Midnight Robber

“Auntie Aislin, you coming tomorrow?” Tan-Tan rested her carry sack on the side table in Aislin’s office and ran to give the woman a hug. She had to lean forward over Aislin’s baby-big belly to put her arms around the doctor.

“Of course, sweetness! You think me and Quamina could miss your sweet sixteen?” Aislin chuckled and rocked her, singing about the sweet sixteen who’d never been kissed.

You wish, whispered a silent, mean voice in Tan-Tan’s head. She ignored it. “Eh-eh, Aislin; them is your new shelf and thing?”

Tan-Tan went to inspect the wood shelves and cupboards Aislin had asked Cudjoe to build for her. The shelves were crookedy. Most of the cupboard doors didn’t quite meet. Tan-Tan looked back at Aislin.

“Me know, me know,” Aislin said. “One-Eye tell me how I fool-fool to make that man put hammer to nail for me, but I feel sorry for Cudjoe, man! He having a hard time learning how to be headblind.”

Cudjoe had climbed the half-way tree just two months earlier. He had wanted to be a carpenter on Toussaint. He had learned the trade in a hurry, trying to cash in on the new fad amongst the Shipmate Houracan people from the south. Everyone wanted headblind cottages of real wood with nails, like the runners had. Gazebos and small huts were springing up everywhere beside people’s main, aware homes. One of Cudjoe’s shoddily constructed cottages had collapsed, killing a woman, a man and three small pickney. While the local Mocambo was still trying to decide what to do with Cudjoe, a treehouse he’d built had fallen in on itself. The boy and girl who’d been playing in it had been injured, but would live. Nanny’s guidance to the Mocambo was that Cudjoe should be made to learn his trade properly, but the Mocambo disagreed. They judged that Cudjoe had already endangered too many people. They didn’t even opt for exporting him, just shipped him up the half-way tree.

“One-Eye tell he if these shelves fall down, is the box for he! Cudjoe taking he real serious.” Aislin laughed, holding the weight of her belly with two hands. “I swear, I never see nail long so in my life! It have more nails than wood in them cupboards there.”

“But suppose them break in truth?” Tan-Tan asked. “You should have ask one of the douen-them to build them for you, Auntie Aislin. You know how them good with them hands.”

“Is all right. I does only keep towel and gauze bandage in there, and some little small things. The medicines-them in the back room, where I could keep my eye on them.”

Tan-Tan knew Aislin’s back room well, with its neat rows of bottles and jars with labels, all lined-up on the shelves along the walls. The back room was where Aislin performed what operations she could manage with the tools she had. It was where Aislin had taken seven-year-old Tan-Tan that first night on New Half-Way Tree when her earbug nanomites had become infected. Aislin had had to fight to keep the fever down. Tan-Tan had lain in recovery there for days, reading the labels on the shelves: “Disinfectants”; “Anti-inflammatories.”

“Melonhead give you he present yet?” Aislin asked teasingly.

“No.” Aislin seemed to have forgiven Melonhead finally. Tan-Tan had lain in her back room again two years ago, staring at one label in particular: “Abortifacients.” The memory of the rending pain was still strong in Tan-Tan’s mind. Is only because the cramps and bleeding had her so sick after the abortion that Janisette hadn’t striped her backside with blows over that one.

“Is Melonhead, ain’t it? Say is he!” Tan-Tan hadn’t answered.

“You little slut! You been hot for that that mamapoule boy from since, you know is true! You think because you get bubby now and your blood start to flow, you is big woman!”

Melonhead. Tan-Tan could have almost laughed out loud at the idea of making boobaloops with her friend Melonhead. He was her only agemate; tailor Ramkissoon’s son who had chosen to come into exile with him when his daddy had been sent up the half-way tree. Melonhead was Tan-Tan’s dearest friend next to Quamina, but he was about as sexy as a clod of dirt. He wasn’t like some of the older men who were already casting their eyes at her then fourteen-year-old body; not like One-Eye’s deputy Kenneth, or like Rick. Tan-Tan had smiled, thinking of how she could make them stare. And Janisette had shaken her finger in Tan-Tan’s face, spraying her with rum-scented spittle as she hissed: “I thought so! Barely old enough to smell yourself, and you carrying on with Melonhead. You leggobeast you!”

“Is not Melonhead,” Tan-Tan had mumbled. But Janisette hadn’t believed. She’d gone to Ramkissoon. He’d kept his son away from Tan-Tan while she was healing, but when she met Melonhead a few weeks later under the acerola cherry tree in the middle bush around Junjuh, Melonhead had told her that Ramkissoon was only doing what Janisette had asked because she was his neighbour.

“He ain’t believe Janisette,” he said, the bobbin of raw fibre he always had with him dropping from his fingers to spin, spin thread just centimetres from the ground. “Daddy believe me. But he say Janisette crazy like dog in the sun hot, he ain’t want to cross she. He say you and me must be careful and stay out from under she eye.”

Melonhead had never asked her who she’d been making baby for. That’s why she liked him. When she didn’t want to talk, he didn’t press her. People gave Melonhead static for making Tan-Tan pregnant, but he never defended himself, just let them think it had been him. He was a good friend.

Tan-Tan dragged her mind back to the present. “Aislin, Daddy send me. Is that same arm what he did break so long ago. He say it paining him again.”

Aislin waddled over to one of Cudjoe’s cupboards. She took a small woven basket out of it and shut the cupboard door, which promptly swung wide again, nearly catching her in the face. “Cho.” The door closed the second time. Aislin pulled the cover off the basket. She took out two papyrus-wrapped packets and held them out to Tan-Tan. Antonio had had this medicine before; an infusion of particular twigs and leaves. The tea reduced inflammation. Aislin said, “Mix two pinch of this in with some z’avocat leaf tea for Antonio, three times a day. It go ease up some of the pain, and the tea good for he pressure. And tell he, he must work he joints so them wouldn’t stiffen up. Now he stop working in the fields, he should be digging in the garden with Chichibud, or making something with he hands. It go do he good.”

“Thanks, Doctor Lin. I go tell he, but you know how he does stay.”

“Yes, sweetness, I know. Antonio have a little bit of arthritis but he only carrying on so Janisette wouldn’t make he wash no more dishes.”

Tan-Tan laughed. “For true! You should hear how he does go on: ‘What kind of thing that is for a man to be doing; washing dish and feeding chicken? You and Tan-Tan more accustomed to manual labour than me. Oonuh could do that.’”

Aislin chuckled. “It have anything in that house that Antonio does do?”

