Midnight Robber

Tan-Tan and Dry Bone

If you only see Dry Bone: one meager man, with arms and legs thin so like matches stick, and what a way the man face just a-hang down till it favour jackass when him sick!

Duppy Dead Town is where people go when life boof them, when hope left them and happiness cut she eye ’pon them and strut away. Duppy Dead people drag them foot when them walk. The food them cook taste like burial ground ashes. Duppy Dead people have one foot in the world and the next one already crossing the threshold to where the real duppy-them living. In Duppy Dead Town them will tell you how it ain’t have no way to get away from Dry Bone the skin-and-bone man, for even if you lock you door on him, him body thin so like the hope of salvation, so fine him could slide through the crack and all to pass inside your house.

Dry Bone sit down there on one little wooden crate in the open market in Duppy Dead Town. Him a-think about food. Him hungry so till him belly a-burn him, till it just a-prowl round inside him rib cage like angry bush cat, till it clamp on to him backbone, and a-crouch there so and a-growl.

And all the time Dry Bone sitting down there in the market, him just a-watch the open sky above him, for Dry Bone nah like that endless blue. Him ’fraid him will just fall up into it and keep falling.

Dry Bone feel say him could eat two-three of that market woman skinny little fowl-them, feathers and all, then wash them down with a dry-up breadfruit from the farmer cart across the way, raw and hard just so, and five-six of them wrinkle-up string mango from the fruit stand over there. Dry Bone coulda never get enough food, and right now, all like how him ain’t eat for days, even Duppy Dead people food looking good. But him nah have no money. The market people wouldn’t even prekkay ’pon him, only a-watch him like stray dog so him wouldn’t fast himself and thief away any of them goods. In Duppy Dead Town them had a way to say if you only start to feed Dry Bone, you can’t stop, and you pickney-them go starve, for him will eat up all your provisions. And then them would shrug and purse-up them mouth, for them know say hunger is only one of the crosses Duppy Dead pickney go have to bear.

Duppy Dead ain’t know it waiting; waiting for the one name Tan-Tan.

So—it had Dry Bone sitting there, listening to he belly bawl. And is so Tan-Tan find he, cotch-up on the wooden crate like one big black anansi-spider.

Dry Bone watch the young woman dragging she sad self into the market like monkey riding she back. She nah have no right to look downpressed so; she body tall and straight like young cane, and she legs strong. But the look on she pretty face favour puppy what lose it mother, and she carrying she hand on she machète handle the way you does put your hand on your friend shoulder. Dry Bone sit up straight. He lick he lips. A stranger in Duppy Dead Town, one who ain’t know to avoid he. One who can’t see she joy for she sorrow; the favourite meat of the one name Dry Bone. He know she good. Dry Bone know all the souls that feed he. He recognise she so well, he discern she name in the curve of she spine. So Dry Bone laugh, a sound like the dust blowin’ down in the dry gully. “Girl pickney Tan-Tan,” he whisper, “I go make you take me on this day. And when you pick me up, you pick up trouble.”

He call out to Tan-Tan, “My beautiful one; you enjoying the day?”

Tan-Tan look at the little fine-foot man, so meager you could nearly see through he. “What you want, Grandpa?” she ask.

Dry Bone smile when she say “Grandpa.” True, Duppy Dead townspeople have a way to say that Dry Bone older than Death it own self. “Well doux-doux darlin’ , me wasn’t going to say nothing; but since you ask, beg you a copper to buy something to eat, nuh? I ain’t eat from mornin’.”

Now, Tan-Tan heart soft. Too besides, she figure maybe if she help out this old man who look to be on he last legs, she go ease up the curse on she a little. For you must know the story ’bout she, how she kill Antonio she father, she only family on New Half-Way Tree. Guilt nearly breaking she heart in two, but to make it worse, the douen people nah put a curse on she when she do the deed? Yes, man: she couldn’t rest until she save two people life to make up for the one she did kill. Everywhere she go, she could hear the douen chant following she:

Tan-Tan reach into she pocket to fling the old man couple-three coppers. But she find it strange that he own people wasn’t feeding he. So she raise she voice to everyone in the marketplace: “How oonuh could let this old man sit here hungry so? Oonuh not shame?”

“Lawd, missus,” say the woman selling the fowl, “you ain’t want to mix up with he. That is Dry Bone, and when you pick he up, you pick up trouble!”

“What stupidness you talking, woman? Hot sun make you bassourdie, or what? How much trouble so one little old man could give you?”

A man frying some hard johnnycake on a rusty piece of galvanized iron look up from he wares. “You should listen when people talk to you, girl pickney. Make I tell you: you even self touch Dry Bone, is like you touch Death. Don’t say nobody ain’t tell you!”

Tan-Tan look down at the little old man, just holding he belly and waiting for somebody to take pity on he. Tan-Tan kiss she teeth steuups. “Oonuh too craven, you hear? Come, Daddy. I go buy you a meal, and I go take you where I staying and cook it up nice for you. All right?”

Dry Bone get excited one time; he almost have she now! “Thank you, my darlin’. Granny Nanny bless you, doux-doux. I ain’t go be plenty trouble. Beg you though, sweetheart: pick me up. Me old bones so weak with hunger, I ain’t think I could make the walk back to your place. I is only a little man, half-way a duppy meself. You could lift me easy.”

“You mean to say these people make you stay here and get hungry so till you can’t walk?” Tan-Tan know say she could pick he up; after he the smallest man she ever see.

The market go quiet all of a sudden. Everybody only waiting to see what she go do. Tan-Tan bend down to take the old man in she arms. Dry Bone reach out and hold on to she. As he touch she, she feel a coldness wrap round she heart. She pick up the old man, and is like she pick up all the cares of the world. She make a joke of it, though: “Eh-eh, Pappy, you heavier than you look, you know!”

That is when she hear Dry Bone voice good, whispering inside she head, sht-sht-sht like dead leaf on a dead tree. And she realise that all this time she been talking to he, she never see he lips move. “I name Dry Bone,” the old man say, “I old like Death, and when you pick me up, you pick up trouble. You ain’t go shake me loose until I suck out all your substance. Feed me, Tan-Tan.”

And Tan-Tan feel Dry Bone getting heavier and heavier, but she couldn’t let he go. She feel the weight of all the burdens she carrying: alone, stranded on New Half-Way Tree with a curse on she head, a spiteful woman so ungrateful she kill she own daddy.

“Feed me, Tan-Tan, or I go choke you.” He wrap he arms tight round she neck and cut off she wind. She stumble over to the closest market stall. The lady selling the fowl back away, she eyes rolling with fright. Gasping for air, Tan-Tan stretch out she hand and feel two dead fowl. She pick them up off the woman stand. Dry Bone chuckle. He loosen up he arms just enough to let she get some air. He grab one fowl and stuff it into he mouth, feathers and all. He chew, then he swallow. “More, Tan-Tan. Feed me.” He choke she again.

She body crying for breath, Tan-Tan stagger from one market stall to the next. All the higglers fill up a market basket for she. Them had warn she, but she never listen. None of them would take she money. Dry Bone let she breathe again. “Now take me home, Tan-Tan.”

Tan-Tan grab the little man round he waist and try to dash he off, but she hand stick to he like he was tar baby. He laugh in she mind, the way ground puppy does giggle when it see carrion. “You pick me up by your own free will. You can’t put me down. Take me home, Tan-Tan.”

Tan-Tan turn she feet towards she little hut in the bush, and with every step she take along the narrow gravel path into the bush, Dry Bone only getting heavier. Tan-Tan mother did never want she; Ione make Antonio kidnap she away to New Half-Way Tree. Even she daddy who did say he love she used to beat she, and worse things too besides. Tan-Tan never see the singing tree she always pass by on she way home, with the wind playing like harp in the leaves, or the bright blue furry butterflies that always used to sweet she, flitting through the bush carrying the flowers they gather in their little hands. With Dry Bone on her back and the full market basket in her arms, Tan-Tan had was to use she shoulders to shove aside the branches to make she way to she hut. Branches reach out bony fingers to pull at she dreads, but she ain’t feel that pain. She only feel the pain of knowing what she is, a worthless, wicked woman that only good to feed a duppy like Dry Bone. How anybody could love she? She don’t deserve no better.

“Make haste, woman,” Dry Bone snarl. “And keep under the trees, you hear? I want to get out from under the open sky.”

By the time them reach the thatch hut standing all by itself in the bush, Tan-Tan back did bend with the weight of all she was carrying. It feel like Dry Bone get bigger, oui? Tan-Tan stand up outside she home, panting under the weight of she burdens.

“Take me inside, Tan-Tan. I prefer to be out of the air.”

“Yes, Dry Bone.” Wheezing, she climb up the verandah steps and carry he inside the dark, mean one-room hut, exactly the kind of place where a worthless woman should live. One break-seat chair for sit in; a old ticking mattress for when sleep catch she; two rusty hurricane lamp with rancid oil inside them, one for light the inside of the hut, and one for light outside when night come, to keep away the ground puppy and mako jumbie-them; a dirty coal-pot, and a bucket full of stale water with dead spider and thing floating on top. Just good for she. With all the nice things she steal from people, she ain’t keep none for sheself, but only giving them away all the time.

Dry Bone voice fill up the inside of she head again: “Put me on the mattress. It look softer than the chair. Is there I go stay from now on.”

“Yes, Dry Bone.” She find she could put he down, but the weight ain’t lift from off she. Is like she still carrying he, a heaviness next to she heart, and getting heavier.

“I hungry, Tan-Tan. Cook up that food for me. All of it, you hear?”

“Yes, Dry Bone.” And Tan-Tan pluck the fowl, and chop off the head, and gut out the insides. She make a fire outside the hut. She roast the fowl and she boil water for topi-tambo root, and she bake a breadfruit.

“I want johnnycake too.”

So Tan-Tan find she one bowl and she fry pan, and she little store of flour and oil, and she carry water and make dumpling and put it to fry on the fire. And all she working, she could hear Dry Bone whispering in she head like knowledge: “Me know say what you is, Tan-Tan. Me know how you worthless and your heart hard. Me know you could kill just for so, and you don’t look out for nobody but yourself. You make a mistake when you pick me up. You pick up trouble.”

When she done cook the meal, she ain’t self have enough plate to serve it all one time. She had was to bring a plate of food in to Dry Bone, make he eat it, and take it outside and fill it up again. Dry Bone swallow every last johnnycake whole. He chew up the topi-tambo, skin and all, and nyam it down. He ain’t even wait for she to peel the roast breadfruit, he pop it into he maw just so. He tear the meat from the chicken bone, then he crunch up the bone-them and all. And all he eat, he belly getting round and hard, but he arms and legs only getting thinner and thinner. Still, Tan-Tan could feel the weight of he resting on she chest till she could scarcely breathe.

“That not enough,” Dry Bone say. “Is where the fowl guts-them there?”

“I wrap them up in leaf and bury them in the back,” Tan-Tan mumble.

“Dig them up and bring them for me.”

“You want me to cook them in the fire?”

“No, stupid one, hard-ears one,” Dry Bone say in he sandpaper voice. “I ain’t tell you to cook them. I go eat them raw just so.”

She own-way, yes, and stupid too. Is must be so. Tan-Tan hang she head. She dig up the fowl entrails and bring them back. Dry Bone suck down the rank meat, toothless gums smacking in the dark hut. He pop the bitter gall bladder in he mouth like a sea grape and swallow that too. “Well,” he say, “that go do me for now, but a next hour or two, and you going to feed me again. It ain’t look like you have plenty here to eat, eh, Tan-Tan? You best go and find more before evening come.”

That is all she good for. Tan-Tan know she must be grateful Dry Bone even let she live. She turn she weary feet back on the path to Duppy Dead Town. She feel the weight on she dragging she down to the ground. Branch scratch up she face, and mosquito bite she, and when she reach where she always did used to find Duppy Dead Town, it ain’t have nothing there. The people pick up lock, stock and barrel and left she in she shame with Dry Bone. Tears start to track down Tan-Tan face. She weary, she weary can’t done, but she had was to feed the little duppy man. Lazy, the voice in she head say. What a way this woman could run from a little hard work! Tan-Tan drag down some net vine from out a tree and weave sheself a basket. She search the bush. She find two-three mushroom under some rockstone, and a halwa tree with a half-ripe fruit on it. She throw she knife and stick a fat guinea lizard. Dry Bone go eat the bones and all. Maybe that would full he belly.

And is so the days go for she. So Dry Bone eat, so he hungry again one time. Tan-Tan had was to catch and kill and gut and cook, and she only get time to sneak a little bite for sheself was when Dry Bone sleeping, but it seem like he barely sleep at all. He stretch out the whole day and night on Tan-Tan one bed, giving orders. Tan-Tan had to try and doze the long nights through in the break-seat chair or on the cold floor, and come ’fore-day morning, she had was to find sheself awake one time, to stoke up the fire and start cooking all over again. And what a way Dry Bone belly get big! Big like a watermelon. But the rest of he like he wasting away, just a skin-and-bone man. Sometimes, Tan-Tan couldn’t even self see he in the dark hut; only a belly sticking up on the bed.

One time, after he did guzzle down three lizard, two breadfruit, a gully hen and four gully hen eggs, Dry Bone sigh and settle back down on the bed. He close he eyes.

Tan-Tan walk over to the bed. Dry Bone ain’t move. She wave she hand in front of he face. He ain’t open he eyes. Maybe he did fall to sleep? Maybe she could run away now? Tan-Tan turn to creep out the door, and four bony fingers grab she round she arm and start to squeeze. “You can’t run away, Tan-Tan. I go follow you. You have to deal with me.”

Is must be true. Dry Bone was she sins come to haunt she, to ride she into she grave. Tan-Tan ain’t try to get away no more, but late at night, she weep bitter, bitter tears.

One day, she had was to go down to the river to dip some fresh water to make soup for Dry Bone. As she lean out over the river with she dipping bowl, she see a reflection in the water: Master Johncrow the corbeau-bird, the turkey buzzard, perch on a tree branch, looking for carrion for he supper. He bald head gleaming in the sun like a hard-boil egg. He must be feeling hot in he black frock coat, for he eyes look sad, and he beak drooping like candle wax. Tan-Tan remember she manners. “Good day to you, Sir Buzzard,” she say. “How do?”

“Not so good, eh?” Master Johncrow reply. “I think I going hungry today. All I look, I can’t spy nothing dead or even ready to dead. You feeling all right, Tan-Tan?” he ask hopefully.

“Yes, Master Buzzard, thanks Nanny.”

“But you don’t look too good, you know. Your eyes sink back in your head, and your skin all grey, and you walking with a stoop. I could smell death round here yes, and it making me hungry.”

“Is only tired I tired, sir. Dry Bone latch on to me, and I can’t get any rest, only feeding he day and night.”

“Dry Bone?” The turkey buzzard sit up straight on he perch. Tan-Tan could see a black tongue snaking in and out of he mouth with excitement.

“Seen, Master Buzzard. I is a evil woman, and I must pay for my corruption by looking after Dry Bone. It go drive me to me grave, I know, then you go have your meal.”

“I ain’t know about you and any corruption, doux-doux.” Johncrow leap off the tree branch and flap down to the ground beside Tan-Tan. “You smell fresh like the living to me.” Him nearly big as she, he frock-coat feathers rank and raggedy, and she could smell the carrion on he. Tan-Tan step back a little.

“You don’t know the wicked things I do,” she say.

“If a man attack you, child, don’t you must defend yourself? I know this, though: I ain’t smell no rottenness on you, and that is my favourite smell. If you dead soon, I go thank you for your thoughtfulness with each taste of your entrails, but I go thank you even more if you stay alive long enough to deliver Dry Bone to me.”

“How you mean, Master Crow?”

“Dry Bone did dead and rotten long before Nanny was a girl, but him living still. Him is the sweetest meat for a man like me. I could feed off Dry Bone for the rest of my natural days, and him still wouldn’t done. Is years now I trying to catch he for me larder. Why you think he so ’fraid the open sky? Open sky is home to me. Do me this one favour, nuh?”

Tan-Tan feel hope start to bud in she heart.

“What you want me to do, Master Crow?”

“Just get he to come outside in your yard, and I go do the rest.”

So the two of them make a plan. And before he fly off Master Johncrow say to she, “Like Dry Bone not the only monkey that a-ride your back, child. You carrying round a bigger burden than he. And me nah want that one there. It ain’t smell dead, but like it did never live. Best you go find Papa Bois.”

“And who is Papa Bois, sir?”

“The old man of the bush, the one who does look after all the beast-them. He could look into your eyes, and see your soul, and tell you how to cleanse it.”

Tan-Tan ain’t like the sound of someone examining she soul, so she only say politely, “Thank you, Master Johncrow. Maybe I go do that.”

“All right then, child. Till later.” And Master Buzzard fly off to wait until he part of the plan commence.

Tan-Tan scoop up the water for the soup to carry back to she hut, feeling almost happy for the first time in weeks. On the way home, she fill up she carry sack with a big, nice halwa fruit, three handful of mushroom, some coco yam that she dig up, big so like she head, and all the ripe hog plum she could find on the ground. She go make Dry Bone eat till he foolish, oui?

When she reach back at the hut, she set about she cooking with a will. She boil up the soup thick and nice with mushroom and coco yam and cornmeal dumpling. She roast the halwa fruit in the coal pot, and she sprinkle nutmeg and brown sugar on top of it too besides, till the whole hut smell sweet with it scent. She wash the hog plum clean and put them in she best bowl. And all the time she work, she humming to sheself:

Dry Bone sprawl off on she bed and just a-watch she with him tiny jumbie-bead eye, red with a black centre. “How you happy so?”

Tan-Tan catch sheself. She mustn’t make Dry Bone hear Master Johncrow name. She make she mouth droop and she eyes sad, and she say, “Me not really happy, Dry Bone. Me only find when me sing, the work go a little faster.”

Dry Bone still suspicious, though. “Then is what that you singing? Sing it louder so I could hear.”

“Is a song about making soup.” Tan-Tan sing for he:

“Cho! Stupid woman. Just cook the food fast, you hear?”

“Yes, Dry Bone.” She leave off singing. Fear form a lump of ice in she chest. Suppose Dry Bone find she out?

Tan-Tan finish preparing the meal as fast as she could. She take it to Dry Bone right there on the bed.

By now, Dry Bone skin did draw thin like paper on he face. He eyes did disappear so far back into he head that Tan-Tan could scarce see them. She ain’t know what holding he arms and legs-them together, for it look as though all the flesh on them waste away. Only he belly still bulging big with all the food she been cooking for he. If Tan-Tan had buck up a thing like Dry Bone in the bush, she would have take it for a corpse, dead and rotting in the sun. Dry Bone, the skin-and-bone man. To pick he up was to pick up trouble, for true.

