“New Half-Way Tree oonuh call it.”
“But,” said Tan-Tan, “we not half way. We come all the way and reach now.” The douen blinked at her. Its eyes were very large. She didn’t like it looking at her. She shouldn’t have said anything. Nervously she giggled at her own joke.
Antonio stopped her with a look. He said, “How you know where to find we? The shift pod does land at the same place every time?”
“No. Douen does know when and where a next one going to land. Taste it in the air. Whichever douen reach there first, him get first right of trade with the new tallpeople. Bring we good business, oonuh. A tallpeople gave me a shirt one time. Front does close up when you run your finger along it. I give it to the weavers in my village. Them will study how to make more.”
“How come you could speak the same way like we?”
“Yes. Anglopatwa, Francopatwa, Hispanopatwa, and Papiamento. Right? We learn all oonuh speech, for oonuh don’t learn we own.”
“And why you call yourself ‘douen’?”
“Allyou call we so. Is we legs.”
The ringing in Tan-Tan’s ears, which had never quite stopped since the shift pod had deposited them here, was getting louder. She shook her head to try to clear it. She had begun to feel chilly. She wrapped her arms round herself.
The douen noticed, sniffed in her direction. It raised one twisted leg and scratched behind its shoulder blade. “Mister, watch at your pickney-girl. Is so allyou does do for cold.”
Antonio stared down at her with a look like he didn’t know what to do.
“Allyou people blood too hot for this place,” said the douen. Now it was holding the foot up in front of its face, inspecting between its long toes to see if its scratching had unearthed anything. Its toes flicked, shaking dust off themselves as agilely as fingers. It put its foot back on the ground, looked at Antonio. “Give she something warm to wear.”
“Me done tell you, me don’t have nothing!”
The creature reached into the pouch at its waist and pulled out a cloth like the one it was wearing. It was saffron yellow, Tan-Tan’s favourite colour.
“Here, small tallperson.”
Tan-Tan pressed up against Daddy’s legs. She looked doubtfully at the cloth. Antonio took it, peered at it, smelt it. He shook it out and put it round her shoulders. “Thanks,” he said grudgingly.
“My wife make those cloths,” the douen said to Tan-Tan.
A dead douen baby could have wife?
“With every thread she weave,” the douen continued, “she weave a magic to give warmth to who wear the cloth. Is true; I does see she do it.”
Tan-Tan took a hard look at the little person. She wished she could talk to eshu. The douen’s eyes-at-the-sides couldn’t look at her straight on; it cocked its head like a bird’s to return the stare, like a parrot. She smiled a little. No, it didn’t look like a dead child. Too besides, it didn’t have no Panama hat like a real douen. She began to feel warmer, wrapped in its wife’s magic cloth. “What you name?” she asked the douen.
“Eh-eh! The pickney offering trail debt.” He bent, sniffed her hair. “You have manners. Me name Chichibud. And what you name?”
“Tan-Tan,” she said, feeling shy.
“Sweet name. The noise Cousin Lizard does make when he wooing he mate.”
“It have lizards here?”
Chichibud looked round the gloomy bush, picked up a twig and flung it at a crenellated tree trunk. A liver-red something slithered out of the way. It was many-legged like a centipede, long as Daddy’s forearm, thick around as his wrist.
“Fuck,” Antonio muttered.
“No, I make mistake,” said Chichibud. “Foot snake that, not a lizard. Shu-shu.”
He peered round again, then pointed to a tree in front of them. “Look.” The tree had brownish purple bark and long twist-up leaves fluttering in the air like ropes of blood floating in water.
“I ain’t see nothing.”
“Look at the tree trunk. Just above that knothole there.”
Tan-Tan squinted and stared at the tree, but still couldn’t make anything out.
Chichibud picked up a rockstone from the ground and flung it at the tree. “Show yourself, cousin!”
A little lizard reared up on its hind legs to scuttle out of the way, then just as quickly settled still again on the tree.
Tan-Tan laughed. “I see he! He like the ones from back home, just a different colour.” The lizard was purple like the bark, but with streaks of pink the same strange colour as the sunlight. When he was quiet he looked just like a piece of tree bark with the sun dappling it.
“Tallpeople say your world not so different from the real world,” the douen told her.
Yes it was. Plenty different. “Why you call the lizard ‘cousin’?”
“Old people tell we douen and lizards related. So we treat them good. We never kill a lizard.”
Antonio said impatiently, “The place you taking we; is what it name?”
“We go keep hiking,” Chichibud told them. They moved off through the bush again. He answered Antonio’s question: “It name Junjuh.”
The parasitic fungus that grew wherever it was moist.
“Nasty name,” Antonio mumbled.
“One of oonuh tell me about junjuh mould. It does grow where nothing else can’t catch. When no soil not there, it put roots down in the rock, and all rainwater and river water pound down on it, it does thrive. No matter what you do, it does grow back.”
As they walked, Chichibud showed them how to see the bush around them. He took them over to a low plant with pointy leaves. In the dusky sunlight they could just make out dark blue flowers with red tongues. “Devil bush this.”
“I know it!” Tan-Tan said. “We have it back home, but the flowers does be red.”
“The one back home like this?” Carefully, Chichibud picked a leaf off the plant. He held it up to the light so they could see the tiny, near-transparent needles that bristled on its underside. “Poison thorn. If you skin touch it, bad blister. Skin drop off. Our bush doctors smoke it. Give them visions. It does talk to them and tell them which plants does heal. Some of oonuh smoke it too, but never hear the voice of the herb, just the voices of your own dreams.”
From then on, Tan-Tan kept casting her eyes to the ground to make sure she wouldn’t brush up a devil bush.
Chichibud said to Antonio, “You bring any lighter with you? Any glass bottle?”
“Nothing, me tell you!”
“Too bad for you. Woulda trade you plenty for those; bowls to eat out of, hammock to sleep in.”
A few minutes later Chichibud pulled down a vine from a tree as they were walking under it. The vine had juicy red leaves and bright green flowers. “Water vine. You could squeeze the leaves and drink from them. If you dry the vine, you could twist it together to make rope.” Chichibud picked two-three of the leaves and squeezed them in his hand. “You want to try, pickney?” But before he could drip the water into her mouth, Antonio dashed the leaves out of his hand.
“Don’t give she nothing to eat without I tell you to!” Antonio shouted angrily.
Chichibud fell into a crouch. He said nothing, but bobbed his head like a parrot. His eyes went opaque and then clear again, like someone opening and closing a jalousie window shutter. The frill at his neck rose. Somehow he seemed to have grown bigger, fiercer. Tan-Tan edged behind her daddy again. Them was going to fight! Maybe Daddy still had some of the poison he’d used on Uncle Quashee. That would serve the nasty leggobeast right.
“Man,” Chichibud replied, his voice growly, “you under trail debt, your pickney declare it. Is liard you calling me liard?”
“I don’t want her to eat nothing that might make she sick.”
“Oh-hoh.” Chichibud straightened up. He was back to his normal size. How he do that? “You watching out for your pickney. Is a good thing to do. But we under trail debt, I tell you. You go get safe to Junjuh. I won’t make your child come to harm.”