borikén
Land of the Valiant and Noble Lord
“Puerto Rico”
2100
As we spring from the sea, it happens midair. Tik, clang, pang, and it feels like I have giant joints and thudduck, we land loudly on a metal shore. So heavy and stiff, we are armoured, but for what?
Ke Ara, Earth People, humans. I want to tell Skelele and try to move toward him, but I can’t speak. Our hair is now wires flowing down into the crevices of our shield plates, LED visors cover our eyes, and when I raise my palm, a touchpad.
[OMG. this feels lockd in. u ok?] I read from Skelele.
Even our language has changed.
Everything has changed. Is this what it means to fall into Ke? To be earthbound? Is this why my people returned to the sea and Skelele’s to the sky? I am familiar with this body — but not. But I did it, we did — sprang into a different shape of ourselves, another reality. What are we being prepared for? My turtle heart thuds slow under my metallic shell and a salamander spine tightens in me. Skelele’s hands flick, lizard-like. Is that a flash of fear from him?
Breathe. Even though the sharp, hot air burns. This place is hard everywhere. No trees. Only metal, concrete, plastic, glass. We are in a dome that maybe covers part of the island. Even though it seems invisible, I can tell because the air inside is slightly clearer than just beyond where a hazy, white-hot sky shimmers. Breathe. Above the city, great machines churn, extracting dust and smoke from construction sites, spewing it out of the climate-regulator dome. This couldn’t be metal we’re covered in, but it feels like that to me.
A GPS signal on my visor directs me, just as Skelele points, to a queue of metallic Ke Ara. Cars jam the streets, and no one is walking. We join the queue.
[whre thyr naniki?] Skelele texts.
A dog-cat creature is suddenly jerked back to its “owner” in the queue by a laser leash.
We see two Ke Ara bounce fists and as we touch ours, instantly, our thoughts are transmitted into our visor screens.
[cool]
[really?]
We are smaller. These Ke Ara are huge. And silent, getting into sleek cars that drive up to them. It is our turn and as soon as we get in, zzlip, we fuse onto, into, the seats and now our thought-texts are projected onto the “windscreen.” It is as if in these materials we have no bones, no blood.
[shoots!]
This thing is driving itself and we are rigged in, a tube in my mouth.
Streaming entertainment tabs pop up on the screen, a menu on the armrest. Skelele is skimming through ads for all sorts of things. I select a “gourmet special” and taste an ugly sludge in my mouth. He laughs at my face and is busy touching too many things, as if it doesn’t matter where we’re heading now, or what we’re passing.
He touches an ad for an air meter and the actual gadget rolls out of the dash, receipt flashing.
[ok. I know!]
But before we can really see anything outside, the screen fills:
[BREAKING NEWS: Great new oil finds in the North and South today. PREDICTIONS: more oil exists throughout the region and, as we expand our systems, other islands will be converting …]
An ad for a resort bubble, full of clean air, sunshine, and trees:
[Don’t forget — everyone needs rest and relaxation to survive! Buy your virtual Holiday at Home package today! Exclusive luxury resort deals just for you — 100% Ameri-Caribbean.]
More announcements fill our view:
[Global Economic Development Commission: We have successfully eradicated poverty and illiteracy. Sustainability is possible with AI and we will be better able to extract and manage precious oil reserves.]
And then it becomes one loud message:
[Remember your part in preserving the human race — innovate, create — and submit ideas to us.]
Numbed. Our naniki senses have dimmed.
[i thnk they call it ‘dumbed’]
Our car deposits us at a stadium where Ke Ara are pouring into the Super Challenge XXI. We are in the City of Ponce and Skelele reads my thoughts on his visor as he takes in the scene.
[this usd 2 b my ancestor’s sacred ceremonial cán]
[krazy]
We stare at the stands full of Ke Ara gamers controlling a virtual battle game on, and above, turf that is real grass. The only natural element in sight.
