The two of them clear a space near the stream, and them plant all the twigs and plants-them. Them use mud and grass to build a wattle-and-daub hut.
And so Kabo Tano tell them, is so it go. Everything grow, and Tan-Tan and Antonio had food for their bellies and wood to build with. Tan-Tan learn to hunt and trap, so them always had meat for their table. The pieces of the half-way tree that get leave behind grow and spread all over the Earth. Earth get green and living again. The beasts in the bush had enough to eat.
King Antonio and Queen Tan-Tan live long on the new, clean Earth, and is Tan-Tan who give birth to the race of people on Earth, for it never had none there before.
But forever after, the beasts in the bush would run and hide whenever them see Tan-Tan coming, for them know she to be the greatest thief of all, the one who could steal them life away before them time come. She turn Robber Queen for true.
Is Tan-Tan make it so.
You like that story, sweetness? Tan-Tan ain’t too like it, you know. It always make she mind run on how she daddy steal she away from her home.
The light was too red and the air smelt wrong. The shift pod had disappeared and left Tan-Tan and the daddy she couldn’t recognise no more in this strange place. They were in a bush with no food and no shelter. Everything was changed.
“Allyou climb the Tree to visit we?” The high, clear voice was coming from behind Tan-Tan. She whipped round. Someone strange was standing there. Tan-Tan screamed and jumped behind Antonio.
Antonio grabbed Tan-Tan’s arm and took a step back.
“What you want?” he asked.
It made a hissing noise shu-shu and said, “That all depend on what you have to trade.”
“Not we. We come with we two long arms just so.”
Tan-Tan peeked out. The creature was only about as tall as she. It smelt like leaves. Its head was shaped funny; long and narrow like a bird’s. It was ugly for so! Its eyes were on either side of its head, not in front of its face like people eyes. It had two arms like them, with hands. Each hand had four fingers with swollen fingertips. Slung across its leathery chest was a gourd on a strap. It carried a slingshot in one hand and had a pouch round its waist. It wore no clothing, but Tan-Tan couldn’t see genitalia, just something looking like a pocket of flesh at its crotch. A long knife in a holder was strapped onto one muscular thigh. But it was the creature’s legs that amazed Tan-Tan the most. They looked like goat feet; thin and bent backwards in the middle. Its feet had four long toes with thick, hard nails. “Eshu,” she muttered, “a-what that?”
Static, then a headache burst upon her brain. Eshu didn’t answer.
The jokey-looking beast bobbed its head at them, like any lizard. “I think you two must be want plenty, yes? Water, and food, and your own people? What you go give me if I take you where it have people like you?”
At the word “water,” Tan-Tan realised that she’d had nothing to drink since the cocoa-tea Nursie had given her that afternoon, and she’d only sipped that; a whole lifetime away, it seemed now.
“Daddy, I thirsty.”
“Hush your mouth, Tan-Tan. We don’t know nothing about this beast.”
The creature said, “Beast that could talk and know it own mind. Oonuh tallpeople quick to name what is people and what is beast. Last time I asking you: safe passage through this bush?”
“Why I making deal with some leggobeast that look like bat masque it own self? How I know you go do what you say?”
“Because is so we do business here. Give me something that I want, I go keep my pact with you. Douen people does keep their word.”
Douen! Nursie had told Tan-Tan douen stories. Douens were children who’d died before they had their naming ceremonies. They came back from the dead as jumbies with their heads on backwards. They lived in the bush. Tan-Tan looked at the douen’s head, then its feet. They seemed to attach the right way, even though its knees were backwards.
The creature made the shu-shu noise again. “Too besides, allyou taste nasty too bad, bitter aloe taste. Better to take you to live with your people.”
Antonio made a worried frown. Then: “All right,” he said. “Let me see what I have to trade with you.” He searched his jacket pockets and pulled out a pen. “What about this?”
One of the douen’s eyes rolled to inspect the pen. A bright green frill sprang up round its neck. It stepped up too close to Antonio. Antonio moved back. The douen followed, said, “Country booky come to town you think I is? Used to sweet we long time ago, when oonuh tallpeople give we pen and bead necklace. Something more useful, mister. Allyou does come with plenty thing when you get exile here.”
