The evening and the morning were the ninety-ninth day.

* * *

Two women, whose bodies serviced captors nightly, told of the captain writing in a large ledger. They weren’t sure of its contents, but he wrote every night, they said, with great focus and fervor. Some of us were writers, too, but, as a people, we were masters of the spoken word. Our crowning feature was our storytelling. Jali could weave tales for hours without ever losing anyone’s attention. We wondered whether, in his big book, the captain was creating tales for his people or simply recording daily events. Illuminated by candlelight, he wrote slowly, deliberately, they said, as if afraid of making an error. If he was interrupted, his anger flared and someone would be flogged. A few times, our women watched him write as his tears fell on the pages. They never knew why. The most plausible explanation came from one of our boys who said the captain’s tears fell because, having treated us so, he would never see God. We wondered if, one day, one of us might write about what we’d seen and endured. We needed a record, we thought, of our experience, lest the day come when our children found our story implausible. We needed a book to tell the world of our glorious kingdoms and our spirit-filled rituals, less people believe we’d always been enslaved. But who would write it? And what tongue would they use? And where would they begin? No one would believe we’d spent weeks—no, months—on a ship, bound with chains, with barely enough food to fill our palms. Or that the Great Waters had been poisoned with our blood. Or that we’d learned songs without words that had kept our spirits centered. One of us would have to write a book so the world would know who we were.

The next day, several were found burning with black fever. The captain ordered them thrown overboard. We heard mournful cries as bodies splashed against the water’s surface. Then, for the first time, we heard a crewman announce their departure: “Number 123, a man, gone.” “Number 65, a man, gone.” “Number 88, a woman, gone.” “Number 13, a boy, gone.” They’d surely said this before, when bodies were cast into the sea, but we didn’t understand them then. Now we knew enough of their language to piece together the meaning of some of their words. We were merely cargo—counted items to be sold away. Perhaps this was the price we had to pay for having ignored our own wisdom.

Once again, there were days when the wind disappeared. The boat sat still as a gourd upon the earth. We knew we were not going home. We did not smell, in the distance, our rivers, our land, our people. We were somewhere far, far away. The air was thick and heavy. Our air had been thin and sweet, moving easily across open plains and carrying the aroma of fruits and flowers. We saw ourselves laughing and playing as mango juice dried on our hands and faces. Then we’d dash to the brook and play in the water until we were cool and clean. We could hear it, the brook, singing a melody that echoed throughout the forest. We loved the song of the brook. Some of our boys could mimic it so perfectly that their voices were integrated into rituals when we needed the brook’s healing power. We heard, now, the song of the open seas, but it was not the same. It was harsh and rough, full of discordant harmonies and unpleasant dissonances. It had its beauty, yet we wanted our song back—the soft strain of the brook—flowing easily among us. We feared we’d never hear it again.