Dangling from Abitefa’s claw tip it had a crushed million-leg leaf-thing.
“Cho,” Tan-Tan said. “I never like them things from first I see one. What a stench! Is a smelling-salts bottle on legs, oui?”
Abitefa warbled something at her and moved back in close. Tan-Tan looked at her warily in the juddering lamplight. Slowly Abitefa reached towards her, put gentle hands on the back of her head. She was checking Tan-Tan’s head where she’d bucked up on the rockstone.
“I all right,” Tan-Tan told her, pushing the hands away. Abitefa settled back on her shovel feet, making worried cooing noises. Tan-Tan frowned, sat for a while with her thoughts. Then she had to smile.
“I guess I kinda ask for this, eh? Who tell me to pick a fight with a four-foot ratbat?” She laughed. “Daddy always tell me I was too much of a tomboy.” Antonio. Suddenly she felt serious again. “Anyhow, Abitefa, I sorry, eh? You understand?”
*Yes.*
She rarely said anything to Tan-Tan. It came out more like a trill than words, but Tan-Tan understood. Abitefa rose to her feet. She sang something at Tan-Tan; could have been an apology or a curse, Tan-Tan didn’t know, but it was softly spoken, and with no threatening movements.
“No problem.” Hinte speech sounded so much like nannysong. On an impulse, Tan-Tan sang at Abitefa the Anansi Web’s phrase for “sunny and fine,” the way Nanny responded most often when asked about the weather. Cockpit County people would sometimes hum the song snatch to mean, “everything all right between me and you.” But Abitefa didn’t respond, just stared at her. Tan-Tan shrugged. Her carry pouch was lying beneath her, the passion fruits broken. She offered a crushed one to Abitefa. The hinte ripped it apart, shook out the seeds and the pulp and chewed up and swallowed the tough yellow rind. Tan-Tan giggled. Abitefa picked up the thing she’d been weaving when Tan-Tan had located her; a next carry pouch, plenty bigger than the one Tan-Tan had, with a sling to put it over one shoulder. Abitefa gave it to her with a warble.
“For me?”
*Yes.*
“Nanny bless. Let we go hunting then, nuh?”
Abitefa led her through the bush. She showed Tan-Tan a thing like a badjack ant but big as a berry, and the nest it made in a type of small, weedy tree that dripped sticky sap. Dozens of the grey ant-things were running round in the sticky cluster of bubbles that was their nest. Abitefa rolled a daddy tree leaf into a cone and stuck the open end right into the sap nest. One time, one set of the ants ran right up into the leaf cone to investigate. Abitefa tore off the closed tip of the leaf and emptied the ants straight into her mouth, chasing runaways with her tongue. She handed Tan-Tan a leaf to try it with.
“No thanks.”
They walked on. Suddenly Abitefa put a hand over Tan-Tan’s mouth, stopping her and muffling her voice same time.
“Wha—” But Abitefa just clamped down harder. Tan-Tan looked where Abitefa was pointing.
The beast was entering a clearing where tinselled sunlight made it visible. It looked like an armoured tank. High to Tan-Tan’s shoulder, wide so like a truck, covered in overlapping scales each the size of a dinner plate. A snout with six tusks poked forward. It moved slowly through the bush, tramping right over anything in its way. Behind it, it dragged a massive tail, as big around as Tan-Tan’s two thighs put together. The tail had a morningstar of spikes at its tip. Tan-Tan was never coming down here alone again. The monster disturbed some of the undergrowth with its passing, and a ground puppy leapt out yapping and landed on its tail. It must have found somewhere sensitive to bite, for a shudder went through the tank beast’s tail then its whole body before the monster slammed its tail to one side, smashing it into a tree. The spikes left finger-deep gouges in the tree trunk. The beast bent its head to root through the underbrush. Abitefa pulled Tan-Tan in another direction, motioning to her to walk quietly.
When she judged that they were out of earshot Tan-Tan whispered to Abitefa, “I never see something terrible so in all my born days! Is what that was?” Abitefa’s response sounded like a hacking cough. Yes, that was a good name for the monster.
Abitefa took them out of the overhang of the daddy tree, into the bush proper. There was a definite path; a lot of douens went this way. Maybe they were going to a human settlement? Tan-Tan got excited at the thought of seeing people again, until she remembered why she’d left Junjuh Town.
She heard the noise before they reached a next clearing; a banging and a clanging and a pounding, like somebody hitting metal against metal. A blast of heat washed over them. “Mama Nanny wash me down! You mean it could get hotter?” The sound was familiar. Yes, they came into sunlight to see a makeshift foundry inside the wide clearing in the middle of the bush, a grey cement dome of a building with big round window-holes all round it. Tan-Tan frowned. Those were douens she could see through the man-height windows; she thought they didn’t know anything about building with cement or forging metal. But is metalworking they were doing for true. Tan-Tan watched at all those douens and them working obeah magic with hammer and fire, turning lumps of rockstone into shining metal. Perched on a log outside the foundry, a douen woman was lashing a sheet of weaving into an iron frame. With beak and claws she tightened the lashing, stretching the piece of cloth into the frame. The mud-coloured wad of cloth pulled taut to reveal a story in pictures: a figure walking all bent over like the weight of the world was weighing the person down. Some kind of small beast clung to its back. Flying above the two was a big bird or bat circling, circling in the air. The hinte gave one last pull of the lashing and the frame gave way, weak joints warping it into a diamond shape. The hinte let it fall with a clang. Two douens came hopping out to see what had happened. Chichibud and Benta. Tan-Tan ran towards them, Abitefa hopping beside her.
“Chichibud! Benta! You wouldn’t believe what we just see in the bush!”
The other hinte shrieked and hurried into the foundry. Chichibud barked angrily at Abitefa, who sat back on her heels and ducked her snout into her breast. Benta stomped. Tan-Tan didn’t pay them no mind. Excitedly she described the mako tank-like beast. Benta warbled a question at Abitefa. The young hinte responded with the cough-hack word. Benta cocked an eye at Tan-Tan and said, *‘Rolling calf.’ That is what tallpeople does call it.*
Rolling calf! Another anansi story folk tale come to life. That last Jonkanoo Season on Toussaint, when Tan-Tan had gone for parang with the Cockpit County Jubilante Mummers. Mummers go on foot, is the tradition. And as they walk the distance between house and house in the dark, is the tradition to pass the time by telling scary stories. The rolling calf was a giant duppy bull with eyes of red flame. Its body was wrapped round in chains. It snorted fire and pawed the ground. The rolling calf left behind smoking tracks of burnt earth. If one only caught you outside late at night where you had no business to be, it would turn into a big ball of flame and chase you, chase you, chase you till you dropped dead of fright and exhaustion. Walking in the dark with the Mummers, the little Tan-Tan had hoped say the rolling calf understood that them had business out there, that them wasn’t up to no good. She had grabbed hold of Ione’s hand tight-tight.
Chichibud said, “Rolling calf bad-minded for so. Them does attack just out of spite. Only a master hunter could kill them.”
“How, with all that armour?”
“Them have a soft spot under them jaw. You have to jook a machète up under the jaw into the brain. If you miss you likely won’t live to try again. You see why we ain’t want you coming into the bush alone? You keeping your lantern light to keep away the mako jumbie-them?”