Nation by Terry Pratchett Page B

the fire a big glowing heap.
    REPLACE THE GOD ANCHORS! WHO IS GUARDING THE NATION? WHERE IS OUR BEER?
    I don’t know, Mau thought, looking up at the sky. The women made beer. I don’t know how.
    He couldn’t go into the Women’s Place, could he? He’d already been up there to take a look, although men couldn’t go to the Women’s Place, and women couldn’t go into the valley of the Grandfathers. If these things happened, there would be the end of everything. It was that important.
    Mau blinked. How much more of an end could everything have? There were no more people, so how could there be rules? Rules couldn’t float around by themselves!
    He stood up and saw the golden glitter. A white oblong had been wedged in a piece of broken wood, and there were toeless footprints in the sand. Next to the wood was another mango.
    She’d been creeping around while he slept!
    There were meaningless marks on the white oblong, but on the other side were some pictures. Mau knew about messages, and this one wasn’t difficult:
    “When the sun is just above the last tree left on Little Nation, you must throw a spear at the big wrecked canoe,” he said aloud. It didn’t make any sense, and nor did the ghost girl. But she had given him the spark-maker, although she’d been very frightened. He’d been frightened too. What were you supposed to do about girls? You had to keep away from them while you were a boy, but he’d heard that when you were a man you got other instructions.
    And as for the Grandfathers and the god anchors, he hadn’t seen them at all. They were big stones, but the wave hadn’t cared. Did the gods know? Had they been washed away? It was too complicated to think about. Beer was simpler, but not by much.
    Women made the beer, and he knew that there was a big bowl in front of the Cave of the Grandfathers where an offering of beer was poured every day. He knew this, and it had just stayed in his head as a thing that he knew, but now questions were rising, like: Why did the dead need beer? Wouldn’t it…trickle through? If they didn’t drink it, who did? And would he get into trouble for even thinking these questions?
    Who from?
    He remembered going into the Women’s Place from when he was very small. Around about the time he was seven or eight he started to become unwelcome there. Women shooed him away, or stopped what they were doing when he came near and watched him very hard until he left. The very old women in particular had a way of glaring at you that made you want to be somewhere else. One of the older boys told him that they could mutter words that made your wingo fall off. After that he kept away from the Women’s Place, and it became like the moon; he knew where it was but didn’t even think about going there.
    Well, there were no old women now. He wished there were. There was no one to stop him doing anything. He wished there was.
    The path to the Women’s Place turned off from the track into the forest and then went downhill and southwest and down into a narrow gulley. At the end of it were two big stones, taller than a man, splashed with red paint. That was the only way in, back when there were rules. Now, Mau pulled out the thornbush that blocked the entrance and pushed through.
    And there was the Place, a round bowl of a valley full of sunlight. Screens of trees kept out the wind, and thorn and briar bushes were woven so thickly among them that nothing except maybe a snake could get through, and today the valley looked as though it was asleep. Mau could hear the sea, but it seemed to be a long way off. There was the tinkle of a little stream that dribbled out of the rock at one side of the bowl, filled a rocky hollow that was a natural bathing place, and lost itself in the gardens.
    The Nation grew the big crops in the large field. That was where you found aharo, sugarcane, tabor, boomerang peas, and black corn. There men grew the things that made you live.
    In the Place, the gardens of the