Faina
The days that followed Masai and Nako’s return were murky with rain; mud caked Faina’s feet and ankles as she carried water from one sleeping hut to the next. Voices moaned, in this world and the next. She felt she was being stalked by the same dangerous magic that had seized the village, the same that stalked all the villages on the island, allies and enemies alike.
The island was rife with rumours—of illness and the curses that caused it. Men and women disappearing and reappearing. No one knew what to believe anymore.
Masai and Nako still muttered with thick tongues at the spirits that threatened them. Faina couldn’t see them, but she could feel them. They were unfamiliar to her. Perhaps they had come with Masai when he was returned.
A deathly smell came from many of the sleeping huts, from the bodies themselves, as well as the fouled mats they lay on. The ill sweated and shat and vomited, so that they were quickly worn down to bone, the insides of them becoming more visible. Boils and pustules appeared on bodies, weeping and then hardening. Those like Faina, who were well, were scared and unsure what to do.
When she went to fetch water, Faina found Telau slouched against a tree, her chin on her chest, her watertight basket spilled next to her. Panicked, Faina crouched next to her friend and shook her, whispering her name. Telau slowly opened her eyes and waved Faina away. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” Her voice was impatient. “Just tired.” Though she looked pale and her hands shook some.
Faina nodded, not wanting to argue, not wanting Telau to be ill. She refilled Telau’s basket for her and then filled her own before joining Telau against the tree.
“Why would they do this to us?” Telau asked. Faina didn’t have an answer. “Will-am brought them here, he helped them.”
“Maybe he could help us now,” Faina said. “Maybe he knows what curse this is. Do you think I should go to the mission?”
Telau shot her a look. “All they have done since they arrived is insult our ancestors and our ways. If they didn’t curse us, surely our ancestors are insulted by how we have let the missi behave in their place.” She shook her head. “No. They can’t help us.”
Telau hauled herself to her feet and led Faina back through the brush.
Faina felt strong, even while the village was suffering with the illness. Why did she feel strong? Why didn’t she get sick? Was Josephine protecting her? If so, then why not the people she loved? Her mind tumbled with questions as she tended on her cousin and his wife, on Father’s Brother, on Louvu’s twins who seemed to wither particularly quickly. She wished to sit with Masai, but he had finally recovered some after long nights of shaking and stuttering. He and Nako had been taken to the men’s house, behind the fence, when others started to become ill, Sero following with his leaf medicine. For days there were chants and the stamping of feet, singing and the rising of smoke from fires.
“How is he?” Faina asked when Father appeared after two days. At first Father only shrugged, but she grabbed his forearm and so he turned to her.
“He is in a powerful battle, but he is strong and will win. Nako thought…” Her father shook his head. “They’re fighting hard, we all are. But this is powerful magic. Sero has never heard of a curse like this. Even Father is bewildered.”
“I want to help.”
“Take water to those who need it. Do as you’re told.” She was about to speak, but he cut her off as though he knew what she was going to say. “Stay away from the mission until this is past.”
She meant to do as she was told.
She fetched water and some fruit and went to Louvu’s sleeping hut. She choked on the air as she stepped inside. She put her hand to her mouth and peered into the gloom. The two boys lay still on their sleeping mats, curled around each other. She waited and exhaled a breath she didn’t know she was holding when their small chests finally moved. Beyond them, their mother lay on her own mat. She tried to lift herself to sitting. “No, no,” Faina whispered. “I’ll take care of them.”
She sat beside one of the boys and eased his head into her lap. They were two of a kind, exactly alike, born at the same time, the same hour. Some peoples, she knew, saw twins as dark sorcery, but not here. Here, they were much loved by everyone in the village; the boys smiled easily and rarely fussed.
She tipped water into his mouth and he coughed against it. She shushed him as he moaned, and when he finally stilled, she moved to nurse his brother. He would not swallow, the water ran from his mouth, and his eyes stared past her. Faina couldn’t look at their mother.
She had to do something. She had brought Masai back. Perhaps there was more that she could do, more that she could learn from Josephine.
Faina stood watching the mission, trying to remember what it had looked like that first time she came with the eel she had caught. She tried to recall the sunshine on the sea, the flurry of activity, the excitement of the new. Now the cove was still, the clouds pressed down, everything sagged in the rain.
