Song Beneath the Tides

by Beverley Birch

  ‘All like we saw last night – like the canoes?’

  ‘No, no. Sometimes I am . . . I am in the hori with Fumo. Sometimes . . .’ his expression was at once self-conscious and defiant, ‘sometimes I am Fumo. I look through his eyes. Sometimes Zawati is with me. But these are dreams, I know this! But it is warnings too! Kisiri is speaking. Fumo is speaking. I do not know why he speaks now. Why it is when you are here only. But we must now look for Mzee Shaibu, because Fumo is saying we must go to Kisiri. We must look what is the warnings for. I think this!’ He thumped his chest with a clenched hand. ‘I feel it here! Mzee Shaibu must say yes!’ He pointed ahead: the Mzee stood under a canopy of thatch where men sat mending fish traps. An animated debate was going on.

  ‘So . . . you’re thinking what we saw last night, really saw, all those boats going to Kisiri, you really think that was like Fumo?’

  ‘I am thinking,’ he said, looking at her with that same slightly self-conscious wariness, before making up his mind. ‘I am thinking it is Fumo.’

  She digested this. Then she said in a rush, ‘You know when I said your forest’s strange, and then when it was odd on Kisiri too, well, I meant—’

  ‘Fumo?’

  Emphatically she shook her head. ‘No . . .’

  ‘Zawati?’

  Again she shook her head. Though for a split second she was remembering the meaning of Zawati’s name – Gift – and Mzee Kitwana’s words to her, ‘Leli’s gift’, and the image of the sun on the medallion and the strange thing about her own name . . .

  ‘Ally?’ Leli grabbed her hand anxiously, held it tight. ‘What is it you mean?’

  She clung to the power of his grip, thinking of the forest and the voices, and everything that flowed through her, ‘It’s like . . . like an echoey thing goes through my head. Like someone’s calling. Like it’s – desperate . . . helpless. Like I’m supposed to do something.’

  ‘Do what? Who is calling?’ His eyes searched her face, every inch of it, with a look of fright.

  ‘Don’t look like that, Leli! I don’t know! I just don’t know. But it’s . . . it’s . . . scaring me . . .’

  He thought about this for a moment, locking both his hands over hers. Then he said vigorously, ‘So, we go together, and together we will discover it?’

  She nodded. He turned, and she laced her fingers through his, falling into step beside him, towards Mzee Shaibu.

  Thirteen

  We slept by turns. We watched and each in our own way prayed, and no one spoke their fear that the enemy will seize Saaduma and Winda as they fish for us.

  Then, in the hour before dawn, the men Chane and Omar felt their signal on the rope and hauled them up. They spilled their catch from cloths tied to their backs, the beat of each fish falling on the stones a heartbeat of new life for us!

  We lit a fire. Goma and Neema brought the children up. We turned the fish in the flames, and even the odour of the fire licking their flesh seemed to fill our bellies.

  Winda portioned them to each of us in strict, small measure, and we ate, turn and turn about, some keeping the Watch while others took their food. Beside the fire, Goma sang a low chanting murmur that beat the rhythm of our march across the battlements.

  I drew the memory of Her to me: dare I believe She hears?

  Surely it is Her gift! I set it down here, each moment as it happened.

  I can scarce believe.

  At first dawn light, Chane spied a boat slide in towards the cliff. We stood alert, afraid. Some time passed. Then three men showed themselves at the forest edge. Each raised one hand with fingers spread to show them empty. The other hand laid a spear before them on the ground.

  Then they took these up and moved quickly over open ground to come below the walls and call to us. We could barely hear their voices amid the shrieking of the gulls, but Omar knew them at once – two brothers, merchants from a far-distant town, a third man he did not know. He vowed no treachery would come with them.

  We unbarred the gate and let them through. Disbelief and hope filled us in equal measure at their tale: the messenger we sent so long ago swam night and day to reach a village and secure a boat to travel onward. Six nights ago, he arrived at the brothers’ city, Mwitu, and thus they learned of our plight. Now these three come whole and healthy into our midst, and in their boat, which they have hidden deep in the cave below, they have grain, and fruit, and chickens, and eggs and other such things we had forgotten we would ever see again.

