Midnight Robber

A deep swooping motion drove Tan-Tan from sleep. She grabbed at the panier’s restraining strap. It was ’fore-day morning and Benta was beginning her descent. Tan-Tan looked behind her at Chichibud in his saddle. The douen was still sleeping, his long clawlike toes locked on his restraining strap where it curved around Benta’s body.

Tan-Tan was cold, despite the blanket that Chichibud had tucked round her. Her knees hurt where her legs had been folded all night into the panier. Her bruises were a thought for later. She rummaged in her pocket, found a last strip of the dried tree frog meat that Chichibud had given her. She set to chewing it, working it about in her mouth to soften it.

The night had been long, oui. It had been too difficult to speak through the rushing wind of their flight, so they’d passed it in silence; Tan-Tan there in the rushing dark with the memory of the weight and smell of Antonio’s corpse pinning her to she bed. She’d retreated into sleep a few times, only to be dragged out of it by her painful knees.

The day was brighter now, easier to see about her. Tan-Tan sat up tall in the panier, dashed her hand across her cheeks. Dried tears flaked off at her touch. Benta swooped down. Tan-Tan looked over the side. “Rahtid!” she cursed. They were heading straight for the forest canopy, towards a leafy circle lower than the topmost trees in the bush, but wide; big so like any village.

“Is home that,” Chichibud shouted above the rushing wind.

Then they were dropping down through green, plunging past leaves and branches. Tan-Tan closed her eyes, ducked her head below the level of the panier to avoid the whipping foliage.

Benta screeched, backwinged, landed with a jolt. Somewhere in the foliage Tan-Tan heard a next packbird scream.

“Woi, Taya!” Chichibud shouted in response. “Benta sister,” he told Tan-Tan. Benta bird screeched her own greeting—the nonsense nannysong again—bobbing her head and cooing back like any pigeon. She shook her wings. They shrunk down small once more. She began to preen and tuck them in.

At first Tan-Tan couldn’t really take in what it was she was seeing any at all. It so big, she could only understand a piece at a time. First the half-light and the damp, heavy heat. And the sound of leaves rustling in the breeze. Shiny burgundy leaves all around them, some of them the length of her body. Then it came to her that the thing they had landed on that curved away on either side was a branch, not ground. One big mako branch, wide as a two-lane autoroute. Big branches everywhere, so big they disappeared into the shadows like trails. Smaller ones coming off them, like paths and so. This place was a massive tree, so big she couldn’t see all of it.

Another screech! A multitudinous chirping, warbling, calling out of Chichibud’s and Benta’s names. Douens were bubbling out of the foliage, shinnying down branches, swinging in on lianas, flying in a-packbird back. Comess, Granny! Up in the air, animals like ratbats flitting from limb to limb and calling out to each other. They started to land praps! praps! praps! all around. Actually they were gliders, not flyers so much. They would land on a branch, push off, shoot to a next one. They chattering to each other like pickney. Mama Nanny, what a way they were ugly! Tan-Tan would have run screaming if she’d been by herself, but Chichibud was only grinning and Benta cooing a welcome.

The first of the douen men reached to them. They stared at Tan-Tan, babbled away at Chichibud. He chirped back as fast as he could. Benta screeched and flapped her wings-them, and the whole was a cacophony. How could anybody make any sense heard through that racket?

There were two kinds of ratbat things, Tan-Tan could see now. One kind had limbs like Chichibud’s, with the two hind legs turn backwards. Some were covered in long hairs, some that looked older had lost the hair. Most of them had flaps of skin stretching between arms and body. Douen pickney could fly! The other kind of ratbat must have been packbird young. Their feathers were disorderly, rampfled up like slept-on hair. But is what kind of packbirds they, with beaks that were half snout and full of teeth? Some of them were walking stooped, like they’d started out being upright. They hopped like douens instead of walking or running like Benta. For the first time, Tan-Tan noticed how packbird feet and douen feet looked almost the same.

Chichibud hopped out of his saddle down to the tree branch, said to Tan-Tan, “You in a Papa Bois, the daddy tree that does feed we and give we shelter. Every douen nation have it own daddy tree. Come in peace to my home, Tan-Tan. And when you go, go in friendship.”

Friendship? the bad Tan-Tan voice howled at her, louder here in douen land. You could be friend to anybody? You was friend to we daddy? Chichibud reached to help Tan-Tan down. She flinched her nasty self away.

