“I all right,” Tan-Tan told her, pushing the hands away. Abitefa settled back on her shovel feet, making worried cooing noises. Tan-Tan frowned, sat for a while with her thoughts. Then she had to smile.
“I guess I kinda ask for this, eh? Who tell me to pick a fight with a four-foot ratbat?” She laughed. “Daddy always tell me I was too much of a tomboy.” Antonio. Suddenly she felt serious again. “Anyhow, Abitefa, I sorry, eh? You understand?”
*Yes.*
She rarely said anything to Tan-Tan. It came out more like a trill than words, but Tan-Tan understood. Abitefa rose to her feet. She sang something at Tan-Tan; could have been an apology or a curse, Tan-Tan didn’t know, but it was softly spoken, and with no threatening movements.
“No problem.” Hinte speech sounded so much like nannysong. On an impulse, Tan-Tan sang at Abitefa the Anansi Web’s phrase for “sunny and fine,” the way Nanny responded most often when asked about the weather. Cockpit County people would sometimes hum the song snatch to mean, “everything all right between me and you.” But Abitefa didn’t respond, just stared at her. Tan-Tan shrugged. Her carry pouch was lying beneath her, the passion fruits broken. She offered a crushed one to Abitefa. The hinte ripped it apart, shook out the seeds and the pulp and chewed up and swallowed the tough yellow rind. Tan-Tan giggled. Abitefa picked up the thing she’d been weaving when Tan-Tan had located her; a next carry pouch, plenty bigger than the one Tan-Tan had, with a sling to put it over one shoulder. Abitefa gave it to her with a warble.
“For me?”
*Yes.*
“Nanny bless. Let we go hunting then, nuh?”
Abitefa led her through the bush. She showed Tan-Tan a thing like a badjack ant but big as a berry, and the nest it made in a type of small, weedy tree that dripped sticky sap. Dozens of the grey ant-things were running round in the sticky cluster of bubbles that was their nest. Abitefa rolled a daddy tree leaf into a cone and stuck the open end right into the sap nest. One time, one set of the ants ran right up into the leaf cone to investigate. Abitefa tore off the closed tip of the leaf and emptied the ants straight into her mouth, chasing runaways with her tongue. She handed Tan-Tan a leaf to try it with.
“No thanks.”
They walked on. Suddenly Abitefa put a hand over Tan-Tan’s mouth, stopping her and muffling her voice same time.
“Wha—” But Abitefa just clamped down harder. Tan-Tan looked where Abitefa was pointing.
The beast was entering a clearing where tinselled sunlight made it visible. It looked like an armoured tank. High to Tan-Tan’s shoulder, wide so like a truck, covered in overlapping scales each the size of a dinner plate. A snout with six tusks poked forward. It moved slowly through the bush, tramping right over anything in its way. Behind it, it dragged a massive tail, as big around as Tan-Tan’s two thighs put together. The tail had a morningstar of spikes at its tip. Tan-Tan was never coming down here alone again. The monster disturbed some of the undergrowth with its passing, and a ground puppy leapt out yapping and landed on its tail. It must have found somewhere sensitive to bite, for a shudder went through the tank beast’s tail then its whole body before the monster slammed its tail to one side, smashing it into a tree. The spikes left finger-deep gouges in the tree trunk. The beast bent its head to root through the underbrush. Abitefa pulled Tan-Tan in another direction, motioning to her to walk quietly.
When she judged that they were out of earshot Tan-Tan whispered to Abitefa, “I never see something terrible so in all my born days! Is what that was?” Abitefa’s response sounded like a hacking cough. Yes, that was a good name for the monster.
Abitefa took them out of the overhang of the daddy tree, into the bush proper. There was a definite path; a lot of douens went this way. Maybe they were going to a human settlement? Tan-Tan got excited at the thought of seeing people again, until she remembered why she’d left Junjuh Town.
She heard the noise before they reached a next clearing; a banging and a clanging and a pounding, like somebody hitting metal against metal. A blast of heat washed over them. “Mama Nanny wash me down! You mean it could get hotter?” The sound was familiar. Yes, they came into sunlight to see a makeshift foundry inside the wide clearing in the middle of the bush, a grey cement dome of a building with big round window-holes all round it. Tan-Tan frowned. Those were douens she could see through the man-height windows; she thought they didn’t know anything about building with cement or forging metal. But is metalworking they were doing for true. Tan-Tan watched at all those douens and them working obeah magic with hammer and fire, turning lumps of rockstone into shining metal. Perched on a log outside the foundry, a douen woman was lashing a sheet of weaving into an iron frame. With beak and claws she tightened the lashing, stretching the piece of cloth into the frame. The mud-coloured wad of cloth pulled taut to reveal a story in pictures: a figure walking all bent over like the weight of the world was weighing the person down. Some kind of small beast clung to its back. Flying above the two was a big bird or bat circling, circling in the air. The hinte gave one last pull of the lashing and the frame gave way, weak joints warping it into a diamond shape. The hinte let it fall with a clang. Two douens came hopping out to see what had happened. Chichibud and Benta. Tan-Tan ran towards them, Abitefa hopping beside her.
“Chichibud! Benta! You wouldn’t believe what we just see in the bush!”
