“Back at the house, in your mother’s wooden box. Of the three I planted, this is the only one that grew. When it sprouted, I returned and tethered it to a stone.”
The tree, in its restless eagerness to die, had worn a circular path around the stone, held back only by its thin white rope.
“This tree is already fifteen?”
“They grow slowly. I planted it so that one day you could cut it down to build your masterpiece.”
Ta’eo touched the soft bark, then looked at his father. “It’s hot.”
“They burn from the inside,” Kuwa’i said.
“How?”
“I think they always burn. I think they spend their lives burning.”
“I don’t want to build boats.”
Kuwa’i took a step away from the tree and looked over the cliff. “I know,” he said. “I have known for years. I want you to do something for me at least.”
“What?”
“When you have a son, tell him the story of these trees.”
They knelt at the roots, and Kuwa’i bent forward to caress the pitted bark. The tree vibrated, pulling back from his touch, dark roots twisting along the ground while from above came a sound like wind through the fronds, though there was no wind.
The tree strained against its tether, yearning for the cliff.
Kuwa’i saw that if a blade were touched even lightly to the taught and creaking rope, the tree would fly to its death.
“I come as your friend,” Kuwa’i whispered to the tree. “To give you what you want.”
With that, he stood. He raised the axe high and brought it down with all his strength, burying the steel in the base of the trunk. The tree shook for a moment, then stilled.
They spent half a day piecing out the core wood. Then they took the precious commodity down the mountain. Five days later, after much planning and careful calculation of where the small measure of precious wood might best be used, they began Kuwa’i’s opus.
They worked methodically through the season, and Kuwa’i was careful not to talk of his son’s plans. He thought of his father. Hiwiloa is two islands at the same time.
In the days before books trapped history, the island people had been travelers. They’d begun their journey long ago, expanding outward from some forgotten homeland, jumping from island to island, and at each new place there were some for whom paradise was not enough; and so the process would continue, some smaller subset raising up and moving on to see what lay beyond the horizon. Not so anymore.
Now the islanders talked of leaving but never did—like the seamstress’s blonde daughter, Mara, who made a plump wife to a fisherman in town. (And who, in addition to a slew of brunettes, had also born a child as unlikely as herself, a girl with copper-colored hair—a condition seen only once before in Wik’wai, on a traveler from Hamburg the year before, and thereafter the subject of much speculation.) Kuwa’i thought of the walking tree, and the field of stumps, and of the growing cities, and the steel ships in the harbors, and all the plant-choked trails of Wik’wai.
The lands were stolen, the old ways fading. It would not be long.
Hiwiloa would be one island again.
And the island he’d known as a child would be gone forever.
In the fourth month of construction, at dusk, as Kuwa’i and his son were finishing the interior joinery and beginning the bulkhead housing, a group of men entered the boat shop. Ta’eo heard the bell and walked around to the front to see who had arrived.
“I’m here to see the shipwright,” a deep voice proclaimed.
Kuwa’i put down his tools. He walked inside and found four men and a teen-aged boy glancing around the shop. He recognized the black coat immediately. The administer was enormous. He had big arms, and a big chest, and a big belly that swayed independently from the rest of him as he moved slowly around the room. Florid, pockmarked and balding, he appeared far older than Kuwa’i had imagined. But it was old the way a bull gets old. He was one of those men for whom aging is not a deconstructive process, but one of simple sedimentation—a gradual building-upon of layers so that you had the idea there remained a bitter and fossilized embryo buried somewhere beneath all the fat, and muscle, and folds of skin that had accumulated.
“So you’re the carpenter,” the administer said.
Kuwa’i nodded.
“I want you to build me a boat.”
“I build boats, and then I sell them. Not the other way around.”
The administer nodded like he understood but then continued on as if Kuwa’i hadn’t spoken, “I want you to build me the best boat on the water.”
“I build what boats I can.”
“They tell me you’re the best.” The large man walked past him, moving deeper into the room, and Kuwa’i found himself following the administer through his own place of business.
“I’ve heard much about you,” the administer continued. “First years ago, after your trouble, and now these boats.” The administer stopped. He stood at the rear of the room, looking out at the boat yard at the edge of the water. “God’s grace.”
His companions came to rest behind him, open-mouthed, eyes widening on the half-finished construction in the launch.
“You are an artist,” the administer said.
“No, I am a just craftsman.”
“This is more…” the big man gestured toward the half-finished boat in the launch. “More than just craft, my friend.”
“I make things that are to be used, like any craftsman. And like any craftsman, there are rules I must follow. A true artist has no rules. You wouldn’t want an artist’s boat.”
“Why not?”
“It might not float.”
The administer burst into laughter and clapped one enormous hand on Kuwa’i’s shoulder. “I like you.” He bent closer. “I like this boat. I want it.”
“I auction my boats when they are finished.”
“I want the boat.”
“It is the way I’ve always done it.”
“What’s the highest bid you’ve ever taken?”
Kuwa’i told him honestly, and the administer waved off the number in disgust. He snapped his finger and a heavy guard produced a fold of bills, which the administer then placed forcefully in Kuwa’i’s hand. “This is almost twice that.”
