New Worlds, Old Ways Read online

  Table of Contents

  ___________________

  Foreword by Karen Lord

  Tammi Browne-Bannister, Once in a Blood Moon (Barbados)

  Summer Edward, The Passing Over of Zephora (Trinidad & Tobago)

  Portia Subran, A New Life in a New Time (Trinidad & Tobago)

  Brandon O’Brien, fallenangel.dll (Trinidad & Tobago)

  Kevin Jared Hosein, Maiden of the Mud (Trinidad & Tobago)

  Richard B. Lynch, Water Under the Bridge (Barbados)

  Elizabeth J. Jones, The Ceremony (Bermuda)

  Damion Wilson, Daddy (Bermuda)

  Brian Franklin, Quaka-Hadja (Barbados)

  Ararimeh Aiyejina, Past Imperfect (Trinidad & Tobago)

  H.K. Williams, Cascadura (Trinidad & Tobago)

  About the Contributors

  Copyright & Credits

  About Akashic Books

  Foreword

  by Karen Lord

  When Jeremy Poynting of Peepal Tree Press invited me to put together an anthology of speculative fiction, my immediate response was to decline. I thought it was a brilliant idea, but given the short time-frame and the complicated nature of Caribbean speculative fiction, I doubted I could curate a selection that would do justice to the genre.

  Some writers (and readers) think that speculative fiction (an umbrella term for science fiction, fantasy, and several other subgenres of improbable what-ifs) consists of Tolkien pastiches and pulpy space opera written in mediocre prose. They overlook Caribbean icons like Edgar Mittelholzer, Erna Brodber, Jamaica Kincaid and Nalo Hopkinson (to name but a few) with their richness of folklore, myth, parable and satire. The problem is not quality, it is definitions. There is a longstanding tradition of Caribbean literature with fantastical or speculative elements in both prose and poetry. Try to find those works, however, and they are often hidden in plain sight amid the bulk of our literary canon in small presses, academic journals and region-specific imprints and publications.

  The project of collecting past works remains one for a later date. This anthology looks to the future, to new writers and new works of Caribbean speculative fiction, by taking advantage of a fortunate set of circumstances. In 2014, the Government of Bermuda invited Grenadian-born author Tobias Buckell to lead a workshop in speculative fiction, and the organisers of the Bocas Lit Fest (Trinidad & Tobago) asked me to do the same for the Bocas South festival later that year. The Bocas Lit Fest 2015 schedule included a workshop with Nalo Hopkinson, Tobias Buckell, Trinidadian author R.S. Garcia and myself. These workshops were attended by writers of all kinds, from die-hard readers of the genre to curious novices. I am grateful to the Government of Bermuda and the organising team of the Bocas Lit Fest for their recognition of the importance of the genre in our region’s literary development.

  Most of the submissions to this anthology came from workshop participants. I found more potential works via the University of the West Indies (St Augustine and Cave Hill). Established editors and educators in the literary community recommended more emerging writers. I am indebted to Professor Funso Aiyejina, Lisa Allen-Agostini, Professor Jane Bryce, Tobias Buckell and Robert Edison Sandiford for their help.

  However, the final selection demonstrates the limitations of the known networks. This anthology does not represent the entire region. This is only a start, and more may be achieved, perhaps in volumes yet to come. For now, in the year 2016, we are pleased to present to you New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean.

  Do not be misled by the ‘speculative’ in the title. Although there may be rockets and robots and fantastical creatures, these tales are not copies of worn-out tropes. The common symbols of speculative fiction are merely tools to frame the familiar. These are stories of survival–survival of the individual, the family, the community, the nation, the region, and the world or worlds that we inhabit. Survival is more than mere living. We need to relate: to connect, to identify, to tell our stories, to draw lines from past to present and from each to each, and thence as far forward as we can to the unborn generations.

  Here you will find the recent past and ongoing present of government and society with curfews, crime and corruption. Here are the universal themes of family with parents and children, growth and death, love and hate. Here is the struggle to survive and thrive when power is capricious and revenge too bittersweet; and here too is the passage of everything . . . old ways, places, peoples, and ourselves . . . leaving nothing behind but memories, histories, stories.

