by Yaba Badoe
Ajuba touched the whale gratefully. ‘Thanks to you, I’ve done it,’ she said. ‘Who would have thought it? I’ve taught an octopus how to dance!’
‘You’ve done well, my child,’ a faraway voice confirmed. ‘You’ve done very well indeed. Now your next task is to find a tiger shark in the turquoise Sea of Cortez and ride it, because only a tiger shark can take you to your father’s bones.
Ajuba and the whale looked at each other in horror. Tiger sharks are among the most ferocious fish in the ocean. What is more, the Sea of Cortez is where pirates and mutineers used to sail in search of treasure. It is said that sometimes, on stormy nights, the ghosts of cargo boats can be heard crashing against rocks amid the screams of drowning sailors.
***
Ajuba and the whale trembled as they approached the turquoise sea, fearful of haunted galleons and petrified of tiger sharks. Even though the water was warm, goose pimples dimpled Ajuba’s skin.
‘I have to ride a tiger shark,’ she kept saying to the whale, to pluck up courage. ‘I have to ride a tiger shark, if I want to find my father’s bones and return home to my mother.’
Ajuba repeated the words a third, and then a fourth time. The whale knew that her friend without fins and blubber was desperately trying to reassure herself, so to keep the girl’s spirits up, she swam along calmly.
It isn’t hard to find tiger sharks in the Sea of Cortez. They prowl about in packs of seven, howling at the sun. Their cries are carried by the wind for miles, warning fish and men that danger is close at hand. Ajuba heard the baying of sharks, followed by the snapping of teeth as one of them caught a large kingfish. When she heard the sound of the shark wolfing down its meal, she recalled the words of the octopus: ‘A fish sleeping on a full belly is safer than a hungry fish.’
‘Let’s head towards that one,’ said Ajuba, nudging the whale in the direction of the shark gobbling down food. ‘It’s just eaten, so it may be less fierce than the others.’
The whale agreed. They swam up quietly behind the shark, which by this time was so satisfied with his large meal that he had left his friends to take an afternoon nap. Indeed, by the time Ajuba and the whale had reached him, his eyes were closed.
Ajuba carefully climbed behind the shark’s dorsal fin. The fish continued snoozing, dreaming of a feast of prawns and shrimps, laced with a brace of red snappers. He yawned, unaware of Ajuba on his back.
‘Well, ride him then,’ the whale whispered. ‘You’ve got to ride him, you know.’
Ajuba shut her eyes. Then, with an almighty kick, she hit the tiger shark. The shark growled, angry at being woken up. He roared, looking from left to right, in case he could eat whatever had disturbed him. He couldn’t see Ajuba, but he could feel something on his back: something that was clutching on to his fin and hugging his sides.
The shark shook himself to see if the thing would fall off. It didn’t. He tried to snap behind his head, but couldn’t reach far enough. He twisted in the water and somersaulted, but still Ajuba clung on. Finally, impatient to rid himself of this burden, he charged into open water.
The shark moved with the speed of a giant canoe rowed by a hundred men. He thrashed water aside, beating his tail this way and that, lunging downwards, leaping towards the sky. Then, with an angry scream, he plunged down again. Ajuba hung on, even though her legs against the shark’s razor sharp fin were frozen with terror.
Without realising where he was heading, the enraged tiger shark sped towards the whirlpool of Cortez. The currents there sucked him to the centre, to a place where his massive strength was as useless as a limp strand of seaweed. He spun round and around, whirling and turning, until he was moving so fast that he dissolved in a mass of red liquid. Ajuba tumbled down behind him, spiralling towards the centre of the sea.
As the currents sucked her down, they whipped her legs together – lashing them as if with rope. Ajuba spun around and as she did so, she changed. Her hair grew long, stretched by torrents of water; her body became taller and when she looked down at her toes, she saw they had turned into black fins. What’s more, her legs had merged into a mermaid’s tail, studded with scales that glistened like purple amethysts.
Ajuba was astonished at how the sea had transformed her. She was no longer a village girl but a Mami-Wata, one of the sea goddesses that people in her village whispered about on still afternoons when the sea rose angrily.
