Naniki, page 1
naniki
naniki
Oonya Kempadoo
Copyright © Oonya Kempadoo, 2024
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Excerpts from The Taino Chronicles 2 & 4, © Miguel Sague Jr. Used with permission. Excerpts from Tidealectics, © Kamau Brathwaite. Used with permission.
Publisher and Acquiring editor: Kwame Scott Fraser | Editor: Ramabai Espinet
Cover designer: Laura Boyle | Cover image: Sharif Mirshak, Parafilms, courtesy of Oonya Kempadoo | Interior image: Freepik
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Naniki / Oonya Kempadoo.
Names: Kempadoo, Oonya, author.
Description: Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20230482546 | Canadiana (ebook) 20230482554 | ISBN 9781459751491 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459751507 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459751514 (EPUB)
Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PR9320.9.K46 N36 2024 | DDC 813.54—dc23
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To Mom, my first storyteller, and my son, the first listener of this story.
naniki
“Active Spirit”
In the Taino Language
1 lightning bank
Caribbean Sea Basin
2050
The sea is my sky.
This is where I float, dream, travel, and thrive.
The sea is in me and I am the sea.
Kissing the air of a brilliant sunrise, washing my face in the softness — a pelican plunges suddenly and something else follows from the air. In my water, a churning and thrashing, clouds of bubbles foam and the pelican is changing into … a flying fish.
Grey feathers float out of the cloud and the flying fish is still, suspended.
He looks stunned.
White feathers stream out of the churning bubbles and that thing from the air is in there. It is changing too. Into something … like me, someone. The movement stops, and as the bubbles and feathers clear, the most beautiful Ni Ara is staring at the flying fish.
Suspended in shock, they stare at each other. The flying fish’s fin-wings flutter and the Ni Ara moves his arms, staring at his fin-hands. He, it is a he, looks at his long rippling legs and fin-feet and he waves them. The flying fish, his naniki, darts around him and he spins around. His shoulder and dorsal fins pop out, surprising him. He laughs and flips. When he spins and stops, his iridescent segments make magic-coloured water. His fins stretch out and retract, the water flows through him, like me, and he is the sea, the most beautiful form of water and being, Ni Ara, and growing, like me.
Now he spots me. I can’t quite fit behind the brain coral and, out of all of the fishes in the sea, my naniki is a bold parrotfish — gawking brazenly at him. His flying fish darts up to my parrotfish. They touch beaks and recoil instantly. But we are smiling at each other, swirling around, fast as fish but magic as lightning and free as air.
“Skelele,” he says. “My family are Sky People, you would call them Turey Ara. My ancestors, Eniyan Ọrun — the ‘people who could fly,’ back to Africa.”
“And yet you are here,” I say. I hang upside down for a second and he circles me. “I am related to the First People of this region, of water, Ni Ara. And I, Amana, should be training.”
“Yes, we should!”
But we chase each other in a fluid vortex and a gaggle of bright sergeant major fish and baby Ni Ara crowd out of the reef to cheer us on. They flutter and bounce around like butterflyfish, dizzy with laughter, making us laugh. It is as if all the colours of the reef are laughing, playing with us. Brightest fluorescent yellow flashes, greenest weed waving.
Speeding, silver tickers fly by. Skelele almost catches my hair. His is sea sponge, but my hair is seaweed, moving like squid tentacles. I can, I will catch his fin but … my moray sense tingles, I stop.
My elders and the guardians are approaching. They glide without effort. Acres of ocean in each one, the wisest. With their octopi, squid, and eel naniki, they know everything without having to ask or speak. Barracuda silver flashes around us as they gather and the laughing babies are hushed, hiding behind the leader’s big grouper. Bibi and Baba are among them, as parents for everyone, not just me. I signal my mother, but she doesn’t signal back. Her beautiful ocean gar does though. The quiver runs through me reassuringly.
My elders look up. In the air above my sea, high up, a V-formation of Turey Ara trail away. Their angel wings of see-through feathers and flowing muscle segments spread wide. Their bodies disappear and reappear as they fly, changing colours to match the morning sky. A scoop of pelicans follows them, also in V-formation. A Turey Ara leader is at the head of the V, old and powerful, with a flowing mane of white clouds.
“Skelele is almost ready. He is playful but he has extraordinary transformational ÿê-owópàrö skills. You must be proud of your abarimaa, male child.” His voice is like the wind in your ears above water, a hoarse Yoruba whisper.
Skelele’s chest glows with an orange tattoo as he watches his father and elders disappear.
“We speak a mixture of African languages,” he whispers to me. “Igbo, Yoruba, Twi, Akan …”
I signal him silence as he’s encircled by barracudas and my mother glides forward, followed by her elegant naniki.
“Guarico,” she summons me, and her voice ripples through me like a water drum.
Every time.
As we move away from Lightning Bank, the strongest and fastest guardians and their barracudas guide Skelele into the deeper blue for training. His flying fish is busy keeping up. My parrotfish keeps looking back as I follow my mother and trainers along the reef.
We flow over unending pipes. Blue harmony stroking through us and with us. Flashes of brilliance may be fish, but are also a silver sun stoking this blue, daggering, dazzling its silky depths. Our soothing movement forward through this warm Caribbean Sea, over ghosts of gorgonians, elkhorn, and brain corals, is a sometimes blurry but seamless journey.
