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.”