Ora's Herbs

Here I am, smack dab in the middle of an ocean I can’t even name, and you've got me tied up tighter than a tiger shark. I know you're thinking I’m some lousy kid from the Rocks, but give me a chance! I can explain why it ain't my fault there's dead bodies all over your deck.

After a week straight of the shiver-sweats, I was finally starting to feel myself yesterday afternoon, so I came up here, right to this spot. I like feeling the salt-spray on my face and watching how the blue waters sparkle. Back home, our water is grey and stank like rot. You’d have to boil it for hours before drinking, and bathing in it makes you dirtier than before you washed.

“I’m only stretching my legs after the fever broke,” I told this guy with huge muscles as he moved crates across the deck. “I took off in the middle of the day without telling a soul, and my family definitely thinks I’m dead. Foolish and dead. If they didn’t blindly follow the clan, they’d know I was lucky and alive.”

I laughed. 

He grunted.  

I couldn’t help but think how nice it was to finally have someone else to talk to. Do you know how miserable it is being stuck in a cramped little cabin for days, your teeth click-clackin' off each other hard enough to make your jaw hurt? And it’s not like I had a lot of people to talk to back home in the first place. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is for a boy like me to get a word in where I’m from, not being all grown up and stuff. Talk at the wrong time and someone will just smack the back of your head. And that's if you're lucky.  

Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, Muscles. 

“They couldn’t have guessed I’d be so lucky,” I told him, “because my lack of learning lessons, no matter how much they beat the tar out of me, ain’t nothing compared to my never-ending itch to explore. These gifts dropped me right into Ora’s lap.

“You couldn’t know her,” I continued, “but Ora is this tiny, wrinkly old thing who’s been sweating away in a little garden, tucked back behind the old oaks miles from my family’s land. The look on her face when she found me in one of her game traps! Instead of gobbling me up like the stories papa would tell about the dangerous cannibals living beyond our safe zones, she made me herbal tea served alongside some strange little biscuits."

You know, she did stare at my eyes too. Kinda like you’re doing right now. I mean, everyone does it, but everyone else says stuff like, "What's wrong with you?" and, "Are you cursed, Kamat?" Ora just peered at them for a few seconds and never asked me about the different colors.  

So after I said that, Muscles started struggling with a soggy crate, and I ran over to shove my hands under the bags that were starting to slip out.

 “She never actually talks, though, not a single word,” I said to him, “but she speaks with her hands. I can understand her pretty easy because before I was born, all the girls in my clan started going deaf as babies, and they began using a similar set of signs to teach them, and us boys had to learn it too, of course. I’m pretty quick at it, even for how young I am, though I can’t always understand what she tries to tell me. When she introduced herself that first day, the motions she made meant nothing to me. She kept flicking her little finger up and sideways. Looked like gibberish. She couldn’t spell so I guessed names until she threw her hands into the air. I’m usually a pretty good guesser. 

“‘Well you look like a Nita, or Aretta, or a, or a...Ora, hey that’s kinda nice,’ I told her, not even serious, but the way her eyes bugged out while reading my lips made me laugh until tears rolled down my cheeks. The name stuck.

“Anyway,” I went on, “in between retelling some wild stories, she taught me how to make the tea and made me promise to come back every month since she liked having the company. Then she'd send me home with a sack full of dried herbs and a pouch of sweet crystals. She warned me there wasn’t enough to share, so I’d have to keep the whole thing a secret. Super easy since I’m real good with secrets! She was so nice, I’d sneak away to see her pretty often. We’d work in her garden together, taking breaks so she could share more stories or ask me about everyone in my family, but she always made sure to send me back before the moon rose.”

We set the crate down with a thud, and as I stepped back, the man leaned against the railing, wiping his brow with a yellow rag as the ship rolled on a large swell. Looking down, he only seemed to notice me then. Tucking the rag into a pocket, he reached up, wiggled his fingers in both ears, and shrugged at me. 

Behind me, laughter boomed, and I turned to see a mean-mugging, skinny man with an even skinnier red beard. His cheeks were gross and peeling. I’m pretty sure he’s the guy I was always seeing drinking and being rowdy with the rest of your crew. 

I bet you can see where this is going, but I’ll keep laying it all out for you.

“Dev deaf, son. Got 'is eardrums blowed out by a cannon blast asa boy, but you kept on chat’rn his ear off, mebbe ten swells o' more. Wasn’t gonna find nothin’ bettah tuh do but watch ‘n see if he’d step right on ya and squish ya skinny ass,’ he said at me through a chewed reed and several big, thick teeth. “Look at ya, still ‘n one piece an’ helpful tuh boot.”

Even though he smiled real wide, I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or looking for trouble, so I stayed quiet. I should probably tell you that I was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing too. 

He frowned at me, coming real close to my face and whispered, “So much tuh say till someone starts talkin’ back, huh?”

I started to back away when the bell clanged from the other side of the ship.  

I shrugged at him before running off to get a bowl of chow while it was still hot. I’m sure you know how slimy it gets with all those limp onions and clumps of fat once it starts to cool. I could hear Red laughing again, but I didn’t care. My stomach was louder. Thinking about it now, I wish I would’ve just stayed in my cabin to avoid this whole stinkin’ mess.

You know how I said I had those fevers? I wasn’t sick or nothing. I was shaking off the last bits of being poisoned. Like I was telling Muscles, er, Dev, even though he didn’t actually hear a word I said, Ora gave me those herbs, and the last time I saw her, she was worried looking and fessed up to the truth. She used to be Kwento, part of my clan, but she ran away when she found out the elders were poisoning all the children with some drink made from scorpion venom. Turns out, what they called medicine was actually making everyone sick, but they told us it would make us stronger and tougher to survive hard living on the Rocks. I guess they did it to keep us from leaving, to control us. It seems to hurt girls the most, since the poison makes nearly all of them deaf. 

Ora tried to convince her brothers to come with her, promising she’d find a way to keep everyone alive, but they were too scared and turned their backs on her. No one knew how smart she was, how she knew all about the plants that grew in the Rocklands, especially herbs like the ones in the bag you’re holding, Captain. You’re supposed to make tea with them. They don't fix the deafness, but it cleans the blood or something so you won't get sick anymore.

After telling me all this, she gave me enough herbs to wean myself from the venom and signed to me, "Kamat, it’s time to leave. Get on a ship and leave the Rocks for good." She hugged me so tight, tears spilling from her eyes. Standing there so close to her face, it was only then I noticed, behind the cloudiness from her being so old, her eyes kinda looked an awful lot like mine. 

I really miss her, you know, I think she’s the only person in the world who ever cared about me. Maybe I can go back some day when I’m bigger and knock someone out if they try to poison me again. I could see if she might leave with me. 

Anyway, about this whole mix-up, I went to sleep last night and woke up to some strange sounds, but I couldn’t see anything since it was so dark. I tried to lay real still and listen for the noise again, but I must have fallen back asleep. I’m still really tired from the fevers, you know?

When I got up this morning, all my bags were tossed around and hanging open like someone rifled through them. Red must have thought the bag of herbs was filled with tobacco and stole them from me. How was I to know he’d roll a bunch of smokes with it and pass them around to half the crew. I swear to Gamab, I didn’t even know it’d kill you if you smoked it. And that is why, even though there are a bunch of dead bodies all over your ship, you don't really have to toss me off the plank.