Things for send he to the tin box, cackled the silent bad voice, like an insane eshu. Tan-Tan set her mouth hard. “I just pass Quamina swinging on the almond tree swing,” she said. “She do some nice cutwork embroidery on she new dress.”

“Yes. She show it to you? She getting real good with a needle, ain’t? Ramkissoon training she to be his assistant. Glorianna and Janisette does trade she for basket and leather shoes and thing.”

“I know. I think every chair in we house have a piece of Quamina cutwork decorating the back. She keeping Chichibud wife busy busy weaving more cloth.”

“Quamina doing good for true. When she did born bassourdie so, I never think say one day she would be able to help sheself. I thank Nanny every day for that bush medicine that Asje give me. It working slow, but it growing she up little-little. She does act more like ten years now than only six.”

Tan-Tan had outgrown her half sister. More often now, she was the one babysitting Quamina.

She chatted a little more with Aislin, left her the bread Janisette had baked in return for Antonio’s medicine, then said goodbye.

It was drizzling outside, a light rain from a passing cloud. Tan-Tan stopped on Aislin’s verandah for a minute to wait for the rain to pass. It gave her an excuse to enjoy a little bit of freedom before she had to go back home again. There was someone in the tin box today, Tan-Tan had heard him groaning as she passed. The rain would cool the box, ease the torture a little.

Asje and two-three other douens were working Aislin’s garden in the rain. They didn’t mind getting wet. They were chattering and twittering happily to each other. From the way their eyes were cloudy, Tan-Tan knew they had their second eyelids drawn down to keep the rain out. They greeted her and went back to their hoeing and weeding. One of them caught a worm as long as Tan-Tan’s forearm and sucked it up like a noodle.

Tan-Tan went and sat in the old creaky rocking chair. She liked the ice-cream sweet scent of the frangipani trees Aislin had growing all around her home now. They used to be just some little fine-fine twigs jooking up into the air.

New Half-Way Tree had changed Aislin and all. The angry, bitter woman Tan-Tan had met nine years ago seemed content now, for all that hard labour had toughened her hands and wrinkled up her face. Whenever Claude came into the room Aislin lit up like is somebody turn on the sun. He was always bringing she and Quamina some nice thing: a jar of wet sugar he’d boiled down himself from tree sap; a new doll he’d carved for Quamina. Sometimes it was hard to believe this was the same Claude who would happily crack heads in the wine shop when things got too raucous.

It had stopped raining, the sun was out. A splinter in the weave of the rocking chair seat was jooking her. Time to go home, after she’d picked up her birthday present from Gladys and Michael’s forgery.

Tan-Tan stepped off Aislin’s verandah into the pink of noonday. The red light of New Half-Way Tree used to seem strange to her. But she and all had changed-up too. Just like Antonio.

Eh-eh. She’d been feeling happy before. Not any more, for some reason.

Antonio hadn’t said anything at first when Aislin and Quamina had brought Tan-Tan home after the abortion. Janisette had still been scolding her when Antonio showed up in the doorway. Fear had jumped in Tan-Tan’s belly at the sight of him. Her womb had shuddered through another cramp, thanks Nanny a small one this time. Antonio had been carrying a steaming pail in one hand and folded-up rags in the other. Compresses. He’d boiled water. He, who left all the work round the house to her and Janisette. “She tired,” he’d said to Janisette. “Let she sleep little bit.”

Janisette had made a suck-teeth sound of irritation and left.

Tan-Tan wouldn’t let Antonio hold the hot compresses to her aching back. “Leave them on the table,” she’d told him, then turned her face to the wall.

She’d thought he’d left, but then she’d heard him whisper, “Doux-doux, I sorry this happen.”

“I tired.”

“I sorry too bad. I sorry you sick.”

He didn’t dare say it plain, what he’d done. She didn’t answer, didn’t trust herself to.

“I sad and I lonely and sometimes you is my only comfort, the only thing that come with me from back home. You know I love you, sweetness. I never want you to hurt.”

Was this good Daddy or bad Daddy talking? Confused and angry, good Tan-Tan and bad Tan-Tan just lay silent. Finally they’d heard the sound of Antonio walking away. The rags stayed in the cooling water in the pail. Eventually the cramping had gotten less and Tan-Tan had fallen asleep.

She healed. Antonio still stroked the bad Tan-Tan from time to time with too-familiar touches, but no more of the thing in the night that had sent her to Aislin. He never spoke about it again. Bad Tan-Tan knew that he’d stopped loving her because she’d gotten pregnant. Good Tan-Tan got increasingly jumpy with fright that the thing in the night would start again. Neither of them slept well, ever.

Never mind. Tomorrow she would be old enough to set out on her own. She was going to live in Sweet Pone Town, her and Melonhead. No hanging tree there, no tin box. Sweet Pone had running water. And no sullen, skulking Antonio. Melonhead could have left two years before, but they were friends. He had waited for her. The two of them had been pestering the douens, pumping them for news from Sweet Pone and for advice on how to get there.

Old Pappy was coming back from the riverside with his three goats-them. “Evening, Pappy. Walk good.”

“Seen, sweetheart. Getting so pretty! You almost old enough to give this old man a kiss now, ain’t?” He cackled and reached out to tap her under her chin.

Tan-Tan scowled and stepped back from his long, bony fingers. “Old enough to push you my own self through the door of the box,” she threatened. Pappy glared at her. He spat to one side. The spittle landed in the mane of one of his goats. The animal shook its rank, smelly head. Pappy took his stick to them angrily, walked on without saying a word more to Tan-Tan.

Is messing with young girls why Pappy had climbed the half-way tree in the first place. Aislin had long ago warned Tan-Tan and Quamina to stay away from Pappy’s wandering hands. Pappy had nearly died the time that One-Eye put him in the box for sticking his hand up Quamina’s skirt. Three hours of that heat and they’d had to pump his chest to get his heart started again.

Round the corner, Tan-Tan bucked up Rick doing his deputy rounds. His eyes slid slowly over her body, down to her crotch, back up to her chest. “Evening, Tan-Tan.”

Tan-Tan smiled slyly at him and walked away, twitching her hips. She could almost feel his eyes on her retreating behind. Rick, Pappy, Antonio; you could rule man easy, with just one thing. Sometimes she wished for something more, wished that they wouldn’t make it so easy. She’d get vex at all the stupidee men in stupidee Junjuh. Then she’d go and talk to Melonhead whose eyes met hers and who talked to her face, not her bubbies.