‘Mame will never recognise me now,’ Ajuba thought sadly, as she swished her new tail around. It sparkled in the water, so she twirled it again, turning her head to admire herself. As she looked, her eye caught a glimpse of something white glinting beneath her. She swam down to see what it was.
At the bottom of the whirlpool, stretching for miles and miles, was a graveyard. Shipwrecked vessels lay broken in pieces, their treasure tossed on the sand. Canoes, which had collided with giant fishes, lay ripped in two, their cargo of pearls scattered; and everywhere, for as far as Ajuba could see, were the skeletons of sailors and fishermen, their bones washed clean by sea dew.
‘This is where my father must be,’ Ajuba decided, swimming over the graveyard. She picked her way carefully through the skeletons. Some still had their swords strapped to them. Others had gold teeth or wore necklaces and bracelets. In broken cradles, she saw the tiny bones of sea-tossed babies.
Eventually, Ajuba found the bones she was looking for. She recognised the gold shark’s tooth chain around the neck. Ajuba dragged her father’s bones to a rock that stood far from any living thing. There, she lay down beside what was left of her father and wept. She cried for the games they had played together, the stories he had told her of windswept days out at sea and stars that fly at night. She cried for their round house by the seashore, and those warm dark nights when, half asleep, she would hear the murmur of her parents talking. Then, she cried for her mother who was cleaning and selling fish on her own, and the bed of matting that she would never be able to sleep on again. Ajuba wept, until the rock she was lying beside absorbed all her grief and rose up into a tall, grey mountain.
It was then that Ajuba heard the familiar thump of the whale’s tail in water. ‘My, how you’ve grown,’ the whale exclaimed. ‘You’re almost as tall as I am now.’
‘Am I?’ Ajuba turned around, so the whale could take her in completely. ‘I’m surprised that you recognised me with my new tail and everything. Do you like it?’
‘Of course!’ the whale replied. ‘You look a bit more like us than those who walk on land. I reckon you’ve got the best of both worlds now.’
Ajuba grinned at her friend. Then she looked at her father’s bones and wondered what to do with them. ‘I suppose I’d better gather them up and return them to my village, hadn’t I?’
The whale nodded.
Ajuba broke her father’s bones one by one, before tying them in a bundle with a strand of her long black hair. In the middle of the bundle she placed her father’s gold chain and shark’s tooth, as proof that the bones belonged to the Man with Silver Nets. Then she strapped the parcel around her waist and, beckoning to the whale, they swam off to find the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa.
***
As they drew close to the beach where Ajuba’s house stood, the friends hid themselves in the sea’s shadow, in case the villagers saw them and were frightened. Ajuba swam in dark pools and sheltered behind rocks. Even so, a fisherman almost glimpsed her but she ducked in time. All he could see was a huge purple fin plunging under water. The man was her brother.
Early the next morning, Ajuba swam towards the shore. The round, firm house that she had lived in was still standing and her brother was patiently mending nets that had once belonged to their father. Seated beside him, Ajuba saw a woman feeding a child. A few yards away her mother sat on a stool, singing as she washed clothes. The wind carried her song over a coconut grove and swept it out to sea.
Ajuba whispered a message through the wind and suddenly, alert to her daughter’s presence, the fisherman’s widow
left her washing to walk on the beach.
Scanning the waves, the woman called out, perturbed: ‘Let me see your face, my daughter. Let me see you one last time, so that I can sleep in the knowledge that you are safe and well.’
Ajuba swam closer to the shore, but still kept her face hidden.
In desperation her mother stepped into the sea. Ajuba shrank back, in case the woman who’d suckled her and taught her to talk, the woman who’d tried to show her how to wash clothes and clean fish, and who she had clung to when the villagers had wrenched her away, should find her appearance upsetting.
‘Daughter,’ her mother cried, a sob in her voice. ‘I dreamed of you last night, but when I touched you I didn’t know if you were dead or alive.’
The fisherman’s widow brushed tears of f her cheeks. ‘If you can hear me, Ajuba, please let me see your face. Then I’ll know you’ve done what was asked of you, and our village will prosper. Let me see you, child.’