Dry Bone bare he teeth at Tan-Tan in a skull grin. “Like you cook plenty this time, almost enough for a snack. Give me the soup first.” He take the whole pot in he two hand, put it to he head, and drink it down hot-hot just so. He never even self stop to chew the coco yam and dumpling; he just swallow. When he put down the pot and belch, Tan-Tan see steam coming out of he mouth, the soup did so hot. He scoop out all the insides of the halwa fruit with he bare hand, and he chew up the hard seed-them like them was fig. Then he eat the thick rind. And so he belly getting bigger. He suck down the hog plum one by one, then he just let go Tan-Tan best bowl. She had was to catch it before it hit the ground and shatter.

Dry Bone lie back and sigh. “That was good. It cut me hunger little bit. In two-three hour, I go want more again.”

Time was, them words would have hit Tan-Tan like blow, but this time, she know what she have to do. “Dry Bone,” she say in a sweet voice, “you ain’t want to go out onto the verandah for a little sun while I cook your next meal?”

Dry Bone open he eyes up big-big. Tan-Tan could see she death in them cold eyes. “Woman, you crazy? Go outside? Like you want breeze blow me away, or what? I comfortable right here.” He close he eyes and settle back down in the bed.

She try a next thing. “I want to clean the house, Master. I need to make up the bed, put on clean sheets for you. Make me just cotch you on the verandah for two little minutes while I do that, nuh?”

“Don’t get me vex.” Tan-Tan feel he choking weight on she spirit squeeze harder. Only two-three sips of air making it past she throat.

The plan ain’t go work. Tan-Tan start to despair. Then she remember how she used to love to play masque Robber Queen when she was a girl-pickney, how she could roll pretty words around in she mouth like marble, and make up any kind of story. She had a talent for the Robber Queen patter. Nursie used to say she could make yellow think it was red. “But Dry Bone,” she wheeze, “look at how nice and strong I build my verandah, fit to sit a king. Look at how it shade off from the sun.” She gasp for a breath, just a little breath of air. “No glare to beware, no open sky to trouble you, only sweet breeze to dance over your face, to soothe you as you lie and daydream. Ain’t you would like me to carry you out there to lounge off in the wicker chair, and warm your bones little bit, just sit and contemplate your estate? It nice and warm outside today. You could hear the gully hens-them singing cocorico, and the guinea lizards-them just a-relax in the sun hot and drowse. It nice out there for true, like a day in heaven. Nothing to cause you danger. Nothing to cause you harm. I could carry you out there in my own two arm, and put you nice and comfortable in the wicker chair, with two pillow at your back for you to rest back on, a king on he own throne. Ain’t you would like that?”

Dry Bone smile. The tightness in she chest ease up little bit. “All right, Tan-Tan. You getting to know how to treat me good. Take me outside. But you have to watch out after me. No make no open sky catch me. Remember, when you pick me up, you pick up trouble! If you ain’t protect me, you go be sorry.”

“Yes, Dry Bone.” She pick he up. He heavy like a heart attack from all the food he done eat already. She carry he out onto the verandah and put he in the wicker chair with two pillow at he back.

Dry Bone lean he dead-looking self back in the chair with a peaceful smile on he face. “Yes, I like this. Maybe I go get you to bring me my food out here from now on.”

Tan-Tan give he some cool sorrel drink in a cup to tide he over till she finish cook, then she go back inside the hut to make the next meal. And as she cooking, she singing soft-soft,

And she only watching at the sky through the one little window in the hut. Suppose Master Johncrow ain’t come?

“Woman, the food ready yet?” Dry Bone call out.

“Nearly ready, Dry Bone.” Is a black shadow that she see in the sky? It moving? It flying their way? No. Just a leaf blowing in the wind. “The chicken done stew!” she called out to the verandah. “I making the dumpling now!” And she hum she tune, willing Master Johncrow to hear.

A-what that? Him come? No, only one baby raincloud scudding by. “Dumpling done! I frying the banana!”

“What a way you taking long today,” grumbled Dry Bone.

Yes! Coasting in quiet-quiet on wings the span of a big man, Master Johncrow the corbeau-bird float through the sky. From her window Tan-Tan see him land on the banister rail right beside Dry Bone, so soft that the duppy man ain’t even self hear he. She heart start dancing in she chest, light and airy like a masque band flag. Tan-Tan tiptoe out to the front door to watch the drama.

Dry Bone still have he eyes closed. Master Johncrow stretch he long, picky-picky wattle neck and look right into Dry Bone face, tender as a lover. He black tongue snake out to lick one side of he pointy beak, to clean out the corner of one eye. “Ah, Dry Bone,” he say, and he voice was the wind in dry season, “so long I been waiting for this day.”

Dry Bone open up he eye. Him two eyes make four with Master Johncrow own. He scream and try to scramble out the chair, but he belly get too heavy for he skin-and-bone limbs. “Don’t touch me!” he shout. “When you pick me up, you pick up trouble! Tan-Tan, come and chase this buzzard away!” But Tan-Tan ain’t move.

Striking like a serpent, Master Johncrow trap one of Dry Bone arm in he beak. Tan-Tan hear the arm snap like twig, and Dry Bone scream again. “You can’t pick me up! You picking up trouble!” But Master Johncrow haul Dry Bone out into the yard by he break arm, then he fasten onto the nape of Dry Bone neck with he claws. He leap into the air, dragging Dry Bone up with him. The skin-and-bone man fall into the sky in truth.

As Master Johncrow flap away over the trees with he prize, Tan-Tan hear he chuckle. “Ah, Dry Bone, you dead thing, you! Trouble sweet to me like the yolk that did sustain me. Is trouble you swallow to make that belly so fat? Ripe like a watermelon. I want you to try to give me plenty, plenty trouble. I want you to make it last a long time.”

Tan-Tan sit down in the wicker chair on the verandah and watch them flying away till she couldn’t hear Dry Bone screaming no more and Master Johncrow was only a black speck in the sky. She whisper to sheself:

Tan-Tan went inside and look at she little home. It wouldn’t be plenty trouble to make another window to let in more light. Nothing would be trouble after living with the trouble of Dry Bone. She go make the window tomorrow, and the day after that, she go re-cane the break-seat chair.

Tan-Tan pick up she kerosene lamp and went outside to look in the bush for some scraper grass to polish the rust off it. That would give she something to do while she think about what Master Johncrow had tell she. Maybe she would even go find this Papa Bois, oui?

Tan-Tan’s first day in the daddy tree, her birthday, her first day as an adult, the douen family realised that something in her urine was poison to the food grubs. After she’d pissed in the pot all the grubs-them had floated up to the top of the effluvia and died, bloated and discoloured. Like them hadn’t been nasty-looking enough already. Benta contemplated the mess. Tan-Tan felt to die from shame.

*From now on,* Benta said, *I go take you down to the ground to do your business.*

“Nanny bless, Benta; ain’t that is plenty trouble?”

*Trouble yes; me and Chichibud know is trouble we would get for picking you up. Don’t pay it no mind.*

That night, Benta gave her a pallet stuffed with dead leaves to sleep on. It was comfortable, but sometime in the night Tan-Tan felt something in her hair. Half asleep, she put her hand up to brush it away. She woke up one time when she felt a tiny body wriggling out from between her fingers. Her screams brought the whole nest to see is what do her.

“Is only a house cousin, child,” Chichibud told her. “Them like to sleep warm against we bodies.”

House cousin. Flying lizard. Vermin. Tan-Tan asked Benta for a piece of cloth. She wrapped up her hair tight-tight, and that is the only way she got any more sleep that night. But the dreams, the dreams. Antonio beating her, flailing at her legs with the buckle end of the belt. She grabbing the belt to hit him back, only the belt had become a cutlass as she swung down with it. She slashed off his pissle with one stroke. He hadn’t been naked before. The bloody tube of meat dropped to the ground and turned into one of the maggots from the douen pisshole; a big one. “Eat it,” Antonio ordered her in a voice like the dead. “It good for you, you just like your mother.” She felt his hand on the back of her neck, pressing her head closer and closer to the writhing pissle on the ground.

She woke up sweating, to the sound of tree frogs singing out sunrise. She felt unreal. Is which world she living in; this daddy tree, or the nightmare daddy world?

Benta flew her down the forest floor. Tan-Tan’s belly still didn’t like the feeling of dropping down through the daddy tree branches. It was a relief when they slid smoothly into a corridor made by two of the giant buttress roots of the daddy tree, at the foot of one of its massive trunks. The root corridor was almost a storey high. Tan-Tan held up her lantern against the darkness, wishing for a flashlight from back home, Toussaint home. She slid off Benta’s back. Her alpagat sandals-them sunk ankle deep in leaf mould and dry twigs. The buttress roots took a long, low slope to the ground, gradual enough to run up them if she had felt to.

*Mind where you step.*

It was humid here on the ground, not like the leaf-rustling breeziness of up in the daddy tree. The heat weighed on Tan-Tan. It was dark. And damp. It was like breathing in warm water. Sweat was already running down between her breasts. Her thick hair was holding in the heat, twisting into locks in the dampness. Shy of Benta’s eyes, she took the long walk round to the other side of one of the buttress roots to do her business. No such thing as paper. And when her period came? Blood cloths from Benta, she supposed. She wiped herself with some dead leaves, wincing as they scraped her. Benta took her back up in the daddy tree.

That morning, Benta and Chichibud’s family foraged for their breakfast. Abitefa climbed onto Benta’s back and the two of them went winging off through the daddy tree to get grubs from a neighbour to replace the ones that Tan-Tan had poisoned. Chichibud gave Tan-Tan a carry pouch woven out of vine. He and Zake took her out into the daddy tree and showed her where to find tree frog nests to raid. Zake shyly tried out his Anglopatwa on her, pointing out edible shoots and the best hand and foot holds for climbing. When they found tree frog eggs, Chichibud and Zake just sucked out the raw contents from the shells right there, embryos and all. Tan-Tan felt queasy watching them.

“Oonuh have any way to cook in your home?” she asked. “I could take some of these eggs back and make a omelette.”

“We have a coal pot in the kitchen, doux-doux, but we don’t use it plenty. We can’t make flames catch the daddy tree. You could use it today, but you go have to learn to eat your food raw. It better for you so; you could taste the life in it.”

She preferred her food good and dead. Trying to keep her find of eggs safe in their pouch, she climbed clumsily down towards the level where Chichibud and Benta had their nest. Two-three douen pickney saw her struggling. They consulted with each other then leapt into the air to swoop past her on their wing flaps, laughing shu-shu and tapping her on the head as they rushed by. She yelled at them to stop. They didn’t listen. Twice she nearly lost her balance. When she finally reached to the nest level most of the eggs were broken. Their slime dripped through the carry sack down her leg. She was trembling with anger and effort. She went inside to climb the rope to the eating room. Three eggs survived that jaunt. She had to pick out yolky, budding masses from inside them before she could finally make herself something to eat. Tree frogs were small animals. The omelette she got from the three eggs would have just filled a tablespoon. There was no salt.

She chewed down the omelette determinedly—she’d burnt it, and Chichibud had made her put out the fire. She wasn’t going to go hungry all the time, oui? She couldn’t bring herself to eat living beasts or compost grubs that grew in douen people’s mess, but there must be a way to cook for herself. She spat out a sharp piece of tree frog shell.

The forest floor; she could go down there and forage and cook what she found, the way Chichibud had shown her and Antonio their first day on New Half-Way Tree. She was going to be going down into the bush regular anyway. Best make some use of the trip while she’d be down there.

Could she make the climb down by herself? She got her knife and carry pouch, found a lantern and a stoppered container into which she poured the lantern’s oil. There were matches—that new creation from the settlement of Bounding Makak—beside the lantern. Oil, matches and lantern went into the carry pouch, which she slung across her body.

Outside, she contemplated the daddy tree trunk nearest Chichibud and they’s nest. She’d climbed it today, a little bit. It had been hard work, but she would get used to it. She set her hands and feet in the first set of holds and started down. Douen people were only stopping what they were doing to stare at her. No-one greeted her, no-one spoke. She clambered down past a douen man climbing up the other way. They did an awkward dance of exchanging hand and foot holds. “Tallpeople,” he muttered as he edged round her. “Chichibud and Benta bring misfortune ’pon we heads when they bring you here.” He was far above her before she even thought to reply.

He right, said the Bad Tan-Tan voice. You is a trial, you is a wicked crosses for people to bear.

Why that hinte over there watching at her? Scrutinizing her business. Tan-Tan waved mock-cheerily at the douen woman and skinned her teeth in a pretend grin. The hinte flew away. Tan-Tan kept climbing. More douen people came out of their nests to ogle. Anger heat rose in Tan-Tan, took over her voice and tongue. She stopped where she was and shouted out to them:

“Morning, sir, morning, ma’am, howdy lizard pickney. Oonuh keeping well this fine hot day? The maggots growing good in the shit? Eh? It have plenty lizards climbing in your food? Good. I glad.” She waited. Some of them went back into their homes, others found other reasons to be busy. They dispersed. The rhetorical words had stirred the Robber Queen deep in Tan-Tan, quelled the Bad Tan-Tan voice a little. Nobody else stared at her for the rest of the climb down, except one or two irrepressible pickney. She didn’t know how the douens got word to one another to leave her alone and she didn’t care. The Robber Queen had triumphed.

The climb down was a good half an hour of skinned-up knees and blistered hands before she reached the forest floor again. Legs and arms trembling with the effort she’d made, she fumbled in the dark for her lantern. She spilled much of the oil, but finally managed to get it lit. She stepped out from between the buttress roots into the womb-close dark.

It had a jumbie bush right in front of her. She edged round the sharp poison thorns. The thorns caught light her lantern threw on the bush, created a warning glow of fuzz on the underside of each leaf. And there, not far off, was jumbie dumb cane. The forest was thick all round her; between foliage and the dark she could scarcely see more than a few metres in any direction. The sombre bush swallowed her lantern’s weak light. She just hoped it was enough light to keep away mako jumbies, yes.

A straggly passion fruit vine hugged on tight-tight to a dead tree, using it as a ladder up to the sun. So much Earth-type flora the exiles had invaded this world with already.

She could see a path leading off into the distance, but that would be douen-made. She didn’t want to see any of them right now. She went in the opposite direction. She heard a crackling noise like feet scuffling the dead leaves on the forest floor. She froze, peering round her into the darkness. Is two trees that, growing close together? Or is the legs of a mako jumbie? No, must be trees, she could see the leaves on them. And is what the hell just moved at the corner of her eyesight? Oh. A manicou rat humping along a low branch. Tan-Tan relaxed a little at the sight of the small, familiar animal. It looked plump and nice. She wished she knew how to trap. Roast manicou was some of the sweetest meat in the world.

It happened too fast for her to calculate. A step forward, onto one end of a long piece of dead wood hidden under leaf mould. The other end levered up from the forest floor. Yapping, a ground puppy leapt out from under it: two handfuls of dirty yellow bristle hair; teeth imbedded in it. Red maw, ring of fangs all round it. Tan-Tan screamed, flailed away. The ground puppy bounced off her knee, slashing briefly at her thigh as it went. It ran off into the darkness on all twelve legs.

“Shit. Is what the rass ever make my people name that thing a ‘puppy,’ eh? Blasted thing look like a hair ball with teeth.” Jittery with fright, Tan-Tan knelt to inspect the bite it had given her. A circle of tooth marks in her knee was bleeding slightly. Ground puppy bites could fester. She would ask Chichibud for something to put on it.

This close to the ground, she could see other things scuttling out from where she’d disturbed the piece of dead wood. A handful of red crablike insects. Something else that favoured a bright green leaf with a million tiny legs running, running, running under it. The way its body undulated made Tan-Tan’s stomach writhe in sympathetic motion. It ran up a tall, thin tree, turned sideways, and slid its body under an edge of bark.

She just wanted to be somewhere safe, somewhere familiar, where people looked and spoke like her and she could stand to eat the food. She crouched on the ground like that for a while, breathing, remembering when she was a girl-pickney and she’d had a home.

Her belly growled. Memories weren’t going to fill it. She stood. Balancing on one foot at a time, she took off her alpagat slippers and shook them out: she didn’t feel to have no red-crab thing or million-leg leaf-thing clambering about in her footwear, oui? What had made her think she could come down here wearing only canvas rope slippers? Stupid bitch, said her internal voice. Maybe Chichibud and Benta could bring her back some hiking boots next time they went into a prison colony to trade.

She found a long stick to probe the forest floor with as she walked. She’d learned her lesson, she took her time, only putting her feet down once she was sure there was nothing dangerous where she wanted to step. She found some nice big mushrooms and put them in her carry pouch. Little farther on she spied a weedy halwa tree, small and struggling in the shade of the daddy tree. Her mouth sprung water at the thought of the sweet gizada-smelling fruit. In two-twos she was up in the tree. Nanny was finally smiling on her; there were two small but ripe fruit. On the ground again she cleared a space in the leaf mould. It went down calf-deep and she didn’t want to think about the disgusting things she flushed from it. One of them had looked like a dried sack of bones, oui. She used fallen twigs to build a fire and roasted the halwa fruit. She ate until her belly swelled, baked the mushrooms over the remaining coals. She would have them and the remaining halwa fruit for dinner.

Time to climb back up the daddy tree.

She couldn’t find it. In the engulfing darkness she couldn’t make out any of its trunks. Is which way she had come from? She couldn’t remember. Maybe from over there so? She took a few steps that way, dead leaves crackling underfoot. She tripped over a log. It hadn’t been there before, she was certain. Is not this way she had come from. She turned a next way, peering into the dark in front of her. She walked one hundred paces, two hundred. Still no daddy tree trunk.

“Chichibud,” she whispered. That twist-up vine looping from one jumbie bush to the next; had she passed that before? She couldn’t remember. That hollowed-out trunk? That waist-high fan of glowing purple fungus? Her head was completely turned round. She didn’t know is which way she’d come from or which way to go. She couldn’t stop the whimpering sound coming from her throat. She stumbled off to the left, poking the stick into the ground in front of her as she went. Still nothing didn’t look right. She ducked at a rustling sound in the leaves above her head. She looked up. A dead leaf was falling, falling slowly to the ground to add itself to the mulch on the forest floor. A big leaf. A red leaf. A juicy leaf. The whimper almost managed to turn itself into a little laugh.

“Cho. I too fool-fool. Ain’t is daddy tree branches right there above me so?” The daddy tree was wide as a village and she’d been under it all the time.

She held the lantern high, studied the pattern of the daddy tree branches above her head, the way they rayed inwards. Where the branches met, she’d find one of the daddy tree trunks. It was so simple. She headed in the direction that the branches pointed. When she saw the buttress roots of the main trunk looming out of the darkness she nearly laughed out loud with relief.

