by Yaba Badoe
The King decided that Prince Leo would leave Norway with Red Norman by the end of the week. Leo hastily put his affairs in order and on the morning of his departure went to the Queen’s chamber to say goodbye.
‘I’ve a feeling your journey is going to be difficult,’ the Queen said, touching Leo’s cheek. ‘Perhaps we shan’t see each other again. So before you leave, I want to remind you that nature has made you a patient man, Leo. You are patient and caring, yet there are some women who can’t be won with patience, my dear. Don’t be disheartened. I believe that after you’ve passed through great danger, you’ll find true love.’
‘I don’t want to go,’ Leo sighed. ‘I want to stay with you here, mother.’
Unable to bear the sight of tears welling up in her son’s eyes, the Queen turned away to hold back her own tears. When she was herself again, Astrid faced her son: ‘The world isn’t always a happy place, Leo. At times like this, it seems very dismal indeed. Remember how much I love you and heed what I’m going to tell you.’
Astrid stroked the token to Freya – the goddess of love, who soars through the heavens on a chariot hauled by black cats – she wore around her neck. ‘Remember that the sea is your friend, my son. At times, she can be as jealous as a woman determined to claim you as her own. But she can also soothe you, Leo, and reward you. You may not realise this but if you make friends with her, she’ll look after you. And when your time of danger comes, remember, ask her for help and she’ll protect you.’
Drawing her son closer, the Queen kissed him before handing him the locket of Freya to wear in her memory.
***
For over a year, Leo was a guest at Trumland Castle – home of the King of Orkney. His gentle ways made him a favourite with the four Princesses, who listened enraptured to the stories he sang with his harp. Delilah and Jezebel tossed teasing glances in his direction, but it was Jael that Leo loved. He was drawn to the glint of midnight in her eyes, and when she smiled at him, that hint of tenderness on her face that showed that she liked him.
The Prince waited patiently until the two eldest Princesses were married before approaching Jael. Then, on the first day of summer, when the sun was out on Rousay and the wind was soft as a baby’s sigh, Leo made a crown of pansies for the Princess.
‘Heartsease,’ he murmured, placing the wreath on Jael’s head. ‘Will you ease my heart, sweet Princess, by doing me the honour of marrying me?’
Jael roared with laughter, shaking so violently that she split a seam of her red dress, revealing a ribbon of flesh.
‘O Leo!’ she squirmed, dabbing her eyes with a sleeve. ‘Please don’t go wobbly on me like the rest of those fools. You’re my friend, you idiot! Don’t make me throw you off the island like I’ve done all the others.’
Undeterred, Leo trailed behind Jael – a pale, faithful Labrador.
Later that morning he fed her cakes he’d baked in the royal kitchens, cakes made of apple and carrot and walnut. Then, in the afternoon, he made her a bouquet of wild poppies with blue-eyed borage and red campion. And when Leo’s heart was full to overflowing, he rubbed the silver locket he wore and asked of Freya: ‘Why doesn’t she love me? Why doesn’t Jael of Orkney love me and go back to the Norselands with me as my bride?’
As dusk fell and the island of Rousay, bathed in grey pearly light, shimmered in the sea, Leo pleaded with Jael to reconsider his offer. She turned her back on him yet again. Dejected, Leo sang out his sorrow to the sea in a voice so clear and true that the rocks around Rousay shivered when they heard his song.
Jael, however, was still unmoved. In fact, the next day, when the two of them went for a walk on Scaqouy Head, she warned Leo never to speak of marriage again. But Leo couldn’t help himself. Before dusk had fallen, he proposed once again.
‘Is that man simple?’ Jael’s other suitors muttered to each other as they saw Leo emerging from the royal kitchens with a tray of fairy cakes for the Princess. ‘Can’t he see that he’ll never win her love? Can’t he see that his case is hopeless and he should move over to make room for us?’
That’s what they said. And yet, while countless suitors were dismissed from the island and rejected outright, Leo was allowed to stay – as long as he behaved the way Jael wanted.
At last the day came when Leo discovered the Princess prowling the garden of Trumland Castle. She paced between the rose bushes, catching her dress on thorns. Every now and again she shook the dress loose, leaving a trail of rose petals behind her.