  All this I have learned since, for I barely heard their words. The single word, Mwitu, rang like a bell in my heart.

  I looked at the third of these strangers entering of his own free will into our prison.

  I saw a youth, my age, no more, in the stained garb of a fisherman of these parts. I saw how eagerly he searched the face of each of us as if he sought someone.

  Then he reached me. His eyes came to rest. He studied my features. He smiled. Recognition stirred in me. Even before he spoke, I knew.

  ‘You know me, my brother?’ he asked. ‘We are two sides of the same coin, minted in the same year, the same month, the same day. Do you remember me?’

  He asks, and ten years vanish! Like a bright spirit at his elbow, I conjure the child he was. Six years old, proud prince in his father’s house. Jabari, Prince of Mwitu.

  I could not speak. Jabari! He is here!

  ‘My brother, it is my shame I have not come before,’ I heard him saying. ‘My father forbade me to sail into these waters to seek you. He grows old, and grows afraid. Your countrymen’s price for passage along this coast is more than our city can pay. Great peril in travelling without permission that only they can give! My father fears they will seize and ransom me, and he will fail to buy my freedom. In his own land he fears this!

  ‘But now we have learned of your father’s death, and we mourn. We learned that you live, and rejoice. I come to you with my father’s blessing. We will not stand by and do nothing! Take heart, my brother! There is Life beyond these walls, for all of you. Together we will seize it, as we once pledged we would!’

  Surely She sends him? Her gift? Hope. Life.

  He stepped towards me. ‘Do you remember me?’

  My words unlocked. ‘Brother.’

  He seized my hand and clasped it tight between his own. ‘We will talk, my brother. How we will talk! We have years to cover! For now, food. We three will return to our boat and bring the supplies below your walls. Lower your ropes quickly, that we may haul them up! Then sleep, all of you. We three will maintain your Watch.’

  I dreamed again, of striving to speak – again, again – and at last She turns, as if She hears and would answer. Her face is open. Sun flames in Her hair, and I know that if I touch Her hand it will have the pulse of flesh and blood, that She is real.

  Then I am no longer with Her, above the sea, facing the sky. I am alone. The broken walls of the fort lie behind me, empty of our horrors, our lives. Only grass and the roots of trees bind its stones; animals burrow, birds nest in its crevices.

  How do I know? It is in the scents of the air. The island slumbers. Empty shores, tranquil groves, seabirds crying on the wind. We are all gone.

  I forced myself awake. Already Jabari and his friends patrol for us. They need what strength I have, and I must give it.

  I climbed to the battlements. Jabari turned to greet me. I took courage and told him of the dreams. Of Her.

  ‘She is the vision of hope your exhaustion brings, my brother. Feed your strength. Sleep again! So that together we may all escape this place and cheat the death that is planned for you. That is Hope!’

  But there is another dream, of people thronging the darkness, a girl and boy walking among them. They are young, with power beyond their years. The boy is like Jabari, but not Jabari. And when I tell Jabari of this dream, he looks at me strangely and questions me deeply. For a b
rief moment I see he believes.

  ‘You dream the birth of this place,’ he says. ‘You have heard it from the storytellers of these parts.’

  I have not. ‘The friendship of your father’s court has never reached us here, in this fort, Jabari. We live afraid of everything beyond the walls. We know we risk our lives if we dare to venture abroad among people not of our kind. Such is the hatred against us!’

  ‘Then you learned the story in my father’s court,’ Jabari said. ‘Or your father heard it and told you. See, once a traveller brought this gift for me.’ He took from around his neck a small disc hung on a leather thread.

  ‘He told me it is a talisman to bring the fortune of Fumo and Zawati on me. And so it has, for it has brought my brother back to me!’ He passed it to me, and I saw the engraving of a bird in flight against the sun.

  ‘See, it has the marks of the young warrior-leaders who once ruled the town we see there, on the mainland.’ He took it again from my hand, and turned it, to show a cross of spears.

