They usually do everything together, but his hatred for the Ocean outdates their friendship. He’s been out a handful of times, but still Nano holds no love for the way fishing boats glide through the churn. He watched Antsy beam joyfully, standing tall at the bow, while he was eager only to return.
Born Noah, the olders dubbed him Na Noah when his dismay at the Ocean became apparent. They found his toddler fists and feet hammering angrily at the shore amusing. They say he continued throwing shells as they carried him away. These days he tries to keep a broad coastline between himself and the deep. Yet, sea breeze on his lips, eyes trained in a squint, it has become custom to stand in this same spot on the pier, three afternoons a week.
Na Noah no longer, Nano now. He paces the pier, his naked soles barely keeping bal-ance on the greasy boards. As a young boy he wasn’t afraid of braving the cornfields after dark to hear the olders’ voice their truths. His heart would pound as he wove his way through the rows, the distant rumble of chants and drums his only guide. Through the night he’d stay in his spot, straining to remain quiet and unnoticed, hanging on every thrilling word, until the last tale had been told or the stickmen had forced them to disperse.
“Why them don’t like we to congregate and voice?” he’d said to Mother one morning, forgetting that her blessing hadn’t been given for his night-time exploits. It was a long and tense travel through time until he’d got a reply.
“Dem force demself to forget we is people,” she’d said with finality, going on with her work separating good nutmeg from bad. The subject had not been brought up again.
Nano stands with toes-tipped on the pier’s edge. Not much changes. The stickmen still torment, the people still resist. He is a truth-teller now, he stands boldface in the field three evenings a week, attempting to captivate an audience. Perhaps, like a busy cloakroom at-tendant hanging many coats on hooks, a younger hides in the shadows, eagerly putting meanings to his words.
A sharp sea draught causes the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. He swipes restlessly at a damsel fly that refuses to settle. A crow’s sharp caws pierce the air. Arms wide and chest high, Nano turns out to face the blue and proclaims:
“Me na know fear!”
The sun will soon fold itself beneath the horizon and there is still no sign of Antsy. No dramatic gleeful approach, no grin with all the teeth in his mouth. Spiteful waters, the Ocean is brutal and greedy. Without prejudice it snatches those who skirt it, old and young, weak-minded or strong-willed. Its only requirement is desperation.
Nano is not shy of complaining about his work on Mother’s farm. Early rises, heavy lift-ing, cramps, sweats and barely making ends meet. Yet staying grounded is a privilege not afforded everyone and he knows he should be grateful. He’d wanted Antsy to stay ashore, work the land with him, but Antsy felt uncomfortable stopping in Mother’s house without contributing.
“Busy you busy, why you can’t just stay still?” he’d said one day in frustration.
“When you find a way for we to survive without eat, then and only then you can talk,” Antsy had retorted, kissing his teeth.
Nano’s face prickles at the memory. Legs dangling over the pier’s edge, he buries his head between his knees and wraps his arms around his stomach. He wishes he could apologise, it had been unfair of him. His mind races, searching for an unfindable solution, a rod to cast out and reel Antsy back home. No one ever returns this late, but who alive can reverse that which is most final? He’ll visit Tanté Adree up Top Hill; she’ll know what to do.
It is known that Tanté Adree doesn’t appreciate visits. She doesn’t mingle either, the olders say she has her hands full entertaining boobooman and jumbie. She came down one time he can remember, to see Mother play mas. She arrived dressed from head to foot in black and had spent the entire time hat low and eyes behind shades. If it was meant to be a disguise it wasn’t a very effective one, not on a day full of colour and celebration. In his recollection she’d stayed just long enough to make her presence felt and had then van-ished.
The stickmen call her witch, afraid that she is powerful enough to bend and turn the very elements to her whims. The olders say her name with a humble reverence, speaking hushed tales of her hanging fire at the edges of town to protect them all. Nano has been up the hill to Tanté Adree’s, beneath the blackthorn and myrtle trees, just once before. The experience had been memorable enough for him to regard her as capable of making even the most futile possible. His excitement had been dampened though, and the walk from the farm had been strained. Mother’s heavy silence had softened the skittish spring in his step.
Nano hated seeing Mother like that, as though the weight of the world was pinning her down. At the time he was young and not yet familiar with the tight knot of coins that forms like chains around olders’ necks; he did not know how to lighten her load. His young eyes could see the exhaustion but couldn’t understand why she didn’t just rest up.
