Hoopla, FF Net!

Okay, so basically Boosh Treatment will be updated as and when, but I'm treating it as a break from less humorous affairs, namely this, right now. I've had this idea for a fair while, and I was debating between doing Saboo or Mrs Gideon first, but i decided to go with Saboo because I've had a real Naboo thing going on lately, and he makes his appearances later on in this fic. Though, as of yet, I have no idea how this is going to end.

I have work due for Tuesday, which I had all Easter to do and started this morning. So basically I should be looking for essays and journals on early modern drama to reference, but instead I was looking up African baby names, human geography and the Atlantic slave trade. But on the plus side, this fic is at least partially (tho probably not all that much) historically accurate.

I've fanonised (I like that word) that Saboo is Yoruba, from western Nigeria, and most people believe that the Yoruba language is the origin of the word "Juju". Which I didn't know until about an hour ago. And if Richard Ayoade also happens to be of Yoruba heritage, then I believe his surname means "joy-crown", or, as seems a much better translation, "crown of joy". Which he is.

Please enjoy.

The Secret History of the Former Prince Saboo

He didn't remember Nigeria. They all told him he was a prince, and they treated him as one. His father claimed to be a king, and it was true, Saboo noticed from a young age, that he seemed to see himself as responsible for the situation shared by their entire village.

As he grew up, he didn't know whether to consider himself a prince or not. His people treated him as one, not that it made much difference, but they were the people he knew and cared for, and saw every day and worked with, and so they were the people that knew him best. But if he was a prince, he was a prince in Nigeria, which he hadn't seen since he was barely out of infancy. He only knew Virginia, and he was most certainly not a prince here.

He lived in a scrap-iron cabin with his parents and three others, one of whom was a child who had been born in there. He had been picking cotton almost since he could walk, he spoke a language that was not his own, his back was criss-crossed with scars from the whip, and he had the initials of the man he called "master" burned into his shoulder. Not a prince's life.

This was why, at the age of seventeen, when people called him "omo oba", 'prince', he told them to stop. He had been a prince once, he explained, but he wasn't any more, and until the Africans could live freely in their own lands again, he was not going to accept that title.

His father was proud of him the day he heard that explanation. His son was a true leader, he said, and fit to be called king after him. Secretly, Saboo doubted this would happen. The business, the trade in human lives, was too big, they were relied on too much to be given up so soon, and if Saboo could not be prince, then he could never be king either. He didn't tell his father this.

The king's pride encouraged him though. He got friends together, and in secret they discussed escapes, protests, anything they could do, but found that very little was possible. No protest or strike would go unpunished, no escape seemed plausible enough to bring success, and any failures would set them back, make the African people afraid, and their plight would become ever worse.

"Don't be so vocal," his father had warned him one day. "You'll draw attention to yourself. You will achieve nothing with them watching you."

He hadn't appreciated the warning until it was too late.

Bamidele had always followed him. He was enthusiastic, and ready and willing, and Saboo admired him. And then, one day, the Africans were ordered to drop work immediately and convene in the courtyard. And there was Bamidele, struggling and furious, held by a white overseer, and nearby was his wife of three months, Folami, restrained by another. Bamidele, Saboo realised, had attempted one of the rejected ideas for escape, and been caught. Folami was simply there for being married to him.

He watched, bloodless, as they were tied down, as hammers were brought out, as high, desperate screams pierced the air around the silent crowd, and as they were left, broken and bloody and slumping like rag dolls, to die.

When the others met the next night, all Saboo could do was look each of them in the eye and say that, short of a miracle, he was giving up.

More had arrived, like any more were needed. Where they came from, Saboo didn't know, and didn't really care. There were so many nationalities, languages and cultures in that one plantation that people had almost given up trying to understand each other, and generally associated only with their own people, even after only just arriving.

So why the old man kept catching his eye, Saboo had no idea.

He hadn't met the others at night for months now. He couldn't face them. They had kept on meeting, discussing, theorising, when he could no longer see the point. They would never be free, there would be no more kings. They had told him that Bamidele and Folami's deaths weren't his fault, when the thought that they were had never really occurred to him.

So, to avoid disappointing his father, who still believed that there was hope for the enslaved people of Africa, he took to wandering around the cabins at night, telling his family he still believed in freedom.

"Good evening," called another voice from across the row. The old man appeared from the shadows. He spoke English so that Saboo could understand, but with a very thick accent that Saboo couldn't place, and which obscured his meanings somewhat.

"Evening," Saboo replied.

"I knew I would find you here," said the old man. "Hiding from your disillusionment."

Saboo stared. "What?" he asked.

"I know you come here because you cannot face the fact you have no hope," the old man said casually, smiling as though it was normal to know such things about a stranger, or to tell him so.

"How do you know?" Saboo asked.

"I've seen it," answered the old man. "Forgive me, my name is Kafil, I am from Kenya, and I have been drawn to you."

"What do you mean, 'drawn to me'?" This man was beginning to unnerve Saboo. He was speaking to him as though they were familiar, and about things that Saboo was entirely uncomfortable discussing with a stranger.

"I'm sorry," replied Kafil. "I forget that you have not seen me as I have seen you. I am a shaman. I have seen you in my dreams and my visions, and I knew that you were real, and that I would find you someday, in this place." Kafil looked at the ramshackle huts around him, and Saboo thought he saw the old man shiver. "I never would have thought such a place existed," he continued. "But here I am, and I have found you."

"A shaman?" Saboo repeated.

"I convene with the spirits, change the world around me," said Kafil.

"So you know everything about me?" asked Saboo.

"Nothing at all."

Saboo stared at the old man.

"I have seen you, and I know you are important, but I know nothing of you as a person," Kafil explained. "Not even your name or where you come from."

Saboo shrugged. "My name is Saboo," he said. "I'm from Nigeria. Yoruba."

"But Saboo is not a Yoruba name?"

Saboo couldn't help but laugh. "You're going to love this," he chuckled. "My father said the name came to him in a dream."

And the old man was laughing. Like a child. Saboo found himself laughing with him, mirth suddenly flooding him, and they sat for what must have been several minutes, just laughing.

As they calmed down, the old man looked in Saboo's eyes.

"You will escape with me," he said.

"I can't do that," Saboo replied.

"Why not?"

"It won't work."

"It will work. There will be magic to help us."

"Magic?"

"The magic of the world, of the beings around us and the spirits long unseen."

Saboo regarded him. "Like… Juju, you mean?"

"If this is what you call it, then yes."

Saboo looked around at the cabins, the faint lights of candles visible in the windows. "I can't just leave everyone," he said.

"They can never be freed from the inside."

Saboo looked back at the old man. His dark, lined eyes were full of sincerity. And it was true- if he stayed, he could do nothing. If he left, he might have a chance.

"Okay."