Midnight Robber

by Nalo Hopkinson

  Fly? Benta leapt out of the tree and plummeted towards the ground below. Tan-Tan screamed. But one beat of the powerful wings hooked at the air and with the next beat Benta was powering them high above the bush, soaring through the air, high, higher, till Tan-Tan couldn’t make out the treetops in the darkness.

  Chichibud leaned forward and shouted over the rushing wind, “Since allyou tallpeople start coming to New Half-Way Tree, packbirds only fly at night, and in places where allyou can’t see. I taking you to a place no other tallpeople ever see either.”

  The wind sang past Tan-Tan’s face. The breeze blew away her tears. The cold, crisp air cleared a little of the fog from her brain. Tan-Tan the Midnight Robber was soaring out above her kingdom, free from thought, nothing to fear. Sweet chariot, time to ride. She laughed out loud. But the wind blew the laugh from her mouth and carried it away. Antonio dead, Bad Tan-Tan hissed at her. You kill he. When you take one, you must give back two.

  A deep swooping motion drove Tan-Tan from sleep. She grabbed at the panier’s restraining strap. It was ’fore-day morning and Benta was beginning her descent. Tan-Tan looked behind her at Chichibud in his saddle. The douen was still sleeping, his long clawlike toes locked on his restraining strap where it curved around Benta’s body.

  Tan-Tan was cold, despite the blanket that Chichibud had tucked round her. Her knees hurt where her legs had been folded all night into the panier. Her bruises were a thought for later. She rummaged in her pocket, found a last strip of the dried tree frog meat that Chichibud had given her. She set to chewing it, working it about in her mouth to soften it.

  The night had been long, oui. It had been too difficult to speak through the rushing wind of their flight, so they’d passed it in silence; Tan-Tan there in the rushing dark with the memory of the weight and smell of Antonio’s corpse pinning her to she bed. She’d retreated into sleep a few times, only to be dragged out of it by her painful knees.

  The day was brighter now, easier to see about her. Tan-Tan sat up tall in the panier, dashed her hand across her cheeks. Dried tears flaked off at her touch. Benta swooped down. Tan-Tan looked over the side. “Rahtid!” she cursed. They were heading straight for the forest canopy, towards a leafy circle lower than the topmost trees in the bush, but wide; big so like any village.

  “Is home that,” Chichibud shouted above the rushing wind.

  Then they were dropping down through green, plunging past leaves and branches. Tan-Tan closed her eyes, ducked her head below the level of the panier to avoid the whipping foliage.

  Benta screeched, backwinged, landed with a jolt. Somewhere in the foliage Tan-Tan heard a next packbird scream.

  “Woi, Taya!” Chichibud shouted in response. “Benta sister,” he told Tan-Tan. Benta bird screeched her own greeting—the nonsense nannysong again—bobbing her head and cooing back like any pigeon. She shook her wings. They shrunk down small once more. She began to preen and tuck them in.

  At first Tan-Tan couldn’t really take in what it was she was seeing any at all. It so big, she could only understand a piece at a time. First the half-light and the damp, heavy heat. And the sound of leaves rustling in the breeze. Shiny burgundy leaves all around them, some of them the length of her body. Then it came to her that the thing they had landed on that curved away on either side was a branch, not ground. One big mako branch, wide as a two-lane autoroute. Big branches everywhere, so big they disappeared into the shadows like trails. Smaller ones coming off them, like paths and so. This place was a massive tree, so big she couldn’t see all of it.

  Another screech! A multitudinous chirping, warbling, calling out of Chichibud’s and Benta’s names. Douens were bubbling out of the foliage, shinnying down branches, swinging in on lianas, flying in a-packbird back. Comess, Granny! Up in the air, animals like ratbats flitting from limb to limb and calling out to each other. They started to land praps! praps! praps! all around. Actually they were gliders, not flyers so much. They would land on a branch, push off, shoot to a next one. They chattering to each other like pickney. Mama Nanny, what a way they were ugly! Tan-Tan would have run screaming if she’d been by herself, but Chichibud was only grinning and Benta cooing a welcome.

  The first of the douen men reached to them. They stared at Tan-Tan, babbled away at Chichibud. He chirped back as fast as he could. Benta screeched and flapped her wings-them, and the whole was a cacophony. How could anybody make any sense heard through that racket?

