by Brian Eames
Again the man lashed out with the whip. Ontoquas lurched to avoid it and lost her footing on the wet deck planks, falling onto her back and nearly dropping the wailing infant. The deafening crack resounded against the rail behind her. A hand clamped down on her arm. Ontoquas bore down on it. The man howled as the girl’s teeth crunched against bone, and then she reeled as the butt of the whip came down on the top of her head.
Somehow she still held the baby. He was part of her now, her own brother. She would do anything for him. Again Ontoquas rose, the first mate separated from her by a wrestling crowd of sailors and slaves.
The whip crackled the air. Many months before, Ontoquas had come to understand that she would die, and die young, but with the infant in her arms, living was an imperative. If she did not live, the baby, too, would die. Ontoquas charged at the first mate, who had made his way clear to her, and scooted under his arm. Across the deck she scampered, the snap of the whip chasing her. She ran directly at the ship’s boy—crouched in terror—the infant still cradled tight in the crook of her arm. Next to the boy rocked the overturned bucket.
“Leave me be!” the boy wailed.
“Get that one!” Ontoquas heard a sailor shout. “Grab her!”
Ontoquas lifted the boy’s bucket by its handle. She turned toward the rail, and she ran like she had never run. She leaped as she had never leaped. One bare foot lighted upon the rail. She thrust against it and was over.
Through the air they flew, Ontoquas and her new brother, the bucket held above her head by its handle. The endless arms of the Great Mother Sea rushed up to greet them.
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CHAPTER 3:
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Shark
TWO DAYS LATER
In an open and seemingly infinite sea the girl floated. From the vantage of a flock of white birds that passed high overhead, it would appear the girl was alone, but she was not. She clung to the sides of the bucket, keeping the rolling waves from tipping it and using its buoyancy to save her strength. Inside the bucket the tiny baby curled on his side and slept. In the late afternoon the wind ebbed to a gentle breeze, and Ontoquas was able to haul herself up and spread her body over the opening of the barrel without tipping it. In this way she protected the boy from the bright sun. From this position she looked at the uninterrupted horizon on all sides.
Now I cannot die. I must survive. I must find land for my brother.
In the language of her recently lost people the name Ontoquas meant “she-wolf.” On the night before she was born her mother had a dream in which a wolf spoke of a daughter who would survive the death of her people to go off and begin the world again.
Ontoquas’s mother, Shanuke, was an important healer; her father was the great Wampanoag Chief Anawan. But that was before the war and the killing. Anawan and his tribe had joined with a fellow Wampanoag tribe headed by the great Metacomet to fight a war against the white man: King Philip’s War. Metacomet and Ontoquas’s father led many raids on English villages, but then a man named Benjamin Church came hunting. With the help of an Indian tracker, Church led a silent attack before dawn on the grassy meadow where Metacomet and Anawan and their weary warriors had made camp.
The colonists’ rage was not quelled with just the death of the men. Soon afterward the women and children of Anawan’s village were rounded up and brought to the port of Boston. There they were sold into slavery and loaded onto ships heading south to distant islands where sugarcane grew.
For two years Ontoquas had known the whip of many masters. She had felt the searing heat of the boiling houses and smelled blackened death among the torched sugarcane stalks, burned before harvesting. She had watched men, women, and even children sink down into such fields from exhaustion. And she had come to care little as to whether she lived or died.
Ontoquas was twelve years old.
I thought the wolf had lied, Ontoquas thought, stealing a peek into the shadows of the bucket where the little boy twitched as he slept. Oh, please, please, let the wolf be right. I want to live again.
The unlikely pair bobbed along between the rising and falling of the waves, the Caribbean sun blazing down. Ontoquas let her head hang. Sometimes she drifted into sleep, only to startle awake in time to steady her balance on top of the bucket. She awoke to measure how far the sun had moved along its descending arc.
Night would come. What then?
Before she had time to consider how she would survive the night, something rose slowly from the water—a fin. It formed a tidy triangle and it cut a straight line through the surface of the water. Ontoquas had watched dolphins swimming alongside her ship in the open sea, chittering and carving exuberant arcs through the air. She liked to think they were laughing at the ridiculous humans. But this fin was different. It had no curve.
Ontoquas pulled herself up onto the bucket as best she could, bending her knees to keep her toes out of the water. Supporting her entire weight and that of the baby, the bucket’s lip sank to just a few inches above the surface of the water.
The fin carved a complete circle around Ontoquas. Then another.
“Leave us!” she shouted at it. Could sharks be scared away? Her heart thundered in her chest. No, no! This could not be. To have survived the ship, only to die now?
In front of her again, at a distance of perhaps fifteen feet, the gray triangle cut in sharply and came straight at her.
“No!”
Just a few feet before the fin reached her it lowered into the water. The great gray body swept slowly beneath her, so close that Ontoquas could see its mighty tail swishing back and forth as it propelled itself through the water. It was huge, perhaps twice as long as she was tall.
Ontoquas felt her chin begin to quiver. The baby beneath her stirred. He opened up his eyes and began to cry, his mouth stretching wide open.
I will save you. I will save you.