She slipped in through the gate. The garden had wilted to rot where a short time before it had been bleached and drying. Their plants didn’t belong here. Maybe Telau was right—the missi did not either. Faina moved first to Talawan’s sleeping hut. As she neared, she heard the moaning and murmuring that came with the illness. So the curse had reached here too. If William wasn’t to blame, who was? He was allies with the men of the ship, had spoken on their behalf, had walked the exchange roads with them. But what if the curse had stung the missi too?
Faina climbed up to the threshold of their house. The door was open. She stepped in. The shutters were closed and the air was stale and smelled so foul she could taste it as she breathed through her mouth. The sleeping platform was a tangle of soiled clothes, and more dirty clothing was piled on the floor. She turned slowly in place. This was only the second time she had been in this room. The little boy. Was he still there? Josephine’s son.
She moved to the wooden plank that stood on one side of the room. Beside the picture of the boy that looked as if he’d been captured behind the shining surface, there were now others where he appeared older. She slid one, quickly, unthinking, into her bag. In front of her were other pieces of Josephine’s paper. Faina leafed through them—there was another drawing of her and several sketches of other women from her village. She picked up the pencil on the desk and on the back of the drawings she wrote each woman’s name. The way she had written Masai’s in the dirt, on her body. She was here. They were here.
“What are you doing?”
Josephine was a shadow in the doorway.
“Are you sick?” Faina asked, her voice a lilt of false concern. She turned the page over, hid her name.
“I haven’t seen you in some time,” Josephine said, stepping towards Faina, her hand out to her. Faina backed away until she was pressed against the wall. Josephine dropped her hand. “I heard your men were returned. Are they…Are they well?” Faina shook her head. “Oh, of course.”
Faina searched for the words, her mind tangled up with a growing anger. “You knew Masai was taken? Did you do this to him?”
Josephine looked skyward and sighed wearily, but didn’t say anything.
“You did.” Faina didn’t ask this time. Kaipar was right; the missi were to blame. She felt the sharp stab where her grief became fury.
“All they wanted was some wood.” Josephine sat down heavily in a chair. “Why didn’t you just let them have it. It wasn’t so much to ask. Now it is all in God’s hands. All we can do is ask for His blessing.”
Faina shook her head. “No. Those men. They can’t just take what they want. No.”
She had so many words, but not the ones to tell Josephine how wrong she was. She and William had become part of their roads; they had exchanged the use of the land for their tools, they had exchanged food, they had exchanged words, and still the missi wanted more, without meeting the obligations they had made. How could they just continue to take and take as though they were infinitely empty inside?
Josephine knelt, her knees making hollow sounds on the wooden floor. She grabbed Faina’s hands and pulled her down with her. Josephine’s eyes were wild, but she was not sick; she sweated in the close air as she always did. “We have to pray.” Faina tried to pull away, but Josephine held her hands tight, pressed together between hers, and began to call to her god. Her voice scratched at the air, asking for their father’s help.
Faina thought of the twins, of Masai and Father’s Brother. She would do anything to help them. Would their pleas to the missi’s god work? If he had caused this curse to come, he could cure it. Josephine and William, the men from the ship, they were god’s people. What if they could cure the illness?
She had to try, didn’t she?
She stood up, pulling her hands away from Josephine just as William appeared in the doorway. Faina pointed from one to the other. “Make your god help.”
When Faina and the missi arrived at the village, Faina’s father sounded the slit drum to call the others.
“Why have you brought them here?” Kaipar asked.
Faina was about to explain that she would try anything to lift the curse, but William spoke instead. “We are here to help. We are only God’s messengers, but we have medicine, and prayers are the best medicine of all. Let us speak to the sick, and if they will accept Him, then perhaps they will be saved. If not in this world, then in the next.”
Kaipar frowned. “So you admit that this is your god’s curse?”
William spread his hands. “He decides who lives and dies, His will be done.”
The men retreated to discuss the missi’s offer of help, leaving William behind with Josephine and Faina. The three of them shifted uncomfortably. Finally Kaipar and Louvu stood together.
“Let them try. But if they fail, they will have to go. You will take your canoe and leave this place.”
For two days they served the sick.