“I go do it myself.” She climbed off Benta’s back.

Two pickney landed right by her, a douen and a packbird. Benta chirped a welcome. “Zake,” said Chichibud. “Abitefa.” Was the douen child his? It reminded her of Old Masque bat costumes, leathery and plain. Ugly lizard pickney. She took a step back. The pickney back-backed in the opposite direction; the packbird pickney too.

They were surrounded by the inhabitants of the tree: douen men and pickney; packbirds. Where were the mysterious douen women? The men were talking fast-fast-fast to Chichibud in their language. He screeched at them. Most of them fell silent. The pickney-them squeezed to the front and stood staring at Tan-Tan, making the nervous click with their tiny claws and pressing their little bodies against the adults as if for comfort. Chichibud called out to Zake again, and finally the pickney Zake came shuffling out of the circle, watching Tan-Tan the whole time from the corners of its eyes. Its young packbird pet followed it, walking awkwardly in its old-people gait. Benta nuzzled pickney, bird and all.

Chichibud uncinched Benta’s saddle, slung it over his shoulder. One of the douen men stood in front of him, his throat frill bulging with angry air. He expelled the air with a high whistle and began the argument again, jerking his muzzle over towards Tan-Tan. Chichibud answered back softly. A few douens in the crowd said the same words, seemed to be agreeing. But the angry one looked Tan-Tan straight in her eyes, reached inside his genital flap and let go a hot, green stream of piss right there on the branch in front of her feet. Tan-Tan danced out of the way. A thin layer of the living wood curdled where the urine had hit. Chichibud hopped between her and the angry one, his throat frill blown up full. The two of them stomped from foot to foot and screeched at each other. The stranger reached for his knife belt, lunged at Tan-Tan. Next thing, something knocked Tan-Tan down. Something big and warm covered her, gently. Benta had shoved Tan-Tan down and was shielding her beneath her huge, warm body. For all her massive size, Benta’s body was light. Tan-Tan could hear Benta’s wings beating, the bird screaming: “Krret! Tzitzippud!”

That last sound—it had almost sounded like Chichibud’s name. Tan-Tan peeked out from underneath Benta’s smooth breast feathers. The douen stranger had crouched low in front of Benta. His knife was back in its sheath. His hands were empty, held out in open view, his throat frill deflated. Chichibud approached Benta slowly, murmured at her softly in the douen tongue. The packbird raised her body so that Tan-Tan could get out. But it was safe right there so in the musty dark that Benta had made. Tan-Tan didn’t move.

“Come out now,” Chichibud coaxed her.

“You sure? I ’fraid that man kill me dead.”

“Kret? Nah, man. Benta go do for he if he try.”

“Why he want to hurt me?”

“He think say me shoulda leave you in Junjuh, and leave tallpeople to deal with they own. But trust Benta to keep you safe, Tan-Tan. Woman is something else to deal with, oui?”

“Woman?”

“More douen business for you to learn. Benta is my wife.”

Benta chortled. She stood right up and shoved her head under her own body to stare at Tan-Tan with one purple eye. The sounds she was making could be “welcome,” if it was talk she was talking in truth. Tan-Tan scooted out from under her and glowered at Chichibud. “You making mako ’pon me?”

Benta warbled in Chichibud’s direction.

“Yes, I did feel say she wouldn’t believe.”

The douen that had attacked Tan-Tan made a noise like a rusty hinge, stood and rejoined the crowd.

Benta sidled over, skreeked, *Tann-Tann!* She rattled her beak through Tan-Tan’s wiry hair, still trying to groom it.

“No, no; wait. Back off.” She was talking to a bird as though it could understand. Benta moved back. “Chichibud, I don’t understand. Allyou is two different species.”

The packbirds around them ruffled their feathers.

“Them find what you saying jokey,” Chichibud told her. “We and them is same-same one. Only tallpeople does come in like the other beasts and them. Allyou woman does look like man, or pickney.”

Tan-Tan laughed! Swallowed her laughter. Looked at Benta good. At the bird feet, so like douen feet. At how the fronds of her feathers resembled the long hair on the douen pickney-them. The bird—douen woman—regarded her calmly.

“All this time she could talk?” Tan-Tan asked Chichibud.

*Talk to me!* Benta warbled. This time the douen males added their shu-shu laughter to the packbirds’ rufflings.

“I… I sorry, Benta.”