“Nobody know we was leaving Toussaint. I ain’t think to bring nothing with we.”
“Me ain’t business with that.”
Worriedly, Antonio started searching his pockets again. Tan-Tan saw him ease a flask of rum part way out of his back pants pocket then put it back in. He patted his chest pocket, looked down at himself. “Here. What about my shoes-them?” He bent over and ran his finger down the seam that would release his shoe from his foot.
“Foolish. Is a two-day hike.” Its frill deflated against its neck, leaving what looked like a necklace of green beads. “Leave on your shoes and come.”
“What?”
“You will owe me. Come. Allyou want water?”
That was what Tan-Tan had been waiting to hear. “Yes, please, mister,” she piped up. Mister? she wondered.
The douen laughed shu-shu. “This one barely rip open he egg yet, and he talking bold-face! Your son this, tallpeople?”
“My daughter. Leave she alone.”
“He, she; oonuh all the same.”
Antonio shot the douen a puzzled look.
“She want water,” the creature said.
“Let me taste it first.”
Antonio took a few swallows from the gourd the douen handed him. He nodded, then held it for Tan-Tan to drink. The water was warm and a little slimy. She didn’t care, she drank until her throat wasn’t dry any more.
The douen said, “Never see a tallpeople pickney climb the half-way tree before. What crime you do, pickney, to get cast away?”
“Never you mind,” growled Antonio.
The creature didn’t reply. It took the gourd back. It sniffed at Daddy, then at Tan-Tan. She moved away from its pointy snout, hands jumping protectively to cross in front of her body. But it just grunted at them and started off through the bush, hacking a path with its knife. Tan-Tan remembered Nursie’s stories about how douens led people into the bush to get lost and die. She started to feel scared all over again. She called silently for eshu. Her headache flared, then quieted. She reached for Antonio’s hand. “Daddy,” she whispered. “Where eshu?”
“Back on Toussaint, child. We leave all that behind now.”
She didn’t understand. Eshu was always there. She bit her bottom lip, peered into the bush where the douen had disappeared. “We have to go with that funny man?”
“Yes, doux-doux. It say it taking we to we own people.”
“For true? It not going to lost we?”
“I don’t know, doux-doux. Just come.”
They followed the path the creature had left. Red heat beat down. Branches jooked. The space the creature was clearing through the bush was short so till Antonio had to rip off the foliage above his own head to make room to pass through. By the time they caught up to the douen, Antonio was panting with the exertion and scratched from jutting twigs. “Is what you did call this place?” he asked.
“New Half-Way Tree oonuh call it.”
“But,” said Tan-Tan, “we not half way. We come all the way and reach now.” The douen blinked at her. Its eyes were very large. She didn’t like it looking at her. She shouldn’t have said anything. Nervously she giggled at her own joke.
Antonio stopped her with a look. He said, “How you know where to find we? The shift pod does land at the same place every time?”
“No. Douen does know whe
n and where a next one going to land. Taste it in the air. Whichever douen reach there first, him get first right of trade with the new tallpeople. Bring we good business, oonuh. A tallpeople gave me a shirt one time. Front does close up when you run your finger along it. I give it to the weavers in my village. Them will study how to make more.”
“How come you could speak the same way like we?”
“Yes. Anglopatwa, Francopatwa, Hispanopatwa, and Papiamento. Right? We learn all oonuh speech, for oonuh don’t learn we own.”
“And why you call yourself ‘douen’?”
“Allyou call we so. Is we legs.”
The ringing in Tan-Tan’s ears, which had never quite stopped since the shift pod had deposited them here, was getting louder. She shook her head to try to clear it. She had begun to feel chilly. She wrapped her arms round herself.
The douen noticed, sniffed in her direction. It raised one twisted leg and scratched behind its shoulder blade. “Mister, watch at your pickney-girl. Is so allyou does do for cold.”
Antonio stared down at her with a look like he didn’t know what to do.
“Allyou people blood too hot for this place,” said the douen. Now it was holding the foot up in front of its face, inspecting between its long toes to see if its scratching had unearthed anything. Its toes flicked, shaking dust off themselves as agilely as fingers. It put its foot back on the ground, looked at Antonio. “Give she something warm to wear.”
