Author’s Note
I’ve always been fascinated by the stories and folktales of the South Seas — just like my friend, the singer-songwriter Marty Atkinson, who hasn’t spent any time there either. It’s probably due to a Bronx childhood spent reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Samoan tales like “The Bottle Imp” and “The Beach of Falesá,” along with a lot of Jack London and my father’s beloved Joseph Conrad. I cherished visions out of Herman Melville’s haunting classic Typee, and fantasies of running off to Tahiti, like Gauguin. I did make it to Fiji once, but it was for a week’s vacation on a private island: not at all the same thing as arriving on a whaler and jumping ship forever. Not at all the same.
“The Children of the Shark God” is, both in story and style, very much my attempt at a tale in the manner of Stevenson. All these years and miles away from the Bronx he is still one of my literary heroes, for lots of reasons.
ROSINA
Man Fry
I.
It began with the turnips. Sent to get some for supper, she pulled one up, and underneath crouched three toads, bright as emeralds.
She picked them up to admire, but one
fell from her hand. Gently, she put
the others down, saying, “Oh, I’m sorry.”
Just then the sun sank behind the hill,
and the toads grew into large, gray shadows.
Thinking it a trick of the fading light, she blinked,
and when she opened her eyes, three stout
men in moss green garb and caps the color
of rust stood before her, with sacks
on their backs from which spilled a green light.
One of the men bowed to her and said,
“Thank you for putting us down so gently.”
“I thank you, too,” said another, crinkling
his face in a smile. “And for your kindness,
we’ll make you radiant as the sun.”
“Harrumph,” croaked the third, glowering at her.
“You’ve hurt my leg with your carelessness,
maybe broken it. If the sun ever shines on you,
you’ll turn into a serpent!”
“Oh, please,” she begged, “I didn’t mean
to hurt you. Maybe I could set your leg.
Let me see.” She reached for him,
but he limped away, his leg dragging.
The other two waved to her and said,
“Stay out of the sun, and all will be well,”
as they disappeared into the shadows.
She ran home and lived in the shade
and the dark, giving forth her own light.
Because she shone with a rosy glow,
she was called Rosina,
but her sister Lydia called her lazy.
“I have to work in the field in the sun,”
said Lydia. “Why won’t she?
This story of toads and little old men
is just an excuse.”
“But look how she shines,”
said their mother. “There must be something to it.”
“Humph,” said Lydia. “You always liked her best.”
To keep peace in the family, Rosina worked
in the field at night, planting and weeding
by moon and starlight.
Early one morning, before sunup, a prince
who was out hunting saw her in the field
and was drawn by the light that spilled from her.
When they talked, her radiance lit fires
within him, and he asked her to marry him.
Rosina wanted to wait until she knew him better,
but Lydia jeered, “He’s a prince. Do you think
he’ll wait for you to make up your mind?”
Her mother said, “It’s been such a struggle
since your father died, but do what you think best,”
so Rosina accepted, provided
she could live in the dark.
On her wedding day, she was taken,
under veils and parasols, to a royal carriage
whose windows were draped with black cloth.
Her mother and sister climbed in,
and they set off. “It’s stuffy in here,”
said Lydia, and she opened the window a crack.
A sliver of sunlight streamed in.
When it struck Rosina, her limbs
shriveled up, her skin grew scales,
and she slithered out the window,
hissing.
At first she longed for all she had lost.
She crept to the edge of her family’s field,
and waited for a glimpse of her mother or sister.
When Lydia saw her, she threw a stone,
screaming, “Ugh — a snake!”
Rosina fled to the woods, where she learned
to crawl without feet, to reach with the whole
of herself, to smell the air
with her flickering tongue.
Then she went to the prince’s palace,
and climbed the castle wall, peering
in windows, her tongue seeking his scent,
until she found the room where he sat
longing for his lost bride.
She slithered over the sill, and when he saw her,
he jumped up and slammed the window.
Rosina drew back just in time and fell
to the ground. Bruised and sore,
she crawled off and hid in a cave.
The prince sent fifty knights on horseback,
fifty huntsmen, and a hundred hounds
to search for her. The woods rang
with the blowing of bugles and the baying of dogs.
Rosina heard it all and stayed in her cave,
safe from spears, hooves, and teeth.
She came to love the grasses, the mud,
and her strong, sinuous body.
And she loved the sun!
She would coil on the rocks
and bask until she was warm,
supple, and moved like water.
II.
When the fifty knights and fifty huntsmen
returned with their hundred hounds,
they reported they couldn’t find Rosina.
The prince moped around the palace
until his parents lost patience. “She was just
a farmer’s daughter,” they said, and convinced him
to marry a foreign princess.
She came reluctantly from a land she loved
where she’d run barefoot in field and forest.
She used to slip away from the court
and climb a tall pine at the edge
of the woods. She’d feel its rough bark
under her hands, and its pitch would stick
to her feet and fingers. From its top
she could see the nests of hawks
and watch them soaring, swooping
down on their prey, and bringing it back
to feed their babies.
She longed for their wings
when she was told she’d be wed
to a stranger. She ran
to the woods, but her father’s guards
caught her and brought her back.
She was hustled on board a ship
and wept as she stood on deck
watching her homeland grow small
in the distance.
III.
As the palace prepared for the wedding feast,
Rosina, coiled around a tree branch,
saw the carts rumble in,
laden with food and finery,
and something in her stirred.
She crept to the edge of a meadow
and hid in a woodpile where she could watch
the comings and goings at the castle.
She fell asleep there,
and when she awoke, she was being thrust,
along with the kindling, into the oven.
It was like diving into the sun.
The heat crackled
around her, and she grew
so warm she flowed,
molten, into a new shape.
The oven door opened.
She heard a scream and stepped,
naked and radiant, a woman
again, from the fire.
The prince, hearing the cook shriek,
came running. “Rosina!” he cried
and embraced her, but she stood,
cool in his arms,
and said, “Who are you?”
He told her how she’d disappeared
on their wedding day, how his men had searched
for her and never found her, how his parents
had urged him to marry a foreign princess,
how he’d finally given in, how today
was the wedding, how the oven
she’d stepped out of was to cook
the marriage feast, and how,
now she was here, rosy and
sweet in his arms, he’d
call it off
and marry her.
“Wait,” she said. “Don’t you even want
to know where I’ve been?”
“Uh, yes,” he said. “Where have you been?”
“I’ve slithered under rocks, nestled
in the earth’s belly, basked in the sun.
I’m not sure. ” Just then the princess
who’d been waiting, stiff in brocade,
to meet the stranger she was to marry,
walked in. She saw the prince talking
to a naked, radiant woman.
“Who are you?” she gasped.
“Are you an angel?”