Antonio just grunted. Tan-Tan knew that particular set of his jaw. He was still vex. Chichibud tugged down a length of vine, showed it to Antonio first, then said to Tan-Tan, “Water vine only grow on this tree here, the lionheart tree with the wood too tough to cut. But if you see a vine looking just like this, only the flowers tiny-tiny, don’t touch it! Allyou call it jumbie dumb cane. Juice from it make your tongue swell up in your head. Can’t talk. Sometimes suffocate and dead.”
They hiked on through the bush. It was sweaty work, but Tan-Tan still felt chilly. Her ears tingled. She was only watching the ground below her feet for the devil bush and the bush above her head for jumbie dumb cane. Chichibud stopped them yet again. “What you see?” he said, pointing to the ground ahead. Like all the ground they’d tromped so far, what wasn’t covered with a thick carpet of ruddy dead leaves was blanketed with a fine, reddish green growth like moss. Gnarled trees with narrow trunks twisted their way out of it, reaching towards the too-red sun. It looked just like the rest of the bush.
Antonio sucked his teeth. “Look, I ain’t business with your bush nonsense, yes. Take we to this Junjuh.”
But as Tan-Tan had looked where Chichibud was pointing, she had slowly discerned something different through the mess of leaf and mould and stem. She tapped Chichibud on the shoulder. “Mister, I see some little lines, like the tracks badjack ants does leave in the sand.”
Gently, Chichibud touched her forehead with the back of his hand, once, twice. “Good, little tallpeople. Sense behind you eyes. That is sugar-maggot trails. If you follow them, you could find their nest. Boil them to sweeten your tea.” Chichibud looked at Antonio. “You must learn how to live in this place, tallpeople, or not survive.”
They hiked and they hiked. They had to stop one time for Tan-Tan to make water. They kept walking. Tan-Tan pulled Chichibud’s wife’s cloth tighter round her, wishing she could feel warm. She peered through the dimness of the bush ahead. “Look, Daddy! Bamboo like back home.”
Antonio turned wary eyes on the tall, jointed reeds growing thick as arms up towards the light. There was a whole stand of them. The shifting shadows caused by the narrow leaves blowing in the breeze hurt Tan-Tan’s eyes. The hollow stems clacked against each other and made her head pound. Antonio frowned. “How bamboo reach here? Is from Toussaint.” He looked to Chichibud for explanation.
“Tallpeople bring it. Plenty other bush too.”
They hiked on and on until Tan-Tan couldn’t make her legs move any more; Antonio had to carry her. As Daddy gathered her into his arms, Tan-Tan could feel how he was shivering too. He turned to the douen: “So where this village you only telling me about all the time? Like you is douen in truth, trying to lead we deeper into the bush and get we lost?”
“Your people tell me story. Where you come from, you could hire people to carry you where you going. You could go fast in magic carriage with nobody to pull it. Here, tallpeople have only your own two feet to carry you. By myself I get to Junjuh in one day. With new exiles, longer. Allyou making I move slow. Not reaching tonight. Tomorrow morning. After we sleep.”
“And so is what? Where we going to stay?”
“Right here. I go show you how to make the bush your home for the night.”
“And suppose it rain?” Antonio challenged him.
“It ain’t go rain. I woulda smell it coming. We looking for a clearing with a tree spreading wide over it.”
A few more minutes’ walk. The douen passed one tree by; it had too many beasts living in its trunk. Then another; it would drop strange, wriggling fruit on their heads while they tried to sleep. Finally they came upon two trees growing close together. Chichibud pointed to lumpy brown growths in the branches of one tree. “Halwa fruit. Dinner.” The other tree was broad-trunked with fire-red leaves. It had thick spreading branches, the shade of which made a clear space in the bush beneath them. “This one good. Let we make camp,” Chichibud told them. He led them under its branches.
The sun was setting. The dying light reflected off the tree’s leaves and made Tan-Tan’s eyes ache, so she looked down. Blood-red shadows were darkening and lengthening along the ground. She could hear things rustling in the gloom where they couldn’t see. She was frightened. She shook her head to clear its ringing.
Antonio let Tan-Tan down. The douen told her, “Pickney, pick up as much dry stick as you could find for the fire. Don’t go far. Stay around these two trees.”
Chichibud went to the halwa tree and shinnied up its trunk. Tan-Tan could hear him moving through the branches.
“Down below! Catch!”
Daddy went and stood below the tree, hands stretched out. Chichibud threw down two heavy round fruits, big as Daddy’s head. Daddy caught them, making a small explosion of air from his lips as he did. No sound came from the douen for a few minutes. Then from another part of the foliage came a wap! like something hitting against the tree trunk. He let something else drop into Daddy’s hands, something big so like the halwa fruit, but floppy and flabby. Daddy looked good at the hairy body he was holding, cried out, “Oh, God!” and dropped it on the ground. In the incarnadine evening light the blood covering his hands looked black. Tan-Tan shuddered. Antonio was only whimpering, “Oh, God! Oh, God, what a place!” and wiping the blood off on his pants.
Chichibud sprang down from the tree, licking his hands. He peered at Tan-Tan and then at Antonio. “New tallpeople always ’fraid the dead.” He laughed shu-shu-shu. “Is meat for dinner.”
Antonio flew at the little douen man, yanked him into the air by the throat, and gave him one good shake. “Jokey story done right now,” Antonio said. “What you do that for?” Chichibud snapped at Antonio’s face and reached for his knife. Antonio let him go.
The douen’s throat was smeared with blood from Antonio’s hands. He wiped it off and sucked it from his palm. His tongue was skinny like a whip. “In the bush, you catch food when you see it. Manicou, allyou call that beast. Allyou bring it here.”
The large rodent lying on the ground had a naked tail. Tan-Tan remembered the tail she’d hallucinated growing and losing again in the shift pod. The thing on the ground looked fat and healthy. Its head was all mashed up. “What happen to it?”
“I kill he,” Chichibud replied. “Grab he quick by the tail and swing he head against the tree trunk. You hear when it hit?”
“Yes.” She imagined the head splitting apart like a dropped watermelon. She felt ill.
“Every noise you hear in the bush mean something. Bush Poopa don’t like ignorance.”
“Bush Poopa?”
“Father Bush, master of the forest.”
Antonio had had enough of the lesson. “We setting up this camp, or what?” He helped Tan-Tan find twigs for the fire. They made a big pile on the ground in the clearing, beside the halwa fruit and the rat-thing. Antonio crouched down right there, just watching Chichibud. Tan-Tan knotted Chichibud’s wife’s cloth around her shoulders. She picked up one of the heavy halwa fruit and pressed her nose against it. The smell made her mouth water.
Chichibud had come back into the clearing with three sturdy staves, fresh cut. He put them beside the trunk of the red-leaved tree and spread a cloth from his pouch on the ground. He jammed the staves into the ground round the groundsheet. They met and crossed in the air like steepled fingers. Chichibud pulled out one more cloth and shook it out. It was much larger than the others. How had it fit inside that little pouch? Like it was magic too, yes? Tan-Tan wondered what else he could have in there. He threw the cloth over the staves. It stretched down to the ground. He shook some pegs out of the endless pouch, looked round himself, saw Antonio watching at him. “Find a rock to pound these pegs in with.”