Black Pearls

Captain Caldwell fingered the pearls in his trench coat. They were failures, all of them. He rolled them between his fingers, feeling their unevenness, their bumpy shapes. They were small, light – like kidney stones.

“Captain,” cried a voice from the helm. “It is getting very foggy, non? We should set anchor for a while until it pass—”

Caldwell’s hand left its pocket as he turned to find Gauthier, that tiny, blasted Frenchman, leaping down the steps of the bridge deck.

He fixed him with an eye. “Sorry, Gauthier; didn’t realize you were the captain, here.”

The boy grimaced. “Pardon, Captain, but 'ow can we navigate if we cannot see—”

The Captain placed a hand on the pistol at his hip and stepped toward the young man. His bootfall came heavy and steady.

“I brought you on this expedition as our translator. Now, I didn’t need a weatherman and I certainly don’t, now.” He stopped in front of the boy, towering over him. “We’ve got provisions enough for a week before we get to Port-au-Prince, but I’m sure the boys would love an extra draught of rum after a good keelhauling, don’t you think? Shouldn’t be too hard toodlin’ around the Port without a Frenchie. Now what was it again: Parlay-voo Anglay?”

Gauthier gulped and stepped back onto the stairs behind him. “My apologies, sir.”

Caldwell tipped his head and cast his gaze out to sea.

But the kid was right; fog was rising fast.

“This,” said the Captain, sweeping his hand out at the gathering fret, “This is our sign.”

Gauthier knew his place, but could not feign understanding. Timidly, he ventured: “Sir...?”

“The Mommy’s a sea-witch, and a rich one at that. She don’t take kindly to white visitors. I reckon this is her way of saying ‘keep out.’ But, we'll do what we gotta. Tell the boys we’ll set a course through the fog; I wont it cut clean in two.”

“Yes, sir,” said the boy with a salute, “Tout de suite, sir!”

~

The crew on that ship did as told, and went sailing through the fog like a wooden knife. Before long, they couldn't see one end of the ship from the other.

As the waters grew choppy, the crew went more and more uneasily about their tasks. There was talk among the Haitian deckhands of the shape of ghosts in the gloom, and poor Gauthier could be seen signing the cross at every pitch and plunge of the ship.

But the Captain was unfazed.

He had already spoken with the Mommy five times before, and he had five baubles to prove it. Mechanically, he rolled the pearls in his pocket, each a failure, letting them grind and clack against the other in their worthlessness.

Mami Wata, spoken of by African slaves near and far, was a spirit that promised great wealth to the one who could tell her a worthy story. Caldwell wasn't a superstitious man – certainly not a believer in African leprechauns – but the fear and reverence with which they spoke of her piqued his curiosity.

Finding her was always a difficult affair, wanderer as she was, but his first encounter was something of an accident.

Years ago, he captained the White Sow, a rum-runner between Jamaica and Louisiana. He wasn't an hour out-of-port when the seas threw up a great fog like the one they now sailed. Steering blind, the hull struck upon a rock, and they quickly foundered. His mutinous crew abandoned ship on their rowboats, and he was left floating among the flotsam.

Eventually, he washed ashore somewhere far beyond the scope of his course. Marooned on an island no map could name, he made do with what little he had.

And when the rain came, he found a small cavern for shelter.

It was there he met her, the lady of awe and legend.

And he never forgot her face: her golden eyes with slitted pupils; her long, dreaded hair perfumed and bound up with golden rings; her skin, black as ebony, which carried all the glint and curve of youth. All of this rode upon a serpent's tail from her waist down, like a mermaid of beauty and terror.

But for sharing her home, all she asked was for the story of his misadventure at sea.

Happily, he told her of the mist that gathered over the waters, and the jutting sea-rock that shattered the wooden hull of his ship, and of the people who abandoned him, and of his long fight to survive. Knowing well the legends told of her by her people, he took great care to embellish what needed embellishing and to leave out what (strictly-speaking) did not need to be said, namely that the rum onboard was stolen cargo, and that much of his crew were wanted men.