Her curly, black hair sparkling with sea dew, Ajuba slowly rose from the sea, strings of seaweed and shells around her neck.
The fisherman’s widow stepped back in alarm, amazed at how tall her daughter had grown and how beautiful she had become. When at last she found her voice, she said, ‘You are just as you were in my dream. You have become a daughter of the sea, Ajuba. But remember, before the sea claimed you, you were my daughter first.’
‘I know, Mame!’ Ajuba replied, blowing a kiss to her mother. ‘I was your daughter first and I love you!’ Ajuba removed the bundle of bones from her waist and threw it on to the beach where she’d once played.
‘May the gods watch over you, my child! And may they grant you the grace to remember me as fondly as I remember you.’
‘Goodbye,’ Ajuba cried as her mother looked at her and waved from the shore.
‘Goodbye,’ the waves echoed.
Out at sea, Ajuba gazed at her home for a long time. She stared until the whale tickled her playfully and said, ‘Come on, Ajuba. Let’s go and find another adventure.’
And together they dived into the deep blue ocean.
2
The Wild Princesses of Orkney
This is a story of long ago: when dragons lived in caves and frogs turned into Princes; when eagles hatched Princesses and mermaids swam beyond the coast of Scotland. All those years ago, there lived on the island of Rousay a King whose people wanted an heir. The King had three children already, three daughters named Jezebel, Delilah and Jael. But the King and his chieftains wanted a son to continue the ancient traditions of Orkney, the hunting of wild boar through Quandale forest in spring, and the supervision of trips abroad to pillage and plunder once the harvest was in.
After his third daughter, dark-haired Jael, was born, the King went to seek advice on how to get a son from Nancy of Hullion – a wise woman who lived alone with a cat in a tumble-down croft.
‘What can I do for you, my Lord?’ Nancy asked when she saw the King. Handing him a tot of whisky, she saw anxiety pucker his brow. ‘It’ll be a son you’re after my Lord, eh?’
The King nodded sadly. ‘What can I do to have a fine healthy boy?’
‘Are you sweet and tender to your lady wife?’
The King fell silent. It was well known on the island that, with the birth of each of his daughters, he had grown irritable and vexatious with his wife. He believed that their lack of a son was her fault and not his as well.
‘If you can’t be kind to her,’ said Nancy, ‘the next best thing to do is to follow an eastern practice. In those countries, my Lord, whenever girls are born and a boy is wanted, the last girl is reared as a lad. And in nine cases out of ten, the next child will be male.’
‘So Jael must be like a son to me,’ said the King.
‘That’s right,’ Nancy replied. ‘But it would help if you were kind to the Queen as well.’
From that day onward, little Jael’s life changed. Her pink baby gowns were removed and she was given the blue silk ones the Queen had made for her long-awaited son. When Jael was a toddler, old enough for skirts, she was made to wear boy’s britches. As soon as her thick curly hair began growing, it was cropped short – so that unless you knew her story, you would think on meeting her that she was a beautiful black-haired boy.
***
After the Queen’s disappearance, the King tried to reform. He was aware that his treatment of the Queen and his subjects had been selfish, and he knew that he was to blame for the unhappiness on Orkney. He mourned the days of his youth, when the Queen’s laughter rang through Trumland Castle and her smile had been like the first breath of spring after a dark Orcadian winter.
‘It will never happen again,’ he swore. ‘I shall never abdicate my responsibilities. To make sure, I’ll never marry again. Orkney must look for an heir elsewhere.’
The King’s plan was to arrange for one of his daughters’ husbands to become the next King of Orkney. That is, if and when they married. I say that because, though the Princesses were beautiful, their unusual upbringing both before and after their mother’s disappearance had made them unconventional.
Even though Jael was still treated like a favourite son, wearing boy’s clothes and her hair cropped, she was extraordinarily good friends with her sisters Jezebel and Delilah. All three of them spent as much time as possible out of doors. They rode to the forest for picnics of cheese and barley wine, and Jael taught her sisters the songs she had picked up on her outings with the King’s men. She showed her sisters how to ride astride, instead of side-saddle as the ladies did in those days, so that they too could pursue foxes, deer and wild boar at royal hunts.