*Good.*

Now that Tan-Tan knew that Benta was sentient and capable of speaking human language, she could understand the packbird a little more clearly.

Chichibud said, “Benta could always talk. All the hinte, the douen women, speak. Just not among tallpeople, is all. Them want to keep them secrets.”

“What a thing,” Tan-Tan murmured.

“Of course, the hinte prefer to communicate in song. Nothing sweet like when a hinte sing to you.”

Benta burst into a concatenation of sound, a wordless almost-nannywarble. Chichibud went and leaned against her side.

Then Tan-Tan had to meet Chichibud and Benta’s whole community. First old Res, the eldest one of them. His fangs were ground down to pegs in his mouth. His eyes were bleary. Tan-Tan wondered how long douens lived. Res sniffed her skin in greeting then climbed agilely up a vine rope to a higher branch of the daddy tree to watch. One by one she met them all. The hinte tasted her clothing and hands with narrow horny tongues. The men and the children sniffed at her. Amongst so many douens, the nutmeg-and-vinegar scent of the adults was strong. The restless, nervous pickney-them smelt something like saliva. One of the changing-into-a-packbird girls both licked Tan-Tan’s blouse and sniffed at her skin, like a pickney and a woman. Much shu-shuing and rustling all round at her adolescent confusion. The douen men sniffed Tan-Tan politely, but some of them rolled down their second eyelids the way douens did at a bad odour. Many greeted her in her language. She thought she recognised some of them. Truth to tell, sometimes the only way she could ever tell Chichibud from the other douen men who came to Junjuh was by the scar on his leg from when he’d fought the mako jumbie. Kret, he just stood to one side. When Tan-Tan met his eyes, he turned his back on her. Then all the douen men and women-them withdrew to under Res’s branch. They stood talking to one another in their singy-singy language, glancing at Tan-Tan from time to time. Benta stayed with her. Tan-Tan was glad for that. She ain’t think she could take much more strangeness, oui? She found herself leaning in the old familiar way against Benta’s warm side. Benta leaned back and made a comforting churring sound. Tan-Tan remembered that this was a woman, not a pack animal. Her ears burning with embarrassment, she pulled away.

“Where I going to stay, Benta?”

*With we.* She chirruped more too besides. Tan-Tan had to apologise; it was too fast for her to catch.

Chichibud left the arguing group and came back to Tan-Tan and Benta. He tried to introduce their pickneys-them, Zake and Abitefa—for Abitefa was a douen girl, not a pet—to Tan-Tan again, but the children wouldn’t come close at all at all. Up on his branch, Res was cawing harshly at the crowd of douens. “So,” Tan-Tan started, wanting desperately to make some sense of the new world in which she found herself, “douen woman does have two kind of pickney?”

Benta start to warble an answer. Tan-Tan listened hard but only caught one-one word here and there; “douen,” and “pickney,” and “fly.”

“I don’t…” Tan-Tan said helplessly. Chichibud took over the explanation:

“When douen pickney hatch,” (Hatch? Tan-Tan thought) “them does all look like Zake, boy and girl both. Them have wingflaps and fur, and them could glide. As the boys mature them does lose their wingflaps and the hair. The hair on the girls does develop into feathers and them arms does crook into wings, them mouths does harden into beaks. Once them start making eggs, them could fly for real. Them get two ways of speech, one for each other, and the one that men and pickney-them use. Is the saddest thing for douen men, to remember how we used to be able to fly like them. If a douen man ever want to fly again, he have to partner with hinte.”

Tan-Tan didn’t want to deal with no more of this, oui? She sat down on the tree branch to try and gather her wits. Something fell through the air and landed in her lap. It was small and soft. She looked up. Old Res was directly above her. In the murky light, she couldn’t tell what it was that he had thrown down for her. She picked it up, holding it to the light to try to see more clearly. It wriggled in her fingers. It was a slimy tree frog.

“Aahh!” Tan-Tan made to pitch it away but Chichibud was faster. He leapt, closed his fist around Tan-Tan’s own. The tree frog squirmed in the cage of their two hands. Tan-Tan tried to pull away. She hated slimy things, they reminded of all the ways her daddy had taught her for bodies to make slime.

But Chichibud held her hands tight. “Oho!” he said out loud, like he was proclaiming it for all to hear. “Is a gift Res give you. Raw tree frog meat is the sweetest meat it have. That mean he accept you as a guest in we daddy tree, Tan-Tan. You must thank he, and you must eat it.”