Chichibud was there! Lying along one of the buttress roots, hind claws digging into the daddy tree wood, waiting for her. Tan-Tan called out joyfully to her friend.

“I name Kret,” he said. “Tallpeople could never tell we apart.”

Kret. The one who disapproved of her being there. So he could speak creole. Tan-Tan stayed where she was. Kret’s muzzle hung open, sharp douen fangs gleaming in the half-light. He jumped down and came towards her. Tan-Tan grasped her stick firmly in her hand, ready to defend herself.

“Girl, you making enough noise to give the dirt and all headache,” he said. “Is what you doing down here?”

Tan-Tan held out her carry pouch for him to see.

“Is what you have in there?” he asked.

She wasn’t mookoomslav enough to get close to show him. “Mushrooms.”

He tasted the air. “And roast halwa. Like you too good for the blessings of the daddy tree. You coulda find those things growing up there.”

She could have. It wouldn’t have suited, she’d wanted to be by herself. And right now her business was how to get past Kret.

“Benta bring me down here,” she lied. She pointed off somewhere into the blackness. “She over there. She tell me to come here and wait for she.”

Kret looked where she was pointing. He twitched his snout up in a strange way, like a dog would if it were barking. But he was making no noise.

“Liard pickney,” he said. How did he know?

He jumped back onto the buttress root. “Cho. Me ain’t business with disrespectful tallpeople. Play down here if you want, me wouldn’t bawl if mako jumbie take you.” Smoothly as a snake he headed back up to the light.

When she couldn’t see him any longer, she began the climb up herself.

*Poison,* Benta declared when she’d seen what Tan-Tan proposed to eat for dinner. With her beak she flipped the mushrooms out of one of the window holes. Poison.

“Shit.” Tan-Tan blew cool air on her hands where the climb had rubbed the skin off. She could still feel the trembling in her thighs from the ascent back up to the nest. “I can’t eat the way allyou does eat, I can’t move about the daddy tree the way allyou does do it, I can’t even take a piss without it causing somebody some botheration!”

Chichibud said, “We don’t mind. You is guest. You need to give your body and your mind time to heal after what Antonio do to you.”

No, not that. Talk about something else. “But none of the other douen want me here.”

“Old Res say you could stay, so none of them go do nothing, no matter how much them chat. Don’t worry your head about that. The pickney-them just mischievous. Them will tease you, but don’t pay them no mind.”

“And what I go do for food? I sorry too bad, Chichibud, but I can’t eat all the raw egg and live centipede allyou does eat.”

Of all the things to do, Chichibud laughed. “I know. Tallpeople does remove all the life from all their food before they eat it, but them still ain’t satisfy with that. Them have to burn it too, and make it deader than dead. None of we douen understand how allyou could taste anything what you eat after allyou done burning everything to coal. I sorry, darling, but we have to be careful about fire in the daddy tree. We don’t cook plenty up here.”

Benta warbled, *You could go down with Abitefa.*

“How you mean?” Tan-Tan strained to understand the warbling patwa.

*Is Abitefa alone time, last season and this next two. She leave she friends and she testing sheself every day in the bush. Go with she. The climbing go be good practice for you, and spending time with tallpeople is good practice for she for when she become a packbird. The two of allyou find and cook food while you down there. Abitefa go take care of you. So you go be spending time away from the douen-them who ain’t easy with having you here. Understand?*

It could work, maybe. “Yes, Benta; I understand. That sound good.”

But when Abitefa came for supper and Benta repeated the plan, the young hinte made a growling sound. Benta hissed something back; Abitefa spat out her reply in whistles sharp like glass. Benta screeched, stamping one foot on the ground. Her wings filled out one time. She beat them through the air, knocking one of Tan-Tan’s halwa fruit off the table. It broke open on the floor, spraying Tan-Tan’s ankles-them with the brown jelly inside.

“Chichibud, what them saying?” Tan-Tan asked.

“Not to worry. Abitefa go do what we tell she.”

Chichibud spoke to Benta and Abitefa slowly, calmly. Abitefa continued to protest. Chichibud and Benta cut her off. Benta cawed out once more. It sounded like a command.

“That settle that,” Chichibud said. “Abitefa go take you down in the bush whenever she go.”

Abitefa was making quiet skirling noises. It was clear she wasn’t looking forward to playing babysitter.

That night Tan-Tan filled up her belly on salad and leftover roast halwa fruit. Come time to sleep, she banded up her head again with the cloth Benta had give her. She curled up on the pallet and stared into the dark, praying for a peaceful sleep.

Prayers didn’t do no good, oui. Antonio chased her all night.

Abitefa jumped from the lowest branch of the daddy tree, about six metres up. She fell like a bullet, dipping her backwards-knees to land silently on the forest floor. She hadn’t even self jiggled the two kerosene lamps she was carrying. Tan-Tan clambered down to a buttress root, tried to balance along its top, lost her balance and slid the rest of the way. She landed braps on the ground, leaves tangling up in her hair. Abitefa barely even threw a glance her way. The hinte lit the two lamps-them, pushed one at Tan-Tan, then just turned her back and strode off into the bush. Her step was quiet like breeze passing. Tan-Tan struggled to her feet and rushed to follow Abitefa, crunching loud-loud through dead leaves with each step.

“Cho!” she muttered to herself. “You would think say me is the one with the foot big like shovel.” Somehow she managed to get her lamp lit as she scurried. She caught up with Abitefa standing by the passion fruit vine Tan-Tan had noticed the day before. The vine was heavy with ripe fruit, filling the air with their sweet, tart smell. Yesterday it hadn’t even had blossoms.

“What a way things does grow fast here,” she remarked to Abitefa. The hinte didn’t reply. Tan-Tan put down her lantern to free her hands. She picked all the ripe passion fruit she could reach. With her teeth she broke the smooth yellow rind of the last one. She sucked out the fragrant, tangy juice and swallowed the tiny black seeds. She thought of Toussaint.

She opened her eyes. Abitefa was gone. She couldn’t see her in the swallowing gloom, couldn’t hear her. She called her name. No answer.

She wandered round in the dark, peering through the circle of light from the lantern, calling for Abitefa, trying to bite back the panic that was fighting in her throat, threatening to spill out her mouth in a scream.

Calm down, Tan-Tan, she said to herself.

Stupid, said Bad Tan-Tan. You go dead from stupid one day. Cool down, girl. Remember what Chichibud tell you, your first day on New Half-Way Tree. How you does survive in the bush?

She stopped and stood still, calling back to mind Chichibud’s lessons. You have to learn to use all your senses; is that what he say.

Tan-Tan looked all round her, turning in a complete circle. No Abitefa. All she could hear was the rustling of the beasts and insects in the bush, going their own quiet ways. Nothing to taste that might help her, nothing to touch. Feeling like an idiot, she put her nose in the air and sniffed. And is what that you doing now? jeered Bad Tan-Tan. A chop-head chicken would have more sense. Nothing to smell but clean air. And the passion fruit juice on her hands. Huh. Maybe smell could work after all. Tan-Tan closed her eyes and drew in another long, deep breath. She smelled the salve that Benta had put on her bites and bruises this morning—like pine and mint. A heavy-sweet smell wafted through the air from over to her right, where the halwa tree was dropping its overripe fruit. Yesterday they were just ripening. The slight breeze was bringing her stories. She let out the breath, sucked in another. So, so faint, the odour of decay. She looked to where it was coming from. A thick clump of browny-pink fungus was growing, perhaps feeding on the body of a small dead beast.

And then she caught a thin thread of scent that didn’t quite belong in the bush. Is what that? She could almost recognise it…

Tan-Tan walked towards where the scent was coming from. It got a little stronger. What, what? Some kinda chemical. Ah. She smiled. She blew out her lantern, tiptoed as quietly as she could towards the smell. Just a few more metres, and round that big rockstone with the blue moss shining on it…

Abitefa was sitting on the ground, back against the big rockstone, using her teeth and wingfingertips to weave something out of vine. She barely glanced up when Tan-Tan stepped round the boulderstone. She’d probably heard Tan-Tan coming through the bush. Tan-Tan played it cool. She sat down beside Abitefa and pulled off one shoe. She shook a million-leg leaf-thing out of it and said, “Your lantern go out just now, ain’t? I smell the matches when you strike them.”

Abitefa’s shoulders shook with laughter. What the rass…? Oh, so is game she think it is? Tan-Tan coulda get eat by mako jumbie out there by herself in the dark, and this ugly ratbat think say is funny! Furious, Tan-Tan shoved Abitefa’s shoulder: “Bitch! You think is joke! Eh?”

One time, Abitefa rolled to her feet and crouched to face Tan-Tan, stretching out her nearly-wingflaps in a fighting stance, flexing her sharp claw tips-them. Abitefa made a threatening noise in her throat. But Bad, heedless Tan-Tan had come to the fore. She leapt at Abitefa, dragging her to the ground. The two of them crashed round in the leaf mould, each one trying to land a good blow. Tan-Tan boxed Abitefa in her ugly mouth; Abitefa bit Tan-Tan’s hand. Tan-Tan felt the skin tear, but rage flared higher than caution. She trapped one of Abitefa’s wingflap arms under one knee and slapped her face again. Abitefa screeched and drew back one of her big bird foot-them. She kicked Tan-Tan solid in her chest, sending her flying to land up against the big rockstone.

The blow made Tan-Tan dizzy. She tried to get up to go after Abitefa again, but her legs were wobbly beneath her. She felt her body inclining down, down to the ground. Is like it took forever till she was stretched out on the forest floor. Her head touched the leaf mould bed, soft like dreams.

Water trickled into Tan-Tan’s mouth, slightly acidic; daddy tree leaf juice. Before she came good into her senses a pungent smell jumped into her nose. She coughed and tried to sit up. Too-long fingers were touching her face. She grabbed at Abitefa’s arm and pushed it away. “Rahtid, woman; is what that you put under my nose?”

Dangling from Abitefa’s claw tip it had a crushed million-leg leaf-thing.

“Cho,” Tan-Tan said. “I never like them things from first I see one. What a stench! Is a smelling-salts bottle on legs, oui?”

Abitefa warbled something at her and moved back in close. Tan-Tan looked at her warily in the juddering lamplight. Slowly Abitefa reached towards her, put gentle hands on the back of her head. She was checking Tan-Tan’s head where she’d bucked up on the rockstone.

“I all right,” Tan-Tan told her, pushing the hands away. Abitefa settled back on her shovel feet, making worried cooing noises. Tan-Tan frowned, sat for a while with her thoughts. Then she had to smile.

“I guess I kinda ask for this, eh? Who tell me to pick a fight with a four-foot ratbat?” She laughed. “Daddy always tell me I was too much of a tomboy.” Antonio. Suddenly she felt serious again. “Anyhow, Abitefa, I sorry, eh? You understand?”

*Yes.*

She rarely said anything to Tan-Tan. It came out more like a trill than words, but Tan-Tan understood. Abitefa rose to her feet. She sang something at Tan-Tan; could have been an apology or a curse, Tan-Tan didn’t know, but it was softly spoken, and with no threatening movements.

“No problem.” Hinte speech sounded so much like nannysong. On an impulse, Tan-Tan sang at Abitefa the Anansi Web’s phrase for “sunny and fine,” the way Nanny responded most often when asked about the weather. Cockpit County people would sometimes hum the song snatch to mean, “everything all right between me and you.” But Abitefa didn’t respond, just stared at her. Tan-Tan shrugged. Her carry pouch was lying beneath her, the passion fruits broken. She offered a crushed one to Abitefa. The hinte ripped it apart, shook out the seeds and the pulp and chewed up and swallowed the tough yellow rind. Tan-Tan giggled. Abitefa picked up the thing she’d been weaving when Tan-Tan had located her; a next carry pouch, plenty bigger than the one Tan-Tan had, with a sling to put it over one shoulder. Abitefa gave it to her with a warble.

“For me?”

*Yes.*

“Nanny bless. Let we go hunting then, nuh?”

Abitefa led her through the bush. She showed Tan-Tan a thing like a badjack ant but big as a berry, and the nest it made in a type of small, weedy tree that dripped sticky sap. Dozens of the grey ant-things were running round in the sticky cluster of bubbles that was their nest. Abitefa rolled a daddy tree leaf into a cone and stuck the open end right into the sap nest. One time, one set of the ants ran right up into the leaf cone to investigate. Abitefa tore off the closed tip of the leaf and emptied the ants straight into her mouth, chasing runaways with her tongue. She handed Tan-Tan a leaf to try it with.

“No thanks.”

They walked on. Suddenly Abitefa put a hand over Tan-Tan’s mouth, stopping her and muffling her voice same time.

“Wha—” But Abitefa just clamped down harder. Tan-Tan looked where Abitefa was pointing.

The beast was entering a clearing where tinselled sunlight made it visible. It looked like an armoured tank. High to Tan-Tan’s shoulder, wide so like a truck, covered in overlapping scales each the size of a dinner plate. A snout with six tusks poked forward. It moved slowly through the bush, tramping right over anything in its way. Behind it, it dragged a massive tail, as big around as Tan-Tan’s two thighs put together. The tail had a morningstar of spikes at its tip. Tan-Tan was never coming down here alone again. The monster disturbed some of the undergrowth with its passing, and a ground puppy leapt out yapping and landed on its tail. It must have found somewhere sensitive to bite, for a shudder went through the tank beast’s tail then its whole body before the monster slammed its tail to one side, smashing it into a tree. The spikes left finger-deep gouges in the tree trunk. The beast bent its head to root through the underbrush. Abitefa pulled Tan-Tan in another direction, motioning to her to walk quietly.

When she judged that they were out of earshot Tan-Tan whispered to Abitefa, “I never see something terrible so in all my born days! Is what that was?” Abitefa’s response sounded like a hacking cough. Yes, that was a good name for the monster.

Abitefa took them out of the overhang of the daddy tree, into the bush proper. There was a definite path; a lot of douens went this way. Maybe they were going to a human settlement? Tan-Tan got excited at the thought of seeing people again, until she remembered why she’d left Junjuh Town.

She heard the noise before they reached a next clearing; a banging and a clanging and a pounding, like somebody hitting metal against metal. A blast of heat washed over them. “Mama Nanny wash me down! You mean it could get hotter?” The sound was familiar. Yes, they came into sunlight to see a makeshift foundry inside the wide clearing in the middle of the bush, a grey cement dome of a building with big round window-holes all round it. Tan-Tan frowned. Those were douens she could see through the man-height windows; she thought they didn’t know anything about building with cement or forging metal. But is metalworking they were doing for true. Tan-Tan watched at all those douens and them working obeah magic with hammer and fire, turning lumps of rockstone into shining metal. Perched on a log outside the foundry, a douen woman was lashing a sheet of weaving into an iron frame. With beak and claws she tightened the lashing, stretching the piece of cloth into the frame. The mud-coloured wad of cloth pulled taut to reveal a story in pictures: a figure walking all bent over like the weight of the world was weighing the person down. Some kind of small beast clung to its back. Flying above the two was a big bird or bat circling, circling in the air. The hinte gave one last pull of the lashing and the frame gave way, weak joints warping it into a diamond shape. The hinte let it fall with a clang. Two douens came hopping out to see what had happened. Chichibud and Benta. Tan-Tan ran towards them, Abitefa hopping beside her.

“Chichibud! Benta! You wouldn’t believe what we just see in the bush!”

The other hinte shrieked and hurried into the foundry. Chichibud barked angrily at Abitefa, who sat back on her heels and ducked her snout into her breast. Benta stomped. Tan-Tan didn’t pay them no mind. Excitedly she described the mako tank-like beast. Benta warbled a question at Abitefa. The young hinte responded with the cough-hack word. Benta cocked an eye at Tan-Tan and said, *‘Rolling calf.’ That is what tallpeople does call it.*

Rolling calf! Another anansi story folk tale come to life. That last Jonkanoo Season on Toussaint, when Tan-Tan had gone for parang with the Cockpit County Jubilante Mummers. Mummers go on foot, is the tradition. And as they walk the distance between house and house in the dark, is the tradition to pass the time by telling scary stories. The rolling calf was a giant duppy bull with eyes of red flame. Its body was wrapped round in chains. It snorted fire and pawed the ground. The rolling calf left behind smoking tracks of burnt earth. If one only caught you outside late at night where you had no business to be, it would turn into a big ball of flame and chase you, chase you, chase you till you dropped dead of fright and exhaustion. Walking in the dark with the Mummers, the little Tan-Tan had hoped say the rolling calf understood that them had business out there, that them wasn’t up to no good. She had grabbed hold of Ione’s hand tight-tight.

Chichibud said, “Rolling calf bad-minded for so. Them does attack just out of spite. Only a master hunter could kill them.”

“How, with all that armour?”

“Them have a soft spot under them jaw. You have to jook a machète up under the jaw into the brain. If you miss you likely won’t live to try again. You see why we ain’t want you coming into the bush alone? You keeping your lantern light to keep away the mako jumbie-them?”

With her beak Benta rummaged in the hard-pack earth. She picked up a splinter of kindling and handed it to Tan-Tan. Without a word, Tan-Tan used the splinter to relight her lantern from Abitefa’s own.

“And now our own-way pickney show you a next douen secret,” said Chichibud.

“This foundry,” Tan-Tan replied.

*Yes. We trying to teach weselves, for tallpeople refuse to teach we.*

“Why you want to learn it, when you could trade for it with we?”

Chichibud stared at her for a long time. Tan-Tan fidgeted, unused to her friend scrutinizing her like a stranger. Finally he said, “What you could make with fire and metal?”

“How you mean? Plenty things. Hooks and so for hanging things up. Baby buggies. Frames like that hinte was trying to string…”

“Guns. Bombs. Cars. Aeroplanes. Them is all words I learn from tallpeople.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Is part of the reason why Abitefa come down here with you. She was supposed to keep you from learning this thing, not to lead you right to it. Stupid, defiant pickney. Tan-Tan, if douens don’t learn tallpeople tricks, oonuh will use them ’pon we.”

“Don’t talk stupidness!”

He moved closer. Little though he was, she sensed the easy strength of him. He wasn’t someone to defy. “Girl child, believe what you want to believe. We see how allyou does act, even towards your own, and we preparing weself.”

Tan-Tan thought of the dogs that One-Eye had set on her, how he and her friend Melonhead had hunted her in the bush. We see how allyou does act, even towards your own.

*We going away for two-three days,* Benta chirruped. *Abitefa go look after you.* Abitefa remained with her snout burrowed sullenly against her breast.

“Away? Where? Why?” Tan-Tan felt a little panicky at the thought of them not being around.

*Trade,* Benta replied. *Over there.* She swung her head to indicate where she meant.

“With who?”

