Song Beneath the Tides Read online

  ‘My cousin Saka’s ngalawa—’

  ‘Is that what this kind of boat’s called?’ The little brother’s voice, excited and shrill.

  ‘Ngalawa, so,’ Huru pronounced it slowly, and the English boy copied. ‘We make it together, from a tree, we take out the inside, so.’ You could see Huru’s pride, patting the strong sides of the boat, the logs fixed as side-floats to balance it, the big curved rudder, the lobster traps and nets, the patched yellow sail. ‘The sail is put away, so it is not broken. It must always be ready again to go to fishing.’ Huru frowned at it dropped in a heap in the boat. ‘Why has Saka not done this? And he is not here! We must find him.’

  It was strange. Leli reflected on it. The fishermen always stayed till everyone’s boat was unloaded, tidied away, and safe on the shore.

  Huru hauled up the sail and dropped it again tidily, furled and tied it, instructed the small brother to stow the paddles. The big brother sat on the prow listening to everyone talking to practise their English.

  Huru is clever to offer Saka’s boat, Leli thought. It is a suitable thing to offer the visitors. Saka will be happy to help. The visitors will like the sea. And the mangrove creeks.

  Suddenly, he felt lighter. He contemplated the girl again, how her hair glowed in the sun, how she felt his look and turned to him and gave him a joyful smile. The thought entered his head that he found her beautiful. With it came a new knot of nerves. He considered how to arrange his words to make no stupid mistakes in her language. Teacher said his words were good, but his grammar was terrible.

  ‘They’re like little fish,’ the girl murmured, meaning the children, just a flash of bottoms and feet tumbling from the rock.

  His prepared words took flight, like startled birds. ‘Fisher children,’ he said in a rush of need for her to understand everything. ‘And boriti cutters’ children—’

  ‘Boriti?’ She repeated it carefully.

  The English name – ‘mangrove poles’ – came to him and he beckoned her towards the new house at the end of the village, showing her the roof – still just a lattice of boriti to take the makuti (‘palm thatch’ in English, he remembered), and the walls just the boriti frame. ‘They will put the mud on,’ he demonstrated the plastering with his hands. ‘In Saka’s boat we can go to the mangroves where the boriti is cut. It is my father’s work—’

  Ally peered up through the skeleton of the roof. ‘Ben’ll like this so much,’ she began, ‘he loves to figure things out—’ Leli was frowning at her in concentration, and she halted.

  ‘Figure things out – what is this?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, sorry – I mean find out how things work? He’s always taking things apart.’

  ‘Ah!’ Leli nodded. ‘Me, I will figure out sickness. I will be a doctor, like your auntie-doctor Carole. But not in the city. I think perhaps the city is interesting, but I have heard there are too many people. It is good to be where there are great seas – to breathe in air. And forests – you can find medicines in forests—’

  ‘Your forest’s so strange!’ Ally told him, without thinking.

  It took her a moment to understand that the look on his face was one of terrible disappointment.

  ‘Oh! No, look, Leli, your forest is beautiful, it’s just – it’s – well, I just find it a bit . . . well, scary . . . But I really like your place, I . . . I feel . . . I mean, I’m lucky, I’m really, really lucky to be here!’

  He rewarded her with a beam of delight, as if she’d handed him a priceless gift.

  Walking back along the sands, he questioned, ‘What is this scary in the forest?’

  ‘Oh, well . . . nothing—’ Again, it ambushes her – a warmth, close by. Unheard words. She glances back.

  He looked behind too. ‘You are troubled?’ He examined her face so intently that she had to look away. ‘Haya, OK,’ he declared. ‘I have not seen strangeness in the forest. But I tell you, there, on Kisiri . . .’

  ‘Where’s that? Kisiri?’ She pronounced it carefully, learning it, liking the sound.

  ‘Our island there. Kisiri is its name. It is . . .’ He screwed up his face with concentration. ‘It is a hidden thing, it is . . .’ He put his finger across his lips.

  ‘Secret?’

