Michael got out of the car. He had to vault over the side; look like they hadn’t had time to make doors. He walked over to a trunk of the daddy tree. Is like tout monde in the daddy tree turned to stone. You couldn’t even self hear breath whisper from anybody’s lungs. Michael squinted up through darkness, cocking his head to one side. He laid a hand on the buttress root, made an enquiring noise. “Gladys, bring a lantern for me there.”
By lantern light, the scuff marks on the buttress root were clear. “You see? Like if somebody went up there so.” He shone the lantern as high as he could, but it didn’t reach them that were hiding.
He gave Gladys the lantern and jumped up onto the root. “Careful, dumpling,” she said.
“Nah, is no problem; like walking up a ramp.” He reached the trunk, touched it. “Koo ya! It have handholds here so.”
Quiet-quiet, the douen women started guiding pickneys and half-formed adolescents up onto their backs. Some of the little ones piped up to know what was going on.
“You hear that?” Janisette asked.
“Yes,” Michael replied. “Like birds chirping.” He was climbing the tree now. Those women with pickneys started flitting away under cover of the shade. The rest stayed with the men.
Michael was well on his way to the first branch. Too close for anybody else to get away. Tan-Tan crouched on the branch next to Chichibud, praying to any god she could think of that Michael wouldn’t come no closer. She heard a soft swips from beside her. Chichibud had pulled his knife out of his belt. The other men did the same. The hinte-them had their beaks and claws to jab and tear. Oh, Nanny; like more blood going to get shed for me.
Michael squinted up into the darkness of the daddy tree leaves. Janisette called out:
“You see anything?”
“Not too good,” he shouted back, frowning. Then his face went clear with astonishment. “But eh-eh! If you only see the size of the wasp nests it have up here, Gladys! Whatever live in there have to be almost as big as me!”
“Nanny save we!” Gladys exclaimed. “You must careful, you hear, doux-doux? I don’t think you should go up any further. Suppose one of them sting you?”
“Only a little more, sweetness. I go mind myself.”
He took two more steps up.
With a screech, a hinte launched herself right at his chest. Gladys screamed. Michael and the hinte plummeted to the ground, the hinte flapping her shrunken wings furiously. Michael landed with a thump. The hinte covering him was Taya, Benta’s sister. “Taya!” shouted Kret. Taya held Michael down with one clawed foot, pecked viciously at his eyes. Michael was only screaming, holding up his arms-them to protect his face. Blood streamed down his forearms.
Fast as flight, Tan-Tan flung herself down the daddy tree trunk. “Taya! Stop it! Stop!”
As her foot touched the ground the air round her exploded, a concussion so strong is like somebody had clapped two hands against her ears. She turned towards the noise. Scraps of blood, bone and beak were fluttering in the bush round the daddy tree. Gladys was standing up in the car, still looking through the sights of the rifle she had used to blow Taya to bits.
“Taya!” Kret hurled himself from the daddy tree to the ground to where Taya’s severed head was lying, the beak still opening and shutting; reflex action as her brain died. Michael was curled up in terror on the ground like an unborn baby. Startled by all the movement, Gladys aimed the rifle first at Kret, then at Tan-Tan. Janisette pulled it out of her hands. “Don’t shoot she. She coming back to Junjuh with we. I want to hear she voice bawling out of the tin box, getting weaker and weaker for days.” Janisette brought her gaze like knives to bear on her stepdaughter Tan-Tan; cutting eyes on Tan-Tan’s person, like if she moved too sudden they would slice her.
Squatting on his haunches, Kret picked up Taya’s bloody head and mashed it to his chest, cawing Taya’s name the whole time. The severed head’s second eyelids rolled over its eyes. The beak stopped moving. Kret put the head down, gentle, gentle, like putting a baby in her bassinette for the night. In terrible swift silence he rushed across the clearing at Gladys; a deadly shadow brandishing a knife. Calm like slow water, Janisette sighted down the rifle and shot him. The gunclap thundered. More blood. More scraps of bone and tissue flying through the air.
“No, no, no! No more!” Tan-Tan shouted. Deafened by the sound of the rifle, she couldn’t hear her own words. The acrid smell of gunpowder got up in her nose with the sweety-salt smell of douen blood. A rage came on her, a fire in she belly. She forgot fear, forgot reason. In two-three strides she was on Janisette. She snatched the rifle away and trained it on Janisette. Janisette’s fearsome gaze never wavered. Uncertain, Tan-Tan dipped the nose of the rifle to the ground.
Her hearing was coming back. Behind her, Chichibud was saying, “You just hold still now, Mister Michael. It have more douen here than you want to tackle with.” Tan-Tan glanced behind her. Michael cowered on the ground, surrounded by the sharp knives and beaks of douens.
Janisette said to Tan-Tan, “So is here you is. Playing in the trees with the monkeys. Murderess.”
Sorrow ground down Tan-Tan’s voice like river water does grind rockstone. “You know what he do to me? You know what my father been doing to me for the past seven years? I couldn’t take it no more, Janisette!”
Janisette clenched her fists and leaned into Tan-Tan’s face: “You think I ain’t know? Slut! You woulda screw anything in sight, including your own father!”
Shock filled Tan-Tan’s mouth up with bile. She started to shake. Janisette continued, “Is you drive he to it! You know what I had was to live with, knowing my own husband prefer he force-ripe, picky-head daughter to me? Eh?”
To Tan-Tan, is like she could feel Antonio’s hands on her again, Antonio’s mouth, Antonio inside her, tearing her up. She had to spit sour slime from her mouth before she could choke out, “Is not so it go, Janisette! Is not my fault! Daddy hurt me!” All she could think was to erase Janisette’s words, to make sure she couldn’t say them any more. She raised the rifle and aimed point blank at Janisette. The blank look of fright that came over Janisette’s face was pure pleasure to Tan-Tan. With a surge of joy she pulled the trigger, blam! just as Chichibud’s clawed hand forced the rifle down towards the ground. A spray of dirt and leaves blinded Tan-Tan. She went cold with horror at what she’d just done. She let go the rifle into Chichibud’s hands. When her eyes cleared again Janisette was leaning against the side of the car, face grey with shock.
I just try to kill my stepmother. Is what kind of monster I is any at all?
“What a stupid-looking thing, only a tube with a handle,” Chichibud said. There was a slight trill to his voice. He wasn’t as calm as he sounded. “Who woulda think it could cause so much pain? What you call this, Tan-Tan?”
“Is a gun,” she told him absent-mindedly. Suppose Chichibud hadn’t pulled her hand away in time? “Mind you don’t pull the trigger; you could shoot off your own foot.” Gladys was returning to consciousness, struggling to her feet inside the car.
“And you point it and shoot it… so?” Chichibud aimed the gun at Michael where he was sitting.
Gladys shouted, “Don’t shoot! Please, Mister Douen—don’t shoot my husband!”
She didn’t recognise Chichibud. She saw him almost every month when he brought goods to trade, and she still couldn’t tell him different from any douen man. But me any different? Tan-Tan’s mind fastened on the thought, rather than dealing on what was in front of her. Sometimes me hard put too to tell he from the rest.