  This anthology also speaks to the fragility of home, something that is not always understood by those who inhabit countries with more resources and choices. Unmitigated dystopia in fiction may be enjoyed by those who live securely, but this region suffers under crises of economy and climate and a history shadowed with genocide. I am wary and weary of literature that depicts the utter extinction, physical or cultural, of a people who still fight to survive. Fortunately, this anthology reminds the reader that although home may be vulnerable, it is also beautifully resilient. The voice of our literature declares that in spite of disasters, this people and this place shall not be wholly destroyed.

  I am grateful for the opportunity to work on this anthology. These new stories have shown me that our horizons continue to be wider than our borders, and that our literature does not only entertain–it transforms. Read for delight, then read for depth, and you will not be disappointed.

  I look forward to the future works that these authors will produce, and the future worlds that their work will inspire.

  Tammi Browne-Bannister

  Once in a Blood Moon

  Barbados

  She threw her piss in the yard of a Nightingale House, in the Republic, on the east of the island. Her name was Gaiutra and she had no one.

  She dreamt she had fallen out of a coconut tree. That wasn’t hard for her to imagine. She grew a thick reddish-brown husk on her scalp and fine bristles ran down her arms and legs. Every day, the children teased her about falling out of a coconut tree until she saw such an image in her sleep. What else was she supposed to think, anyhow? Her birth was mysterious. Her parents were figments that never came to claim her. All those years–the moon moved in front of the sun and as a shadow grew over the earth, people got dim, dimmer and darker. Secretive and superstitious. Gaiutra didn’t know that on the night she was born the earth had passed between the moon and the sun. It was the first in a series of lunar eclipses that would determine her fate forever.

  Those blasted children at the home were wicked and nasty. They called her leatherback. Said she smelled like the Careenage in Bridgetown, during low tide. Their hands came down on her back like hammers. Their fingernails tattooed her olive flesh until scaly patterns stitched themselves into place. No, Gaiutra didn’t stand there, take all the blows. She slapped them for 1, not knowing her parents; 2, not knowing her date of birth; 3, saying she fell out of a coconut tree; and 4, because she believed them when they said she rolled into the stony yard of this restored Victorian house with a hard-to-spell-and-hard-to-break-down-into-syllables-name like Gaiutra.

  She never cried for owning an exaggerated beak on her face–for the oversized head on her neck–for tough skin and a broad back–for being different. Each New Year came and she lit a candle for being extraordinary. That was how she had chosen to celebrate her life on land.

  One day, an old woman who worked at the home as a cleaner noticed how Gaiutra had been spending her days. Disengaged. Alone. In isolation. Sitting on a ledge of the veranda that overlooked Shell Bay, staring at the ocean’s undulating waves.

  “What you doing here by yourself?” the woman said to her.

  “Catching fish with my eyes,” Gaiutra said, keeping her gaze set on the sea ahead
of them.

  “What kinda fish do you see?”

  “Flying fish,” she said, as a smile beamed across her face.

  “How you so sure that’s what you see?”

  Gaiutra’s shoulders went up and down. As the woman came closer, the girl smelled sunshine and sea breeze. “I can’t explain, but for some reason I can see very far, very well. I can see the fish skittering on the surface of the water. I can hear the droplets, like heartbeats, falling back into the ocean. I can smell those creatures, too, Auntie,” she said to the old woman, who nodded as if she knew for sure that this was so.

  “I know a story about the sun and moon, the stars, the sea and shells and gorgeous creatures like the dorado. I know a ton of stories. You want to hear them?’ the woman said with an expectant look on her face. Gaiutra nodded.

  The old woman, whom all the children at Nightingale House called Auntie, went on to tell of the time when she appeared from the indigenous hat shell. Gaiutra grew to love this woman and her fantastic stories. She called her Auntie Cowrie because her smile reminded Gaiutra of a cowrie shell with a jagged gap in its middle. Through this woman, Gaiutra learned of the awesome powers of Poseidon, the god of the sea. From this day, there grew a tug of excitement in her belly, which became stronger and stronger, whenever she heard a new story.