  There were two kinds of ratbat things, Tan-Tan could see now. One kind had limbs like Chichibud’s, with the two hind legs turn backwards. Some were covered in long hairs, some that looked older had lost the hair. Most of them had flaps of skin stretching between arms and body. Douen pickney could fly! The other kind of ratbat must have been packbird young. Their feathers were disorderly, rampfled up like slept-on hair. But is what kind of packbirds they, with beaks that were half snout and full of teeth? Some of them were walking stooped, like they’d started out being upright. They hopped like douens instead of walking or running like Benta. For the first time, Tan-Tan noticed how packbird feet and douen feet looked almost the same.

  Chichibud hopped out of his saddle down to the tree branch, said to Tan-Tan, “You in a Papa Bois, the daddy tree that does feed we and give we shelter. Every douen nation have it own daddy tree. Come in peace to my home, Tan-Tan. And when you go, go in friendship.”

  Friendship? the bad Tan-Tan voice howled at her, louder here in douen land. You could be friend to anybody? You was friend to we daddy? Chichibud reached to help Tan-Tan down. She flinched her nasty self away.

  “I go do it myself.” She climbed off Benta’s back.

  Two pickney landed right by her, a douen and a packbird. Benta chirped a welcome. “Zake,” said Chichibud. “Abitefa.” Was the douen child his? It reminded her of Old Masque bat costumes, leathery and plain. Ugly lizard pickney. She took a step back. The pickney back-backed in the opposite direction; the packbird pickney too.

  They were surrounded by the inhabitants of the tree: douen men and pickney; packbirds. Where were the mysterious douen women? The men were talking fast-fast-fast to Chichibud in their language. He screeched at them. Most of them fell silent. The pickney-them squeezed to the front and stood staring at Tan-Tan, making the nervous click with their tiny claws and pressing their little bodies against the adults as if for comfort. Chichibud called out to Zake again, and finally the pickney Zake came shuffling out of the circle, watching Tan-Tan the whole time from the corners of its eyes. Its young packbird pet followed it, walking awkwardly in its old-people gait. Benta nuzzled pickney, bird and all.

  Chichibud uncinched Benta’s saddle, slung it over his shoulder. One of the douen men stood in front of him, his throat frill bulging with angry air. He expelled the air with a high whistle and began the argument again, jerking his muzzle over towards Tan-Tan. Chichibud answered back softly. A few douens in the crowd said the same words, seemed to be agreeing. But the angry one looked Tan-Tan straight in her eyes, reached inside his genital flap and let go a hot, green stream of piss right there on the branch in front of her feet. Tan-Tan danced out of the way. A thin layer of the living wood curdled where the urine had hit. Chichibud hopped between her and the angry one, his throat frill blown up full. The two of them stomped from foot to foot and screeched at each other. The stranger reached for his knife belt, lunged at Tan-Tan. Next thing, something knocked Tan-Tan down. Something big and warm covered her, gently. Benta had shoved Tan-Tan down and was shielding her beneath her huge, warm body. For all her massive size, Benta’s body was light. Tan-Tan could hear Benta’s wings beating, the bird screaming: “Krret! Tzitzippud!”

  That last sound—it had almost sounded like Chichibud’s name. Tan-Tan peeked out from underneath Benta’s smooth breast feathers. The douen stranger had crouched low in front of Benta. His knife was back in its sheath. His hands were empty, held out in open view, his throat frill deflated. Chichibud approached Benta slowly, murmured at her softly in the douen tongu
e. The packbird raised her body so that Tan-Tan could get out. But it was safe right there so in the musty dark that Benta had made. Tan-Tan didn’t move.

  “Come out now,” Chichibud coaxed her.

  “You sure? I ’fraid that man kill me dead.”

  “Kret? Nah, man. Benta go do for he if he try.”

  “Why he want to hurt me?”

  “He think say me shoulda leave you in Junjuh, and leave tallpeople to deal with they own. But trust Benta to keep you safe, Tan-Tan. Woman is something else to deal with, oui?”

  “Woman?”

  “More douen business for you to learn. Benta is my wife.”

  Benta chortled. She stood right up and shoved her head under her own body to stare at Tan-Tan with one purple eye. The sounds she was making could be “welcome,” if it was talk she was talking in truth. Tan-Tan scooted out from under her and glowered at Chichibud. “You making mako ’pon me?”

  Benta warbled in Chichibud’s direction.

  “Yes, I did feel say she wouldn’t believe.”

  The douen that had attacked Tan-Tan made a noise like a rusty hinge, stood and rejoined the crowd.

