How to Stop Time(76)

‘Rules? What kind of rules?’

‘It is very bad to stand on the shadow of a . . .’ He looked around, as if the word he was searching for was somewhere in the air. Then he saw Furneaux heading sternwards over the poop deck and pointed to him.

I understood. ‘Commander? Leader? Chief?’

He nodded. ‘When I first saw you, you did not stand on my shadow. You came near. But you did not stand on it. This was a sign that I could trust you. The mana inside you respected the mana inside me.’

I found it interesting that this seemed of more significance to him than my decision not to set fire to his home. I shifted a little distance away from him.

He laughed at me. Put a hand on my shoulder. ‘It is not bad when you know someone, just when you first meet them.’

‘Were you a chief?’

He nodded. ‘On Tahiti.’

‘But not on Huahine?’

‘No.’

‘So why did you move from Tahiti to live on Huahine?’

He was generally quite a light-hearted person, and remarkably relaxed for a man heading away from all he had ever known, but when I asked this his brow creased and he chewed on his top lip and he seemed almost hurt by it.

‘It is all right,’ I assured him. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’

This is when he told me.

‘I know I can trust you,’ he said. ‘I know it as much as I know anything. You have been a good teacher. And you are a good friend. I also sense something about you. The way you talk about the past. The look in your eyes. The penny you have which you tell is old. All the knowledge you have. I think you are like me. You are a good friend.’ He kept saying it, as if needing confirmation.

‘Yes. We are good friends.’

‘Muruuru. Thank you.’

There was some understanding that passed between us then – a confidence to move out into the open.

Hollamby walked by. Hollamby, who I slept next to, had already told me that he thought it was a bad idea to have Omai on board: ‘He is a burden, eating the rations and bringing unknown curses with him.’ He gave us a sideways look, but let his eyebrows do the talking and walked on by.

‘I am older than other men,’ he said. ‘And I think you are too. Your face has not changed in five years. Not one bit.’

‘Yes,’ I said, lowering my voice to a whisper. I was too shocked to say anything else. It felt like the most terrifying and wonderful release, a century before seeing Dr Hutchinson, to find someone like me, and to be able to tell the truth. It was like being shipwrecked on an island for decades and then finding another survivor.

He stared at me and he was smiling. There was more relief than fear with him now. ‘You are like me. I am like you. I knew it.’ He laughed with relief. ‘I knew it.’

He hugged me. Our shadows merged. ‘It does not matter! Our mana is the same. Our shadows are one.’

I cannot express the magnitude of that moment enough. Yes, Marion was like me but I still hadn’t found her. And so Omai made me feel less alone. He made me feel normal. And I immediately wanted to know everything. Looking around, making sure the other crew were below deck or elsewhere, we began to talk.

‘Is this why you came? Is this why you wanted to leave the islands?’

He nodded. Nodding, it seemed, was universal. So was superstition. ‘Yes. It was difficult. At the beginning when in Tahiti it was good. They saw me as . . . as the special One. That is why I became a . . . a chief. They saw it as . . . proof that the mana inside me was good. That I was good. That I was half a man and half a god. No one ever dared come too close to me in the daylight in case they stepped on my shadow.’ He laughed, and stared out to sea, as if the memory was something he could almost see on the horizon. ‘And I did my best and I think I was a good chief but after many, many moons had passed things changed. Other men. They wanted to be chief. And I could not stop being chief. The only way to stop being a chief was to die. So I was . . .’

He mimed claustrophobia. Hands throbbing in the air near his head.

‘Trapped.’

‘Yes, I was trapped. So I had to go. I had to begin like the dawn. But a day is only meant to last so long and then they want the night. I had run out of places to go. I just wanted to live.’

I told him what had happened to my mother. About Manning. About Marion, being like us. I told him how Rose had been in danger because of me. I told him how much I missed her.

He smiled softly. ‘People you love never die.’

I had no idea of the sense of his words, but they stayed with me for centuries.

People you love never die.

‘In England they do not accept us either,’ I told him, returning to our topic. ‘You can tell no one on this ship about your condition. When I return to England, I must become someone else again. Already Mr Furneaux is a little suspicious.’

Omai looked a little worried. Touched his face. He was probably wondering how on earth he was going to hide.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘You are exotic.’

‘Exotic? What is that word?’

‘Different. From far away. Far. Far. Like a pine-apple.’

‘A pine-apple? You don’t have pine-apples in England?’

‘There are probably about thirty in England. On mantelpieces.’

He looked confused. The sea splashed gently against the bow of the boat. ‘What is a mantelpiece?’