by Yaba Badoe
The Secret of the Purple Lake
Yaba Badoe
Dedication
For my godchildren - Ajani, Mukai, Joe, Ben, Allegra, Fynnie and Kaahiye - and the next generation of storytellers and readers - Issa, Emefa, Elorm and Lael - with all my love.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
1 The Fisherman’s Daughter
2 The Wild Princesses of Orkney
3 The Walrus Prince
4 Romilly The Golden Eagle
5 The Fish-man of the Purple Lake
Acknowledgements
Copyright
1
The Fisherman’s Daughter
A long time ago, during the days of the Ghana Empire, there lived a girl named Ajuba whose house was by the sea. Ajuba lived with her father, her mother and her brother, but it was her father she loved best of all. He was called ‘the Man with Silver Nets’ because every time he went out to sea, he returned with nets teeming with fish.
Early one morning, when Ajuba should have been helping her mother light the fire to cook breakfast, she followed her father to the seashore. ‘Can’t I come with you this time?’ she pleaded, gazing up at her father. ‘Please, Pa. I’ll help you throw your nets into the ocean and if water comes into your boat I’ll bail it out for you.’
‘But who will help your mother if you come with me?’
Ajuba didn’t know what to say. She didn’t enjoy helping her mother clean and gut fish – not to mention the other household chores she avoided whenever she could: chores such as sweeping the yard and washing her brother’s clothes.
‘I’d rather be out at sea with you, Pa,’ Ajuba mumbled. She was about to dawdle back home, when her father grabbed her hands and swung her round and round, making the sea and sky whirl around her.
‘Would you like me to throw you to the fishes?’ her father teased.
‘Yes!’ Ajuba screamed. ‘Throw me into the sea and I’ll swim alongside your boat and fill your nets with snappers.’
‘One of these days I’m going to give in to you, my girl!’
Ajuba’s father put her down on the ground. When she tried to stand up, she staggered from side to side and toppled on to her bottom, like an old woman drunk on palm wine.
Before he set off, the Man with Silver Nets rubbed a special lotion of coconut oil on his skin, for protection against any danger he might encounter out at sea. The shark’s tooth he wore around his neck for good luck shone and his skin glistened as he pushed the canoe into the water. He leapt into the boat, paddling on one side and then the other, until the only thing he could see was a speck on the shore waving at him: his daughter, Ajuba.
That evening, around dusk, when the heat of the day rested like a moist blanket on the sea, the village women helped the fishermen drag in their nets. Ajuba and her mother waited for her father. ‘Perhaps he went out far this time,’ her mother said, ‘to find us deep-water fish.’
But twilight came and still there was no sign of the Man with Silver Nets. Ajuba and her mother huddled together, scanning the sea for his canoe. Apart from tiny crabs scuttling about their feet, and the sound of frogs croaking in the lagoon, everything was quiet.
At midnight, Ajuba’s brother came out of the family house to join his mother and sister, for there was still no sign of the fisherman.
At daybreak, just as a breeze rustled the palm trees and the sea began to stir, three crows shattered the morning calm. They flew screaming through a coconut grove and circled the family hut. The birds perched on the roof, but then flapping their wings they leapt up and down, as if the roof was alight with flames.
The villagers ran out to see what was happening. Ajuba’s mother flung coconut husks at the birds to keep them away from the hut. But they returned cawing, an omen of death in the family. It was then that one of the villagers pointed to the sea. There, on the milky horizon, was the fisherman’s black canoe coming home with the tide. The canoe was empty.
***
Life changed in the village. The cocks stopped crowing, hens stopped laying eggs, and children sickened beneath the noonday sun. Then, one after the other, tethered goats disappeared and snakes, which had once only come out in the moonlight, flaunted themselves by day. Over seven months the village fishermen caught nothing but tiny fish, mangoes dropped green from trees, and children spat out fruit poisoned by maggots.
One evening a cloud of vultures dropped seeds over the village farmlands. The next day, giant thistles sprung up and choked the ripening corn. Everyone grew lean.
