We reached the south village, me, my surrogate grandmother and the mother of my friend, and told the few seasonal residents what had happened. The question of whether to begin an immediate search of the mountain was raised, whether to go to the big village right away or spend the night in the south village and go the next morning. Some people said there ought to be a search, that we ought to stop at nothing to find the boy, but that night was on the edge of the sky and the dying light, the crimson tide, would soon be upon us, so any search would be short-lived. Everyone would have to return to the village, for nothing could be done after nightfall, and it would be hard, very hard indeed on the poor mother to have to spend the night without her son. And this had become most evident because although everyone had come to help and offer support, the presence of the entire village in her house was what had saddened her most, for it felt like a wake, like her son had died, although nobody knew for sure. And it would have been a very hard night for her to get through with that heavy feeling in her heart. What’s more, she was not in the big village, where she could have drawn comfort, understanding and courage from her people, from more people. But some of the south villagers said it was too late to set off for the big village, that she’d only get there after nightfall anyway, so very few people would learn of what had happened. They said that no matter what was decided, it was better to wait until morning, when news of the boy’s disappearance could more easily be made known. But the woman was in a village where there was nothing to light the house with, and her son was lost in the bush. All the women of the village could come and keep her company, but nobody would say anything, for there was nothing to say. Everyone would sit outside the house until nightfall and then go inside to sleep on a big pile of dried banana leaves, people having brought them from their own homes, but still nobody in the big village would know what had happened.
Given all these considerations, it was decided the woman ought to go to the next village, a village not far from the south village, but on the other side of the mountain. The two villages are not so very far apart but they are divided by a mountain range that runs down the centre of the island, so anyone wishing to walk from one village to the next has to go up the mountain, the same mountain we’d climbed in search of the bird, cross one of its peaks and go back down the other side. With the sun half down, a group of us set off from the south village, a group that included me, my surrogate grandmother and the mother of my friend. We were going to that other village to ask its few seasonal residents if they knew anything about the boy lost in the bush, the boy who’d been hanging over the precipice. By the time we got there, it was dark and everyone had shut themselves in their homes. They didn’t have anything to light their houses with either, so they’d gone inside to keep safe. Or if they weren’t inside, they were sitting in their doorways, but it was impossible to see them in the darkness. And because the few inhabitants of that village were quite spread out, not all of them noticed our arrival. One of the women who’d accompanied us had a house in the village and we followed her, took the criss-crossed sticks from her doorway and went inside to sleep on a pile of old banana leaves. We shook them first, to check for snakes and rats that might have nested among them, then shut the door and went to sleep. I wasn’t aware of anything else that happened that night, though things did happen. Walking through the bush at night had left me exhausted. It was something I’d never done before. In fact, other than when something serious happened, nobody ever went into the bush at night. No activity took place in the bush while darkness reigned over the island.
We slept as best we could and woke to find that most people hadn’t slept a wink. Which was only to be expected given that we had a serious problem and nobody knew how it would turn out. But it was more than that, for something had happened in the night in that village on the other side of the mountain, something that had forced people out of their beds. A child who’d never been to the village before woke up in the middle of the night because someone was preventing him from sleeping. He screamed at the top of his voice because he felt like someone was squeezing his throat and he was choking. He thought he was dying. The adults in the house where he was sleeping realised he’d not spent a night in the village before and therefore probably hadn’t been presented to the village’s patron saint. And if he hadn’t been presented to the village’s patron saint, the patron saint wouldn’t let him sleep, wouldn’t let him remain in the settlement. The child went on screaming and they decided to go to the little church and make the presentation. But it wasn’t as simple as that, and now I’ll explain why. What we call being presented to the saint is a serious thing, though something we children never understood. In fact I still don’t understand it. On our island all children are born in the big village. Only in the event of an unexpected birth or a miscalculation by the mother does a child come into the world on a plantation, or on the way to one. In fact, whenever this occurs, the child is immediately given the name of the place it landed after coming out of its mother. For example, a friend of mine’s mother had put her load down to rest and quench her thirst at the river, a river where it was common for people on the island to stop for a rest and a drink, and that friend of mine thought it was a pleasant spot and pushed. And his mother had no choice but to let him out. When he was completely out, she bathed him in the river, tied him to her back and brought him home. And he took the name of that river. That friend of mine was very smart. His mother had just descended the steepest hill on the whole island. In fact, the hill was so steep that when the first white people came to the island and were faced with having to descend it, they turned right around and went back to the big village to get materials to build steps. Anyway, that boy’s mother had been returning to the big village from the other end of the island, and she went down the steep steps and got to the river. She put her load on the ground, or on a rock, and sat down on another rock, with her feet in the water. And she drank the fresh water from the river, which still had a fair way to travel before it reached the sea. She too still had a fair way to travel, for after her rest she’d have to put her load back on her head and start climbing up the steep steps and on towards the big village. And it was a tough climb. The thing was, that freshwater river lay between two big bodies of rock, like a creek in a valley, and the only way to get from one side to the other was by going down and up again. There was no way round, no other path that accessed the south of the island. And so that friend of mine must have thought about all the effort his mother would have to make to climb back up to the top and he decided to come out and lighten her load. He timed it well, for carrying a child on the back is far easier than carrying a child in the belly, especially with all those rocks jutting out into the path.