  Benta sidled over, skreeked, *Tann-Tann!* She rattled her beak through Tan-Tan’s wiry hair, still trying to groom it.

  “No, no; wait. Back off.” She was talking to a bird as though it could understand. Benta moved back. “Chichibud, I don’t understand. Allyou is two different species.”

  The packbirds around them ruffled their feathers.

  “Them find what you saying jokey,” Chichibud told her. “We and them is same-same one. Only tallpeople does come in like the other beasts and them. Allyou woman does look like man, or pickney.”

  Tan-Tan laughed! Swallowed her laughter. Looked at Benta good. At the bird feet, so like douen feet. At how the fronds of her feathers resembled the long hair on the douen pickney-them. The bird—douen woman—regarded her calmly.

  “All this time she could talk?” Tan-Tan asked Chichibud.

  *Talk to me !* Benta warbled. This time the douen males added their shu-shu laughter to the packbirds’ rufflings.

  “I . . . I sorry, Benta.”

  *Good.*

  Now that Tan-Tan knew that Benta was sentient and capable of speaking human language, she could understand the packbird a little more clearly.

  Chichibud said, “Benta could always talk. All the hinte, the douen women, speak. Just not among tallpeople, is all. Them want to keep them secrets.”

  “What a thing,” Tan-Tan murmured.

  “Of course, the hinte prefer to communicate in song. Nothing sweet like when a hinte sing to you.”

  Benta burst into a concatenation of sound, a wordless almost-nannywarble. Chichibud went and leaned against her side.

  Then Tan-Tan had to meet Chichibud and Benta’s whole community. First old Res, the eldest one of them. His fangs were ground down to pegs in his mouth. His eyes were bleary. Tan-Tan wondered how long douens lived. Res sniffed her skin in greeting then climbed agilely up a vine rope to a higher branch of the daddy tree to watch. One by one she met them all. The hinte tasted her clothing and hands with narrow horny tongues. The men and the children sniffed at her. Amongst so many douens, the nutmeg-and-vinegar scent of the adults was strong. The restless, nervous pickney-them smelt something like saliva. One of the changing-into-a-packbird girls both licked Tan-Tan’s blouse and sniffed at her skin, like a pickney and a woman. Much shu-shuing and rustling all round at her adolescent confusion. The douen men sniffed Tan-Tan politely, but some of them rolled down their second eyelids the way douens did at a bad odour. Many greeted her in her language. She thought she recognised some of them. Truth to tell, sometimes the only way she could ever tell Chichibud from the other douen men who came to Junjuh was by the scar on his leg from when he’d fought the mako jumbie. Kret, he just stood to one side. When Tan-Tan met his eyes, he turned his back on her. Then all the douen men and women-them withdrew to under Res’s branch. They stood talking to one another in their singy-singy language, glancing at Tan-Tan from time to time. Benta stayed with her. Tan-Tan was glad for that. She ain’t think she could take much more strangeness, oui? She found herself leaning in the old familiar way against Benta’s warm side. Benta leaned back and made a comforting churring sound. Tan-Tan remembered that this was a woman, not a pack animal. Her ears burning with embarrassment, she pulled away.

  “Where I going to stay, Benta?”

  *With we.* She chirruped more too besides. Tan-Tan had to apologise; it was too fast for her to catch.

  Chichibud left the arguing group and came back to Tan-Tan and Benta. He tried to introduce their pickneys-them, Zake and Abitefa—for Abitefa was a douen girl, not a pet—to Tan-Tan again, but the children wouldn’t come close at all at all. Up on his branch, Res was cawing harshly at the crowd of douens. “So,” Tan-Tan started, wanting desperately to make some sense of the new world in which she found herself, “douen woman does have two kind of pickney?”

  Benta start to warble an answer. Tan-Tan listened hard but only caught one-one word here and there; “douen,” and “pickney,” and “fly.”

  “I don’t . . .” Tan-Tan said helplessly. Chichibud took over the explanation:

  “When douen pickney hatch,” (Hatch? Tan-Tan thought) “them does all look like Zake, boy and girl both. Them have wingflaps and fur, and them could glide. As the boys mature them does lose their wingflaps and the hair. The hair on the girls does develop into feathers and them arms does crook into wings, them mouths does harden into beaks. Once them start making eggs, them could fly for real. Them get two ways of speech, one for each other, and the one that men and pickney-them use. Is the saddest thing for douen men, to remember how we used to be able to fly like them. If a douen man ever want to fly again, he have to partner with hinte.”