Faina shadowed and helped William and Josephine offer strange fluids and powders to those who were lying ill, the way she had so long ago when Marakai was dying. She hoped this time it would work; she hoped that this magic was strong enough.
A few mornings later, men from the Upland and Hotwater arrived at the village to discuss what must be done. They gathered in the nasara in groups, making a circle around the open space, talking about the number of people who were ill, that the new strangers’ ship still lay in wait in a nearby cove. Louvu sat, his head in his hands, while Kaipar stood and held his high to bring them to quiet. Even with the crowd it was easy to see that there were those who were missing. Faina noticed that Albi was absent, but she didn’t send a whisper along the line to ask about her betrothed. She did not want to know. Josephine stood a short distance away; she was drawn and pale.
A murmur drew her attention away from Josephine. Masai entered the nasara, with William trailing behind him. Faina’s throat ached with relief and happiness, tears prickled at her eyes. She had not known he was so much better. Though he still appeared weak and shaky, he held himself upright and stared straight ahead, his steps careful and measured. Her relief was dampened by his refusal to look around; she wanted him to see her, she wanted him to know that she had been trying to save them all.
“Nako has died,” Masai said. He swayed but stayed on his feet.
Kaipar whirled around and stalked towards William, who was glancing around in panic.
“Your hand is in this,” Kaipar said. “Such things didn’t happen until you came here, and you refuse to put an end to this darkness. We will let you know what we decide.” Kaipar looked past Faina and she wished that she had never brought William here, never laid eyes on him or Josephine.
“Take him back to the mission,” Kaipar told her, and then he turned away and, without waiting for the group to dissipate, disappeared down the road towards the men’s house.
Later that night, Father came to her. The men from the villages had been talking late in the nakamal, the men’s enclosure. They had drunk kava, and listened deeply to it; they had talked with the delegates from the other tribes. They had decided what must be done.
“Will-am and Jos-fine must leave this place,” Father told her, waking her up from her sleep. Her heart stuttered some. She pictured them climbing into their canoe, rowing towards the ship that still stalked the nearby sea. “They will go on their own, or we will deliver them ourselves. We tried to make them welcome here, but they have done this to us, or they have insulted our ways and for that we are being punished. It does not matter, but they have to go.” He was silent for a long moment. “Albi,” he said eventually. “He died from this curse.”
Her heart seized again. What would this mean? She would not marry so soon, perhaps. Or—
Father interrupted her thoughts. “The people of the Upland will be our ally in this, in insisting the missi leave. They will be our ally.” He paused. “And you will be the wife of Yakeh in that place.”
They were right. The missi needed to go, but somehow she wanted to plead for Josephine the way she wished someone might plead for her.
“We will go to them tomorrow and tell them what has been decided. They could have been a part of these conversations, but they refused their obligations.”
“Will I go with you?” Her voice finally cracked the dark as the sun was rising, a spear of it piercing the corner of the hut.
Father nodded.
The next morning, Faina travelled with Kaipar and Father and men from Hotwater and Upland to the mission. She stood behind them and watched as William came to greet them, with Josephine behind him. She was like Faina’s own strange reflection. They were afraid, Faina realized. They all were. Fear lay everywhere on the island.
There were so many dead, and there seemed to be no way to end it. Even here she could smell the acrid scent of fires that had been lit as different tabu men tried to break the curses that swept the roads. There were whispers and voices everywhere.
“We tried to make you part of us,” Kaipar said, and marked the place as restricted with the namele leaf, “but you have brought only death and division. We sent word to the ship. It waits for you around the head of the island. You can paddle your own canoe, or we will take you.”
Faina shaped the words as best she could, wanting William and Josephine to understand, wondering when she would be able to speak this language again, or if she would be like Father’s Father, with sounds and meanings trapped inside her that she would repeat as stories that no one else would truly understand.
William looked at her with disgust, as though she had somehow betrayed them, when all she had done was try to make them understand each other, tried to understand them. William and Josephine were the ones who had betrayed those they had promised to be allies with.
“We will not leave,” William said, and his voice was desperate. Faina was too stunned to speak. “God sent me here. He came to me, in my darkest winter, and told me if I served Him in a lost place like this then I would be loved, I would be blessed. I am God’s messenger. I obey Him, I follow Him. He wants me in this place so you cannot send us away. This is God’s dominion and He will have it. I will not leave.” He grabbed on to Josephine’s wrist. “We will not leave.”