Mami Wata took pity on him, and thanked him for his tale and offered him a single, black pearl as a gift.

In his adventures on the seas, he would come to earn four more of these wretched pearls, but not a single nugget of her coveted hoard did he see.

Frustrated, kept away from his promised treasure, he accused the Mommy of greed, of lying about a hoard she did not possess. After his last pearl, he demanded her treasure, to which she shrugged and said simply, “Nuh every man can 'ave a kingdom,” and slithered away into the shoal.

A kingdom, Caldwell vowed to himself as he pored over a map, will be just the start, today.

~

Some hours in, the ship ran aground between great, black shapes in the murk. Like arms folded in an embrace, the jutting land seemed to wrap itself around the ship and hold it to its bosom.

Captain Caldwell gave the command to weigh anchor and take up arms. “If you wonna get paid,” he told them, “You gotta live. So be sure you do.”

Three dinghies carried the Captain and his crew forth, between the shadows. And as they went rowing, the fog peeled back, and the sun was warm on their faces.

“Sacré bleu!” cried Gauthier, “You were right, Captain! Zis witch commands ze sea and her airs!”

Caldwell did not turn to acknowledge his French comrade but looked on, rolling the pearls in his pocket like a papist at his beads. The shape of the land became clearer as they cut their path: It was a broad, white beach spilling over with tall trees and greenery. The land just beyond the line of the forest lifted into craggy cliffs, the tops of which also bore dense forest.

He sighed; it was gonna be a machete kind of day.

Their landing went well-enough. Gauthier was the last to disembark, and capsized his dinghy on stepping out. The boys had a laugh over him, ribbed him in their own way, called him “ti-sirèn-la” all the vine-hacking day.

At the dying of the sun, they made camp and a fire to hold a dozen braces of fish, and there they shared their stories amongst each other. Caldwell sat quietly as they conversed, here in English, there in French: a secret word in Kreyòl.

“Donc, Capitaine,” said a rum-merry Gauthier, “Do you really believe zis witch 'as ze treasure? She moves around, n'est-ce pas? She came from Africa, non? Zis is a great distance to travel with great gold.”

Captain Caldwell said nothing. He stared intently into the flames, rolling the pearls in his coat.

“And 'ow dangerous is she? A witch can confuse the mind,” here, he tapped a finger to his temple. “We 'ave guns, but she - she could 'ave—”

“Gauthier, shutcher ever-lovin' trap, alright? Christ, you Frenchmen love to talk.”

“Are we to fight a she-devil, Captain?”

Caldwell leapt to his feet and drew his pistol. Aiming it right at the French boy, he said: “Unless you wonna cuddle with the barnacles, I suggest you shut ya damn mouth.”

With a click, he aimed his pistol at the sky and delivered a shot. Birds rose up in a great flock at the sound of gunclap and fled into the night.

If any of the crew weren't at attention, they were now.

“Ya'll need to hear one thing, alright. This ain't no ordinary dame we chasin'. She's a witch, a monster, maybe even a demon, but she dresses herself up nice and pretty. I know she's got more than these—” and he held out the pearls of his pocket in the cup of his hand “—and we are gonna take it. I don't know how she fights, but if any of you chicken-shits wants to back out now, I'll let ya.”

The barrel of his pistol swept over the lot of them, daring them to leave, but they drew back and nodded with their hands in the air.

“Say clair, garsons? I really don't wonna go over this again.”

“Oui,” they said, “C'est clair, monsieur.”

And they passed the night uneasily, watchful of what lurked outside the glow of the fire and, increasingly so, of what lurked within.

~

Come morning, the crew took their morning piss each in their turn and packed up their provisions. They spent the early parts of the day scouting out the island, while Caldwell worked to find a name for it. His maps offered no clues as to where they were, and so he came to believe that he was indeed closing in on her again.