“Tallpeople village, not far from here,” Chichibud answered. “We have goods to deliver in return for lamp oil and some seeds them have that we never see before. When oonuh climb the half-way tree, oonuh does bring some wonders with you for true.”

But Tan-Tan wasn’t paying no mind to all that. “A village? A human village? I coming with you.” Her heart started to beat fast at the thought of seeing people, of hearing speech she wouldn’t have to strain to understand.

*No, doux-doux,* Benta murmured soft-soft. *Too much danger.*

Resentment spewed out of Tan-Tan like bile. “How you mean, dangerous? You just think I going to be too much trouble, ain’t? I bet you would take Abitefa.”

A douen passing by them with a length of raw iron stopped at that. “Tallpeople pickney, wings ain’t even start for sprout, what you know about wisdom? Look at Abitefa. What you think allyou people would do if them see something that look to them like half douen, half packbird, that can’t talk to them in them own language, that big enough to defend itself if them attack? Eh? If Abitefa only set foot in tallpeople lands, she dead. Is so allyou does do anything that frighten you.”

She didn’t care. “But why I can’t go? I is human, just like them.”

Chichibud replied, “The danger is you, not them. We can’t take the risk that you tell them about we.”

Tan-Tan felt cold. They would never let her go.

Through the days of foraging in the bush, a friendship sprang up between Tan-Tan and Abitefa. Abitefa taught her how to trap small beasts; gave her lessons in yelling and stick-throwing to startle prey or frighten off the bigger beasts-them; how to smoke meat. Tan-Tan tried to learn to speak as the hinte did, but the sounds were too liquid and complex for her mouth to form. Abitefa would only jiggle with laughter when Tan-Tan tried. When she was in the flowertop bath up in the nest, Tan-Tan would watch at the reflection of her face in the water, pursing up her lips-them and skinning up her teeth-them, trying to trill like a hinte. She rolled her tongue into a tube, she chirped, she whistled; all she do, her words came out dead and flat. Tan-Tan singing hinte favoured a lonely tree frog croaking in the darkness. She got so frustrated trying make the sounds come out right! She started to wish she had a beak like Benta’s, even a snout-turning-to-beak like Abitefa’s. When she listened to mother and daughter warbling and cooing at each other she felt invisible, like she didn’t have a mouth to speak for people to hear her.

Abitefa and tallpeople speech was a next story, though. In no time Abitefa was fluent. She and Tan-Tan got along well. And Chichibud and Benta had an easier time of it with the rest of the daddy tree people when Tan-Tan was out of sight. Abitefa and Tan-Tan spent most of their days together down in the bush.

Tan-Tan elbowed Abitefa aside on the daddy tree trunk. No time to explain. She slid down a buttress root fast-fast, jumped to the ground, holding her hand to her mouth. She sank to her knees just in time to spit up the halwa fruit and cold roast frog she had eaten for breakfast up in the nest. The sour taste burned the back of her throat. She made some more saliva to spit the taste out of her mouth with. Then she cotched up against the buttress root and just stared off into the distance.

Abitefa dropped down beside her, second eyelids still flickering in surprise. She handed Tan-Tan a lantern. Tan-Tan glanced up, took it, glanced away.

“Hot down here,” she said, as if that explained what had just happened. She took a breath, let it out slowly. “And every day I come down, I does feel it more. Like my body making more heat.”

*You sick?* Abitefa asked.

Tan-Tan dashed her eyes clear with the back of one hand. “Not sick; pregnant. I ain’t see my courses for a month now. Oh, God; I making baby for my own father.” Again. She leaned back against the daddy tree root. “What I go do? Tell me what?” A bitter laugh broke from her throat: “And what I go call it, eh? Son or brother?” She looked at her friend. “I can’t give birth to this thing, Abitefa. Is a monster. I rip one of the brutes out of me once, I could do it twice.”

Abitefa’s arms were more like wingflaps now, feathered and longer. The feathers puffed out in shock. *Why? You make egg, you must lay it; is a gift from the daddy tree.*

Gift. That squeezed another bitter laugh from Tan-Tan’s lips. “We don’t lay,” she corrected Abitefa. “We does push out we babies live and screaming. And this ain’t no gift, is a curse.”

*No egg? Oho,* Abitefa said, peering at Tan-Tan’s stomach. *So is that why I can’t see no egg… skin round the baby.*

Tan-Tan goggled at her. “See it? See it how? What you talking about?”

In the whiney voice that meant she was puzzled Abitefa replied, *Same way I see when a halwa fruit good to eat.*

“I don’t understand.”

*I call out to it. Little bit like the cry when I want to catch small meat. I just call, so… * She raised her snout in the air and opened and closed her mouth like she was screeching, but Tan-Tan didn’t hear no sound. A tree frog dropped out from the canopy above them and lay stunned for a split second before it hopped on its wobbly way.

“Abitefa,” Tan-Tan whispered, “is you do that?” Abitefa would do the same silent motion when she was showing Tan-Tan how to startle beasts. She’d always followed it up with a throwing stick. Tan-Tan had thought it was just alien body language. Was Abitefa actually making a supersonic sound?

*Yes,* the hinte replied. *You don’t hear it? If I call high-high the sound does confuse small meat; tree frog and thing. If I do it soft, I does see things inside things. I see the baby in you.*

“To rass! Allyou got sonar!”

*Sonar?*

“Yes, man. Sonar and echolocation too, I bet you. Abitefa, you could see in the dark down here?”

*Not good, no. Not with my eyes. So I call. I does hear if something in my way. When my wings grow in, is so I go fly at night.*

“See what I mean?” Tan-Tan laughed, happy to latch on to this new thing instead of her troubles. “Girl, you is a ratbat for true!” An idea hit her. She’d always wondered… “Tell me this. How allyou does always know where the next group of exiles show up?”

*It does make a big, high noise,* Abitefa chirped. *It does hurt we ears. You never hear it?* The hinte’s second eyelids flickered in surprise.

“No. I never hear a shift pod materialise. No human could hear it.”

*Oh,* Abitefa replied matter-of-factly. Plenty of things tallpeople couldn’t do, after all. She held up her lantern, looked round. *You feel better now? Ready to go?*

“Yes, the nausea does go away once I vomit. Plenty women not so lucky.” Lucky. Tan-Tan scowled. She rubbed her hand over her belly, imagining she could just dig her fingers inside and pull out the thing growing in her. “Sonar not going to help me, Tefa. What I need is to lost this baby. I need to kill it before it grow any more.”

*No,* Abitefa insisted.

“Oh, God, Abitefa, what I going to do?” Tan-Tan leaned against Abitefa’s warm body, comforting as Benta’s. Tefa’s feathers were coming in. Tan-Tan wished she had wings too, and a sharp beak like Abitefa was getting. For all her bones were probably hollow to aid flight, Abitefa would come in bigger and stronger than any man of her people. She could defend herself.

“Abitefa,” Tan-Tan said one evening while they were climbing back up to the daddy tree, “if you only know how sick I getting of roast manicou and halwa fruit, eh?” With her feet Tan-Tan curled a length of the vine rope she was climbing into a knot round her instep and stopped for a rest. She was already experiencing the shortness of breath of pregnancy. Abitefa leapt to a nearby branch to wait until Tan-Tan was ready to go again.

*I go give you some of my tree frog tonight,* the hinte suggested.

“Nah, man. After it go be raw?”

*Is good that way, not burnt like you does do it. Daddy must be mad, eating tallpeople burn-up food.* Abitefa had once tasted some of Tan-Tan’s cooking. She had spit it out one time.

“Taste nasty, you mean. Uncooked. Me can’t get used to the kaka oonuh does eat, you hear?” Tan-Tan untangled her feet again and continued climbing. Abitefa followed her in silence. Tan-Tan stopped.

“I sorry, girl. I ain’t mean to insult you. All I could think about is this baby eating out my insides.” She sighed. “Tefa, you want to go with me tomorrow to the village?”

*We already living in the village.*

“No, the tallpeople place, not this douen place; the village nearby where Chichibud and Benta did going that time. You want to come with me?”

*Is too dangerous for me.*

“Yes, you right,” Tan-Tan replied gloomily. “Them will take you for some leggobeast out of the bush and throw two cutlass chop in your head one time.” They climbed a bit more. “But you don’t have to come all the way with me, Tefa. Just show me how to get there nuh, and wait in the bush for me? I ain’t go stay long. I only have to find them doctor and make she give me something to abort this baby.”

*Do what for the baby?*

All she tried, Tan-Tan hadn’t really been able to make Abitefa understand. Easy for her. When Tefa came of eggbearing age, if she couldn’t or wouldn’t look after one of her own pickney, her chosen nestmates would, or another nest. “Take it away from me. You go help me?”

*I can’t go. You shouldn’t go neither. You hear what Daddy say.*

Tan-Tan hauled herself up onto a younger, narrower daddy tree branch and lay there puffing. The monster child was taking away her wind and all.

“Abitefa, I tell you true, if I don’t lost this baby, I go kill myself.” Abitefa looked at her, feathers puffed out in alarm. “So,” Tan-Tan asked her again, “you go help me, or what?”

When Abitefa said her reluctant *yes,* is like a weight lifted off Tan-Tan’s chest. She laughed out loud, ignoring the douen pickneys wheeling through the branches around them. “Oh, Tefa, you is a real friend, you hear?”

They didn’t waste any time, oui. Next morning self, barely dayclean, the two of them were down in the bush. *Sorry I can’t fly yet,* Abitefa said. *Else I coulda carry you.*

They took the regular path. Abitefa led the way and Tan-Tan clambered after her, prodding the ground ahead of her with a stick as she went. Like everything in douen territory, the path grew over quickly. Ground puppies sprang out and snapped at Tan-Tan; dead branches reached up and jooked her calves; grit flies pestered her; a manicou shat on her head from a tree above. But Abitefa? Grace covered her like a blanket. Nothing could touch her. She saw branches before they snagged her skin, dodged the ground puppies-them before they could land. The trip was pure cool breeze to Abitefa. Two-three times Tan-Tan nearly said, “Let we turn back,” but the nausea was burning in her belly like acid this morning, driving her to her purpose. They pressed on. Every few minutes, Tan-Tan felt for the gold ring she had knotted into a corner of the dhoti she was wearing. Antonio’s wedding band. The one he had give her for her ninth birthday. All those years of wearing it, and every time her hand had brushed it, it had propelled her back to that birthday night, to Antonio touching her, hurting her, to the smell of liquor on his breath. She had taken it on its leather thong off her neck the second day in the daddy tree. She could use it to buy herself freedom from the monster child. Bad Tan-Tan within accused her of being ungrateful. She kept hiking doggedly along the overgrown path.

The pink sun rose, shooting the occasional beam of light through the sombre bush. With it came the heat. At least that sent the grit flies away. They walked another hour or two, stopping twice for Tan-Tan to lose her breakfast. They stopped beside a tree, a weed compared to the daddy tree.

*Walk through there so,* Abitefa hissed, pointing. *You reach.*

Tan-Tan couldn’t see anything but more bush.

*Little more and you go be there. I go wait in this tree.* Abitefa nicked the bark with her claws in a particular pattern to help Tan-Tan find her again. She climbed up into the tree. *Be careful,* she trilled.

“Yes, man.” Tan-Tan took a minute to untie her dhoti and wrap it into a sarong round her hips. She patted at the knot that concealed the ring. Then she set off the rest of the way. So long now she hadn’t seen people! Once she traded the ring, maybe she would have enough money left over after seeing the doctor to get some real food. Her mouth sprang water at the thought of stewed gully hen with yam and dumplings and sweet, red sorrel drink to wash it down. Her belly rebelled, though. She had to stop once more to spew.

A few minutes later the trees started to thin out. Then it had low bush, then some picky-picky brown grass trying to grow in the hard earth under the hot sun. Beyond that it had a cornfield. The feathery spikes were brown for lack of water. It look like nothing grew easy in this place. Nobody was working the corn for it was day hot. So she got through without anybody seeing her.

Her heart started to pound when she got out of the cornfield. To see people again! A dirt track led off to her right. She followed it to where it stopped a little farther on, making a T junction with a cobble street that ran off perpendicular to it. On the street to her right were two-three broken-down farmhouses in a row. To her left the cobble street meandered into the distance, probably leading into the town. Tan-Tan checked out the farmhouses again. The two goats tied up in the yard of the closest one scarcely raised their heads to look at her.

A woman came out from round the side of the house. Tan-Tan started, looked round for somewhere to hide; then checked herself. This is what she’d come for.

The woman swayed with the weight of a bucket balanced on her head. She spied Tan-Tan, stopped and watched at her. It was too far to discern her expression, but for a little bit Tan-Tan just stood and stared at the strangeness of her; her round face with neither beak nor snout, her two legs-them that bent to the front not the back. She would use them to walk, not hop. It came in strange to Tan-Tan. She felt her own body beginning to remember that it was human not douen, that her feet-them were made to walk on ground, not climb through trees. She smiled at the woman. “Morning, Compère,” she called out.

The woman just turned away and headed off for the compost heap with her slop bucket. What for do, eh? Some people just ain’t have manners. Tan-Tan shrugged and headed down the cobble street, looking for the town proper.

The street was lined with run-down wattle-and-daub houses, stink from the reek of the goat dung that formed their plaster. The front stairs to one bungalow had rotted away completely. Somebody had put a piece of warped board over the crumbling wood to make a ramp. A little farther on it had one mako midden heap, everything in it from a mashed-up baby cradle to rotting entrails, rank in the sun. Tan-Tan could hear the flies buzzing round it. A goat was standing on top of it, ripping and eating the leaves out of an antique paper book. The sight was shocking. Who had thrown away knowledge like that?

Eyes malice-bright, the goat watched her go by, twitching its ears to keep off the flies. It wrinkled up its nose like if is she who smelt bad.

In the front yard of the house after the midden heap it had a scruffy man digging in a half-dead kitchen garden. Tan-Tan patted the knot that hid her ring. She went to greet him. Like all the rest, his house was small and lopsided. Something had been split or maybe spewed against one of the mud-coloured walls; the dried residue was orange-yellow and looked gritty. Bits of it were flaking off into the pack earth. Half the steps up to the house had fallen away. It had a mangy, meager dog tied up in front with a piece of knotty rope. The dog start to bark when it saw her; a wheezy, resentful yipping.

“Morning!” Tan-Tan called out in a cheerful voice.

The man straightened up, stretched out his back, and looked at her. His eyes got wide. He cracked a big grin. Three of his front teeth were missing. His mouth looked just like his own front steps. His hair was snarled and matty-matty.

The dog was still barking. He went over to it and gave the rope round its neck a vicious yank. “Shut up!” The dog yelped and crouched down low on the ground. It stopped its noise.

The man flashed Tan-Tan a next gap-tooth grin and pulled up his pants that had been riding so low on his hips she’d seen the beginning of pubic hair peeking out above the waistband. “Ah,” he sighed. “What a way morning time bring me a piece of sweetness to grace my yard today.”

He was ugly like jackass behind, but she had to ask someone where to find the doctor. Tan-Tan remembered tallpeople ways. Bad Tan-Tan put on her coyest smile. “Morning, mister,” she cooed. “I lost, you know? Ain’t this is the way to the doctor?”

The man scratched his head, popped something between his fingers. “Like you new to Chigger Bite, doux-doux?”

Naturally the place would name after a parasite, Tan-Tan thought sarcastically. But she just giggled and played with her hair. “Yes, mister. I just visiting from over the way,” she said, pointing vaguely out beyond the opposite side of the village.

“Oh. From Wait-A-Bit?”

Wait-A-Bit. Must be the name of the next settlement. “Ee-hee,” she agreed. “And what you name, mister?”

The man stood to attention. He pulled down the shirt hem that had crept up over his paunch to expose a belly soft like a mound of mud; a bloated paunch on a meager man. He accidentally released the hoe handle; grabbed for it; it flew back and rapped him on the ear. Tan-Tan had to bite her lips to keep from laughing.

“Me?” the man said, rubbing the banged ear ruefully. “I name Alyosius. Alyosius Pereira. Al for short. And you, my girl, you must be name Beauty to match your nature, for I can’t tell when last I see anything so pretty as you.”

To Tan-Tan’s surprise, the look in Al’s eyes was warm and genuine. But what a way the man fool-fool! Her smile faded. She asked again:

“Is which part the doctor stay?”

“Make I take you, sweetness. I go give you the tour of Chigger Bite.” He leaned his hoe up against the side of the house, beckoned her to follow. Up close, he smelt of days-old sweat and rotten teeth. Tan-Tan fell in beside him, taking shallow breaths. They started off down the cobble road again.

“Chigger Bite Village,” Al said in a sunny voice, “is the nastiest, meanest of all the exile settlements on New Half-Way Tree, oui? In Chigger Bite, is every man and woman for themself.”

They passed a next flyblown midden heap. Al smelt sweet in comparison. He nodded in its direction: “Say you have a goat; a smelly, mangy goat, thin so till you swear you could see the sun shining through it flanks, but still, it does give milk when it have a mind to, when you could catch it before it bite you. Now, say a next feller put him eye ’pon your goat for some nice goat curry for him dinner; well then you best watch your back, oui? You could be walking your goat down the dirt trail to river bank good-good to get her some water, minding your own business, when next thing you know, one machète stroke chop the rope you leading your meager goat by, and if you make fast and try and stop the feller from running off with your property, well. Half hour later, them could find your carcass facedown in the river, fouling the water with the blood running from the slash in your throat.”

Tan-Tan stared at him. Al just pointed to a house they were passing, even dirtier than his own. A woman was hanging up raggedy laundry to dry on a line strung from the house to a dried-up lime tree nearby. Two snotty-nose pickney no older than two years were hanging on to her dress hem. One of them picked up a twig and threw it in the direction of Al and Tan-Tan, but the little arm didn’t have plenty power. The twig dropped to the ground right in front of the pickney’s foot. Without even self looking, the mother slapped it across its head. The pickney didn’t seem to notice.

Al continued with his story. “And it ain’t have nobody who would feel sorry for you, oui? Once you dead, your woman go praise God that it have one day in this land she ain’t have to slave for no man. Only one day, for you know that tomorrow some next man who couldn’t find a woman before this go be sniffing round she skirts. Your pickney-them go run wild, for now it ain’t have nobody to lash them and stripe their legs with no greenstick switch. And friend? Nobody in Chigger Bite have any friends. It only have two kind of people: them who would like to kill you on sight, and them who can’t be bothered with you.”

Tan-Tan decided she’d better get to her business and get the rass out of this place. “Al? Is which part the doctor living?”

He stopped and looked her up and down, drinking her in like a thirsty man guzzling water. “Oh, sweetheart, you look too strong and healthy to need medicine. If I was a different man, maybe you and me could be medicine for each other, oui.” He brushed her shoulder with his hand.

