Tan-Tan took a little sip from the hot thread of blood pumping down her chin. It tasted salty, and sweet. It spread over her tongue like thick mud. Like the first time Antonio had ever ejaculated in her mouth, whispering to her the whole time. Yes, sweetness, you want it, ain’t? Her belly rose right up into her throat, but she swallowed the frog’s blood. Oh Nanny. She looked into Chichibud’s eyes, praying that the torture done, but it had more for her to do.
“Take it from me, Tan-Tan. Bite off one of the limbs. If you could eat it, eat it, but if not, make like you chewing, and just keep it in your cheek.”
She couldn’t let herself vomit. Tears were flowing down her cheeks, but she took the tiny dead body from Chichibud. She held her breath. Closed her eyes. Bit into the tree frog. She could hear small bones snapping, feel the gristle tearing. She shut her mind against the smell, the smell of Antonio’s body once she’d sliced it open. She didn’t know how she managed it but she choked down a little piece of the meat. She spit a small leg bone into her hand.
And is like that was the signal every man-jack was waiting for. One set of yodelling from the douen men started up in the daddy tree. The hinte bated their wings and bobbed their heads, screeching to the sky.
“What?” Tan-Tan asked Chichibud, wondering where she could run to.
“So you eat the tree frog, so you eat we secrets. We know we safe with you now.”
Only Kret didn’t seem too happy. He walked slowly past Tan-Tan, holding his gaze on her with cloudy eyes. He’d rolled down his second eyelids-them to stare; a big douen insult. Benta hissed. Kret gave Tan-Tan one last shrouded glare then ran for the edge of the branch they were on and leapt over the side, grabbing at a rope vine as he went.
It looked like that was that. Douens started to drift away through the daddy tree, some gliding, some hopping, some walking. Finally, only Benta and Chichibud and their two pickney remained standing there with Tan-Tan. Tan-Tan gave Chichibud the rest of the dead frog. He popped it into his mouth and chewed it like hard candy. Tan-Tan could hear the little bones crunching. She looked away.
“It have somewhere I could lie down?” she begged. “I tired too bad.”
*Come, I go show you.* Benta led them all to an aerial buttress vine. On a regular banyan it would have been narrow. On this mako tree it was bigger than Tan-Tan could wrap her arms round. There were handholds carved into it.
Her eyes more accustomed to the dusky light now, Tan-Tan could see how the daddy tree come in like a mangrove. It had many vast trunks to uphold its bulk. A fluorescent fungus grew everywhere, giving off guiding light. Tan-Tan gasped when Zake leapt right off the branch, opening his gliding flaps with a snap. He was heading downwards into the dark. Abitefa chirped something to her mother and started climbing down the aerial root.
“Get on Benta back,” Chichibud told Tan-Tan. He grabbed a liana and swung down.
Tan-Tan looked at Benta. Benta cooed something. Tan-Tan frowned, feeling more like crying, in truth. She didn’t understand. She wanted to go home. She couldn’t go home. Benta sidled up to her and tried to put one shoulder under Tan-Tan’s thigh, but no matter how low the douen woman crouched she was still too tall for Tan-Tan to throw her leg over the broad back. Benta warbled. Tan-Tan shook her head impatiently, running her hands over her hair. The hinte tapped Tan-Tan on the shoulder with her beak. Tan-Tan looked down where the beak was pointing. Benta had crooked one leg akimbo, making a step for Tan-Tan to climb up on.
“Climb up on your foot, Benta?”
*Yes.*
And is so Tan-Tan found herself straddling a hinte bareback. She had barely settled when Benta gathered herself and swooped down from the tree branch. Tan-Tan’s belly did a somersault. She grabbed for Benta’s snaky neck, squeezed with her thighs as hard as she could. Benta hadn’t puffed up her wings!
But they glided safely, Benta landing on one branch then pushing off to fall gracefully to a next one. Tan-Tan closed her eyes against the sight of leaves rushing too fast past her face. Her ears popped, her bruised legs protested. Benta connected with a thump on a hard surface. This time she didn’t immediately leap to another branch. The world was still again. Tan-Tan opened her eyes.
The structure in front of them was a cluster of room-sized spheres the colour and texture of dried leaves. Tan-Tan struggled for a childhood memory. The thing looked like a giant wasp nest. It had a halwa tree growing beside it, digging roots into the daddy tree like a parrot on a perch. Plants clustered all round the structure, feeding directly through the daddy tree’s branches. Stuck into the surface on either side of the wasp nest structure were the two beak halves from the mako jumbie that Chichibud had killed many years ago. Zake was perched at the very top of one of the beak halves. Benta screeched at him and he slid down to the branch, threw himself backwards through a hole in the wasp nest structure. Chichibud came out of the same hole, Abitefa clambering clumsily after him.
*Get down now,* said Benta. Tan-Tan let go Benta’s neck, although her arms-them felt like they wanted to lock there permanently, oui? She slid off the douen woman’s body.
“So you reach!” Chichibud laughed. “I was beginning to think say Benta let you fall.” Abitefa screeched and ruffled her body in douen woman mirth.
“Easy for oonuh to laugh,” Tan-Tan muttered. “Oonuh make to travel this way. I ain’t no ratbat, you hear?”
*Come inside.*
Up close, Tan-Tan could see the mudlike substance that formed the domes of the dwelling, the twigs and dead leaves mixed in for strength. A soft moss grew over it, with tiny square leaves. Probably that would make it waterproof.
The douen family had disappeared through the door hole. Tan-Tan had to crouch down to get inside. Her bruises stretched painfully.
Inside, it did spacious and airy. Glowing fungus everywhere made it bright, aided by kerosene lamps—traded from the humans—hanging from every level of the space. The domes connected on the inside in a waffle shape, rising to three-four storeys. Some of the walls had round holes knocked out of them for windows; or doors, Tan-Tan supposed, since the douens-them could fly or climb through any one they wished.
Some of the dwelling’s domes had been built right around smaller branches of the daddy tree. The structure would be very stable.
Zake hopped over to an aerial root. It had the same handholds carved in it that Tan-Tan had seen before. In no time at all the boy shinnied up the branch to the next storey. He opened his arms wide and threw himself into the air, screaming with glee, to glide down to the ground level. He took off at a hopping run into another room. Tan-Tan and the others followed.
A low oval table was in the middle of the room. It had logs in a circle around it; probably they could be seat or perch, depending on who was using it. Zake dove for a pile of approximately spherical cushions against one wall, all different sizes and shapes. He gathered them round himself in a temporary nest then reached out and broke off a piece of fluorescent fungus that was growing by the wall. To Tan-Tan’s surprise he popped it into his mouth and started eating it. He stared at her, saying nothing.
Tan-Tan recognised the dye-work on the fabric of the cushions; is Chichibud’s wife’s work…
“How Benta does do she weaving?”
Chichibud said, “Ask she nuh, doux-doux? I sure she go like to show you.”
Tan-Tan felt her ear tips heating with embarrassment. She’d forgotten again to speak directly to Benta.