We longed for fish and we saw all those encouraging signs from that bird with the single-feather tail, a bird we could see flying about in the mountains from the south village. It became increasingly clear to us that the answer to our problems lay with the bird up there. And so one day, when that friend of grandmother’s took the same path to the plantations as my friend’s mother, we decided to make the most of the opportunity to look for the bird. We’d accompany our respective adults, his mother and my surrogate grandmother, and keep them company as required, but when the chance arose, we’d head up the mountain to see what we could do about our longing for something to eat that wasn’t dry malanga or boiled banana. We’d whistle to one another from our respective plantations and assemble at an agreed meeting point. But we’d have to make sure we wouldn’t be missed. The women we accompanied went there to work, but they wouldn’t ask us to work, so if we waited until they were immersed in their tasks, we could sneak away and be up the mountain and back down again in time to put our loads on our heads and accompany the women home. We planned all this and we rubbed our hands in anticipation of the adventure that lay ahead and the result we hoped to achieve. In the bush, children can only communicate by whistling. The women emit a different sound, a sharp cry, something they’ve agreed on beforehand, or sometimes it’s the call of a particular family and all the women in the family know the call. So me and the other boy whistled and assembled and started to climb up to where we’d seen the birds flying about, those birds that so whet our appetites. Lacking fish, lacking wild hens, lacking seabirds you threw stones at and river crayfish that meant stones were thrown at you, lacking anything at all that offered any flavour, we climbed the hill, excited by the prospect of the long-feathered bird. We didn’t want the adults to miss us, so we hurried to get up there and we made quick progress. We soon found ourselves up in the clouds, the clouds that hover about the mountain-top, although we didn’t realise it right away. It was very misty, and we thought it must have rained, or was about to. But then we saw the birds, flying in and out of their nests in the trees right in front of us. And we thought our luck was in. We looked around for trees that weren’t too tall for our young bodies to climb, and we looked for white-feathered tails poking from holes. Eventually we found the perfect tree with the perfect tail, the tail of a beautiful specimen of that bird of our dreams. We were all set. He would go up, as he was the oldest and the more experienced. All he had to do was grab hold of the unsuspecting bird, clip its wings or break them, and then throw the bird down to me on the ground. So my friend boldly set off up the tree, and he climbed up a considerable distance. Then he screamed. ‘What’s the matter?’ I called. And he screamed again. His second scream was accompanied by other signs that something was wrong, for he started to shake. But he couldn’t move, meaning he couldn’t carry on climbing or come back down. I was standing at the bottom of the tree, looking up, unable to understand what was going on. Frozen up there, halfway up the tree, he told me to look down. I didn’t think there was anything to look down at, other than the path we’d come up. But he went on shaking and whimpering and he told me to look down the other way. I took a couple of steps forward and a great void suddenly rushed up at me. We were at the summit of one of the highest mountains on the island and we hadn’t even realised it. My friend had only realised once he was halfway up the tree, and he immediately felt overwhelmed at being so high. And the thing was, that mountain had a precipice and the tree he’d been climbing was on the edge of the precipice, jutting out over it in fact, which was something we’d failed to appreciate, due to our desperate need for fish, or because of the clouds, or our simple youthfulness. You couldn’t see the precipice from the south village as it was on the north face of the mountain; it would have only been possible to see from the settlements further east, on the mountain’s other side. That explains why it’s so misty, I said. But that was easy for me to say, for my feet were on firm ground and I could take a step back; he couldn’t move at all, although on the other hand his body was moving rather exaggeratedly: like I said, he was shaking uncontrollably. The solution was for him to come back down, but he couldn’t move, not now he’d seen where he was. And, although he was older than me, he was still just a boy, and so there he remained, stuck up the tree, shaking and crying. I became gripped with fear, convinced he was going to fall. And I saw that I too was in danger, so I moved further back. Had we really gone up so high? We’d reached the summit of the mountain without even realising it! I couldn’t believe it. As he went on shaking, unable to look down because he couldn’t bear the sight of the nothingness beneath him, I realised I had to do something. So I told him to hold on, I’d go and get help from the women further down. They were adults and they’d know what to do. I descended the mountain without looking where I was going. I have to say I ran, because I had two feet, indeed I still do. But really I flew, and I cried, for there was only one of us returning where two had set off, and that was a very