She took the riverside path to Gladys and Michael’s iron shop to avoid passing the hanging tree. The woman’s body was beginning to smell in the hot sun. One-Eye would have to cut Patty down soon before the maggots came. He kept bodies up on the hanging tree two-three days so everybody could see and learn. Patty had beaten her baby boy to death after she’d been up three days and nights from his crying. The child had been colicky from birth. One-Eye said he was sorry but in Junjuh, murder must always get repaid with murder. “Them is the rules,” he’d said, then brought out his rope.

Tan-Tan had only gone once to see a hanging. She’d vomited out her lunch by the side of the road.

She had a brief vision of Antonio hanging from a rope, his swollen tongue protruding from his mouth.

What would she wear for her fête tomorrow? Oh yes; the new sarong and blouse that Chichibud’s wife had sent for her. They were yellow, her favourite colour. Little black figures were woven all along the hem of the skirt. Some were dancing, some were climbing trees. One had a knife in its hand. Chichibud had said that as his wife wove the cloth for the sarong and blouse specially for Tan-Tan, she’d breathed on it and with her breath, Bois Papa had sent her the story she’d woven into it. “Is the story of your life, doux-doux. You go have plenty adventures.”

It was loud at the iron shop today. Tan-Tan had always liked the clang of the hammer on the anvil, the red clouds of steam that would billow from the shop when Gladys or Michael quenched the metal. Husband and wife been running the smithy five years now, trading with the other human settlements for scrap iron and melting it down to make new things. They were in fierce competition with the douens, oui; many of the things they could make from iron, the douen people made better from wood. Douens were masters at that craft. Plenty prison settlement people preferred to trade with them for bowls and pot spoons and baby bassinets and so, rather than chance human iron, which had a way to rust. The few runner people on New Half-Way Tree were reviving hard labour crafts as fast as they could, but they hadn’t yet perfected making steel with the primitive resources on New Half-Way Tree. Too besides, douen work pretty, seen. The douens etched indelible designs on the inside of their bowls: vine patterns; ratbats flying; douens leaping. They made baby bassinets from a lattice-work of smooth peeled twigs that they had trained to grow into a bowl shape. Every one had a different lattice design. The pliant wood that made them grew deep in the bush where only douens could go. On the days that Chichibud appeared in Junjuh Town with his cow-sized packbird Benta, people would mob him to see what douen woodwork he was carrying. When Tan-Tan was little Chichibud had told her that tallpeople couldn’t help but like douen makings; it was because the douens had worked obeah magic upon the wood.

“Douen man grow them, douen woman paint them,” he would say with pride. “The woman-them does work obeah into them as they painting them. Is for so the patterns come in like they alive. You don’t think so?” He would hold up a beautiful bowl for her to admire, perhaps one that had a favourite douen symbol on its inside, a spreading banyan tree design. “Men make things and women magic them. Is so the world does go, ain’t, doux-doux?” Then he’d laugh shu-shu.

Old trickster! For years, Tan-Tan had believed him about douen magic, but now she knew he’d only been making mako ’pon her. It wasn’t magic, it was craft and cunning. And it was vexing Gladys too bad. When she and Michael had come to New Half-Way Tree, the douens-them were still using bone-chip knives. Now every douen had at least one iron blade to call his own. There was good trade with the douens for sculpting tools; the tools the douens used to compete with Gladys and Michael. Gladys was always complaining about how ungrateful douens were. Chichibud laughed in private with Tan-Tan about it. “Yes, oonuh tallpeople show we plenty of new ways, and we does learn fast. Why you think we always right there to meet new exiles when them climb the half-way tree?”

Wouldn’t have been Tan-Tan crossing Gladys. Gladys was big and beefy. Her tree-branch thick arms came from slamming that hammer down onto the anvil plenty times each day. Her temper was sour and too besides she ain’t too like Tan-Tan already.

The tall, thick metal door to the iron shop was closed. Strange. It got too hot in there to do that. Tan-Tan turned the handle and pulled. It was bolted from the inside. Gladys and Michael must be burning up with heat. Were they all right in there? She leaned closer to the door. She could hear the roar of the flames, the ringing of metal on metal, then a mechanical noise, a kind of cough: “Kuh-hunh! Kuh-hunh!” Is what that? The sound reminded Tan-Tan of something, something from long time ago, back on Toussaint…

No matter. She slapped the door with the flat of her hand and shouted, “Inside! Allyou in there? Gladys? Michael?”

The coughing noise stopped one time. After a few seconds, the handle of the door turned in Tan-Tan’s hands. Michael opened the door one little crack to peer out at her. A cloud of black, greasy smoke with the stench of burning oil floated out the iron shop and escaped on the breeze. Tan-Tan coughed and waved her hands to dispel the smoke, but she had to smile at the sight of Michael’s soot-covered face, his reddened eyes glistening like guinèpe fruit. “Mister Michael,” she said teasingly, “like one of your creations blow up in your face, or what?”

Michael tried to wipe away some of the soot, but all like how his hands were black with it too, he only smeared his face worse. “What you want, Tan-Tan? We busy.”

Tan-Tan frowned at his tone. “Ain’t you remember, Michael? You tell me was to come and get my birthday present today,” she said in her sweetest voice. “It not ready yet?” She gave him a disappointed look, biting her bottom lip to make it fuller and riper. What were they doing in there that they wouldn’t make her see?

“Nah, nah, is all right, Tan-Tan, I have your present right here.”

Tan-Tan smiled and stepped forward, thinking Michael would open the door for her; instead he said, “Soon come,” and shut it in her face. She heard the bolts slide over. What the rass…?! Tan-Tan kissed her teeth. Nothing she could do about it, she just had to stand there and wait for Michael to come back out. She put her ear to the door. She thought she could hear Gladys’s voice, then Michael’s, but she couldn’t make out the words. It fell quiet inside the iron shop.

In a little minute a clean-face Michael cracked the door again. He stepped outside fast-fast and shut it behind him. A quick blast of heat had followed him out. It dissipated on the breeze. Tan-Tan had only managed a glimpse inside before the bolts locked. There was something big like a donkey cart in there, covered right down to the ground in an oilcloth that had mako rockstones weighting it down. Tan-Tan was mad for curious. “Is a big something that,” she said enquiringly.

Michael only smiled, caramel skin crinkling to cocoa along his forge-weathered face. “Craven puppy does choke, Tan-Tan. When time come for you to know, you will know.”

Oh, yes? She knew how to get what she wanted from him. She grimaced a little, made a small noise of pain, lifted one foot delicately off the ground and perched it on top of the other.

“What happen to you?” he asked.