  ‘Secret. Yes, secret. Secret! Kisiri means this – secret. Some of my friends, they swim to Kisiri in the night and they come back yelling! Phaw, if the Elders saw they were going . . .’ His tone signified something beyond description. ‘I think my friends are joking, but I see truly they do not go again. Not Eshe, who is very brave, not Koffi, who always follows Eshe, not even the one, Lumbwi, who is a bit mad and will do forbidden things because they are forbidden! But he will not go there in the night! They tell that a cold wind is there, going round, and round, and the tide is fierce by the island, but it is calm on our beach! I tell you, no one will go again after the sun is gone!’

  ‘But why would your Elders be angry? Why’s it forbidden?’

  ‘Sababu . . . sababu . . . because Kisiri is for special times, for Shanza only.’

  She thought about that. ‘You mean private – like, someone owns it?’

  ‘Everyone owns it! It is Shanza’s place!’

  ‘Then can’t we just ask? You know, get permission from the Elders?’

  He chewed his lip as if it helped him sort out answers. ‘They will not allow. We go in special times only. It is the burial place of—’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s sacred!’

  ‘Sacred.’ He nodded. The place there is very sacred, in Kisiri’s forest.’

  He pronounced the word so that it sounded like secret, if you didn’t listen carefully. Secret and sacred. A tingle went up her spine. Secret and sacred. She looked at Kisiri, from this angle a curl of white shore, leaning palms, the green swell of the tide round it.

  After a minute, she resumed, ‘So who’s buried? Can’t we go if we’re very, very careful – and . . . you know . . . respectful?’

  ‘It is the burial place of Bwana Fumo and Mwana Zawati. They are the great founders of Shanza – many many many hundreds of years ago. They are young people. They do brave things. Kisiri is where they lie, for ever. For the Sherehe ya Kwazi . . . so . . .’ He puckered his face, searching for the translation. ‘So when we are together, everyone, we eat, tell stories, there is dancing, singing . . .’

  ‘A party?’

  ‘Ndiyo! I mean ‘yes’! We go round Kisiri – everyone in the boats. We go on Kisiri and we stay for a night. Mzee Kitwana tells us the stories of Bwana Fumo and Mwana Zawati, how they came from far dangers to be safe on our island. We are joyful! We come away when the sun is high. But sometimes, it makes the skin go cold, this place, even when the sun is hot—’

  ‘Eh, Leli, you are the storyteller now!’ a voice broke in. ‘So now you let old Kitwana rest from his duties!’ A deep, warm chuckle followed, and a kind of lilting sigh.

  Ally looked for the speaker, and spotted him at the top of the beach – very old, very stooped, his frail frame a shock to her against the musical strength of his voice.

  He brandished a walking stick at Leli. ‘You have time for stories, still, Leli? Or you are too busy with the world that cannot keep up with itself?’

  He squinted, head on one side. Ally saw the hint of a smile in the twist of his mouth. ‘When I was your age, young ones did not have to go to distant places to search for wonder! Leli, Leli, will you remember to tell your English friend of the big dhows?’ He pointed his stick at the open waters beyond the island. ‘Just there – just there. Flying over the ocean like great birds. And men from many places rested their tall ships and traded good things and told us tales.’ For a minute he stared pensively into the distance and Ally found herself turning to try and see what he saw: fleets of ships? Billowing sails?

  ‘It is calm, calm, now.’ The old man’s voice dropped to a slow lilt. ‘Now it is t
he birds that come every year to our warm place from the cold places of the world. But in the old, old time of our Bwana Fumo – who was just a boy like you, Leli, and Mwana Zawati, who was just a girl like your friend . . . Ah, when, together, they came to deeds of great bravery – in that long ago time, other ships and other men wandered this sea. Such ships! Such men! To fill people with fear and hatred and many other feelings it is terrible to have in your heart.’

  He turned a sudden sharp gaze on Leli. ‘It is in my mind that it is like this Tundani place you must go to see, Leli. So that you will understand. So that it will be remembered.’ He tapped his head and sighed, a gusty, wheezing, wistful sound, and plodded away through the soft dry sand, muttering.

  ‘What’s he mean?’ Ally whispered, reluctant to have the old man hear.

  Leli frowned. ‘Tundani is the place of the big new hotel they make for the rich tourists, many, many miles away . . . But remembering? I do not know what he means.’