At noon, as the group settled under the shadow of a thick canopy for hardtack and pickles, a voice rose up on the wind. It carried a spirited tune in a tongue that was unfamiliar to any of them.

Caldwell counted eight heads quickly, and knew then beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was her.

“We gonna follow that voice,” he said, abandoning his rations. “I'll lead. C'mon!”

As they neared the source of the song, they could make out the sound of clapping hands. It was moving, lively, a nnwonkoro performance that roused their souls in a way they could not have imagined was possible. Some of the crew broke into dance, but caught a withering glare from their Captain and ceased.

A turn in the trees, a drop from the cliff, and they could see it: a crevice, nestled between the rocks. Her voice rang out from it, clear as the sky above them.

They descended gently, and at the Captain's direction, they huddled together.

He spoke to them in a hushed voice: “Listen here, all a' ya'll: I wont you six outside. Unless it's me comin' outta there, I wont you to shoot at anything until nothin's movin'.”

His crew nodded their acknowledgment.

“You and Gauthier, you'll follow me,” he said, gesturing to his quickest crewhands, “But keep that mouth shut, ya hear?”

Gauthier nodded meekly.

“Let's get goin', then.”

The trio slipped quietly into the cavern and picked their steps through the dimming tunnel. Caldwell drew his lighter - a fancy contraption he won in a game of cards with a German medic - and lit their way through the winding stone.

Their path grew bluish with a growing, distant light as they went, and soon, cracks appeared in the rock, opening up to chimneys that let in the vastness of the sky. The sound of the sea drawing in and out echoed with the nnwonkoro song of the Mommy, and the Captain drew in his breath.

His heart leapt in his chest.

He signalled to his boys to stand back, stand guard, and stand by.

~

The tunnel opened up to a large chamber and the sound of rushing water. Foam frothed and sprayed over sea-beaten stone at the far end, and the light of day filtered through into the busy tidal pools.

“Mommy Water, I’m back,” he said.

The singing stopped, and there was a clacking of dread-pieces. A form rose up from the other side of the stone in curiosity.

Recognizing her visitor, she drew herself up, coiling her long tail under her. Her hair hung in long dreads, glittering with fluted gold and smelling of frankincense as it always had.

A smile broke across her face.

“Ahhwh, Captain. Wah gwaan! Me miss ya stories!” Her outstretched arms rattled with thin, golden bangles.

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, dear? But you don’t look a day older, do you?”

The witch tossed her head in laughter. “Ooh, boy ya some charma! Come sit by me side an tell me a likkle. There too many slave ships an’ nuh enough storytellas come through here dese days, mon.”

And so he did.

Taking his seat next to the Mommy, he gazed out at the swirling pool that opened up to the sea beyond. Holes in the limestone whistled like teeth as the water passed between them.

“I have a tale for you, Mommy. It's a special one I heard from an Irishman out of Kingston. Y'ever met one?”

“Irishmon? Oh yeah, me meet many; hair like fire - dem love dem dead god, too.”

“That's them. Well, this story was about a creature patickler to their home in Ireland. He called it a lepperkhan.”

“A leppakhan? Whoever hear of such a ting!”

“So I said, Mommy! Well, this creature is a short little thing and likes to hoard gold. And he keeps his treasure in a big, black pot at the end of a rainbow.”

Mami Wata furrowed her brow and gazed off distantly. It seemed to Caldwell that she was weighing the merits of such a method.

“At deh end of deh rainbow. Dat right?”

“Awwh, yeah. It's true, Mommy; believe me. So anyways, a brave Irishman named Connor found the lepperkhan at the end of the rainbow and asked for a bit of gold to pay his landlord, who at the time was holdin' his wages for debt.”

“An' what did him say?”

“Well, he told Connor, 'I won't give you a shine of my gold because it's all mine.' And the little bastard up and ran off to another rainbow.”