“Is a long walk over here, you know. I think I must be blister my foot.” She bent over, slowly slipped her alpagat sandal off her slim, brown foot. She spread her toes and inspected them. Michael gave a small intake of breath. She had him now. “You see any blister there, Michael? Between the big toe and the long toe? It paining me right there so.”

Michael pursed his lips. He looked almost frightened. He wiped his hand on the leather apron tied round his waist. His smith’s biceps jumped with the movement. He came closer and bent to look at her foot. The tips of his ears went ruddy with embarrassment. “You don’t think maybe I should go inside and sit down?” Tan-Tan asked him. She nearly felt wicked, teasing him like this. For a big, hard-back man, Michael was shy and gentle so till he wouldn’t even mash ants beneath his foot. For all her mischievousness, Tan-Tan liked him. He was a man who saved his strength for his work, not for brutalising people who didn’t do as he wanted.

“I ain’t see no cut,” he said softly.

Enough. She wasn’t going to torment the poor man any more. “Well, maybe is just a little soreness. You bring the knife?” She slipped her alpagats back on.

He straightened up, held his apron away from his thighs, kept wiping his hands in it as though they were wet. He took a long, chamois-wrapped package out of his apron pocket and held it towards her.

It had been Janisette’s idea; a cooking knife.

“The way people always sweet after you,” she’d told Tan-Tan, “you go have your own partner soon, and you go have to do your share of the cooking. A good cook need a sharp knife.” She’d sent Tan-Tan to the iron shop to order it, so Gladys could measure her grip. But as Tan-Tan had opened up her mouth to tell Gladys to make a cooking knife, the image of the Robber Queen dolly had popped into her head, and for some reason she’d said “hunting knife” instead. She hadn’t made Janisette know. Too besides, it was time she owned her own hunting knife. She and Melonhead were going to have to go through bush to get to Sweet Pone.

Tan-Tan unwrapped the chamois. An oiled leather sheath lay inside it. A shaped wooden handle protruded from it, rivets still new and shiny. Tan-Tan slid the knife out of its sheath. Light winked along the blade edge.

“When you not using it,” Michael said, “you must clean it with the chamois then oil it. And you must always store it in the sheath, you understand me?”

Tan-Tan just watched at the knife. It was gun-metal grey. A dark blue sheen chased itself round the blade. The tip of the blade came to a sharp point. She touched her finger to it, hissed as the point entered her skin.

“Careful!” Michael took the knife from her. “The point is so you could use it for throwing. Gladys make the handle from some Jamaica mahogany Chichibud bring we from Sweet Pone.”

The hardest wood, the most precious. It only had a few Jamaica mahogany trees growing on New Half-Way Tree, from a cutting an exile had brought years back. The way the handle of the knife curved, the way it was just the length of her palm and looked smooth like a baby’s cheek, Tan-Tan’s hand was itching to hold it again. She reached to take it from Michael.

“Mind now, girl. You must treat a knife with respect. You is left handed, yes? Here. Take it.”

The knife fit her hand like she’d been born carrying it. She laughed and swung it through the air. It sang.

“Wait, wait! Not like that. You go hurt somebody, or drop it and cut off your own pretty foot. Let me show you how.”

Michael stood behind her and reached over her shoulder to take her hand. He formed her fingers around the hilt of the knife. Shyly he said, “Like so. Feel the indentations for your fingers, and the one on top for your thumb? When your thumb slide into that space, you know you have the right angle for throwing.”

Tan-Tan turned and made to throw the knife at the trunk of the big halwa tree in the yard.

“No, not like that! You have to cock your arm back like this.” He bent her arm into the right position.

“Thanks, Michael.” She gave him a seductive smile. He looked down at the ground. What a way this man was sweet! Tan-Tan too liked gentle Michael. He was no true exile, had followed Gladys for love. People like him and Melonhead would never try to catch her in a quiet corner and feel her up. Not like…

Suddenly angry, she grunted and threw the knife. It went wide of its mark and sliced through a branchlet of the tree before it tumbled to the ground.

Michael laughed. “You get power in that throwing arm, Tan-Tan!” He retrieved the knife and gave it back to her. “The way you stand is the most important thing. You must plant your right foot in front.” He pointed at her foot, looked quickly away.

“Like you giving the girl-pickney a lesson, Michael?”

Michael started at the sound of Gladys’s voice. He took a step away from Tan-Tan.

“Ah-hah. Showing she how to use she new present.”

Gladys was leaning up against the front entrance, toffee-brown face flushed maroon from the heat and the exertion of forging iron.

Tan-Tan had always wondered what Michael saw in Gladys’s fat, round body, sturdy as a mother hen. How did Gladys even see over her own chest and belly to work on the anvil?

Gladys pulled off the scarf from her hair and used it to wipe her face. “I sure plenty of man already been teaching she how knife could jook.” She smirked at Tan-Tan. “How do, sweetheart?”

Bad Tan-Tan was snarling silently. None of Gladys’s blasted business. Tan-Tan skinned her teeth in a fine-fine smile. “Doing good, thank you, Gladys.”

“And your father? How things with the ex-mayor?” Gladys was from Cockpit County. She had been right there in the fight yard when Antonio had poisoned Quashee. She never had a good word for Antonio. Is jealousy fuelled by hard liquor that had brought Gladys to New Half-Way Tree. She’d broken a next woman’s back in a fight over Michael. She and Antonio were alike in that, oui. Maybe that’s why she hated him so. Gladys still had a taste for the bottle. Sometimes when she went on a drunk, Michael had to lock her in the shed and make her sleep off her rage.

“Daddy all right. Arthritis bothering he a little.”

“Too bad,” Gladys replied, looking as regretful as the mongoose that eat the last guinea fowl in the pen. “Anyhow, don’t make we keep you, Tan-Tan. I sure you have plenty to do to get ready for your birthday. Michael, time for we to take a break. My foot-them dusty. I want you to wash them for me. You know only you could do it nice the way I does like it.” She turned and walked into the bungalow that she and Michael had beside the iron shop.

“Yes, doux-doux.” Quick like fowl when it see corn athrow, Michael followed Gladys into the house. As the door closed behind them, Tan-Tan heard Gladys’s rich, throaty laugh, heavy with hard living and hard loving. Tan-Tan cut her eyes at the closed door. Then she crept to the door of the iron shop and quietly tried it. Still locked.

