Loyal slaves either fled or died with their masters. A doctor was spared, along with his two sons. Another man was given clemency because he was well liked. In the south, many of the slaveholders, warned in advance of the carnage, had time to flee.
Women and children were transported to a cay off the coast, to protect them from the maroons, who had no boats to pursue them with. The remaining white men, forty in all, fortified themselves at the Durloo plantation, which had several cannons. Twenty-five faithful slaves were given guns to guard the plantation and protect their masters. The maroons, lacking the necessary weapons, failed to seize the plantation. And so the rebellion had ended in a stalemate.
Mera heard all this at a distance. She heard the two cannons fire when the maroons took the outpost. She knew from the unease of the other slaves that the rebellion had begun, but her plantation ran as usual for most of the first day even after Mr. Jerson and his family slipped quietly away.
By the next day, many of the slaves had wandered off to join their preferred group of maroons, had run off into the bush to hide, or had tried to join the men defending the Durloo plantation. Mera stayed where she was. She tended her garden as best she could, and slept in her hut. She carried on as if nothing was happening. She whispered to the reefs in her ship to be ready for her return.
Siba came to her two nights later. The scent of him announced his presence. He was unwashed, his skin covered in dirt. Blood was on his hands.
“Come here,” Mera told him, and he obeyed.
He didn’t talk. He only shook in her arms. She didn’t need to ask him what had happened. His body spoke the words.
“I won’t go with you,” she reminded him. “But you can come here when you need me.”
He made a noise, a small one that trapped itself in his throat.
It took him a long time to fall asleep, but at last his shaking subsided to heavy, even breaths. A few times through the night, he startled awake for a moment, but Mera would whisper to him that it was all right and that she was there and he was safe, and he would drift off again.
She never told him that she loved him. She regretted that very much.
• • •
“I’m sorry about the crowd,” Derrick said. “I didn’t expect so many people to be here.”
They were parked in an area between the two sides of Western Cemetery. The small pathway barely amounted to a road, but several cars were parked along it. A large gumbo-limbo tree grew out of the dirt to one side of the path, fused to the walled entrance on one side of the graveyard. Derrick was parked at the end of the path, near the road.
Behind her, Mera heard the quiet roar of passing cars. In the graveyard, she saw Lee standing over her friend’s grave. Several people were standing with her. A larger group, maybe two dozen, crowded around another grave. They stood much closer to the path than Lee and her companions. Mera could hear a woman sob. People continued to trickle toward the larger crowd.
Derrick hadn’t said anything to Mera during the drive to pick up his sister. After Lee got in the car, Mera hadn’t expected him to broach the subject. But now they were alone again. She shifted her attention to him. He was looking ahead, staring at the back of the car parked in front of him.
“I know you can’t tell me why you’re here,” Derrick said. He hesitated, finding his words. “But can you tell me when you’ll leave?”
“Very soon,” Mera answered. Two men walked past the car, and she watched them take the path in the direction of the large crowd. When they were about halfway there, one looked back.
“You leaving with the others?” Derrick asked.
“Probably.”
“But you don’t have to?”
Mera shook her head. He was circling around something. She waited for him to spiral down into the real question.
Derrick took a deep breath and said, “Could you take me to Ganymede?”
Mera shifted back her attention to his face. He looked serious.
“Just to see it,” he added. “I’ve always wanted to go there. Since I was a boy.”
“That’s what you wanted to ask me?” Mera smiled, showing teeth. “Okay. When all this is over, I’ll take you to Ganymede.”
Derrick didn’t look satisfied.
She continued to wait, listening to someone sing “Amazing Grace.” The beautiful voice, a woman’s, swelled with passion, the edges of it breaking off in anguish.
When Derrick’s words finally came, they tumbled out all at once. “This job is much more than what’s on paper. I’ve accepted that. I’ve stayed on, knowing that. I’m sorry I overstepped boundaries, and I’m okay if we don’t develop a true friendship. But I don’t want to pretend anymore like all I’m here to do is answer your emails. If you want to build a bridge, this needs to be more. Even if my title doesn’t change, the way you treat me must.
“I know you have to make decisions. But don’t base your decisions on what you think I can or can’t handle. Please give me the full respect of an equal. Make your decisions based on what you can handle.”
Derrick opened his mouth as if to add more and then stopped. He had raised his voice a little at the end—not in anger, but with passion. Now he forced that passion back down, causing his body to shudder just a little.
The words had been heavily accented with St. Thomian vowels, the dropping of t’s and g’s at the ends of words. He didn’t slip into St. Thomian grammar, however—a habit he never indulged in her presence. On one hand, it was a gesture of professionalism; St. Thomians commonly maintained a standard version of their English in professional settings. But it was also an indicator that Mera was an outsider. She was not one of them and would never be.
And she had long ago lost the feeling of belonging among the Ynaa. In truth, she belonged nowhere, and now she had brought someone else into that space with her. And in that space, she had created a microcosm of the outside: the Ynaa above, the human below.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking at him. “I was wrong.”
