One Blood Read Online Free Page B

the old man from launching himself at his tormentors.
    Then the islanders stopped laughing. They were looking at the edge of the forest. A small, undistinguished rodent was crouching among the undergrowth, its whiskers twitching suspiciously. A beatific smile appeared on Timothy Anilafa’s face.
    ‘Emperor!’ he said caressingly, almost as a greeting.
    No one else on the plateau spoke. Kella moved to one side to get a better view of the rat. He could not recognize its species, but surely the old man was not right? The Emperor Rat, once indigenous to Malaita, had not been seen for the best part of a hundred years. In the 1880s, a British colonial administrator, driven half mad by loneliness and the effects of the sun, and with too much aimless time on his hands, had noted theanimal’s existence in excruciating detail in his notebooks. Then it had vanished on to the international registers of extinct species. Over the decades, some islanders claimed to have seen examples of the creature deep in the bush, but there were no recorded official sightings. Yet here was the villager greeting the shy, twitching creature almost as an old friend.
    The Emperor Rat lurched forward and then walked steadily towards what was left of the ark. It stopped beneath an overhanging spar and looked back towards the trees. A second, smaller rat, as undistinguished as the first, emerged and scurried over to its mate. The two animals hesitated for a moment, and then were lost inside the dark recesses of the structure. Kella could hardly believe what he had just witnessed, but he did his best to take advantage of the moment.
    ‘You have your first pair,’ he told Timothy Anifala. ‘Now you must continue with your building here and wait for others to follow. It might take a long time, but the creatures of the island have taken their first steps to assist you in your venture. You have your first animals, the rarest in the whole of the Solomons.’
    The old villager nodded, for once lost for words. Kella looked at the other islanders. No one was laughing any more. All were regarding the ark and its builder with sudden awe. Of such incidents were legends established. Kella clapped Timothy on his scrawny shoulder.
    ‘
Nganwi ilana
,’ he said respectfully, giving the old man the traditional title bestowed upon islanders who were not priests but who had displayed indisputable proof of being able to see into the future. For the sake of peace in the village, he hoped that the completion of the ark would occupy the remaining years of the venerable old man’s life, thus giving him local prestige in his evening years, together with a sense of purpose. At the same time, fortunately for his welfare, it was very unlikely that he would ever be called upon to test the plainly unseaworthy vessel before the eyes of his peers.
    All in all, it was proving a most satisfactory state of affairs. The policeman decided that it was time to bring an end to proceedings and quit while he was still ahead. He gestured to the other islanders.
    ‘Fetch-im mary bilong you quick time,’ he suggested.
    The men started to hurry back through the trees to bring their wives up to continue work on their now uncluttered gardens. Kella followed them down the slope at a more leisurely pace. Overhead, hornbills crashed their wings like cymbals through the air. A sense of well-being pervaded him. The sudden appearance of the Emperor Rats had been, almost literally, a godsend as far as preserving the peace in the area had been concerned. He did not intend, however, to make any mention of the event in his end-of-tour report. It was likely to be misunderstood by his superiors in the capital. There were some matters with which it just did not pay to bother his expatriate bosses. What they did not know could not hurt them. Especially, decided Kella, when he did not fully understand them himself.
    The sergeant glanced at his watch. He decided that he would spend the remaining hours of daylight