Nation

Erk! as the grandfather bird took off again with another of Mau’s boiled fish in its beak, making the canoe wallow for a moment. Well, at least I’m a bit lighter, Mau thought. It’s not as though I need the fish in any case. I’ll be filling up with pork tonight!
    The bird landed heavily on a log a little way ahead. Quite a large log, in fact. As he drew nearer, Mau saw that it was a whole tree, even with its roots, although a lot of its branches had been torn off.
    He saw the axe, tangled, rising out of the water. But part of him already knew he was going to see it. The sight of it raced toward his eyes and became, just for a moment, the center of the turning world.
    The grandfather bird, having juggled the fish so that it could swallow it whole, took off in its gloomy is-this-really-worth-it? way and flapped with its big, slow wings nearly touching the scummy water.
    With its weight gone, the tree started to roll back. But Mau was already in the water and caught the axe handle as it was pulled under. Holding his breath, he braced his legs against the tree’s trunk and tugged. Oh, he’d been clever, hadn’t he, that moment a hundred years ago now, slamming the axe hard into the tree to show the next boy what a big man he was….
    It should have worked. With his last mighty heave the axe should have come free. That’s how it should have been, in a perfect world. But the swollen wood had gripped it firmly.
    Mau dived again three more times, and came up every time coughing and spitting seawater. He had a deep, angry feeling that this wasn’t right; the gods had sent the axe to him, he was sure of that. They had sent it to him because he was going to need it, he was certain of it, and he had failed.
    In the end he swam back to the canoe and grabbed the paddle before the grandfather bird was out of sight. They always flew back to land at night, and he was pretty certain that there couldn’t be much of the Boys’ Island to go back to. The tabago tree was hundreds of years old, and it had roots thicker than Mau’s waist. It looked as though they had practically held the island together! And there had been a god anchor among them. No wave should have been able to shift a god anchor. It would be like moving the world.
    The grandfather bird flapped onward. Ahead of it, the thin line of the horizon grew redder, redder than any Mau had ever seen before. He paddled on as fast as he could, trying not to think about what he was going to find ahead of him; and because he was trying not to think them, the thoughts ran around in his head like excited dogs.
    He tried to calm them down. Look, the Boys’ Island was hardly anything more than a lump of rock surrounded by sandbanks, was it? he thought. It wasn’t good for being anything but a fishing camp or a place for boys to try to be men. The Nation had mountains—well, one good one—had a river, there were caves, there were whole forests, there were men who’d know what to do!
    Wouldn’t they? And what could they do?
    But the little picture of his man-soul feast flickered in his head. It wouldn’t stay still, and he couldn’t find the silver thread that dragged him toward it.
    Something dark drifted in front of the sunset, and he almost burst into tears. It was a perfect sunset wave, rolling across the red disk that was just sinking below the horizon. Every man in the Islands of the Sun had that image as his manhood tattoo, and in a few hours—he knew it—so would he.
    And then, where the wave had been, there was the Nation. He could recognize its outline anywhere. It was five miles away maybe. Well, he could do another five miles. And soon he’d see the light of the fires.
    Paddling faster, eyes straining to see the darker shape in the strange twilight, he made out the whiteness of the surf over the reef. And soon, please, soon he would see the light of the fires!
    Now he could smell them, all the smells of the land except the one he wanted, which was the smell of smoke.
    And then, there it was, a sharp little tone in the scents of sea and forest. There was a fire somewhere. He couldn’t see it, but where there was smoke, there were people. Of course, if the wave had come this way, there wouldn’t be much dry wood. The wave wouldn’t be bad here, not here. He’d seen big waves before, and they would make a mess, and splinter a canoe or two. All right, this one had looked really big, but waves did when they went over the top of you! People had gone up the