On the advice of the oldest man in the village, the community decided to seek help from Nana – an old woman who lived at the edge of the forest. Nana was as gnarled and thin as the trees that twisted around her hut, and her face was wrinkled like a tiger nut. She understood the ways of forest folk and could work their magic well. It was said that she could whistle dwarves down from trees and once, a long time ago, she had danced with leopards under a full moon.
A delegation, led by the old man, went to see Nana. After they described their troubles, she withdrew to sit beneath a Nim tree – the most ancient tree in her compound. Nana gently hummed to herself and when all around her was still, opened her cloudy eyes. ‘Just as the forest claimed me,’ she began in a low musical voice, ‘so the sea must have its daughter.’
‘What do you mean?’ the old man asked.
‘The child the sea wants,’ Nana explained, ‘is the daughter of the Man with Silver Nets. His spirit cannot rest until his bones are brought to land for burial. Only then will the village know peace and prosperity again.’
Ajuba’s mother wept when the villagers came to take her child away. Ajuba clung to her mother screaming: ‘I want to stay with Mame. I’ll cook and clean. I’ll do everything you ask me to do, won’t I Mame?’
‘This girl is my only daughter,’ her mother cried. ‘You can’t take her. I forbid it!’
Deaf to their protests, the villagers prised Ajuba’s fingers from her mother’s waist. The woman dropped to the ground and, rubbing dust over her face, cursed the villagers for their wickedness.
The old man tried to soothe her by wiping her brow clean and assuring her that Kwame, greatest of all the gods, who created heaven and earth and everything on land and sea, would watch over Ajuba. But the woman cursed each and every one of the people who tore her daughter from her arms.
That night Ajuba was given one of Nana’s potions to drink. She fell into a deep sleep in which she dreamed that hyenas carried her for miles along the seashore. When she awoke, she found herself alone on a strange beach. She would have cried had it not been for the reassuring sound of the sea calling her name.
The child replied by paddling along the shoreline and picking up brightly coloured shells. She was so absorbed in the purple, pink and gold shells that she didn’t notice the sea changing. In a matter of seconds it receded a mile down the shore, then it yawned, turning into the mouth of a gigantic hippopotamus about to swallow the world.
Ajuba dropped the shells. She was about to scream when she heard Nana’s voice telling her not to be frightened. But as the enormous wave curled around her and swallowed her deep down to its belly at the bottom of the sea, she yelled, terrified, convinced that she was tumbling to her death.
***
Ajuba’s fall ended with a thud on the seabed. ‘Have I become a ghost?’ she asked.
She saw that her arms and legs were still the same and, to her astonishment, she could breathe under water. There wasn’t much to see though, for the water hung gloomy and heavy like the sky on a stormy night. There weren’t any fishes swimming about and there was no foliage, just dark waves rolling along an endless desert of sand.
> ‘Where should I go from here,’ Ajuba wondered. ‘How am I to find my way home again?’
From out of nowhere a voice answered her question. It was the reassuring sound of Nana speaking: ‘Ajuba, you are here to find your dead father’s bones and return them to land for burial.’
‘How am I going to do that? Can’t you just let me go home again? My mother worries about me …’
‘Listen to what I have to tell you, my child,’ Nana replied sternly. ‘To find your father, you must accomplish three tasks …’
‘But I want to go home!’
‘Didn’t you want to follow your father out to sea?’
‘That was different.’
‘Maybe it was,’ said Nana, ‘but since you’re here, if you want to survive what’s in store for you, you’d better do what I say. Are you listening?’
Ajuba nodded, but before Nana could continue, she said, ‘When I’ve done what’s asked of me, will I get to go home again?’
‘Stop asking questions and listen! First, you must steal a carbuncle, a sign of wisdom, from a whale and bury it in the Purple Lake. But be careful, for beside the lake lives a Fish-man who guards it with his life.’
‘But where can I find a whale?’