  Tan-Tan didn’t want to deal with no more of this, oui? She sat down on the tree branch to try and gather her wits. Something fell through the air and landed in her lap. It was small and soft. She looked up. Old Res was directly above her. In the murky light, she couldn’t tell what it was that he had thrown down for her. She picked it up, holding it to the light to try to see more clearly. It wriggled in her fingers. It was a slimy tree frog.

  “Aahh!” Tan-Tan made to pitch it away but Chichibud was faster. He leapt, closed his fist around Tan-Tan’s own. The tree frog squirmed in the cage of their two hands. Tan-Tan tried to pull away. She hated slimy things, they reminded of all the ways her daddy had taught her for bodies to make slime.

  But Chichibud held her hands tight. “Oho!” he said out loud, like he was proclaiming it for all to hear. “Is a gift Res give you. Raw tree frog meat is the sweetest meat it have. That mean he accept you as a guest in we daddy tree, Tan-Tan. You must thank he, and you must eat it.”

  Tan-Tan hissed, “You gone bassourdie, or what? Eat that nasty thing?”

  “Child,” the douen man answered soft-soft, “keep your voice quiet, and follow my lead if you want to sleep safe tonight. Plenty of my people already not too happy to have a tallpeople among we, especially not one who could bring trouble on we head by she kill one of she own. Them ’fraid you go bring more tallpeople here searching for you. Is a chance Res give you, and me too. So just do what I tell you, nuh?”

  If you take one, you must give back two. Old Res was showing her a kindness. Chichibud too. They were trying to save her life.

  “What I must do, Chichibud?”

  “You go have to eat the frog.”

  “Raw?” Tan-Tan felt her gorge rise. The greasy frog squirmed frantically in her hand.

  “Seen, but I go make it easier for you.”

  She set her teeth. She nodded.

  “Good girl. You have courage.” Chichibud called something out to Res. The old douen laughed shu-shu. Chichibud turned back to Tan-Tan.

  “I tell he that since you ain’t know we ways, I go have to show you how to eat tree frog.” Before Tan-Tan could respond, Chichibud took the tree frog from her hand
and bit off its head. He put the body to her lips. Tan-Tan made a choking noise. She fought not to pull herself away. “Drink some of the blood, doux-doux. Pretend you sucking it all in.”

  Tan-Tan took a little sip from the hot thread of blood pumping down her chin. It tasted salty, and sweet. It spread over her tongue like thick mud. Like the first time Antonio had ever ejaculated in her mouth, whispering to her the whole time. Yes, sweetness, you want it, ain’t? Her belly rose right up into her throat, but she swallowed the frog’s blood. Oh Nanny. She looked into Chichibud’s eyes, praying that the torture done, but it had more for her to do.

  “Take it from me, Tan-Tan. Bite off one of the limbs. If you could eat it, eat it, but if not, make like you chewing, and just keep it in your cheek.”

  She couldn’t let herself vomit. Tears were flowing down her cheeks, but she took the tiny dead body from Chichibud. She held her breath. Closed her eyes. Bit into the tree frog. She could hear small bones snapping, feel the gristle tearing. She shut her mind against the smell, the smell of Antonio’s body once she’d sliced it open. She didn’t know how she managed it but she choked down a little piece of the meat. She spit a small leg bone into her hand.

  And is like that was the signal every man-jack was waiting for. One set of yodelling from the douen men started up in the daddy tree. The hinte bated their wings and bobbed their heads, screeching to the sky.

  “What?” Tan-Tan asked Chichibud, wondering where she could run to.

  “So you eat the tree frog, so you eat we secrets. We know we safe with you now.”

  Only Kret didn’t seem too happy. He walked slowly past Tan-Tan, holding his gaze on her with cloudy eyes. He’d rolled down his second eyelids-them to stare; a big douen insult. Benta hissed. Kret gave Tan-Tan one last shrouded glare then ran for the edge of the branch they were on and leapt over the side, grabbing at a rope vine as he went.

  It looked like that was that. Douens started to drift away through the daddy tree, some gliding, some hopping, some walking. Finally, only Benta and Chichibud and their two pickney remained standing there with Tan-Tan. Tan-Tan gave Chichibud the rest of the dead frog. He popped it into his mouth and chewed it like hard candy. Tan-Tan could hear the little bones crunching. She looked away.