The Mommy's golden eyes, wild and catlike, regarded Captain Caldwell for a moment. And there was the wisdom of the long lineages of kings in them, and the wrath of many widows.

Slowly, she said: “Pahaps Conna nuh earned it.”

“Connor was an honest, hardworking man,” he answered with no small amount of conviction, “And the lepperkhan had more than his fair share.”

Mami Wata hummed in thought, curling the tip of her great, serpentine tail around a hand. Her eyes never left their fixation on him.

“So, Connor spent his youth chasin' rainbows while his debt grew all the while. And his wicked landlord, a greedy sumbitch, stole his shop from him while he was away. He took his livelihood, everything that made him, and demanded more payment besides.”

“Unwise ta chase rainbows inna trouble.”

“Perhaps.”

“But did him find deh leppakhan?”

Captain Caldwell smiled and leaned back. “Oh, he did. And he brought with him a horseshoe. Ya see, lepperkhan's hate horseshoes: makes them all addled and confused. It's the iron in it.”

Mami Wata sucked her teeth in disgust: she needed to hear no more. “Bad man, bad mind. Ya odda stories did betta, Captain.”

“Well, you see,” he started, lifting himself up to his feet. “It hits at a central truth, Mommy: That being that there's nothing that can't be taken by a little force.”

“Look at ya, speakin' all dem words! But what ya sayin', mon?”

Captain Caldwell threw back his trenchcoat and drew the gun at his hip. He put some distance between himself and the she-devil and said: “I asked ya once for ya gold, ma'am; I ain't gonna ask again. You go and do the right thing, alright? For both of us.”

“Ya sick, Captain Caldwell?” she asked, raising a black eyebrow. “Ya come to Mami Wata, wantin’ death? Does deh white mon kill hisself dese days?”

“I don’t know about all of that,” he said, flicking the hammer of his pistol, “But I do know I sees a witch sittin’ on a pretty egg. And I wont that egg. So, we can do this easy or hard.”

For a moment, the sea-witch laughed. Her laughter was belly-full and ringing.

Then her jaw, hanging open with her mirth, unhinged itself, and she reached a long, black hand in and grasped at something in it. And from the bend of her long throat was unsheathed a curved blade, dripping with venom, rusted with the ages, but no duller for it.

She flicked it at him, angled just-so, and said: “Ya nuh earned it, Captain.”

“I’m about to.”

“Was it nuh enough when ya stole we from we homes? Ya white mon, always hungry afta eatin’, always wantin’ afta takin’!” Mami Wata’s voice grew with every word, and her eyes flamed with the fury of stolen centuries. She rose up on her serpentine belly, scales glinting gold and copper in the dim sea-light, and whirled her blade with a red glitter. “Ya could have come to tell ya stories, but now me nuh let ya live.”

Gauthier and his partner stepped into the cavern at the sound of her voice, weapons drawn. They trained themselves on her as the Captain stepped back to join them.

“If you wonna step-to, I can happily oblige. But now, I’d prefer if we didn’t have to kill ya. We've had such a good time together, Mommy; why ruin it?”

Mami Wata's golden eyes flicked from the Captain to his men and back again. Her shoulders drew up in outrage. “Me tought ya diff'rent, Caldwell. Ya die laas, dough; me 'ave a word fuh ya.”

Fire broke from the tip of Caldwell’s pistol, but the African witch let out a blood-curdling shriek and struck the bullet out of the air with the flat of her blade.

She advanced, never moving her arm, and was upon Gauthier before he could squeeze the trigger. A spray of blood and a scream painted the cavern walls.

Caldwell and his man fired again, missing the she-devil widely to the sound of bent bullets.

There was no scream in her second kill; his vocal cords, still twitching and warm with life, lay dashed upon the stone. He collapsed, gripping his throat, as the life ebbed from him.

The witch spun 'round, her dreads swinging like golden scourges, and hissed at the Captain.