bad thing. I got to my surrogate grandmother’s plantation and saw my load waiting for me on the ground, the load she’d prepared for me to carry back to the house. And I knew that if she’d already prepared my load, she was either about to leave or had already set off. So I ran around the farm, making lots of noise so that she knew I was there. The woman was not my own grandmother so I was reluctant to call her by her name. On our island, children don’t call adults by name unless they’re family. But on the other hand, I’d gone to the south village with that woman, and we were living together in the same house, so it would have been equally disrespectful if I called her by the general term we use to address all female adults. I was in two minds because of this, so I went on making a noise, showing that I was back from the mountain, back with her, until finally she appeared. She knew something was wrong the moment she saw me. She put down whatever she had in her hands and came over to me with a look of alarm on her face, ready for me to tell her what had happened. Once I’d done so, her face filled with fear, and she made the call she’d agreed with the mother of my friend. As the woman was quite far away, I couldn’t tell her what had happened until she reached us. And when she heard the call, she’d have understood it as the signal for departure, for it was in fact time to go home. My surrogate grandmother was too agitated to finish off the day’s tasks. Unexpected developments had upset her plans. So we just waited and, as she was an older woman, she started talking to herself, muttering about what might happen. She was worried. A certain time passed and then my friend’s mother appeared. Because her son had not come back in time to leave, and because her friend had called her, she knew something was wrong. She arrived looking worried, and it didn’t require much from me to deliver the bad news, for she already feared the worst. And that was because so many awful things had already happened on the island, and everyone, especially the adults, were very affected by it. Well, something awful had happened again. She listened to me tell the story, but before I’d even finished, she put her hand on her head and set off, as if she knew the path we’d taken better than anyone, and up the mountain she went. I followed, along with my surrogate grandmother, both of us crying, until we all got to where I said the tree was. It was still misty, and the cloud cover had increased. This is it, I said, showing them the tree. And below … I didn’t know whether to tell them that a few feet away from where we were standing was a giant void. I was certain we were in the right place, but there was no sign of our having been there, nothing we’d left behind, no item of clothing etc … So I began to have my doubts. But was there even anything we could have left behind? We’d set off without food, meaning there were no leftovers, no bones or peel; we’d not brought machetes to cut down branches and, as we were barefoot and had mainly been walking on fallen leaves, we’d hardly left any footprints. No, I was certain we were in the right place. The tree was unmistakable, the precipice too. But my friend was nowhere to be seen. The two women looked at me. They looked up, looked down and looked around, hoping to see the boy sitting there waiting for us. I looked up again and I saw one of the birds we’d come to catch approaching the tree, and any doubts vanished: that bird confirmed to me we were in the right place. I even thought I recognised the bird, that it was the exact same one that drew us to the tree in the first place. Never mind that those birds were all alike, I could just tell it was the one that enticed my friend up the tree. So I wasn’t wrong; we were in the right place. But where was my friend? I told the women this was definitely the spot, and as there was no one up the tree, they felt their worst fears confirmed. But I didn’t know what their worst fears were. All we really knew was that the boy wasn’t up the tree any more. I had another look for him, going round all the trees nearby, until finally I gave up. And I passed the burden of the matter on to the two women. They had their hands on their heads but, before they wept, the boy’s mother made the call their family used in the bush: uuhu-huhu-huuuuuu …! There was no reply. She repeated the call, directing it over the precipice. Nothing. The boy wasn’t there. We now knew he wasn’t there because he hadn’t answered the call, and so we had a catastrophe on our hands. The most likely scenario was that he’d slipped from the tree and either fallen to the ground or over the precipice. If he’d fallen over the precipice, he’d have landed in the trees below and come to serious injury in the branches. But if he’d fallen to the ground beneath the tree, his soul would have ripped out of his body on impact. That’s what their worst fears were, what we all now feared. And we gave in to our sorrow. But first we had to get to the south village, to see if the boy hadn’t made it back somehow. If there was no sign of him there, we’d wait for a little while longer before gathering our things and heading for the big village. The disappearance of a man, woman or child was not something the big village could remain uninformed about. Bad news for one family was bad news for the whole island, and the news had to be spread round the big village so that everyone was aware of it and suffered over it.