With her beak Benta rummaged in the hard-pack earth. She picked up a splinter of kindling and handed it to Tan-Tan. Without a word, Tan-Tan used the splinter to relight her lantern from Abitefa’s own.
“And now our own-way pickney show you a next douen secret,” said Chichibud.
“This foundry,” Tan-Tan replied.
*Yes. We trying to teach weselves, for tallpeople refuse to teach we.*
“Why you want to learn it, when you could trade for it with we?”
Chichibud stared at her for a long time. Tan-Tan fidgeted, unused to her friend scrutinizing her like a stranger. Finally he said, “What you could make with fire and metal?”
“How you mean? Plenty things. Hooks and so for hanging things up. Baby buggies. Frames like that hinte was trying to string…”
“Guns. Bombs. Cars. Aeroplanes. Them is all words I learn from tallpeople.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Is part of the reason why Abitefa come down here with you. She was supposed to keep you from learning this thing, not to lead you right to it. Stupid, defiant pickney. Tan-Tan, if douens don’t learn tallpeople tricks, oonuh will use them ’pon we.”
“Don’t talk stupidness!”
He moved closer. Little though he was, she sensed the easy strength of him. He wasn’t someone to defy. “Girl child, believe what you want to believe. We see how allyou does act, even towards your own, and we preparing weself.”
Tan-Tan thought of the dogs that One-Eye had set on her, how he and her friend Melonhead had hunted her in the bush. We see how allyou does act, even towards your own.
*We going away for two-three days,* Benta chirruped. *Abitefa go look after you.* Abitefa remained with her snout burrowed sullenly against her breast.
“Away? Where? Why?” Tan-Tan felt a little panicky at the thought of them not being around.
*Trade,* Benta replied. *Over there.* She swung her head to indicate where she meant.
“With who?”
“Tallpeople village, not far from here,” Chichibud answered. “We have goods to deliver in return for lamp oil and some seeds them have that we never see before. When oonuh climb the half-way tree, oonuh does bring some wonders with you for true.”
But Tan-Tan wasn’t paying no mind to all that. “A village? A human village? I coming with you.” Her heart started to beat fast at the thought of seeing people, of hearing speech she wouldn’t have to strain to understand.
*No, doux-doux,* Benta murmured soft-soft. *Too much danger.*
Resentment spewed out of Tan-Tan like bile. “How you mean, dangerous? You just think I going to be too much trouble, ain’t? I bet you would take Abitefa.”
A douen passing by them with a length of raw iron stopped at that. “Tallpeople pickney, wings ain’t even start for sprout, what you know about wisdom? Look at Abitefa. What you think allyou people would do if them see something that look to them like half douen, half packbird, that can’t talk to them in them own language, that big enough to defend itself if them attack? Eh? If Abitefa only set foot in tallpeople lands, she dead. Is so allyou does do anything that frighten you.”
She didn’t care. “But why I can’t go? I is human, just like them.”
Chichibud replied, “The danger is you, not them. We can’t take the risk that you tell them about we.”
Tan-Tan felt cold. They would never let her go.
Through the days of foraging in the bush, a friendship sprang up between Tan-Tan and Abitefa. Abitefa taught her how to trap small beasts; gave her lessons in yelling and stick-throwing to startle prey or frighten off the bigger beasts-them; how to smoke meat. Tan-Tan tried to learn to speak as the hinte did, but the sounds were too liquid and complex for her mouth to form. Abitefa would only jiggle with laughter when Tan-Tan tried. When she was in the flowertop bath up in the nest, Tan-Tan would watch at the reflection of her face in the water, pursing up her lips-them and skinning up her teeth-them, trying to trill like a hinte. She rolled her tongue into a tube, she chirped, she whistled; all she do, her words came out dead and flat. Tan-Tan singing hinte favoured a lonely tree frog croaking in the darkness. She got so frustrated trying make the sounds come out right! She started to wish she had a beak like Benta’s, even a snout-turning-to-beak like Abitefa’s. When she listened to mother and daughter warbling and cooing at each other she felt invisible, like she didn’t have a mouth to speak for people to hear her.
Abitefa and tallpeople speech was a next story, though. In no time Abitefa was fluent. She and Tan-Tan got along well. And Chichibud and Benta had an easier time of it with the rest of the daddy tree people when Tan-Tan was out of sight. Abitefa and Tan-Tan spent most of their days together down in the bush.
Tan-Tan elbowed Abitefa aside on the daddy tree trunk. No time to explain. She slid down a buttress root fast-fast, jumped to the ground, holding her hand to her mouth. She sank to her knees just in time to spit up the halwa fruit and cold roast frog she had eaten for breakfast up in the nest. The sour taste burned the back of her throat. She made some more saliva to spit the taste out of her mouth with. Then she cotched up against the buttress root and just stared off into the distance.
Abitefa dropped down beside her, second eyelids still flickering in surprise. She handed Tan-Tan a lantern. Tan-Tan glanced up, took it, glanced away.
“Hot down here,” she said, as if that explained what had just happened. She took a breath, let it out slowly. “And every day I come down, I does feel it more. Like my body making more heat.”
*You sick?* Abitefa asked.
Tan-Tan dashed her eyes clear with the back of one hand. “Not sick; pregnant. I ain’t see my courses for a month now. Oh, God; I making baby for my own father.” Again. She leaned back against the daddy tree root. “What I go do? Tell me what?” A bitter laugh broke from her throat: “And what I go call it, eh? Son or brother?” She looked at her friend. “I can’t give birth to this thing, Abitefa. Is a monster. I rip one of the brutes out of me once, I could do it twice.”
Abitefa’s arms were more like wingflaps now, feathered and longer. The feathers puffed out in shock. *Why? You make egg, you must lay it; is a gift from the daddy tree.*
Gift. That squeezed another bitter laugh from Tan-Tan’s lips. “We don’t lay,” she corrected Abitefa. “We does push out we babies live and screaming. And this ain’t no gift, is a curse.”
*No egg? Oho,* Abitefa said, peering at Tan-Tan’s stomach. *So is that why I can’t see no egg… skin round the baby.*
Tan-Tan goggled at her. “See it? See it how? What you talking about?”
In the whiney voice that meant she was puzzled Abitefa replied, *Same way I see when a halwa fruit good to eat.*
“I don’t understand.”
*I call out to it. Little bit like the cry when I want to catch small meat. I just call, so… * She raised her snout in the air and opened and closed her mouth like she was screeching, but Tan-Tan didn’t hear no sound. A tree frog dropped out from the canopy above them and lay stunned for a split second before it hopped on its wobbly way.
“Abitefa,” Tan-Tan whispered, “is you do that?” Abitefa would do the same silent motion when she was showing Tan-Tan how to startle beasts. She’d always followed it up with a throwing stick. Tan-Tan had thought it was just alien body language. Was Abitefa actually making a supersonic sound?