Mother had no rest, between the farm and the marketplace there were no breathers; no time to enjoy the sunrise, instead her days were a rat-race against them. Their visit to Tanté Adree had been one of necessity; the stickmen had put a curse on their crops. Cassava, breadfruit and nutmeg, cut, peeled or ground, all dry as chalk and white as death inside. A healthy yield didn’t bring in much; a poor one was devastating.
Tanté Adree had somehow made the problem go away. He doesn’t know how, because he did not go inside. Wait here, he’d been told firmly, and he’d sat there on the porch, until the sun had begun to make its retreat towards the horizon. By the time they’d reached home, their crops were back to normal, and Mother’s brow was slightly less furrowed.
Shoulders slumped, Nano gets to his feet and heads home. He’ll put on long trousers, pack a small bag and wait for the moon to rise high in the night sky before setting out.
Or so he plans. When the time comes to leave, Nano instead watches the shadows in Mother’s candlelit kitchen ripple like smoke up the walls and tries to convince himself that the Ocean has this once resisted its nature. Antsy could return while he is gone.
“Maybe him d’even go at all,” is his weak attempt. They’d shared breakfast this morning, yesterday’s leftover bakes, following which he’d seen Antsy off. Nano usually enjoys time to himself, but he’d felt particularly alone as he tilled the land this morning.
When he and Antsy first met, he’d been sat by himself on the wall at the back of the school playground; an outsider with head hunched and face wet. The other children had pushed him around. They’d said he laughed too raucously, screamed too loud, cried too much; he was too emotional. He’d never be strong like them. Nano has always preferred hard truths to sugary lies, but their sudden taunts had stunned him. Antsy’s arm around his shoulders was a welcome surprise.
Everyone knew of Antsy: his reputation for mischief made the adults keep their children from playing with him. Unruly, no broughtupsy they said and maybe they were right.
“The turtles dem hatching, come we dash stones at the birds,” he’d said and Nano had followed.
Down on the beach, his aim had been lacking. Noticing his struggle, Antsy gave him some pointers, hiding his compassion behind a thin veil of colourful language. Antsy was a natural at everything; somehow beginner’s luck would turn to studied excellence in no time at all, and Nano always felt out of breath trying to keep up. The two of them spent the remainder of the evening protecting the hatchlings (who were too impatient to wait for nightfall) from the frigate-birds picking off easy meals. They couldn’t save them all, but the Ocean is no safe haven either.
“Trouble that boy middle name, mind he don’t catch you in his web of nonsense,” Mother had said, when he’d announced he had a friend. But he could see in her body lan-guage she was happy for him.
Bag packed with two smoked and wrapped snapper, bread, water and a jumper for when the night turns cold: Nano steps out, full of resolve. The route is a simple one: a serpentine ascent via a single road once he exits town.
He passes the marketplace first. Shut stalls, dusty footprints and silence; the market-place at night is hollow and full of nothing more than memories. Many hot days he’s spent here, hoping and hustling for custom; lightened by Mother’s face whenever he’d bring a new customer her way.
Nano rails, his anger one-tracked and pointed. Hateful waters; wet, violent and lawless. He wants so little and tries his best to fit into the mould thrust upon him. He never broke a mirror, always remembers to throw salt over his shoulder before entry and doesn’t step on the cracks. Why it have to take what he holds dear?
With each step the heat rises within him, his head is hot and thoughts are cloudy. The road, blue in the moonlight, begins its incline with looming trees blending like paintbrush-es on either side, each flourish darkening the sky. He unclenches his teeth, doesn’t recall clenching them, and releases a thunderous cry. Its ring startles the treetop birds before evaporating into the night air. He will beg Tanté Adree for the tools to drain the Ocean and bring Antsy home.
The next sound Nano makes is more of a yelp, as something grabs his ankle in the darkness. Looking down, he sees the glint of Brother Manicou’s shiny eyes.
“Why you lie down in the middle of the road like say you dead? You jumped me man!”
“Nano, is you? You na know you must trod light?,” comes the opossum’s reply, whisk-ers twitching and not much taller now that he is standing, “but wait, you out late, oui?”
“Tanté Adree me look for,” Nano responds, wondering if Manicou had been startled by his cry.
