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that his visitor is painted black from head to foot. As his eyes adjust he scans the recesses of his prison, fearful of what may lie around him. There are barrels and bales, seemingly from his own ship, and dirty straw, and shackles and cinches for tying down large animals. But he sees no corpses, no other captives, no big carnivores. The young man leaves, and so does the little cat. Not a puma kitten, but some other kind, striped, tame, bounding like a puppy up the ladder.
    Two of the ghost men from yesterday come to take him up on deck. His hands are tied behind his back and the heavy iron is left around his ankle. He looks for signs of his people, his ship, but there is nothing. No sail, no land, no others from the World. The open sea rolls all around, empty but for the distant feather of a whale spout. He drinks the fresh air deeply, tries to calm his mind. They seem to be heading northwards now, hauled to the wind, tacking to wherever it is they came from.
    He is taken to a low wooden house at the stern, made of planks, lit dimly by small round windows filled with crystal. Four barbarians are seated at a high board in the middle of this room: two old, two younger, all lean and watchful as stray hounds. They wear leather caps, tight britches, loose cotton shirts. Their strange clothes are torn and dirty. Vermin roam in their hair and beards. No wonder the hotlanders took them for the dead: all have a deathly pallor, young and old; their mouths are blistered, their teeth rotten or missing. The stench that pervades the ship is coming from
them
—their bodies and their breath.
    More enter, making eight. One has reddish hair, others black or brown, and the red one has eyes like the sky. Their skins are of all shades: pink, wan, grey, and one much the same hue as himself. The youth comes in, sets a bowl and a jug of water on the dining board. This one is indeed dyed black, except for the palms of his hands.
    The oldest begins speaking from a mouth like a sea anemone, toothless and red, sunk in a grizzled beard. Waman cannot hear the words. It’s as if he is deaf, yet he can hear the ship and the water and a mewling of gulls from the door. He gives silent thanks to Mother Sea that he’s alive. And thanks that Tika did not run with him, into this. His thoughts fill with her, with everyone at home. Tears spring in his eyes.
    The barbarians are speaking again and still he cannot hear them. He wants to ask many things. Where are his shipmates? Are they alive? Why is he the only one here? What do they want with him? But when he opens his mouth they are as deaf to his tongue as he to theirs.
    â€”
    After the fifth night they unbolt the iron from his foot and let him walk the ship by day. They have not harmed him, and he is growingused to their looks and ways. He has counted ten on board including the barbarians’ leader and the captain, who are much older than the rest. There is also the black one, their cook and helper, who treats him kindly yet still locks him in the hold at night.
    The unearthly keening he heard the first night is no longer a mystery. On evenings without rain two or three gather on the foredeck, where they sing and play an instrument with strings and a round belly made of wooden strips like the hull of their ship. Waman has always loved music. Sometimes in Little River he would play his flute at weddings, and he was a good singer until his voice began to fray. He hates these barbarians who must have slaughtered many, perhaps all, of his shipmates. He is ashamed that he blacked out and did not see what happened. He vows in his heart to kill them, as many and as soon as he can. Yet he can’t help becoming drawn to their weird music. Surely men who can make such beauty must have had some goodness in them once, if only when they were children?
    So many other wonders: the abundance of iron in the ship’s fittings, the great knives they wear; also iron helmets and armour, all cunningly wrought