Tan-Tan yanked away. She pulled in a breath, hard, then a next one. Antonio tear off she underclothes with one hand. He shove into she with a grunt. She made a noise like the chick seeing the mongoose.

Alyosius looked confused. “Is what do you, doux-doux?”

Tan-Tan snapped back into the world. “Nothing… nothing, Al. I just need to find a—”

“Alyosius? Alyosius Pereira! All this time I calling you, you lazy so-and-so, and you ain’t answer me, ain’t even prekkay ’pon me. Is what possess you to leave the gardening and gone traipsing down the road, eh? I give you permission to go chasing skirt? Eh? Ain’t I tell you to tie up all the bodie bean-them?”

The old woman waddling down the path after them could have doubled as a mountain in her spare time. Her dirty calico dress didn’t quite manage to contain the masses of her breasts. They pushed out of her bodice like dough rising. Her belly rolls swayed from side to side as she hustled towards them. Her jowls wobbled. Someone was keeping this woman well fed, oui. Under a raggedy piece of head wrap, sweat was beading down her forehead, bathing her face in salt. She was waving a switch at Al.

“Mamee!” Alyosius said. He shrank closer to Tan-Tan. All of a sudden, he seemed to her like a small boy. “I wasn’t going far, Mamee, just showing the young lady to she destination.”

Al’s mother glared at Tan-Tan. Her face went dark with anger. “You business with any woman? Eh? Any woman go want you? Sweat-stink, big belly, no-tooth excuse for a man? Who go want you, eh? Just a tramp like this!” The woman slapped her switch down on the ground right by Tan-Tan’s foot. Tan-Tan jumped. The woman cut the switch against Al’s calf. He howled, danced out of range. She followed, slicing at his legs, hissing, “Is woman you want, eh? Tramp? Leggobeast? Bitch in heat? Eh? I go show you heat. I go heat up your behind for you with this switch!”

A crowd of grimy, run-down Chigger Bite people had gathered round to watch the show. Somebody shouted out, “But eh-eh, Alyosius; how you could dance so?”

Antonio unbuckled his heavy leather belt and pulled it out from his pants. He doubled it up in his hand and cracked it against Tan-Tan’s shins. The pain nearly made her faint.

Something in Tan-Tan broke loose, howling. Her skin felt hot. She pushed Alyosius to one side, grabbed the switch from his surprised mother and fetched her one slice swips on her leg.

“You like how that feel? (Swips) Eh? You think he like it any better? (Swips) Eh?”

The woman was only twitching heavily away from the blows, crying, “Have mercy, lady, what you doing! Allyou stop she nuh!” Somebody in the crowd sniggered. Tan-Tan didn’t let it distract her. Is like a spirit take her. A vengeance had come upon her, it was shining out from her eyes strong as justice. Not one of them would dare try and prevent her. She whipped the woman’s legs, she whipped them. She made the bitch prance. She knew how it felt to dance like that. She knew how it felt to cry out so, to beg mercy and get none. So the woman wailed, so Tan-Tan licked her. So she begged, so Tan-Tan cut her. Alyosius was hovering about them, asking her to stop, to have mercy. Nobody had had mercy on her. She yanked the switch out of his reach when he grabbed for it.

The woman bawled out, “Lord Mistress, don’t do me so! Please, don’t hit me no more!”

Please Daddy, don’t hit me no more.

Just so, the anger left Tan-Tan. She lowered the switch and stood there, breathing hard. Alyosius snatched it out of her grasp and threw it out of her reach. He ran to his mother, wrapped his two arms round her. “Is all right, Mamee, is all right. I sorry, Mamee. Come, I go take you home. I go put healing oil on it for you, eh? And it go stop hurting. Don’t cry, Mamee. Come.” The woman leaned on him, whining about the welts that were rising on her legs.

Al cut his eyes at Tan-Tan. “Best find your meddling behind somewhere else, oui? Before my blood rise.”

He left with his mother, cooing soothing noises at her.

How could he stand to touch that woman? How could he love her when she hurt him like that?

“How you could…” She was, somebody was speaking out loud. Words welled up in the somebody’s mouth like water. Somebody spoke her words the way the Carnival Robber Kings wove their tales, talking as much nonsense as sense, fancy words spinning out from their mouths like thread from a spider’s behind: silken shit as strong as story. Somebody’s words uttered forth from Tan-Tan’s tongue:

“Stop and stand forth, O Jack Sprat and his fat, fat, fat mother,” said the Robber Queen.

Alyosius and his mother stopped, turned to hear the Carnival Monarch. People in the crowd started to grin again.

“Woman, what a way your son lean; lean ’pon you, lean because of you, inclined to be a mama-man for love, for lovie-dove. What a way your son love you, like two cooing doves in a cote. I go coat my throat with words of wisdom; come, and pay me heed.”

“But she mad!” Al’s mother whispered loudly. She took Al’s hand and started to pull him away. The Robber Queen leapt in front of them, held up an imperious hand:

“Nay, stay, knaves and pay me mind. I shamed to be of your kind, oui? You treat he worse than dog, yet he love you like hog love mud. My father was a king, and my mother was he queen. Them carry me in chariots that float on air to take me anywhere, from my silken boudoir to my jasmine-circled pagoda. Them give me invisible servants to do my every bidding, and even with all that, I never feel a love like this man just show for this woman he mother. Compère, don’t wear it out.”

A wondering smile was wavering on Al’s face.

“Yes, Compère,” the woman said, backing away like you does do from mad dog. “Sometimes my temper does run away with me, you know? That is all.”

The woman-of-words, the Robber Queen, stared at the woman long. “Me tell you, don’t hurt your son no more. Me will know. Me, Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen.”

Mother and son made haste down the road.

She was back in her body. The somebody had gone. Tan-Tan felt weary. In a small voice she said to the crowd, “Please, it have a doctor in this place?”

They backed away. “No,” somebody muttered.

“Mad like France,” said another.

“No? So is where Al was taking me?”

“For a ride, oui? Me nah know. It ain’t have no doctor. If we sicken, we does dead, that is all.”

No doctor. No-one to take the parasite out of her. Tan-Tan spat on the ground. She turned on her heel and strode away. She could feel their eyes on her.

As she passed the hut of Alyosius and his mother she saw the movement of someone inside drawing back the faded curtains a little to peek at her.

Hiking back through the corn to meet Abitefa, Tan-Tan began to feel proud of herself, so full up of pride she could have burst from it. She remembered the voice that had come from her, it must have been her. She, all by herself; she’d taught that woman a lesson, and she’d spoken her mind with confidence, and she (yes, this is how she would tell it to Abitefa), she had ruled a mob of people who could easy have pelted her with rockstones if they had had a mind to. She didn’t even self feel like the same Tan-Tan.

And for once, Bad Tan-Tan was quiet.

When she reached the tree with the gouge in it she called out, “Abitefa-oi! You still there?”

The hinte poke her head out of the branches and looked round. She did her silent call and seemed satisfied. She climbed down, gave Tan-Tan a hat she’d woved from flexible twigs while she was waiting. *The baby gone now?*

Tan-Tan frowned. “No, man. That is one backward place, you hear? Them ain’t have what I want.” She brightened up again. “But Abitefa, make I tell you what happen to me in Chigger Bite Village. Girl, it sweet can’t done; Tan-Tan the Robber Queen just done make masque ’pon Chigger Bite!”

That night she lay on her pallet in the dark, staring at the lantern flame. She was jittery for some reason, she couldn’t get restful. What was eating at her so, what? She tried to lull herself to sleep with the pictures leaping in the flickering light: She and Melonhead up in a wet sugar tree, arguing happily about whether it was humane for the Nation Worlds’ to exile their undesirables to a low-tech world where they were stripped of the sixth sense that was Granny Nanny. She and Quamina years younger, undressing their dollies and making them play doctor. The look of amusement on Aislin’s face when she found them. Chichibud on that first day on New Half-Way Tree, showing her how to roast meat on a spit and never saying that he hated it cooked. Her mother, Ione, letting her play with her colourdots, trying on lip colour after lip colour with her and laughing at the effect. The house eshu from Toussaint, singing her lullabies when she’d woken in terror from nightmares.

She missed the eshu. She hadn’t thought of the a.i. in years. She wondered what had happened once people had realised she and Antonio were gone off Toussaint, gone from out of that dimension for good.

She had acid stomach. The parasite baby again. She wriggled on the pallet irritably, trying to get comfortable. Her mind was only running backwards, backwards in time. The lantern flame guttered, flared with another image. Antonio, screening a picture book for her and rocking her to sleep as her eyes closed on the bright images.

The tears were sudden, the flood of them hot down her cheeks. Benta must have heard. She wheeked a question from her part of the nest. “I all right!” Tan-Tan called back. She quieted down, fixed her eyes on the flame, on the heavy-lidded little girl dozing securely in her father’s arms.

Daddy dead. You kill him.

She dropped her head to the bed, put her neckroll over her ears. But she could still hear the evil voice in her ears.

She longed to have the good daddy back. Her mind skittered over his attack the day before her birthday. Could she have prevented it? Stopped him? If she had come back early from running errands and kept him from the liquor-soaked fruit? If she hadn’t lingered with Melonhead out on the verandah? Her daddy was gone. She wept and rocked, despising herself. Bitter silent Tan-Tan howled accusations at her, and they were true, every one. Her doing, all hers.

Not a bit of sleep that night.

The sun was beginning to lay dapples of pink wash on the daddy tree leaves when she realised what she had to do to quiet the inner voice that never ceased. Bad Tan-Tan had given her peace for a while when she’d been saving Al. Chichibud had said, “When you take one, you must give back two.” She had to make up doublefold for what she’d done to Antonio. Helping Al had been the first small step. She had to go back to Chigger Bite.

Tan-Tan wrinkled up her nose, trying to make it smaller so she might inhale less. The evening air was a little chilly. She pulled the shawl that Benta had given her closer round her shoulders.

The alley behind Chigger Bite’s rum shop ran rank with slops. The door that led into the alleyway opened. Tan-Tan moved farther back in the shadows, trying to ignore the squelching feeling underfoot. Her alpagats would soak through soon.

A young woman with a hard, scarred face was standing in the doorway. She pulled aside her clothing, put a hand inside. A stream of urine jetted outward in a precise curve, guided by the two fingers she would have inserted between her labia. Arcing liquid caught the dying sunlight to glow a soft and glittering tangerine. The woman pulled her hand free and shook it. She put the fingers into her mouth, sucked meditatively. She wiped the hand dry against her overalls and rearranged her clothing. “Cookie!” she yelled into the rum shop, turning from the darkening evening to go back inside. “You motherass so-and-so, bring me a jerk pork and some stew peas there!” She slammed the door behind her, cancelling out the rhomboid of light that had been thrown through the open doorway onto the ground.

Full dark soon. Benta and Chichibud no longer worried when Tan-Tan was out this late, though. She climbed down the daddy tree at all hours now to relieve herself, stayed down on the ground in the bush quiet as long as it suited her. They’d given her a machète as tool and weapon, for she wouldn’t touch the knife that had been Janisette’s birthday present to her. Too besides, she knew how to wield a machète from years of farming corn.

She pulled her feet free of the putrid suction of mud, crept closer to the finely meshed wet sugar tree bark that made the rum shop’s back windowpane. She peered in. The shop owner was cutting slices off a cured haunch of meat, tossing them into a sizzling frying pan. Flames jumped in the brick oven. The man swiped his brow with one hand, took a swig from a mug beside the cutting board.

“Cookie!” a deep voice called from the rum shop’s front room. “Two pimiento liqueur!”

He put down his mug, wiped his mouth with his hand back. “Strong or weak?” he shouted.

“Your behind, I ever take weak yet? Strong!”

“Soon come, Japheth.” Cookie scooped the fried meat onto a plate, spooned a ladleful of stewed peas from a big pot onto the plate. Tan-Tan’s belly rumbled. From an earthenware urn the owner ladled garnet red pimiento liqueur into two mugs. He took the lid off his water bucket and topped up the pimiento liqueur with water. He took the plate and the two mugs into the front room.

Giving them weak but charging for strong. Oho; Tan-Tan had felt she would find something to entertain herself with this night. She go do for he. She tied her shawl around her body like an apron—easy thing to hide her machète in its folds. She tied a knot in a corner of the apron; let the owner think she was carrying money, he would be less suspicious.

The ground was dry where she was standing. She bent, paddled three fingers in the grime of the alleyway and rubbed it into her face. Chigger Bite people never seemed quite clean, oui. She wouldn’t want to stand out.

Her heart was starting to throb with the excitement of what she was about to do. She breathed in deeply for calm, pulled her scarf down low on her forehead to hide her features a little. She hunched her shoulders and cast her eyes meekly down, then put on the exhausted shuffle of someone who did manual labour from dayclean to daylean. She went round the front and limped into the rum shop. A few people glanced up but went right back to their drinking.

Tan-Tan stood for a second, blinking in the flickering lamplight. The woman who’d taken a piss out back was laughing and talking at a table with three other women. One of them had the Toussaint-style clothes and the lost, frightened look of the newly headblind; a recent exile. Singletons or with their compères, people were taking their rough ease from the day’s labour. Wisdom weed smoke choked the air.

The owner was at the bar now, wiping out some ashtrays. Tan-Tan shuffled over. The owner frowned at the dirty, downpressed woman in front of him. “Compère,” Tan-Tan asked in a trembly voice, “beg you little liqueur, nuh?”

“You mad or what?” the man growled. “It ain’t have nothing for free in here.”

“No, no, Compère, I could pay,” she said, fumbling with the knot in her apron. “I have gold.”

“Real, or gold wash? Make I see,” he ordered, bending over the bar to see better in the gloom.

Yes, just so. Lean just a little closer. She fumbled with the knot a little more, chatting the whole time like she was trying to cover up nervousness. “I ain’t too like coming out in the dark, oui, but my woman tell me say I must bring she pimiento liqueur tonight, only she forget to give me any money, you know, so is a good thing I have this gold ring my mother give me…”

She untied the knot and started to open the folds of cloth. The shop owner stretched his neck quite over the edge of the bar trying to see what she had in there. I have you now, you son of a bitch. Tan-Tan grabbed his collar, jammed his head against the bar. Her machète was out and against his neck before he knew what had happened to him. A man cried out and made a move towards her.

“No! Anybody even self blink, I cut he.”

Two people were sneaking up on her. She could hear them. They would never survive in the bush. Tan-Tan said, “This man been cheating oonuh, you know.” The footsteps behind her stopped.

“Cheating? How you mean?”

She chanced a quick look at them. “Is oonuh just order the pimiento liqueur?”

“Seen.”

“Him a-use water to weak it, and a-tell you is the strong he giving you.”

The people in the rum shop started one set of ssu-ssu, whispering to each other. “Cookie,” someone called out, “is true what she say?”

The shop owner started to curse. He surged up towards her and got a shallow slice on his neck back for his trouble. “Ow! Fucking leggobeast!”

Tan-Tan grinned to see the thin line of blood. This was what she needed, this desperate, sharp joy. She had the crowd’s attention now. She sang out to them, “Oonuh want to see if is true what I telling you, or is lie?”

“Yes, lady,” they responded gleefully. The two men behind her came up and held Cookie’s arms.

“Elroy!” he blustered. “Christopher! Is what the rass wrong with allyou? Let me go; hold she instead!”

“Never you mind that,” one of them replied. “Two years I been coming in here. If I find out you been cheating me from since…”

Tan-Tan warbled out, “Oonuh want to know the truth?”

“Yes, lady,” the crowd chanted.

“Oonuh want to be sure you getting the right goods for your rupees?”

“Yes, lady.”

“All right. Well, watch me then, nuh?”

At machète point, Tan-Tan walked the shop owner back into his own kitchen. His customers followed, squeezed tight-tight into the kitchen to see sport. Tan-Tan pointed with her chin: “Koo the strong liqueur there.” She turned to the two men who were holding Cookie. “Where the one he give allyou?”

“I go get it!” someone said. The mugs were brought into the kitchen. There were still some dregs in them.

“All right. One of you two; ladle out a taste from the barrel.”

“No!” said Cookie. “If too many mouths touch it, it going sour!”

“Don’t fret,” she said. “More time, it won’t have none left to sour.”

One of the men ladled himself a good taste from the barrel, then took a swig from the mug Cookie had brought him. “Pah!” He spat it right into Cookie’s face. “Piss water.” Unable to use his arms, Cookie blinked and blinked to get the burning alcohol out of his eyes.

“So you really been cheating we, Joseph,” said an old woman. “When I think how I does work hard all day,” she addressed the crowd, “and I come in here nearly every evening and give Joseph my money to ease some of my sorrows, and this is how he do me. Joseph, man, you make my heart hurt too bad.”

The shop owner didn’t reply.

“Too right,” a next somebody say. “What a way the man is a swindler, ee? What you going to do, lady?”

“This.” At machète point, Tan-Tan made shop owner Joseph drink from the bucket of water.

“Drink, you cheating swine, drink it all down. Drink down your swindlement, drink down your defraudation. Swallow, now! And again!” All the customers cheered as they watched him struggling to gulp until he’d drunk all the water. But Tan-Tan ain’t done yet. “Nah, man, like you slowing down. I know you have enough water in this kitchen to last you a full day. Yes, here so.” The barrel stood as high as her hip. “Fill your bucket. Now drink again. Drink, I say.” Looking slightly green, Joseph put the bucket to his head. “Drink a swallow for every one of these populace you defraud. Swallow, don’t spill none! Drink three times more for every member of this fine population who had was to choke down your thin, watery concoction and trade you them hard-earned goods for the favour.”

The barkeep started to cough back up the water, out of his nose and all, but Tan-Tan made him choke down another bucketful, and another. He fell to his knees, vomited copiously onto the floor, gouts of slimy liquid with the thready remnants of his supper floating in it. Few spared the time to laugh at him. They were too busy helping themselves to the pure, sweet stash of pimiento liqueur.

Cookie groaned, glared daggers at Tan-Tan from reddened eyes. She smiled sweetly back. “When them ask you is who bring about your ruination this day, tell them Tan-Tan the Robber Queen, the terror of the bad-minded. I come into this life further away from here than your imagination could stretch. I born behind God back, under a next sun. My mother was the queen of queens, and my father was she consort, and he bring me to this place in a mighty engine. The birds of the air raise me. The lizards in the trees feed me. Them teach me how to be invisible, man, so if you start watering your drinks again, you won’t see me, but I go know. Is Tan-Tan telling you.”