Tan-Tan hissed, “You gone bassourdie, or what? Eat that nasty thing?”

“Child,” the douen man answered soft-soft, “keep your voice quiet, and follow my lead if you want to sleep safe tonight. Plenty of my people already not too happy to have a tallpeople among we, especially not one who could bring trouble on we head by she kill one of she own. Them ’fraid you go bring more tallpeople here searching for you. Is a chance Res give you, and me too. So just do what I tell you, nuh?”

If you take one, you must give back two. Old Res was showing her a kindness. Chichibud too. They were trying to save her life.

“What I must do, Chichibud?”

“You go have to eat the frog.”

“Raw?” Tan-Tan felt her gorge rise. The greasy frog squirmed frantically in her hand.

“Seen, but I go make it easier for you.”

She set her teeth. She nodded.

“Good girl. You have courage.” Chichibud called something out to Res. The old douen laughed shu-shu. Chichibud turned back to Tan-Tan.

“I tell he that since you ain’t know we ways, I go have to show you how to eat tree frog.” Before Tan-Tan could respond, Chichibud took the tree frog from her hand and bit off its head. He put the body to her lips. Tan-Tan made a choking noise. She fought not to pull herself away. “Drink some of the blood, doux-doux. Pretend you sucking it all in.”

Tan-Tan took a little sip from the hot thread of blood pumping down her chin. It tasted salty, and sweet. It spread over her tongue like thick mud. Like the first time Antonio had ever ejaculated in her mouth, whispering to her the whole time. Yes, sweetness, you want it, ain’t? Her belly rose right up into her throat, but she swallowed the frog’s blood. Oh Nanny. She looked into Chichibud’s eyes, praying that the torture done, but it had more for her to do.

“Take it from me, Tan-Tan. Bite off one of the limbs. If you could eat it, eat it, but if not, make like you chewing, and just keep it in your cheek.”

She couldn’t let herself vomit. Tears were flowing down her cheeks, but she took the tiny dead body from Chichibud. She held her breath. Closed her eyes. Bit into the tree frog. She could hear small bones snapping, feel the gristle tearing. She shut her mind against the smell, the smell of Antonio’s body once she’d sliced it open. She didn’t know how she managed it but she choked down a little piece of the meat. She spit a small leg bone into her hand.

And is like that was the signal every man-jack was waiting for. One set of yodelling from the douen men started up in the daddy tree. The hinte bated their wings and bobbed their heads, screeching to the sky.

“What?” Tan-Tan asked Chichibud, wondering where she could run to.

“So you eat the tree frog, so you eat we secrets. We know we safe with you now.”

Only Kret didn’t seem too happy. He walked slowly past Tan-Tan, holding his gaze on her with cloudy eyes. He’d rolled down his second eyelids-them to stare; a big douen insult. Benta hissed. Kret gave Tan-Tan one last shrouded glare then ran for the edge of the branch they were on and leapt over the side, grabbing at a rope vine as he went.

It looked like that was that. Douens started to drift away through the daddy tree, some gliding, some hopping, some walking. Finally, only Benta and Chichibud and their two pickney remained standing there with Tan-Tan. Tan-Tan gave Chichibud the rest of the dead frog. He popped it into his mouth and chewed it like hard candy. Tan-Tan could hear the little bones crunching. She looked away.

“It have somewhere I could lie down?” she begged. “I tired too bad.”

*Come, I go show you.* Benta led them all to an aerial buttress vine. On a regular banyan it would have been narrow. On this mako tree it was bigger than Tan-Tan could wrap her arms round. There were handholds carved into it.

Her eyes more accustomed to the dusky light now, Tan-Tan could see how the daddy tree come in like a mangrove. It had many vast trunks to uphold its bulk. A fluorescent fungus grew everywhere, giving off guiding light. Tan-Tan gasped when Zake leapt right off the branch, opening his gliding flaps with a snap. He was heading downwards into the dark. Abitefa chirped something to her mother and started climbing down the aerial root.

“Get on Benta back,” Chichibud told Tan-Tan. He grabbed a liana and swung down.

