by Jacob Ross
‘Go bring down dem goat, Dee. They sufferin up there.’
Her feet took her past the Bay of Caves, around the spine of the island, through the wilting manchineel until she came upon the tree that Sago told her was as old as the beginning of the world. Time and sun had charred its bark a deep black. Its trunk lay parallel to the chalky earth, its branches plaited around each other. ‘See how it twis’-up? Is all the pain ov this lil island that it carry. From time.’
The goats were on the other side of the ridge. She ignored the safer route and clawed her way up the sandy hillface.
Once on top, she dusted her hands, adjusted her skirt and hopped along the hilltop. The three animals were gasping in the heat. Her mother had tethered them to the only tree up there. She let them loose, watched them leaping down the slope, an avalanche of dirt racing after them.
She did not want to follow them home, but stood squinting across the waters, making plosives with her mouth, appraising the grey procession of islands that Sago had named for her: Mayreau, Canouan, Mustique, Bequia…
Something in the air disturbed her daydreaming – a sound, like a loose sail in the wind. Only there were no boats on the water down there.
The flapping came again and she swivelled her eyes to where she thought she heard it. Saw nothing but the barely visible dust track that broke off at the edge of the ridge.
Another flutter pulled her gaze up to the branches of the tree, to what looked like the torn-off portion of a sail. Except the cloth was agitating and there was no wind.
A bird. Bigger than her.
A great ruffle of white feathers ran along its underbelly to its tail. The yellow beak was broad as a fisherman’s knife, curved downward at the tip like a giant hook. Through the weave of branches, past the pale webbed feet, she saw its eyes: night black, white-ringed. Shiny. She felt a shiver run through her.
Her mind dragged her back to an early morning with Sago on the jetty, facing the sea. She’d followed his pointing arm to a drifting shape beneath a bank of clouds.
‘Dreamflyer,’ he said. ‘Soul-carrier.’ He was smiling at the sky.
She’d shaken her head, lifted a hand and sketched the shape of a bird.
Sago shook his head. ‘Nuh! It might look like a bird, but is not a bird. Is a Dreamflyer that you watchin there. Is the wind take on de shape ov a bird fuh de pleasure ov riding on itself.’
She fluttered her fingers in his face.
‘Is evidence you askin for? What happen, you turn lawyer now? Okay! Which bird you know does walk on water, eh? Or sleep on wind for months, never touchin land. Dem fly ahead ov storm, move between all de oceans ov de world like you step over to yuh neighbour yard. You know any bird could do dat? Eh?’
He sucked his teeth and glared at her. ‘An s’pose I tell you that dem is the eyes of Jah. Dem see everything. Dem carry the soul ov all Jah children back to Africa and rest dem at the feet of Selassie I. You don’ believe me? Well, proof-o-de-fact,’ he shot a finger at the sky, ‘Dreamflyer can’t leave Jah earth without it mother, de wind, to lift it up.’
The thrashing of the bird brought her back. She looked down the hill at the wilting corn and peas, the sagging cotton trees, the rows of rusting galvanized roofs against the yellow shoreline, the dazzle of the sea and sky beyond.
She rearranged her skirt and began to climb the tree.
The branches bent under her weight. She would not look down, knowing that if she slipped it meant a straight drop onto the rocks below.
She levered her body upward until she was under the creature; saw that the left wing of the bird was jammed between a tight netting of leaves.
She edged herself away from it and tried to climb above it. The big grey head jerked sideways. A single, night-black eye rested on her and stayed there.
She passed a tentative hand along the heavy feathers of the trapped wing. The bird erupted. She wrapped her arms around a branch and held on tight until it quietened. Began to strip away the leaves, the smaller branches; then strained against the larger ones until they snapped. The bird remained at rest while she eased the massive feathers through the tangle. Then with an abrupt shudder it was free. It brought its great wings forward, folded them against its sides and remained where it was.
She uttered a plosive, drew closer, examined the three black claws held together by a white translucent web; the proud curve of the neck; the quick shutter of the membrane that flicked over its eyes.
She laid a hand on it again, just under its shoulder and was amazed at the rate of its hammering heart and the oiliness of its feathers.
She looked down at the overheated land, then out to sea. No wind. There hadn’t been for days. Already the water was turning glittery gold with touches of pink on the swells. A yellow haze hung over the chain of islands in the distance. She sat with the bird, her hand on its shoulder and watched Bequia, Mustique, Canouan and Mayreau fade into the oncoming night.
Soon her mother would be pushing her head out of the window and shouting her name. With Sago not there anymore, she did this all the time now.