She ladled out a half gallon jug of the strong for herself. The rum shop patrons cheered. She turned to breeze out the shop. Al and his mother were standing together in a corner, watching her. Tan-Tan’s heart leapt like firecrackers, but they made no move to stop her. The hatred in Al’s mother’s face could have burned flesh off bone. Tan-Tan didn’t care, she just laughed. She blew Al, clumsy, coward, stink, sweet Al, a kiss. He looked down, but it didn’t hide the bow of the smile forming on his face. Spirit singing, Tan-Tan strode out into the dark. Behind her she could hear the people fêting on Cookie’s good liquor, laughing and singing and making old-talk.

Abitefa was mad to know the story when Tan-Tan reached back to the bush. The two of them sat on the ground and Tan-Tan related the tale by the light of two kerosene lamps. “If you only see the shop owner, Abitefa! I sure he never going to feel thirsty in he life again, oui.”

With a flourish Tan-Tan unscrewed the cap from the liqueur. She put it to her mouth and spat it out again immediately. “Bloodcloth!” The smell, the taste was making her belly roil.

*What?* asked Abitefa.

“It spoil! How it could spoil between there and here?”

*Smell fine to me,* Abitefa said.

“You mad? You try it then.”

They poured the water out of Abitefa’s drinking calabash, replaced it with pimiento liqueur. Abitefa dipped her beak in it, tossed back her head to let the liquid roll down her throat. *Good. Like fruits, but better.*

To rass, what was she talking about? Tan-Tan sniffed the alcohol again, took a small taste of it. Still nasty. But the people in Chigger Bite had been drinking it fine-fine. They didn’t know strong from weak, but for sure they would have known spoiled from fresh, ain’t?

Is the baby, the monster baby that was round and hard now like a potato in her belly. Her two months’ pregnancy had changed her body chemistry so till alcohol tasted and smelled bad. Resentfully Tan-Tan dug her fingers into her stomach. The defiant thing inhabiting her didn’t yield. Her head pounded with anger. She could only drink what it let her, eat what it permitted. And strong? She was making the climb from the daddy tree in two-twos nowadays. Poopa, this thing inside her was keeping her strong and healthy like horse, a good horse to carry it.

Abitefa had never tasted pimiento liqueur before, just the salty, fermented grogs that douens made. She got herself good and drunk. She ended up running round in the bush, holding up her kerosene lamp and flapping her free arm, trying to fly. Tan-Tan nearly perish with laugh at the sight. Giggling, she led Abitefa deeper into the bush so the Chigger Bite people wouldn’t hear her. Nanny witness, that night was joke for true! Tan-Tan laughing as she guided Abitefa into the bush, one hand on the hinte’s neck, the next hand holding her kerosene lamp up high to keep away the mako jumbies. Abitefa only whistling and warbling the whole time in douen talk mixed up with creole. Then every so often Abitefa would stop and say, *Story, Tan-Tan! Tell me again how you frighten them in Chigger Bite.*

And Tan-Tan would tell it all over again. The hectoring inner voice didn’t plague her once. That there night was sweet, seen.

She got too confident. She had started sneaking into Chigger Bite all hours of the day and night, doing a deed here, a deed there. By now people were recognising her, but so long as they weren’t the butt of her crusadering, her appearance was cause for a fête and a merriment. She was beginning to hear whispers: how she was a duppy, the avenging spirit of a woman who’d been beaten and left in the bush for dead; how she was a hero like Nanny and Anacaona of old, come to succour the massive-them, the masses that the Nation Worlds had dumped out here behind God’s back; how she was a witch who sucked the blood of sleeping pickneys. She could scarce recognise herself in the stories. She wasn’t paying none of it no mind. She was working off her curse, keeping her nightmares at bay.

But she took on too much that night, three men who had chivvied an old man into an alleyway to rob him. Addled with fear, the old man had forgotten his earbug was dead to Nanny, and was yelling for his eshu to help him. He must have been a newcomer. Tan-Tan surprised the three nasties good, got them backed into the dead end and was holding them at bay with her machète. Their victim recovered his wits, snuck away as soon as his road was clear. Good. But when Tan-Tan launched into her Robber Queen speech, waving the machète round, she got mesmerised by her own elocution. She never even self saw the fourth man who had been their lookout until he dropped down on her from a rooftop. She let go her weapon. All four of them were on her one time. Somebody boxed her in her head so hard she felt consciousness fading. They were holding her down, they were hitting her, hitting her. It come in like her sixteenth birthday again, like she was back under Antonio’s body, fighting for her life.

Then it stopped. One of them shouted, “Rasscloth! A-what that? Run, allyou, run!”

Tan-Tan was still too bassourdie to make out is what going on. One mako claw closed round her upper arm. She tore weakly at it. Another supported her head. Abitefa!

*Stand up, Tan-Tan!* the hinte screeched. *Arms round my neck!* Somehow they managed, Tan-Tan muttering punch-drunkenly all the while into Abitefa’s ear, “My gros bonange, sweet guardian angel.” They made their exit fast from Chigger Bite, Tan-Tan hanging on to Abitefa’s neck and the hinte running hopping dropping, for her body hadn’t changed enough yet to allow her to fly off proper with Tan-Tan. Abitefa ’buse she off good for that little escapade, oui?

Lying in the cornfield outside Chigger Bite, Tan-Tan was barely listening to Abitefa’s rant. Her head was still spinning from how the man had lashed her. She half-heard Tefa, noticed how the young woman’s words getting to sound more like when Benta spoke. Abitefa nearly turn woman already, oui?

Tan-Tan poked at her calabash belly with the demon inside. Three months. Maybe the fight had knocked it loose? She lay back again, listening to Abitefa carry on. She prayed for the cramps to start that would miscarry the demon. But nothing. When she woke up next morning, Antonio’s child was still with her.

She’d lost her machète over that one. She crept back into Chigger Bite next night to thief another one, even though Abitefa was frantic over her going.

Daylean was when she went, the prettiest time of day on New Half-Way Tree. The dying sun had turned all the light lavender. The evening air felt cool on her skin as she emerged from the bush into the field of high corn. The waving leaves drew against her face as she went by; the same way so Antonio would pass his dry, papery fingers across her cheeks, like he was trying to remember when his flesh felt young like that. Tan-Tan shuddered and put a hand out in front of her to ward off the corn leaves. The corn swayed and rustled in the breeze. Sneaking through it in the puss boots Chichibud had brought her, Tan-Tan heard her feet landing quiet-quiet like lovers whispering secrets to one another. With her big shawl and her boots on, she felt like Tan-Tan the Robber Queen for true.

She lifted a machète easily from the barn. She could have gone back then, but from where she was she could see the flickering oil lamps in Chigger Bite. Her heart started to pump faster. She went creeping round the village, just to see what was doing. Seemed she couldn’t fill up her eyes enough with the sight of tallpeople going about their business. The stories she heard people whispering about her round the kerosene lamps in the rum shop nearly made her dead with laugh. She hurried back and told Abitefa about it round the fire they had built:

“If you could only imagine: them say how Tan-Tan the Robber Queen have eyes like fire, how she ain’t even human! I supposed to have ratbat wings like Shaitan out of Hell heself, and two heads, one in front and one in back. Somebody have it to say how they see me spit green poison and fly off into the night! God girl, that too sweet.”

She grinned at Abitefa. She took a bite of the manicou haunch that she’d roasted on the fire. The hot fat oozed into her mouth and ran down her chin. She tried to imagine what tallpeople saw when they looked at her, that they would describe her as duppy and ratbat and ravener. Was she? Mad? A scary thing from a anansi story? Or just herself? She ain’t know. For now, food hot in she belly and friend strong by she side. For a little while at least, life was good.

Tan-Tan knew she had to wait couple-three weeks before making a next excursion to Chigger Bite. Give the village people time to relax and stop looking out for her. But the waiting got her to feeling so restless she couldn’t stand it. Benta tried to show her how to weave, but she was only snarling up the loom. What weaving had to do with her any at all? Chichibud took her from level to level in the daddy tree to introduce her to their neighbours, but she didn’t pay plenty mind to who was who. She was barely polite. Douen people didn’t want her among them anyway. Days in the daddy tree didn’t suit her, and she was frightened of the nights too bad. She would lie in the darkness with her head wrapped up from the house cousins, holding her eyes open wide-wide against sleep, trying to stay awake until dayclean. But all she do, her eyelids-them would lock eventually, and then, Antonio would be there waiting for her.

“Soon, doux-doux,” he would whisper, running his hands over her body. She couldn’t squirm out of his grasp, he was too strong. “I go be with you again soon. Four months gone. Just a few more. Soon, Ione.”

Every morning Tan-Tan would wake up in a cold sweat, her belly churning. She was going to go mad in this place. She passed the time by weaving herself a hut down on the bush floor from pliant green withies she cut from the trees. She really didn’t know much about it, but she was learning as she went, occupying her mind and body. The hard work soothed her spirit. One day she swung at a young sapling with her machète, and something moved inside her belly. She dropped the machète and put her palms to her stomach. She felt the baby roll under her hands, once.

Anger filled up her mind, buzzing in her head like bees. She picked up the machète again and started to chop, chop, chop like if she could chop down every tree on this motherass planet. Abitefa found her a little later, blowing hard, her sweat-soaked clothes sticking to her like sensé fowl feathers when it rain, but still chopping strong. And cursing! If curse word was machète, Tan-Tan would have chopped down that whole bush by herself with her mouth alone. She glared down Abitefa, but what tallpeople body talk mean to a douen? Damn mangy not-yet-hinte didn’t see the warning in her look. With one claw foot Abitefa calmly took the machète from Tan-Tan’s hand. *You tired. Rest.*

Tan-Tan felt her mouth start to tremble. She sucked in breath after breath, trying to catch more air. The breaths turned to sobs.

“He rape me, Abitefa. He put this baby in me, like the one before. He was forever trying to plant me, like I was his soil to harvest.”

Abitefa scratched her two feet-them a little on the ground. *Why?*

“How the rass I am to know? Eh? Tell me how! I only wish I could have stop he—kick he with my claw foot-them, jook out he eye-them with my pointy beak!”

*You not a hinte,* Abitefa pointed out.

The sobs erupted, harsh as coughs. “Not a hinte, not nothing with value. Better I did dead, oui.”

Abitefa folded up her backwards knees to plump herself down on the ground beside Tan-Tan. She rocked from side to side, making a humming sound in the back of her throat. Thinking.

The baby was jooking into Tan-Tan’s side. She put a hand to the place. The baby moved away from it. It really had a living being inside her for true.

Abitefa cocked her head to look at Tan-Tan. *No need to wish for dead, it will happen soon enough. It does come to all of we.*

Tefa just couldn’t understand, oui. “Is all right, Abitefa.”

That had been a good lime, a nice piece of entertainment. That poor, tired woman sleeping like the dead in her break-down little hut was going to be so surprised to wake up and find a big pot of curry goat on her kitchen table. Tan-Tan wondered if the people at the cookstand had missed it yet.

It was early evening. Lights were being lit all over Chigger Bite. Maybe she would go back early up the daddy tree tonight.

She was nearly to the outskirts of the town when she heard a noise from a side street: Putt-putt-putt. It sounded familiar, and it was coming closer. Frowning, Tan-Tan waited to see what it was.

Ahead of her, a car turned from the side street onto the one she was standing on. A car! Big and loud and smelly; body made of rusting sheets of iron held together with rivets; and large, lumpy wheels made from tree sap or something. The car’s exhaust pipe was pumping out one set of black smoke, clouds of it rolling up into the clean air. The exhaust is where the explosions were coming from. And look, is bad-minded Gladys she behind the wheel, oui.

At first Tan-Tan didn’t even self have the presence of mind to be frightened. So is that Gladys and Michael was making in them iron shop. Michael was beside Gladys, fanning away smoke from her face with a palm leaf fan.

And in the back of the car, sitting high on the caboose? Tan-Tan’s stepmother, Janisette.

“Look she there!” Janisette shouted. Gladys turned the car towards Tan-Tan. Janisette aimed a rifle at her stepdaughter. Tan-Tan jumped behind the corner of a house. Pow! A spray of plaster flew into Tan-Tan’s eyes from the bullet that hit the wall right beside her head.

Phut-phut-phut. Tan-Tan ran, dipping through people’s kitchen gardens, ducking behind chicken coops and thing. The baby bounced like a watermelon in her belly, slowing her down, like it wanted her to get caught. Antonio’s duppy self, haunting and hunting her from within. Tan-Tan put two fists to her belly bottom to hold it still. She ran, she ran, she ran. “Nanny, Granny Nanny, help me now…” She was only sucking in air, but she couldn’t get enough. The autocarriage stalked her, phut-phut-phut. She crashed through somebody’s bambam pumpkin patch. Her foot smashed clomp! right through a ripe pumpkin. She had to stop and shake it off. Through frightened tears she saw a face in the kitchen window, smiling a vampirish soucouyant smile in the guttering candlelight: Al’s mother. She nodded a greeting in the direction of the autocar.

Phut-phut-phut.

Tan-Tan ran.

The car was getting tangled in the ropy pumpkin vines, it didn’t have enough power to tear free. Janisette pulled off another shot, missed. Fire burning in her throat, Tan-Tan headed for the cornfields. She could hear the whine of the carriage straining against the bonds that held it, the coughing of the engine as the wheels spun pumpkin trash up into it. She lost them in the tall corn, escaped into the bush and ran, ran, ran till every breath was like sucking in ground glass and her limbs were whip-striped from branches she had fled past. She collapsed to the ground, chest heaving for air. How, how? Too frightened for words, she couldn’t complete the thought. Were they still following? She tried to still her breath, listened hard. No car sound. On foot, maybe? Sneaking up on her right this minute? Tan-Tan peered back the way she thought she’d come. Outside the bush the sky would be still deepening to oxblood dark, but here in the bush night had already come, solid as a lump of coal. She couldn’t see a rass. Cooling sweat made her shiver. A grit fly nibbled painfully at her eye corner, but she didn’t dare slap it away. Was that a light? The sound of a footstep? No. She waited minutes more. No, they weren’t coming after her.

Where was she? She hadn’t entered the bush at her usual spot, hadn’t had been able to spare a moment to even think about her lantern, much less collect it from where she’d hidden it.

The grit flies were gathering, drawn by her heat. She could hear their whining. She was bitten, then again. Dashing furious fingers at her eyes, she fumbled with her other hand in her carry pouch, found the precious matches. It felt like a stinging age of stumbling round in the dark before she put hands on a likely brand of wood. When she moved it she disturbed a ground puppy, which took a good bite out of her arm before it bounced off into the night. Damned things glowed purple in the dark.

By now the grit flies were worrying so badly at her eyes that she could barely stand to take her hands away to light the brand. It took a long time to catch, nine or ten tries with the matches. By the time it was burning well, her eyes were swollen nearly shut.

The brand flared, driving away the grit flies. Blessèd, blessèd relief. She heard a sound moving away from her, away from the light; a massive crushing of the undergrowth. Then another. Mako jumbie? Rolling calf? She began to tremble.

It was hours before she came upon the douen path. She could have wept with relief, but she didn’t dare; she was hardly seeing out of her tortured eyes any more. She careened along the path. When her shins finally crashed into a buttress root of the daddy tree, she thought it was the sweetest pain she’d ever felt. She extinguished the burning branch by stabbing it into the damp loam and, eyes shut, scrambled exhaustedly up until the first douen lights flickered against her eyelashes. She was home. She climbed to Chichibud and Benta’s nest. Chichibud was up, waiting for her. “I thought is you that I could hear crashing through the leaves,” he said. “Why you let grit fly do you so? What happen to your lantern?”

“I lost it. I put it down somewhere and didn’t mark good where.”

“I go get you some balm. Go on to bed.”

The soothing balm worked, as so much douen medicine did. The itching and burning faded quickly and the swelling subsided. Tan-Tan fell into an exhausted sleep. She ran in her dreams all night, chased by a thing she couldn’t see. When she clambered out from sleep, she realised: Janisette and them hadn’t seemed surprised to see her there in Chigger Bite. They must have been asking the settlements round Junjuh for news of her. Had Al’s mother betrayed her?

Next morning she was helping Benta fold some newly woven cloths. *You could have come to grief last night,* Benta clucked.

Grief come to me long time. “But nothing happen, I was all right.”

*No, you prove you is still a bush baby. You my charge and Chichibud’s, we can’t put you in danger. From now on, you must only go down a-bush during the day.*

And all Tan-Tan protested, she had to obey. The rest of the douens told on her if she tried to escape, and somebody from the nest would come and get her. For a week her curfew made her shamed and furious. She big woman, making baby, and two ratbats telling her what to do!

She couldn’t stand it. One morning she decided to talk to them about it. They were in the kitchen, Chichibud gouging holes in the daddy tree to transplant new herbs into, and Benta trimming back new daddy tree growth with her sharp beak. Tan-Tan opened up her mouth to talk to them.

BANG-bang-bang! rang out through the daddy tree. Tan-Tan threw herself prone to the floor. Benta was by her side in two-twos, sweeping Tan-Tan to safety beneath her body. She screeched for Zake and Abitefa, who scrambled up into the kitchen to hide under her too. BANG-bang-bang! It was coming from groundwards. Chichibud yelled that he would see what the racket was. He leapt for the hole in the floor, grabbing at the rope as he did. There came the slap of his feet hitting the floor downstairs, then running outside.

Zake was only wailing, “Uhu! Uhu!” Benta whistled softly to him. The daddy tree branches were thrumming with the impact of douens running, hurrying down to the bush floor to see is what really going on. Tan-Tan, Zake and Abitefa squatted under Benta’s breast like baby birds in a nest. What strangeness was happening this time? Tan-Tan’s mind skittered in fright.

The bowl of centipede things had spilled. The nasty yellow-green insects that had been released were scuttling hell-for-leather to freedom. And all the while, all you could hear was: BANG-bang-bang! Splutter-splutter-phut-phut.

Then the patter of feet running back inside the nest. *Chichibud?* Benta sang out. Chichibud warbled back. His head appeared in the hole in the floor. “Allyou make haste come and see. Down on the forest floor. You too, Tan-Tan; this have to be tallpeople business.”

No time for the harness once they reached outside the nest. Chichibud climbed up on Benta’s back, grasped her feathered sides with his feet claws. Tan-Tan clambered up behind him and wrapped her arms round his waist. The banging noise was driving out all logic. Chichibud’s nutmeg-and-vinegar smell was strong; he was agitated. Abitefa threw herself down a daddy tree trunk, heading fast for ground level. Benta pumped up her wings and flung herself off the branch. Tan-Tan fought down nausea as the plummet seemed to turn her belly right away round in her body.

All round them douen people were heading down, quiet like duppy spirits as they reached the lower levels. Benta landed on the lowest branch. It was wide like an avenue. Its edge was crowded with douens four deep, but Benta pushed to the front. Tan-Tan and Chichibud slid off her. A few douens climbed up frantically from ground level to join them; the ones who’d been at the foundry. What were they running from?