“We both were,” he said, staring back, intensity in his eyes.
They didn’t notice the song cut off and the crowd start to disperse. Hearing yelling, Mera finally shifted her attention just in time to notice part of the crowd spill out from the graveyard, filling the space that the cars hadn’t taken up. She watched a young man boldly pick up a stone from the edge of the path.
“Derrick, get down!”
Mera reached to open the car door. If she could get to the man, disarm him and put him to sleep, perhaps she could quash what was to come. But he hurled the stone before she got out of the car. Mera turned back, the door already slightly open.
Phantom blood wet her face. Gasping, she blinked the memory away.
Too late. She had just enough time to see Derrick staring stun-faced as the windshield shattered. She stiffened as the rock hit him. He grunted and fell back in his chair, sliding down in his seat. His head cocked to one side; his eyes rolled back in his head.
Mera flung the car door open. She moved faster than she should toward the young man. He was already bending down for another rock. As he stood up, she caught his arm and pulled the rock from his hand. She threw him into the surging crowd, knocking the front line back. Many of them scattered, while a few stood frozen in fear.
“Get back!” she yelled. It came out low and gravelly, like a growl.
A man knelt down and pulled the young man back. The frozen people in the crowd fell back as well. From a safer distance, people yelled at Mera. “You don’t belong here.” “You kill his brother.” “Go away. Leave us alone.” “You devils.” “You demons.” “His brother is dead. His brother is dead.”
Lee approached Mera from the side. Mera whirled on her and stopped herself inches from the girl’s throat.
Lee didn’t flinch from the narrowly avoided attack. “Is Derrick okay?”
A few small stones peppered the car as Mera and Lee returned to it. They got Derrick into the passenger’s seat. Mera put her hands on him, releasing as many reefs as she could. Blood was pouring from the wound in his forehead, covering his eyes, nose, and mouth. Lee buckled him in and took off her shirt, wrapping it around his head.
Mera started the car as Lee hopped in the back, her chest and bra stained with Derrick’s blood.
They reversed out into the street as stones continued to pop and patter against Derrick’s car. An SUV honked furiously, almost rear-ending them.
“Come with me,” Mera said as the tires squealed in forward drive. She had lost track of time and space. In her frantic perception, the world ahead looked like ocean, the road like rocks jutting out of a white sea.
• • •
The rebellion lasted six months. In that time, two Danish attempts to retake the island failed, along with one British attempt. The maroons were adept at guerrilla warfare, but they had neither the strategy nor the weaponry to seize Durloo or to fully engage the better-armed Europeans.
In May, the French came to the aid of the Danish, with a ship of two hundred Frenchmen and a free-Negro corps perfectly capable of hunting the maroons through the bush.
Unlike the Danes and British before them, the French were systematic and ruthless. For a month, it was an extended cat-and-mouse game: the maroons fleeing, the Frenchmen and free Negroes pursuing.
A few weeks in, the French began to find bodies. Maroons had begun killing themselves as their desperation turned to despair. The French cut men, women, and children down from trees or collected the bodies of maroons who had shot themselves with their remaining bullets.
Ram’s Head Peninsula was a particularly attractive destination—a cliff face that gave cornered maroons a final escape into the sea. Located on the south side of the island, the area was frequented by torrents of wind that threatened to toss a careless person into the rocks two hundred feet below. A part of this cliff face resembled the head of a ram, horns and all—something a suicidal maroon could catch a glimpse of on his way down.
Mera tracked Siba to this spot, ahead of the pursuing Frenchmen. When she found him, he was alone. The smell of death hung in the air. Not far away, two women had hanged themselves. The bush was littered with the corpses of the hopeless, who had sought death to avoid a worse one.
Siba stood near the edge of the cliff, his gun pointing down the path where the Frenchmen would arrive.
When he saw Mera, tears came to his eyes. “My wife,” he called to her in his delusion. He had been gone for over a week. To be with his king, he had said. His king was not with him now, having chosen to flee with others into the bush. Siba was tasked with keeping the Frenchmen at bay.
The shouts of a dozen men rang out as they came up the path.
“Don’t do this,” Mera said. “I can take you to the sea. I can protect you.” Waiting under the water was her small ship. “I can take you home,” she said, grabbing his arm. “To Great Accra.”
“My home is gone,” he said. “My king is here. I must protect him.”
Mera shook her head. She came close. The wind gusted loudly, straining even her superior hearing. She held his shoulders and squeezed them harder than she intended. “I do not understand this. Don’t you want to live?”
She saw in his eyes hope mixed with hopelessness. She couldn’t understand it. His eyes were those of a madman.
“Come with me,” Siba said. He had stepped closer to the edge now, and Mera, finding herself suddenly repulsed by him and afraid, had let him.
To ward off the enemy, she said a mantra in her mind: Never do the universe’s work. Live to spite it. Live against all else.
Siba put his hand out to her, his eyes wild. “Come with me,” he said again. “To the other life.”