“Me done tell you, me don’t have nothing!”
The creature reached into the pouch at its waist and pulled out a cloth like the one it was wearing. It was saffron yellow, Tan-Tan’s favourite colour.
“Here, small tallperson.”
Tan-Tan pressed up against Daddy’s legs. She looked doubtfully at the cloth. Antonio took it, peered at it, smelt it. He shook it out and put it round her shoulders. “Thanks,” he said grudgingly.
“My wife make those cloths,” the douen said to Tan-Tan.
A dead douen baby could have wife?
“With every thread she weave,” the douen continued, “she weave a magic to give warmth to who wear the cloth. Is true; I does see she do it.”
Tan-Tan took a hard look at the little person. She wished she could talk to eshu. The douen’s eyes-at-the-sides couldn’t look at her straight on; it cocked its head like a bird’s to return the stare, like a parrot. She smiled a little. No, it didn’t look like a dead child. Too besides, it didn’t have no Panama hat like a real douen. She began to feel warmer, wrapped in its wife’s magic cloth. “What you name?” she asked the douen.
“Eh-eh! The pickney offering trail debt.” He bent, sniffed her hair. “You have manners. Me name Chichibud. And what you name?”
“Tan-Tan,” she said, feeling shy.
“Sweet name. The noise Cousin Lizard does make when he wooing he mate.”
“It have lizards here?”
Chichibud looked round the gloomy bush, picked up a twig and flung it at a crenellated tree trunk. A liver-red something slithered out of the way. It was many-legged like a centipede, long as Daddy’s forearm, thick around as his wrist.
“Fuck,” Antonio muttered.
“No, I make mistake,” said Chichibud. “Foot snake that, not a lizard. Shu-shu.”
He peered round again, then pointed to a tree in front of them. “Look.” The tree had brownish purple bark and long twist-up leaves fluttering in the air like ropes of blood floating in water.
“I ain’t see nothing.”
“Look at the tree trunk. Just above that knothole there.”
Tan-Tan squinted and stared at the tree, but still couldn’t make anything out.
Chichibud picked up a rockstone from the ground and flung it at the tree. “Show yourself, cousin!”
A little lizard reared up on its hind legs to scuttle out of the way, then just as quickly settled still again on the tree.
Tan-Tan laughed. “I see he! He like the ones from back home, just a different colour.” The lizard was purple like the bark, but with streaks of pink the same strange colour as the sunlight. When he was quiet he looked just like a piece of tree bark with the sun dappling it.
“Tallpeople say your world not so different from the real world,” the douen told her.
Yes it was. Plenty different. “Why you call the lizard ‘cousin’?”
“Old people tell we douen and lizards related. So we treat them good. We never kill a lizard.”
Antonio said impatiently, “The place you taking we; is what it name?”
“We go keep hiking,” Chichibud told them. They moved off through the bush again. He answered Antonio’s question: “It name Junjuh.”
The parasitic fungus that grew wherever it was moist.
“Nasty name,” Antonio mumbled.
“One of oonuh tell me about junjuh mould. It does grow where nothing else can’t catch. When no soil not there, it put roots down in the rock, and all rainwater and river water pound down on it, it does thrive. No matter what you do, it does grow back.”
As they walked, Chichibud showed them how to see the bush around them. He took them over to a low plant with pointy leaves. In the dusky sunlight they could just make out dark blue flowers with red tongues. “Devil bush this.”
“I know it!” Tan-Tan said. “We have it back home, but the flowers does be red.”
“The one back home like this?” Carefully, Chichibud picked a leaf off the plant. He held it up to the light so they could see the tiny, near-transparent needles that bristled on its underside. “Poison thorn. If you skin touch it, bad blister. Skin drop off. Our bush doctors smoke it. Give them visions. It does talk to them and tell them which plants does heal. Some of oonuh smoke it too, but never hear the voice of the herb, just the voices of your own dreams.”
From then on, Tan-Tan kept casting her eyes to the ground to make sure she wouldn’t brush up a devil bush.
Chichibud said to Antonio, “You bring any lighter with you? Any glass bottle?”
“Nothing, me tell you!”