Tan-Tan looked at Benta. Benta cooed something. Tan-Tan frowned, feeling more like crying, in truth. She didn’t understand. She wanted to go home. She couldn’t go home. Benta sidled up to her and tried to put one shoulder under Tan-Tan’s thigh, but no matter how low the douen woman crouched she was still too tall for Tan-Tan to throw her leg over the broad back. Benta warbled. Tan-Tan shook her head impatiently, running her hands over her hair. The hinte tapped Tan-Tan on the shoulder with her beak. Tan-Tan looked down where the beak was pointing. Benta had crooked one leg akimbo, making a step for Tan-Tan to climb up on.

“Climb up on your foot, Benta?”

*Yes.*

And is so Tan-Tan found herself straddling a hinte bareback. She had barely settled when Benta gathered herself and swooped down from the tree branch. Tan-Tan’s belly did a somersault. She grabbed for Benta’s snaky neck, squeezed with her thighs as hard as she could. Benta hadn’t puffed up her wings!

But they glided safely, Benta landing on one branch then pushing off to fall gracefully to a next one. Tan-Tan closed her eyes against the sight of leaves rushing too fast past her face. Her ears popped, her bruised legs protested. Benta connected with a thump on a hard surface. This time she didn’t immediately leap to another branch. The world was still again. Tan-Tan opened her eyes.

The structure in front of them was a cluster of room-sized spheres the colour and texture of dried leaves. Tan-Tan struggled for a childhood memory. The thing looked like a giant wasp nest. It had a halwa tree growing beside it, digging roots into the daddy tree like a parrot on a perch. Plants clustered all round the structure, feeding directly through the daddy tree’s branches. Stuck into the surface on either side of the wasp nest structure were the two beak halves from the mako jumbie that Chichibud had killed many years ago. Zake was perched at the very top of one of the beak halves. Benta screeched at him and he slid down to the branch, threw himself backwards through a hole in the wasp nest structure. Chichibud came out of the same hole, Abitefa clambering clumsily after him.

*Get down now,* said Benta. Tan-Tan let go Benta’s neck, although her arms-them felt like they wanted to lock there permanently, oui? She slid off the douen woman’s body.

“So you reach!” Chichibud laughed. “I was beginning to think say Benta let you fall.” Abitefa screeched and ruffled her body in douen woman mirth.

“Easy for oonuh to laugh,” Tan-Tan muttered. “Oonuh make to travel this way. I ain’t no ratbat, you hear?”

*Come inside.*

Up close, Tan-Tan could see the mudlike substance that formed the domes of the dwelling, the twigs and dead leaves mixed in for strength. A soft moss grew over it, with tiny square leaves. Probably that would make it waterproof.

The douen family had disappeared through the door hole. Tan-Tan had to crouch down to get inside. Her bruises stretched painfully.

Inside, it did spacious and airy. Glowing fungus everywhere made it bright, aided by kerosene lamps—traded from the humans—hanging from every level of the space. The domes connected on the inside in a waffle shape, rising to three-four storeys. Some of the walls had round holes knocked out of them for windows; or doors, Tan-Tan supposed, since the douens-them could fly or climb through any one they wished.

Some of the dwelling’s domes had been built right around smaller branches of the daddy tree. The structure would be very stable.

Zake hopped over to an aerial root. It had the same handholds carved in it that Tan-Tan had seen before. In no time at all the boy shinnied up the branch to the next storey. He opened his arms wide and threw himself into the air, screaming with glee, to glide down to the ground level. He took off at a hopping run into another room. Tan-Tan and the others followed.

A low oval table was in the middle of the room. It had logs in a circle around it; probably they could be seat or perch, depending on who was using it. Zake dove for a pile of approximately spherical cushions against one wall, all different sizes and shapes. He gathered them round himself in a temporary nest then reached out and broke off a piece of fluorescent fungus that was growing by the wall. To Tan-Tan’s surprise he popped it into his mouth and started eating it. He stared at her, saying nothing.

Tan-Tan recognised the dye-work on the fabric of the cushions; is Chichibud’s wife’s work…

“How Benta does do she weaving?”

Chichibud said, “Ask she nuh, doux-doux? I sure she go like to show you.”

Tan-Tan felt her ear tips heating with embarrassment. She’d forgotten again to speak directly to Benta.

*This way.* The hinte led her past a room with a hole right through the floor. Tan-Tan had to pee, but she wasn’t going to squat with her bottom exposed to the outside to do her business, like some kind of wild animal, a leggobeast in the bush. The room didn’t even self have a door! She felt her mouth screwing up in disgust.

