Midnight Robber

The light was too red and the air smelt wrong. The shift pod had disappeared and left Tan-Tan and the daddy she couldn’t recognise no more in this strange place. They were in a bush with no food and no shelter. Everything was changed.

“Allyou climb the Tree to visit we?” The high, clear voice was coming from behind Tan-Tan. She whipped round. Someone strange was standing there. Tan-Tan screamed and jumped behind Antonio.

Antonio grabbed Tan-Tan’s arm and took a step back.

“What you want?” he asked.

It made a hissing noise shu-shu and said, “That all depend on what you have to trade.”

“Not we. We come with we two long arms just so.”

Tan-Tan peeked out. The creature was only about as tall as she. It smelt like leaves. Its head was shaped funny; long and narrow like a bird’s. It was ugly for so! Its eyes were on either side of its head, not in front of its face like people eyes. It had two arms like them, with hands. Each hand had four fingers with swollen fingertips. Slung across its leathery chest was a gourd on a strap. It carried a slingshot in one hand and had a pouch round its waist. It wore no clothing, but Tan-Tan couldn’t see genitalia, just something looking like a pocket of flesh at its crotch. A long knife in a holder was strapped onto one muscular thigh. But it was the creature’s legs that amazed Tan-Tan the most. They looked like goat feet; thin and bent backwards in the middle. Its feet had four long toes with thick, hard nails. “Eshu,” she muttered, “a-what that?”

Static, then a headache burst upon her brain. Eshu didn’t answer.

The jokey-looking beast bobbed its head at them, like any lizard. “I think you two must be want plenty, yes? Water, and food, and your own people? What you go give me if I take you where it have people like you?”

At the word “water,” Tan-Tan realised that she’d had nothing to drink since the cocoa-tea Nursie had given her that afternoon, and she’d only sipped that; a whole lifetime away, it seemed now.

“Daddy, I thirsty.”

“Hush your mouth, Tan-Tan. We don’t know nothing about this beast.”

The creature said, “Beast that could talk and know it own mind. Oonuh tallpeople quick to name what is people and what is beast. Last time I asking you: safe passage through this bush?”

“Why I making deal with some leggobeast that look like bat masque it own self? How I know you go do what you say?”

“Because is so we do business here. Give me something that I want, I go keep my pact with you. Douen people does keep their word.”

Douen! Nursie had told Tan-Tan douen stories. Douens were children who’d died before they had their naming ceremonies. They came back from the dead as jumbies with their heads on backwards. They lived in the bush. Tan-Tan looked at the douen’s head, then its feet. They seemed to attach the right way, even though its knees were backwards.

The creature made the shu-shu noise again. “Too besides, allyou taste nasty too bad, bitter aloe taste. Better to take you to live with your people.”

Antonio made a worried frown. Then: “All right,” he said. “Let me see what I have to trade with you.” He searched his jacket pockets and pulled out a pen. “What about this?”

One of the douen’s eyes rolled to inspect the pen. A bright green frill sprang up round its neck. It stepped up too close to Antonio. Antonio moved back. The douen followed, said, “Country booky come to town you think I is? Used to sweet we long time ago, when oonuh tallpeople give we pen and bead necklace. Something more useful, mister. Allyou does come with plenty thing when you get exile here.”

“Nobody know we was leaving Toussaint. I ain’t think to bring nothing with we.”

“Me ain’t business with that.”

Worriedly, Antonio started searching his pockets again. Tan-Tan saw him ease a flask of rum part way out of his back pants pocket then put it back in. He patted his chest pocket, looked down at himself. “Here. What about my shoes-them?” He bent over and ran his finger down the seam that would release his shoe from his foot.

“Foolish. Is a two-day hike.” Its frill deflated against its neck, leaving what looked like a necklace of green beads. “Leave on your shoes and come.”

“What?”

“You will owe me. Come. Allyou want water?”

That was what Tan-Tan had been waiting to hear. “Yes, please, mister,” she piped up. Mister? she wondered.

The douen laughed shu-shu. “This one barely rip open he egg yet, and he talking bold-face! Your son this, tallpeople?”

“My daughter. Leave she alone.”

“He, she; oonuh all the same.”

Antonio shot the douen a puzzled look.

“She want water,” the creature said.

“Let me taste it first.”

Antonio took a few swallows from the gourd the douen handed him. He nodded, then held it for Tan-Tan to drink. The water was warm and a little slimy. She didn’t care, she drank until her throat wasn’t dry any more.

The douen said, “Never see a tallpeople pickney climb the half-way tree before. What crime you do, pickney, to get cast away?”

“Never you mind,” growled Antonio.

The creature didn’t reply. It took the gourd back. It sniffed at Daddy, then at Tan-Tan. She moved away from its pointy snout, hands jumping protectively to cross in front of her body. But it just grunted at them and started off through the bush, hacking a path with its knife. Tan-Tan remembered Nursie’s stories about how douens led people into the bush to get lost and die. She started to feel scared all over again. She called silently for eshu. Her headache flared, then quieted. She reached for Antonio’s hand. “Daddy,” she whispered. “Where eshu?”

“Back on Toussaint, child. We leave all that behind now.”

She didn’t understand. Eshu was always there. She bit her bottom lip, peered into the bush where the douen had disappeared. “We have to go with that funny man?”

“Yes, doux-doux. It say it taking we to we own people.”

“For true? It not going to lost we?”

“I don’t know, doux-doux. Just come.”

They followed the path the creature had left. Red heat beat down. Branches jooked. The space the creature was clearing through the bush was short so till Antonio had to rip off the foliage above his own head to make room to pass through. By the time they caught up to the douen, Antonio was panting with the exertion and scratched from jutting twigs. “Is what you did call this place?” he asked.

“New Half-Way Tree oonuh call it.”

“But,” said Tan-Tan, “we not half way. We come all the way and reach now.” The douen blinked at her. Its eyes were very large. She didn’t like it looking at her. She shouldn’t have said anything. Nervously she giggled at her own joke.

Antonio stopped her with a look. He said, “How you know where to find we? The shift pod does land at the same place every time?”

“No. Douen does know when and where a next one going to land. Taste it in the air. Whichever douen reach there first, him get first right of trade with the new tallpeople. Bring we good business, oonuh. A tallpeople gave me a shirt one time. Front does close up when you run your finger along it. I give it to the weavers in my village. Them will study how to make more.”

“How come you could speak the same way like we?”

“Yes. Anglopatwa, Francopatwa, Hispanopatwa, and Papiamento. Right? We learn all oonuh speech, for oonuh don’t learn we own.”

“And why you call yourself ‘douen’?”

“Allyou call we so. Is we legs.”

The ringing in Tan-Tan’s ears, which had never quite stopped since the shift pod had deposited them here, was getting louder. She shook her head to try to clear it. She had begun to feel chilly. She wrapped her arms round herself.

The douen noticed, sniffed in her direction. It raised one twisted leg and scratched behind its shoulder blade. “Mister, watch at your pickney-girl. Is so allyou does do for cold.”

Antonio stared down at her with a look like he didn’t know what to do.

“Allyou people blood too hot for this place,” said the douen. Now it was holding the foot up in front of its face, inspecting between its long toes to see if its scratching had unearthed anything. Its toes flicked, shaking dust off themselves as agilely as fingers. It put its foot back on the ground, looked at Antonio. “Give she something warm to wear.”

“Me done tell you, me don’t have nothing!”

The creature reached into the pouch at its waist and pulled out a cloth like the one it was wearing. It was saffron yellow, Tan-Tan’s favourite colour.

“Here, small tallperson.”

Tan-Tan pressed up against Daddy’s legs. She looked doubtfully at the cloth. Antonio took it, peered at it, smelt it. He shook it out and put it round her shoulders. “Thanks,” he said grudgingly.

“My wife make those cloths,” the douen said to Tan-Tan.

A dead douen baby could have wife?

“With every thread she weave,” the douen continued, “she weave a magic to give warmth to who wear the cloth. Is true; I does see she do it.”

Tan-Tan took a hard look at the little person. She wished she could talk to eshu. The douen’s eyes-at-the-sides couldn’t look at her straight on; it cocked its head like a bird’s to return the stare, like a parrot. She smiled a little. No, it didn’t look like a dead child. Too besides, it didn’t have no Panama hat like a real douen. She began to feel warmer, wrapped in its wife’s magic cloth. “What you name?” she asked the douen.

“Eh-eh! The pickney offering trail debt.” He bent, sniffed her hair. “You have manners. Me name Chichibud. And what you name?”

“Tan-Tan,” she said, feeling shy.

“Sweet name. The noise Cousin Lizard does make when he wooing he mate.”

“It have lizards here?”

Chichibud looked round the gloomy bush, picked up a twig and flung it at a crenellated tree trunk. A liver-red something slithered out of the way. It was many-legged like a centipede, long as Daddy’s forearm, thick around as his wrist.

“Fuck,” Antonio muttered.

“No, I make mistake,” said Chichibud. “Foot snake that, not a lizard. Shu-shu.”

He peered round again, then pointed to a tree in front of them. “Look.” The tree had brownish purple bark and long twist-up leaves fluttering in the air like ropes of blood floating in water.

“I ain’t see nothing.”

“Look at the tree trunk. Just above that knothole there.”

Tan-Tan squinted and stared at the tree, but still couldn’t make anything out.

Chichibud picked up a rockstone from the ground and flung it at the tree. “Show yourself, cousin!”

A little lizard reared up on its hind legs to scuttle out of the way, then just as quickly settled still again on the tree.

Tan-Tan laughed. “I see he! He like the ones from back home, just a different colour.” The lizard was purple like the bark, but with streaks of pink the same strange colour as the sunlight. When he was quiet he looked just like a piece of tree bark with the sun dappling it.

“Tallpeople say your world not so different from the real world,” the douen told her.

Yes it was. Plenty different. “Why you call the lizard ‘cousin’?”

“Old people tell we douen and lizards related. So we treat them good. We never kill a lizard.”

Antonio said impatiently, “The place you taking we; is what it name?”