The triangular fin reappeared again at the earlier distance. Again it circled her, once, twice. And again it broke from its arc and came straight at her, this time toward her left side.
Ontoquas tried to pull herself up higher on the barrel, but there was nowhere to go. Closer came the fin, closer, and then the triangle leaned over and out of the water rose a gaping mouth of gray and white full of glittering teeth. The huge jaw snapped at the barrel, and its teeth found a purchase in the wood. The shark thrashed, nearly tossing Ontoquas from the bucket.
She could see the shark’s black eye looking up at her. Again it thrashed, and this time Ontoquas slipped, and her legs and body slid out and onto the shark’s snout.
No!
Rage filled her. Pure rage. Ontoquas reared back with a hand and punched the shark on its snout. The shark turned to try to get its mouth on her, but the bottom lip of the barrel got in its way. Again and again she punched, her eyes filling with tears. Again and again and again she struck. She could hear her voice shouting at the beast, but it somehow seemed far away, as if another voice were calling.
Suddenly the shark broke off and sank beneath the surface. Again Ontoquas watched it swim beneath her, and again it reemerged at its former distance.
The circles began anew.
How long can I fight it off? she wondered. She pulled herself up onto the bucket’s lip again and saw that the knuckles of her left hand were wet with blood. Ontoquas knew little enough about sharks, but she had heard that the scent of blood drew them like ants to honey. She pulled her wounded hand in and rested it on her forearm instead, the wound dripping a drop of blood down onto the baby’s leg.
The baby was crying now, crying loudly. So loudly! Ontoquas wondered how she had never heard the infant before today, but then remembered how loud it was in the hold of the slave ship, how many different cries of distress there were both day and night.
Ontoquas craned her neck around to watch the shark pass along the right hand side, still at a distance, when suddenly another fin broke the surface just inches from her. Ontoquas raised her fist to strike at it, but she did not bring
the fist down. This fin was different; it curved back and came to a rounded point.
A dolphin?
Sure enough, a rounded gray snout broke the surface. The dolphin regarded her for a moment. She reached out, and the dolphin stayed still and allowed her to pet him.
“You must go!” she told it in her own language, giving it a push. “It is not safe here!” The shark had swum behind her now, and Ontoquas turned to keep an eye on it. Then, to her surprise, the dolphin broke from her, and it, too, began to make a circle around her, a tighter one, swimming between the shark and her barrel.
Before Ontoquas had even a moment to comprehend what was happening, another curved fin emerged next to her, then another. And another. In a breath’s time there were more dolphins than she could count. Was it eight? Ten?
And before her disbelieving eyes, they formed a ring around her, floating just at the surface—all but two, and these two continued to swim along with the shark.
They are protecting us, little baby. They are saving us!
One of the dolphins swam just ahead of the shark and thrashed its tail in the water, creating a torrent of froth. The shark raised its ugly snout to snap at the dolphin, but the animal had already shot out of reach. Then another sped in, and it too thrashed at the water near the shark’s head. Again and again it happened, and each revolution of the circular path the shark swam grew wider and wider.
And then, without incident, the gray fin lowered into the water, turned away, and was gone.
“Aaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiii!” Ontoquas shouted to the sky. “I am alive! We are alive!”
The dolphins had turned now, all seeming to seek her attention. Ontoquas reached out, careful to pat them only with her unwounded hand. She reached out and caressed each beautiful shimmering snout, each smooth gray head, telling each one how much she loved it and how they had saved her life and that of her brother. A triumphant smile lit her face.
The baby was crying again, though, and Ontoquas stopped to run her hands over the poor child. His skin was very dark, the color of rich earth, and cool. A layer of tiny black curls adorned his head.
He is so young, Ontoquas realized, for he cries without tears. She had six or seven summers when her brother was born, and she remembered that he cried this way too.
How old is this baby? She did not know. He did not sit up in the bucket; when she propped him up earlier, he had flopped onto his side. When was it that Askooke could sit? Her brother was born right when they had planted the corn. Ontoquas remembered this because there was one day when mother did not join her to plant the rows of kernels. And then the next day she had come, with the infant swaddled to her back with a long sash.
When we cut the corn down, he could sit. She remembered sitting him on the ground before her as she worked a line of stalks. How he slapped at the green ears that she piled up around him!
So this baby cannot be even six moons. Three? Four?
One of the dolphins shoved its snout at the side of the barrel, nearly upending Ontoquas. She glared at the animal, but reached out to pet.
“Are you jealous?” she asked. But the dolphin lowered its snout again and pushed at the barrel.
“Why are you doing that?” Another dolphin came to the other side and it, too, began to push at the bucket. With the two of them pushing, the cut barrel surged through the water. Ontoquas knew the playful nature of dolphins. Were they having a game with her? After several seconds the two stopped in unison, and one lifted its head entirely out of the water and looked squarely at her.
“Ahhhhhhh!” It made a strange clicking noise with its mouth wide open, then lowered and swam forward a few feet so that its dorsal fin rubbed against the barrel. Thinking that the animal wanted to be petted there, Ontoquas reached for the curved fin. As soon her hand touched it, though, the animal heaved with its tail and shot off a few feet. It turned around and swam back to her, again lifting its head.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!” it said to her.