The sheath could be tied round her waist. She knotted it securely, tucked the chamois into her bodice and headed for home. At the turnoff that led to their house she spied their neighbour Cudjoe, the bad carpenter, hoeing up dasheen in his front yard. He was clumsy with the hoe, still accustoming his body to the linear tasks that ate up every waking hour on New Half-Way Tree. He was cursing and working with equal determination. He’d taken off his shirt, leaving only a pair of work pants covering him. Sweat had put a sheen on his black skin. Muscles in his back flexed with each turn of the hoe. Like even bad carpenter can get good body, oui?

Cudjoe saw her. He waved. Tan-Tan waved back; looked down at her feet as though from shyness; looked back at him again, smiling sweetly. Worked smooth like cool breeze. Cudjoe let the hoe fall and came over. He’d failed the first test.

Tan-Tan made shift to toy with a curl of her hair. She was proud of her waist-long plaits. Every morning she undid them and washed her hair good with a soapy piece of cactus plant. Then she oiled it with some shine oil from Chichibud’s cart and plaited it up again.

“Good afternoon, Cudjoe. Like you working hard?”

“Yes, Tan-Tan, but then I see your beautiful self out catching the sun, and I come was to tell you that when I could see such a sight, all hard work get easy.”

An edgy excitement warmed her, shot through with pique. Easy fish. Rise to the hook. “Not all hard work, I hope, Cudjoe.”

Cudjoe quirked his lips into a small smile, stared provocatively into her eyes. “So,” he said, “I hear allyou having big fête and thing tomorrow.”

“Yes, my sixteenth birthday party. You coming?”

“I bet your boyfriend go bring you something real pretty.”

Tan-Tan giggled and gave Cudjoe a delicate tap on his shoulder; a slap light like a kiss. “Get away! You too fast! Where you hear I have any boyfriend?”

“What, nobody to dance with you on your sixteenth birthday? Now, that is a crying shame.”

He kept looking deep into her eyes. She met his glance full on and said, “You go come and dance with me then, Cudjoe?”

“What you going give me for a dance?” he asked playfully.

“Let we go for a short walk round the back and I give you little taste.” She took his hand, led him to the back of his hut where passers-by couldn’t see them. He hesitated, waiting to see what she would do. She put the front of her body up against his, put an arm round his waist. She could smell the man-sweat off him, the complicated scent that she loved and hated at the same time. “Kiss me then, nuh?” He put his mouth to hers. She sucked on his tongue. The silent, wicked Tan-Tan urged her on.

She heard Janisette shouting before she even self reached the house.

“You blasted motherass piece of shit! Get out here right now and face me, Antonio! Is where the dry fruits I been soaking in liquor for Tan-Tan cake? Eh? You mookoomslav! Don’t tell me booze have you so bassourdie, you drink it out from the soaking fruits and all? Get out here, I say!”

Antonio raged back, “Woman, don’t bother my ass with your stupidness. I been here sick in my bed all day. I ain’t see no fruits in liquor.”

“You liard son of a bitch!”

Tan-Tan ran inside the house, slamming the door as she entered. Sometimes if she did that, Janisette and Antonio would stop fighting and yell at her instead. It didn’t work this time, though. Tan-Tan heard the sharp wap! of a wooden pot spoon connecting with somebody’s flesh. She knew that sound too well. Is who throw the first blow this time? She flew inside the kitchen and grabbed the pot spoon out of Janisette’s hand, just as her stepmother was about to slap it against Antonio’s shoulder again.

“Janisette, stop! Daddy say he sick!”

Janisette turned and shoved Tan-Tan in her chest. Tan-Tan stumbled back against the kitchen wall. “Is only alcohol sick he! Why the rass you fasting yourself in my business? Is your birthday cake I trying to make, you know!”

Antonio flew at Janisette and threw his open hand across her face, crack!

“What you think this is, Janisette, laying a hand on my daughter? Eh?” He cuffed her in the belly. Janisette dropped to the ground, retching. Then she leapt to her feet again and flew at Antonio, screaming and kicking. He tried to trap her hands in his fists, shouted bitch and leggobeast at her.

“Daddy! Janisette!” They ignored her. “Oonuh have to stop, or somebody go send for the sheriff!”

Now Antonio had Janisette’s hair. Her head was twisted at an uncomfortable angle. She was clawing at his crotch. Tan-Tan forced herself in between them. She could smell the heavy sweet staleness on Antonio’s breath. “The sheriff coming!” she hissed desperately.

Antonio let Janisette go and stumbled back towards the bedroom. Janisette crumpled to the ground and lay there, gasping and holding her belly. Tan-Tan crouched down beside her.

“You all right, Janisette?”

She never saw the lash that creased her face.

“Facety girl-child!” Janisette hissed. “How you mean, ‘You all right?’” After you just done take your daddy side against me, like always? You two-face, force-ripe bitch, you no better than he, with your sluttish self! I bet you if I make One-Eye know how you does carry on with half the men in Junjuh, him would have plenty to say about that!”

Tan-Tan’s cheeks burned, from the slap, from shame. You no better than your daddy. She stood and looked down at Janisette. She fingered her mother’s wedding ring hanging from the chain round her neck, the one Antonio had given her for her ninth birthday. She had earned that ring. The words burned her lips. She spat them at her stepmother: “Talk all you like, Janisette. Both of we know is which one Antonio really love.”

Janisette’s face crumpled into tears. Tan-Tan stalked out to the verandah, went round to the back verandah. Power thrummed through her so strong she could scarcely breathe. She had never stood up to Janisette like that before! Is the last time she would let Janisette shame her like that. Oh yes, Tan-Tan thought. I big woman now, sixteen tomorrow. She go have to leave me alone.

She heard the front door slam, and the tinkle of Janisette’s gold ankle bracelets going away up the walk. She must be going to weep on Glorianna neck. Good for she.

She sat there on the back porch, legs swinging through the railings, taking in the afternoon sun and thinking about how she go talk plain around Janisette from now on. Pride? I have every right to be proud. I speak my mind.

Shame? You have every right to be shame. No better than your mother.

She ignored the silent voice.

Someone was coming round to the back house, whistling. It was Melonhead’s favourite tune. Tan-Tan smiled, craned her neck. There he was, wearing as ever a much-mended pair of khaki shorts and a holey singlet. Dust powdered his bare feet to the ankle.

“Girl, is what you do Janisette, eh? I just pass she fleeing up the walk sobbing with she whole head bury in a kerchief.” The dreads on his big round melon head bobbed with his stride. Tendons flexed in his bandy thighs as he walked. His broad smile was full of fun.

Tan-Tan chuckled. “But eh-eh. Ain’t she is big woman and me only pickney? What I could do she?”

He leaned against the banister beside her, picked a windblown leaf out of her hair. “Not no pickney no more. Full adult come tomorrow. You bags pack?”

