Free Nation by Terry Pratchett

that was a good thing. She wanted him to come into the wreck, too. He did so, very cautiously. The Sweet Judy had keeled over a bit when the wave had dropped her at ground level, so everything sloped.
    Inside was just a mess, made of many different messes all jumbled up. Everything stank of mud and stale water. But the girl led him into another space that looked at least as though someone had tried to clean things up a bit, even if they had failed.
    “I’m afraid the chairs all got smashed,” said the girl, “but I’m sure you will find poor Captain Roberts’s sea chest an adequate substitute.”
    Mau, who had never sat on anything but the ground or a hut floor when he ate, edged his bottom onto a wooden box.
    “I thought it would be nice to get properly acquainted, since we haven’t been introduced,” said the ghost girl. “Obviously the fact that we cannot understand each other will be something of a drawback….”
    While this gibberish was going on, Mau stared at the fire in its little cave. Steam was coming out of a round black pipe. Next to it was a flat round thing. Pale things on it looked like some kind of bread. This is a Woman’s Place, he thought, and I don’t know the rules. I must be careful. She might do anything to me .
    “…and the butter had gone runny, but I threw away the flour that had gone really green. Would you like some tea? I expect you don’t take milk?”
    He watched as a brown liquid was poured into a blue-and-white bowl. Mau watched it carefully, while the girl went on talking faster and faster. How do you know what’s right and wrong? he wondered. What are the rules when you are all alone with a ghost girl?
    He’d not been alone on the Boys’ Island. Oh, there hadn’t been anyone else there, but he’d felt the Nation around him. He was doing the Right Thing. But now? What were the Right Things? The Grandfathers bellowed and complained and ordered him about and didn’t listen.
    He couldn’t find the silver thread either, or the picture of the future. There was no picture now. There was just him and this girl, and no rules to fight the darkness ahead.
    Now she had taken the bready things off the fire, and put them on another of the round metal things, which he tried to balance on his knees.
    “Most of the crockery got smashed in the wreck,” said the girl sadly. “It’s a miracle I could find two cups. Will you have a scone?” She pointed at the bread things.
    Mau took one. It was hot, which was good, but on the other hand it tasted like a piece of slightly rotten wood.
    She was watching anxiously as he moved the lump around in his mouth, looking for something to do with it.
    “I’ve done it wrong, haven’t I?” she said. “I thought the flour was too damp. Poor Captain Roberts used to keep a lobster in the flour barrel to eat the weevils, and I’m sure that can’t be right. I’m sorry, I won’t mind if you spit it out.”
    And she started to cry.
    Mau hadn’t understood a word, but some things don’t need language. She weeps because the bread is awful. She should not cry. He swallowed, and took another bite. She stared, and sniffed, not certain if it was too early to stop crying.
    “Very nice food,” said Mau. He swallowed the thing with a fight and was sure he felt it hit the bottom of his stomach. And then he ate the other one.
    The girl dabbed at her eyes with a cloth.
    “Very good,” Mau insisted, trying not to taste rotted lobster.
    “I’m sorry, I can’t understand you,” she said. “Oh, dear, and I completely forgot to lay out the napkin rings. What must you think of me….”
    “I don’t know the words you say,” said Mau.
    There was a long, helpless pause, and Mau felt the two lumps of bad, dreadful bread sitting in his stomach, planning their exit. He was drinking the cup of sour, hot liquid to drown them when he became aware of a faint murmur coming from a corner of the cabin, where a big blanket covered—what? It sounded as though