[beyond OMG]
In this wild, virtual role-play battle, “mud” is flying, “blood” pouring from the fantastical beasts, characters, and made-up naniki. The stadium is alive and loud with a blaring digital roar and frenzied clamour. But two tiny, real bee hummingbirds, colibri, are dodging through the laser- and sword-filled chaos — straight to us. Hovering above our shoulders, they point down. The corner of a cemi stone is there, at our heavy feet, and as I pick it up and Skelele also touches it, we can see through the raging game and the turf. Relics, a burial site, conch-shell middens, and bones. I start trying to explain to Skelele, but he can see what I see now:
A clearing in the middle of the battle game, a Batey ceremonial ball court lined with stones, and a Batey game being played by Taino Earth People.
It is just a glimpse, before the battle game clouds in again and our hummingbirds jitter about us. They dive into the madness ahead.
[we mst follow, quick!]
[u telling me?] He is.
The stone cemi we are holding seems to pull us, as if attached to the darting jewel birds, and we crash our way through, ducking and dodging hyper-coloured horses with knights charging, ninja warriors and anime samurais attacking, sci-fi creatures fighting, and “prehistoric” beasts clashing. We burst into the centrefield ancestral clearing.
Breathe. Breathe now.
Here, Taino people are singing and dancing an areito and it reverberates around us like water, passing their history on and on. Skelele and I recognize our tattoos on them and their tekina leader spots us, signalling us in.
“Ocama! Listen, Ocama! And you will go far,” he shouts.
The dancers are singing and as we listen, we see Borikén as it used to be, in our visors, with rivers and trees. Ocama, like a breeze.
Atabey … Mother Earth Spirit … birth source of the universe … mother of twin sons Ioka Hu and Guakar.
Breeze touching La Cordillera Central mountains, the beautiful Sacred High Place of the Great Waters.
Another child is born from the womb of Atabey, Iaia Lokuo … the divine father-mother of all humanity …
Iaia Lokuo was born naked and defenceless, but with the gift of reason from Guakar and his rigourous guidance, Iaia Lokuo became strong and survived … his blood on this soil made the first humans, Ke Ara.
But these Ke Ara are strange. Play-fighting for no reason.
The new human creature learns to heal itself … ward off starvation. You must too!
A red blood cloud spreads from the battle-game slaughter, thick. We strain to listen and can only hear now the faint buzz of hummingbird wings approaching.
Atabey sometimes transforms into her destructive manifestation … Gua Ban Sesh.… she summons up Koatriskie, the spirit of torrential precipitation and flooding. She calls out for Guatauba, the Lord of Thunder, who announces chaos with the thundering sound of his mayohuacan drum. Sometimes she summons up the violent whirlwind spirit Hu Rakan …causing ruin and grief. Other times she causes the Earth kaiman to shake and shudder, causing earthquakes and tsunamis. There are times when the chaotic manifestation of the Matriarch Spirit causes fire and heat to burst from great mountains on the earth.
The blood cloud clears and our colibri are leading a Beike toward us.
“I am Sobaoko Koromo, Miguel Sague Jr., Beike Bo, founder and leader of the Caney Indigenous Spiritual Circle. And I know you will learn from others … there was another, Iahubaba, who was selfish … Iahubaba was also struck down by the manaya of Guakar, the harsh teacher … and the elements in the tissues of his body were seized by the metamorphic powers of the sun spirit … and turned into birds. This sacrifice allowed for the creation of the third mystic family, the ANIMAL FAMILY.4
Your path is clear and guided, and you must OCAMA and follow it.”
He blesses us and our tattoos sparkle like diamonds. It tingles, even through my metallic skin, dazzling Skelele.
We know now, where the cemi needs to rest.
We kneel and place it into its cardinal position near two other ancient cemis in a sacred formation, Sacred Earth. But when we rise, the Beike has vanished and we are surrounded again by the virtual battle game, more violent than ever.
We are the target now.
Fast as our colibri, we speed through the deafening neon madness, out of the stadium. Water. Only a concrete canal but it is throbbing with the sound of a wooden drum, and we dive. Ni. Even if it is dirty — water, ni.
I can barely see Skelele, but we follow the sound of the mayohuacan drum together. Concrete walls become metal cylinder and faster than currents we are piped out into my sea.
Open.
Sea me. Sea me now.
My parrotfish and Skelele’s flying fish are nervous, struggling with the warm water and as shaken as we are.
