tobago
Tobacco
18th Century
Scrambling up rocks to seek shelter, we shift into … we are hunted maroons, running through bushes, wet with fear. Dogs smell us, barking, but our zandolie slithers with us, faster. We surge into a gully and up the side of it. Crashing through leaves, we glimpse slaves working a cane field in the distance and a fort being built on a sharp mountain ridge.
Skelele tugs me upward as he shifts into his sky self, just above the bamboo, and a set of noisy cocricos fly along with us. Landing on the side of a small hill, we are landlocked.
“I need more power to fly too!” I can’t help wailing, as if that would help.
The undergrowth trembles and from behind the buttress roots of a massive tree, Papa Bois appears. A little army of Douen swarm out from the bushes surrounding us and we brace, back to back. The cocricos settle in the branches above.
“Don’t worry my, deers. We are only here to help,” Papa Bois murmurs and his voice is as kind as his wizened brown face. The dappled light flickers his white mane and beard alive, and he smiles as we stare at his cloven feet. The Douen, spirits of unborn children, make a chattering sound that could be leaves in a breeze. They crowd closer but hide under their large hats.
“It’s okay,” he tells them and they shuffle back a little. Their feet are back to front.
Papa Bois looks all the way up and we follow his gaze to the sparse top of the huge silk cotton tree. The shape of someone and a large owl are hard to make out. “Don’t worry,” he tells us again. “We are exiles too, for now. She helped us escape the fighting and destruction in our island, and will fly us back to Trinidad when these two islands unite.”
He shouts, “Gang Gang Sarah, we have some friends in need!”
The ghost of a slave witch who flew from Africa is stuck here because she ate salt and couldn’t return. She can only help others now.
She stands on the fat branch amongst the bromeliads and strokes her owl, rags flapping in the wind. “Aye, mi arabimaa, Skelele! Kini o n duro de? What you waiting for?”
Skelele beams as he lifts off, hefting me upward amidst the cackle and flap of the cocricos.
Ha ha ha! Co-co-rico! Her laugh sounds the same as the crude birds.
I balance, sitting on Gang Gang Sarah’s branch and a beautiful motmot, with the most elegant long tail feathers, lands on my shoulder. I feel just as beautiful as the bird, light and as exquisite as Skelele’s sky self hovering midair just in front of us. Our eyes are one right now.
Gang Gang Sarah throws back her head and laughs raucously. “Heh heh heyy! What is that scoily smell? Nutmeg?” We can’t smell it ourselves anymore. We are waiting. She knows what we want.
“But I know what I want you to do fuh me,” she says, staring hard at me. “Tek this Salt of the Earth, and return it to where it come from.” Handing me a small cloth parcel tied with sisal string.
It sits heavy in my hand as I try to remain balanced, but she doesn’t wait for me to ask …
“You will know when de time reach.” And she calls out right away, “Iba Olódùmarè, Nyame, Ala, Amadioha!! Ee fún ọmọ yi ni agbara lati to. Iba, Creative Forces of the multiverse. Give this child the power to fly. Even for a while, ha!”
Two frigates circle high above us and beyond them we see Skelele’s elders hiding in the clouds.
I am soaring! A partial sky me, sailing, flanked by the frigates majestically in formation with Skelele.
Gang Gang Sarah’s cackle fades and we close our eyes just for a moment. The breath of wind flowing through us is so cleansing and light. Așẹ. Hahom. For this moment of ours.
We flip joined wing tips into our gifted mirror, to see behind us better. At the centre of Maboya, the oil-rig claws are crazy, and the carrion-feeding disaster keeps spreading.
Ke Choreto has broken the chain of the archipelago ring and is floating in the Atlantic. Just as I fly so light, my heart weighs more than ever.
Way below us, a flock of scarlet ibis glitter like bright jewels against a dark green sea. We swoop down following them, across the Gulf of Paria, toward a muddy estuary.