Chapter 36: The Legend Begins

BEING CAUGHT in Guabancex’s hurricane was not the first time I’d been blown off course by an angry god. Remember Guabancex? After the Spaniards landed in the new world and I got blown in a huricane to Kukulcán? It’s in the first volume. Well, of course, I’d had run-ins with Poseidon aplenty, but...

Let me start at the beginning. I’ll tell more about my adventures in China some other time. After my time with the Khaans, I finally reached the east coast of China in the city of Huating, not far from the crossing to Nihon. Once a humble fishing village, now it was becoming a shipping capital with ships from as far away as England and France making it a port of call. It was a perfect place for me to get a ship.

“This is not a fishing boat,” the ship owner said. I nodded. It was certainly too small to be considered a shipping vessel, but it did look fast. I could imagine flying across the waves on this little ship. The wind in my hair. The fresh salt spray. And all that.

“Yes, I can see that. I like its features. Looks sleek and fast.”

“Well, if you have a good crew, it could win a race among the islands. Can you sail?”

I wanted to tell him I’d begun sailing where the first navy in human history was floated. I’d sailed the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Bay of Bengal. Of course, he wouldn’t believe that because I had the appearance of being a strong and willful young Asian, out to find my fortune. In truth, I was constantly on the lookout for kidnappers who would grab me to be a crewman on some freighter. I wouldn’t mind that so much as I could always take over the ship, but they were too large for my purposes. Some other time, perhaps.

I finally managed to convince him I was a good choice as a boat owner and paid him too much for the little boat. Before he could call anyone to grab me, I’d jumped onto the boat and shoved off. He ran along the docks and shortly, I saw three other boats of similar model cast off and set their sails to follow me.

Well, I knew a few tricks these fellows didn’t and set a fresh breeze in my sail, soon outdistancing them to such a degree that they fell back and turned around toward their berths. And I was off and sailing. I set myself generally southeastward and lay back to relax. I celebrated my first night on the open seas with a flask of wine from the infinity room and settled in to enjoy the journey, as I kept the wind in my sail and my hand on the tiller.

I put in at a few South Seas islands and restocked with wine. That’s not the subject of this little tale.

Perhaps I drank a bit too much wine. I woke up in the midst of a storm that had the marks of celestial interference about it. It turned out that I’d accidentally strayed into a raging battle between Tawhiri, the Maori god of storms and the sea, and his brother Tu of the angry face, the Maori god of war (and cunning and the destruction of humanity, etc.) When Tu came upon my little ship, he flung it behind him to get it out of his way as he grappled with his brother. I landed far inland on what I now know as the great island of Australia. My ship, broken in pieces around me, was good only to build a rough shelter to crawl into.

I did not stay in my shelter for long. Too many other beings crawled in with me. It seemed that everything in Australia was devoted to killing me. Snakes, crocodiles, jelly fish, spiders, bears, sharks, and even a giant bird called a cassowary. Anything not intent on killing you will still fight you, including the indigenous people. During the entire time I was in the land of the Australian aborigines, I kept the gateway to the infinity room closed.

Except once.

I looked at my star charts, which were woefully incomplete for this part of the world, and determined that I was far southeast of India. So, I headed northwest, making my way across a land that was alternatively a rich and fertile paradise and a barren desert. It was as I was making my way that I came across an aboriginal tribe that only tried to be dominant over me and not necessarily kill me. I acknowledged my innate inferiority and they then accepted me into their tribe—not quite as a long-lost brother, but more like a scarcely tolerated distant cousin who desperately wants to be part of the family, but keeps getting drunk, insulting the grandfather, and suggesting lewd acts to a married first cousin. Not that I did any of that literally. Exactly. Suffice it to say that my time with the Kalahalakalaka was informative.

By this time of my life, I had met hundreds of different races of people and at least dozens of different civilizations. I discovered that the hundreds of tribes and groups of Aboriginals in Australia were probably the oldest civilization on earth. I estimated they were thousands of years older than my own people on Crete, or any I encountered in Mesopotamia. And they were fantastic storytellers. Ask any question and a fatherly or motherly person of the tribe would sit you down and begin to tell you how it all began.