Faina tried to explain his words, but Kaipar shook his head. He understood enough. “You have until the morning after tomorrow’s night.”
The men turned to walk away, and Faina followed them. William yelled after them, his voice catching in the wind. “God will punish you! And He will protect us. You will burn in Hell.”
William and Josephine had been told to go. There was nothing left for Faina to do.
But they refused and even still remained at the mission, and the whispers, the murmurs on the island, stirred to a wind that whipped the trees, a wind that blew hard in the night and brought with it a new wailing as the morning came. She had thought she had grown used to the mourning wails.
In the nasara, Faina ran into Masai and Telau.
“It is Louvu’s sons,” Masai said. “Both of them.”
Telau sent her voice into the air too, and Faina’s face grew wet, with tears and with the rain that had begun to fall, beating the earth, sending small splatters of mud onto her feet and ankles where the drops exploded.
She stood there a long time. She felt the weight of the boy’s small head in her lap, his brother’s weak smile. That they were gone pulled at her, yes, but it was as if all of the grief was building up on her shoulders and in her head. A pressure, pushing outwards, that reminded her of when she dove deep into the punched blue holes of the ocean, pulling herself down and down and down to grab the spiny creatures that hid under the rocks, and how her skull filled with an ache until she swallowed it down. She stood swallowing and swallowing—grief and aches and guilt and pain—until she could not deny the truth anymore.
She knew what was going to happen. She knew what had to happen.
Faina ran her hand along the perimeter of the cave.
She stretched to reach the one spot that caught a ray of sun late in the day, where there were the handprints of all the women who had come before her. It was said that one of the handprints belonged to the first woman to come to this cave, that she had lived in its depths rather than live with a man. Faina held her hand against them, hoping that she might hear a whisper of their wisdom.
She thought of being here after Masai was taken and how she had brought him back. She touched her palm to the print she had made. She pressed as hard as she could so she could feel it pressing back against her, the whole island holding her up. She stayed that way until she could not tell where she ended, where the stone began. She imagined melting into it, part of her left here forever.
When she let go, her body was warmed and hummed from the rock. Then she moved to the back of the cave, to the crack where she had pleaded for Masai’s return.
She thought of his name, marked on the dirt, on the wall, on her body; of how he came back to her. Outside, the storm lashed sideways at the cave, the bushes and trees bending as though trying to see what she was doing, what she would do. The wind whirled, but she was safe and dry here. She pictured the bodies of Louvu’s twin boys. She imagined her marriage exchange and having to leave behind everything she knew. What could she do?
Slowly, she wrote William’s name into the dirt at the crack of stone leading into darkness. Then, hesitating, she wrote Josephine’s. They had come to the island uninvited. She had tried to help them, to learn from them. They all had. Kaipar and Louvu had protected them, made them part of the web that encapsulated the island, and yet William and Josephine had failed to honour their place in it, to recognize the role that they had elected to play.
She wrote the names of others—Albi, who had taken her hand in his and helped her up, who might have been kind to her; Marakai all those months ago; Nako. She still looked for the shadow of him just behind Masai. Telau’s mother was gone, and Father’s Brother. She wrote their names over and over and hoped they were dancing.
She bent her back to the storm and her face close to the earth, the smell of it thick in her nostrils, relieving some of the pressure there.
The wind came up behind her as she pursed her lips, as though all her ancestors breathed with her. She blew, and the storm blew with her, wiping the words away and carrying them into the darkness, down into the earth.
She waited for the storm to pass.
It grew wild and angry, the daytime air growing dark, fronds and lianas whipping past the mouth of the cave that sheltered her. Still, her heart pounded with the rhythm of it. When she heard the crashing of a fallen tree, she worried one might block the entrance to the cave and she would be trapped here with only the tunnel to the spirit world as an exit.
But finally, after what seemed a very long time, the air around the cave calmed, the light bloomed, and the whole of the brush in front of the cave sparkled with water drops, everything gilded and bright. The air was fresh, and the earth and the green of the trees were already responding to the pulse of rainwater by opening into the air. Growing. She stepped into the sunlight. She could smell the sea.