Tokoyo lived long ago in a village on the coast of Japan. Her father was a healer who believed that he should never walk past someone who needed his skills, that if someone was injured or ill, he should always stop to help. He hoped to teach Tokoyo how to be a healer too, he hoped to share his skills and his knowledge of herbs with her.
But Tokoyo had a different passion. She loved to dive with the pearl fishers of the coast, the women who trained long and hard to dive deep under the waves. Tokoyo was learning to how to hold her breath for minutes at a time, to search for oysters, then prise them open with a knife to see if there was a pearl inside.
Tokoyo loved the challenge of holding her breath, she loved the underwater world where light and sound were so different from onshore, and she loved the gamble of not knowing which oysters would contain pearls.
One day the local warlord fell ill. Tokoyo’s father tried to heal him, but it was an illness the healer had never seen before. The warlord was struggling to breathe, his lungs were filling up with fluid, he felt like he was very slowly drowning. Tokoyo’s father, even with all his learning, skills and herbs, couldn’t heal the warlord. So the warlord, who couldn’t tolerate failure, exiled Tokoyo’s father.
Her father was sent to a far-away island to be imprisoned, never to come home again. He was exiled so fast that Tokoyo didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.
She decided to follow him to the island, to find him, to keep him company, perhaps even to help him escape.
After a long journey she arrived on the island and started to search. The island was very different from her own coastal home. No-one dived for pearls; instead the men fished with long nets, from small boats.
As she searched the shore for any signs of her father’s prison, she saw something glitter in the morning sun. She saw a silver shape on a high rock above a stony beach.
She ran closer. It was a girl, in a silver robe, being pushed to the edge of the rock by a priest. The girl was screaming and struggling.
Tokoyo shouted, “No!” and ran towards the rock.
She ran past a line of men on the beach, local fishermen in a half-circle round the rock, who weren’t doing anything to help the girl.
“No!” Tokoyo shouted again and scrambled up the rock.
She stood between the girl and the edge, holding her arms out to block the way. “What are you doing?” she asked the priest.
“I’m throwing her into the sea.”
“Why? Can she even swim?” Tokoyo glanced at the girl, who shook her head. “Why would you throw a girl who can’t swim into the sea? She’ll die!”
The priest nodded. “Someone must die, because there is a giant sea serpent living under this island, and he causes storms which sink our boats and drown our fishermen, unless we give him a gift once a year. A gift of a girl, to eat. So if we don’t throw this girl into the sea, then our fishermen will die.”
Tokoyo looked at the weeping girl and at the frightened faces of the fishermen below. She thought of her father, who never walked past someone who needed his help. She took a slow breath, deep into her strong lungs. She felt the breath fill her body and she knew how long she could hold it. She felt the sharp oyster knife in the waistband of her dark tunic.
Tokoyo said, “If you must give the giant serpent a gift, then give me.”
“You?” said the priest. “You would sacrifice yourself for this girl?”
“Yes, but will you do me one favour in return? There is a healer imprisoned on this island. Please take him a message from me. Tell him that his daughter came looking for him, but that I stopped to help someone on the way.”
Then Tokoyo balanced on the edge of the rock above the sea and stretched her arms upwards.
“Not yet,” called the priest. “You must wear the silver robe, so the sea serpent knows you are the gift and leaves our boats alone.”
The girl undid the silver belt and pulled off the silver robe, and Tokoyo tied it round herself.
She stood on the edge again, her arms raised. The priest stepped towards her, but she shook her head. “There is no need to push me. I go willingly.” She took a deep breath and dived off the rock.
She dived down down down, into the flat cold sea.
Tokoyo could see underwater, but not clearly, because light moves differently under the sea, as if the light from above and the shadows from below ripple together. However she could see enough to glimpse a black arch in the bottom of the rock. A cave. The cave where the giant sea serpent lived.
To one side of the cave, Tokoyo saw a man, standing on the seabed. She swam closer.
The man was just standing, staring at her. Eyes wide open, mouth wide open.