“When Awa’s father sent him to get water from the stream...” a story would begin, and before long, I would discover that two thousand cycles of the sun ago, the spine was broken off a rackarock fish and grew its own body. “And that is how the dreaded dingadocka was created.”

When I began to build my boat, I told the people about my voyage across the sea and how Tu had thrown me all the way across Australia. The people were delighted by the story. They wanted to know about where I had been and how I had sailed so far. They helped to build my boat in any way they could and often met until late at night to go over the details of my story and figure out how it fit into their own unique mythology.

I finished the boat and told my adopted tribe that in the morning, I would set sail northward again. When I rose with the sun, I discovered the entire village had been disassembled and packed on the backs of the tribe. They stood by my boat waiting for me. They were not there to see me off. They had packed everything in their village and had even captured some of the less dangerous animals to bring with them when they joined me on my boat. They had to know that the little boat I had fashioned would not hold the seventy or so of their cluster, yet they confidently waited for me to bring them aboard.

I explained that if they boarded my boat, they would find themselves in a different dreamland. They would never return to this dreamland and would live very long lives in my dream. They thought this was excellent. So, I consulted with my women and they designated an area far from where our cities were located. I opened a gateway and as the tribe set foot on my boat, it entered into the infinity room. I entered there long enough to explain to them where they were and they nodded and shooed me away to sail my dream.

I paused only long enough to kiss my wives and concubines and possessions, then sealed the satchel and set sail.

That was a long voyage. I intended to make for India, but was blown westward and began a slow crawl up the west coast of Africa toward the Mediterranean Sea. The voyage took a hundred years and I finally arrived in Italy near the middle of the fourteenth century, just as the black plague was taking hold.

Let me see. I’ve told you about Italy and Spain and Columbus. I told you about the Mayan gods recruiting me and my beautiful possession Maya. Well, Maya and I worked our way south until we found the abandoned town of Machu Picchu and there I hid the satchel and stepped in. We were there for many years and I only came out of the infinity room occasionally to see that the area was still undisturbed. The rest of the time, I spent exploring the infinity room which was truly vast by this time. I eventually made my way to the tribe of Aborigines I had brought from Australia. They had changed their name to Bobbobbob in honor of the god who brought them to this rich land where they flourished. I tried to think how many centuries they had lived in this corner of the infinity room and could not figure it out. Time is so undependable in the infinity room.

To listen to them tell the story to their children, they had lived there many thousands of years, dreamed into existence by The Bob. I was not just Bob anymore; I was The Bob. I was now a part of the creation myth and was deemed the supreme ruler of the gods of this land they now inhabited.

“Bob looked upon the empty land and was lonely. So, he spoke the word of creation and plants and animals grew in the land and there was plenty for everyone. But Bob was still lonely. In all the land he could find no storytellers to speak of him and his mighty works. And so, Bob wandered and found the dreamtime of Ungambikula. Ungambikula had also wandered the earth and found shapeless bundles by waterholes, and under trees, and in the nests of birds. These, Ungambikula carved and gave heads and arms and legs. When they were finished, Ungambikula went back to sleep and humans wandered its dreams. Bob quietly borrowed the Bobbobbob people from Ungambikula and brought them to this land in his dream where they live today.”

I was no longer a demon in the hearts of the Bobbobbob. I was the dreamer and sustainer of life.

I landed in southern California in the early eighteenth century. Of course, that involved having set sail from Lima early in the seventeenth century. That journey lasted nearly one hundred years and was very profitable.

Much has been written about piracy in the Caribbean. It was a major form of trade, engaged in by both privateers and buccaneers as well as general pirates. The difference? A pirate is a private warship that preys on other ships of any nation for its personal gain. Privateers are private warships that have a license from their nation to attack enemy ships and take their cargo. A Buccaneer is a private warship operating in its own interest without any official sanction, but generally does not prey on ships of its own nation.