  ‘Eh-eh, Leli!’ The old man had stopped at the top of the beach and was contemplating them again. ‘Leli, Leli, my son of the night, I have in my mind,’ he chortled, ‘I have in my mind that you have found your Zawati!’ He waggled his head and went on his way again, enjoying his own joke.

  Ally glanced at Leli. She could see his embarrassment.

  ‘He is old,’ he said. ‘It is nothing. He is talking about Bwana Fumo’s friend, Zawati. She is a great warrior, a great leader. They lie there together on the island. Bwana Fumo and Mwana Zawati. Warriors and leaders.’ He sniffed. ‘Mzee Kitwana is making a big joke. Everyone is joking today—’

  ‘It’s a nice joke! I quite like being called a warrior and a leader!’

  He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. She was tempted to narrow her eyes back, except he’d definitely think she was mocking him.

  Instead she asked, ‘So why did he call you “son of the night”? Is that a joke too?’

  Warily he regarded her. After a pause, ‘My name, Leli – this means night.’

  ‘Oh, OK! I like that – Leli, Son of the Night. So not anything to do with this Bwana Fu—’

  The blare of a car horn blasted through her words. Then the thrum of an approaching engine. Goats galloped furiously into view, scattering chickens and heralding the apparition of a large, very shiny red Land Rover.

  The vehicle ground its way through soft sand, bumped to the top of the shore, halted, and the engine switched off.

  As one, the small children abandoned the rock and streamed out of the water towards the newcomer. But then they stopped, gathered in a circle, waited.

  The length of the bay, work ceased and a watchful silence descended.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then the door swung open and a ridiculously large white broad-brimmed hat emerged. But there was nothing ridiculous about the irritation with which its owner swept it off and used it to swat away the bolder children venturing close.

  The man shoved the outsize hat back on his head, ignored everyone else, strolled to the water’s edge, lifted binoculars to his eyes, and panned across the bay until he came to rest on the island.

  Ally sensed Leli, close beside her, bristle with tension.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, low-voiced. ‘He marches in like he owns the place!’

  ‘This is no person we have seen before—’

  An earsplitting roar cut him short, two powerboats screaming round the bulge of the mangrove swamps. They ploughed towards Shanza village as if to mount the shore, at the last moment skidding away in a vicious turn, bow waves surging towards the beach. Murmurs rippled through watching Shanza fishermen, grew to angry shouts.

  ‘Idiots!’ yelled Jack. ‘They’ll hit someone!’

  The Land Rover man lowered the binoculars and turned to stare at him.

  ‘Leli, I am thinking this is maybe the new hotel people from Tundani.’ Huru kept his eyes glued to the speeding boats.

  ‘So why’re they going to your special island if no one’s allowed?’ Ben demanded in a tone of outrage.

  The boats had cut their engines and were gliding silently towards Kisiri’s shore, passing out of sight on the far side.

  Agitation rippled along Shanza’s beach, so sharp Ally could feel it.

  ‘Oh, oh! There will be anger,’ Leli said. ‘This will bring big anger!’

  Three

  That evening, for their aunt, Ben eagerly reported the events in the village.

  ‘Everyone argued, then someone fetched a man – mizay something—’

  ‘Mzee Shaibu?’ Carole asked. ‘The headman, Benjy – leader of the Shanza Village Council. Mzee’s a respectful word for Elder. It means old man.’

  ‘Yeah, him, and then they all shot off to that island, everyone in canoes like an army!’

  ‘Those speedboats’ll run someone down and not even know they’ve done it,’ Jack put in, lazy in a hammock slung from iron pegs in the wall.

  They were all on the roof of the house, digesting supper – fish, grilled by Carole on a tiny charcoal stove, or rather by Carole and Ben. He’d watched her, interrogated, then taken over.

  Now the little stove glowed in the corner, heating water for tea, while they finished great, juicy slices of pawpaw.

  After the long, hot day, Ally’s eyes felt scorched. Up here, a strong sea breeze took the sting from her skin. Carole had doused the paraffin lamp, and the night filled with the breeze in the casuarina trees and surf sighing in the coral hollows below the house. A few points of flickering light from Shanza gave a hint of other human habitation. Otherwise, all was a dark expanse, fringed by a snow-gleam where moonlight touched the sands.