She swam even closer. Was the sea monster a man, rather than a serpent?
She swam cautiously closer still, then she recognised the man. He was the warlord who had exiled her father.
She swam closer and the man just stared, he didn’t move. This wasn’t a man, this was a statue. A wooden statue of the warlord, deep underwater.
She looked at the statue’s wide open mouth, full of seawater, and she thought about the illness her father couldn’t cure, and she wondered…
Suddenly there was a surge of water from the dark arch, which knocked Tokoyo over. She tumbled through the sea.
When she regained control, she was already in the serpent’s mouth. Huge fangs above her and huge fangs below her were closing around her. So she put her feet against the forked tongue coiled at the back of the mouth, and she kicked, pushing herself off and propelling herself fast through the water and out of the serpent’s mouth.
The mouth snapped shut and Tokoyo saw the sea serpent, huge and yellow and scaly, look confused at the lack of food in its mouth.
She turned and swam off, zigging and zagging, trying to get away from that giant yellow head. But the sea serpent followed her, weaving and winding through the water.
Tokoyo was fast and tricky, but the sea serpent was faster and followed her every move. Then with a lurch and a snap, the serpent had her. The hem of her silver robe was trapped between the monster’s fangs. She couldn’t get away, she was dangling from the serpent’s mouth, looking up into its huge hungry eyes.
Tokoyo jerked and tugged on the silver fabric, trying to escape, but she couldn’t tear herself free. She fumbled under the robe and pulled out her oyster knife.
With one slash she cut off the hem and freed herself.
The serpent’s mouth opened in surprise, the fabric which Tokoyo had cut away slid out from between the fangs, and Tokoyo saw the sea serpent’s eyes flick to watch the silver ribbon drift away.
She realised that the sea serpent was chasing the silver robe, not her. The silver was bright in the dim rippling water, so the wrapping round the gift was what allowed the serpent to catch its food.
She undid the silver belt and pulled off the silver robe. Then she threw the robe in one direction and she dived, in her dark tunic, in the other direction. The sea serpent snapped after the robe, not after the dark shadow.
As the sea serpent’s head turned away from her, Tokoyo dived towards it, and stabbed the serpent’s right eye. She jerked the knife out and the sea serpent’s black blood darkened the sea. She swam over the sea serpent’s head, stabbed the left eye and tugged her knife free again. Then she dived under the sea serpent’s jaws and cut right across its throat.
But she didn’t take the knife out a third time.
Tokoyo left the knife in the sea serpent’s flesh and dived down and round its long writhing body. She swam in a spiral round the serpent, cutting all the way, slicing off a long line of yellow skin as she dived.
As she swam round and down, the blood spurted from the serpent’s flesh, but as she cut more and more, the flow of blood slowed, until it was only seeping out.
When she reached the tail of the serpent with her sharp knife, the blood stopped completely and she knew the monster was dead.
She used her knife to cut the strip of skin off at the tail and the sea serpent drifted to the seabed, naked and skinless and dead.
Tokoyo held in her hand a long strong scaly yellow skin rope.
She could feel her lungs straining. Her body needed air. But she swam to the statue and tied the skin rope around its waist. Then holding the other end, she swam upwards, not rushing, taking her time, staying safe all the way up to the surface.
Her face burst up into the air. She took a deep and welcome breath.
Then she swam to the shore. She put the skin rope in the hands of the girl she had saved, the priest she had persuaded and the long curve of fishermen, and she asked them to pull. They hauled and dragged that wooden statue out of the water.
When it was on the shore, Tokoyo turned it over to let the water drain out.
When the statue’s mouth was empty and the wood started to dry, then the warlord in her village far away breathed properly again.
When he discovered that Tokoyo had lifted the curse on him, he let Tokoyo and her father return to their village, where her father healed anyone who needed his help and Tokoyo dived for pearls.
But whenever she went to that beautiful and dangerous underwater world, she took a silver sash tucked into her dark tunic, in case she ever needed to distract another giant sea serpent.