The sound of explosions was coming from off in the bush, from the direction of Chigger Bite. It was getting closer. Could never happen, say it couldn’t be. Tan-Tan bent and whispered into Chichibud’s ear: “What we looking for?”

“Wait. It coming into sight now. Keep still.”

Is like he give the order to everybody. Every man-jack of the douen people became still and invisible. They slid into shadows or put themselves behind big daddy tree leaves. Is as if nobody was there.

Tan-Tan sank into a crouch and watched at the place where the noise was coming from. Closer. Louder. It broke from the bush into the space beneath the daddy tree. Splutter-splutter-phut-phut-phut. It was the car, limned by the lanterns its occupants were carrying. Tan-Tan squeaked, clapped a hand to her mouth. They had tracked her from Chigger Bite!

The car rolled to a stop. They had wrapped chains round its wheels. The chains had bitten into the loam and tossed up deep chunks of it, leaving a plowed trail all the way from the daddy tree back to Chigger Bite.

“What a way the something ugly!” Chichibud whispered.

Sitting up on the caboose, Janisette was wearing a low-cut black peasant blouse today and tight black dungarees, with a big black straw hat and veil protecting her face and bosom. She favoured La Diablesse, the devil woman. She put her lantern down beside her and rolled the veil up over the hat to look round. For all her widow’s weeds she didn’t look like nobody in mourning, oui? More like a woman on a rampage. Is so thunder cloud does look before the hurricane, so rolling calf does gather heself into a big black ball before he strike. She looked up, up at the height and breadth of the daddy tree.

“What a ugly, obzocky-looking thing! It come in more like a mountain than a tree. Michael, you sure is here the bitch went to?”

“Is here the trail dead out,” Michael responded. “Best we check it out. Rahtid! You ever see a tree big so?”

“What you think Tan-Tan would be doing here?” Janisette looked round, her mouth pursed up in disdain. She cupped her hand to her mouth and sang sweetly out over the bush, “Tan-Tan! You out here? You all right? Come, doux-doux; everything forgive. Mamee looking for you!”

Gladys said, “You know, you is a two-faced woman. Trying to mamaguy the pickney with sweet words.”

“Is no pickney that, is the bitch that killed my husband.”

“Nobody know that for sure.”

Janisette spat over the side of the car. “So is who do it, then?”

“Maybe Antonio get into a fight with one of Tan-Tan man, oui? He had a unhealthy way to be jealous of he own pickney.”

“Hush your mouth!”

“No, Compère. Making this car for you was a good challenge, we learn plenty, but me fatigued with this nonsense now. Me and Michael want to go home.”

Michael smiled at Gladys, shrugged apologetically in Janisette’s direction.

Scowling, Janisette pointed back the way they’d come.

“You want to leave, get out and go then, nuh?”

“Like you forget who construct this vehicle? We ain’t see no payment yet.”

Janisette kissed her teeth, looked away.

But Gladys wasn’t done. “Maybe you bring we on this chase for nothing. That woman-pickney pants too hot for she own damn good, but I tell you, coulda be anybody do for Antonio. Anybody he cheat or insult. Cuffee, for instance. Chichibud. The rest of allyou does trust douen people too easy.”

“And you does run off your blasted mouth too easy. Shit flowing out of it like out of duck behind.”

“Oonuh don’t fight, nuh?” Michael pleaded with them. “It ain’t go help nothing.”

Tan-Tan knew what she had to do. This was about her, she couldn’t make the douens get mixed up in it. She made to start down the nearest trunk, but Chichibud held her back.

Michael got out of the car. He had to vault over the side; look like they hadn’t had time to make doors. He walked over to a trunk of the daddy tree. Is like tout monde in the daddy tree turned to stone. You couldn’t even self hear breath whisper from anybody’s lungs. Michael squinted up through darkness, cocking his head to one side. He laid a hand on the buttress root, made an enquiring noise. “Gladys, bring a lantern for me there.”

By lantern light, the scuff marks on the buttress root were clear. “You see? Like if somebody went up there so.” He shone the lantern as high as he could, but it didn’t reach them that were hiding.

He gave Gladys the lantern and jumped up onto the root. “Careful, dumpling,” she said.

“Nah, is no problem; like walking up a ramp.” He reached the trunk, touched it. “Koo ya! It have handholds here so.”

Quiet-quiet, the douen women started guiding pickneys and half-formed adolescents up onto their backs. Some of the little ones piped up to know what was going on.

“You hear that?” Janisette asked.

“Yes,” Michael replied. “Like birds chirping.” He was climbing the tree now. Those women with pickneys started flitting away under cover of the shade. The rest stayed with the men.

Michael was well on his way to the first branch. Too close for anybody else to get away. Tan-Tan crouched on the branch next to Chichibud, praying to any god she could think of that Michael wouldn’t come no closer. She heard a soft swips from beside her. Chichibud had pulled his knife out of his belt. The other men did the same. The hinte-them had their beaks and claws to jab and tear. Oh, Nanny; like more blood going to get shed for me.

Michael squinted up into the darkness of the daddy tree leaves. Janisette called out:

“You see anything?”

“Not too good,” he shouted back, frowning. Then his face went clear with astonishment. “But eh-eh! If you only see the size of the wasp nests it have up here, Gladys! Whatever live in there have to be almost as big as me!”

“Nanny save we!” Gladys exclaimed. “You must careful, you hear, doux-doux? I don’t think you should go up any further. Suppose one of them sting you?”

“Only a little more, sweetness. I go mind myself.”

He took two more steps up.

With a screech, a hinte launched herself right at his chest. Gladys screamed. Michael and the hinte plummeted to the ground, the hinte flapping her shrunken wings furiously. Michael landed with a thump. The hinte covering him was Taya, Benta’s sister. “Taya!” shouted Kret. Taya held Michael down with one clawed foot, pecked viciously at his eyes. Michael was only screaming, holding up his arms-them to protect his face. Blood streamed down his forearms.

Fast as flight, Tan-Tan flung herself down the daddy tree trunk. “Taya! Stop it! Stop!”

As her foot touched the ground the air round her exploded, a concussion so strong is like somebody had clapped two hands against her ears. She turned towards the noise. Scraps of blood, bone and beak were fluttering in the bush round the daddy tree. Gladys was standing up in the car, still looking through the sights of the rifle she had used to blow Taya to bits.

“Taya!” Kret hurled himself from the daddy tree to the ground to where Taya’s severed head was lying, the beak still opening and shutting; reflex action as her brain died. Michael was curled up in terror on the ground like an unborn baby. Startled by all the movement, Gladys aimed the rifle first at Kret, then at Tan-Tan. Janisette pulled it out of her hands. “Don’t shoot she. She coming back to Junjuh with we. I want to hear she voice bawling out of the tin box, getting weaker and weaker for days.” Janisette brought her gaze like knives to bear on her stepdaughter Tan-Tan; cutting eyes on Tan-Tan’s person, like if she moved too sudden they would slice her.

Squatting on his haunches, Kret picked up Taya’s bloody head and mashed it to his chest, cawing Taya’s name the whole time. The severed head’s second eyelids rolled over its eyes. The beak stopped moving. Kret put the head down, gentle, gentle, like putting a baby in her bassinette for the night. In terrible swift silence he rushed across the clearing at Gladys; a deadly shadow brandishing a knife. Calm like slow water, Janisette sighted down the rifle and shot him. The gunclap thundered. More blood. More scraps of bone and tissue flying through the air.

“No, no, no! No more!” Tan-Tan shouted. Deafened by the sound of the rifle, she couldn’t hear her own words. The acrid smell of gunpowder got up in her nose with the sweety-salt smell of douen blood. A rage came on her, a fire in she belly. She forgot fear, forgot reason. In two-three strides she was on Janisette. She snatched the rifle away and trained it on Janisette. Janisette’s fearsome gaze never wavered. Uncertain, Tan-Tan dipped the nose of the rifle to the ground.

Her hearing was coming back. Behind her, Chichibud was saying, “You just hold still now, Mister Michael. It have more douen here than you want to tackle with.” Tan-Tan glanced behind her. Michael cowered on the ground, surrounded by the sharp knives and beaks of douens.

Janisette said to Tan-Tan, “So is here you is. Playing in the trees with the monkeys. Murderess.”

Sorrow ground down Tan-Tan’s voice like river water does grind rockstone. “You know what he do to me? You know what my father been doing to me for the past seven years? I couldn’t take it no more, Janisette!”

Janisette clenched her fists and leaned into Tan-Tan’s face: “You think I ain’t know? Slut! You woulda screw anything in sight, including your own father!”

Shock filled Tan-Tan’s mouth up with bile. She started to shake. Janisette continued, “Is you drive he to it! You know what I had was to live with, knowing my own husband prefer he force-ripe, picky-head daughter to me? Eh?”

To Tan-Tan, is like she could feel Antonio’s hands on her again, Antonio’s mouth, Antonio inside her, tearing her up. She had to spit sour slime from her mouth before she could choke out, “Is not so it go, Janisette! Is not my fault! Daddy hurt me!” All she could think was to erase Janisette’s words, to make sure she couldn’t say them any more. She raised the rifle and aimed point blank at Janisette. The blank look of fright that came over Janisette’s face was pure pleasure to Tan-Tan. With a surge of joy she pulled the trigger, blam! just as Chichibud’s clawed hand forced the rifle down towards the ground. A spray of dirt and leaves blinded Tan-Tan. She went cold with horror at what she’d just done. She let go the rifle into Chichibud’s hands. When her eyes cleared again Janisette was leaning against the side of the car, face grey with shock.

I just try to kill my stepmother. Is what kind of monster I is any at all?

“What a stupid-looking thing, only a tube with a handle,” Chichibud said. There was a slight trill to his voice. He wasn’t as calm as he sounded. “Who woulda think it could cause so much pain? What you call this, Tan-Tan?”

“Is a gun,” she told him absent-mindedly. Suppose Chichibud hadn’t pulled her hand away in time? “Mind you don’t pull the trigger; you could shoot off your own foot.” Gladys was returning to consciousness, struggling to her feet inside the car.

“And you point it and shoot it… so?” Chichibud aimed the gun at Michael where he was sitting.

Gladys shouted, “Don’t shoot! Please, Mister Douen—don’t shoot my husband!”

She didn’t recognise Chichibud. She saw him almost every month when he brought goods to trade, and she still couldn’t tell him different from any douen man. But me any different? Tan-Tan’s mind fastened on the thought, rather than dealing on what was in front of her. Sometimes me hard put too to tell he from the rest.

“I can’t shoot at he? Not even for practice?” Though without human intonation, Chichibud made shift to sound regretful, ironic. “You don’t think when I bring this… gun to we ironsmith, I should be able to tell him how it work?”

“I beg you, mister, I go do anything, only don’t kill he.”

“And if I had beg allyou same way not to kill my people, what you woulda say?”

He sighted down the barrel of the gun. Michael looked Chichibud straight in the eye, put his chin in the air, and just waited. Nothing else for him to do, Tan-Tan realised. The douens were in charge of the situation now—Chichibud and she and the rest of them.

“Chichibud, let them get in the car,” she said. She heard a sharp breath in from Gladys:

“Rahtid! Is Chichibud that?”

Tan-Tan watched Michael climb in. Janisette seemed to have recovered from the shock. She stood glaring at Tan-Tan until the other two pulled her into the autocar. Tan-Tan told the hunting party: “Leave these people in peace and go your ways. You don’t have no quarrel with them. As for me, I tell you; I do what I do in self defense.” Liard! You kill he in cold blood! She shook her head a little to dispel the voice. “Leave me in peace, I going to a settlement where Junjuh laws can’t entrap me.”

Chichibud still had the gun trained on Michael. Michael started up the car. It failed twice, started the third time with noxious poops of black air. With much yanking at the steering wheel he turned it round. Janisette pointed a threatening finger at Tan-Tan. “One day I go find you lying slutting self when it won’t have no leggobushbeasts to protect you,” she promised. “Then I bringing you back to Junjuh to roast like chicken in the box.” They left, the car farting every few metres of the way.

The douens watched until they were good and gone. Oddly, Tan-Tan wished she could have asked after Melonhead.

The hinte and some of the adolescents that had fled were starting to return, having left the children safely in the high branches of the daddy tree. Benta’s grief at her sister’s death filled the skies. It tore at Tan-Tan’s heart.

“I have to leave oonuh and go,” Tan-Tan said to Chichibud.

“How them know to find you here?” he asked.

*Don’t make no difference, now them know is where we is,* warbled a douen woman. *Best allyou men had listened to we and never fast up yourself in tallpeople business.*

Chichibud lowered the gun. He dropped his arms to his sides and said nothing. *Because you help that girl child,* the woman continued, *them will bring more tallpeople back here to hunt we down. Them will fight we with more of them gun and thing. We ain’t go have no peace from tallpeople again!*

Chichibud said sadly, “How them know, Tan-Tan?” She couldn’t meet his gaze. “Oh, girl child,” he continued, “the time had to come when tallpeople come into the bush to look for we, but I ain’t know was going to be my actions that bring it.”

“But you could fight!” Tan-Tan told him.

The hinte replied, *We could fight, yes, but allyou tallpeople mad like hell. I think plenty of we would dead in that fight, and allyou would win.*

She couldn’t stand it, she couldn’t take it. Everywhere she went she brought trouble, carrying it like a burden on her back.

From behind Chichibud, the old douen Res growled out something in their language. Chichibud whipped round and chirped out a response. From his movements Tan-Tan recognised that he was amazed at what he’d heard, and he wasn’t the only one. Man and woman, the other douens gathered round Res, screeching and chirruping at him. Res tried to answer back. He couldn’t make himself heard. The douens were cawing and crowing at their elder. The women beat their wings in distress. A couple of the adolescents started to cry, that uhu-uhu sound that Tan-Tan had heard Zake make earlier. Even Abitefa was in the middle of the discussion, clicking her claws together in alarm. Res just held his ground, responded calm-calm.

Tan-Tan touched Chichibud’s shoulder. “What he saying?”

“He say we don’t have to make no more tallpeople find we.”

Hope was like a bird in Tan-Tan’s throat. “How?”

“We have to destroy we home and move away.”

“What, your houses?”

Chichibud didn’t answer, just went and huddled with his family. The argument with Res continued, but in the end they all agreed with him: they would cut down the daddy tree.

All the rest of that day, everybody stripped their houses and made small packs of the things they would need most, only what they could carry on their backs. Benta’s eyes on Tan-Tan were cold like duppy heart and sad, so sad. Finally, everyone’s goods were packed up inside the foundry for them to pick up once the tree had been chopped down.

Benta waddled over to Tan-Tan. Tan-Tan looked at her warily, sorrowfully. *Taya gone. We hatch from one shell, and she gone.*

“Benta, I sorry too bad!”

*Is not you make the gun, is not you fire the gun. But is your actions bring she to this path, so is good you sorry.* She squatted back on her heels, looked up at the daddy tree. *This work going to take we all night,* she said. *You stay here in the foundry, out from under the shadow of the daddy tree.*

“What I could do?”

*Help mind the babies.*

Which she would have done, if they had let her. The douens had set up the foundry as a nursery for all the pickney-them, with the adolescents and the old people to look after them. But every time Tan-Tan moved towards a child, someone would sweep it out of her reach. Finally a douen man being harried by four pickneys of varying size thrust the youngest one into a startled Tan-Tan’s hands. The baby instinctively wrapped his toes round one of her arms and tangled his fingers in her hair. “I feed he already, he should sleep now. I have to go and help them chop. Somebody else will look after these three. Mind he good.”

She would mind he like her life itself, she was so grateful to be trusted. She sat down on an anvil to rock the baby. He curled up his free hand into a fist on his chest and started to drop off to sleep one time. He didn’t look as ugly to her as when she had first set eyes on douen pickneys.

A chopping sound was coming from up high in the daddy tree. Still rocking the baby, she went and stood in the door of the forge. In the dusk, she couldn’t see through the branches of the daddy tree, but she could hear. Up at the top of the tree, the douens were hacking away at its trunks. It was a shocking sound. With loud cracking noises, the tops of the tree broke off in rapid succession, letting in the dying light. All the douen women were in the air, circling, circling. Quick-quick, teams of them grabbed branches in their talons, tugged at them until they came away from the tree. The hinte flew away beyond her sight.

The noise had startled the baby awake. He whined, “Uhu, uhu,” little ratbat face wrinkled up in distress.

“Shh,” Tan-Tan whispered, rocking him. She sang, “Captain, Captain, put me ashore / I don’t want to go any more.” Then she clamped her mouth shut. Not that song. She stroked the baby’s forehead with a fingertip instead, like she’d seen the douens doing. He calmed down little bit. Tan-Tan stared out at the let-in sky. Benta had told her that the hinte would take the tree piece by piece to the sea and drop it in. She had never seen the sea on New Half-Way Tree, never thought to wonder what its oceans were like. Keeping body and soul together kept tallpeople too busy to think of exploring.

Another level of daddy tree was taken away. Thick brown sap was welling up out of the chopped-off trunks. It dropped in gouts to the forest floor. The rest of the hinte kept circling, circling.

The team of douen men with axes climbed down a next level and started chopping again. This level had some douen houses in it; the men just left them there so. Their owners had already abandoned them. Wasp nest houses. Tan-Tan had scorned them when she’d first seen them. Now, she would give anything to be safe back in Benta and Chichibud’s house; anything for the douens not to have to do this thing.

The men chopped and chopped till they cracked off a next section of the daddy tree. Another team of douen women made off with it, heading seawards. And is so it went, level after level, until all that was left was the big stumps and buttress roots of the daddy tree. It had sticky sap all over the forest floor, and shards of douen houses.

It had a mako big hole in the bush canopy in the place where the daddy tree crowns used to be. Tan-Tan looked up at the cerulean blue of the evening sky. Is you do this, you worthless one; is you let the sky into the bush like this.

All through the new-made clearing the douen people gathered in circles round the weeping stumps of what used to be their daddy tree—waiting, waiting. Some of them had lit their lanterns already. Lantern light, sky light; when last had this part of the bush been so illuminated?

Finally the last team of douen women had flown back from the sea. They fluttered down to join the rest of the village in the circles. Benta started to rock from foot to foot. Everybody followed suit. Res began a chant deep in his throat, a wail that resembled a douen baby crying. Tan-Tan caught the words for “home” and “food” and “thank you.” The wail got louder. So a child would lament a dead parent. Other douens joined in, some chanting low and passionately like Res, some screaming, ululating, crying. They keened their loss to the sky. Each one was thanking the daddy tree for sheltering them, mourning its loss. The sound filled up the air, pierced into Tan-Tan’s ears like knives, beat against her body like fists and slaps. The baby she was holding woke up crying again. She let him go on this time. Now is the time for him to bawl. Tan-Tan felt say she didn’t have any right to be part of their mourning, but the tree had held her in its arms too. Quietly she whispered, “Thanks. I so, so sorry. Thanks.”