“It’s bad luck to sell a boat before it’s finished.”
“For the seller or the buyer?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well,” the administer said dismissively. “We’re not superstitious natives, are we? Eh, Issac?” And with that, he winked at the teenaged boy he’d brought with him who, though dark as a native islander, was too lanky and long-waisted to be of pure stock. And Kuwa’i was about to speak again but suddenly could not find the words—halted mid-protest in frozen disbelief—because though the boy’s face was a stranger to him, his teeth were Elissa’s.
And a moment later the big man laughed uproariously at Kuwa’i’s afflicted expression, and Kuwa’i realized this was the administer’s joke—this meeting between he and the boy. The administer knew of their history, or part of it. But looking at the boy, it was obvious to Kuwa’i that the joke had been played twice, because the teen looked as confused by his employer’s laughter as Kuwa’i was informed by it. As if to confirm Kuwa’i’s suspicions, the administer clapped the boy on the shoulder and whispered loudly, “I’ve got a story for you later.”
Kuwa’i searched the boy’s dark features for something to call his own, and found nothing. Nor was there Myer. “The boy looks like his mother,” Kuwa’i said.
The boy’s face became suspicious.
The administer laughed again, absently waving off the drama threatening to unfold before him in the same way he had waved off Kuwa’i’s protests earlier. “So then we are agreed. The boat is mine, yeah?”
The boy, who was beginning to suspect what he might be looking at, glared at Kuwa’i from under a growing scowl.
“I’ll be back to pick it up
in a month,” the administer said.
Kuwa’i could not bring himself to say another word.
Over the next several weeks Kuwa’i made it his goal to learn as much as he could about the man named Underhill, this island administrator with a fondness for jokes. He traveled to Moloa and spent time in the taverns, buying drinks for those in the mood to talk. He learned through subtle cross-examination of the local patronage that the administer was merely the most visible manifestation of an extensive family line—one whose various filaments stretched throughout the hereditary topsoil of the islands. His people were from the mainland but had been in the Pacific for generations, amassing land and cattle and power, and more recently, new friends in faraway places.
One thirsty old fisherman was particularly forthcoming on the subject, “He’s nephew to the mayor, uncle to most of the police force, Godfather to the local pastor, and boss to half the cattle men on the island.”
A further round of drinks revealed that Underhill was also, most interestingly perhaps, cousin to the town grocer, Issac Porter, who had in previous, happier times been father to a strapping son named Myer, now many years deceased of a septic eye. The teenaged boy who’d accompanied Underhill to the boat shop was named Issac after his supposed paternal great-grandfather, and had been put on the administer’s payroll as an enforcer. The boy was widely reputed to be good at his job. So good, in fact, that finding people who would talk about him required the last of Kuwa’i’s drinking money. “Not a big lad,” one drinker slurred. “But fast. He gets the tough jobs.”
“Jobs?”
“He’s a close-up artist,”
“What does that mean?”
“No guns.” The old man took the last swallow of his drink and glanced toward the door. “He carries knives in his belt.”
Kuwa’i returned to the valley the next day but, for perhaps the first time in his life, had lost interest in boats.
Still, he and his son worked. They had to, because Kuwa’i had taken money. The boat was no longer theirs, but the administer’s. And now, in a way, they worked for him, too. Kuwa’i wondered at the skills of a man that found himself so easily made employer out of customer. That difference was everything.
Occasionally, people would come to watch the project develop, often making comments, or asking questions—but more and more as the boat took shape around its elegant walking tree backbone, the visitors stood back in reverential silence before the ambition of the project. It was the largest craft Kuwa’i had ever attempted, a twenty-eight-foot gaff-rigged sloop, fully nine feet abeam, with an enormous shark fin keel the size of a man. The single cabin dropped below decks and was large enough for two beds, a table, and a large navigation desk. A round window of imported glass looked out from the stern. The sails were bent to the spares with robands and mast hoops the size of dinner plates. The fastenings were bronze. Rising above the mainsail, a jackyard flapped loosely in the breeze along a double row of reefing points. Extending out to the sides, like the bent wings of an albatross, two knife-thin outriggers balanced the project.
Most shipwrights believed you could tell how fast a ship was by looking at it, and everything Kuwa’i knew of boats said this boat was fast—perhaps the fastest craft ever to see the lagoon.
Every week or so the administer would send one of his men to check on the progress of the ship, and every week Kuwa’i would give the same answer, “It’ll be done when it’s finished.” Young Issac was never among the men.
During the protracted term of construction, it became apparent that the pale and copper-headed daughter of Mara was in some way involved in the project. Her name was Rebecca, and when Kuwa’i finally noticed her among the crowd who stopped by to watch, he had the feeling that he had missed something important, and she had already been hanging around for several days. The first time she brought the coconut of cool milk, Kuwa’i realized she and Ta’eo were lovers. Kuwa’i took his drink and stood looking at the two young people for a very long time. The girl was beautiful in a sun-damaged way—a tragedy of dark freckles obscuring her features so that you had to look closely to see what she really looked like. Beneath the paint, her features were straight and fine.
