The two of them clear a space near the stream, and them plant all the twigs and plants-them. Them use mud and grass to build a wattle-and-daub hut.
And so Kabo Tano tell them, is so it go. Everything grow, and Tan-Tan and Antonio had food for their bellies and wood to build with. Tan-Tan learn to hunt and trap, so them always had meat for their table. The pieces of the half-way tree that get leave behind grow and spread all over the Earth. Earth get green and living again. The beasts in the bush had enough to eat.
King Antonio and Queen Tan-Tan live long on the new, clean Earth, and is Tan-Tan who give birth to the race of people on Earth, for it never had none there before.
But forever after, the beasts in the bush would run and hide whenever them see Tan-Tan coming, for them know she to be the greatest thief of all, the one who could steal them life away before them time come. She turn Robber Queen for true.
Is Tan-Tan make it so.
You like that story, sweetness? Tan-Tan ain’t too like it, you know. It always make she mind run on how she daddy steal she away from her home.
The light was too red and the air smelt wrong. The shift pod had disappeared and left Tan-Tan and the daddy she couldn’t recognise no more in this strange place. They were in a bush with no food and no shelter. Everything was changed.
“Allyou climb the Tree to visit we?” The high, clear voice was coming from behind Tan-Tan. She whipped round. Someone strange was standing there. Tan-Tan screamed and jumped behind Antonio.
Antonio grabbed Tan-Tan’s arm and took a step back.
“What you want?” he asked.
It made a hissing noise shu-shu and said, “That all depend on what you have to trade.”
“Not we. We come with we two long arms just so.”
Tan-Tan peeked out. The creature was only about as tall as she. It smelt like leaves. Its head was shaped funny; long and narrow like a bird’s. It was ugly for so! Its eyes were on either side of its head, not in front of its face like people eyes. It had two arms like them, with hands. Each hand had four fingers with swollen fingertips. Slung across its leathery chest was a gourd on a strap. It carried a slingshot in one hand and had a pouch round its waist. It wore no clothing, but Tan-Tan couldn’t see genitalia, just something looking like a pocket of flesh at its crotch. A long knife in a holder was strapped onto one muscular thigh. But it was the creature’s legs that amazed Tan-Tan the most. They looked like goat feet; thin and bent backwards in the middle. Its feet had four long toes with thick, hard nails. “Eshu,” she muttered, “a-what that?”
Static, then a headache burst upon her brain. Eshu didn’t answer.
The jokey-looking beast bobbed its head at them, like any lizard. “I think you two must be want plenty, yes? Water, and food, and your own people? What you go give me if I take you where it have people like you?”
At the word “water,” Tan-Tan realised that she’d had nothing to drink since the cocoa-tea Nursie had given her that afternoon, and she’d only sipped that; a whole lifetime away, it seemed now.
“Daddy, I thirsty.”
“Hush your mouth, Tan-Tan. We don’t know nothing about this beast.”
The creature said, “Beast that could talk and know it own mind. Oonuh tallpeople quick to name what is people and what is beast. Last time I asking you: safe passage through this bush?”
“Why I making deal with some leggobeast that look like bat masque it own self? How I know you go do what you say?”
“Because is so we do business here. Give me something that I want, I go keep my pact with you. Douen people does keep their word.”
Douen! Nursie had told Tan-Tan douen stories. Douens were children who’d died before they had their naming ceremonies. They came back from the dead as jumbies with their heads on backwards. They lived in the bush. Tan-Tan looked at the douen’s head, then its feet. They seemed to attach the right way, even though its knees were backwards.
The creature made the shu-shu noise again. “Too besides, allyou taste nasty too bad, bitter aloe taste. Better to take you to live with your people.”
Antonio made a worried frown. Then: “All right,” he said. “Let me see what I have to trade with you.” He searched his jacket pockets and pulled out a pen. “What about this?”
One of the douen’s eyes rolled to inspect the pen. A bright green frill sprang up round its neck. It stepped up too close to Antonio. Antonio moved back. The douen followed, said, “Country booky come to town you think I is? Used to sweet we long time ago, when oonuh tallpeople give we pen and bead necklace. Something more useful, mister. Allyou does come with plenty thing when you get exile here.”
“Nobody know we was leaving Toussaint. I ain’t think to bring nothing with we.”
“Me ain’t business with that.”
Worriedly, Antonio started searching his pockets again. Tan-Tan saw him ease a flask of rum part way out of his back pants pocket then put it back in. He patted his chest pocket, looked down at himself. “Here. What about my shoes-them?” He bent over and ran his finger down the seam that would release his shoe from his foot.
“Foolish. Is a two-day hike.” Its frill deflated against its neck, leaving what looked like a necklace of green beads. “Leave on your shoes and come.”
“What?”
“You will owe me. Come. Allyou want water?”
That was what Tan-Tan had been waiting to hear. “Yes, please, mister,” she piped up. Mister? she wondered.
The douen laughed shu-shu. “This one barely rip open he egg yet, and he talking bold-face! Your son this, tallpeople?”
“My daughter. Leave she alone.”
“He, she; oonuh all the same.”
Antonio shot the douen a puzzled look.
“She want water,” the creature said.
“Let me taste it first.”
Antonio took a few swallows from the gourd the douen handed him. He nodded, then held it for Tan-Tan to drink. The water was warm and a little slimy. She didn’t care, she drank until her throat wasn’t dry any more.
The douen said, “Never see a tallpeople pickney climb the half-way tree before. What crime you do, pickney, to get cast away?”
“Never you mind,” growled Antonio.
The creature didn’t reply. It took the gourd back. It sniffed at Daddy, then at Tan-Tan. She moved away from its pointy snout, hands jumping protectively to cross in front of her body. But it just grunted at them and started off through the bush, hacking a path with its knife. Tan-Tan remembered Nursie’s stories about how douens led people into the bush to get lost and die. She started to feel scared all over again. She called silently for eshu. Her headache flared, then quieted. She reached for Antonio’s hand. “Daddy,” she whispered. “Where eshu?”
“Back on Toussaint, child. We leave all that behind now.”
She didn’t understand. Eshu was always there. She bit her bottom lip, peered into the bush where the douen had disappeared. “We have to go with that funny man?”
“Yes, doux-doux. It say it taking we to we own people.”
“For true? It not going to lost we?”
“I don’t know, doux-doux. Just come.”
They followed the path the creature had left. Red heat beat down. Branches jooked. The space the creature was clearing through the bush was short so till Antonio had to rip off the foliage above his own head to make room to pass through. By the time they caught up to the douen, Antonio was panting with the exertion and scratched from jutting twigs. “Is what you did call this place?” he asked.