“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.”