“We go keep hiking,” Chichibud told them. They moved off through the bush again. He answered Antonio’s question: “It name Junjuh.”

The parasitic fungus that grew wherever it was moist.

“Nasty name,” Antonio mumbled.

“One of oonuh tell me about junjuh mould. It does grow where nothing else can’t catch. When no soil not there, it put roots down in the rock, and all rainwater and river water pound down on it, it does thrive. No matter what you do, it does grow back.”

As they walked, Chichibud showed them how to see the bush around them. He took them over to a low plant with pointy leaves. In the dusky sunlight they could just make out dark blue flowers with red tongues. “Devil bush this.”

“I know it!” Tan-Tan said. “We have it back home, but the flowers does be red.”

“The one back home like this?” Carefully, Chichibud picked a leaf off the plant. He held it up to the light so they could see the tiny, near-transparent needles that bristled on its underside. “Poison thorn. If you skin touch it, bad blister. Skin drop off. Our bush doctors smoke it. Give them visions. It does talk to them and tell them which plants does heal. Some of oonuh smoke it too, but never hear the voice of the herb, just the voices of your own dreams.”

From then on, Tan-Tan kept casting her eyes to the ground to make sure she wouldn’t brush up a devil bush.

Chichibud said to Antonio, “You bring any lighter with you? Any glass bottle?”

“Nothing, me tell you!”

“Too bad for you. Woulda trade you plenty for those; bowls to eat out of, hammock to sleep in.”

A few minutes later Chichibud pulled down a vine from a tree as they were walking under it. The vine had juicy red leaves and bright green flowers. “Water vine. You could squeeze the leaves and drink from them. If you dry the vine, you could twist it together to make rope.” Chichibud picked two-three of the leaves and squeezed them in his hand. “You want to try, pickney?” But before he could drip the water into her mouth, Antonio dashed the leaves out of his hand.

“Don’t give she nothing to eat without I tell you to!” Antonio shouted angrily.

Chichibud fell into a crouch. He said nothing, but bobbed his head like a parrot. His eyes went opaque and then clear again, like someone opening and closing a jalousie window shutter. The frill at his neck rose. Somehow he seemed to have grown bigger, fiercer. Tan-Tan edged behind her daddy again. Them was going to fight! Maybe Daddy still had some of the poison he’d used on Uncle Quashee. That would serve the nasty leggobeast right.

“Man,” Chichibud replied, his voice growly, “you under trail debt, your pickney declare it. Is liard you calling me liard?”

“I don’t want her to eat nothing that might make she sick.”

“Oh-hoh.” Chichibud straightened up. He was back to his normal size. How he do that? “You watching out for your pickney. Is a good thing to do. But we under trail debt, I tell you. You go get safe to Junjuh. I won’t make your child come to harm.”

Antonio just grunted. Tan-Tan knew that particular set of his jaw. He was still vex. Chichibud tugged down a length of vine, showed it to Antonio first, then said to Tan-Tan, “Water vine only grow on this tree here, the lionheart tree with the wood too tough to cut. But if you see a vine looking just like this, only the flowers tiny-tiny, don’t touch it! Allyou call it jumbie dumb cane. Juice from it make your tongue swell up in your head. Can’t talk. Sometimes suffocate and dead.”

They hiked on through the bush. It was sweaty work, but Tan-Tan still felt chilly. Her ears tingled. She was only watching the ground below her feet for the devil bush and the bush above her head for jumbie dumb cane. Chichibud stopped them yet again. “What you see?” he said, pointing to the ground ahead. Like all the ground they’d tromped so far, what wasn’t covered with a thick carpet of ruddy dead leaves was blanketed with a fine, reddish green growth like moss. Gnarled trees with narrow trunks twisted their way out of it, reaching towards the too-red sun. It looked just like the rest of the bush.

Antonio sucked his teeth. “Look, I ain’t business with your bush nonsense, yes. Take we to this Junjuh.”

But as Tan-Tan had looked where Chichibud was pointing, she had slowly discerned something different through the mess of leaf and mould and stem. She tapped Chichibud on the shoulder. “Mister, I see some little lines, like the tracks badjack ants does leave in the sand.”

Gently, Chichibud touched her forehead with the back of his hand, once, twice. “Good, little tallpeople. Sense behind you eyes. That is sugar-maggot trails. If you follow them, you could find their nest. Boil them to sweeten your tea.” Chichibud looked at Antonio. “You must learn how to live in this place, tallpeople, or not survive.”

They hiked and they hiked. They had to stop one time for Tan-Tan to make water. They kept walking. Tan-Tan pulled Chichibud’s wife’s cloth tighter round her, wishing she could feel warm. She peered through the dimness of the bush ahead. “Look, Daddy! Bamboo like back home.”

Antonio turned wary eyes on the tall, jointed reeds growing thick as arms up towards the light. There was a whole stand of them. The shifting shadows caused by the narrow leaves blowing in the breeze hurt Tan-Tan’s eyes. The hollow stems clacked against each other and made her head pound. Antonio frowned. “How bamboo reach here? Is from Toussaint.” He looked to Chichibud for explanation.

“Tallpeople bring it. Plenty other bush too.”

They hiked on and on until Tan-Tan couldn’t make her legs move any more; Antonio had to carry her. As Daddy gathered her into his arms, Tan-Tan could feel how he was shivering too. He turned to the douen: “So where this village you only telling me about all the time? Like you is douen in truth, trying to lead we deeper into the bush and get we lost?”

“Your people tell me story. Where you come from, you could hire people to carry you where you going. You could go fast in magic carriage with nobody to pull it. Here, tallpeople have only your own two feet to carry you. By myself I get to Junjuh in one day. With new exiles, longer. Allyou making I move slow. Not reaching tonight. Tomorrow morning. After we sleep.”

“And so is what? Where we going to stay?”

“Right here. I go show you how to make the bush your home for the night.”

“And suppose it rain?” Antonio challenged him.

“It ain’t go rain. I woulda smell it coming. We looking for a clearing with a tree spreading wide over it.”

A few more minutes’ walk. The douen passed one tree by; it had too many beasts living in its trunk. Then another; it would drop strange, wriggling fruit on their heads while they tried to sleep. Finally they came upon two trees growing close together. Chichibud pointed to lumpy brown growths in the branches of one tree. “Halwa fruit. Dinner.” The other tree was broad-trunked with fire-red leaves. It had thick spreading branches, the shade of which made a clear space in the bush beneath them. “This one good. Let we make camp,” Chichibud told them. He led them under its branches.

The sun was setting. The dying light reflected off the tree’s leaves and made Tan-Tan’s eyes ache, so she looked down. Blood-red shadows were darkening and lengthening along the ground. She could hear things rustling in the gloom where they couldn’t see. She was frightened. She shook her head to clear its ringing.

Antonio let Tan-Tan down. The douen told her, “Pickney, pick up as much dry stick as you could find for the fire. Don’t go far. Stay around these two trees.”

Chichibud went to the halwa tree and shinnied up its trunk. Tan-Tan could hear him moving through the branches.

“Down below! Catch!”

Daddy went and stood below the tree, hands stretched out. Chichibud threw down two heavy round fruits, big as Daddy’s head. Daddy caught them, making a small explosion of air from his lips as he did. No sound came from the douen for a few minutes. Then from another part of the foliage came a wap! like something hitting against the tree trunk. He let something else drop into Daddy’s hands, something big so like the halwa fruit, but floppy and flabby. Daddy looked good at the hairy body he was holding, cried out, “Oh, God!” and dropped it on the ground. In the incarnadine evening light the blood covering his hands looked black. Tan-Tan shuddered. Antonio was only whimpering, “Oh, God! Oh, God, what a place!” and wiping the blood off on his pants.

Chichibud sprang down from the tree, licking his hands. He peered at Tan-Tan and then at Antonio. “New tallpeople always ’fraid the dead.” He laughed shu-shu-shu. “Is meat for dinner.”

Antonio flew at the little douen man, yanked him into the air by the throat, and gave him one good shake. “Jokey story done right now,” Antonio said. “What you do that for?” Chichibud snapped at Antonio’s face and reached for his knife. Antonio let him go.

The douen’s throat was smeared with blood from Antonio’s hands. He wiped it off and sucked it from his palm. His tongue was skinny like a whip. “In the bush, you catch food when you see it. Manicou, allyou call that beast. Allyou bring it here.”

The large rodent lying on the ground had a naked tail. Tan-Tan remembered the tail she’d hallucinated growing and losing again in the shift pod. The thing on the ground looked fat and healthy. Its head was all mashed up. “What happen to it?”

“I kill he,” Chichibud replied. “Grab he quick by the tail and swing he head against the tree trunk. You hear when it hit?”

“Yes.” She imagined the head splitting apart like a dropped watermelon. She felt ill.

“Every noise you hear in the bush mean something. Bush Poopa don’t like ignorance.”

“Bush Poopa?”

“Father Bush, master of the forest.”

Antonio had had enough of the lesson. “We setting up this camp, or what?” He helped Tan-Tan find twigs for the fire. They made a big pile on the ground in the clearing, beside the halwa fruit and the rat-thing. Antonio crouched down right there, just watching Chichibud. Tan-Tan knotted Chichibud’s wife’s cloth around her shoulders. She picked up one of the heavy halwa fruit and pressed her nose against it. The smell made her mouth water.

Chichibud had come back into the clearing with three sturdy staves, fresh cut. He put them beside the trunk of the red-leaved tree and spread a cloth from his pouch on the ground. He jammed the staves into the ground round the groundsheet. They met and crossed in the air like steepled fingers. Chichibud pulled out one more cloth and shook it out. It was much larger than the others. How had it fit inside that little pouch? Like it was magic too, yes? Tan-Tan wondered what else he could have in there. He threw the cloth over the staves. It stretched down to the ground. He shook some pegs out of the endless pouch, looked round himself, saw Antonio watching at him. “Find a rock to pound these pegs in with.”

Sullenly Antonio stood up and cast round until he’d found a good rockstone. “Here.”

Chichibud pounded the pegs through the stretched cloth, solidly into the ground. They had a tent. Chichibud straightened up and stretched his back, just like any man.

