MAU AWOKE. A STRANGE woman was spooning gruel into him. When she saw his eyes open, she gave a little shriek, kissed him on the forehead, and ran out of the hut.

Mau stared up at the ceiling while it all came back. Some bits were a little blurred, but the tree and the axe and the death of Cox were as clear to him as the little gecko watching from the ceiling with upside-down eyes. But it was as if he was watching someone else, just a little way in front of him. It was another person, and that person was him.

He wondered if —

“Does not happen!” The scream was like lightning through his head, because it came from a beak about six inches from his ear. “Show us your” — here the parrot muttered to itself, then went on, rather sullenly — “underthings.”

“Ah, good. How are you?” said the ghost girl, stepping inside.

Mau sat bolt upright. “You’ve got blood all over you!”

“Yes. I know. There goes the last good blouse,” said Daphne. “Still, he’s much better now. I’m pretty proud of myself, actually. I had to saw a man’s leg off below the knee! And I sealed the wound with a bucket of hot tar, exactly according to the manual!”

“Doesn’t that hurt?” asked Mau, lying back on the mat again. Sitting up had made him dizzy.

“Not if you pick it up by the handle.” She looked at his blank expression. “Sorry, that was a joke. Thank goodness for Mrs. Gurgle; she can make someone sleep through anything. Anyway, I think the man is going to live now, which is more than he would have with that terrible wound in it. And this morning I had to cut off a foot. It’d gone all… well, it was awful. Those captives were treated very badly.”

“And you’ve been sawing the bad bits off them?”

“It’s called surgery, thank you so very much! It’s not hard if I can find someone to hold the instruction manual open at the right page.”

“No! No, I don’t think it’s wrong!” said Mau quickly. “It’s just that… it’s you doing it. I thought you hated the sight of blood.”

“That’s why I try to stop it. I can do something about it. Come on, let’s get you up.” She put her arms around him.

“Who was that woman who was feeding me? I’ve seen her before.”

“Her real name is Fi-ha-el, she says…,” said Daphne, and Mau clutched at the wall for support. “We used to call her the Unknown Woman. And now we call her the Papervine Woman.”

“Her? But she looked completely different — ”

“Her husband was in one of those canoes. She went right up to it and dragged him out by herself. I’m blessed if I know how she knew which one he was in. I sent her to look after you because, well, it was his leg I had to saw off.”

“Newton was greatest!” screamed the parrot, bouncing up and down.

“And I thought the parrot was dead!” said Mau.

“Yes, everyone thought the parrot was dead,” said Daphne, “except the parrot. He turned up yesterday. He is minus one toe and a lot of feathers, but I think he will be fine when his wing heals. He runs after the grandfather birds now. They really hate that. I’ve, er, started doing something about his language.”

“Yes, I thought you had,” said Mau. “What’s New-Tan?”

“Newton,” Daphne corrected absentmindedly. “Remember I told you about the Royal Society? He was one of the first members. He was the greatest scientist there has ever been, I think, but when he was an old man, he said he felt that he had been like a little boy playing with pebbles on the beach while a great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before him.”

Mau’s eyes widened, and she was shocked to realize that it had been a long time since she’d seen him look so young.

“He stood on this beach?”

“Well, er, not this beach, obviously,” said Daphne. “Possibly not even any beach. It’s what trousermen call a metaphor. A kind of lie to help you understand what’s true.”

“Oh, I know about those,” said Mau.

“Yes, I think you do.” Daphne smiled. “Now come out into the fresh air.”

She took Mau’s hand. There were a few nasty grazes that he didn’t remember getting, his whole body felt stiff, and there was a ragged wound where the flesh of his ear had been, but it could have been a lot worse. He remembered the bullet in the water, slowing down and dropping into his hand. Water could be hard — you only had to belly flop from a height to know that — but even so…

“Come on!” said Daphne, dragging him into the light.

The Women’s Place was full. There were people in the fields. The beach was busy. There were even children playing in the lagoon.

“We’ve got so much to do,” said Mau, shaking his head.

“They are already doing it,” said Daphne.

They watched in silence. Soon people would spot them and they would be back in the world again, but right now they were part of the scenery.

After a while the girl said: “I remember when it was… just nothing, and there was a boy who didn’t even see me.”

And the boy said: “I remember a ghost girl.”

After a longer silence, the girl asked: “Would you go back? If you could?”

“You mean, without the wave?”

“Yes. Without the wave.”

“Then I’d have gone home, and everyone would have been alive, and I would be a man.”

“Would you rather be that man? Would you change places with him?” asked the ghost girl.

“And not be me? Not know about the globe? Not have met you?”

“Yes!”

Mau opened his mouth to reply and found it choked with words. He had to wait until he could see a path through them.

“How can I answer you? There is no language. There was a boy called Mau. I see him in my memory, so proud of himself because he was going to be a man. He cried for his family and turned the tears into rage. And if he could, he would say ‘Did not happen!’ and the wave would roll backward and never have been. But there is another boy, and he is called Mau, too, and his head is on fire with new things. What does he say? He was born in the wave, and he knows that the world is round, and he met a ghost girl who is sorry she shot at him. He called himself the little blue hermit crab, scuttling across the sand in search of a new shell, but now he looks at the sky and knows that no shell will ever be big enough, ever. Will you ask him not to be? Any answer will be the wrong one. All I can be is who I am. But sometimes I hear the boy inside crying for his family.”

“Does he cry now?” asked Daphne, looking down at the ground.

“Every day. But very softly. You won’t hear him. Listen, I must tell you this. Locaha spoke to me. He spread his great wings over me on the beach and drove the Raiders away. Didn’t you see that?”

“No. The Raiders ran as soon as Cox went down,” said Daphne. “You mean you met Death? Again?”

“He told me that there were more worlds than there are numbers. There is no such thing as ‘does not happen.’ But there is always ‘happened somewhere else’ — ” He tried to explain, while she tried to understand.

When he’d run out of words, she said: “You mean that there is a world where the wave didn’t happen? Out… there somewhere?”

“I think so…. I think I’ve almost seen it. Sometimes, at night, when I’m watching the shore, I almost see it. I nearly hear it! And there is a Mau there, a man who is me, and I pity him, because there is no ghost girl in his world….”

She put her arms around his neck and gently pulled him toward her. “I wouldn’t change anything,” she said. “Here I’m not some sort of doll. I have a purpose. People listen to me. I’ve done amazing things. How could I go back to my life before?”

“Is that what you’ll tell your father?” His voice was suddenly sad.

“Something like that, I think, yes.”

Mau gently turned her around, so that she was looking at the sea.

“There’s a ship coming,” he said.