  But Ally was having to force herself to listen to the chatter. A cocoon seemed to hold her at a distance from the others. Was it the heat? Or the newness of everything? Or a retreat from the hullabaloo in the village, the struggle to work out what was happening when everyone yelled incomprehensibly to each other in Swahili?

  Other things kept swallowing her thoughts. Colours, sounds, faces – Leli’s face – that look of pure happiness, the amazing way his eyes lit up and he’d given that slow smile when she’d said she was lucky to be here. It felt like the best present she’d ever given anyone.

  I should’ve told him about the forest. Properly. He’d have listened. Like he told me about the island’s strangeness.

  Not telling him felt like betraying a trust.

  In the darkness now the weirdness in the forest was real to her again, as if it rose on the trees’ whisper and the restless swash of the ocean; as if the wind carried words she should be able to hear; the sensation prickled over her skin like a touch.

  She forced herself to focus on Ben telling Carole, ‘That Big-Hat Land Rover man was talking on this big, big satellite phone, but he drove off really fast when everyone jumped in the water! And then the speedboats zoomed off too.’

  ‘Thing is,’ Carole mused, ‘if the boats are from the new hotel at Tundani, they’ve really got no business this far down the coast.’

  She poured tea and handed out cups. ‘There, see if you like it – it’s how Shanza people drink it. Spiced with ginger.’ She leaned back in a ramshackle basket chair that creaked and squeaked as it settled. ‘There’s been a long-running argument over that hotel – still is, mind. People haven’t been able to get a health clinic built here, and it’s so, so badly needed – but suddenly a massive tourist thingy gets government approval, just like that!’ snapping her fingers to emphasize the point.

  She sipped her tea for a minute. ‘But the hotel complex is supposed to be spreading north of Tundani, way north up the coast, not south to here. That’s – what, fifteen miles away, I’d say, at least, maybe more.’

  ‘Leli made us meet the Mzee headman,’ Ben ploughed on, ‘he was carrying this cool stick with snakes on it, and he shook our hands and said, “it’s an honour to meet the doctor�
�s family—”’

  ‘There’s people buried out there,’ Ally said, because that was the other thought that kept shoving its way into her head. ‘On the island, I mean. Leli told me—’

  An elaborate groan from Ben. ‘Now you’ll never dare go there! You were really spooked in the forest!’

  ‘You would be too!’ Ally retorted. ‘It felt like someone was – I don’t know – following or something. Like, hiding— No, it really did!’ she insisted to Carole, ignoring Ben crossing his eyes at her.

  ‘Kids teasing you, maybe,’ Carole said. ‘The people buried on the island, Ally, they’re from centuries ago – way, way back, around the time the first ships from Europe reached this coast – oh, five hundred years ago, at least, I think. To be honest, I don’t know much about it, keep meaning to find out. Maybe we should do that while you’re here, what d’you think? It’s a murky, nasty bit of history . . .’

  ‘The storyteller in Shanza said something about it,’ said Ally. ‘I didn’t really understand. I wished I did.’

  ‘So we’ll do that, we’ll find out,’ Carole confirmed. ‘Anyway, whatever worried you in the forest wouldn’t be anything criminal. There’s some nasty stuff happening a long way up the coast, eighty miles at least: smuggling, trafficking. It’s been in the newspapers. But not here. It’s really peaceful here – the Elders are very proud to tell me there’s no crime in this place, not like in the city.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean it was like a thief or anything—’

  ‘Like what, then?’ Her aunt scrutinized her.

  Like what? They hadn’t returned through the forest, instead taking the longer route by shore and climbing the coral bluff to reach Carole’s house on the headland. All the way, though, Ally felt the forest marching to her right, at first hugging the shore, then giving way to the scattered, feathery casuarina trees with their carpets of piny needles and cones. All the way that sensation of nearness travelled with her, echoes, whispers, a voice she couldn’t hear. Her mind circled what Leli’d said about Kisiri, about sacred places and warrior-leaders.