The whirring drumbeat is slowing.
Blue returning
stealing my heart again in its swallow.
Cooling, we flow, curving with the coast northward, following the drum, but it is changing. A gush from Mona Canyon pushes us into the Puerto Rico Trench, the deepest gorge of the Atlantic. The warm Caribbean Sea filigrees through vast ocean and ripples in us.
In this “Blue Marlin Alley,” we can sense the past fury of mahi-mahi, wahoo, sailfish, and marlin, but no longer see them. The strength and torrent canyoning miles of deepness, ultra-dark blueness, strums with wooden drum notes and we give ourselves to it in all expanse.
Release. Decompression. A rebreather.
But I have never felt blue waters like this deepest trough. Is it soul-blue threads the drums are weaving? Water, wind, and us — pushing in equatorial force against the spin of Mother Earth.
The Bluest Blue seas me. Send me, rush me
away from the weight of centuries.
Flush between Atlantic gorge and Antillean arc
the deepest blue sees me.
Sluicing us along, blue-black water sliding in the Hispaniola Trench, the sounds lie like umbilical cables on the invisible ground at first. All around us. Pulling us forward. Sound ropes become threads, as the beat changes from mayohuacan to talking drum. Skelele twizzles, rushing ahead and then back to me excitedly. Threads above us, light as air, are lifting into the air and teasing the waves. Skelele is beaming, skimming along in a rhythm that I cannot try to keep up with, catching his breath as the talking drum rises out of a water note. Dùndún!
What it is saying fills me too.
It lifts me through Atlantic seas as we rush along the coast of Ayiti. It tells us:
“From old mouths to new ears.”5
“Sounds are the first language …”
“The story is our escort; without it, we are blind …”6
“Ogotemmêli and my people, Nommo!” Skelele shouts, from his moment above water, as he pings his flying fish’s wing.
He is too playful for his age. But so joyful and free. He should know not to tease his naniki rough like that though, and he should know that I know these things too. Mostly. Mostly I know we should be heading back, not away from our sea basin and elders. But what is the reason for this journey anyway?
Dance pulse is the human heartbeat …
Music pulse the drumbeat of Africa — the mother land of drums …
“Amma!” He is shouting again. “Dogon!” In time with the beat. Bouncing madly.
His elders must be near.
There, a sky mother, with two cherubby babies tucked into her shoulder-blade wings, is calling out to a bunch of little Turey Ara children who are trying to follow us. “Wá!”
The sky children are all shapes and sizes, tumbling over each other with their seagull naniki, squawking, pointing, wings tangled, laughingly loving Skelele.
He splashes some water up at them and they dodge.
“Wá!” the mother calls again, fading, and they slow.
We slipstream sideways below Inagua Islands and the Great Bahama Banks, past a long bright stripe of what used to be Ragged Island. The reefs are long gone, but my naniki is now a silver-white marlin and Skelele’s a sailfish, and the call of a brown booby echoes back to the talking drum.
Skelele leaps higher into the air. Maybe the bird or the sounds are not real enough to carry him. He spots the dark blue Tongue of the Ocean, which I can barely hear, uncurled and languishing between the bright Bahama banks. He lands again shouting, “Nommo! Dogon!”
We seal and glide, smiling white as the glow of aqua-light sediment shining at us. Millions of centuries of layers of Sahara dust conspire here, in whispers. A thickness of silt-throated whiting, photosynthesizing, cyanobacterizing, a luminescent chatter.
Skelele shivers. He’s brighter and faster than ever, changing colours with his sailfish, sparkling in this sea of African glitter dust.
I want to see him feather-a-change into a Turey Ara again.
I want to feel him change my heart again into air.
Where have his people gone?
This river in the sea pulls stronger than anything and we are ripping along. Just look at him, Skeleleling along at a rate, flipping in and out of the dark blue against bright. That could be me, except he is dancing like no Ni Ara, breathless, shouting together with the drum.
“When the music changes, so does the dance !”7
And it does change.
The beat taps, taps, is tapping into … la clavé
tripling along, even though the river is slowing.
I have only seen this island from my Caribbean side, in my time.