He learned through subtle cross-examination of neighborhood friends and visiting patrons that she was soon to be married. The man was large and hot-tempered, a consigner by trade, though he spent much of his time in the taverns. His name was Isban, and he was several parts again her age. Having already worn through the affections of two, she was to be his third wife.
Kuwa’i went to visit her mother, Mara, one afternoon and found her house contained only children of every conceivable age (and some quite unconceivable, given her marital partnership). He asked after their mother, and the children proved contradictory compasses on the matter, pointing him in several directions at once. However, by blending the advice of the eldest several, he was finally able to guess her whereabouts and found Mara at the waterfall wringing out clothes and slapping them on the hot, sun-baked boulders to dry. As he called her name, he realized it was the first time he’d spoken to her in a decade. There was no trace of anything he recognized in her, and he realized those young lovers were other people than these two gray-haired parents standing among the rocks.
“He’s Sione’s brother-in-law, and he’ll make a good husband for her,” Mara said.
“He’s been married twice before,” Kuwa’i said.
“And Rebecca won’t leave so easily, I told her that already. She won’t come crying back home.”
“Aren’t you concerned—”
“He makes a good living. He’ll provide for her; that’s what I’m concerned about.” She bent to her work. “She won’t be marrying a poor fisherman so she can toil all day while he’s out to sea. She was meant for more than that.”
“She’s in love with Ta’eo.”
Mara slowed in her scrubbing but did not look up. “That will pass.”
“How can you say such a thing?”
And then she did look up, and there were cinders in her eyes. “It always does.”
For the first time, Kuwa’i realized that after all these years, she had not forgotten. Here was revenge deeper than smashed windows and stolen tools.
Without another word, he turned away. There was nothing to be done.
Over the next several weeks, Kuwa’i was overwhelmed by the insight that all the island’s stories were coming to a head. There was idle talk in Wik’wai of the wedding, and Kuwa’i learned the date was already set and approaching. And, too, the ship was nearing completion. The convergence of all things suffused him with a kind of dread different from all the other dreads he’d suffered in his life. This was the shifting and shapeless dread of one who fears he’ll live to see the far shore of what he cannot imagine: that time hanging out there in front of them all when there would be no boat, and no walking trees to replace it, and no Rebecca bringing them coconuts of cool milk—and Ta’eo on this island without love and without prospects. He thought of Elissa and her smashed-out teeth, and he thought of her baby, and every day he worked on the boat like the work would last forever, because it was all the time they had.
On the last Wednesday, three days before the wedding, a squall blew across the lagoon, churning the blue-green water to chop. The administer and his men arrived soon after at the launch.
“It is beautiful,” the administer said.
“She’ll float,” Kuwa’i said.
“You speak with the modesty of a craftsman who knows he has created a masterpiece.”
Kuwa’i hung his head. “Yes, she is a wonder.”
“What is she called?”
“She’s the only boat I haven’t been able to name. I don’t force the names; I wait for something to come to me. Nothing has.”
“You tell my men she’s not done.”
“She’s not.”
“Looks done to me.”
“There’s still veneering to do. And the roamings need work.”
“
I’ll take it as it is.”
“The steering isn’t done yet.”
“When?” the administer snapped.
“It could be a while, I still have to—”
“My men will come for it in three days.”
The administer turned to go, stepping down off the ladder. His men followed him up the steep embankment.
“Her,” Kuwa’i called after him.
The administer turned. “What?”
“You said ‘it.’ She’s a her.” Kuwa’i made a decision. “And I’m no longer interested in selling her to you.”
“Are you trying to raise the price?”
“At any price, I’ve decided she’s not for sale.”
“Not for sale?” The administer smiled sadly, like a disappointed father. He made a subtle gesture with his hand, and his men turned and faced the old man. “Kuwa’i, what are you saying?”
“Another boat, but not this one. I can’t sell you this one.”
“Then maybe I’ll just take it.”
“You can’t do that, Administrator.”
“Why not?”
“You may control Ahana and Motoa, but you have no authority under my roof.”
The administer turned to his bodyguards, “Prove him wrong.”
Against the early morning quiet, on the day on which his story would end, Kuwa’i woke shouting from his sleep. He sprang upright in his bunk, sweating like a pig, gasping like a fish taking its first breath of air. It had been a nightmare of falling. Outside his window, the sun had yet to rise, but the first hint of pink colored the sky. He rubbed his bruises softly and tried to work life back into his cramped limbs. In the three days since his meeting with the administer, the marks of his beating had come into full flower. “Today,” he said to himself in the silence of his room. Today was the wedding. Today the administer would come for the boat.
He put on his worn sandals and walked to his son’s room where he found his bunk empty and un-slept in. On the pillow was the small black box that they’d made for his mother’s necklaces all those years ago. Kuwa’i stared at the box, which should have been hidden in a drawer in his bedroom. He opened the lid and found it empty. The two remaining seeds were gone.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 7 Page 43