A next room, too dark to see good, then Benta’s workspace. Weaving and dyeing were everywhere: cayenne red and ochre yellow strips were draped to dry on lines strung from wall to wall; cloth was folded into squares and stacked on one of the low tables; a sloping loom was strung with a half-finished piece. Tan-Tan could discern the dancing black figures that Benta was weaving into it. How, with no hands?

Benta waddled to the loom. In her beak she picked up a warp thread that had been dangling off to one side. The end of the thread was attached to a shuttle. Benta started shunting it through the warp, using her beak and one foot just like a parrot eating a nut. With the foot on the ground she pressed the treadle.

“But eh-eh!” Tan-Tan laughed. Everything here so strange!

Benta stopped the loom, chirped, *Bath for you now.*

The bathing room was the dark one next to the piss hole room. It had one mako big flowertop growing from the daddy tree right into the space. It put Tan-Tan in mind of a pineapple top, but at least three metres across. The tips of it extended out through small holes in the side of the room. Cool, diffuse light came through the holes. A lantern hanging from one of the spiny flower petals threw a quivering mandala of light on the wall. As her eyes adjusted, Tan-Tan could see that the crown of the flower was full of water; a natural bathtub. Abitefa was strewing crushed herbs from a small bowl into the water, stirring it with her arms that were crooking into wings. The herbs smelt strengthening, like the scent of coffee brewing. Abitefa stood and from a low shelf took a little iron pot with holes cut out the sides. She waved it in the air and a sweet-smelling smoke curled from out the pot. The bathing place felt peaceful and quiet, the perfect space to cleanse your body and your mind.

Benta left the two of them alone in the room. Abitefa glanced at Tan-Tan, looked away, made to shuffle past her. “Ahm, Abitefa?” said Tan-Tan. The young hinte woman stopped and looked at her silently. Did she speak Anglopatwa? “I need to, uh, I need to piss.”

Sure enough, Abitefa led her into the adjoining room that she had walked past a few minutes ago. Tan-Tan peered down into the squatting hole. There was some kind of bowl hanging below it. Her stomach roiled at the sight of the pale, fat grubs churning in the mess inside. But she was going to burst, she had to go. “You could watch the door for me?”

Abitefa warbled, then switched languages: *Watch why.*

It was a question. “I mean, stand by the door and make sure nobody come by and look ’pon me while I peeing.”

Abitefa ruffled her developing feathers in amusement, but waddled to the door and stood. She skreeked loudly, *Nobody coming.* There was a flurry of answering calls and cries from somewhere in the dwelling. Tan-Tan hurriedly did her business while Abitefa rustled and bustled with laughter. The acid urine stung Tan-Tan where… feeling Bad Tan-Tan stirring, she abandoned the thought. She quickly pulled up her clothing and said loudly to Abitefa, “I done now.”

Abitefa took her back, continued preparing the bath. Not knowing what to say to her, Tan-Tan just looked round. On the floor beside the bromeliad tub it had a bowl with scrubbing husks. A handful of arm-thick stalks jutted out one side of the tub, pushed themselves out of a hole that had been cut for them trunkside of the room. Abitefa pulled one of the stalks to the inside. It was a big dark blue flower, pitcher-shaped, with a deep cup. Abitefa bent the stalk over the bath, emptied its load of water in.

“Oho,” Tan-Tan said.

*Bathe now,* Abitefa sang. She left Tan-Tan to figure it out herself.

Tan-Tan stood closer to the bromeliad tub. She could see a trickle of condensation running from the tip that went outside down into the tub. It would refill itself constantly and the douens could top it up from the pitcher flowers if they needed to. How did they drain it?

She was alone, finally. The flicker-lace light from the lamp threw soft, gentle shadows on the leaves and branches. Tan-Tan dabbled her hand in the bath water. It was warm. The trickle sound of the water was a soothing balm. It had a scent in the room of growing things, of peace. She was tired for true, seen. She was nearly swaying on her feet with fatigue. She made to strip off her shirt—but the door, it ain’t have no door!

She yelped when Abitefa shuffled back into the room unannounced. Startled, Abitefa dropped the folded unbleached cloths she’d been carrying. They stood staring at each other. Was the young hinte shy? Vexed? Indifferent? The elongated hands of Abitefa’s going-to-wings arms-them retained their fingers on their ends, that’s how she grasped things. Abitefa picked up one of the cloths and rubbed it against her own body.