Slowly the douen wail died down, leaving only the children still sobbing. Next thing Tan-Tan knew, Res pulled out his pissle from his genital flap and peed on the stump in front of him—a green, thick piss that curdled the raw wood wherever it landed. The rest of the douen men did the same, wherever they were standing. The daddy tree stumps were dissolving!

“Papa God!” Tan-Tan exclaimed. “Is what them doing?”

*Burying the daddy tree,* Abitefa explained. Her words-them were mushy, for her teeth were falling out as her mouth grew into a beak. Tan-Tan had to strain to understand her.

*I never see this before, I only hear about it,* Abitefa continued. *Them making the burning water. It go hide the old tree and help the new tree grow in faster.*

“So then how them does piss without melting down the whole place all the time?” she asked. Kret could have burned off her leg that day!

*Them body water don’t always burn, only when them wish it to. What Kret do you, he wasn’t supposed to do.*

“And how it is that no boys ain’t there helping them?”

*Too young. Boys can’t make the burning water yet, them have to turn man first.*

Tan-Tan clicked her tongue in wonder. “And we does say a man not a man until he old enough for he pee to make froth.”

The light of day was almost gone. The men finished their job. All that was left of the daddy tree was a green soup, smelling like ammonia and blood. It made a rank mud on the forest floor. Picking his way carefully round the redolent pools, Chichibud hopped over to his family. Tan-Tan had known him from she was a small pickney. She knew how to read his emotions in his body language. She’d never seen him sadder than this night. But all he said when he reached to them was, “Allyou have any of the tree sap on you? On your foot bottom, anywhere? Wipe it off careful with dead leaf. Don’t touch it! Throw the leaf-them down here so then let we get out of the way. The little teeth coming any minute now; the smell of the sap does call them.”

Little teeth? Tan-Tan gave the baby back to its father. She made haste and obeyed Chichibud. All round her douen people were wiping any trace of sap off themselves and moving briskly out of the clearing into the tree cover. They clustered together. Nine-ten of the douens dipped some long sticks in the sap and piss soup and made a trail out of the clearing, away from where the rest of the village was standing. Tan-Tan went to stand with Chichibud and them.

*We safe upwind. We could watch from here,* Benta said. With her beak she gently pulled Abitefa to her, tucked the young douen woman beneath her breast. Abitefa hunkered down into a ball, warm against the deep keel of her mother’s body.

One-one, more light from lanterns sprang up in the darkness; bouncing, disembodied glows. Tan-Tan remembered the douen myth from back home, about how people could be drawn into the bush by douen lights and the sound of their voices, going deeper and deeper until they were lost for good. And Tan-Tan knew she was lost for true, so far away from herself that she couldn’t know how to come back.

Nobody spoke. What was going to happen? Tan-Tan asked Chichibud what they were waiting for, but a voice from out of the darkness said in a deliberate, contemptuous Anglopatwa, “Chichibud, hush that tallpeople up, you hear? None of we want to hear she voice tonight.” Pressed down with shame, Tan-Tan clamped her lips together.

A hissing sound was coming from the darkness beyond them; a hissing that turned into a rustling that became a chittering then a crunching. A bright red wave poured into the cleared space where the daddy tree had been. From the lantern light Tan-Tan could see a gleam here and there of a thousand thousand shiny carapaces: the little teeth. The wave moved closer. Tan-Tan strained to see. They looked like lobsters, an army of scavengers each the size of her hand, climbing over one another in their eagerness to get to the mixture of daddy tree sap and piss. The noise was their feet running, climbing over anything in their way, even their compères. The noise was their mandibles; cutting and biting, tearing up anything that had sap on it and bearing it away: pieces of wattle and daub; daddy tree leaves and branches that had been left behind; a scrap of some hinte weaving; a leg ripped off one of their own; anything, anything. And so them tear it up, is so them eat it.

Tan-Tan felt a whimper in her throat but she couldn’t hear herself over the noise of the little teeth feeding. She shrank away from the sight in the clearing and leaned up against Benta’s side. She heard an animal scream; the little teeth were taking down a mammal that had been foraging in the clearing and had probably gotten some sap on its feet. The beast was the size of a small dog, but the little teeth bore it down to the ground with the sheer weight of their piled bodies. Tan-Tan couldn’t take her eyes off the roiling mass that hid the beast. It stopped screaming. Seconds later the little teeth that had attacked it were moving on again. Only gnawed bones were left.

And quick as it start, it finish. The little teeth gobbled up everything in their way, followed the trails of sap out of the clearing, and disappeared into the night bush. The ground in the clearing was bare, but for the bones of creatures that had been caught in their path.

“The little teeth does leave nothing behind but them guano,” Chichibud said. Is true; in the lamplight Tan-Tan could see the droppings everywhere, little pellets littering the clearing. And then the most astonishing thing of the whole night; as Tan-Tan watched, shoots started to push up through the ground, growing right before her eyes!

“Koo ya!” she gasped: Look at that!

Chichibud told her, “Is the little teeth guano doing it. When them eat the sap mixed with we burning water, them guano does cause things to grow fast-fast-fast for a few hours. By tomorrow morning, it ain’t go have no clearing here, just a young new daddy tree. Anybody come looking for we might find we foundry in the middle of all this bush, but it go be just a empty, break-down building. No daddy tree. No douens to hunt. We gone.”

Chichibud turned to Abitefa and Tan-Tan. “And you two can’t come with we.” The words beat at Tan-Tan’s ears like Carnival bottle-and-spoon.

“What? Is what you a-say?”

Abitefa cried out. Trembling, she tried to bury herself deeper under her mother’s body. Chichibud warbled at her, took a step towards her, but Res barked out something and Chichibud drew back. Benta nuzzled her, then stepped away. The ring of douen lights moved away from where Tan-Tan and Abitefa were, pulled closer together farther back in the bush.

They couldn’t mean it! “Chichibud,” Tan-Tan asked again, “what you telling we?”

“My job to tell you, for is me bring this misfortune. Is so we does do things, Tan-Tan. You cause harm to the whole community, cause the daddy tree to dead. Abitefa aid you by helping you find Chigger Bite. She shoulda been keeping we secrets, not you own. The two of you too dangerous to carry with we. You going to have to make your own way somehow.”

In frenzied silence Abitefa was plucking out her new feathers, one by one.

The new daddy tree was man-height now, its treetop beginning to knit together. Its growth had slowed, was no longer perceptible to the eye.

All round Tan-Tan and Abitefa, douens were sniffing one another’s skin in the way they did for hello and goodbye. They were splitting up into groups, going separate ways. Other daddy trees would take them in. They all knew how to live off the bush; no need to carry much in the way of provisions. Instead everyone was packing what they treasured most: a douen man was squatting on the ground, repacking a wood box full of ironworking tools; a hinte went by with what looked like two tallpeople books in her beak—she must have learned written patwa. Tan-Tan wondered what she made of the alien worlds described in the pages. “Abitefa,” she asked timidly, “what you taking with you?”

The young woman seemed to have recovered a little from her shock. She opened a pouch round her neck and showed Tan-Tan some pieces of what looked like wrinkled hide, thick as orange rind.

*The shell I hatch from. When I mate, my partner go carry piece in he genital pouch. My first chick go have a anklet from the rest.*

Tan-Tan’s belly felt like it was full up of ice. How was Tefa going to find a mate if she was exiled from her people? Is you do this, mash up another life.

Chichibud came over to them. He extended something to Tan-Tan: her sixteenth birthday present from Janisette.

“Me nah want it!” The leather scabbard was well-oiled. Chichibud slid the knife partially out so that she could see how he’d kept its edge clean.

“Is a gift, you must think before you throw those away,” he told her. “You go need it now, the one machète not enough. It could lose, or break. This knife get you out of danger once, remember?”

“It kill Daddy!” Is you kill Daddy.

“Yes, it had a cost. Present that could cut will cut. And sometimes the tree need to prune, oui? Take it.”

She reached out and touched it, shut her eyes against the memories that came with it. That only made them clearer. She opened her eyes again, took the knife from Chichibud, fastened it in its scabbard round her waist, beside her machète. She had to sling it low round the tummy pot she’d developed. The flesh touched by the scabbard crawled.

“Doux-doux, I sorry too bad it come to this. Maybe your people and mine not meant to walk together, oui.”

But still is your ratbat pickney you leave me with. “Is all right, Chichibud. I going find a settlement I could stand to live in. Them can’t all be rough like Junjuh, right?”

“A next daddy tree will take Abitefa in. We will find she again. But I tell she not to leave you until you settled.” He hadn’t answered her question.

He turned to walk away. They were really leaving her and Tefa here in the bush! Tan-Tan ran to Chichibud and Benta. Tefa beat her to it at a hop, nibbled at Zake’s neck and huddled with her family. Benta cocked an eye at Tan-Tan, lifted one wing. *Come.* And for the final time, Tan-Tan leaned against Benta’s warm side, submitted to Benta grooming her jungly dreadlocks. Then Res snapped out an order and she and Tefa had to separate from the rest again.

Clusters of douens were abandoning the place: by air; on foot. Tan-Tan and Abitefa crouched together on a boulderstone and watched them leave, group by group. They were all gone by the time the sun had risen. The new daddy tree was some two metres tall. Tefa stood, stretched her arm/wings. *Time to leave here before those tallpeople come back with their killing things.*

You must understand, my darling: Abitefa and Tan-Tan was practically children they own self. They know plenty about how to survive in the bush alone, but not everything. Before too long, the two of them did living in misery: not enough to eat, the rain and dew keep coming in on them through the grass thatch Abitefa weave, and the fire only going out all the time. Them have chigger worms digging into them foot. Abitefa had a sore on she toe that wouldn’t heal, from where a ground puppy had bite she one night when she wasn’t careful where she step. Abitefa was doing all right for food, but Tan-Tan was only eating raw mushroom and whatever fruits she could find, for that she didn’t have to bother to make a fire for. She start to weaken on the poor diet. She belly was running all the time.

“We can’t go on like this,” she tell Abitefa. “Every time the fire go out, I frighten mako jumbie go come and hold we. We need some lamps and some kerosene. We need grain alcohol to put on your foot, and a shovel to dig a good fire pit, and a axe to cut wood. Too besides, I could kill for some roast gully hen, oui!”

Tan-Tan convince Tefa to come with she closer to where tallpeople living. “Just for a little while. Just until we scavenge what we need.” That is how them find themselves in the bush outside the settlement named Begorrat.

Tan-Tan didn’t recognise the food crop growing in the fields that circled Begorrat. It was tall with long, scratchy leaves like corn, but the segmented stems were thick as her wrist, bowed with their own weight. She elbowed through it, trying to keep the leaves from touching any exposed skin. She stepped out from between the planted rows right into the path of a young woman about her own age. Her heart fired like a cap gun. “Pardon, Compère.”

The young woman smiled a tired, friendly smile and stayed where she was, centred and calm. Her brown eyes twinkled, matching the red highlights in the drizzled, unruly hair. Two of her front teeth were cracked. “You have to be careful, eh? Don’t make Boss catch you pissing in the cane.”

Boss? That was a word for machine servants to use, not people. “How you mean?”

“You miss lunch. You want some of mine?” She held out a burnt bammy with a bite out of it. “I does take longer to eat, because of the teeth, you know.”

Tan-Tan tore off a bite of the sticky cake of grated cassava. Somebody had soaked it in gravy to soften it before cooking it on the tawa griddle. The outside was overcooked and the inside was hard, but after weeks of cold food with grit in it, the still-warm bammy was glorious. “Thank you.”

“Piss does burn the cane roots,” the woman said. Tearing awkwardly with one side of her mouth, she took a bite of her lunch, chewed it cautiously. She made a small noise of pain, stopped chewing. “Can’t eat too good now since Boss lick me in my mouth that time.” She resumed eating. “Me know one-one dead cane not plenty, but me does do it too. Me figure every one me kill is one less me have to cut, seen?” Her conspiratorial grin was warming, her face beautiful, even deformed round the lump of bammy she was trying to consume. Her look appraised, approved what it saw. Tan-Tan grinned back, dashing away a fleeting image of bandy legs in khaki shorts, a head too big for the strong, wiry body it topped.

“Cane, you call this? Why oonuh want it to dead?”

A triple whistle blast echoed out over the cane field. The woman turned to look over her shoulder, never moving from the spot where she’d chosen to stand. “Time to get back to work. Me will have to finish eat this as me chop.” She stuffed the bammy into a pouch at her waist. “From I get send to this New Half-Way Tree, me never could learn all you have to do to survive without Nanny, oui? This way, me chop little piece of cane, and mind what Boss say, and me get shelter for me head and food for me body. Some of we saving up we earnings until we could do better, but me ain’t able fight up myself more than so. Where you from, that you don’t know what it is to be indentured?”

Indentured. A word from her history lessons. “Is what; somebody making allyou work like this?”

A deep, rumbling woman’s voice was ordering people back to work, calling them lazy, willful. The young woman took Tan-Tan’s two hands urgently, held them hard. The warm touch was startling. Tan-Tan gripped the human hands that held hers. The woman looked earnestly into Tan-Tan’s face. “Prettiness, me nah know where you come from, but if you have it better there, best you get your fine behind out of this Begorrat Town. For me, this place is my best chance for a stable life.”

Tan-Tan was only half-listening. The woman’s mouth was plump, shiny with bammy grease.

Over her shoulder the woman yelled, “Coming, Boss, I coming!” She turned and shambled away. She was dragging one leg; it was hampered by a ball and chain. It had been hidden in the short grass. Gooseflesh rose on the back of Tan-Tan’s neck. She pelted back through the long cane, oblivious of it nicking her skin, to the freedom of the bush.

All night as she shivered in the chill and dark next to Abitefa her inner voice berated her. What kind of Robber Queen was she, that she just turned tail and ran from real evil?

In Corbeau she traded her mother’s ring for three lanterns, oil, matches, grain alcohol, an axe, five kilos of flour and two chickens. She watched the last evidence of Ione’s existence disappear into the shopkeeper’s apron. She gave half the flour and one of the chickens to a wizened family living in a shanty beside the trash heap; it was too much to carry, anyway. “Make soup and dumplings,” she told them. “It will stretch for all six of allyou.” The father asked her her name. “Robber Queen,” she told him, before heading back into the bush. Tefa hissed at the way the alcohol burned her toe, but her sore dried up overnight.

In Babylon A-Fall Tan-Tan stayed a week, having two specially thick blankets woven in return for some manicou she trapped, killed and smoked. She cursed herself for having given away Ione’s ring when she could have used her survival skills to produce goods like smoked manicou to trade.

She liked Babylon A-Fall. They had no tin box torture. She would go back and tell Abitefa she would stay here. On the day her blankets were ready, she collected them and was going to speak with a woman who had a room she would let. She saw a new headblind exile about to step into the town well. She shoved him out of danger, and got an earful of obscenity for her trouble. And one of her blankets fell into the water. As she was dragging it out of the well, she heard a familiar phut-phut-phut. Open road, nowhere else to hide. She jumped into the well, hung on by her fingers to its edge. Her blanket landed soundlessly again in the water below.

The sound came closer, moved past her. Tan-Tan poked her head out of the well. Janisette had found her. Her stepmother was alone. She was driving a jeep this time, obviously made of parts that Gladys and Michael had stripped from the autocar. The jeep was heavier, rode smoother. There was no bleating from its engine.

There came a screech of brakes, the sound of Janisette cursing. Then to Tan-Tan’s dismay, she heard the jeep returning. Biceps burning, she lowered herself into the well to the extent of her arms. The weight of the baby pulled at her, made the tendons in her groin cramp. Her feet paddled in the ice-cold water. The jeep stopped. Tan-Tan could feel the rough brick of the well’s edge scraping the pads of her fingers. Her boots were filling with frigid water, making her shiver. How deep was the well? Her arms screamed for her to let go, just let go. She could swim, ain’t? She would be all right? But she held on. She could see the muscles of her arms twitching involuntarily. Her feet were blessedly numb now, but the weight of the water in her boots was an extra drag. Her fingers were beginning to slip. The babyweight was dragging her down. Soon only her fingertips held her.

Janisette made an impatient noise. “Cho. After is here them tell me I could find she.” The jeep started up again, phut-phut-phutted its way away.

Gasping with the pain in her abused arms, Tan-Tan scrabbled with her feet against the sides of the well until she found purchase on its uneven bricks. She worked her thighs apart to make room for her bellybulge, braced her feet and her back against the sides of the well. Slowly, by pushing with her thighs and arching her back, she levered herself up. Eventually she was able to roll out onto the ground, much to the shock of two little girls who had come with their bucket for water. They stood wide-eyed and watched her. “Careful there,” she told them. “Mind you fall in.”

Her arms wouldn’t work to push her upright. They trembled and ached. Tan-Tan rocked to her knees, then her feet, wept with the effort of tossing the remaining blanket over her shoulders. She smiled her brightest smile at the little girls. They stared solemnly. She hiked back to Abitefa and the safety of the bush. She couldn’t make a home in tallpeople lands. Janisette would follow the trail that gossip about her laid, hunt her out wherever she was. She should stay away from settlements altogether, but sometimes she just longed for tallpeople faces.

In Poor Man Pork she had the remaining blanket made into a cape to hide her seven-month belly. Hard living in the bush had made her so lean, the bulge didn’t show if she wore bulky clothes. But it was getting bigger.

The seamstress tried to substitute a cheaper fabric for the one Tan-Tan had given her. So Tan-Tan stood over her while she sewed. She pilfered every single candle the woman had in the place, tucked them into her carry pouch. When her cape was done she paid for it and took it away. She had supper in a rum shop, etched “Tan-Tan the Robber Queen” with her knife point into the longest candle. She made sure to leave just as the sun was beginning to think about going down. She meandered through town until she found a house that was in darkness. She put the candles down on the front step, rapped smartly on the door, and ran away, cape flaring behind her.

She began to notice little girls playing at Robber Queen in the settlements.

You feeling pressure, eh doux-doux? Don’t worry, that normal. Not too much longer, promise you. Then a whole new life going to start for you.

No, don’t fight it so, relax. Or it does hurt more. Yes, relax. And make I continue, the story will take your mind off it.

So. Little time after she start up she escapades regular in the New Half-Way Tree settlements, Tan-Tan start to hear back the first anansi stories ’bout sheself. I think you going to like this one, sweetness. Is the only one Tan-Tan would sometimes repeat sheself: