Milo gave him a long, slow look and then kept on coming, his muscles moving like oiled coconuts under his skin. Daphne could hear the sand being crushed under his feet as he plodded over to the god anchors and set his burden down with a grunt. It sank a little into the beach.
There were already four lying in the sand. That isn’t right, is it? she wondered. Weren’t there supposed to be three but one got lost? Where did the other ones come from?
She saw the big man stretch himself out with a cracking of joints before turning to the little crowd and saying, in the slow and solemn voice of a man who tests the truth of every word before letting it go: “If anyone touches the stones, they answer to me.”
“That one was made by a demon!” shouted Ataba. He looked at the crowd for some support here but didn’t find any. The people weren’t on anyone’s side, as far as Daphne could tell. They just didn’t like shouting. Things were bad enough as they were.
“Demon,” rumbled Milo. “You like that word? Demon boy, you call him. But he saved you from the shark, right? And you said we made the god anchors. You did! I heard you!”
“Only some,” said Ataba, backing away. “Only some!”
“You never said some!” said Milo quickly. “He never said some,” he announced to the crowd. “He was speaking for his life an’ he never said some! I have good ears and he never said some!”
“Who cares what he said?” said Daphne. She turned to the nearest woman. “Get Mau some blankets! He’s as cold as ice!”
“Mau did rescue Ataba from a shark,” said Pilu.
“That is a lie! I was in no danger — ” the priest began, and stopped, because Milo had started to growl.
“You should have seen it!” said Pilu quickly, turning to the crowd with his eyes wide open and his arms outspread. “It was the biggest one I have ever seen! It was as long as a house! It had teeth like, like, like huge teeth! As it came toward us, its speed made waves that almost sank the canoe!”
Daphne blinked and looked sideways at the people. Their eyes were as wide as Pilu’s. Every mouth hung open.
“And Mau just waited, treading water,” the boy went on. “He did not turn and flee! He did not try to get away! He looked it in the eye, there in its own world! He waved at the shark, the shark with the teeth like machetes, the shark with teeth like needles, to call it to him! He called it to him! Yes, he did! I was in the water and I saw! He was waiting for it! And the shark came faster! It came like a spear! Faster and faster it came!”
In the audience, someone started to whimper.
“And then I saw an amazing thing!” Pilu went on, his eyes wide and gleaming. “It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen! I will never see anything like it if I live to be a hundred! As the shark charged through the water, as the shark with the huge teeth sped toward him, as the shark as long as a house came through the water like a knife, Mau — he pissed himself!”
The little waves of the lagoon lapped at the sand with small sup-sup noises, suddenly loud in the bottomless moment of silence.
The woman bringing a grubby blanket from the hut almost walked into Daphne because she couldn’t bear to take her eyes off Pilu.
Oh, thank you, Pilu, Daphne thought bitterly as the magic drained away. You were doing so well, you had their hearts in the palm of your hand, and then you had to go and spoil it by —
“And that was when I saw,” whispered Pilu, lowering his voice and staring around the circle of faces, catching every eye. “That is when I knew. That is when I understood. He was no demon! He was no god, no hero. No. He was nothing but a man! A man who was frightened! A man like you and me! But would we wait there, full of fear, as the shark with huge teeth came to eat us? He did! I saw him! And as the shark was upon him, he shouted at it in scorn! He shouted these words: Da! Na! Ha! Pa!”
“Da! Na! Ha! Pa!” several people mumbled, as if they were in a dream.
“And the shark turned and fled from him. The shark could not face him. The shark turned about and we were saved. I was there. I saw this.”
Daphne realized that her hands were sweating. She had felt the shark brush past her. She had seen its terrible eye. She could draw a picture of its teeth. She had been there. She had seen it. Pilu’s voice had shown it to her.
She remembered when Mr. Griffith from the Nonconformist chapel had been invited to speak in the parish church. The sermon was rather damp, because he spat a fine spray when he shouted, but the man was so full of God that it overflowed everywhere.
He preached as if he had a flaming sword in his hand. Bats fell out of the rafters. The organ started up by itself. The water sloshed in the font. All in all, it was very unlike the sermons of the Reverend Fleblow-Poundup, who on a fine day could get through a mumbled service in half an hour, with his butterfly net and collecting jar leaning against the pulpit.
When they had got home, her grandmother had stood in the hallway, taken a deep breath, and said, “Well!” And that was that. Normally people tended to be very quiet in the parish church. Perhaps they were afraid of waking God up in case He asked pointed questions or gave them a test.
But Pilu had unfolded the story of the shark like Mr. Griffith had preached. He had unfolded a picture in the air and then made it move. Was it true? Had it really happened like that? But how could it not be true, now? They had been there. They had seen it. They had shared it.
She looked down at Mau. His eyes were still open and his body was still twitching. And then she looked up, and into the face of Cahle, who said: “Locaha has taken him.”
“You mean he’s dying?”
“Yes. The cold hand of Locaha is on him. You know him. He does not sleep. He eats not enough. He carries all weights, runs every distance. In his head, too much thinking. Has anyone here seen him not working, guarding, digging, carrying? He tries to carry the world on his back! And when such people weaken, Locaha springs.”
Daphne leaned down to Mau. His lips were blue. “You’re not dying,” she whispered. “You can’t be dying.”
She shook him gently, and there was a rush of air from his lips, faint as a spider’s sneeze: “Does… ”
“Does not happen!” she said triumphantly. “See? Locaha hasn’t got him yet! Look at his legs! He is not dying! In his head he is running!”
Cahle looked carefully at Mau’s twitching legs and put her hand on his forehead. Her eyes widened. “I have heard of this,” she said. “It’s shadow stuff. It will kill him, even so. The Sky Woman will know what to do.”
“Where is she, then?”
“You chew her food for her,” said Cahle, smiling. The Unknown Woman appeared behind her, staring at Mau in horror.
“Mrs. Gurgle?” said Daphne.
“She is very old. A woman of great power.”
“Then we’d better hurry!”
Daphne put her hands under Mau’s shoulders and pulled him up. To her astonishment the Unknown Woman handed her baby to Cahle and took Mau’s feet. She looked at Daphne expectantly.
Together they ran up the hill, leaving everyone else behind after they had gone a little way. By the time they arrived in the hut, Mrs. Gurgle was waiting for them with her little black eyes gleaming.
As soon as Mau was laid on a mat, she changed.
Until now Mrs. Gurgle had been rather a strange, half-sized person to Daphne. She had lost most of the hair on her head, moved on all fours like a chimpanzee, and looked as if she’d been made out of old leather bags. Also, she was, frankly, grabby when it came to food, and tended to fart in an unladylike way, although that was mostly the fault of the salt-pickled beef.
Now she crawled around Mau carefully, touching him gently here and there. She listened intently at his ears and lifted each of his legs in turn, watching the twitching as closely as if she was observing a new species of wild animal.
“He can’t die!” Daphne blurted out, unable to bear the suspense. “He just doesn’t sleep! He spends all night on guard! But you can’t die of not sleeping! Can you?”
The ancient woman gave her a wide grin and picked up one of Mau’s feet. Slowly she ran a stubby black fingernail along his twitching sole and seemed disappointed in whatever it was she learned by it.
“He isn’t dying, is he? He can’t die!” Daphne insisted again as Cahle came in. Other people crowded around the door.
Mrs. Gurgle ignored them and gave Daphne a look that said, unmistakably, “Oh? And who are you, who knows everything?” and did some more leg lifting and prodding just to make the point that she was in charge. Then she looked up at Cahle and spoke at high speed. At one point Cahle laughed and shook her head.
“She says he is in the — ” Cahle stopped, and her lips moved as she tried to find a word she thought Daphne might understand. “The place between,” she said. “Shadow place. Not alive. Not dead.”
“Where is it?” said Daphne.
This was another difficult one. “A place with no place — you cannot walk there. Cannot swim there. On sea, no. On land, no. Like shadow. Yes! Shadow place!”
“How can I get there?” This one was relayed to Mrs. Gurgle, and the reply was abrupt.
“You? Cannot!”
“Look, he saved me from drowning! He saved my life, do you understand? Besides, it’s your custom. If someone saves your life, it’s like a debt. You must pay it back. And I want to!”
Mrs. Gurgle seemed to approve of this when it was translated. She said something.
Cahle nodded. “She says that to get to the shadow world, you have to die,” she translated. “She is asking if you know how to.”
“You mean it’s something you have to practice?”
“Yes. Many times,” said Cahle calmly.
“I thought you only got one go!” Daphne said.
Mrs. Gurgle was suddenly in front of the girl. She stared at her fiercely, moving her head this way and that as if she were trying to find something in Daphne’s face. Then, before Daphne could move, the old woman suddenly grabbed her hand, dragged it onto her own heart, and held it there.
“Boom-boom?” she said.
“Heartbeat? Er… yes,” said Daphne, trying very hard and very unsuccessfully not to feel embarrassed. “It’s quite faint — I mean, you’ve got a very… a lot of — ”
The heartbeat stopped.
Daphne tried to pull her hand away, but it was held tight. Mrs. Gurgle’s expression was blank and slightly preoccupied, as if she was trying to do a mildly complicated sum in her head, and the room seemed to darken.
