Men looked at their enemy, yes, but sometimes they turned around and paddled like mad.

It made no difference. The sea was sliding and then, suddenly, was dancing again, like the water in the lagoon. Mau, trying to think straight, fought to get the canoe under control.

He’d get back. Of course he would. He could see the picture in his head, small and clear. He turned it around, savoring the taste of it.

Everyone would be there. Everyone. There could be no exceptions. Old, sick men would prefer to die on mats at the water’s edge rather than not be there; women would give birth there if they had to, while watching for the homecoming canoe. It was unthinkable to miss the arrival of a new man. That would bring down terrible bad luck on the whole Nation.

His father would be watching for him at the edge of the reef, and they’d bring the canoe up the beach, and his uncles would come running, and the new young men would rush to congratulate him, and the boys he’d left behind would be envious, and his mother and the other women would start on the feast, and there would be the… thing with the sharp knife, where you didn’t scream, and then… there would be everything.

And if he could just hold it in his mind, then it would be so. There was a shining silver thread connecting him to that future. It would work like a god anchor, which stopped the gods from wandering away.

Gods, that was it! This was coming from the Gods’ Island. It was over the horizon and you couldn’t see it even from here, but the old men said it had roared, back in the long ago, and there had been rough water and a lot of smoke and thunder because the Fire god was angry. Maybe he’d gotten angry again.

The cloud was reaching up to the top of the sky, but there was something new down at sea level. It was a dark gray line, getting bigger. A wave? Well, he knew about waves. You attacked them before they attacked you. He’d learned how to play with them. Don’t let them tumble you. Use them. Waves were easy.