  He looped the thread over my head, and pressed the medallion against my chest. ‘Hold it fast, brother. Let us hear their call of hope, of power. Perhaps their voices will speak for us. Perhaps their power will reach us here. Seek and hold your Spirit of Hope, she who walks the forests and island shore for you. Perhaps she too is their hope, reaching for us. Keep your courage steady, for us all!’

  Fourteen

  ‘You still think you’re picking up creepy stuff from the forest and the island?’ Jack fixed Ally with a penetrating stare.

  ‘Leli wants to go to Kisiri and see if people’ve been there,’ she defended herself. ‘He’s asked Mzee Shaibu and we can go too, to help! You’ve been worrying about those boats—’

  ‘But that’s not all – you’ve just been listening to the story­teller . . .’ He didn’t finish, glancing at Leli, standing close beside her.

  ‘We can help, Jack! You know, more people to look round.’ She tried not to show urgency in her voice.

  Jack looked from her to Leli and back again. The warmth of Leli’s arm against hers was calming. It willed her on.

  ‘We promised Carole to stick together – if you won’t go, Jack, I can’t!’

  ‘But why right now? You’re not telling me something. What’s the whole story? Ally, what’s really going on with you two?’

  His eyes bored into her, sharp with suspicion. She refused to look away. ‘That’s not fair, Jack. I tell you things and you say I’m being stupid! You won’t listen! We’ve got to look – we’ve got to help! Don’t you want to help?’ she challenged. You—’

  ‘OK, OK!’ he stopped her. ‘We’re going to help figure out these boats hanging about. But you’re not going to make your big brother have to watch your back all the time, wandering off in search of legends and spooky stuff, are you? Not with all these other things going on. It’s bad enough having to keep track of Benjy.’

  She flushed hotly, ‘Don’t—’

  ‘Just teasing,’ he said, ‘well, sort of. You’ve made your point, Ally. We’ll all go, Benjy too.’

  Jack insisted on dragging the canoes out of sight into a thicket above the beach. Huru had guided them to the only sandy bay on the rocky south shore of the island, the side they hadn’t been before.

  Leli led them all across low shelves of flat rock strewn with seaweed and shells, pushing inland. The ground rose, undulating through stands of palms, sandy banks laced with thorny creepers, grassy mounds and bushy hollows. It opened unexpectedly onto a broad, open plateau clothed in dense fern. Thick forest bordered its length on the far side.

  ‘In this place they came on their journey.’ Leli was low-voiced for Ally.

  ‘Who came?’ asked Jack, close enough to overhear.

  ‘First people of Shanza,’ said Leli. ‘Festival story.’

  Ally avoided Jack’s eye. She could feel his scrutiny, always assessing her and Leli.

  She followed Leli closely, pushing through the ferns, releasing a bruised, pungent fragrance. Two lone baobabs rose, gigantic, from the plateau’s centre, their trunks broad enough to shield three people abreast, their branches dotted with crows. As they all neared, the birds broke into a shrieking argument, flapped off, swerved in a black cloud into the flanking forest.

  Hysterical chirruping answered, and a violent shaking rippled along the high canopy. A lone dark shape soared from it, dwindling against the sky’s white glare.

  Ben squinted after it. ‘Is that a fish eagle again?’

  ‘Kwazi,’ Huru confirmed. ‘We saw in the mangrove waters.’

  ‘How d’you know it’s the same one?’

  Huru rolled his eyes. ‘And monkeys making the little birds angry, come, see,’ the two of them pushing through ferns. To Ally’s relief, Jack followed them.

  Ally stayed where she was. The plateau was high enough for her to see the water on two sides – west towards Shanza on the mainland, south across Ras Chui’s rock spine. Beyond it, the red peak of their tent just showed in the long bay. And beyond the bay, the white square of the Old Fisheries House on the distant headland. But on the north side, towards the mangrove creeks and Tundani, sight of the sea was blocked by the forest. That’s where we crossed in Saka’s boat, the first time we came to Kisiri. That’s where Fumo and Zawati came, to hide in the island’s forest. It’s where we saw the shadows of the canoes crossing.