Daphne couldn’t help herself. She started to count under her breath.
“… fifteen… sixteen… ”
And then… boom… so faint you could easily have missed it… boom… a little stronger this time… boom-boom… and it was back. The old woman smiled.
“Er… I could try it — ” Daphne began. “Just show me what to do!”
“There is no time to teach you, she says,” said Cahle. “She says it takes a lifetime to learn how to die.”
“I can learn very fast!”
Cahle shook her head. “Your father looks for you. He is a trouserman chief, yes? If you are dead, what do we say? When your mother weeps for you, what do we say?”
Daphne felt the tears coming, and tried to shut them out. “My mother… cannot weep,” she managed.
Once more Mrs. Gurgle’s dark little eyes looked into Daphne’s face as if it were clear water — and there Daphne was, on the stairs in her nightdress with the blue flowers on it, hugging her knees and staring in horror at the little coffin on top of the big one, and sobbing because the little boy would be buried all alone in a box instead of with his mother, and would be so frightened.
She could hear the lowered voices of the men, talking to her father, and the clink of the brandy decanter, and smell the ancient carpet.
There was the sound of a busy stomach, and there was Mrs. Gurgle, too, sitting on the carpet chewing salt-pickled beef, and watching her with interest.
The old woman stood up and reached for the little coffin, laying it gently on the carpet. She reached up again and lifted the lid of the big coffin and looked at Daphne expectantly.
There were footsteps below in the hallway as a maid crossed the tiled floor and disappeared through the green baize door to the kitchens, sobbing.
She knew what to do. She’d done it in her imagination a thousand times. She lifted the small, cold body from his lonely coffin, kissed his little face, and tucked him in beside their mother. The crying stopped —
— she blinked at Mrs. Gurgle’s bright eyes, there in front of her again. The sound of the sea filled her ears.
The old woman turned to Cahle, and she rattled and spluttered out what sounded like a long speech, or perhaps it was some kind of command. Cahle started to reply, but the old woman raised a finger, very sharply. Something had changed.
“She says it is you who must fetch him back,” said Cahle, a bit annoyed. “She says there is a pain taken away, there at the other end of the world.”
Daphne wondered how far those dark eyes could see. There at the other end of the world. Maybe. How did she do that? It hadn’t felt like a dream; it felt like a memory! But a pain was fading….
“She says you are a woman of power, like her,” Cahle went on reluctantly. “She has walked often in the shadow world. I know this to be true. She is famous.”
Mrs. Gurgle gave Daphne another little smile.
“She says she will send you into the shadows,” Cahle continued. “She says that you have very good teeth and have been kind to an old lady.”
“Er… it was no trouble,” said Daphne, and thought furiously: How did she know? How did she do it?
“She says there is no time to teach you, but she knows another way, and when you come back from the shadows, you will be able to chew much meat for her with your wonderful white teeth.”
The little old woman gave Daphne a smile so wide that her ears nearly fell into it.
“I certainly will!”
“So now she will poison you to death,” Cahle said.
Daphne looked at Mrs. Gurgle, who nodded encouragingly.
“She will? Er… really? Er, thank you,” said Daphne. “Thank you very much.”
Mau ran. He didn’t know why; his legs were doing it all by themselves. And the air was… not air. It was thick, as thick as water, and black, but somehow he could see through it a long way, and move through it fast, too. Huge pillars rose out of the ground around him, and seemed to go up forever to a roof of surf.
Something silvery and very quick shot past him and disappeared behind a pillar, and was followed by another one, and another.
Fish, then, or something like fish. So he was underwater. Underwater, looking up at the waves…
He was in the Dark Current.
“Locaha!” he shouted.
Hello, Mau, said the voice of Locaha.
“I’m not dead! This is not fair!”
Fair? I’m not sure I know that word, Mau. Besides, you are nearly dead. Certainly more dead than alive, and dying a little more every moment.
Mau tried to go faster, but he was already running faster than he had ever run before.
“I’m not tired! I can keep going forever! This is some kind of a trick, right? There must be rules, even to a trick!”
I agree, said Locaha. And this is a trick.
“This is safe, isn’t it?” said Daphne. She was lying down on a mat by Mau, who still seemed as limp as a doll apart from the twitching legs. “And it will work, won’t it?” She tried to keep the wobble out of her voice, but it was one thing to be brave, and — two things to be brave and determined when it was really only an idea at the moment — and definitely another matter entirely when you could see Mrs. Gurgle out of the corner of your eye, busy at work.
“Yes,” said Cahle.
“You are sure, are you?” said Daphne. Oh, it sounded so weedy. She was ashamed of herself.