But she would not leave this creature stranded. She would sit with it and wait for wind all night if she had to.
But the longer she rested against this Dreamflyer, the more certain she was that if people found this bird with her, they would kill it becuz on Kara Isle, anything they did not like or understand they destroyed. Like the strange creatures they sometimes pulled out of the ocean; in all the sea-stories she’d ever heard them tell, at the end of every one, something always died.
The day was cooling and with it she felt a shift in the air. The bird must have felt it too, because it had edged itself around to face the sea. A small wind fingered the hem of her skirt and stirred the fine feathers at its throat. But she knew that it was not strong enough to lift it.
She thought she heard her name, but wasn’t sure. More voices, pitched faintly in the air, then her mother’s, clearer than the rest.
Another gust fluttered her skirt. She wondered if it was enough to lift the bird. She tapped its feet. It edged further forward, a murmuring rising from its chest.
Now, with the voices drawing nearer, she sensed the tension in the creature. It had raised its head, was shifting it with rapid, jerky movements.
She wedged herself between the upper branches, urged it forward with an outstretched leg, ignoring the drop below her, her eyes on the darkening sky.
When she heard the swelling hum of voices down the hill, saw the glow of torches, she kicked out at the creature. It lunged, not in a clatter of wings, but in a silent plummet towards the water. A solid shadow falling.
Just before it struck the sea, its body quaked, seemed for a moment to be struck by something invisible which lifted its wings and arced the creature upwards. Then it dipped, the great wings fully stretched out. It lifted and dipped again, rising higher every time, and faster, until she had to tilt her head to watch it climb the air.
Way up there it rested on the wind, making easeful circles above her. She thought she heard its cry – something between a rattle and a bray. Then it leaned a dark wing upward, became a shadow drifting towards the last of the light at the far reaches of the sky.
When she could no longer see it, she looked down at the fluttering hem of her skirt, then at the wound its claws had left along her leg.
Her mother called again.
She picked her way down the tree, sat on the stone beneath it, and made shapes in the air with her hands.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jacob Ross is a novelist, short story writer, editor and creative writing tutor. His latest book, The Bone Readers, marks a new departure into crime fiction, and won the inaugural Jhalak Prize in 2017. His literary novel Pynter Bender was published to much critical literary acclaim and was shortlisted for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Regional Prize and chosen as one of the British Authors Club’s top three Best First Novels. Jacob is also the author of two short story collections, Song for Simone and A Way to Catch t
he Dust, and the editor of Closure, Contemporary Black British short stories. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been a judge of the V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, the Olive Cook, Scott Moncrieff, Tom-Gallon Literary Awards and The Commonwealth Writers’ Short Story Prize.
ALSO AVAILABLE BY JACOB ROSS
The Bone Readers
ISBN: 9781845233358; pp. 270; pub. 2016; price £7.99
Secrets can be buried, but bones can speak...
When Michael (Digger) Digson is recruited into DS Chilman’s new plain clothes squad in the small Caribbean island of Camaho he brings his own mission to discover who amongst a renegade police squad killed his mother in a political demonstration. Sent to London to train in forensics, Digger becomes enmeshed in Chilman’s obsession with a cold case – the disappearance of a young man whose mother is sure he has been murdered. But along with his new skill in forensics, Digger makes rich use of the cultural knowledge he has gained from the Fire Baptist grandmother who brought him up, another kind of reader of bones. And when the enigmatic Miss K. Stanislaus, another of Chilman’s recruits, joins him on the case, Digger finds that his science is more than outmatched by her observational skills. Together, they find themselves dragged into a world of secrets, disappearances and danger that demands every ounce of their brains, persistence and courage to survive.
Jacob Ross brings the best traditions of crime fiction to the Caribbean novel with a fast-moving narrative, richly observed characters, a powerful evocation of place and a denouement that will leave readers breathless. With its compelling sense of place and cast of characters with real emotional depth, The Bone Readers artfully delivers for the Caribbean what Ian Rankin does for Scotland.
The Bone Readers is the first in Ross’s Camaho Quartet.
Winner of the inaugural Jhalak Prize, judge, poet Musa Okwonga said of The Bone Readers, “by turns thrilling, visceral and meditative, and always cinematic”, while author Catherine Johnson added that it “effortlessly draws together the past and the present, gender, politics and the legacy of colonialism in a top quality Caribbean set crime thriller”.
Bernardine Evaristo in The Guardian wrote: “Ross’s characters are always powerfully delineated through brilliant visual descriptions, dialogue that trips off the tongue, and keenly observed behaviour.”