Free Nation by Terry Pratchett Page A

someone under there was muttering angrily to itself.
    “It’s good to have someone to talk to,” said the girl loudly. “I see you walking around and it’s not so lonely.”
    The flour balls in Mau’s stomach didn’t like the brown drink. He kept very still, fighting to keep them down.
    The girl looked at him nervously and said: “My name is, um…Daphne.” She gave a little cough and added, “Yes, Daphne.” She pointed to herself and held out her hand.
    “Daphne,” she said again, even more loudly. Well, she’d always liked the name.
    Mau looked obediently at her hand, but there was nothing to see. So…she was from Daphne? In the islands the most important thing about you was the name of your clan. He hadn’t heard of the place, but they always said that no one knew all the islands. Some of the poorer ones disappeared completely at high tide and the huts were built to float. They would have gone now…so how many were left? Had everyone in the world been washed away?
    The ghost girl stood and walked up the sloping deck to the door. Mau thought this looked promising. With any luck he didn’t have to eat any more wood.
    She said: “Could you please help me with poor Captain Roberts?”
    She wanted him to go outside, that was clear, and Mau got up quickly. The bad bread wanted to escape, and the smell of the fire was giving him a headache.
    He staggered up and out into the fresh afternoon air. The girl was standing on the ground, by the big gray roll Mau had seen yesterday. She looked at him helplessly.
    “Poor Captain Roberts,” she said, and prodded it with her foot.
    Mau pulled away the heavy cloth and saw the body of an old trouserman with a beard. He was lying on his back, his eyes staring up at nothing. Mau pulled the cloth down farther and found that the man’s hands were holding a big circle of wood, with things like wooden spikes all around the edge of it.
    “He tied himself to the ship’s wheel so that he wouldn’t get washed away,” said the girl behind him. “I cut the ropes but his poor hands wouldn’t let go, so I found a hammer and knocked the pin out of the wheel, and I tried and tried to bury him but the ground is too hard and I can’t move him by myself. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind being buried at sea,” she finished, all in one breath.
    Mau sighed. She must know I can’t understand her but she goes on talking, he thought. She wants this body buried, I can tell. I wonder how long it took her to scrape that pathetic little hole in the rock? But she’s lost and far from home, like me.
    “I can send him into the dark water,” he said. He made wave noises and wave shapes with his hand. She looked terrified for a moment, and then laughed and clapped her hands.
    “Yes! Yes! That’s right! The sea! Whoosh, swoosh! The sea!”
    The man and the wooden wheel together were too heavy to lift, but the cloth was very thick and Mau found he could drag the body quite well over the crushed vegetation of the track. The girl helped him with the difficult bits, or at least tried to, and once they reached the shore, the gray roll slid well enough on the damp sand, but it was a long tiring drag to the western end of the beach. At last Mau managed to get the captain into the waist-deep water at the very edge of the reef.
    He looked into the dead eyes, staring straight ahead, and wondered what they would see down in the dark current. Would they see anything? Did anyone see anything?
    The shock of the question hit him like a blow. How could he think it?
    Once we were dolphins and Imo made us into men! That was true, wasn’t it? Why did he even wonder if it wasn’t? And if that wasn’t true, then there was just the dark water and nothing was anything….
    He stopped those thoughts before they could run away with him. The Daphne girl was watching him, and this was no time to be uncertain and hesitant. He twisted papervine together to fasten stones and pieces of broken coral to poor Captain Roberts