Leo picked one up and placed it against his cheek. It was from a bush his mother loved, a wild rambling rose, which grew in pink clusters against the west wall of her summer house in Norseland. ‘This petal is an omen from Freya,’ Leo thought. ‘An omen that my time has come.’
The Prince blocked Jael’s path, placed a hand on her shoulder, and asked for the third time: ‘Will you marry me, Orkney Princess?’
‘Blast you, Leo!’
Leo thought he was about to be slapped but to his surprise, after scrutinising him, Jael said petulantly, ‘Very well, Leo of Norseland. I’ll marry you. But first you must make me a wedding dress from the feathers of puffins.’
Leo was overjoyed. ‘I’ll do anything you want, Jael, anything at all. Nothing will give me greater pleasure than to find feathers to adorn you for our wedding. The goddess of love glides through the sky in a cloak made of hawk’s wings.’
With those words Leo ran to find a boat to sail to Wyre Island where a colony of puffins lived. ‘When I come back,’ he promised the Princess, ‘with the help of Freya, my love for you will be such that you will love me in return.’
***
If he’d had more sense, Leo would have waited for the ferry to Wyre that morning, instead of rushing off. But eager to marry Jael and return home quickly after a year on Rousay, he brushed aside his usual nervousness around water and leapt into a rowing boat, paddling furiously towards Wyre. He didn’t notice storm clouds gathering, and as a stranger to Orkney he didn’t yet understand the curious ways of the Rousay currents. Leo was in love and in too much of a hurry to notice that anything was wrong. Until, halfway between Wyre and Rousay, a clap of thunder rocked the sea and turbulent waves thrust him off course towards the island of Egilsay – an island ringed by sharp granite rocks.
Wet and shivering, Leo cried out as lightening tore open the sky to reveal the faces of goblins laughing at him. The thunder roared again, this time with a low, ominous rumble, as if the mere sight of Leo struggling on the sea made it angry.
Terrified, the Prince called out a second time as the wind swept the boat towards the rocks off Egilsay. ‘Wind and rain stop!’ he begged. ‘Stop! For I must go to Wyre to make a dress of puffin’s feathers for my Orkney bride.’
If the storm heard Leo, it failed to respond. It flung the boat closer to Egilsay. Leo thrust the oars against a slab of rock to push himself to safety but first one and then the second oar snapped as the boat flooded with water. Convinced that he was about to die, the Prince clutched the locket around his neck to sing a last song.
His voice rose, a church bell sounding through the storm, through lashing rain and biting gale. Leo sang for his family in the Norselands, the tall pines and glaciers of his home. Then, he sang for Jael whose careless love had led him to his fate. The gale seemed to answer him in Astrid’s voice: a mother’s howl of grief as her son, his boat smashing against rocks, begins his journey from one world to the next.
‘Mother, is that you?’ Leo asked the wind. ‘Are you there?’
Believing that he could hear his mother’s voice, Leo remembered what she had said as she kissed him goodbye. Leo remembered her words and begged the sea for mercy.
The wind and rain paid no heed to his plea but the sea, sensing his desperation, stilled her waves. Having listened to Leo’s songs over the past year and been soothed by them, she swallowed him deep down into her belly.
At first, Leo didn’t know what was happening to him. Swaddled in an element he detested, he
thought he was drowning, being swept towards a watery grave, when all at once the sea seemed to cradle him, buoying him, till he floated up to see the sky again.
The storm had passed, the air was still, and yet Leo felt completely different. He was different. He saw that his skin, which had been white as the snow on the mountains of the Norselands, though still pale, was rough as a pumice stone. His hands, which had once teased tunes from a harp, were clumsy, fat flippers. His feet were large fins. What’s more, his beautiful golden hair had gone, replaced by a stubble of bristles on his chin. Leo would not have recognised himself had it not been for his mother’s silver locket coiled around one of the two tusks that sprang from where his teeth had been.
‘Has it come to this? Have I become a walrus?’ he asked, refusing to believe what his eyes told him. ‘Is this hulk what has become of Leo of the Norselands?’