What is it? What do you want from me?
Again it spun about so that the dorsal fin was positioned directly beneath her hand. This time Ontoquas reached out and took hold of it. Immediately the dolphin propelled itself forward and this time Ontoquas and her barrel shot through the water after it, swift enough to make the water ripple around the barrel.
She held on, half alarmed and still unclear as to the animal’s intentions. On either side of her she could see that the other dolphins were swimming with them too, all heading in the same direction. One dolphin shot ahead and leaped clear out of the water, carving a glorious arc in the air and landing with hardly a splash. Again it leaped, and again. Two more dolphins joined in the fun.
Then, after several minutes of being towed along this way, the dolphin whose fin Ontoquas held promptly dived deep into the water, forcing Ontoquas to release her grip. The bucket came to an abrupt halt. Before Ontoquas had time to marvel at what was happening, another dolphin broke through the surface just inches from her face. It opened its mouth and let out a similar bark, then positioned itself the same way the other one had with its dorsal fin next to the barrel edge.
Risking putting her wounded hand into the water, Ontoquas reached out and held onto this dolphin’s fin. Sure enough, it shot through the water and all the other dolphins—there seemed to be even more now, at least a dozen—swam along with them, some cavorting with one another, others just swimming contentedly.
The idea was too good to be true. Ontoquas could hardly allow herself even to think it.
Could they be taking me somewhere? Could they be taking me to land?
One thing was certain: The dolphins had some sort of intention in their actions, because the towing went on for hours. The sun neared the western horizon. Ontoquas’s hands ached. It seemed to her as if each dolphin had taken dozens of turns. She alternated hands every time, hoping her strength would last longer that way. The salt water had cleaned the wound that turned out to be nothing more than a small cut across the knuckles. She prayed for strength.
The sun set. The baby cried, probably from hunger and from thirst, Ontoquas knew. She had nothing to offer him but her hope.
The next time her dolphin dove Ontoquas lay her head on her hands and closed her eyes. Her throat burned with thirst, a familiar enough sensation aboard the slave ship, but at least then she knew someone would come along sometime and offer her a ladle. A dolphin pushed its snout against her cheek.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!” it squeaked.
“I am tired.”
“Ahhhhhhhhh!” it said again. Three other dolphins lifted their snouts and made similar complaints.
Ontoquas drew a deep breath and let out a sigh. The baby continued a weak cry, more of a moan. If they are taking me to land, then I must hang on. How long can this little one last if I do not find him food and water? She lifted her head and looked eye to eye with the dolphin.
“Yes, yes, I hear you. I can hold you now.” The dolphin positioned itself and again they were off.
The night was dreadfully long. The infant slept in snatches and would awaken mostly to cry. Ontoquas would let go of whatever dolphin she held long enough to adjust the baby in the bucket so that he did not lie too long on any one side. He was so very tiny, so delicate. During one of the baby’s crying jags, weariness and desperation and the darkness broke Ontoquas down. She stopped to weep, crying like the baby now, tearlessly. The dolphins seemed somehow to sense her distress. She let her hands drag in the cool water and rested her cheek against the bucket. The dolphins swam along in front of her, rubbing their smooth sides against her slack hands.
It is too much, Mother. It is too much to ask me to survive.
But then the weeping subsided, and an overwhelming exhaustion swept over her. Ontoquas closed her eyes and listened to the little boy’s cries until they, too, went silent.
Did she sleep? She did not know. A dolphin prodded the top of her head.
“Aaaaaahhhhhhh!” it said.
“Leave me alone,” she whi
spered, the effort of saying words stinging her throat.
“Aaaaahhhhhhhh!” it said again, more insistently.
Maybe it had been sleep, for Ontoquas felt the tiniest amount of energy left in her as she lifted her head and looked out at the bright stars above. Her grandmother had told her the stars were little tears in the fabric at the edge of our world, and that through those holes our ancestors would peer through to watch us and give us their strength when we needed it. Ontoquas wondered if her mother and father were together again up there, looking down on her.
I need your strength now.
The dolphin slapped its flipper on the water’s surface, splashing water on Ontoquas’s face. She smiled at the animal, then reached out with her hand and grabbed hold of its dorsal fin.
You win.
All nights, no matter how long, yield to dawn, and this one finally broke with breathtaking beauty. The light started in the east to Ontoquas’s right side, the black of night leaking away into the darkest of blue that in turn faded with each rotation of the dolphins. The wind had picked up slightly, and the rolling waves through which Ontoquas and the baby-filled bucket were towed swelled enough to give her a better vantage by which to view the awakening world.
Atop such a swell, Ontoquas saw it. Just as the brilliant yellow of the sunrise seeped over the horizon with the same brilliance as the yolk of the quail eggs her mother and she would sometimes find when they went gathering in the springtime woods, Ontoquas saw it.
Far ahead—still a few miles off—a small but unmistakable mound rose above the northern horizon.
Ontoquas looked down at the sleeping baby.
Land, little one! They have taken us to land. We will live.
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CHAPTER 4:
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