It is possible that more persons of the S.S. Poseidon’s crew would have survived and may had even been able to bring their shipment of Africans in tow if they had not included the girl. Or, more smartly, had not been in the business that they were at all.

But they were in that business. And they had brought her.

Mr. Josiah Greene had claimed to have found her in some ways from the ship. That may have been the case. But all knew he had had enough of eyeing the female cargo’s flesh. He had desired limbs and legs to pass away the time at sea and that was the faith of this one. She had skin as dark and smooth as a seal pup’s. Her foregoing drinking water offered to pour it upon her skin may have only enticed him more.

Her saving grace from an altogether different enslavement was her humming.

When none but Mr. Greene survived the fury of the goddess who followed them recounted the girl, he told of the humming. It’s pitch low; the note steady, rarely rising and falling, save for a single sound like a staccato: Oshun, Oshun. With eyes closed and head bowed and gritted teeth sharpened to tipped points, she hummed. And one by one, the other slaves who knew who the girl truly was followed. With shackled arms raised, they too hummed; with swaying, seated bodies, they too hummed.

“Oshun, Oshun.”

The hums drove the ship’s captain to fury. He pulled the girl from out her shackles and dragged her on deck, commanding her to stop. He struck her to stop. And when she refused, he pulled her to her feet and pushed her overboard—which, Mr. Greene would suppose was what she wanted more than the captain own desires.

The sounds of the slaves did not stop—“Oshun, Oshun”—but the pull and push of the water and tumble of wind against the sails did. It was if the world had stopped, but really, things were only beginning.

“Oshun, Oshun.”

Water slapped the sides of The Poseidon.

“Oshun, Oshun.”

There came the sound of scratching off the starboard. And what followed was a swell and a lurch, as if the ship lifted from the water.

It *had* lifted from the water.

And then suddenly there was the goddess. As blue-black as the night sky meeting the dark ocean, hair like water serpents, face as devastating as a Gorgon.

Oshun, Oshun.

She deign not to speak in the slavers’ tongue.

“I have heard the cry of my child, and those of children who wish to be called mine. You who steal from the land have only escaped due wrath by carrying your theft along my body. But you will not steal from me myself my child or any other who seek my embrace. I will forever accept those who beg for salvation through me.”