Leo’s tears fell on Egilsay rock. They fell until the granite crags glistened beneath the midday sun. As always, sadness moved Leo to sing. He raised his curved tusks to the sky and opened his mouth to give his sorrow to the sea. He cleared his throat and breathed in deeply but instead of a glorious voice ringing out clear and true, a large croak came out. Leo sounded like an old Viking burping after a heavy meal.
‘What has become of my voice?’ He opened his mouth again to sing but the same undignified noise rang out louder than a donkey’s fart.
‘Not only have I become a walrus, I’ve also lost the gift I treasure most. My home is the sea, yet I’ve never liked the sea. I much prefer living on land. Not that I’m ungrateful, mind you …’
The pools of Egilsay rock rose as Leo filled them with his tears. They rose till they covered the tip of the highest granite peak and ran into the sea. The people of Rousay saw the island of Egilsay disappear under a river of tears. On the nearby island of Wyre, the white puffins whose feathers Jael had wanted for her wedding dress, scattered in alarm. Finally, the people of Rousay saw a fat grey walrus, its head bowed in grief, slowly swim away.
***
Leo travelled to the lands of the north to find creatures that looked like him: creatures with skins as tough as elephants and faces wizened by the wind. After several days, he came across a family of walruses looking for food beside the island of Greenland. They welcomed Leo into their circle, nibbling the stubble on his chin in greeting.
‘How did you get that silver locket around your tusk?’ asked a curious young walrus who hadn’t yet grown tusks. He was anxious to know the background of the wandering walrus that had just joined them.
‘I’m not really one of you,’ Leo confessed, stifling a sob. ‘I’m Leo – a Prince of the Norselands. I went to Orkney to find a wife and became as I am when the sea saved my life.’
‘You don’t seem very pleased to be alive,’ grunted an old bull walrus with long, grey bristles on his chin.
‘I don’t feel at home at sea,’ Leo replied. ‘I prefer dry land. What’s more, since my change, I’ve lost my voice. I can’t sing anymore and I love singing.’
‘Of course you can’t sing like those humans do,’ explained the old bull walrus. ‘We walruses don’t sing that type of song. We have our own music.’
His relatives nodded in agreement.
‘But I love singing,’ said Leo. ‘Even more than I love cooking and gardening. Singing makes me who I am.’
‘Who you were,’ said the old walrus, shaking his head sadly.
‘You’ll not be able to sing as a walrus, I’m afraid. Not unless you find your voice again or find a mate. Then you’ll sing a walrus song, which will be the making of you.’
The family of walruses waddled around Leo to comfort him. They stroked his back, massaging it softly to make him feel better. As they rubbed and stroked and grunted and snuffled, they put their heads together to think of a plan to help the walrus Prince.
‘We could take him back to Orkney to search for his old voice there,’ one suggested.
‘We could look inside a conch shell,’ said another. ‘They hold the music of the sea.’
‘I have the answer,’ said the old walrus, grunting in excitement.
‘Whale can help. The whale who travels with the fish-woman. The woman who once walked on land.’
Quickly, the old walrus told Leo about Ajuba, the fisherman’s daughter, who had been sent to sea by her village and had become a mermaid. Ajuba swam the seven seas with her best friend Whale, who occasionally returned to Greenland to visit relatives.
‘Whale should be coming home shortly,’ explained the walrus, ‘and when she does, I’ll ask her to take you to the fisherman’s daughter. If anyone can help you, I’m sure she can.’
For seven days Leo waited for Whale to appear. He waited with the family of walruses who tried their best to make him feel at home in the sea. They lazed about in the warm summer sunshine, splashing in the waters of Greenland. They guzzled clams and crabs, then feasted on sea-worms tossed with sea cucumbers and cabbage. In the afternoon they relaxed on cushions of seaweed, burping happily to the sun.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that he could no longer sing, Leo might have tolerated his new life in his ungainly new body. The mounds of blubber beneath his skin, which had turned pinkish-brown in the sun, kept him gloriously warm in icy water. And day by day, he began to realise that his lumbering bulk made him less anxious about being in water. It was the sea that had saved him and now, when he plunged in the element he’d once been frighted of, instead of feeling cold and clumsy, he was graceful and at ease.
