Nalo Hopkinson: Midnight Robber

She sighed. “Don’t ask me, Melonhead, I done tell you I have to live in secret, I don’t settle anywhere for long. I will come and visit you again, seen?” She turned to leave.

“I could come with you?” he asked quietly. At her look he blustered, “Not to stay or nothing, not to give you grief, just to walk you back to your home, talk to you little more. Then I leave you alone, promise. So long I ain’t see you, girl.”

Home. He thought she had a home. This was breaking her heart, this longing. “You could hike in the bush?” she said, before she could have time to think about what she was offering.

“Nanny save we, is bush you living?”

She couldn’t stand the pity on his face. “Bush today yes, a different place next week, maybe bush again the week after that. Is so I does live, take it or leave it.”

“Nah, I ain’t mean nothing by it.” He was searching through his room. “Let me just find my good boots.”

“We taking the side routes, so you know. Can’t make anybody see where I go.”

He straightened up from tying his laces. She’d forgotten his short, sweet, bandy legs. “All this secrecy really necessary, girl?”

Panic fluttered in her throat. “Yes! And if you can’t honour that, tell me now and let me go my ways.”

“I never break word with you yet, Tan-Tan.”

But she’d broken hers to him. “Make we go.” She tipped her sombrero low on her head.

He followed her uncomplainingly, dipping into side streets, taking the least observed routes. He followed her through the cover of the eveningtime cornfields, through the middle bush to where she’d stashed her lantern. He just raised an eyebrow at how quickly she found it. It would be dark before she got back, Abitefa would be worried. She shouldn’t have stayed this long. How would she let Tefa know she was bringing company? How would Melonhead react to the hinte? To the rolling calf pup? She didn’t know what she was doing, or why. “We have to go quick.”

“Seen.”

He hiked along quietly with her for almost an hour, a soothing presence by her side. He held the lantern for her while she lit it, handed it back to her, said, “You making baby, ain’t it?”

“You could tell!” she stuttered, too shocked to dissemble.

“Not at first, no. That cape does hide plenty. But it start to show in your walk once you get out of Sweet Pone.”

“Huh.” She strode off, leaving him to keep up.

Another half hour of silence, not calming this time. Tan-Tan’s brain was seething over, too fast for sense. She was aware of every step Melonhead took, every inclination of his head. She nearly jumped out of her skin when he took a preparatory breath in. He was going to speak. He said, “Tan-Tan, don’t vex at the question: is Antonio baby?”

“Why you would ask me something like that!” She stomped on ahead of him, horrified herself with the fleeting thought that she could abandon him here in bush, like in the douen stories. She had let him get too close.

He caught up to her, gazed at her, waiting. Fucking man, always waiting, waiting for her to say what was on her mind. She said, “I can’t talk about it, don’t ask me.”

He nodded. “Seen.” They kept walking. In a few more minutes, he reached slowly for her hand. She took it and held on, tight-tight like creeper vine.

“Is really your home your taking me to, Tan-Tan?”

“My camp, yes.”

“It dark out here like backra soul, oui. You not frighten in this bush come nightfall?”

She felt pleased with herself. “Not any more.”

In another hour they were approaching the place where she and Tefa had made camp. Tefa had left pork-knacker signs, bush prospector signs, to tell her that she’d made that night’s nest in another nearby tree. They did that every night; it gave the rolling calf pup somewhere new to graze. Tefa was probably already hearing two sets of feet tramping through the bush, was wondering is what a-go on. “Tefa!” she skreeked. Her hinte talk was getting better. “A tallpeople with me! No danger!” Tefa carolled back that she was prepared.

Melonhead had jumped when she began calling. He halted dead where he stood. “What you make that noise for?” he asked.

“I have a packbird with me,” she said. The story she and Tefa had prepared if they were to need it. She hoped they could pull it off. “Just letting she… it know I coming.” Now she could see through the trees the flicker of the campfire. “Melonhead I have, ah, a pet.”

“You mean the bird?”

It took her a second to understand that he was calling Abitefa a pet. “No, a next beast. Don’t ’fraid when you see she.”

By the lamplight she could see him smiling. “You got what, a hunting dog or something?”

“No, more like a ankylosaur.”

“How you mean?”

“She getting big, all right? And she scary looking, but she won’t mean you no harm. Just don’t get where she could step on your foot.”

They stepped into the campsite. Snuffling with joy, the rolling calf pup rushed Tan-Tan, narrowly missing her with one of its horns. Melonhead shouted and froze. “What the bloodcloth…!” Inquisitive, the pup went to sniff at him. Melonhead put out warding hands, his face grey with alarm. The pup sampled a bit of his sleeve.

“Stop that!” Tan-Tan scolded her, pulling on her horns. “Sorry Melonhead, she growing; she is nothing but appetite.”

“She going to get bigger? ” The pup chewed meditatively, spat out a button.

“Little bit, yes. Watch out for she tail there. She mother reached to my shoulder. I killed she, the mother I mean, but is my fault. I frighten she and she attack. I couldn’t abandon the pup after that.”

Some of the fear had gone from Melonhead’s face. Carefully he reached out a hand and stroked one of the pup’s horns. “In all my born days, I never.”

Abitefa fluttered down from the nest. Melonhead straightened, smiled. “Now, here something I more familiar with. Coo-coo, bird-oi.” He made dove noises at Abitefa, holding out his hand. She looked to Tan-Tan for guidance.

“Ahm, she not used to strangers. She won’t come to you.”

He dropped the hand, pulled it out of reach of the pup’s nibbling mouth. In her beak Abitefa picked up a log of the wood she had gathered to stoke the fire. She must have thought better of it, for she dropped it again and stood looking at Melonhead. She didn’t get to see plenty tallpeople.

Melonhead glanced round the campsite. “Nanny bless, Tan-Tan; is here you staying? And all because of Janisette?”

“I like it here,” she lied. “You hungry?”

That was a long night; long in good and bad ways. There was the moment when Tan-Tan realised she couldn’t really expect Melonhead to make his way back home through the bush in the dark. He was going to have to stay there with them. How come she hadn’t thought of that before? It pleased her and frightened her to have him stay. She showed him how to climb up into the nest and he praised her ingenuity at training her bird to build it for her. Abitefa’s neck feathers had bristled. Tan-Tan had told him how she slept snuggled next to Abitefa for warmth and he’d said sweetly, “You don’t have to do that tonight, sweetheart. I here.” Tan-Tan had gaped at him, looked helplessly at Tefa, who just gazed back, puzzled. Finally Tan-Tan had had to ask her in awkward hinte to please sleep somewhere else for the night. Abitefa had made a peculiar noise and climbed up higher in the tree. Leaves and twigs had rained down on she and Melonhead for a while as Tefa had woven herself a new nest.

Yes, a long, long night alone in a confined space with Melonhead, which she had managed by pretending to fall asleep almost instantly. Melonhead had called her name softly a few times, then sighed and curled himself round her. She’d lain like that for hours, feeling the slow beat of his heart against her spine, his arm curled round her belly.