“There is nothing else,” she said. “Only here, now.” She stepped away from him again. She had forgotten her plan to take him with her. She was confused, frustrated, and terrified. She had never felt this way before.
He looked past her, to where the men approached.
Mera turned to see the men pointing their weapons at them, yelling, their voices muffled and distant in the angry wind.
She turned to look at Siba, and he, too, had his weapon pointed.
“No!” she yelled through the wind.
Too late. She felt the blood wet her face. Siba fell backward, where there was no land to catch him. On instinct alone, Mera leaped after him. Again the universe conspired against her. Gravity kept him ahead of her. The jagged rocks jutting from the white foam of the crashing waves rushed up to meet them both, Siba arriving first. Mera could only watch as his spine cracked. She whimpered as his head shattered into a plume of blood and bits. The next wave crashed, carrying the body away.
When Mera hit the rocks, her reefs protected her. She rolled off into the water. As she sank under the surface, she could see Siba, the blood spreading around him like a dark cape.
She pushed herself to him and cradled his body in hers as the blood surrounded them both. She allowed herself to cry then, but her tears were indistinguishable from the blood and the water. Around them, a congregation of drowned maroons swayed and weaved like stalks of seaweed in the current.
• • •
Months later, when Mera resurfaced on St. Thomas, she learned that the great king Aquashi had been captured by the French, each bone in his body broken on the wheel, his head removed after death and impaled as a warning to other slaves.
She visited his head one night. Below it, in Danish, was a plaque written in blood: There are no more slave kings. Only masters.
• • •
Mera and Lee were sitting beside Derrick’s bed when he finally opened his eyes.
“Hey, monkey brains,” Lee said. “Good thing you wake up, ’cause I was about to get some ice water.”
Derrick smiled and looked to Mera as if awaiting a smart remark from her as well. She kept her mouth closed. Gone was the earlier frenzy she had lost herself in. Instead, she presented as her usual calm self, though her stomach felt tight and her teeth ground together. It was not much of a disguise for her inner turmoil if Derrick knew what to look for.
He touched her hand, revealing that the disguise was as weak as she imagined. Mera felt the impulse to pull away, but she didn’t follow it. The storm inside her spun furiously.
“What happened?” Derrick asked.
“You were hit in the head,” Mera replied.
“There was a riot at the graveyard,” Lee added. “A bunch of people visiting Tony’s grave.” She didn’t need to explain further.
Derrick nodded, seeming to understand the whole context. “Graveyards are dangerous places.”
“You should get some more sleep,” Mera insisted. The reefs she had put into his body were still working to heal him. She controlled their work, since he didn’t have the ability to control them himself.
“I’m not going to sleep,” Derrick said stubbornly. “I want to know what else happ—”
Mera sent a command to the reefs, and they put him to sleep in the middle of his protest.
“What the hell was that?” Lee asked.
“Don’t worry,” Mera said. “He will heal better while sleeping.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Lee said, glaring.
Mera watched her calmly in return. “It’s an Ynaa drug,” she said, opting for a simple explanation. “It will not harm him.”
“It better not.”
“You need me to take you back to your grandmother’s?”
“I’m not leaving him here alone with you.”
Mera smiled, pleased to see that boldness was a Reed family trait. “Okay,” she said, getting up. “Wat
ch him. You can take the room next door if you get tired.”
In the doorway, she risked one more look at Derrick. He slept peacefully, as if he had not been awake only moments before. Satisfied, she left the room.
• • •
When Mera was young, her mother took her to see the Pits of Yn.
It was down on the Sa’s surface, far beneath the floating city of Ynaa Sky. Mera had never gone to Yn or any of the other large islands of Sa. Her mother told her this was where the other races lived. The weaker races.
Her mother sang to the reefs on the walls of their ship. The walls disappeared, billions of tiny eyes reflecting back to them the world they were descending into. Mera could see the sky outside, the ocean beneath, as if they were standing in midair.
Ynaa Sky, above them to the west, shone with her pearly blue-white walls swirling up to high pointed spires. Blue-white calcium-carbonate ships soared around Ynaa Sky like birds.
Below them to the east, Ynaa Water reached out of the ocean with large spiky red, blue, and green limbs, a rainbow tree bustling with activity. Under the water’s surface, a coral metropolis descended all the way to the ocean floor. A family of brown-backed fera swam nearby, the vast shadow of their bodies clearly visible in the midday sun, their tall fins cleaving the surface and trailing white foam.
In front of their ship, Yn revealed itself. They had not strayed too far from their home island. The large green back of Yn rose from the deep ocean as their small ship came down from the clouds of upper Sa. The island rose high above the ocean on this side, a cliff of smooth dark stone reaching up to an elevated plateau.
As they passed over the green trees of their old home, her mother told her the story she had heard a hundred times in Ynaa Sky.
“A long time ago, our people were almost destroyed by a large flood. The great waters of Sa rose and drove us inland, where there were beasts we had not encountered before. Back then, our people lived on the border of the land and sea. We had never encountered the deep jungle.”
The Lesson Page 13