The Signature of All Things

would send word tomorrow to Papeete that she was looking for a berth on a good ship with a respectable captain who had heard of Dick Yancey.
    She was not at peace, but at least she was decided.

Chapter Twenty-five
    F our days later Alma awoke at dawn to joyous shouting from the Hiro contingent. She stepped outside her fare to discover the source of the commotion. Her five wild little boys were running up and down the beach, turning flips and somersaults in the early morning light, shouting in enthusiastic Tahitian. When Hiro saw her, he ran up the zigzagged pathway to her door with wild speed.
    “Tomorrow morning is here!” he shouted. His eyes were blazing with excitement, such as she had never before seen, even in this quite excitable child.
    Baffled, Alma took his arm, trying to slow him down and make sense of him.
    “What are you saying, Hiro?” she asked him.
    “Tomorrow morning is here!” he shouted again, jumping up and down as he spoke, unable to contain himself.
    “Tell me in Tahitian,” she commanded, in Tahitian.
    “ Teie o tomorrow morning! ” he shouted back, which was merely the same nonsense in Tahitian as it was in English: “Tomorrow morning is here.”
    Alma looked up and saw a crowd gathering on the beach—everyone from the mission, as well as people from the nearby villages. All were as excited as the little boys. She saw the Reverend Welles running toward theshore with his funny, crooked gait. She saw Sister Manu running, and Sister Etini, and the local fishermen, too.
    “Look!” said Hiro, directing Alma’s eyes to the sea. “Tomorrow morning is arrive!”
    Alma looked out to the bay and saw—how could she not have noticed immediately?—a fleet of long canoes slicing across the water toward the beach with incredible speed, powered by dozens of dark-skinned rowers. In all her time in Tahiti, she had never lost her wonder at the power and agility of such canoes. When flotillas such as this came rushing across the bay, she always felt as though she were watching the arrival of Jason and the Argonauts, or Odysseus’s fleet. Most of all, she loved the moment when, drawing close to shore, the rowers heaved their muscles in one last push, and the canoes flew out of the sea as though shot forth by great invisible bows, landing on the beach in a dramatic, exuberant arrival.
    Alma had questions, but Hiro had already dashed over to greet the canoes, as had the rest of the growing crowd. Alma had never before seen so many people on the beach. Caught up in the excitement, she, too, ran toward the boats. These were exceptionally fine, even majestic, canoes. The grandest must have been sixty feet, and in its bow stood a man of impressive height and build—clearly the leader of this expedition. He was Tahitian, but as she drew nearer, she could see that he was impeccably dressed in the suit of a European man. The villagers gathered around him, chanting songs of welcome, carrying him from the canoe like a king.
    The people carried the stranger to the Reverend Welles. Alma pushed through the throng, drawing as near as she could. The man bent down over the Reverend Welles, and the two pressed their noses together in the customary greeting of deepest affection. She heard the Reverend Welles say, in a voice wet with tears, “Welcome back to your home, blessed son of God.”
    The stranger pulled back from the embrace. He turned to smile at the crowd, and Alma caught her first direct look at his face. If she had not been propped up by the crush of so many people, she might have fallen over with the force of recognition.
    The words tomorrow morning —which Ambrose had written on the backs of all the drawings of The Boy—had not been a code. “Tomorrow morning” was not some sort of dreamy wish for a utopian future, or an anagram, or any manner of occult concealment whatsoever. For once in hislife, Ambrose Pike had been perfectly straightforward: Tomorrow Morning was simply a person’s name.
    And now, indeed, Tomorrow Morning had arrived.
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    I t enraged her.
    That was her initial reaction. She felt—perhaps irrationally—that she had been tricked. Why, in all her months of search and privation, had she never heard mention of him—this regal figure, this adored visitant, this man who brought all of northern Tahiti running and cheering to the shoreline to greet him? How had his name or his existence never been alluded to, not even faintly? Nobody had once used the words tomorrow morning