Tan-Tan got serious. “No. Later.”

Melonhead frowned. “You tell them yet that you leaving?”

“No. Don’t talk so loud, Daddy somewhere round the place.” Tan-Tan rubbed her arms. Sun had gone behind a cloud. “I done tell you already, I just want to leave quiet-quiet tomorrow night. Daddy and Janisette go be bassourdie with liquor and the two of them going to be asleep. Let them wake up next morning and find we gone, nuh?”

Melonhead sighed, cocked a foot up onto the verandah floor. His legs were really too short to do that gracefully. Tan-Tan absent-mindedly brushed some dust off the knobby knee he presented. Melonhead said, “Girl, talk sense. How we going leave at night, eh? Is bush we go be walking through. You want ground puppy chew up we tail? You want grit fly to suck we eyeball-them dry?”

“It have trails to Sweet Pone.”

“And bush all round. You have a water jug to carry?”

“I can’t share yours?”

“What food you taking? You have dry bouilli beef and buju and congo peas and thing?”

“Some,” she said quietly. “I thief little piece from Janisette.”

“You have pot to cook in, and firestick?”

“I have a knife,” she said, indicating the sheath at her waist.

“And what? You going to catch wild boar with that and your bare hand? How you going eat? How you going sleep? Come to that, you have tent and bedroll?”

“I thought I could share your—”

“Nanny give me strength! Tan-Tan, you is big woman or you is pickney still? These is the same questions I been asking you for two months now, and still you ain’t prepare. Like you ain’t really want to go, or what?”

“Sshh!” Tan-Tan hissed. “Daddy go hear you!” Melonhead scowled at her, ran a hand through his hair. He always did that when he was upset. She tried to explain: “I just want to do this quiet, get away quick before they know.”

“When you going to stop hiding from them?” he asked. Hesitated. Then softly: “I know them does beat you.”

The flurry-fear of panic rose in her throat like wings beating. Hush it, mock it, make it small. She cackled, “Melonhead, is what that big head of yours working overtime on in truth? I get two-three little slap when I was pickney, same like you. Not for years now, man.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand, looked away from the hurt in Melonhead’s eyes.

“Tan-Tan, don’t make mako ’pon me, I not going let it confuse me. You frighten of Antonio and Janisette and you frighten to leave. I could see it, I know you too good.”

Tan-Tan could only stare at him.

“You want me to tell them for you?”

“No! Don’t say nothing!”

“I serious, girl. Then me and Daddy could help you get ready, if your family not going to do it.” His look softened in a way she’d never seen before on Melonhead’s jovial, easy-going face. He said awkwardly, “I, ahm… Nanny hear me, Tan-Tan; I would do anything for you.”

“What?” The first “huh” of a laugh fell from her lips. Then she looked into his eyes, felt wonder rearrange her features. “What?” she breathed, scared to death of the answer.

He looked embarrassed, backed away a little. “Look, never mind. I go come back later, all right?” With hurried, awkward steps he started away.

“Stay, Melonhead.” He stopped, kept his back to her, looked down at the ground.

“Is what you saying?” Tan-Tan asked.

He returned slowly, still not looking at her. “You go laugh.”

“I ever laugh after you yet? Tell me.”

“I… so long I want to tell you, to ask you…” He took her hand, Melonhead took her hand, played nervously with one of the beads of her bracelet. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “You think you might ever want to partner with me?”

“Me?” The sound could have been a sob. She pulled her hand away from him. “Why you want me?”

“You and me does walk good together, talk good together. Me nah want that for stop, ever. You don’t like me, Tan-Tan?”

This was not her friend Melonhead, this was a new creature standing in front of her. “I never think—”

He rushed to cut her words off: “I know we never talk about it before, I know you got plenty next boyfriend, I know my face favour jackass a-peep through tear knickers…”

A giggle bubbled to Tan-Tan’s lips. “Don’t say so! You not ugly!”

Melonhead’s eyes searched her face. He smiled uncertainly. And waited. He always knew when to wait, just let her talk, or think. This wasn’t a new Melonhead, she was just seeing him differently. He had always looked out for her. He cared for her. Who could care for mud in the street, whispered bad silent Tan-Tan, but for the first time in years the voice didn’t wound, didn’t matter. “When we would do it?” she dared to ask quietly.

Hope made Melonhead incandescent. “The ritual? Before we leave, so everybody could come.”

“No. Not here. In a new place, with new people. Please, Melonhead, not here. When we settle in Sweet Pone we could send for your father to come and have it with him there. In we own house.” We own house; was it her saying those words?

He smiled. “All right, if is so you want it.”

“And what about…”

He was suddenly cheerful. “All the thousand and one boyfriend-them, you mean? We could be freehand partners, sweetness.” He looked away shyly, her too, startled by the endearment.

Such a simple solution. He didn’t scorn her, didn’t call her names, wouldn’t punish her. Bad silent Tan-Tan made unhappy sounds. She would consider that later. Gravely she said to Melonhead, “Let we do it.” She could scarcely breathe for joy. Melonhead stepped closer to her, his hands warm on her knees. His breath smelled of cloves and sweetleaf. She leaned forward to touch her lips to his.

Crash! Shards of glass showered down over her and Melonhead. Jumping up, she saw Antonio holding a broken-off rum bottle neck in his hand. Antonio jabbed at Melonhead who leapt back.

“Mothercunt thiefing son of a bitch!” Antonio bellowed. “What you chatting she up for? Eh?” He staggered forward, tried to leap the banister. He slipped and caught himself, his bare feet sliding in the broken glass. So drunk he didn’t even self notice his sliced, bleeding feet. “You want I tear up that pretty face for you? You ain’t business with my daughter!”

Melonhead pulled himself up tall, his face cold. “Your daughter old enough to do what she please, man.”

Antonio’s face clotted with fury. “You facety…!” Antonio made to rush down the porch stairs.

“No, Daddy!” Tan-Tan put her hands out to stop him. He clouted her over her ear, the one where her implant had been. Pain exploded behind her eyes, but she managed to stay upright. She held on to her father’s waist, kept him on the stairs from sheer force of desperation. “Melonhead! Go home!”

“I not leaving you!”

“She not going anywhere with you, you pissant wretch!”

“Go, Melonhead, or it just go be worse!”

“You sure?”

“Yes! I go come talk to you later.”

Melonhead took an unsure step away, waiting to see what would happen. Antonio quieted, stood weaving on the stairs and mumbling incoherent curses at Melonhead.

“Tan-Tan,” Melonhead called, “I go give it a hour for you and he to talk. Then I coming back with Daddy and the sheriff and we taking you from here.”