No, life as a walrus wasn’t bad; especially since Leo was enjoying spending time with a big-eyed walrus who had taken a liking to him. As she scrubbed and pummelled his back, the frustrations of his stay on Rousay were rubbed away and, gradually, Leo forgot his love for Jael.
At the end of a week, Leo bade farewell to the walruses and swam towards an iceberg where he’d been told that Whale would be waiting for him. When she saw Leo, Whale looked at him suspiciously.
‘Why do you want to meet my friend Ajuba?’ she asked, wary of anyone who might intrude on her friendship with the fisherman’s daughter or anyone who might hurt her.
‘I need help to find my voice,’ Leo said. ‘I lost it when I became a walrus and I’m not at all happy without it.’
‘I’m not sure that Ajuba’s the person you’re after. I’m not sure if anyone can help you for that matter.’
The look of desolation that swept over Leo’s grizzled face at the suggestion that no one might be able to help him surprised Whale. So much so that, being a fundamentally kind-hearted creature, she added quickly: ‘I’m not sure if Ajuba will be able to help you, but maybe it’ll be worth your while talking to her.’
‘Pray tell me, where does my lady dwell?’
‘I left my lady in the Gulf of Siam. Your lady,’ Whale sniffed, ‘is with a band of sea gypsies. She says they’re worshipping her – though how pouring bottles of whisky and lotus flower wine into the sea can be described as worship I don’t know. I’m happy to take you to her if that’s what you want. But whether it’ll do you any good or not …’
‘I need to meet her,’ Leo insisted. ‘I don’t think I have any other choice at the moment.’
And so it was that with a swish of their tails, the walrus Prince and Whale began the long journey to the Gulf of Siam.
***
They travelled across the choppy waters of the Bay of Biscay, around the coast of Africa, to the emerald land of Siam where the people live by an inner grace directed by the sea and stars. There, they discovered Ajuba floating on warm water, her face turned up to the sun.
Up till that moment, Leo, having only been a walrus for a short time, had never seen a mermaid. He was startled by what he saw. Ajuba was almost as tall as Whale. Her skin shone like polished black coral and her long fish’s tail, which could move with the strength of a herd of sea lions, swished seductively in the turquoise water.
The fisherman’s daughter gave the walrus Prince a lazy smile of wel
come and, as she did so, Leo sensed that if anyone could help him find his voice again then Ajuba was that person.
‘Well,’ she said, when she’d listened to Leo’s story, ‘I think the first thing we must do is investigate your talent for singing. When you walked on land, what did people say your voice was like?’
Leo paused to think. Eventually, he said: ‘At times they used to say that I sang like a nightingale. I’ve also heard it said that my voice is like a tinkling silver bell. But my mother claims that when I sing she is enchanted, overcome with the magical splendour of the Northern Lights.’
‘Anything else?’ Ajuba probed, sensitive to the wobble in Leo’s voice when he mentioned his mother.
The walrus Prince snuffled. ‘Sometimes,’ he sighed, ‘when I was really inspired, people used to say that it was as if I was singing to Freya – the goddess of love. They said I used to sing to her with the voice of a bird born in paradise,’
‘A bird of paradise,’ Ajuba murmured, scratching her scalp to help her think. ‘I’m not sure about this, but it’s worth a try …’
Without further ado she dived underwater, cutting through currents to the boats of the sea gypsies. The gypsy children hailed her, calling to their parents to come and look at the black goddess. Soon the decks were crowded with people throwing paper flowers at Ajuba. There were old men and women, naked brown children, men wrapped in sarongs, and sun-kissed women suckling their babies.
Ajuba silenced them with a wave of her hand. ‘I want you to do something for me,’ she asked, as a hush descended over the honey-brown people. ‘Will you fetch me the feathers of birds of paradise? Twenty-one glorious feathers; one for every year the walrus Prince has lived.’
Delighted to do the bidding of their ebony goddess, the sea gypsies pulled up anchor and sailed away in their brightly coloured boats. A warm wind blew them gently along the coast until they arrived at their destination: a sheltered cove that led to a jungle on the mainland of Siam.
