“I can’t shoot at he? Not even for practice?” Though without human intonation, Chichibud made shift to sound regretful, ironic. “You don’t think when I bring this… gun to we ironsmith, I should be able to tell him how it work?”
“I beg you, mister, I go do anything, only don’t kill he.”
“And if I had beg allyou same way not to kill my people, what you woulda say?”
He sighted down the barrel of the gun. Michael looked Chichibud straight in the eye, put his chin in the air, and just waited. Nothing else for him to do, Tan-Tan realised. The douens were in charge of the situation now—Chichibud and she and the rest of them.
“Chichibud, let them get in the car,” she said. She heard a sharp breath in from Gladys:
“Rahtid! Is Chichibud that?”
Tan-Tan watched Michael climb in. Janisette seemed to have recovered from the shock. She stood glaring at Tan-Tan until the other two pulled her into the autocar. Tan-Tan told the hunting party: “Leave these people in peace and go your ways. You don’t have no quarrel with them. As for me, I tell you; I do what I do in self defense.” Liard! You kill he in cold blood! She shook her head a little to dispel the voice. “Leave me in peace, I going to a settlement where Junjuh laws can’t entrap me.”
Chichibud still had the gun trained on Michael. Michael started up the car. It failed twice, started the third time with noxious poops of black air. With much yanking at the steering wheel he turned it round. Janisette pointed a threatening finger at Tan-Tan. “One day I go find you lying slutting self when it won’t have no leggobushbeasts to protect you,” she promised. “Then I bringing you back to Junjuh to roast like chicken in the box.” They left, the car farting every few metres of the way.
The douens watched until they were good and gone. Oddly, Tan-Tan wished she could have asked after Melonhead.
The hinte and some of the adolescents that had fled were starting to return, having left the children safely in the high branches of the daddy tree. Benta’s grief at her sister’s death filled the skies. It tore at Tan-Tan’s heart.
“I have to leave oonuh and go,” Tan-Tan said to Chichibud.
“How them know to find you here?” he asked.
*Don’t make no difference, now them know is where we is,* warbled a douen woman. *Best allyou men had listened to we and never fast up yourself in tallpeople business.*
Chichibud lowered the gun. He dropped his arms to his sides and said nothing. *Because you help that girl child,* the woman continued, *them will bring more tallpeople back here to hunt we down. Them will fight we with more of them gun and thing. We ain’t go have no peace from tallpeople again!*
Chichibud said sadly, “How them know, Tan-Tan?” She couldn’t meet his gaze. “Oh, girl child,” he continued, “the time had to come when tallpeople come into the bush to look for we, but I ain’t know was going to be my actions that bring it.”
“But you could fight!” Tan-Tan told him.
The hinte replied, *We could fight, yes, but allyou tallpeople mad like hell. I think plenty of we would dead in that fight, and allyou would win.*
She couldn’t stand it, she couldn’t take it. Everywhere she went she brought trouble, carrying it like a burden on her back.
From behind Chichibud, the old douen Res growled out something in their language. Chichibud whipped round and chirped out a response. From his movements Tan-Tan recognised that he was amazed at what he’d heard, and he wasn’t the only one. Man and woman, the other douens gathered round Res, screeching and chirruping at him. Res tried to answer back. He couldn’t make himself heard. The douens were cawing and crowing at their elder. The women beat their wings in distress. A couple of the adolescents started to cry, that uhu-uhu sound that Tan-Tan had heard Zake make earlier. Even Abitefa was in the middle of the discussion, clicking her claws together in alarm. Res just held his ground, responded calm-calm.
Tan-Tan touched Chichibud’s shoulder. “What he saying?”
“He say we don’t have to make no more tallpeople find we.”
Hope was like a bird in Tan-Tan’s throat. “How?”
“We have to destroy we home and move away.”
“What, your houses?”
Chichibud didn’t answer, just went and huddled with his family. The argument with Res continued, but in the end they all agreed with him: they would cut down the daddy tree.
All the rest of that day, everybody stripped their houses and made small packs of the things they would need most, only what they could carry on their backs. Benta’s eyes on Tan-Tan were cold like duppy heart and sad, so sad. Finally, everyone’s goods were packed up inside the foundry for them to pick up once the tree had been chopped down.
Benta waddled over to Tan-Tan. Tan-Tan looked at her warily, sorrowfully. *Taya gone. We hatch from one shell, and she gone.*
“Benta, I sorry too bad!”
*Is not you make the gun, is not you fire the gun. But is your actions bring she to this path, so is good you sorry.* She squatted back on her heels, looked up at the daddy tree. *This work going to take we all night,* she said. *You stay here in the foundry, out from under the shadow of the daddy tree.*
“What I could do?”
*Help mind the babies.*
Which she would have done, if they had let her. The douens had set up the foundry as a nursery for all the pickney-them, with the adolescents and the old people to look after them. But every time Tan-Tan moved towards a child, someone would sweep it out of her reach. Finally a douen man being harried by four pickneys of varying size thrust the youngest one into a startled Tan-Tan’s hands. The baby instinctively wrapped his toes round one of her arms and tangled his fingers in her hair. “I feed he already, he should sleep now. I have to go and help them chop. Somebody else will look after these three. Mind he good.”
She would mind he like her life itself, she was so grateful to be trusted. She sat down on an anvil to rock the baby. He curled up his free hand into a fist on his chest and started to drop off to sleep one time. He didn’t look as ugly to her as when she had first set eyes on douen pickneys.
A chopping sound was coming from up high in the daddy tree. Still rocking the baby, she went and stood in the door of the forge. In the dusk, she couldn’t see through the branches of the daddy tree, but she could hear. Up at the top of the tree, the douens were hacking away at its trunks. It was a shocking sound. With loud cracking noises, the tops of the tree broke off in rapid succession, letting in the dying light. All the douen women were in the air, circling, circling. Quick-quick, teams of them grabbed branches in their talons, tugged at them until they came away from the tree. The hinte flew away beyond her sight.
The noise had startled the baby awake. He whined, “Uhu, uhu,” little ratbat face wrinkled up in distress.
“Shh,” Tan-Tan whispered, rocking him. She sang, “Captain, Captain, put me ashore / I don’t want to go any more.” Then she clamped her mouth shut. Not that song. She stroked the baby’s forehead with a fingertip instead, like she’d seen the douens doing. He calmed down little bit. Tan-Tan stared out at the let-in sky. Benta had told her that the hinte would take the tree piece by piece to the sea and drop it in. She had never seen the sea on New Half-Way Tree, never thought to wonder what its oceans were like. Keeping body and soul together kept tallpeople too busy to think of exploring.
Another level of daddy tree was taken away. Thick brown sap was welling up out of the chopped-off trunks. It dropped in gouts to the forest floor. The rest of the hinte kept circling, circling.