Oh, please Nanny, yes. “Go, I say!”

He walked away backwards, slowly, keeping a stern eye on Antonio. Antonio found some energy and threw the bottle top at him. Melonhead ducked clear, turned and jogged down the lane.

“Come Daddy, make I clean up your feet.”

Antonio grabbed her arm, so tight she felt the skin bruise same time. “Rutting whore!” He backhanded her across the face. She felt her teeth meet in her tongue.

“No, Daddy!”

“Every time I turn my back, you making time with some man! Like you turn big woman now? Eh? You smelling yourself?”

“No, Daddy! Please, Daddy! It ain’t go happen again!”

But Antonio dragged her into the living room. All Tan-Tan pulled she couldn’t break his grip.

“Blasted slut with a slut for a mother. You ain’t too big for me to tan your behind for you!” With one hand, Antonio unbuckled his heavy leather belt and pulled it out from his pants. He doubled it up in his hand and cracked it against her shins. The pain was like a knife cut.

“Daddy!” she shrieked.

He beat her across her calves, her thighs. She could feel the welts rising. She screamed, but Melonhead was too far away to hear.

As he whipped her Antonio was dragging her by the arm through the house, into her bedroom. He threw her on the bed.

“Is man you want? Is man? I go show you what man could do for you!”

No. No. She couldn’t face this again, after years free from it. He kicked her legs apart, yanked up her skirt, tore her underwear off. He pushed into her. She bawled out for the tearing pain between her legs. He grunted, “I is man too, you know! Is this you want! Is this?”

Something was scraping at her waist. Her hand found it. The scabbard. With the knife inside. A roaring started up in her ears. It couldn’t have been she. It must have been the Robber Queen who pulled out the knife. Antonio raised up to shove into the person on the bed again. It must have been the Robber Queen, the outlaw woman, who quick like a snake got the knife braced at her breastbone just as Antonio slammed his heavy body right onto the blade.

“Uhh!” Antonio jerked like a fish on a hook. He collapsed onto her. His weight drove the knife handle backwards against her breastbone, gouging upwards until it was under her chin. Antonio’s head fell on Tan-Tan’s own. She screamed. His body convulsed, then relaxed. Thick blood gushed out of his mouth. She heard his bowels loose in death. Then she smelt it.

Her body went cold. She started to tremble uncontrollably. She lay there so under Antonio’s corpse, waiting for Melonhead to come and end the nightmare.

And is there so Chichibud found her. He sniffed the air before he entered the room. “Dead,” he said.

Tan-Tan felt the hysteria bubbling up. “Off me. Get. He. Off. Me.”

Chichibud hopped up onto the bed and dragged Antonio’s body to one side. Tan-Tan couldn’t stop trembling. She couldn’t even self manage to pull her skirt back down over her legs. Is Chichibud who did it for her. A low moaning was coming from her mouth. “Sh, sh, doux-doux. I could read the signs for myself. I know he attack you.”

She found the words. “He did beating me.” She swallowed. Her chest burned where the knife handle had gouged a track, pushed by Daddy’s body. “Beating me bad, with he leather belt. Then he… I never mean to use the knife, Chichibud. I did only want he to stop hurting me. Oh God, Daddy dead?”

“Dead, yes. We have to leave, fast.”

“No, Melonhead coming back with One-Eye.”

“Then we must move now. One-Eye rules don’t have no mercy. Murder will swing you from the hanging tree.”

“Me?” She couldn’t believe it.

“You, yes. Pack.” He sent her over to her dresser drawers while he wrapped up Antonio’s body in the bedclothes. She did nothing, couldn’t seem to think, just watched him. He wiped her new hunting knife clean against the bedsheets and handed it back to her.

“No, no, Chichibud! Don’t make me touch it! Throw it away!”

“Don’t fret, Tan-Tan, don’t fret.” He sheathed the knife at his own waist.

He tore off a strip of the bedsheet, wiped the blood off Tan-Tan’s face. He indicated the gouge in her breastbone from the knife handle. “I go bandage it later.” He opened her dresser drawers himself, yanked clothes out of them at random.

She had killed Daddy.

Somehow she struggled into the clean blouse that Chichibud gave her. Her hands were shaking so badly she could only do up three of the buttons. Chichibud held out another garment. Her new skirt, the birthday skirt that Chichibud’s wife had made for her. She pulled it on under the skirt she’d been wearing, tore the top skirt off her body and let it fall. Her eyes kept straying back to the bloodstained lump on the bed, wrapped in her sheet. The smell of death was thick in the air. She just kill she own daddy.

Chichibud bundled her out of the house, talking soothingly to her the whole time. “Nothing wrong, is just you and me, going for a walk like we always do. Good thing Benta come with me today. We could ride she.” They went out front to the guava tree. Benta, his big, stout packbird, was crouching on the ground, large as a cow and as solid, but with green and brown feathers. She was plucking leaves off the water vine that was entwined around the wormy guava tree and sucking them down. She had a leather panier strapped to her back between her stubby wings-them and her neck, and a high leather seat buckled round her body.

When Benta spied Chichibud she got to her feet, bating her useless wings and cawing.

“Hush up, the child in trouble! Can’t make everybody know we business.”

“Wroow,” Benta said. She butted her head gently against Tan-Tan’s shoulder in her customary greeting. She nuzzled against Tan-Tan’s neck and combed the girl’s untidy plaits through her beak. On another day it would have made Tan-Tan smile; Benta bird was forever trying to groom her hair. Today she stood beside Benta and shook. Daddy dead. Somebody kill he. Somebody bad.

“Down, Benta girl,” said Chichibud. The bird crouched low. “Tan-Tan, get in the panier.”

She could do that. She could follow an order. Benta bent her neck and Tan-Tan climbed into the panier, knees pulled up in front of her nose. Her body hurt. She waited for whatever it would please Chichibud to do next. He climbed into the seat behind her. He threaded a leather strap between one handle of the panier and the other, tied it. “Hold on to this when the ride get rough,” he told her. “And keep your head low.”

It smelt clean inside the panier, like wood shavings. She heard Chichibud buckling his own seat straps.

“Hold on, pickney. Go, Benta. Straight to the bush.” The bird stood up, shook her wings into place, and took off at a run. She pelted round the back of the house, using her wings for balance whenever she swerved. Tan-Tan closed her eyes. The bumpy, jolting ride in the confined dark… a memory nearly a decade old rose in Tan-Tan’s mind, of crashing round in the trunk of the sheriffs’ car while it drove her and Daddy to exile. Daddy…

Soon the sound of Benta’s feet hitting the ground changed from a thud to the crackle-bounce of corn trash. Tan-Tan opened her eyes. They were in the fields around Junjuh, fleeing fast in the dusk towards the bush.

