoon light.
    “You know, I can’t remember a longer day than this,” said Daphne.
    “I can,” said Mau.
    “Yes. That was a long day, too.”
    “It takes ten strong men to move the stone,” said Mau after a while. “We don’t have that many.”
    “I’ve been thinking about