“If you ever sleep out in the bush like this by yourself, check the tree first. Any hole in the trunk, look for a next tree. Might have poison snake or ground puppy living in there.”

Chichibud showed them how to start a fire with three sticks for kindling and a piece of vine for friction. By the time the fire had caught it was full dark. The dancing flames were pinkish and the burning wood had a slight smell of old socks, but Tan-Tan felt cheered by the circle of flickering light the fire threw. She moved nearer, rinsed her chilled hands in the heat flowing from the fire. The itching in her ears eased if she turned them to the warmth, one side of her head, then the other. One ear was more itchy.

Chichibud built a wooden spit over the fire. He skinned and gutted the rat-thing. Tan-Tan’s stomach writhed at the sight of the raw, split-open rat, but she couldn’t look away. This was a thing she’d not seen before, how the meat that fed her was a living being one minute and then violently dead. The smell of it was personal, inescapable, like the scent that rose in the steam from her own self when she stepped into a hot bath. They had broken open the animal’s secret body just to eat it.

Chichibud chopped off their supper’s head. He smeared the empty body cavity with herbs from his pouch, then with a quick motion jooked the spit through it. Tan-Tan started at the wet ripping sound. Chichibud put the meat above the fire to cook.

“Here, Tan-Tan. Turn the handle slow, cook it even all around.”

He wrapped up the guts and the head in the creature’s skin. “I soon come back,” he told them. “Taking this far away so other beasts don’t smell it and come after we.”

He disappeared into the bush, rustling branches as he went.

“Nasty little leggobeast goat man,” Antonio muttered. “You all right, doux-doux?”

“I don’t like the dark. My ears itching me. Let we go back home nuh, Daddy?”

“No way back home, sweetness. The shift pod gone. Here go have to be home now.”

Tan-Tan sniffled and jerked the meat round and round on its spit.

“I here,” Antonio said. “I go look after you. And I won’t make the goat man hurt you, neither.”

Tan-Tan was more ’fraid ground puppy than Chichibud, but she didn’t say so. Antonio sighed and pulled out his flask of rum. He took a swig.

Chichibud returned just as the browning, smoking meat had begun to smell like food. He praised Tan-Tan for turning the spit so diligently, then took the halwa fruit-them and broke them open. Tan-Tan’s belly grumbled at the smell. It favoured coconut, vanilla and nutmeg. Same way so the kitchen back home smelled when Cookie was making gizada pastry with shaved coconut and brown sugar.

“It best raw, this meat,” Chichibud told her, “but oonuh prefer it burned by fire.”

He hauled out three flat stones from his pouch and put them on top of some of the live coals close to the outside of the fire. “Far away from the meat, yes? So the meat juice wouldn’t splatter?” He balanced the fruit on the stones. In the firelight, Tan-Tan could make out the brown fleshy inside of the fruit halves. Little-little, the sweet gizada fragrance got stronger. It floated in and round the rich scent of the cooking meat till Tan-Tan could feel the hunger-water springing in her mouth. She feel to just rip off a piece of manicou flesh and stuff it down, half-cooked just so. She reached towards the spit, but Chichibud gently took her fingers. Antonio stood up and came over to them. “It hot,” said Chichibud. “You a-go burn your fingers and make me break trail debt.” From his pouch he took a parcel wrapped in parchment paper and unwrapped it. It had a square of something dry and brown inside. With his knife, Chichibud cut off strips for the three of them. He distributed them then bit into his own. When Antonio saw Chichibud eating, he started to chew on his own piece one time. Chichibud said, “Is dry tree frog meat.” Antonio cursed and spat the jerky out of his mouth. He tossed the rest into the bush. Chichibud just watched him.

Tan-Tan bit into the dried meat. It was salty and chewy. She tore off a piece with her teeth. It tasted good.

A little time more, and Chichibud told them that the meat was cooked. He set out three broad halwa leaves around the fire as plates. He pulled out a little brown cloth from his endless pouch and used it to juggle the hot fruit halves onto the leaves. Then with his knife he sliced off three slabs of rat-thing and put them beside the fruit.

“Pickney, everything hot. Go slow until it cool. Use your fingers to scrape out the fruit. Don’t swallow the seeds, you might choke.” He put two long fingers into his halwa fruit and pulled out a shiny purple seed, round like a pebble.

“I go be careful, Chichibud.” Tan-Tan scooped out a piece of fruit, pulled out the seed and put it on her leaf plate. She put the fruit in her mouth. It come in sweet and sticky and hot. The lovely gizada taste slid warmly down her throat. The meat was good too, moist and tender, and the spice Chichibud had rubbed on it tasted like big-leaf thyme. Tan-Tan began to feel better.

Antonio picked up his halwa fruit half with both hands and dropped it again, blowing on his burnt hands. “Motherass!”

Chichibud laughed his shu-shu laughter. Antonio glared at him and started to dig out pieces of fruit, blowing on his fingers and spitting the seeds out everywhere.

“Don’t spit them into the fire,” Chichibud warned. But Antonio just cut his eye in contempt and shot one seed from his mouth prraps! into the middle of the flames-them.

“Back! Behind the tree!” Chichibud grabbed Tan-Tan’s arm and they both scrambled quick to get behind the trunk of the tree, Chichibud hopping on his backwards legs like a kangaroo. But Antonio took his cool time, doing a swaggerboy walk towards them. “What stupidness this is now?” he grumbled.

With a gunshot noise, a little ball of fire exploded from the flames. Only because the sound made Antonio duck that the seed didn’t lash him in the head. It landed on top of the tent. By its glow Tan-Tan could see the tent fabric smouldering. With shrill, birdlike sounds, Chichibud rushed over and quickly flicked the burning ember onto the ground. His ruff was puffed out full. Tan-Tan stared at it, fascinated. Chichibud growled at Antonio, who shrank back, muttering sullenly, “All right, all right! Don’t give me no blasted fatigue. How I was to know the damned thing would explode?”

“I tell you not to spit it in the fire. I know this bush, not you. You ignorant, you is bush-baby self. If you not going to listen when I talk, I leave you right here.”

Antonio made a loud, impatient steuups behind his teeth. He went back to the fire and continued eating his share of the meal. Chichibud inspected the tent. “Just a little hole,” he said to Tan-Tan. “I can mend it.” His ruff had deflated again. Tan-Tan ran her fingers over the cloth and was surprised at how thin and light it felt.

They went back to their dinner. Antonio looked up as they approached. “All right,” he said to Chichibud. “It have anything else we have to know to pass the night in this motherass bush behind God back?”

“Don’t let the fire go out,” Chichibud replied. “Light will frighten away the mako jumbie and the ground puppy, and grit fly like the flame. Fly into it instead of into we eyes. You and me going to sleep in shift.”

“All right,” Antonio said. He looked unhappy.

“You catch the first sleep,” Chichibud told him. “Little bit, I wake you up.”

Tan-Tan and Antonio curled up under their shelter, sharing the cloth Chichibud had lent to Tan-Tan. The firelight danced against the sides of the tent.

“Daddy? How Mummy go find we here? How she go know which Toussaint we come to?”

But Antonio was already snoring. Truth to tell, Tan-Tan was missing Nursie and eshu just as much as Ione. All now so, if she was going to bed back home, she and eshu would have just finished singing a song; “Jane and Louisa” maybe, or “Little Sally Water.” Nursie would have had Tan-Tan pick a nightie from her dresser drawer to put on. Tan-Tan could almost smell the bunch of sweet dried khus-khus grass that Nursie kept inside the drawer to freshen her clothing.

She would pick the yellow nightie. Then Nursie would have hot eggnog sent from the kitchen for both of them, with nutmeg in it to cool their blood. The smell would spice the air, not like in this strange red land where the air smelled like sulphur matches all the time.

Tan-Tan swallowed, pretending she could taste the hot drink. Swallowing cleared her ears a little. Now Nursie was combing out Tan-Tan’s thick black hair. She was plaiting it into two so it wouldn’t knot up at night. Nursie and eshu was singing “Las Solas Market” for her. When the song finished, Nursie kissed her goodnight. Tan-Tan was snuggling down inside the blankets. Eshu wished her good dreams and outed the light.

The wetness on Tan-Tan’s face felt hot, then cool against her skin. She snuffled, trying not to wake Antonio. She clutched her side of the yellow blanket round herself and finally managed to fall asleep.

It felt like she had barely locked her eyelids shut when Chichibud was standing outside the tent, shouting, “Tallpeople man! Your turn to watch the fire.”

“Why the rass you can’t use my name, eh?”

“You tell it to me yet?”

“Oh. Antonio.”

“Time to watch the fire, Antonio.”

“I coming, I coming.”

In her half sleep, Tan-Tan felt Daddy move away from her and crawl out from under the tent. Chichibud crawled in. She heard him move to the opposite side of the tent. He had a strange, spicy-sharp smell; not human, but not unpleasant.

“Chichibud, you want some blanket?”

“You use it, child. The night warm for my blood.”

His voice faded away. She was singing with Nursie: “Come we go down Las Solas, for go buy banana,” but when it came to the chorus, Nursie’s voice turned into a low, raspy buzz. Then Nursie bit her beside her eye with one tooth, sharp like needle. Tan-Tan woke up swiping at a stinging spot in the outside corner of her eye. A small, soft body popped under her fingers, leaving a granular smear. Grit fly? Tan-Tan scrubbed at her eyes, wondering if grit flies looked as nasty as they felt. It was pitch black in the tent. “Chichibud?”

From out of the dark Chichibud said, “The fire.” She heard a whap! like a hand against flesh, the sound of Chichibud getting to his feet. He twittered something, then:

“Your foolish daddy let the fire go out, child. Stay here so. Don’t come out.”

She heard him crawling out, then silence. What was happening? She stuck her head under the tent flap to look out. The only light was the blue-red glow of the coals from the dying fire. If she squinted she could just see Daddy asleep beside them. Chichibud must have been looking in the blackness for sticks and dry leaves to stoke up the fire. He was moving quietly, except for the occasional thump or crackle.