At the height of midsummer, during the simmer dim, when the sun never set and arctic seals splashed close to the shore, the three sisters walked along the jagged cliffs of Scabra Head and sang songs to the mermaids there. And during autumn, when the sun slipped away to the other side of the world and left Orkney dark and gloomy over winter, they picked blackberries at Westray – smearing their bodies with black juice till they looked like zebras dancing in moonlight.
‘You’ll never find husbands if you go on at this rate,’ their old nursemaid, Betsy, scolded when they returned to the castle after one of their midnight jaunts. ‘Staring at the stars indeed! You’ll be calling yourself the three witches of Orkney next. You should be in bed, fast asleep, like your sister Jewel.’
The King’s youngest daughter was quite different from her sisters. Jewel had her mother’s golden hair and, like the Queen, was as patient as an old snail determined to reach its destination at the end of a long walled garden where seedlings are ripe for eating. But the journey Jewel was making was towards marriage and a hearth of her own.
Unlike her sisters, who frightened men with their bold glittering eyes, Jewel was gifted at reading men’s hearts and making them fond of her. She spent hours chatting sweetly to the young men of the court, while she sat embroidering a tapestry beside the fire in the Great Hall. And when winter evenings seemed tiresome, she fetched her mother’s lute and sang songs of lands where the sun shines continuously.
‘You’re the jewel of my weary old heart,’ the King said, smiling fondly at his daughter. But everybody knew that the real jewel of his heart was dark-haired Jael, who rode with her older sisters and laughed like the leader of a pack of howling wolves.
It happened that there was a man in the King’s court who was particularly fond of Jewel. His name was Magnus. He was the son of the wisest and rowdiest of the King’s chieftains – Lord Blackhamar of Blackhamar Lodge to the north-east of Rousay. Magnus had a strong but gentle face, a character at once manly and sensitive, and legs so shapely that even nursing mothers swooned at the sight of them.
Jewel received Magnus’s attentions coyly, giggling at the fuchsias he picked her and the presents he gave her of shells and stones that he found along the shore. Jewel saw that Magnus was a kind man and, knowing that he was a well-placed son of Orkney from a family with a large estate, she fell in love with him.
As was the custom in those days, Lord Blackhamar went to the King to ask if Magnus could marry Jewel.
‘Nothing would please me more,’ the King replied, delighted at the thought of such a worthy son-in-law. ‘But according to royal protocol, Jewel’s elder sisters must marry before she can. Please tell Magnus to be patient. I’ll try and get those strong-headed daughters of mine married off as soon as I can.’
***
A general call was sent through out the Norselands, and territories to the north and south, that the King of Orkney was looking for suitors for his three eldest daughters. Word had it that they were as sweet as Orcadian mead, as strong as Scottish whisky and as graceful as the seals splashing around Rousay.
‘Just wait till they see your tempers,’ laughed Betsy, scrubbing the long white backs of the three Princesses.
They cursed her roundly. ‘We don’t want to marry,’ they yelled. ‘Let sweet-tempered Jewel do our marrying for us. We won’t make Princes out of frogs, will we sisters?’
But though they stormed and raged around Trumland Castle, and prowled in front of the fire like angry panthers, in their hearts they were secretly pleased at all the attention they were getting. That is, Delilah and Jezebel were pleased, but not Jael.
For the first time in her life she was told not to wear men’s clothes. She was no longer allowed to go drinking with the young men at court, and was prevented from cutting her hair. At first she tore her dresses off and pounded at the King’s door when Betsy told her that it was on his instructions that her clothes had been burnt.
‘Father,’ she cried, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Am I no longer your girl-son, your favourite darkhaired Jael?’
The King hardened his heart, believing that what he was doing was in his daughter’s best interest. ‘You’ll always be my Jael,’ he replied, safe behind a locked door. ‘But you’ve got to marry. You’ve got to marry so that Orkney can have a son and heir.’