The other hinte shrieked and hurried into the foundry. Chichibud barked angrily at Abitefa, who sat back on her heels and ducked her snout into her breast. Benta stomped. Tan-Tan didn’t pay them no mind. Excitedly she described the mako tank-like beast. Benta warbled a question at Abitefa. The young hinte responded with the cough-hack word. Benta cocked an eye at Tan-Tan and said, *‘Rolling calf.’ That is what tallpeople does call it.*
Rolling calf! Another anansi story folk tale come to life. That last Jonkanoo Season on Toussaint, when Tan-Tan had gone for parang with the Cockpit County Jubilante Mummers. Mummers go on foot, is the tradition. And as they walk the distance between house and house in the dark, is the tradition to pass the time by telling scary stories. The rolling calf was a giant duppy bull with eyes of red flame. Its body was wrapped round in chains. It snorted fire and pawed the ground. The rolling calf left behind smoking tracks of burnt earth. If one only caught you outside late at night where you had no business to be, it would turn into a big ball of flame and chase you, chase you, chase you till you dropped dead of fright and exhaustion. Walking in the dark with the Mummers, the little Tan-Tan had hoped say the rolling calf understood that them had business out there, that them wasn’t up to no good. She had grabbed hold of Ione’s hand tight-tight.
Chichibud said, “Rolling calf bad-minded for so. Them does attack just out of spite. Only a master hunter could kill them.”
“How, with all that armour?”
“Them have a soft spot under them jaw. You have to jook a machète up under the jaw into the brain. If you miss you likely won’t live to try again. You see why we ain’t want you coming into the bush alone? You keeping your lantern light to keep away the mako jumbie-them?”
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?
*Yes,* the hinte replied. *You don’t hear it? If I call high-high the sound does confuse small meat; tree frog and thing. If I do it soft, I does see things inside things. I see the baby in you.*
“To rass! Allyou got sonar!”
*Sonar?*
“Yes, man. Sonar and echolocation too, I bet you. Abitefa, you could see in the dark down here?”
*Not good, no. Not with my eyes. So I call. I does hear if something in my way. When my wings grow in, is so I go fly at night.*
“See what I mean?” Tan-Tan laughed, happy to latch on to this new thing instead of her troubles. “Girl, you is a ratbat for true!” An idea hit her. She’d always wondered . . . “Tell me this. How allyou does always know where the next group of exiles show up?”
*It does make a big, high noise,* Abitefa chirped. *It does hurt we ears. You never hear it?* The hinte’s second eyelids flickered in surprise.
“No. I never hear a shift pod materialise. No human could hear it.”
*Oh,* Abitefa replied matter-of-factly. Plenty of things tallpeople couldn’t do, after all. She held up her lantern, looked round. *You feel better now? Ready to go?*
“Yes, the nausea does go away once I vomit. Plenty women not so lucky.” Lucky. Tan-Tan scowled. She rubbed her hand over her belly, imagining she could just dig her fingers inside and pull out the thing growing in her. “Sonar not going to help me, Tefa. What I need is to lost this baby. I need to kill it before it grow any more.”
; *No,* Abitefa insisted.
“Oh, God, Abitefa, what I going to do?” Tan-Tan leaned against Abitefa’s warm body, comforting as Benta’s. Tefa’s feathers were coming in. Tan-Tan wished she had wings too, and a sharp beak like Abitefa was getting. For all her bones were probably hollow to aid flight, Abitefa would come in bigger and stronger than any man of her people. She could defend herself.
• • •
“Abitefa,” Tan-Tan said one evening while they were climbing back up to the daddy tree, “if you only know how sick I getting of roast manicou and halwa fruit, eh?” With her feet Tan-Tan curled a length of the vine rope she was climbing into a knot round her instep and stopped for a rest. She was already experiencing the shortness of breath of pregnancy. Abitefa leapt to a nearby branch to wait until Tan-Tan was ready to go again.
*I go give you some of my tree frog tonight,* the hinte suggested.
“Nah, man. After it go be raw?”
*Is good that way, not burnt like you does do it. Daddy must be mad, eating tallpeople burn-up food.* Abitefa had once tasted some of Tan-Tan’s cooking. She had spit it out one time.
“Taste nasty, you mean. Uncooked. Me can’t get used to the kaka oonuh does eat, you hear?” Tan-Tan untangled her feet again and continued climbing. Abitefa followed her in silence. Tan-Tan stopped.
“I sorry, girl. I ain’t mean to insult you. All I could think about is this baby eating out my insides.” She sighed. “Tefa, you want to go with me tomorrow to the village?”
*We already living in the village.*
“No, the tallpeople place, not this douen place; the village nearby where Chichibud and Benta did going that time. You want to come with me?”
*Is too dangerous for me.*
“Yes, you right,” Tan-Tan replied gloomily. “Them will take you for some leggobeast out of the bush and throw two cutlass chop in your head one time.” They climbed a bit more. “But you don’t have to come all the way with me, Tefa. Just show me how to get there nuh, and wait in the bush for me? I ain’t go stay long. I only have to find them doctor and make she give me something to abort this baby.”
Midnight Robber Page 23