The fire ebbed a little more. Suddenly Tan-Tan had to be near her father’s warmth. She crawled on hands and knees to Antonio, stopping on her way to swat at three more grit flies. She was at his side now. The breaths he blew out smelled sweet and thick. There were dark spots moving round his eyes. Grit flies.

“Daddy. Wake up.”

Antonio knuckled at one eye; mumbled, “…ain’t enough, Ben. Look, just put some more of the paste on the blade, oui?” He flung his arm out and caught Tan-Tan across her chest.

“Oof.” The blow threw her backwards. She reached behind her to break her fall. She landed with a thump that set her ears to ringing again. Her hand touched the empty rum flask. Then Chichibud was there beside them. He threw some kindling on the coals and fanned them till the fire started to come back.

“Pickney,” he whispered, “get back in the tent. Dangerous out here in the dark. I go look after this tallpeople man.”

Tan-Tan was almost at the tent when Chichibud said with a low, urgent calm, “Child. Don’t move.” Tan-Tan looked back. Chichibud was holding himself in an alert quiet, staring up into the sky. Something rustled in the trees far, far above them. It sounded big.

“Me say don’t move, Tan-Tan. Not a muscle. Don’t even turn your head again. Stay just how you is. A mako jumbie just come out of the bush.”

“What that?” Tan-Tan’s voice was quavering out of control.

“Sshh. Talk soft. A bird, tall like this tree here. Stay still like the dead, pickney. It don’t hear so good, but it eyes sharp.”

Tan-Tan froze as she was, with one foot pointed in front of her and her head twisted back to look at Chichibud. Antonio was still unconscious on the ground beside him. From her blind side Tan-Tan heard the crash of twigs breaking. She shook with the effort not to turn her head to the sound. Snot filled up her nose. She panted shallowly through her mouth, tasting the salt tears that ran into it.

An enormous clawed foot landed bap! in her line of sight. Tan-Tan made a small noise in her throat. It looked like a chicken foot, but it was the same length as Tan-Tan’s whole body. She turned her eyes up to follow the leg of the mako jumbie, long as a bamboo stem, but in the darkness she couldn’t see the body way up in the trees. It was high like a house. The next foot slammed down beside the first. Tremble, she just a-tremble.

“Pickney, all you do, don’t move. Them birds stupid, oui? Hold still, it will think you is bush or stick.”

“Chichibud, I frighten.”

“I know, pickney,” he said in that eerily calm voice. “All we could do is wait until the fire catch. That go scare it away.”

Tan-Tan nearly expired on the spot when the mako jumbie peered down low to look round the clearing. Its head was as big as their tent. A hungry, dead-cold eye rolled above its thick, sharp beak. Its snaky giraffe neck was covered in black feathers the length of Tan-Tan’s arm.

It swung its monster head right by her, so close she could feel the breeze as it passed. The sulphur-stench of carnivore breath almost choked her. The mako jumbie looked round the campsite, cocking its head to one side to see better, just as Chichibud had done. Tan-Tan didn’t laugh this time. It would take a step, it would crush them, she should run, hide. She heard her own prayerful whimpering, felt her body readying to flee. “Still, Tan-Tan, root yourself still like the halwa tree, like the lizard you see today. Yes, good pickney.”

She and Chichibud remained frozen for a lifetime, watching the fire slowly get brighter. Her neck ached in its twisted position, her poised foot was cramping.

The fire leapt into flame. Spitting, the mako jumbie pulled its head back up into the treetops and took a step out of the clearing.

“Just two-three second more, little one. You being brave.” The smell of its hot, sticky spittle in her hair was worse than its breath. It stepped over them and shoved between two trees. It was leaving.

Antonio flung himself upright in his sleep and shouted, “Get away! You can’t jail me!”

Quick as death, the mako jumbie turned and struck at Antonio. His scream turned Tan-Tan’s blood to ice water in her veins. It had him by one arm, was yanking him into the air when Chichibud leapt onto it, wrapping his legs round its neck. The mako jumbie dropped Antonio like Chichibud had dropped the killed rat-thing. There was a snapping sound. He screamed again. The bird threw its head from side to side, trying to shake Chichibud off. Tan-Tan ran to her daddy. He was moaning and rocking on the ground, his arm bent back on itself. A white tooth of bone was sticking through the skin, with a red spongy tip. In desperation, Tan-Tan grabbed his shirt collar and tried to pull him away from the battle. The bird screeched, thickening the air with its dead-meat breath. Still howling in pain, Antonio helped Tan-Tan by pushing and pushing his heels against the ground to move himself until the two of them reached a low tree to cower against. Tan-Tan looked up in time to see the mako jumbie scrape its neck against the trunk of the halwa tree, but still Chichibud didn’t drop off. He hauled out his knife from its holster and jooked it right into the mako jumbie’s throat. With a gurgle the bird went silent, but its thrashing became even more destructive. It stepped on the tent, piercing its own foot on the staves. It screeched its agony without vocal chords, a stinking harmattan wind. Chichibud dragged his knife right through the bird’s throat. In the firelight, its blood jetted out blackish in the air, thick and rank so till Tan-Tan nearly vomited when a gout of it, enough to fill a bucket, splashed to the ground nearby, splattering foul drops on her.

The mako jumbie’s legs collapsed under it. Chichibud jumped down quickly just before it hit the ground. Its head landed with a thump. Its rolling eyes were still. The slash in its neck, still pumping blood, gaped a wet black. Then the flow stilled. Chichibud had chopped the bird right to its neck bone.

He put his knife away and started to limp across the clearing, favouring one leg. “Tan-Tan! Antonio! Where allyou?”

“Chichibud, please—Daddy arm break!”

Antonio was moaning and crying with pain. The sound scraped at her ears. The smell of stale rum from him reminded her of nights when he and Ione would fête till dayclean, shouting and singing all through the mayor house.

“He been drinking that bitter liquid allyou does make,” Chichibud said.

His arm was scraped raw. He put a clawed palm on Antonio’s chest. Antonio quieted a little, looking pleadingly up at him. “Tallpeople,” Chichibud said, “I go help you, understand?”

Antonio nodded.

Chichibud went to the ruin of the destroyed tent and brought back a small packet and the water gourd from the wreckage. “Good the calabash ain’t break, we go need the water.” He unwrapped and picked out two-three pieces of dry bark. He put them in Antonio’s mouth. “Chew this. Is for sleeping. It bitter bad.” Antonio chewed, screwing up his face at the taste. He gagged. “No,” Chichibud said. “Don’t spit it out.” The douen stared at Antonio. “You is pure botheration. Without trail debt, I might left you here just so.”

Little-little, Antonio’s two eyes-them closed down. His head rolled onto his chest and the piece of chewed-up bark fell from his mouth. He relaxed into Chichibud’s arms. Chichibud lowered him to the ground.

“Little one, you must help.” He sliced Daddy’s shirt sleeve with his teeth, tore it away from Daddy’s broken arm. Tan-Tan felt woozy, looking at it. “Cradle his head. Hold he jaw back so he could breathe easy.”

Chichibud washed his hands then Antonio’s arm, using his claws to pick out grit and leaf mould from the break. When he was done he shook the calabash. “Nearly empty. Tomorrow we find some water vine. That bark your daddy chew does make you thirsty.”

He found a straight stick for a splint, and ripped the torn shirt sleeve into a bandage. Then he leaned over Antonio’s two broken ends of bone and spat into them.

“You nasty!” Tan-Tan said.

“It will heal faster so. Is so we mouth water stay.” He stretched Antonio’s arm out straight and gently moved the two ends of bone back together. Tan-Tan screwed up her face at the grinding noise. She looked down at her daddy’s face to see if he felt it, but he was sleeping peacefully.

Chichibud said, “Must reach to Junjuh before it start to rotten.”

He bound Antonio’s arm tightly.

“He go get better, Chichibud?”

“He go sleep quiet. The doctor in Junjuh go make he better.” He held Antonio’s head. “Take his feet.”

They were heavy, but she could do it. They carried Antonio back to the wreckage of the tent. They passed the stiffening corpse of the mako jumbie on the way. The scent of its blood was sweet and sickly, like rotten frangipani flowers. They laid Antonio down. Chichibud burrowed into the mess that had been the tent and surfaced with the yellow cloth.

“Lie beside he and keep he warm.” He covered them both. “Sleep now.”

She sat up, throwing the cloth off in the same moment. “You going and leave we?”

“No. I watching the fire. And it have fresh meat lying out there. I guarding it.” Chichibud laughed shu-shu. “Too besides, you musn’t waste the gifts Bush Poopa does send you. I go smoke the mako jumbie meat over the fire tonight; as much as you and me could carry. And I taking the feathers, for my wife to make a hat to keep the sun off she face. Everybody go know what a brave husband she have.” He made sure that Tan-Tan was comfortable beside her daddy, then covered them both with the fabric that had been their tent. Tan-Tan could hear him twittering and chirping as he tended to the bird.

They were safe. She closed her eyes.

“Tan-Tan! Tan-Tan! Wake up, nuh?” Antonio was cotched up on his good arm.

Tan-Tan sat up and blinked her eyes in the pink morning light. Daddy’s face was grey and haggard-looking. His eyes were red and bleary. But he was smiling.

“You doing good, doux-doux?” he asked. She nodded.

“Tell me that I only had a bad dream last night, nuh? Tell me that I ain’t see a bird big so like a mountain, and it ain’t try to pull off my arm.”

Tan-Tan giggled. Antonio made to sit up all the way, but he cried out and sank back down to the ground.

“It paining you, Daddy?”

“Yes, girl. It paining too bad.”

“I go get Chichibud.”

She scrambled out from under the canvas. The warm pink morning light made the whole forest glow. It had some things like big butterflies dancing in the air, gold and green wings flashing. They were tearing leaves from the bushes with their hands and eating them. A small something was working up inside the ground just in front of her. A head and body popped out of the little mound of soil. It was dark red and furry, with an intelligent face like a mongoose’s. It saw her, wheeped in alarm and jumped back into its hole. What came after five? Yes, six. She always forgot. The mongoose thing had had more legs than six, but it had gone before she could count them all.

