The Plover: A Novel (22 page)

*   *   *

Pipa in her chair in the stern of the
Plover
has her eyes closed in the bright sunlight and is cruising her soul around the lagoon, amazed at the wealth of colors and beings and shapes and sculptures and angles of light and astonishments of graceful and terrified propulsion. Taromauri had been repainting the cabin as per instructions from the captain, but something about the gull perched on the cabin roof has caught her eye, and she has been staring intently at the gull for several minutes. The gull had been dozing but felt her attention and now is awake and has cocked one eye at Taromauri. They regard each other with interest.

There’s more to you than meets the eye, says Taromauri quietly.

The gull cocks her head to port.

What is it, though? Who
are
you?

Gulls do not grin, not having lips, nor do they hoist their eyebrows, not having eyebrows, but if ever there was a gull who
seemed
to be hoisting a brow and grinning, it’s this one.

Declan says you understand every word said on the boat.

No reply.

I think maybe you understand everything that isn’t said as well.

No reply.

Declan could be wrong but he’s right, isn’t he?

No reply, but a flurry of feathers; do the gull’s eyes grow more intent?

We are verbs in noun packages, as Piko says.

Again what would be a grin if gulls could grin.

Piko could be wrong but I think he’s right.

No reply.

I think you are far more than who you appear to be.

Now the gull is undeniably intent; and she steps daintily to the edge of the roof, closer to Taromauri, and stares down at her. They are perhaps a foot apart, and oblivious of everything else in the universe: Pipa’s gentle burble as her mind explores a cave with an eel the size of her leg and the eel startles at her touch; the sway and creak of the boat in the cradle of the lagoon; the startle of terns along the stern railing, three on each side of the murmuring child; the rhythmic
thwap
of the rigging against the bones of the boat; the throaty humming of the captain down below tinkering with the hull patch for the hundredth time; the faint faraway drone of a cargo plane; the steady smash of surf on the reef; the rustle and rub of trees and bushes and thickets and copses; the infinitesimal whir of wind through the wings of an albatross just past the surfline; somewhere fainter than faint, the sound of voices in song.

I know who you are, says Taromauri, so quietly that if you were standing next to her you could not be sure if she had spoken aloud or if she had thought those words, and somehow you had heard them in your head.

I
know who you are. You are one of the thirteen. You have taken this form and come among us. You are one of the shining ones.

The gull chortled; did her eye again double in intensity?

I see you, said Taromauri in an awed whisper. I
see
you.

It is so, said the gull, and again, if you were standing there on the deck, inches away from this bird and this woman, as close to them as you could decently stand, you could not absolutely tell for sure if the gull had actually formed those words with her beak and her tongue, or if you had heard them as if they were cut into your mind as sharp and bright as lines of fire.

Yes, said, or thought, the gull, it is so. You see clearly. And we see you. We cannot give gifts, we cannot change what is, but we can open things that are closed. We are allowed to remove obstacles. We are the thirteen servants.

Taromauri began to weep so silently and copiously that the tears slid down her face like a sheen on a rock and the top of her immense red cloth darkened with the wet. She bent to kneel but the gull said, do not kneel; remember we are your servants. We see you. What is it that we can open for you? Remember we cannot change what is, but we are allowed to open that which is closed. You must say it with your mouth.
Manewe,
as you say in your tongue, the thing must be sung. So many tongues in which to sing.

But Taromauri was overwhelmed, and could not stop weeping, and all her love and pain for her vanished daughter and hollowed husband, all the grim nights when she sat awake swaying and praying in the hold of the
Tanets,
all the pain and loss she had witnessed and tried to ameliorate, all the kindness and courage she had witnessed and tried to celebrate, all washed over and through her like a tremendous tide, and she did kneel, she couldn’t help it, and weep from the cellar of her soul, and place her forehead upon the wooden deck, and heave sobs not of sadness but of release, and then relief; the latter not because her people had been right to believe that there are always thirteen shining ones in the world at any one time, taking any and all forms according to their incomprehensible designs and predilections, but relief in some inarticulate way that she had been
seen,
she was
known;
without ever admitting it to herself, she was lonely beyond articulation, so lonely and bereft that she had plastered over the pain with a grim mien and constant work, even fending off what few friendships were offered; but that
this
bright being, one of the blessed ones, of whatever nature it truly was, had
seen
her, seen the holes the size of her slim daughter and burly husband; this knocked her to her knees, and she wept.

The gull waited patiently, peering over the edge of the cabin roof; then again she felt a piercing attention on her skin, and looked up to see Pipa staring at her with eyes like wild oceans. The terns leapt into the air and swirled protectively around the child, darting like swallows. Down below, Declan felt some electric jolt in the air and stopped humming, puzzled; what, Jesus fecking
lightning,
on a clear day, in the blessed fecking tropics? Is this how a cyclone starts? Taromauri also felt the shock and stood up, instinctively reaching for Pipa. At the other end of the island Piko felt it also, and turned instinctively toward Pipa, although the top half of his mind thought is that an earthquake? Taromauri saw Pipa’s stare and turned and looked at the gull and suddenly knew what to ask.

Can you heal the child?

We cannot change what is, said the gull.

Can you … open her? asked Taromauri.

The gull bowed ever so slightly from the roof of the cabin. We
are
allowed to remove obstacles, she said, or thought, and then the words
be opened
were in the air, shimmering, and again the gull bowed slightly and without the slightest effort sailed away into the gracious air. Taromauri watched her soar along the beach until she was a thin white line against the tangled green trees; and just as the gull banked seaward and vanished against the surging surf, Pipa said
Papa?