  * * *

  Years later, after two more lunar eclipses, Gaiutra blossomed into a beautiful young woman. She still struck a match when the moon was full, cold and giddy blue. She danced on the warm sands of Foul Bay, below the shedding mile trees, not too far from the chattel house that she rented, after her emancipation from Nightingale House. She had found work with a local conservation agency, recording the variety of shells, saving coral reefs and sea life.

  Two weeks before the arrival of an auspicious moon, her Auntie Cowrie passed away. With no family of her own, Gaiutra took it upon herself to bury the woman. Gaiutra laid her Auntie Cowrie on a bed of periwinkles and shells in a cemetery not far from her home. She placed a wreath made of purple and yellow sea fans on top of the grave. She cried for the first time in ages.

  That night, in her sleep, she saw the woman’s kind but craggy face–rough top, salty curls, and a sprinkling of poppy seeds that dotted her cheeks–that cowrie shell smile. “Dead people will not rest unless they can tell one last story,” Gaiutra said to herself when she received such a blessing from her auntie:

  “Many phases ago, your Mother used to follow the moon. She would come ashore and drop her eggs in the sands of Foul Bay. Her natal beach. Your natal home. Good people saved your siblings. Bad people boiled them for food. Your Mother didn’t make the journey alone. She returned with a few of her own sisters. Some were captured, became delicacies for the highest bidder, their shells sold as wall ornaments.

  “Once upon a time, your ancestors had to make such an arduous journey and if people were around, they would have to abandon their plan to drop their descendants on land. Before Poseidon, Man and the Goodnight Moon, they dropped their eggs into the sea and swam back home–exhausted and hungry but free.

  “I was told a story of those who journeyed to Trinidad to lay eggs on the packed shores of Matura. The local conservationists rescued the eggs and hatchlings from poachers, mongooses, the wretched corbeaux, from people who supported the circle of life and had given it new meaning by catching newborns to feed land crabs and pigs. Grande Riviere had become feeding ground. The corbeaux circled like vultures. They waited for the hatchlings to emerge. When they did, half-cracked shells and carcasses without heads were strewn across the sandy ground. The beach reeked of sulphur and death. Only a few escaped into the sea.

  Years ago, I heard a grisly story of what had happened to unfortunate hatchlings in Speightstown. The saying goes: plantain suckers follow the root. Well, before there was a road that cut into Speightstown, just by the new hotel, all there was beach land. When the turtles returned, they crossed over the embankment from the sea onto the paved road to the exact spot in which they had nested. Weeks later, when the hatchlings burst through the sand, they saw what appeared to be moonlight. The hatchlings followed the bright glow out of the sandy banks, past the tall cane grasses, toppled over the sidewalk onto the asphalt. They were scattered about the road in confusion. The yellow light led them everywhere except towards the sea. They didn’t know it was a streetlight that fed them into oncoming traffic. It wasn’t difficult for Man to disregard a life whether belonging to a mere turtle or one of their own species.

  “When the hatchlings were killed, Poseidon became furious. He flushed the earth with the sea. He purged the world until the lives taken equalled those pummelled into the asphalt and those hunted and killed. Then he caused a miracle to happen for a few of his creatures.

  “Every time there was a blood moon, a few of the hatchlings became human beings, but always inclined to the sea and light. On their thirtieth anniversary, they would become their true form again. To make this transition, they had to give birth. I found you many, many moons ago. You are one of Poseidon’s specially chosen daughters, and soon you will take on your true form when the earth casts a shadow upon a super moon.”

  Gaiutra loved what she had heard. She liked the part about not falling haphazardly like a nut from a tree. Everything was now majestic and beautiful to her eyes and ears. She would never question her existence again. The god of humans didn’t like it when anyone questioned his work. She was sure her own god had his own feelings about anyone who challenged him.