Small busy beast noises came from the halwa tree; chucking and chuckling sounds. The air smelt better to her than it had the day before. The glowing light on everything made it hard to focus. Her head hurt a little from it. She squinted and looked round. There was Chichibud sitting by the fire, slicing at something with his knife and eating the strips he cut off.

The mako jumbie legs-them were jooking out of the bush, where Chichibud must have dragged its carcass. The branches over the spot were shaking and sometimes there was a growling and a scrabbling. Tan-Tan imagined animals tearing at the body. She would make sure to stay far away from the trembling branches. She wondered what Mummy was doing this morning, if she was getting ready yet to come and join them. This place ain’t go suit Mummy so good, oui; with no Nursie and no seamstress and no eshu, and all kind of wild animal only looking to make a meal on your bones.

“Father Tree shade you, little one.” Chichibud skinned his snout back in a smile. “You sleep good?”

“Yes.” Yesterday his snarly, snouty grin would have frightened her, but she was coming to like how his face looked.

Chichibud had used branches to rig a net of vine over the fire. He was smoking strips of mako jumbie meat in it. It smelt nice. But he had the mako jumbie head in the net smoking too, with its beak cut off, ugly as the devil he own self. The beak halves stood nearby, like a canoe that had been sliced in half.

“Why you cooking the head?”

Shu-shu-shu. “Not cooking; drying. I go jam it on a stake and stand the stake up right here-so in this bush, so anybody who pass by going to know that a fine hunter win a battle here. Beak coming home with me to decorate my entranceway.” His long tongue flicked out, licked his snout, the corner of one eye; slid back into his mouth. He held out a piece of gristle for her. “Here; piece of the mako jumbie tongue. The sweetest part to eat.”

It had bumps on it like on her own tongue, but big. And it was dark blue. Her gorge rose. “No.” Then she remembered her manners. “No, thank you, Chichibud.” Oh, but she’d come to talk to him for a reason: “Daddy arm paining he. Come and fix it, nuh?”

“Yes. I have some hard words for he too. We nearly all dead because of he.”

Chichibud stood. From beside him he picked up Daddy’s empty rum flask. He’d found the lid, transferred the water from his calabash into the bottle. He saw Tan-Tan looking at him. “Precious thing this your daddy cast away. I take it as payment for my trouble.”

The arm he had scraped the night before was all over scabs now. Tan-Tan wondered if he had spit on it the way he had spit on Daddy’s broken bone. He began to limp towards where Daddy was lying.

“Chichibud, your leg hurt?”

He didn’t answer. When he reached Antonio he stood by his head, making Antonio scrunch his eyes to look up at him in the sunlight.

“Tallpeople, you know what we does do to people who break trail debt?” Antonio said nothing.

“We does break they two… arms and leave them out in the bush.”

Tan-Tan’s skin prickled. Chichibud would do that? Hurt Daddy and leave him like that? It was her fault. She shouldn’t have made a noise when the grit fly bit; she should have just gone outside and lit the fire back her own self. Then Daddy wouldn’t be in trouble.

Chichibud ask Antonio, “What I must do with you? Eh?”

“You ain’t go do nothing with me. You go keep me alive so I could look after my little girl.”

Chichibud skinned up one side of his snout. That looked to Tan-Tan like a growl, not a laugh. Is so mad dog does do before they jump you. Tan-Tan went and stood close to Daddy.

“Mister,” Chichibud said, “best I leave you for Bush Poopa to take in truth. She go survive better without you.”

“No!” Tan-Tan leapt into Daddy’s arms. He cried out in pain. Horrified at what she’d done, Tan-Tan jumped up again. Antonio glared at the douen.

Chichibud jerked his snout up into the air two-three times, like a he-lizard throwing a challenge. His ruff started to swell out. Then he stopped.

“No. I liard. I not going to hurt you. Is just vex I vex.”

Antonio’s face was serious. “Look, you right. I do a stupid thing last night. I sorry. I make a long, long journey to this strange place, and it sitting heavy on my heart that I never going to see home again.”

His tone of voice was familiar. It was the same one he used to use on the narrowcasts back home come election time. Mummy called it “speechifying.” Antonio hung his head, looking shame. Tan-Tan felt bad. She was so much trouble.

“We could reach Junjuh today,” Chichibud said, “if you mind everything I tell you.”

“Yes. I go do that.”

Antonio made as if to get up, but he sucked air and sat back down. “Tan-Tan say maybe you have something for pain. Is true?”

“Same bitter bark from last night. I could only give you little piece. You chew too much, you go fall asleep. You go be thirsty too, after chewing it last night. First thing, we go find some water vine.”

By the time the shadows were getting long again, Tan-Tan was weary so till she thought she would drop. They had had to move slowly because walking jogged Antonio’s arm badly. He came close to fainting away a few times. Chichibud was limping heavily on his injured leg, but even so, he had a net vine sling at his back with the smoked mako jumbie meat, and was carrying the dead bird’s beak halves stacked inside each other and overturned on his head. He’d made a second sling in which Tan-Tan was carrying more smoked bird.

“For the way you was brave,” he’d said. “Food to share with your daddy until he could hunt for the both of you.” It was heavy. He’d had to remind her a few times not to drag it on the ground.

Junjuh village snuck up on Tan-Tan like a mongoose; one minute, the three of them were beating their way through bush, then the bush got less dense, fewer trees, more shrubs. Next minute they turned a corner to see cleared earth.

Two men were standing round a low round wall made of stone. It had a roller handle above it. A rope wound round the handle and extended down inside the wall. The wall had a thatch roof. One of the men, the big, brawny one, was winding the handle. So he turned so the handle creaked. Both men were chanting:

As Tan-Tan and Daddy and Chichibud approached, the men wrestled a dripping bucket up at the end of the rope. The bucket was strange, made of pieces of wood with iron bands round them. “Daddy, what they doing?” Tan-Tan whispered. By now she knew it was no point asking eshu. He’d gone and left her.

“I think is a well that, doux-doux,” Antonio replied tiredly. “For getting water out of the ground.”

Out of the ground? Why not from the tap in their house? One man picked up a large calabash, one of two round-bottomed gourd containers that had been sitting in twisted rings of cloth on the ground. He put the cloth on his head then sat the calabash in the ring. The other man carefully poured water from the bucket into the calabash. He gave his friend the bucket to hold. His friend wove his head a little from side to side to counter the sloshing of the water. The second man arranged his own calabash on his head then went down on one knee so his friend could fill it. He began to stand with the full calabash of water. He would spill it!

But no, he made it safely to both feet. The men rested the bucket on the lip of the well then, steadying their calabashes with one hand, they turned and started walking down the path. Their hips and heads swayed like those of Bharata Natyam dancers as they balanced the shifting water. Tan-Tan laughed with glee to see it.

They stopped at the sound and turned, slowly, their heads sliding from side to side. One of them grinned. “Eh Chichibud, ain’t see you for a while. I bet you been up to mischief, ain’t, boy? And is who that with you? Like you mash them up bad, oui!” Tan-Tan frowned, confused. The man spoke to Chichibud the way adults spoke to her.

Chichibud said, “Evening, Master One-Eye, Master Claude. These two drop out the half-way tree.”

Master? Only machines were supposed to give anybody rank like that. The two men beckoned them over. Daddy drew himself up tall as he limped up to them. “Good evening, Compères,” he said in his official voice. “I name Antonio, and this is my daughter, Tan-Tan.”

One of the men had an eye cloudy in its socket like guinèpe seed. He nodded at Antonio. “One-Eye, me. This is my partner, Claude.” Claude said nothing, just spread his two feet-them wide for balance and stood there looking at them. He had a truncheon tucked into his waistband. One-Eye clapped Chichibud hard on his back. The douen man stumbled, favouring his injured leg. “Chichibud, you thieving little bastard, you!” One-Eye said. “I bet you you make these two give you something before you bring them here.”

Chichibud cast his eyes down at his feet and mumbled, “Is so trade does go. If people ain’t share their talents and gifts with each other, the world go fall apart.”

One-Eye laughed and turned to Antonio. “Superstitious. Is so douen people stay.”

“Boss,” the douen say to One-Eye, “this man need the doctor bad.”

Tan-Tan scolded, “He not your boss, Chichibud.” She repeated her lesson exactly as Nanny had sung it to them in crêche: “Shipmates all have the same status. Nobody higher than a next somebody. You must call he ‘Compère,’” she explained to the douen.

The men burst out laughing, even Daddy. “Pickney-child,” said Claude, “is a human that?” His voice was dry and rough like after you eat stinkin’ toe pods.

“No,” Tan-Tan replied doubtfully.

“So how he could call we Compère?”

“I don’t know.” She felt stupid.

Chichibud headed off down the dirt path. “I taking them to Doctor Lin, seen?”

They needed a doctor. Daddy was swaying on his feet. He had rested his good arm on Tan-Tan’s shoulder, and dark blood was seeping through the bandage on his broken arm. Tan-Tan patted his hand and looked up at him.

“Yes, doux-doux,” he said. “Come make we go.” One-Eye and Claude walked along with them, balancing their calabashes.

Farther down the road was one set of wattle-and-daub cottages squeezing up against the bumpy gravel path. Some of the houses had provisions growing in their front yards. Tan-Tan saw pigeon peas and sorrel bushes and a plant she didn’t recognise, with big pink leaves and fat, tight buds like cabbages, only aqua blue. She could hear hammering and sawing off in the distance. As they passed one cottage, two men and a woman with thick heavy sticks were pounding some kind of paste in a hollowed-out tree stump, THUMP-thump-thump, THUMP-thump-thump. “Mortar and pestle,” Antonio said quietly. “I only ever see that in pictures.”

An old man was hanging out washing to dry on a clothes line strung up between one house and the next. He sang to himself in a cracky voice.

They drew level with another cottage, much like the rest. “Let we just put down this water,” One-Eye said. “Then we go escort you the rest of the way.” They rested their burden in a shady part of the porch. One-Eye ran round to the back and returned with a banana leaf that he’d just cut. It was the same height as him. He used it to cover the two calabashes. They set off down the road again. One-Eye spoke to Tan-Tan: “Your daddy say you name… what?”