‘Follow the warm currents north,’ Nana’s voice replied. ‘And there, beside a green island, you will see many whales.’
Eager to return home to her mother, Ajuba set off at once. She swam upwards to a part of the sea where fishes swim and food grows. There, she followed a group of brightly coloured fish looking for tepid water to play in. They soon stumbled into a flurry of warm waves that swept Ajuba northwards. Ajuba followed the warm current and then, after days of the sea being pitch black, Nana’s voice came to her with the words: ‘You’ve reached your destination, my child. Look around.’
Ajuba surfaced to look for the green island. She immediately dived back into the water, coming back up again when she’d plucked up the courage to face the biting wind. It was as cold as the blade of a new cutlass touching her cheeks.
To her left, Ajuba noticed an island covered with snowy peaks and black granite cliffs. There didn’t seem to be anything green about the island yet, to her right, she noticed seven black monsters splashing in the sea.
‘Whales!’ Ajuba gasped. She looked closer and saw that the largest whale had whiskery growths over his body. ‘Carbuncles!’ she decided and swung into action.
Ajuba swam as close as she could to the biggest whale and then heaved herself on to its back. Its skin was as dark as her own, but a thousand times more slippery. Ajuba took a step forward and slid. She slithered this way and that, tumbling down mounds of black blubber, before colliding into the carbuncle on the whale’s nose.
‘What is that irritating tickle?’ the whale rumbled as Ajuba landed on its carbuncle. The whale twitched its nose in an attempt to stop whatever was tickling it, but by now, Ajuba was clutching the whiskery carbuncle between its eyes. The whale stared at Ajuba in cross-eyed bewilderment. Although his carbuncle was exceedingly large, he was not, in fact, the cleverest of whales.
‘What in heaven’s name is that thing hanging on my carbuncle?’ he bellowed.
He dived to the bottom of the ocean, while Ajuba hung on with all her strength. The whale resurfaced, spurting out a jet of water, but Ajuba clung on as determined as a soldier ant in battle. She tugged and heaved, shoved and pulled, until little by little she began to ease the growth from the whale’s nose.
‘My carbuncle!’ the whale moaned. ‘I’ve been working on it for years. It’s the best in all of the seven seas and it’s mine. It’s mine!’ He plunged into the water once again.
Unfortunately for him, Ajuba had already uprooted his precious possession and strapped it on to her back. When he lunged into the sea, Ajuba rolled off the whale’s nose.
The weight of the carbuncle on her back thrust her under water. She would have sunk right to the bottom if she hadn’t landed on the back of a smiling whale, a baby whale, who had been watching Ajuba’s antics on its grandfather’s back.
‘Why are you stealing Grandfather’s carbuncle?’ the small whale asked, thumping her stumpy tail in the sea.
‘I have to throw a carbuncle in the Purple Lake before I can find my father’s bones,’ Ajuba explained. ‘You see, his bones have to be buried on dry land before my village can prosper again. Then, if all goes well, I’ll be able to sleep on my own mat once more.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said the small whale, though she didn’t really understand what Ajuba was saying and couldn’t work out what a creature without fins, nor much blubber, was doing so far away from land. ‘Would you like me to help you?’
‘Will you help me? Will you really help me?’
‘I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it,’ the whale sniffed.
‘In that case,’ Ajuba replied, ‘I’d really appreciate a ride to the Purple Lake.’
And so, together, they sped off to the Purple Lake.
They swam down south to where porpoises and dolphins play in the sun. They sped past islands with palm trees that catch shooting stars at night. And once, as they rested in the Caribbean, they saw the sea leap with hundreds of flying fish. Eventually, Ajuba and the whale found the Purple Lake hidden underwater at the bottom of a blue mountain range between two brooding volcanoes. The lake was still but restless, a dog snapping its teeth while asleep.
Ajuba and the whale approached cautiously. ‘I must beware of the Fish-man,’ Ajuba reminded herself.
While the whale hovered over the Lake, Ajuba unstrapped the carbuncle from her back and flung it down. As it hit the water, the Lake seethed and snarled. Foaming at its centre, it rose up in the form of a long, unfurling snake.