  It was her Auntie Cowrie’s stories that spurred her into working as a conservationist. Gaiutra recalled her first time rescuing the hatchlings from predators. Oncoming traffic posed threats to life. No matter how much she flailed her arms to flag down a speeding vehicle, the traffic mashed the turtles into the asphalt. Water came to her eyes as she recorded the number of deaths. “This is a sign of the times,” she said to herself. Whilst she couldn’t blame drivers for trying to knock down someone they perceived as a deranged criminal, why couldn’t they make out the tiny creatures crawling around to find the sea. Gaiutra had rescued many turtles from artificial light in and around the island and taken them to darker beaches as their nesting places.

  * * *

  She sat on the beach, chewing on seaweed snacks and drinking a fizzy Plus. She had Foul Bay to herself because of the Blood Moon Bash at St. Lawrence Gap. She glided a hand over her tummy as she recalled her decision to jump for Crop Over that summer.

  It was on impulse when after one mas camp spoke to her with their Under the Sea theme, she jumped with the loggerheads section in the broiling sun that turned her skin to a dry greenish-brown tone. When her troupe got to Spring Garden, Gaiutra had an irresistible urge to take a sea bath. She walked into the Caribbean-blue waters. The waves folded themselves over one another until there was foam. Gaiutra felt calmed, the sea warm.

  Her first and only sexual experience was unlike anything she had ever read in magazines, or seen on television. She felt a series of tickles up and down her thighs, like those felt when swimming through slippery sargassum. Whatever it was latched itself onto her body and slipped into the space between her legs. Her toes curled. Her body quivered and a pleasurable feeling surged through her. When the sensation was over, Gaiutra dipped her head under the water only to glimpse an albino hawksbill turtle swimming away. A rare sighting: that species of turtle had a short lifespan.

  Now sitting upon sandstone, in moonlight, Gaiutra made light of her situation. If an old person was around, she would be told that sitting on hard, cold surfaces could give her a cold, varicose veins, piles, and a bladder infection. If that person knew of the child she carried, they would say it could cause the child to be stillborn. Gaiutra felt the wriggling movements of her unborn inside her womb.

  The truth was Gaiutra had become tired of all the moon and sea stories that she told herself. “Enough now, nuh. A moon is just a moon.” For that reason, she played mas–to escape herself, do something normal for a change. Now, awaiting the bl
ood moon’s arrival, Gaiutra realised how impatient she had been–that this restlessness and rebellion only propelled her closer to her fate. She found comfort in staring at the moon and listening to the lapping sounds of the sea.

  Earlier in the evening, she had taken photographs of the super moon. It was a perfect circle and the brightest of floodlights she had ever seen. There was a spotlight on the water and a long shimmering shadow streaked the ocean. She put the camera down, satisfied with the shots she had taken. She dug her feet into the warm sand, feeling the grains escaping through the spaces between her toes. She dug some more. The hole got large enough to roast breadfruits. She continued digging. Soon the hole was big enough, but for what? Gaiutra didn’t know and she didn’t wonder about it for long. The super moon kept rising higher and higher into the steely blue sky. Hours later, a shadow crept across its face.

  She pulled a tripod from her bag and set it up in a clearing of sand, stones and shells. She placed the camera on the tripod. A shadow stretched across the moon until its brilliance gradually faded. Gaiutra changed lenses. Her camera hummed as she took more pictures.

  The shadow swallowed the landscape of the moon until it began to bleed.

  Water as warm as the sand gushed down Gaiutra’s legs. Sprinkled her toes. She began to pack up her things. Pain struck through her spine, ripped through her belly down to her legs. She fell to her knees, began to bear down. She eased her underwear off. Pain struck through her again. She lay still on her side. Her breathing grew heavy. She crawled until she got to the hole in the sand. She crouched over it and bore down when the pain clawed at her womb. She pushed down harder and longer. Breathe in. Breathe out, like the women she saw in the videos. She bore down until there was crowning. Rested.

  The stiffness in her belly returned. Gaiutra pushed harder and longer until she delivered a large sack into the sand. She lay down on her side and peered into the hole. She ran a hand over the silky attachment that covered her newborn, and she became frightened. Gaiutra had heard of humans who expelled their shame into plastic bags, discarding them on the bay. Was this the way? Her eyes widened with fear.