“Tan-Tan.”

“Tan-Tan. A pretty little girl with big brown eyes like toolum sweetie. What a sadness for a pickney to come here.”

Antonio said to him, “So what you get exile for?”

The man replied gruffly, “We don’t ask people questions like that.”

“Oh, yes?” Tan-Tan knew that tone. You didn’t cross Daddy when his voice got that edge. “So is who going to stop me from speaking what on my mind?”

“Me. And this.” Claude had stepped between the two of them, was patting the truncheon he carried. He smiled a crocodile grin.

With one bright eye and his one dead one, One-Eye stared Antonio down. “Mister,” he said soft and low, “it have rules here in Junjuh. No Anansi Web to look after we.” Antonio looked startled, then thoughtful. “I is the one who does enforce the rules,” One-Eye continued. “Claude is my deputy.”

“And so? What I care for your rules?”

“After a day in the tin box, most people does care.”

“A-what that?”

“You go see it soon.”

Chichibud laughed shu-shu-shu. Claude challenged him: “You have something to say?”

“No, Boss. Is tallpeople business, oui?”

“You know so. Take that child sling from she. She looking tired.”

Balancing the mako jumbie beak on his head with one hand, Chichibud made a whistling noise as he lifted her sling off her shoulder. He was limping more now. Now that she didn’t have the weight dragging her shoulder, Tan-Tan felt a little less tired. She looked round more, paid more attention. She liked the way that the pinkish rockstones that made up the gravel path had glints in them. The lowering sun made them sparkle. A few people were sitting on their front verandahs watching them as they passed. A woman hoed in her garden. Her belly was big with baby, and her short-zogged hair was twisted up in little picky-plaits like she never had nobody to do it up nice for her. Everybody looked old and callous. Tan-Tan had never seen so much hard labour and so many tired faces.

“Nanny save we,” muttered Antonio. “Is what kind of place I bring we to any at all?”

Some of the vegetable patches had bright flowers twining amongst the food plants. A morning glory vine clambered up the side of one cottage, flowers just opening up in the evening cool. Things mostly looked neat and clean, but Junjuh had a weariness to it.

Two-three of the houses had douen men working in the gardens, digging and hoeing. They all called out to Chichibud as he passed, in a language sweet like when your mother sing to you in your dreams. Glancing back at the houses to see if the humans would notice and stop them, some of the douens came hopping out to greet Chichibud. They crowded round him, nuzzling his shoulders and face and grooming his eye-ridges. Two of them took the mako jumbie beak halves and leaned them up against their bodies. A whole ring of them clasped arms with him and just stood there in a circle, twitching their heads from time to time in that jerky birdlike motion that Chichibud did. They opened and closed their mouths but no sound came out.

“What them doing, Daddy?” Tan-Tan asked.

“Me ain’t know.” Antonio looked at them with a sneer. “Them look bassourdie for true, like them crazy from the sun or something.”

“Is so douen-them does greet one another,” One-Eye said. “You could run a donkey cart through the whole pack of them right now, and them would barely notice.”

And just so, quick as the circle had formed, it broke up. Two of the douens picked up the mako jumbie beak halves. They all started walking with Chichibud, talking steady-steady to him the whole time, looking in his pack and touching the beak. All Chichibud was limping, he was only making style in the street, dancing and waving the mako jumbie feathers in the air. Tan-Tan was mad with curiosity. She called out, “What them saying to you, Chichibud?”

“Glad I reach safe. And how me wife going to love me even more when she see the gift I bringing she.”

For the first time, One-Eye seemed to really look at the douen man limping along beside them.

“But eh-eh, Chichibud, what stupidness you go and do to yourself? Is mako jumbie allyou meet up with in the bush?”

“Death bird herself, yes! And it done dead! Is me it buck up in the dark; me, Chichibud!” He did a little dance on the gravel path, hopping from side to side, bad leg or no. The other douens joined in. Tan-Tan giggled. Claude rolled his eyes. They kept walking, leaving Chichibud to catch up. Twittering the whole time, he and his friends came along behind.

With the truncheon, Claude pointed out a galvanized metal box on one side of the path, suspended between four wooden posts. It looked scarcely big enough to hold a grown man. It had a ladder leaning up against it, leading to a door in its side. Above the door, it had one little air hole drilled in the galvanized metal, about big enough for Tan-Tan to stick her fist in. The door had four big bolts all round to hold it shut.

“The tin box,” One-Eye told them. “One morning in dry season I put a gully hen egg inside that box. When I open it up come evening, the egg did boil to a jelly, right inside it own shell. Man or woman, anybody break the rules, is at least a day in the box for them. I warn you so you know.”

Something complicated happened to Daddy’s face. Tan-Tan imagined being shut inside the dark box, no choice to leave, no room to move, drowning in your own sweat. Skin burning with from your own stinking piss, from the flux of shit running down your leg. Like crêche teacher had told them. Like her nightmares.

Antonio didn’t say anything for a while, just leaned on Tan-Tan as he walked, blowing a little from the exertion. Then he looked sideways at One-Eye and asked, “So how the rules go that allyou have in this place?”

One-Eye laughed. “I see you is a man does figure the odds fast. That go do you good. You have to understand, Antonio, that this is a prison colony. The Nation Worlds send all of we here because them ain’t want nothing to do with we. Either we do something them ain’t like, or we ain’t do something them would have like we to do.”

Antonio didn’t say anything.

“Now you,” One-Eye continued, “I mad to know is what make them send you here with a pickney. But by we code, you can’t ask people why them get exile, but people could choose to tell you. You could share confidences, seen? Me, I lose my temper one day and beat up the lying, cheating, motherass mongrel who call himself my business partner. Bust him up bad before the sheriffs reach.”

“You tell me wasn’t the first time you hit he, neither,” Claude interrupted. “Nanny and your Mocambo decide you too violent.”

“But I woulda do it again too. That ain’t any way to do business.”

“I stab a man who thief my woman,” Antonio said boastfully. Tan-Tan looked up at him. His eyes were bright. She remembered the sight of Uncle Quashee after Daddy had stabbed him; lying flaccid in the dust of the fight yard with his breath sticking in his throat. “Me and Daddy fool them,” she said. “We run—”

“Hush up your mouth, Tan-Tan. This is big people story.”

Stung, Tan-Tan pressed her lips together. They pushed out into a pout. Pride. She could just hear Nursie saying it. One-Eye frowned at her, flashed a strange look at her daddy, then said:

“Is just so. Most of we get send here because anger get the better of we too often. Almost any other crime the Grande ’Nansi Web could see coming and prevent, but Granny Nanny can’t foresee the unpremeditated, seen?”

“Seen,” Antonio muttered thoughtfully.

“A whole planet full of violent people,” Claude told them.

“Everywhere? The shift towers send people to the poles too?”

“We nah know. Nobody have time for go exploring. Hard enough staying alive right here so. Granny Nanny sentence we to live out we days in hard labour.”

“When I reach New Half-Way Tree,” One-Eye said, “life in Junjuh Town was madness, you see? One set of comess. Everything you had, somebody else ready to take it from you. And take your life too, if them had them way. You couldn’t close eyes and sleep in peace come nighttime. So when me and Claude find each other”—he flashed a warm smile at Claude—“we lay down some ground rules and we find two next people to help we enforce them: no fighting; if somemaddy mark goods as them own, nobody else could claim them; if somemaddy beat their spouse, the spouse could leave and go to a next somemaddy, and them could take them own goods with them. Anybody who break a rule, is the box the first time for them, and a hanging the next time. Oh, and it have one more: is only we could enforce the rules.”

“How allyou get away with that?”

“Wasn’t easy. We had was to stand up for weself more than once, and we always have to mind each other back. Is so I lose this eye, oui? But is only my one eye gone; the man that start that argument never draw breath again to start a next one. After a while, people come to see that we judgement fair, that we don’t cheat them. I the one who usually make the judgements. And I listen to both sides before I make a decision. So Junjuh people acknowledge me as sheriff, and the next three people as deputies.”

“And no Nanny to watch everything you do. No web nowhere.” Daddy sounded like a man in prayer.

One-Eye grinned. “No nanoweb to mind you, but no-one to scrutinize you either.”

Tan-Tan was bored. Chichibud and his friends had finally caught up with them. She patted his shoulder to get his attention.

“Chichibud, your wife coming to meet you?”

The douen men laughed and clicked their claws together tick-tick-tick. Claude guffawed too. Tan-Tan didn’t understand what she had said to sweet them so.

“Pickney-child,” One-Eye said, “the day I see a douen woman must be the day I go drop dead. Chichibud does talk about he wife like she is the living goddess; Pastora Divina sheself come down to Earth. Don’t it, Chichibud? But none of we ever see she, nor any other douen woman. Douen don’t live among we, and douen women don’t come among we.”

“Them ’fraid oonuh too bad,” one of the douens said, arching a reptilian head towards One-Eye. “Them tell we allyou ugly like duppy!” And he laughed shu-shu, covering one eye with his hand to imitate the man he was speaking to.

One-Eye scowled. “All right, enough fête.” He waved his hands at the douen-them to make them go away. “Go back to work.”

One-one, they all left, except Chichibud and the two helping him. “We have to do for him, Master,” one said to One-Eye. “He too lame to carry all this by heself.”

“Hmm. All right.” He spat onto the dirt path.

“You have to watch them all the time,” One-Eye told Antonio. “Them like children.”

Chichibud said nothing. He pulled his sharp bush knife from his waist and started cleaning in between his fangs-them with it.

In a few more steps they reached a bungalow that had a white flag waving on a pole out in the front. The two douens laid the mako jumbie beak halves down in the dust beside the house. They skreeked at Chichibud and left.

“This is where Doctor Lin does stay,” Claude told them. He led them up the front steps. No house eshu clicked on to greet them. It felt strange, wrong.

