The Full Moon Child

Tonye Briggs had been born on the night of a full moon, in a canoe, in the middle of a storm, and her father had never forgiven the sea for it.

She knew this about him the way she knew the creek. Not in words. In a thousand small things: the way he spat three times into the water before every fishing trip, the way he refused to let her swim past the mangrove roots, the way he stood at the window on moonlit nights with his hand pressed flat to the glass as if the sky might lean through.

"Papa," she said, on the evening of her twenty-first birthday. "Why do you hate the moon?"

"I don't hate it."

"You close the shutters."

"I like the dark."

"You are lying, Papa."

He did not answer. He was mending a net on the porch of their stilt house, his big brown hands working the cord. Below them, the creek lay quiet and green, threaded with mist. Frogs sang in the mangroves. Across the water, in the village of Okrika, someone was cooking fish and the smell drifted over, smoky and sweet.

She was twenty-one. She had a diploma in marine biology from the University of Port Harcourt, a boat she had bought with her own savings, and a job offer from a research station in Calabar that she had not yet told him about. She had imagined a gentler evening.

"There is something I need to say," she said. "I got a job."

His hands stopped. "Where?"

"Calabar."

"That is far."

"It is four hours."

"It is too far." He put the net down very carefully. "Tonye. You cannot go."

"Papa, I am grown."

"I know." His voice cracked. "I know you are. That is the problem."

The sun had gone. A line of silver was rising on the east horizon, thin as a blade. She watched his face change as the light touched it, the fear coming up through the skin like a stain.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"Come inside."

"Papa."

"Come inside, Tonye. Now."

Too late. The moon cleared the trees.

It was enormous, a great swollen disc of pale gold, and as its light struck the water the whole creek began to shiver. The frogs fell silent. A single ripple rolled out from the middle of the channel, then another, then a dozen, widening, until the surface of the water was a ring of trembling light. The air tasted of salt. Of something older than salt.

Her father stood up. His chair clattered. He seized her arm.

"Inside!"

"What is happening?"

"It is her." He was shaking. "She has come early."

"Who?"

The water rose. It lifted itself out of the creek like a living thing, a column of green glass, twenty feet high, and in the heart of it a shape took form. A woman, tall, with hair like kelp and skin like polished jet. Her eyes were two pools of drowned moonlight. She wore a gown of seafoam and a thousand strands of cowrie beads, and when she smiled, the stars seemed to flinch.

"Amadi Briggs," said the apparition, in a voice like a tide drawing back. "It has been twenty-one years."

"Mami," whispered Tonye's father. "Please."

"You swore."

"I was desperate."

"You were. And I was generous. You asked for a child, and I gave you one." The shining face turned toward Tonye. "She has grown well. She has your eyes."

Tonye could not move. She could not speak. She had spent her whole life on this water and never once seen anything so terrible and so beautiful.

"What bargain?" she managed.

Her father fell to his knees on the porch. He covered his face. "Tonye," he sobbed. "Forgive me."

"Papa. What did you do?"

"Your mother was dying. Eight months pregnant. Everything the doctors tried, nothing worked. I came to the water one night and prayed. And she answered."

"I answered," the sea goddess agreed gently. "I healed your wife. I saved your unborn child. And in return, you promised me the girl on her twenty-first birthday. Seven nights in my kingdom. And then, if she chooses, she may return."

"If she chooses," said Tonye's father brokenly. "You said if she chooses."

"I did. And I keep my word." The goddess smiled at Tonye. "Child. I do not wish to frighten you. I have waited a long time to meet the girl I saved. I only wish to show you my home."

"And if I say no?"

"Then your father's life is forfeit."

The words fell like stones.

Tonye looked at her father. At the white in his hair, the tremor in his hands, the twenty-one years of guilt folded into every line of his face. She looked at the goddess. At the silent water, and the drowned moon.

"Seven nights," she said.

"Seven."

"And then I come home."

"If you choose."

"And my father lives."

"Unharmed."

Tonye drew a long, shaking breath. "Then I accept."

"Tonye!"

"It's all right, Papa." She wiped her face. "It's only seven nights."

The goddess raised a hand. A figure stepped from the heart of the water-column behind her, tall, lean, with skin the colour of deep sea and eyes as green as a wave at dawn. He wore only a wrap of woven kelp, and his hair fell in dark ropes to his shoulders. He looked at Tonye with an expression she could not read: grave, careful, almost pained.

"This is Ibiye," said Mami Wata. "My prince. He will guard you. He will see that no harm comes to you beneath the waves."

"Miss Briggs," said Ibiye. His voice was low and clear. He extended a hand. "Will you come?"

Behind her, her father began to weep.