The young man who’d been sent across the fjord in a canoe came back with nothing. No message, no clue. Aaron climbed down from the platform to speak to the dancers, who were banging their drums with a menacing rhythm. ‘We wait more,’ Naomi said.

When eventually the conch sounded, daylight was vanishing and the chickens were flying up into the trees. Even Martha could fathom that if the old people and the children and the elders were to cross the fjord before the dancers, the drama of their arrival would be lost in the falling dark. Their splendour would go unseen. To accept an invitation so late in the day, and after such humiliation, would be to accept the insult - even if the dancers who’d stalked off could be persuaded to stalk back.

‘And if we don’t go at all?’ Martha asked Naomi.

‘Nogat!’ That would be tantamount to war.

‘Aaron will find the way,’ Dulcie said.

‘Not Aaron,’ Rika said. ‘He comes here for a rest. You know. You know how he gets easy here, gets well again.’

Earlier Martha had heard her telling Dulcie of the hours Aaron worked, how tired he got, too tired, and though Martha put a warning hand on her arm, she said it again, too tired, wanting Dulcie to understand that she meant too tired to lie with her and make a baby.

Dulcie turned her head away towards another sister-in-law. A glance passed between them, an intimation of the countercurrents running somewhere out of sight.

‘Aaron isn’t an elder,’ Martha said to Naomi. ‘Why must he find the way?’

‘Aaron goes to Moresby and makes government,’ Angel answered. ‘Soon I will come,’ and she was off again on how hard she’d work and how much she’d see. Dulcie hushed her with a slap. ‘Listen, quiet.’

Noah was coming down the steps from his platform to speak. His pig-tusk necklace was in place, his wrinkled buttocks folding like fabric beneath his loincloth.

‘He wants us to go,’ Naomi said. ‘The younger brothers, they say no.’

Noah returned to the platform and the heads of the elders moved forward. Outside, dancers continued to prance and shout, raising their fists and pulling the herbs from their armbands. Another pause, another deliberation. Then Aaron came down from the platform to speak. The crowd quietened; Aaron’s voice rose above them. There were interjections and shufflings, but the anger diminished like a sigh as tension released, and though Martha couldn’t understand the words, she saw their effect. He’d turned the mood. He’d found the solution.

A cheer went up and there was much shaking of hands.

‘We go at dawn,’ Naomi said. ‘Good true.’ Across the water food would be waiting, and it would go to waste. ‘We arrive in the morning and they must cook again. To welcome us.’ She laughed. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘Aaron, he knows.’

In the dark, still hour before the sun rose, those who weren’t to dance crossed the fjord in silence. On the other side, they stood grouped together, and even the smallest child made no sound until the first rays of the sun lit the tips of the trees. Then the dancers crossed on their canoes, plumed and adorned, chanting with the ferocity of warriors. They cut through the dark, glassy water with a wake of silver. The peninsula was a dark bulk; at its tip were palms silhouetted against a pale pink sky.