They broke into the bush proper, to the cover of the trees. When the first young branch scored the side of her face, Tan-Tan crouched down inside the panier. More withies slapped whup-whup against the panier. Tan-Tan didn’t know how Chichibud was protecting himself from them. But Benta slowed only slightly, trampling what she could and avoiding what she couldn’t. The roaring in Tan-Tan’s head hadn’t stopped since she’d impaled Antonio on her knife. Bad Tan-Tan was screaming silently: Antonio dead, he dead. Antonio dead. You kill he.

After some time, Chichibud called for Benta to stop. Tan-Tan heard him sniffing the air.

“Them coming for we, Tan-Tan. Bringing the dogs.”

The dogs! The dogs that had made it to Toussaint had all interbred into one tough, bad-tempered mongrel strain. They would track a scent till Kingdom Come. Tan-Tan had seen animals that the Junjuh pack had torn apart. It was too much to deal with. Dumbly, she twisted back to look at Chichibud.

He said, “Benta, is up to you. The dogs must lose we scent. Tan-Tan, you strap in good? Hold on tight.”

“Wroow,” Benta cooed. She hopped over to the nearest big tree and dug one set of powerful claws into its trunk. Even in the reddish dusk Tan-Tan could see the tips of Benta’s claws sinking into the wood. The bird reached up and dug her beak into the trunk a little higher. And to Tan-Tan’s amazement, Benta started to climb. She sidled up foot by foot, using her beak to pull her up higher into the tree, up into the branches where the leaves could hide them and the dogs would lose their scent in the air.

Chichibud laughed a low shu-shu. “Oonuh tallpeople don’t really know what packbirds could do, oui?”

Tan-Tan held on to the sides of the panier till her fingers cramped around it. “You should leave me, make them find me.”

“For that mad sheriff to hang? You was only trying to defend yourself.”

“One-Eye would be right to hang me. I k-kill Daddy.”

“Papa Bois see what really happen in that room, Tan-Tan. He ain’t judging you.”

Benta had reached a thick limb high up in the tree. Before Tan-Tan knew what was happening Benta was leaping to a next tree, flapping her useless wings as she went. Tan-Tan gave a little scream.

“Hush. Don’t make the dogs hear we.”

Benta landed sure-footed in the next tree and kept climbing. And now Tan-Tan could hear the pack of dogs baying, following their scent and the clear trail Benta’s tracks must have made. The dogs were crashing through the undergrowth, with the men shouting behind them: “Here! This way!” Lights from hurricane lamps were dancing through the bush like duppy lights in the dark.

Benta froze.

Tan-Tan held still like the last breath between life and death. She didn’t even dare look down. The dogs were whining and running around, looking for the scent they’d lost. One-Eye’s voice said, “Is what the blast wrong with allyou bitch hound? Find them, I say!”

The men laid about the dogs-them with whips. The dogs yelped. But they’d lost the scent and there was no more trail.

“Let we go home,” said a voice. It was Melonhead. Tan-Tan managed to stop her cry before it had left her lips. She sat in the dark with Chichibud and Benta, knuckling hot tears and grit flies from her eyes.

The lights and the sound of the hunting party were gone. Chichibud made a chittering noise with his claws. Tan-Tan knew that sound; he was worried. “I think is time,” he said to himself. “We know say it would happen.” Benta gave a low, grumbly series of warbles that made Tan-Tan think of nannysong. But they were only nonsense phrasings. Benta started climbing again, higher and higher up the tree till the stars were visible through the branches. She kept climbing, testing her weight on smaller and smaller branches. Tan-Tan was queasy from the swaying of the climb. Would the branch hold? She looked out over the bush. She could just make out one-one light twinkling back in Junjuh Town: the hurricane lamps people hung outside their front doors every night. The darkness was a thick blanket round her, like the blanket in the trunk of the autocar when she’d run away with… Chichibud’s voice was barely a whisper when he said:

“Oonuh tallpeople been coming to we land from since, and we been keeping weselves separate from you. Even though we sharing the same soil, same water, same air. Tonight, that go change, Tan-Tan. I taking you far away, where Junjuh Town people can’t find you. For me to do that, you go have to come and live with we douen. You go find out things about we that no other human person know, starting tonight.” She twisted round to look at his silhouette, crouched on Benta’s back in the clotting dark. “Understand the trust I placing in your care, doux-doux. Understand that I doing it to save your life, but you have to guard ours in return.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“When you take one life, you must give back two. You go keep douen secrets safe? You must swear. I know you ain’t feel to talk right now, but you must swear out loud.”

Tan-Tan’s heart was hammering hard and slow in her chest like drum. When you take one life, you must give back two. Tan-Tan bowed her head and accepted the obeah that Chichibud had just put on it. “I swear, Chichibud.”

“Remember what you swear, child. Papa Bois listening.”

What would he do now? She remembered how she used to think douen people were magic.

“In the daytime,” Chichibud told her, “packbird is ground bird. But is nighttime now. No-one to see.”

And he raised his voice: “Benta! Now!”

The packbird gave a squawk that sounded like joy. She puffed her chest in and out repeatedly, then started to beat her wings, hard and fast. They were shadows whipping through the dark. And they were growing. The wings that Tan-Tan had always believed were clipped were filling out, getting long and strong.

“Chichibud! What she doing?”

He had to shout to be heard above the beating wings. “The channels in she wings does fill up with air when she need to fly.”

Fly? Benta leapt out of the tree and plummeted towards the ground below. Tan-Tan screamed. But one beat of the powerful wings hooked at the air and with the next beat Benta was powering them high above the bush, soaring through the air, high, higher, till Tan-Tan couldn’t make out the treetops in the darkness.

Chichibud leaned forward and shouted over the rushing wind, “Since allyou tallpeople start coming to New Half-Way Tree, packbirds only fly at night, and in places where allyou can’t see. I taking you to a place no other tallpeople ever see either.”

The wind sang past Tan-Tan’s face. The breeze blew away her tears. The cold, crisp air cleared a little of the fog from her brain. Tan-Tan the Midnight Robber was soaring out above her kingdom, free from thought, nothing to fear. Sweet chariot, time to ride. She laughed out loud. But the wind blew the laugh from her mouth and carried it away. Antonio dead, Bad Tan-Tan hissed at her. You kill he. When you take one, you must give back two.