It had a girl, older than Tan-Tan, sitting in a rocking chair on the verandah, rocking and singing to herself in a little girl voice. She held on tight to a tattered rag doll, so old that most of the embroidered stitches that had sketched its face were gone. Tan-Tan remembered the many dollies that Daddy had bought for her. She’d left them all behind; dollies that walked and talked and thing, and Babygreen, the special one, the one whose clothes would change colour when Tan-Tan ran a special wand over them. She missed them. Her heart hurt when she remembered all the things she missed.

The big girl in the rocking chair had her hair in two fat plaits on each side of her head. As she rocked she held on to one plait and twisted it round and round in her fingers. When she saw the procession, she grinned sloppily and called out, “Good evening, allyou. Allyou come to see Doctor Mummy?”

“Yes, Quamina,” Claude said gently. Then quietly: “She ain’t have all she wits. Lin tell we she have the mind of a four-year-old.”

Antonio stared at Quamina, his lip curling up in disgust. Tan-Tan didn’t understand. If the big girl was sick, why didn’t they fix her?

One-Eye said, “She did even worse than that when she was little. Born bassourdie, and she couldn’t learn to walk good, or talk; only wetting up sheself all the time.”

“And what happen to she now?” Antonio whispered. He looked like he’d stepped in dog do-do.

Claude answered, “Asje, my douen, bring some bush tea for she. He tell Lin she must make Quamina drink a little every morning. Next thing you know, Quamina start to talk!”

“She might never come into she full age, though,” One-Eye say. “I ain’t know what Aislin make she live for. She only a burden.”

Claude scowled at him. “Quamina quiet, and she sweet, and she does help Aislin round the place.”

One-Eye hugged Claude to him, patted him on the back. “All right, sweetness! I ain’t go badtalk your woman daughter.” He kissed Claude on the mouth. Claude returned the kiss, his scowl clearing slowly. He took One-Eye’s hand and went up to the door, stopping to tousle Quamina’s hair. She smiled. He rapped on the door and called out, “Inside!”

“Claude? I here,” a woman’s voice called happily from inside. Claude’s face lit up. “What crosses you come to bother my soul with today?” the playful voice said.

“We bring you a new boyfriend, Lin.” He showed Antonio and Tan-Tan inside. “Only one thing, though; he reach in two pieces, and you have to put he back as one again.” He stood with his arms round One-Eye, waiting for her reply.

Chichibud limped over to an examination table. He put his slings down beside it and climbed up onto it. The woman washing her hands in a bucket looked up and smiled at Chichibud. She didn’t look pretty to Tan-Tan. She had little baby plaits sticking out of the kerchief she’d tied round her head. Her eyes were creased up at the corners as though she was used to frowning all the time. Although she straightened up from the bucket to greet her visitors, her shoulders had remained stooped. When she saw Antonio, a look of horror came over her face. Antonio sighed, then said, “Well, Aislin; is you? Like me and you meet up again.”

Aislin! Nursie’s daughter that had climbed the half-way tree! Tan-Tan tried to see Nursie’s face in Aislin’s.

Aislin looked good at Antonio. “Mayor Antonio? Is Antonio allyou bring to my clean hospital for me to treat?” Her voice rose. “This… this piece of trash?” She strode up to him, waved her fist in his face. “Yes, you hear me right! I glad Toussaint throw you away to this hell! You ain’t mayor of nothing any more. Here I could name you for what you is—dung that dog does mash in the street! You do me wrong…”

“You mean to tell me your conscience really clear, Aislin?” Antonio asked softly. “You totally innocent?”

Aislin’s face purpled with rage. “Don’t give me none of that, I won’t listen to it! You do me wrong, I say! Then you send me away from my old mother so you wouldn’t have to look on your own deeds, send me away to rot here behind God back, and now look; you end up here your own self. I know it would happen; I know your liard ways would catch up with you one day.” Aislin started to laugh, but it had tears running down her face. “Take he away, Claude. I ain’t looking after he.”

One-Eye frowned. “What he is to you, Lin?”

“My baby father.” Aislin hugged Quamina, who had come in to see what all the comess was about. “You see, Antonio? You see what does happen to the child when you send a pregnant woman up the half-way tree? You greet your daughter yet?”

Antonio said nothing, just stared in repulsion at Quamina. Tan-Tan pulled on his pants leg. “Daddy? Why that lady so vex?”

“Hush, doux-doux. I go explain you later.”

“Why you don’t explain to she now, Antonio? Tell she she have a sister, nuh?”

A sister? Tan-Tan looked at Quamina. She didn’t understand. Aislin wasn’t her mummy. Quamina smiled her wet smile at Tan-Tan and held out her doll. Tan-Tan released Antonio’s hand and went to stand in front of Quamina. She reached out and touched the dolly with the tips of her fingers. It was still warm from Quamina’s clutch. Quamina released the dolly into Tan-Tan’s grasp and Tan-Tan grabbed it like a lifeline. She held it and stroked its head. She said to Quamina, “You want to play with me?”

“Tan-Tan!” Antonio shouted, “get away from that mad girl!” He made to pull her away, but he forgot and used his broken arm. He bawled for pain and would have fainted dead away if One-Eye hadn’t supported him and helped him onto the other examining table. Chichibud chewed on a piece of jerky from his pouch, simply watching.

“Aislin,” One-Eye said, “I know how this must be paining you, but you is we doctor; you have to help this man.”

Aislin just shook her head. Claude went and held her hand.

“Choonks, I know now who this man is. I know what he do to you, for ain’t is me who shoulder you bawl on when Quamina did born bassourdie? But you have a job to do, darling.”

Aislin just stood frozen, her face set hard. Tan-Tan had seen that expression plenty of times before. “Is just so Nursie does do she lip,” she said.

Aislin’s face softened. “Mamee still alive?” she asked Tan-Tan.

“Yes,” Antonio muttered. “I taking care of your mother good-good in my house. And she visit she sister all the time. I ain’t leave she lonely with no people to share she life with. She all right.”

Aislin made a soft noise, like when you standing outside the sweetie shop window but your mummy won’t let you go in.

“Maybe Tan-Tan should go outside and play with Quamina after all,” Daddy said to her.

Aislin sighed. “Yes, Quamina; show your sister the swings, all right, sweetness? I have to do some doctor business now.”

“All right.”

“You better stay here, Claude; you and One-Eye. I need someone here with me to mind I don’t poison this son of a dog instead of giving he medicine. Stay and watch me, or it might be me allyou putting in that galvanized box tomorrow morning.”

Chichibud walked with them down the steps to the gravel path. “Trail debt between we done, pickney. You reach safe.”

“Thank you, Chichibud.”

Carrying his bounty, he limped back towards the bush.

Quamina took Tan-Tan to an almond tree in the middle of the village. A rope swing with a plank for a seat hung from one of its low branches. “I go push,” Quamina said shyly. Tan-Tan climbed on, still clutching Quamina’s doll in one hand. She squeezed its arm and the swing’s rope together in one fist. She let the older girl push. “Where you come from?” Quamina asked.

“From the half-way tree. Yesterday morning.”

“Mummy say you is my sister.”

“I ain’t know. Push a little harder, nuh?” Tan-Tan pumped and pumped her legs until she was swinging high over the village. But all she looked out over the bush, she couldn’t see the shift tower. It was daylean; the sun was lowering to dark. The ringing in her ears was back. She shook her head, trying to clear it.

She pushed Quamina in the swing for a while, then she taught her how to play Midnight Robber. Quamina had to be the Faithful Tonto and just follow what Tan-Tan did. Her mind was too young for anything else. They made up brave deeds for the Midnight Robber: “And then, and then she say, ‘Oh, bad mako jumbie, I going chop your neck for you and send you far away up in the half-way tree!’”

As it got darker a woman with a ladder came out and climbed the lampposts in the village square. She lit the lamps. The flickering light put Tan-Tan in mind of the nation ship hat she’d worn at Jonkanoo time. Were the tongues of flame singing, or was the sound just in her ears?

A little after nightfall, Aislin came to look for them, her face set and unsmiling. She hugged Quamina tight, straightened her dress. Quamina chortled and kissed her mother. “Come, Tan-Tan,” Aislin said. “You could have dinner with me and Quamina, and then I go take you to Antonio.”

“Daddy staying by you in the doctor house?”

“No, child. I can’t have that man near me. One-Eye and my Claude carry he over to the mash-up hut where old Zora used to live till she pass on last year. The two of you could stay there.”

“Daddy go get better?”

“Yes, darling. Your father tough like old boot. In two-twos he go be back on he feet, up to he old tricks. And Granny Nanny help we then.”

As they got close to the silent doctor house Tan-Tan could smell food cooking. Her tummy started to rumble. They went inside. There wasn’t a lot of light there. Rusty iron chandeliers hung from the ceiling: smelly, smoky candles burned in them. Tan-Tan stroked a wall for light, but nothing happened. The voices in the candle flame were stronger now. She could almost hear what they were singing. Her ears itched, particularly the left one. She tunnelled her little finger into it to scratch it, but it didn’t help.

“I been busy all day,” Aislin told them. She went to something that looked like a stove, only flames were burning in the top of it. There was a big frying pan on the flames. Aislin reached for a cloth hanging beside the stove and used it to lift the lid off the frying pan. A fry-popping sound came from it, and a delicious smell. Aislin stuck a spoon inside. She tapped something from the spoon onto her hand and tasted it. “I ain’t have time to do nothing fancy. Quamina, put down that dolly, nuh? Show Tan-Tan how to wash she hands, then allyou sit to table.”

“Yes, Mummy.” There was a big wooden barrel of water beside the wooden sink. A calabash dipper hung from a string on the wall. Quamina dipped water over Tan-Tan’s hands while she washed them. The soap smelt nasty and made her skin dry. The cool water made her shiver. “Dip some for me now,” Quamina told her. She did, awkwardly. “Now come to table.”

Three rough, uneven chairs stood round a hand-hewed table. Tan-Tan’s chair wobbled. The plates were a blue glaze with red birds painted on them. In the candlelight they seemed to flap their wings. Were they singing? Ah, chi-chi bird, oi. Some of them a-holler, some a-bawl. No, that’s not what they were singing. Tan-Tan couldn’t understand the words.