“You mean I must dry myself with them?” asked Tan-Tan.

*Yes.*

She was gone again. Tan-Tan knotted two-three of the soft cloths together and tied them across the door.

Finally some quiet, oui. Tan-Tan took off her clothing and climbed into the flowertop. Her feet slid into the centre, where the wide spikes of the bromeliad overlapped to hold the water. It was warmer there. The heat seemed to be coming from the core of the flower. So strange to be inside a living bath! She lowered herself in.

As her behind hit the warm, fragrant water all her nicks and cuts from the day before awoke stinging. She sucked in air against the pain and eased in slowly. Her hands were trembling, her knees shaking. All of a sudden she felt sick. Every scratch was a memory, every gash an image. Bad Tan-Tan was screaming at her, accusing her. She could see the raised welts on her legs from Daddy’s belt. Sobbing, she scooped up some water, splashed her face with it. The water made a spot on her cheek burn. She touched it gently. A bruise, from Antonio’s slap. Another, a branch-whip from their flight through the bush.

The herbs in the water were soothing, eventually eased the pain of her wounds to a blessed numb tingle, but Tan-Tan was sobbing by the time she was clean. This wasn’t just a day trip, an adventure. She had had home torn from her again.

Tan-Tan crouched in the tub, watching the tears dropping one by one into the water. She felt sick to her stomach. Only good for dead, hissed Bad Tan-Tan. Her dripping eye water made rings in the bath.

She stayed there so until the chilling of her skin from the water brought her back to herself. She was hungry, yes? She climbed down from the bath and dried her skin. She picked up her birthday skirt—today was her birthday—to put it back on. A faint smell snaked out from it, different from the cleansing scents of herbs and smoke. A smell of blood. Tan-Tan skinned up her face and dropped the skirt into the bath water. She swirled it round, wrung it, laid it over one of the flower spikes to dry. She found a dryish piece of cloth from the pile Abitefa had brought her. She tied it into a dhoti round her hips, wrapped another cloth round her chest and tied it into a halter at neck and waist. She looked down at herself with a wry smile. “But look at what I come to, ee? Living in a tree like a monkey, wearing a halter top and a diaper. Lord, if Janisette see this outfit, she would dead with laugh.”

Janisette. Tan-Tan’s mind shut tight like a mouth again.

Her belly grumbled. Maybe Chichibud and them would give her something to eat? She slipped her sandals back on and left the bathroom, looking for Chichibud and his family.

The main room was empty. Benta wasn’t in her weaving room. Tan-Tan couldn’t find Abitefa or Zake anywhere.

“Allyou?” she called out softly. Then, a little louder: “Is where everybody gone!”

*Up here, doux-doux!*

Tan-Tan looked up. Three-four ropes hanging from the ceiling were threaded through a round hole. The whole family was looking down on her from a next room up there.

Chichibud called down, “I still smelling the heat from the lantern, child. Bush Poopa don’t like a unwatched fire.” So she had to go back and blow out the lantern. When she returned, Chichibud told her to climb one of the ropes and join them for the day meal.

The ropes had spaced knots that she could wrap her toes round, had they been long and prehensile like douen toes. But she had always liked to climb… She kicked off her sandals and grabbed hold of a rope. The climb seemed to take forever. By the time she stuck her head through the hole, she had added rope burns to her other abrasions. The muscles in her arms were burning like pepper. Chichibud and Benta had to pull her the rest of the way, with her grinning like a fool. She had done it. “Is a good thing I know how to tie dhoti, ain’t?” she announced to the family. “Couldn’t have do all of this in that little short skirt.”

A piece of the daddy tree trunk formed one wall of the space in which she found herself. Two branches stuck out from the trunk along one wall surface, and then poked out to the outside. The trunk grew right up through the ceiling-self. There was a hole cut out for it. Thick, succulent daddy tree leaves grew from the trunk and branches; some hand-sized, some long as she. In amongst the branches, it had more of the flowerstalk that had been in the bathroom sticking through the windows. There was lots of water available for food preparation. Somebody had dug small pits in the meat of the branches-them, lined them with what looked like dried leaves, then planted herbs inside. Their roots probably tapped into the daddy tree’s own food systems. Tan-Tan recognised peppermint and scotch bonnet pepper that the douens had probably traded with humans for, but it had a whole set of plants too besides that she didn’t know.

