The men dozed in the shade around the cooking pit; the boys were off somewhere. None of the women had come back.
No one noticed Loa grab his fishing spear. He jogged down to the lagoon where the canoes lay high on the sand, away from the reach of the tide. He tied his spear into the smallest craft. Canoes sank down almost to the level of the water when there was a pile of fish in them. You had to tie your spear on so it didn’t float away.
The canoe needed two paddlers, but he could manage it alone. He was Loa, pig killer! He untied a bundle of dried pig bladders from one end of the canoe and filled them with fresh water from the stream, then fastened them carefully in the canoe too. His new knife hung on the cords around his waist.
What else did he need? Food?
He hadn’t eaten all day; no one ate before a feast. But he’d be at the next clan’s camp by nightfall. There’d be food there.
He hesitated. He’d never been to the giant-headland-near-the-sky, though his grandfather had found a wife there. You could only see the headland on clear days. What if it took more than an afternoon to paddle there or find the camp?
Of course he could find the clan! He only had to look for the smoke of their campfire. And if the journey took longer than he thought he could come ashore tonight to make a sleeping platform out of reach of crocodiles and rats. He could eat shellfish and long fat mangrove worms in the trees. The world was full of food.
Maybe he could spear a big fish as a present for the headland camp. A shark, perhaps …
He bit his lip. He’d be alone on the water, with no one to look out for sharks. A shark could snap you right out of a canoe. A crocodile could too.
He needed a rubbish dog. Crocs and sharks liked rubbish dog more than man. Fishermen always took a rubbish dog on long voyages, so they could throw the dog out to any circling sharks.
A rubbish dog was the best food to take too. Even strips of salted shark went bad in the glare of the sea, but you could kill a tied-up dog to eat whenever you wanted to go ashore, or make a tiny cooking fire on board and roast it piece by piece.
He ran back to the camp. Some of the women had returned. They sat in the shade, laughing and talking, wrapping their tubers in arrowroot leaves. But there was no sign of Leki, or her mother, or his own mother either.
His mother would worry when he wasn’t at the feast. That’s what mothers did: they worried. But Leki could explain where he’d gone. His mother would be glad when he brought back a wife, he told himself.
‘Loa!’ One of his friends gestured for him to come over and sit with them.
Loa pretended he didn’t hear. He looked over to where the netted rubbish dogs had lain. Only one was left — a small female. She glared at him as he walked up to her.
‘You’ll do.’ He picked her up by the cords that bound her paws and carried her upside down.
The dog struggled, but she didn’t make any sound. Rubbish dogs didn’t make much noise: just growls, if you came near their pups, or long slow howls at night. This one didn’t even whimper. Her jaws were tied too tightly.
He slung the dog into his canoe, then lashed her securely to the side next to his spear so no wave could wash her away.
He hesitated.
This was a big thing — to leave his clan, to try to find a wife all by himself. Young men went off to find wives, even sometimes stealing them. But not alone.
Should he wait? Ask some of his friends to come with him tomorrow?
Deep down he realised he didn’t want to go at all. He didn’t want a wife from a different clan. He wanted to be at the feast as everyone ate his pig meat and exclaimed; he wanted to make his pig’s-teeth necklace; he wanted to hunt pig again in a few days’ time.
But he had told Leki he would go. He wasn’t going to hang around the edges of her feast, like a rubbish dog looking for her scraps of attention.
He had to go! Now!
He pushed the canoe over the sand, through the first waves, then clambered in. He began to paddle across the lagoon, towards the reef and the sea beyond.
Someone shouted from the shore. He looked back, but he was already too far away to see who it was. He waved, then turned back to paddling.
The rubbish dog stared at him from the end of the canoe.