‘Welcome to the Purple Lake,’ the snake hissed, swaying from side to side. ‘I understand that you have been sent here to find a path to where your father, the Man with Silver Nets, lies swallowed by the sea. I’m here to tell you, Ajuba,’ said the snake, ‘that if you want to find your father, you must go to the Pink and Grey Cave, and teach the octopus who lives there how to dance. Listen to the octopus while she dances, because she will tell you the secret of how to succeed in your final task.’
Ajuba watched, mesmerised by the snake twisting before her. She was so fascinated by what it was doing that she didn’t notice the thing creeping up behind her: the Fish-man, a beast with the legs and arms of a man, but the trunk and head of a fish. In his hand he wielded an enormous sword made from a thousand pointed shark’s teeth. He swung the sword over Ajuba’s head, preparing to slice her in half and then dice her up into pieces.
‘Look out!’ yelped the whale as she swatted the Fish-man with her tail.
‘Come on,’ Ajuba screamed. ‘Let’s get out of here!’
Ajuba leapt on to the whale’s back. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the Fish-man running towards her, waving his sword of shark’s teeth above his head. But the whale was moving faster than he was, and so, quicker than lightning, the pair fled the Purple Lake, leaving a cloud of sand behind them.
***
Now, the path to the Pink and Grey Cave is covered with scuttling crabs and spiky black sea anemones. Red and blue jellyfish hang in the water like lights suspended by invisible threads. Ajuba and the whale followed the lights towards the cave, carefully avoiding shelves of jagged coral. The whale breathed in to squeeze past them, and Ajuba ducked to avoid hitting sea bats that squawked when she touched them. The entrance to the cave was terrifying. It gaped, dark and mysterious; a passageway to another world.
‘Would you please wait for me here, Whale?’ Ajuba said to her companion. ‘And if I’m not out soon, come and fetch me. OK?’
Ajuba drifted into the silence. A current lifted her up to a space shining with light: the Pink and Grey Cave. The light gave off a mysterious glow that made Ajuba feel as if she were floating in a dream.
The further up Ajuba floated, the brighter the mother-of-pearl shone. At first the light dazzled her, but gradually
she made out a creature with eight legs drifting towards her from the centre of the cave. ‘That must be the octopus that I have to dance with,’ Ajuba decided.
As the creature sashayed towards her, Ajuba was struck by the clearness of its skin. It appeared transparent, for the light from its mother-of-pearl surroundings shone right through it, giving it a radiant, otherworldly sheen.
‘Shall we dance?’ Ajuba asked the octopus, as it arrived in front of her.
‘Dance?’ answered the octopus. ‘Dance?’
‘Come now. Let me show you.’ Ajuba took a tentacle in each of her hands and began to stamp her feet and shake her hips the way she danced with her friends during village festivals. Under water, however, instead of drummers beating out a rhythm, there were crabs tapping their claws against conch shells, and the whale thumping her tail against the cave entrance. Ajuba stomped across the cave, making waves with her shaking body. The octopus copied her movements, transforming its tentacles into the arms of a belly dancer. While the creature danced it sang a song, which Ajuba listened to carefully.
‘A fish sleeping on a full belly is safer than a hungry fish,’ the octopus sang.
Eager to make sense of the song, Ajuba repeated the words – unaware that the creature was coiling a tentacle around her waist, another around her neck. Then, like it always did when it wrapped itself around something tasty, the octopus started squeezing.
‘Stop!’ Ajuba yelled. ‘You’re hurting me.’
The octopus kept on doing what it did instinctively. It hugged Ajuba so tightly, in fact, that struggling to breathe, she spluttered. Just as she was about to faint, the whale heard her cries for help and thundered into the cave. The small whale took in a deep gulp of water, spat it out and blew the octopus right across the cave. It crumpled in a heap of tentacles on the floor.
‘Are you OK?’ the whale asked Ajuba.
