“Koo ya!” she gasped: Look at that!
Chichibud told her, “Is the little teeth guano doing it. When them eat the sap mixed with we burning water, them guano does cause things to grow fast-fast-fast for a few hours. By tomorrow morning, it ain’t go have no clearing here, just a young new daddy tree. Anybody come looking for we might find we foundry in the middle of all this bush, but it go be just a empty, break-down building. No daddy tree. No douens to hunt. We gone.”
Chichibud turned to Abitefa and Tan-Tan. “And you two can’t come with we.” The words beat at Tan-Tan’s ears like Carnival bottle-and-spoon.
“What? Is what you a-say?”
Abitefa cried out. Trembling, she tried to bury herself deeper under her mother’s body. Chichibud warbled at her, took a step towards her, but Res barked out something and Chichibud drew back. Benta nuzzled her, then stepped away. The ring of douen lights moved away from where Tan-Tan and Abitefa were, pulled closer together farther back in the bush.
They couldn’t mean it! “Chichibud,” Tan-Tan asked again, “what you telling we?”
“My job to tell you, for is me bring this misfortune. Is so we does do things, Tan-Tan. You cause harm to the whole community, cause the daddy tree to dead. Abitefa aid you by helping you find Chigger Bite. She shoulda been keeping we secrets, not you own. The two of you too dangerous to carry with we. You going to have to make your own way somehow.”
In frenzied silence Abitefa was plucking out her new feathers, one by one.
The new daddy tree was man-height now, its treetop beginning to knit together. Its growth had slowed, was no longer perceptible to the eye.
All round Tan-Tan and Abitefa, douens were sniffing one another’s skin in the way they did for hello and goodbye. They were splitting up into groups, going separate ways. Other daddy trees would take them in. They all knew how to live off the bush; no need to carry much in the way of provisions. Instead everyone was packing what they treasured most: a douen man was squatting on the ground, repacking a wood box full of ironworking tools; a hinte went by with what looked like two tallpeople books in her beak—she must have learned written patwa. Tan-Tan wondered what she made of the alien worlds described in the pages. “Abitefa,” she asked timidly, “what you taking with you?”
The young woman seemed to have recovered a little from her shock. She opened a pouch round her neck and showed Tan-Tan some pieces of what looked like wrinkled hide, thick as orange rind.
*The shell I hatch from. When I mate, my partner go carry piece in he genital pouch. My first chick go have a anklet from the rest.*
Tan-Tan’s belly felt like it was full up of ice. How was Tefa going to find a mate if she was exiled from her people? Is you do this, mash up another life.
Chichibud came over to them. He extended something to Tan-Tan: her sixteenth birthday present from Janisette.
“Me nah want it!” The leather scabbard was well-oiled. Chichibud slid the knife partially out so that she could see how he’d kept its edge clean.
“Is a gift, you must think before you throw those away,” he told her. “You go need it now, the one machète not enough. It could lose, or break. This knife get you out of danger once, remember?”
“It kill Daddy!” Is you kill Daddy.
“Yes, it had a cost. Present that could cut will cut. And sometimes the tree need to prune, oui? Take it.”
She reached out and touched it, shut her eyes against the memories that came with it. That only made them clearer. She opened her eyes again, took the knife from Chichibud, fastened it in its scabbard round her waist, beside her machète. She had to sling it low round the tummy pot she’d developed. The flesh touched by the scabbard crawled.
“Doux-doux, I sorry too bad it come to this. Maybe your people and mine not meant to walk together, oui.”
But still is your ratbat pickney you leave me with. “Is all right, Chichibud. I going find a settlement I could stand to live in. Them can’t all be rough like Junjuh, right?”
“A next daddy tree will take Abitefa in. We will find she again. But I tell she not to leave you until you settled.” He hadn’t answered her question.
He turned to walk away. They were really leaving her and Tefa here in the bush! Tan-Tan ran to Chichibud and Benta. Tefa beat her to it at a hop, nibbled at Zake’s neck and huddled with her family. Benta cocked an eye at Tan-Tan, lifted one wing. *Come.* And for the final time, Tan-Tan leaned against Benta’s warm side, submitted to Benta grooming her jungly dreadlocks. Then Res snapped out an order and she and Tefa had to separate from the rest again.
Clusters of douens were abandoning the place: by air; on foot. Tan-Tan and Abitefa crouched together on a boulderstone and watched them leave, group by group. They were all gone by the time the sun had risen. The new daddy tree was some two metres tall. Tefa stood, stretched her arm/wings. *Time to leave here before those tallpeople come back with their killing things.*
You must understand, my darling: Abitefa and Tan-Tan was practically children they own self. They know plenty about how to survive in the bush alone, but not everything. Before too long, the two of them did living in misery: not enough to eat, the rain and dew keep coming in on them through the grass thatch Abitefa weave, and the fire only going out all the time. Them have chigger worms digging into them foot. Abitefa had a sore on she toe that wouldn’t heal, from where a ground puppy had bite she one night when she wasn’t careful where she step. Abitefa was doing all right for food, but Tan-Tan was only eating raw mushroom and whatever fruits she could find, for that she didn’t have to bother to make a fire for. She start to weaken on the poor diet. She belly was running all the time.
“We can’t go on like this,” she tell Abitefa. “Every time the fire go out, I frighten mako jumbie go come and hold we. We need some lamps and some kerosene. We need grain alcohol to put on your foot, and a shovel to dig a good fire pit, and a axe to cut wood. Too besides, I could kill for some roast gully hen, oui!”
Tan-Tan convince Tefa to come with she closer to where tallpeople living. “Just for a little while. Just until we scavenge what we need.” That is how them find themselves in the bush outside the settlement named Begorrat.
Tan-Tan didn’t recognise the food crop growing in the fields that circled Begorrat. It was tall with long, scratchy leaves like corn, but the segmented stems were thick as her wrist, bowed with their own weight. She elbowed through it, trying to keep the leaves from touching any exposed skin. She stepped out from between the planted rows right into the path of a young woman about her own age. Her heart fired like a cap gun. “Pardon, Compère.”
The young woman smiled a tired, friendly smile and stayed where she was, centred and calm. Her brown eyes twinkled, matching the red highlights in the drizzled, unruly hair. Two of her front teeth were cracked. “You have to be careful, eh? Don’t make Boss catch you pissing in the cane.”
Boss? That was a word for machine servants to use, not people. “How you mean?”
“You miss lunch. You want some of mine?” She held out a burnt bammy with a bite out of it. “I does take longer to eat, because of the teeth, you know.”
Tan-Tan tore off a bite of the sticky cake of grated cassava. Somebody had soaked it in gravy to soften it before cooking it on the tawa griddle. The outside was overcooked and the inside was hard, but after weeks of cold food with grit in it, the still-warm bammy was glorious. “Thank you.”