With little time left to him, he drew his sword and brandished it with an oath. As he charged, sword held out as a guard, he felt a line of cold steel rake hot across his chest. Blood erupted from him, and the witch caught his fall by the tail of his hair. His blade clattered impotently on the floor.

Captain Caldwell gasped, unable to speak. Mami Wata pulled his head back to face hers and smiled a wide smile.

“Ya know,” she said, her voice at a whisper, “Inna Alkebulan, me hear deh white mon before dem come. Me people tell me deh stories of ya for many, many years before ya invasion. It chu, Captain, believe me!”

She threw him back onto the stone, his red life pooling before his dimming eyes. Sudden rage was in her voice again. “An’ AGAIN! Ya white people, ya tink ya can go whereva ya want, but dis time ya step inna deh home of a black empress. Me know everyting, me see everyting. Ya was always a go to die.”

Her sword grated against the stone as she carved a strange symbol into it.

“An' since ya go to die,” she said, not lifting her eyes from her scribing, “Me will tell yaah story. Listen good, boy.”

Captain Caldwell groaned, clutching the bleeding cut under his coat, mouth forming words but giving them no sound. He gazed up at his killer, sight blurry. His face blanched.

“Me did born inna Kemet wid feathas inna me hair – dat what ya people call Egypt, ya idiot. Deh sun was fuh me crown, an’ me was an empress. But Kemet, she was too rich for me. Me fada give me all-fuh-him gold, but it neva fuh-me. Me want tuh earn me own gold, me own love, so I go west, an’ me people follow. Ova there, me find peace an’ quiet in deh wata. So dem call me Mami Wata, deh Mami inna deh Wata. I neva love worship.”

She cocked her head at the dying man beneath her and grinned broadly, her teeth showing like bright pearls between her black lips. Her dreads poured at her side like a fountain of gold and jet.

“White mon, ya even whita now. Nuh be rude, Mami Wata tellin’ yaah story! Nuh die before deh end!”

And the sea-witch swallowed her sword before continuing.

“Me people give me all-fuh-dem gold an’ tell me dem stories. Ya white people different; tell me ya stories an’ wantin’ me gold. Anyway, afta many years, ya white soljahs come an’ tek me people an’ dem gold. So me tek me gold an’ me follow dem to dis land. An’ when I come – kiss me rass! – I see ya give me black people a white heart! Dem come to me, tellin’ dem stories and wantin’ me gold, too!”

Captain Caldwell’s eyes fluttered up, and he gripped himself against death’s chill.

She crouched down, her breath hot on his cold cheek. A forked tongue flicked against his clammy skin.

“So here we are, nobody tellin’ a wordy story to Mami Wata, an’ deh white mon comin’ ta plunda black treasure again. But…” she stroked the length of his whitened jaw and smiled. “Me will console ya, an' nuh wid a black pearl dis time. For deh fos time, sum'ady mek me tell me own story, an’ dat deserve a likkle treasure.”

Mami Wata reached into the coil of her snake-tail and plucked a long, red jewel that blazed in the dim light of the sea-cave.

Even as he lay dying, Captain Caldwell fixed his sight on the glowing gem. It was a fine thing, indeed; if he could only grab it and make for the exit…

“Dis deh Date of Kemet, deh most delicious fruit inna all deh lands. She was too big for deh Egyptian necklace, so dem cut her downg an’ worship her as a pillow-jewel. She deh empress of fruits: a jewel of fire!”

The sea-witch held it to the view of the dying man and smiled.

“Me give dis to ya, me greatest treasure. White mon always so hungry, but Mami Wata tink dis will finally satisfy.”

And she grabbed a fistful of his long hair, pulled back his head so that their eyes met, and rammed the large gem into his mouth. His jaw unhinged like the serpent as his vocal cords wheezed feebly.

“Ya like her, boy?” she hissed. “She come all deh way from Kemet for ya.”

Mama Wata released him, and his gem-heavy head fell, cracking against the slick stone.

And there he was the richest captain ever to sail.