The family was sitting or crouching on a crescent-shaped rug on the floor. It had bowls in front of them, but Tan-Tan couldn’t really make out what was inside.

“Sit, Tan-Tan,” Chichibud said.

He hopped over to a table that was right under the herbs. One set of wooden and iron bowls had been put on the table, and some piles of what looked like meat and plants. Chichibud picked up a cleaver, overturned one of the bowls and started chopping up the things that had tumbled out. The things tried to crawl away as he chopped. Tan-Tan’s skin crawled; they were the same kind of grubs she had seen in the toilet. Maggot juice flew as Chichibud diced away with his cleaver. He caught one grub just as it wormed its way off the table. He popped it into his mouth and chewed contentedly. Tan-Tan swallowed hard to keep from spewing up her belly contents right there. Mama Nanny, is what she doing here?

“I ain’t too hungry, you know,” she announced.

“Well, if you ain’t eat now, is hours before night meal.”

Chichibud said something to Zake. The boy stood and collected two bowls and a pile of wood skewers from the chopping table. He took them over to where the family was sitting. Chichibud brought the bowl of minced grubs himself. The table was set. Tan-Tan squatted down beside Abitefa, who presented her with a gap-toothed grin; smile or grimace, who knew? The sight of Abitefa’s funny half-beak-half-muzzle mouth made Tan-Tan queasy. Between these bird-lizard people and the offal they ate, is what she land-up herself in now? She leaned forward to look into the bowls-them to see is what they really expected her to put into her mouth in truth.

A tiny lizard darted from a crevice in the nest wall. It ran right over her hand, snatched a piece of salad from out one bowl, and glided back towards its hole on little wingflaps just like the ones douen pickney had. Tan-Tan yanked back her hand.

Abitefa warbled. She held out her own hand to intercept the lizard. The reptile ran right up onto Abitefa’s shoulder and stood there on its hind legs, stuffing salad leaf into its mouth with tiny claws.

“Cousin,” Chichibud cooed at the lizard, “good you come to visit.” From one of the bowls, he picked up something that had enough still-wriggling legs for twelve centipedes, oui. He waved it in front of the lizard’s face. Its eyes-them got big like cat eye when she see cockroach a-run past. It flew off Abitefa’s shoulder, straight at the centipede thing. Chichibud let it go. The lizard wrestled the centipede to the ground and bit off its head one time, just like Chichibud had done with the tree frog. The lizard settled down to its afternoon meal, crunching up chitin and all.

Tan-Tan swallowed hard. “I could just have some salad? Plain salad, with nothing on it?”

*Yes,* said Benta. The family settled down to their food, taking from the various bowls and pushing raw meat and live insects and everything into their mouths. Every so often, one of them would dip some writhing something into a bowl of lavender paste that Abitefa had put there and pop it into their mouths, making hissing noises, like if the mess they were eating tasted good for true. A delicious smell came from the bowl of chopped-up grubs. Tan-Tan’s belly grumbled at being denied. She ignored it.

“Benta,” she said, “I worried about Kret. You think he go trouble me again?”

*Kret jealous. Can’t live good with nestmates. Ain’t have no woman to take he flying. No man to share a frog with he, for he friendship always bitter. From time back, him always jealous of Chichibud, of me.*

It was the longest speech of Benta’s that Tan-Tan had heard. She struggled to understand the carolled words. Chichibud laughed. “Well, he been courting your sister steady, but so far, Taya ain’t taking he on, oui?” He turned to Tan-Tan. “Benta done warn Kret off you. Is only a madman would face down a hinte.”

Kret had looked plenty mad to Tan-Tan. She rifled through the salad bowl, pretending to look for the tenderest leaves. But really she was making sure it ain’t have nothing but leaves in there. Then she chewed it all down, dry so, to appease her hunger. You satisfy? mocked Bad Tan-Tan. This is your home now.

Yes I know, doux-doux. Things changing around you too fast. But don’t pay it no mind, this thing will happen without you or with you. Listen, make I sing you a next story:

In all she years of exile on New Half-Way Tree, with all the anansi stories exiles and douen people make up to tell about she life, Tan-Tan never hear back the tale about that escape she make from Junjuh Town on Benta back. It had one exile tale about a bird carrying someone away. But that tale put she more in mind of when the mako jumbie bird try to fetch away she daddy. Sometimes she wonder why the voice of Dry Bone remind she of another voice in she head: