The Islanders

there is also a commemorative plaque for his brother.

Rawthersay (1) DECLARE / SING

A small island in the southern Midway Sea, RAWTHERSAY is sheltered from prevailing winds by the mountains on the curving arm of the Qataari Peninsula that lies to the east. This area of the Dream Archipelago is known as the Quietude Bay, because although deep in the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere the shelter of the landmass has created a vast and tranquil bay where storms are rare and all extremes of weather are virtually unknown. Summers are warm and delightful with nights that are short, and mild winters are endured in short days and chilly nights. Springtime and autumn are periods of picturesque natural change.

Approximately five thousand islands of every size are found in Quietude. All are fertile and inhabited, governments are stable, industry is varied, trade between islands has been harmonious as long as there has been recorded history. The creative and performing arts are practised at a high level of accomplishment. When the Covenant of Neutrality was agreed, the people of Quietude famously neglected to ratify it for more than a hundred years, not affected by the urgent need for peace that was felt elsewhere in the Archipelago.

Although not the largest island in Quietude, Rawthersay is one of the most developed. Its patois name renders as DECLARE. It is situated in the coolest part of the Bay, far to the south. The two principal activities on the island are sheep farming and mining. The tall but fertile hills of Rawthersay provide ideal grazing for the hardy breed of sheep that thrives on the island. The wool the animals produce is warm, soft and hard-wearing, and is a major source of export funds. Coal is mined in the southern valleys of Rawthersay, where a separate patois is spoken (the miners call the island SING), and in the east there are large deposits of iron ore which have been mined for centuries.

Rawthersay is a university island, drawing its students from islands all over the southern reaches of Quietude Bay. Ostensibly specializing in the practical vocations of mining and animal husbandry, Rawthersay University has developed many challenging courses devoted to folk literature and music, with an emphasis on performance skills. Touring troupes of performers from Rawthersay regularly travel around all parts of the Archipelago, where they are much appreciated.

The social reformer CAURER is probably the most celebrated alumna of the university. Born Esla Wann Caurer, she was brought up in a small farmhouse in the central valley of Rawthersay, and educated at the local village school. She won a scholarship to the university when she was seventeen.

The farmhouse is open to visitors but an advance appointment is necessary as it is still partly occupied. Many of Caurer’s toys and letters from her childhood are displayed in the public rooms. There is a small but excellent bookstore next to the main building.

Caurer founded the university’s literary magazine, Free!, and edited the first eleven issues while still an undergraduate. Free! editorialized about the unfairness of the feudal laws that still existed in most islands and the need for universal suffrage and human rights. It also published a great deal of student poetry, reviews, stories and art. The most notable item, the one that ensures the magazine’s immortality, is a long article written by Caurer herself and published in the ninth edition of Free! .

This was a review of Stationed, Chaster Kammeston’s third novel. How the copy reached Rawthersay and Caurer’s hands is still not fully understood, because Kammeston’s early books were all but unavailable outside his native island, but nevertheless Caurer got hold of it somehow and the article was written.

Using the name ‘Esla W. Caurer’ — she did not drop the use of her first names until after she left university — she wrote a review that is now known to be the first extended piece of criticism of Kammeston’s work. From the text it is possible to discern that Caurer had read earlier novels by the same writer, but this was her first opportunity to discuss them in print. The review of Stationed runs for eight tightly printed pages, full of abundant praise for the novel, but also, notoriously, it contains many speculations and pointed insinuations about Kammeston’s presumed motives, proclivities and psychology. More than a year later these immature, unwarranted but witty and highly quotable judgements provoked a hurt but intrigued letter from the author. By this time Caurer had graduated and was no longer at the university.

The letter, addressed to ‘Dear Editor’, was never printed in Free!, but the original is today displayed in a case in the foyer of the Caurer Memorial Theatre. The review itself has been widely anthologized, but a facsimile of its original appearance in Free! is displayed next to Kammeston’s letter.

The remarkable fact of this review is that Caurer accurately identified, described and praised the unique quality of Kammeston’s work, which did not receive wider critical recognition for several more years. At the time, Caurer’s essay had a negligible impact: it was after all an obscure book by a more or less unknown author, reviewed by a student at a minor university.

After graduation, Caurer left Rawthersay. Her first work was as an assistant community consultant in the neighbouring Olldus Group. She took up the cause of the poor and immigrant classes on that heavily industrialized chain of islands and wrote the first of her three plays, Woman Gone.

Woman Gone is an undisguised attack on feudalism unmodified by human rights, and for several years put her life at risk of reprisals. There were many barons and lords with vested interests. Her powerful, flowing and poetic use of language was unprecedented, and although the play opened in a small theatre in an economically declining part of Olldus Town, within a year it had transferred to Le Theatre Merveilleux in Jethra, Faiandland. After a long run in Jethra the play was produced in many other theatres around the Archipelago, and is still today regularly revived.

When islanders in all parts of the Archipelago began to demand reforms to the way they were governed, Woman Gone was usually cited as the liberating inspiration. Lines from it were adopted as campaign slogans, posters were created using the images of the central characters.

Caurer was soon recognized as a powerful and moving public speaker. She kept Rawthersay as her base and returned there whenever she could, but she travelled constantly to public meetings throughout the Archipelago, where she gained increasingly appreciative audiences. During this period her second play appeared: The Autumn of Recognition.

Against expectations, Autumn was a light-hearted comedy with musical interludes, although many critics were quick to point out a certain paradox. Beneath the flow of witty dialogue, the scenes of casual adultery and sexual mix-ups, there must be some inconsolable tragedy that the author was not directly addressing. Whatever it was she meant seemed impossible to grasp, but there were clues in the text throughout the play and several of the speeches had a seriousness that was out of key with the rest. The play was delightful entertainment and it played to packed houses, but this enigma at its heart sometimes left audiences puzzled.

Caurer herself rarely discussed her work but during one public speech, in answer to a question from the audience, she mentioned as an aside that if the four acts of Autumn were performed in reverse order, certain scenes were removed, the music was omitted, and all the characters were played by actors of the opposite sex, then the play’s real meaning would be revealed.

Soon after this the play was re-mounted in that form, and it was seen to be transformed. These days it is rarely performed in its ‘original’ version, although the Caurer Memorial Theatre does revive it in workshop productions every few years.

Her third play appeared at approximately the same time as Autumn was being reinterpreted. Called The Reconstruction it was another tragedy: an immense work of some three and a half hours’ duration without an interval. It was presented in the form of a series of heartfelt monologues, describing life on particular islands. Each monologue was reconstructed by the next speaking part, making what had just been stated much more complex, but also more comprehensible. The language throughout was judged to be some of the most graceful and resonant ever spoken on the stage. Audiences were almost invariably reduced to tears by the experience of listening to her prose.

Caurer unexpectedly disappeared from view not long after the first performance of The