“Oho, you lucky me have shortcut.”
At once fox, rat and monkey, Brother Manicou is skilled in the art of deception and is never far from bacchanal. If you ever have the misfortune to get into a conversation with him when he’s after something, it’s pure bad talk and much up he lures you in with.
Nano has steered clear of Brother Manicou since the time he’d offered help on the farm in payment for a meal. Brother Manicou’s so-called help only meant more work for Nano, who had to follow after him and correct all his errors. All the while Manicou laid back, skin-ning teeth and calling him ‘bossman’ and ‘saga bwoy’.
“The spirit of maco strong with that one,” Mother had said and she was right.
Nano should know better, but desperation must be a close relative of foolishness be-cause he doesn’t suspect a trap when Brother Manicou points to a row of cats marching in single-file off the main path, and says he should follow them.
The otherwise warm night turns cold as he joins the queue. They lead him on a crooked route through the bush to a ramshackle old house, buried deep in a thicket. The cats be-come charged and frantic as the line progresses, climbing over each other and scratching to be at the front. This isn’t how he remembers Tanté Adree’s house, but a lot of time has passed, and change is always possible.
Nano steps inside and finds that the house is made up of one large room. Perhaps there were once more walls, maybe even furniture, but this house is now a skeleton with nothing on its frame. Moonlight bursts through a hole in the roof and illuminates the centre of the room, where a cat larger than any he has seen before is sat. Three times colourful, its pear-coloured eyes are set in a face altogether shaggy and taut. Surrounding this large cat are tens, no hundreds, of regular-sized cats all sitting in a sort of circular congregation. Inside is not frantic like the entrance, but the atmosphere is still strained.
“Me looking for Tanté Adree, any a allyuh know the way?” Nano spills into the room and a sea of cat’s eyes, gleaming in the lowlight, turn to face him.
“You dotish?” is the large cat’s reply, “you does come before Aristo just so?” his heavy tail twitches testily from side to side. “The length a me tongue you want?”
“Sorry, Aristo, Nano me name. Only me in a rush, and…”
“Don’t rush, my youth,” Aristo cuts him off, “whatever that woman can do for you I is more than capable.”
Aristo makes a show of getting to his feet, sighing all the while. Larger with ten toes to the ground, his frame cuts an intimidating shadow in the gloom. The sea of cats’ eyes fol-lows, as he sweeps soundlessly over to Nano.
“What is it you desire?” his voice is softer now; all the same Nano takes a step back. And, of course, he doesn’t tell Aristo that it feels as though the heartache will turn him in-side-out. He doesn’t say that he’d give his whole self if it meant returning Antsy. Instead, his head heats and the rage boils, drowning out the apprehension he should feel at the cat’s intimidating presence.
“Turn water to smoke,” is his scathing reply, “Me want revenge on the Ocean who take him from we.”
An ear-to-ear grin spreads across Aristo’s face. The look Nano has seen many cats give moments before pouncing on a farmyard mouse. Regretful that he didn’t bring his lass, Nano measures up the distance between himself and the door. A room full of cats, no doubt all quicker and more nimble than he.
“You must give to receive,” Aristo utters, “what you have there in the bag?”
Nano makes for the door but stumbles over a cat he hadn’t noticed at his feet. A miser-able oversight, the feline corral immediately set upon him, eyes wild and fur on end. In a chorus of hisses, they rip the bag from Nano’s back, tearing his clothes and skin in the process. They brawl over the contents and snapper flesh and bones fly as he escapes pan-icked and stumbling out into the mancrow darkness.
The sweat pouring from his forehead hides the tears as his chest heaves with fear and relief. The taste of salt on his lips is sour and speaks the Ocean’s name. The moon is hid-den by tree heads swaying black on blue above him. Nano picks the mosquitos from his skin, the closeness of the forest both devours and consoles him. Breathless, he lumbers through the bush and out onto the road. The moonlight, cool on his wet face, is calming. He sits to catch his breath. Realisation tugs on his heart, drawing him open like stage drapes; he’ll never see Antsy again.
Antsy never shared his passion for the olders’ tales, only rarely did he join him in the cornfields to hear them. Yet he would always listen when the mood took Nano to where they would just spill and stream out of him. A smile on his face, broad and full of teeth, his friend loved seeing him bewitched in this way.