Aislin brought the frying pan over to the table and emptied its contents onto the three plates. “You like metamjee, child? Oil-down, some people call it? Chichibud give me some of he mako jumbie meat, and I fry it up with some ground provisions and coconut oil.”

“What happen to your Cookie?” Tan-Tan asked her.

Aislin frowned. “Doux-doux darling, nobody here have any artisans to gift them with their skills. You and Antonio going to have to cook your own food that you grow in your own yard, or that you hunt and kill yourself. You going to have to fetch your own water, and take your own clothes down to the river bank to wash. Anything we have here, we make with we own two hand. You understand, Tan-Tan?”

“Back-break not for people,” Tan-Tan quoted at her scornfully.

“We not people no more. We is exiles. Is work hard or dead.”

“I does work hard,” Quamina said proudly. “Is me get the stuffing for my dolly from the feather pod trees it have growing in the bush.”

Aislin smiled at Quamina.

Tan-Tan said, “My daddy go take care of me. My daddy could do anything.”

“Your daddy think he could get away with anything. Is a different thing. And it look like them finally catch him out, oui? Junjuh Town go do for he.” She seemed to shake the thought away. “Well, never mind, sweetness. Let we eat.”

Tan-Tan thought she’d never tasted any food so good as the plate of oil-down she was eating with a beat-up old spoon at a rickety kitchen table. But after couple-three mouthfuls she lost her appetite for more. She still felt shivery from the cold water. Her head hurt like it had hammers inside. The voices in the candle flames were singing:

Dodo, petit popo, (Sleep, little one,)

Petit popo pas v’lez dodo, (But baby ain’t want to sleep,)

Si vous pas dodo, petit popo, (If you don’t sleep, little baby,)

Mako chat allez mangez ’o. (Big tiger go come and eat you up.)

“No!” she yelled at them. “Daddy won’t let you!”

“Tan-Tan?” Aislin said.

Eat you up, beat you up, the candles told her. Her head pounded. Brigand a miduit allez mangez ’o. Everything looked blurry. “No,” she whimpered at the candles.

“Tan-Tan, is what do you?” It was Nursie’s voice, but young. Nursie’s hand touched her forehead. “Me granny! You burning up with fever!”

“Nursie, I want to go to bed. I don’t feel good.”

Nursie picked her up. She closed her aching eyes and laid her head against Nursie’s neck. The room was swinging, swinging in circles. Her supper flew up out of her belly and gushed acidic lumps past her lips, splattering Nursie’s shoulder. Then blackness come down.

They never heard word of Maka, the runner who had made the poison that had killed Quashee. He’d promised he would join Daddy by climbing the half-way tree. Tan-Tan sometimes wondered what had happened to him. She had liked his face.

The year she turned nine, Antonio and his new partner Janisette threw a fête for Tan-Tan:

My little Tan-Tan get so big! You look just like my lost Ione.

The fête started when the three of them got home from working the cornfields that flanked Junjuh. They toted extra water, enough to wash their hair and all. When it was her turn to use the big wooden washbasin out back of the cottage, Tan-Tan sat still in the water and inspected her face reflected in it. Yes, Mummy’s eyes had been brown so, had come to tiny turned-up points at the outsides like that. Mummy’s hair had been mixup-mixup like that, some straight, some coiled tight like springs, some wavy. All the bloods flowing into one river. She looked like Mummy for true. Mummy was never coming to see her. Nor eshu, nor Nursie. They had just left her here in this place.

Janisette shouted through the window, “Pickney-child, make haste and done with that bath!” Tan-Tan looked up to see Daddy gazing at her through the mesh of the wet-sugar tree bark that formed his and Janisette’s bedroom window. He drew his head back fast. Tan-Tan stood and dried herself.

Quamina came to her birthday, with Claude and Aislin. Aislin scowled the whole time and kept calling Quamina to her. Tan-Tan had asked for Chichibud to come too. “Nanny guard we,” Janisette had said. “What you want that nasty douen in the house for?”

Tan-Tan had pouted and looked at her feet. “He tell nice stories.”

“Is true, doux-doux,” Antonio had said to Janisette. “We could have him out in the yard. He could tell ’nansi story and keep the pickney-them entertained.”

One-Eye dropped in after he had made his rounds of the town for the evening. When Chichibud arrived the whole fête moved to the yard out back. They drank sweet sorrel (Janisette gave Chichibud his in a calabash dipper, not a mug). They ate hot halwa fruit, and Chichibud told them duppy stories by the fire, about all kinda dead spirits and thing. Claude lay across One-Eye’s and Aislin’s laps, reaching up from time to time to kiss one or the other of them. Tan-Tan and Quamina screamed and laughed and held each other as Chichibud told them about the Blackheart man who steals away tallpeople girl-pickneys and chops out their hearts.

Ah, my little Tan-Tan, so sweet. Don’t ’fraid. I not going to hurt you.

Quamina gave Tan-Tan a new dolly. “I make she like a Carnival Robber Queen for you, sister.” Quamina had gained even more sense in these years. Aislin had told Tan-Tan that the douen medicine was still working on her, growing her up very slowly. The dolly had on a black jacket and pants like a masquerade Robber, and a big wide-brim hat with tassels hiding its face. Quamina had put a little wooden gun in the doll’s waistband and had tied a tiny wooden knife in a holster round one thigh. “You know is a lady dolly because I give she two bubbies,” Quamina said. And for true, the doll had two bumps of breasts like Quamina’s. Tan-Tan wondered what it would feel like when she got her own.

Aislin kissed her and gave her some lavender perfume that she had brewed in the doctor house. “Doux-doux, remember the scare you give we the first day you come here? I so glad you here for we to enjoy your birthday.” Aislin glared at Daddy. When adult exiles got punted to New Half-Way Tree, the trip through the warps of the dimension veils caused their earbugs to cease functioning. But Tan-Tan’s earbug had still been growing with her growing body; its nanomites hadn’t yet calcified permanently into a transmitter-receiver. The nanomites had become infected and had nearly killed her.

Chichibud gave Tan-Tan a plant from the bush. It had heart-shaped leaves and a deep red flower. A simple gift, but Tan-Tan had come to understand over the years that douens were simple people; Aislin had told her so. They did everything with their hands and never thought to advance themselves any further.

Chichibud held up the flower to show her, and Tan-Tan realised that she had grown taller than the little douen man. She inhaled the perfume of the flower, like roses and grapefruits.

“We does call it sky-fall-down-to-earth, for is the same colour as the evening sky,” he say. Tan-Tan watched as he transplanted it into the garden.

“Thank you, Mister Chichibud.”

“He is only douen. Don’t be calling he mister.” Janisette kissed her teeth. She had given Tan-Tan a pretty new dress in douen yellow, made by Chichibud’s invisible wife. “I hope the bodice fit. You does outgrow everything so fast nowadays.”

Antonio had given her his gold wedding band strung onto a leather thong to wear round her neck.

“This is yours, Daddy.”

“Never mind. Is yours now. I give up everything to come here so we could be together, Tan-Tan; my wife, my home, everything. And look at how big you get. The ring is yours.”

As Tan-Tan tied the thong round her neck she glimpsed Janisette’s thundercloud-dark face. “You leave one wife and gone, but you have a next one now. And I suppose you ain’t think to gift this one with gold ring.” Janisette spent the rest of the fête knocking back one set of sorrel spiked with strong rum. Antonio had to half-carry her to bed when the fête was done and everybody gone home. Then he walked Tan-Tan to her bedroom.

Tan-Tan was feeling so happy. She gave Antonio one big hug, pressed against him and held on tight. “Thank you for my party, Daddy.”

“Nanny bless, doux-doux. You know how much I love you.” He stroked her shoulder, her hair.

My sweet little girl. You get so big now. Let me comb your hair for you. Let me put on your nightie. I go tuck you into bed, all right?

He took her face in his two hands and kissed her on the mouth. Let me show you something special.

Antonio laid her down on the bed. The “special” thing was something more horrible than she’d ever dreamt possible. Why was Daddy doing this to her? Tan-Tan couldn’t get away, couldn’t understand. She must be very bad for Daddy to do her so. Shame filled her, clogged her mouth when she opened to call out to Janisette for help. Daddy’s hands were hurting, even though his mouth smiled at her like the old Daddy, the one from before the shift tower took them. Daddy was two daddies. She felt her own self split in two to try to understand, to accommodate them both. Antonio, good Antonio smiled at her with his face. Good Tan-Tan smiled back. She closed her mind to what bad Antonio was doing to her bad body. She watched at her new dolly on the pillow beside her. Its dress was up around its waist and she could see its thigh holster with the knife in it. She wasn’t Tan-Tan, the bad Tan-Tan. She was Tan-Tan the Robber Queen, the terror of all Junjuh, the one who born on a far-away planet, who travel to this place to rob the rich in their idleness and help the poor in their humility. She name Tan-Tan the Robber Queen, and strong men does tremble in their boots when she pass by. Nothing bad does ever happen to Tan-Tan the Robber Queen. Nothing can’t hurt she. Not Blackheart Man, not nothing.

Oh God, Tan-Tan, oh God, don’t cry. I sorry. I won’t do it again. We won’t even tell Janisette, all right, or she go be mad at we. You wouldn’t want she to send for One-Eye to put me in the tin box, right? That would kill your poor Daddy, Tan-Tan. Is just because I missing your mother, and you look so much like she. You see how I love you, girl? See what you make me do? Just like Ione. Just like your mother.

Tan-Tan looked at the dolly’s knife holster. It would be nice if the little wooden knife inside it were really sharp steel. Babygreen, she would name the dolly Babygreen to replace the one she’d left behind.

The bad thing happened plenty of times after that. Antonio promised every time would be the last. But he couldn’t help himself, is because she was the spitting image of Ione. Daddy said so. One evening she passed by Antonio and Janisette’s room. Janisette was sobbing, “You love she better than me, ain’t?”

“No, doux-doux,” came Antonio’s appeasing voice.

“She is your daughter, but I is your wife!”

“No, doux-doux, no.”