  The hum of insects was loud, and the scent of crushed fern, and she was suddenly overwhelmed by it all, by the sweat coursing down her back, by the bee buzzing at her, zigzagging away between fronds, droning back, by an unbearable sense of expectation, of alarm.

  She shaded her eyes and looked for Leli. He’d moved on, heading for the seaward end of the plateau where the terrain sharpened to vertical rock slabs, lichen and creeper-covered. At the top, a twist of fallen tree. For a second it was a large bird looking down, then it wasn’t.

  Leli seemed to find an invisible path and leapt upwards easily. She chased after him, breathing hard, sweating hard, and caught up with him as he paused on a flat ridge to assess the route on up.

  She turned to view the way they’d come. ‘Can we see where they’re buried from up here?’

  He jutted his chin at the green rim of the forest. ‘It is hidden. Usually we go only in the festival—’

  She’s listening, and then not. A sound has brushed her ear. Or is it sound? More as if a silence near them deepens, stirs, and settles in a new place.

  She turns her head. Looks along the ridge. Both ways.

  Nothing. Above. Nothing.

  Below, only Huru and Ben scrambling up the rock path towards them, talking loudly over each other as they always do. And Jack following them.

  Jack glanced up at her quizzically and then behind him at what she might be seeing.

  Only the span of the island below, narrowing to the sand bank jutting into Shanza’s bay, where the heron always foraged. She turned back to Leli, and was surprised to see him already near the clifftop, edging up through a mesh of undergrowth. She set off in pursuit. She pushed through the tangle of bushes.

  A buffeting breeze knocked her sideways, salty and fresh and wonderful. Sea glittered green on all sides, heaved in smooth, rolling swells against the cliff; birds wheeled in a slow dance. She was wrapped in incandescent sunlight. She breathed deep, her head clearing, her pulse slowing.

  Ben burst through the bushes behind her, Huru and Jack on his heels. ‘Cool! Are we on top of that cave?’

  Leli pointed straight down. ‘Just there. You go in when the sea is low. The cave is very long. It is not good to be there when the sea is high, like now.’

  As if in answer, water boomed.

  ‘That’s what we felt last time,’ Jack asserted. ‘Water slamming in—’

  And it’s there again – that whisper she cannot hear. For a split second, in the gleam of the air, there�
�s a warmth, not quite a touch, something apart, separated, yet close. She hears the intake of a breath.

  ‘Ally?’ Jack moved quickly to her, fracturing everything. ‘You OK?’

  She resisted looking beside or behind or around her, though every nerve twanged. ‘Just . . . hot.’ She glanced towards Leli – did he see? But he’d moved away, was gazing north.

  I’m alone in this.

  ‘Tundani is there,’ Huru announced to them all, pointing north up the coast. ‘Not so long by water, more long on the road.’

  She forced herself to concentrate. Far beyond the mangroves, pale shapes clustered along a flat coastline, vanishing into heat haze. ‘The coral goes many miles after the mangroves far, far north, all up to Tundani,’ Huru continued. ‘And all round Kisiri – coral, coral. Just one big deep place for big dhows, there.’ He pointed to the channel between the island and the mangroves.

  ‘Well, one thing’s certain,’ Jack said, ‘there’s nothing that says anyone else’s been here, is there? I mean, where we left the canoes there’s just bird tracks. No other boats in sight now. Just those.’ He meant Shanza’s fishing boats, their sails making crescents of light on the water. ‘So why’ve those powerboats been around here so much? And if there’s coral reefs all along by Tundani like you’re saying, Huru, that’s dangerous for big boats, isn’t it? So why come south, why not keep north of Tundani – safer for tourists, I mean? And what’s all the stuff going on at night is what I really want to know,’ he finished.

  ‘When the D.O. comes to Shanza again, we will know why. For sure!’ insisted Huru. ‘The D.O. and Mzee Shaibu and the Elders will make them go away!’

  ‘Hope it’s that simple,’ Jack muttered. Though no one but Ally seemed to hear.