*   *   *

Piko, startled by the electric shiver in the air, concluded that he better get moving, and he rose from the sand, and turned back toward the village to pick up his pieces of pig, but his eye is caught by what surely must be porpoises! just behind the surf line; his mind automatically processes speed (fast), color (black and white), furl of propulsion (considerable), and dorsal evidence (minimal), and he thinks
Phocoenoides dalli,
this far south?
Phocoena dioptrica,
this far north? Intrigued, he follows the porpoises—almost certainly
dalli,
amazing!—along the beach, until they vanished, all at once, in an instant, their speed and grace in the water just as awesome to him now as the first time he ever saw them as a boy, from a boat on the Oregon coast, nine porpoises flashing alongside the boat suddenly so fast and powerful that he gasped, breathless at such beings he had never imagined in what had seemed a bleak and ponderous sea.

He turns inland, smiling at the verve and power of the creatures, and sees a faint trail toward the village through what looks like a muddy swamplet; once inside the scrim of trees the trail becomes a worn wooden walkway, winding through an increasingly deep and fervent swamp. Piko is a student first and foremost of the ocean and its creatures, but he is alert to all of nature’s profligacy, especially moist gifts, and he examines the welter of plants, some of which he can identify: arum, fern, bulrush, palms of various sorts and hues, and what seems to be an orchid; also there are flitterings of tiny birds, warblers and brilliant little parrots of green and red and blue.

He kneels down on the walkway to get a closer look at a nest tucked deftly into an old coconut husk, when he sees a second nest built into a soldier’s helmet. Then he sees a circle of ferns bursting from an old tire. Then he sees shards of metal and cloth and men, little by little, as if his eyes were clearing and the swamp was revealing itself as the moist graveyard it had been for twenty years, untouched by the villagers, left to haunt and molder; the villagers had carried out their own dead, two boys blown to bits in the shivering clearing, but left the rest of the soldiers for the bog to bury, and buried they were now, by ferns and bulrushes and flowers; here and there still a flash of metal could be seen if you looked close for it, but the men—boys themselves for the most part, tall beardless boys, except for their sergeant, who had a beard like a bush—sank and dissolved, their atoms and molecules feeding the vibrant green things, the green things feeding the birds, the birds feeding the crabs, the crabs and birds and plants all eventually feeding the swamp again; the swamp always hungry, always patient, always inviting, always gentle in its acceptance of what falls into the shimmer of its surface, and then slowly plummets, the thick warm water closing over the memory with a sigh.

*   *   *

The warbler, smelling land and trees and ferns and bushes and flowers and mud and bogs and lakes, emerges slow and shy from under the water tank; and for the first time in many days she comes all the way out into the overwhelming light, which feels so warm and luxurious and nutritious that she stretches and flaps and whirs and chirrs; and her wing works! her wing works! Not very well, and it’s
very
sore, but it works! the parts are back in play! A thump and curse from belowdecks sends her skittering back under the tank for a moment, but she cannot resist the light and out she comes again, this time more sure of herself, thrilled by her wingfulness; still cautious enough to see where the Huge Ones are—the largest One and the smallest One are sitting on the stern rail, One is down below, One is missing, that One with the long feather hanging from his chin—but jazzed by the light and by the irresistible smells of soil and sand, which together mean food. For the first time she hops all the way out onto the deck; and then with half a hop and half a flutter she makes it to the top of the water tank; and then, all systems go! and all caution thrown to the wind! she flutters up to the bow railing, and then bounces to the prow, and back to the railing, and if you can imagine a bird essentially the size of your thumb laughing with pleasure and leaping around with a sort of antic joy, go ahead and imagine that. Back to the water tank, quick as a sneeze; back to the prow, then all the way up to the cabin roof—where’s the big white bird, the gull, who lives here?—back to the railing, liquid as water; a tiny feathered pinball, quicker in flight than you can easily follow; she moves so fast that she’s more like a gentle brown blur than a bird giggling at being back in her first form. Then she remembers the
kiore,
and calls to them in that rippled voice warblers have trilled since before there were people in the world; and one by one the two young wood rats emerge, blinking, from a crack in the hatch cover; the first time they too have seen full sunlight in many days. The warbler launches an incredible tumultuous song covering many subjects, especially the unimaginable foods available and waiting on shore; and there is a moment to savor, as the boat rocks gently, and the warbler sings of vast mountains of fruit and hillocks of seeds, and the
kiore,
overwhelmed by the song, and the extraordinary light, and the green dense wet redolence of the island in their noses, shiver with pleasure; and fear.

VII

22° NORTH, 165° WEST

PIPA WAS STILL CRIPPLED
. Sure she was. Her hands and feet were no different than before, flittering and flapping and wriggling when she was excited; she still could not sit up, or kneel, or walk, or run, or jump, or spin, or skip, or shuffle, or amble, or shamble, or shake hands with another being of any sort or species, or cup miracles in the bowls of her hands, or rub her eyes in weariness or amazement, or dance in a fling of limbs, or thumb-wrestle, or punch someone in the nose, or lean back grinning and weary with her hands behind her head, or wipe away tears, although tears did rise in her eyes and fall down her face, free and untrammeled; as they are right now, when she is so happy and overwhelmed and startled and croaky and out of practice with her voice that every time a word comes out of her mouth she regards it for an instant with absolute astonishment, as if it was a new and brilliant creature emerged from the holy cave of her mouth.