The flex and strength of fins, a scaled curve slipping glimpses of iridescence, sliding with currents that match trade winds above. Now on the surface there’d be ripples, chippy and sharp, streaking the way ahead. Undersurface, a starry dappled sheet, always billowing, swaying.
A hum, wider than this sea, carries us forward. Echoing with the crackle of shrimp and seabeds, it is part of the light and liquid roll. Unlimited, soundless to us, it is a stretch of sight and sensing, vast as this blue.
And as we glide with our manta rays, our shadows trigger the light lines. They flicker dimly, flashing ropes of pain and hope. The light of our ancestral migration patterns still senses our presence and guides us. This was the path of the “Black Caribs” from Hairouna2 to Honduras. For us — a straight line toward the Great Blue Hole,3 always, in silence.
* * *
It is the longest day this time, and even though my friend and her clownfish try to make me laugh, I can’t help but see Skelele’s colours and movement in everything. And long to see him again. He is out there in this blueness, sweeping forward also, I know.
Approaching the barrier reef, as we smudge in from the deep blue edge, the brightness defies the end of day. Skylight and waterlight are one, holding us magically. Turquoise glow shines white whiter and black wing tips starker. In this shallow sealight run, twilight blends blue green. Fields of finger coral and seagrass floors beckon small fry as we pass, mimicking, mirroring the snaky surface. Sand grains swirl lazy below, and even though the reefs are almost dead, my cherubfish eyes still see beauty. The blue tangs too. The pinkish-grey lumps are soft and still hold friends and food. Forests of sea fan shadows are flickers now, of light, that show sand ripple streaks on the soft lumps. If you tuck under a ledge though, you can still hear the murmur of polyps. And shooting across the shallows, none can tell flashes of light from fish, from glamour-water’s snaky, blinding dance. Shimmering with a thousand tiny sprats, scattering and changing directions, we still see beauty and live it. Jan jan catu. We are almost home.
Gentle, gentle, cradle me
In between swells
Take me in slowly
Carrying my spines of birds
My casuarina needles
Shells of coconut and turtle
Glass and bone
Shards of our lifetimes
In your op en, open-ended
Mouth, your roaming hunger
Feed us, feed on us
Until land
Till every grain of land
Is sea
Ni bi, ni bi
See us now
Tell me what
Tell me how
Light us with
A language we don’t know
Hahom
* * *
Sinking, sinking, deeper, down. The walls of our nest hold caves of secrets, slightly murky or embedded in the rock itself. We sink down, down, leaving our naniki where they choose to sleep, protected by the nurse sharks. Deeper, to rest on our ledges and sand beds in blackness, heartness. This is where the babies sleep and where all nurturing comes from. This is where a piece of Ke fell into our world and mixed Earth People’s knowledge with ours. It is our vault that the elders keep full of love. Of course, sleep comes quickly. Even as the babies snuffle and elders snort. Nestled in with my closest siblings, sleep is heartness. But before it wraps me, my saline mind shows me Skelele, tucked in with some adolescents on a ledge, already in dreamtime.
* * *
It is morning and we must meet. This much I know because I know he dreamt it too. That was also in my dream.
Shooting up to burst through my watersky into air, break-a-day splashing back into light water, gives me a blast of energy every time. Today though, it is better. Stronger. And as I land back in the water, Skelele has already escaped the guardians and is waiting for me.
We squeeze into an overhang of thick sea fans.
“You saw it, right?”
I don’t even have to answer, he knows.
“The hard and shiny island with strange people and buildings, all metal and plastic.”
It is not in this time.
“But it is a sign!” he says.
“That we must follow,” I consent.
He had been told what I already know. That Guami-ke-ni, Lord of Land and Water, has asked us to gather forces and strengthen our skills, urgently, because time is running faster. We have to become guardians, faster. And that even though his people, the Turey Ara, are almost celestial, my people’s special skills include caring powers from old knowledge that have been kept in practice to look after every living thing. What he doesn’t know is that I have never seen a Turey Ara transform into a Ni Ara before AND that I will figure out how to do it in reverse. So be it. Jan jan catu. I will fly in his sky one day, somehow.
“Like no other island I have ever seen,” Skelele says.
“And I guess with your bird’s-eye view, you’ve seen a few.” I’m not looking at him.
“Yes, but that is not my point. This one is ahead in time.”
“But we dreamt it, so we can find it.” Agreed.
Through the sea fans, we see a Ni Ara guardian and his sharp barracuda passing. It will only be moments before our path is clear.
Off! Zipping, flashing, flighting. My parrotfish has never moved so fast.
“But is it escape?” Skelele shouts.
“You think the elders don’t already know where we’re heading? Who knows if it’s even a test!”
He chases after me and I double back, flip, and go deeper. Before I can see him — bump! We bang against each other and bounce back. I feel my colours turning up and see Skelele’s orange glow and tribal tattoos. He stares at mine spreading across my chest and reaches out to touch, but no! I zip back. He laughs as he looks at his own tattoos turning red, and I twist to show him the one along my spine.
“You are more beautiful than water,” he says. And then he turns into the most brilliant, solid, aquamarine blue.
My angelfish vanity burns and my parrotfish grins.
The light lines are glowing faintly, running blips of light like flashlight fish … reminding or leading us? We follow them into the big blue. Beyond the dead white-and-grey reefs, for hundreds of miles. Through drifting plastic and the massive pylons of long bridges that link islands. A grove of huge pipes appears ahead.
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.
