Ashore, the dancers led the way, leaping and drumming up the slope to where the finger of the peninsula joined the hand. There, at the top, looking out over the fjords on either side - waterfalls, a tumble of green - was the village where Aaron’s mother had been born, and where Jacob’s clans had their land. For the length of the climb there had been hazards; Naomi pointed them out as Rika and Martha brought up the rear – damp patches of soil, potent herbs sprinkled across the path, bent twigs in the grass at the edge of the path – and yet none of the dancers lost their concentration or footing, and the young women and girls who danced behind followed in unerring step. Aaron’s clans went up that ridge like a travelling carnival. It was a triumph; a restoration of pride.

The hosts, shamed in their turn, could do nothing else but open the village and welcome the dancers in, past houses set out under the trees, clamshells marking the paths between them, and tall flowers, yellow and orange, around the perimeter of the dance ground.

The elders came forward in welcome, and behind them was Jacob.

‘Smart move,’ he said to Aaron.

‘What did you expect?’ Aaron replied.

ANGEL HEARD THE DINGHY BEFORE IT ROUNDED THE HEADLAND. It was two days later and they were idling in the village, replete from feasting. Rika followed the direction of her eyes as a small smudge came into view, its noise bringing people from their houses to stand under the shade trees along the water’s edge. The dinghy crossed the fjord, swung round and cut its engine to drift neatly against the rocks. The clerk from the government station landed cleanly on the bank and handed Rika a telegram. It was addressed to Aaron.

‘Kiap says you can stay at the station tonight,’ he said in a loud voice, as if memorising the message. He was wearing shorts and long beige socks of the sort colonial bureaucrats in Moresby once wore. Chest out, feet planted square, he announced that there was a message from the government, very important, and Mister Aaron must go back to Moresby. ‘The chief minister’s office will radio at six,’ he added, his voice modulated for Rika. ‘A plane will come tomorrow morning early. You go to Popondetta, wait for the Moresby plane.’

‘We have another three days,’ Rika said.

‘Tomorrow,’ Angel was on her feet as if a sprint might be required. ‘I can come tomorrow.’

Aaron had gone to the gardens with afa Noah and his father’s brothers’ sons to see the land they were clearing for him. They’d found old ancestor stones there and the blade of an axe fashioned by ancient hands. They were a message from the ancestors, an invitation to garden this land, they said – a doubtful story to Aaron’s mind, a convenient discovery to reinforce his obligations to the village and counterbalance the gardens given to Jacob on the rival peninsula, where he was trying out vanilla crops. So Aaron was an hour’s walk away, sniffing the wind of another politics, when he heard the dinghy’s motor. Pete, still in the host village up where the vasái had been, didn’t hear the dinghy at all.