At the top of the hill, Nano stops at the tamarind tree in the yard and runs his hand along the bark. He doesn’t know what he will say to Tanté Adree and considers turning back. What if she doesn’t have what he needs? All the same, it can’t hurt to at least look at the house. He approaches as soundlessly as possible. It looks as he remembers: more windows than wall, chipped white paint along the frames and the same long strings of brown and black beads in place of a door.
“Come in,” a voice calls out to him, “your mother na tell you it’s rude to stand in door-ways?”
Nano gingerly steps inside.
“Tanté Adree?” he questions, already knowing the answer.
“Lord, been a while since somebody did call me that.”
She pours out two cups of tea and hands him one.
“Here, siddung.”
Tanté Adree stands above him, as though waiting for him to sip before settling back down herself.
“It hot, yuh need sugar?”
“No thanks, Tanté,” he replies, taking a gulp and allowing the tea’s warmth to settle his stomach.
Dressed neck to foot in a loose-fitting black garment, Tanté Adree’s grey locs are tied in a plait on her right shoulder using a length of string she twiddles while speaking. His eyes are drawn to the colourful necklace that forms a vibrant arc around her neck; the beads hang from it like stars against the night sky, glinting in the candlelight.
The huge windows must let in a lot of sun during the day, but at night they serve only as mirrors to reflect what little is in the room: a small sofa, a rocking chair and a low table covered with books. Between the window frames hang photographs, and Nano scans the flickering faces, searching for one he recognises. It isn’t long before he spots Mother, a smile across her young face and a small Nano slung in one arm. The picture is at the beach, perhaps even the day he became Na Noah, the grimace on his young face suggests as much. Nano wonders how it is that a photograph of him looking so distressed can bring a smile to his face.
Eyes closed and sinking back into the sofa, Nano begins to speak. He tells Tanté about the time he and Antsy caught crabs to race down on the beach, back when crabs were still shell-less. The crabs had been vexed at being caught and made to run for sport, so the next day when Nano and Antsy returned to race them again, they’d all hidden inside shells and refused to come out. The sound of his own laughter startles him, it seems to come from a distance; curled and small, treading water in the void. They will be creating no new memories.
“The Ocean take him, me na know what fi do,” Nano surrenders, the palms of his hands facing upwards in a prayer-like fashion.
Tanté Adree does not respond; instead she gets to her feet and steps outside, her long dress trailing behind her like a shadow. Desperate for remedy, Nano follows.
They make their way behind the house and through the back gate, beyond which is a large clearing. In the darkness, the expanse before them could be anything, even a body of water, yet still he follows.
They reach the centre of the clearing, and Tanté stops. She motions up to the sky, which feels so close Nano is sure he could reach up and pluck the galaxies.
Moon marked door keeper, heed I with both hands clasped,
my pitch is bright and yarn spins out, daring to the beyond;
possess these seedlings, bound and faithfully assembled,
that all once perceived forever pours, to fill this empty frame.
With one hand he gently grips at his chest; it feebly attempts a comfort beyond its reach. The night around him is dense and still as a seabed. He will tear the icy depths and swim over cold sheets for Antsy. His body, brittle with sorrow, no longer moves as he commands, and he falls back onto the soft grass. His heart aches with the depth of a rust-coloured bruise, and he has no strength to fend off the terrible bellyaches.
Oh be a shield, a wide salt circle of protection,
our children drevait and the asham passes swiftly,
so with hands unclasped we cast this glimmer
skyward to the untold, where every light is one of we.
On this out-of-the-way pasture, beneath the satin quilt sky, there is a loosening. Looking up Nano no longer feels alone. Above him the eternal pattern sings a chorus. As he strains for a familiar voice among the many, a light, small at first, is born.
Now step and whirl, low beneath the wax and wane,
our shells coiled in every bogle and whine,
calling out in each toe tap and plié, observing the endless
all carefully chasing, the door marked moon.
At the point where idea becomes change, Nano finds the bud of his comfort. The Ocean still churns, its ruin as inevitable as the tide, but he is not alone.
Curtis Ackie is a black British writer of Grenadian and St. Lucian descent. His passions are surrealist fiction for adults and fantastical fiction for children. He is the co-founder of Formy Books, an independent publisher focussed on amplifying black creative talent within children’s literature. He can be found on instagram here: @botchedsonnet and on formybooks.com.