“Too bad for you. Woulda trade you plenty for those; bowls to eat out of, hammock to sleep in.”
A few minutes later Chichibud pulled down a vine from a tree as they were walking under it. The vine had juicy red leaves and bright green flowers. “Water vine. You could squeeze the leaves and drink from them. If you dry the vine, you could twist it together to make rope.” Chichibud picked two-three of the leaves and squeezed them in his hand. “You want to try, pickney?” But before he could drip the water into her mouth, Antonio dashed the leaves out of his hand.
“Don’t give she nothing to eat without I tell you to!” Antonio shouted angrily.
Chichibud fell into a crouch. He said nothing, but bobbed his head like a parrot. His eyes went opaque and then clear again, like someone opening and closing a jalousie window shutter. The frill at his neck rose. Somehow he seemed to have grown bigger, fiercer. Tan-Tan edged behind her daddy again. Them was going to fight! Maybe Daddy still had some of the poison he’d used on Uncle Quashee. That would serve the nasty leggobeast right.
“Man,” Chichibud replied, his voice growly, “you under trail debt, your pickney declare it. Is liard you calling me liard?”
“I don’t want her to eat nothing that might make she sick.”
“Oh-hoh.” Chichibud straightened up. He was back to his normal size. How he do that? “You watching out for your pickney. Is a good thing to do. But we under trail debt, I tell you. You go get safe to Junjuh. I won’t make your child come to harm.”
Antonio just grunted. Tan-Tan knew that particular set of his jaw. He was still vex. Chichibud tugged down a length of vine, showed it to Antonio first, then said to Tan-Tan, “Water vine only grow on this tree here, the lionheart tree with the wood too tough to cut. But if you see a vine looking just like this, only the flowers tiny-tiny, don’t touch it! Allyou call it jumbie dumb cane. Juice from it make your tongue swell up in your head. Can’t talk. Sometimes suffocate and dead.”
They hiked on through the bush. It was sweaty work, but Tan-Tan still felt chilly. Her ears tingled. She was only watching the ground below her feet for the devil bush and the bush above her head for jumbie dumb cane. Chichibud stopped them yet again. “What you see?” he said, pointing to the ground ahead. Like all the ground they’d tromped so far, what wasn’t covered with a thick carpet of ruddy dead leaves was blanketed with a fine, reddish green growth like moss. Gnarled trees with narrow trunks twisted their way out of it, reaching towards the too-red sun. It looked just like the rest of the bush.
Antonio sucked his teeth. “Look, I ain’t business with your bush nonsense, yes. Take we to this Junjuh.”
But as Tan-Tan had looked where Chichibud was pointing, she had slowly discerned something different through the mess of leaf and mould and stem. She tapped Chichibud on the shoulder. “Mister, I see some little lines, like the tracks badjack ants does leave in the sand.”
Gently, Chichibud touched her forehead with the back of his hand, once, twice. “Good, little tallpeople. Sense behind you eyes. That is sugar-maggot trails. If you follow them, you could find their nest. Boil them to sweeten your tea.” Chichibud looked at Antonio. “You must learn how to live in this place, tallpeople, or not survive.”
They hiked and they hiked. They had to stop one time for Tan-Tan to make water. They kept walking. Tan-Tan pulled Chichibud’s wife’s cloth tighter round her, wishing she could feel warm. She peered through the dimness of the bush ahead. “Look, Daddy! Bamboo like back home.”
Antonio turned wary eyes on the tall, jointed reeds growing thick as arms up towards the light. There was a whole stand of them. The shifting shadows caused by the narrow leaves blowing in the breeze hurt Tan-Tan’s eyes. The hollow stems clacked against each other and made her head pound. Antonio frowned. “How bamboo reach here? Is from Toussaint.” He looked to Chichibud for explanation.
“Tallpeople bring it. Plenty other bush too.”
They hiked on and on until Tan-Tan couldn’t make her legs move any more; Antonio had to carry her. As Daddy gathered her into his arms, Tan-Tan could feel how he was shivering too. He turned to the douen: “So where this village you only telling me about all the time? Like you is douen in truth, trying to lead we deeper into the bush and get we lost?”
Midnight Robber Page 10