And change duly came. Myrtle and George don’t live at number 56 any more—they’ve gone back to the home world. Lucy and Peter went with them, but Susan stayed on in the house. She met a nice human boy from Palmerston North, and they’ve got a family of their own now, two girls and a boy on the way. The children look human enough, and beyond that, I’m too much the gentleman to ask.
Myrtle wasn’t lying about the rest of the galaxy. Energy is as cheap as dust up there, and galactics—those who can breathe our air—come in such numbers the Government’s had to put restrictions on the back country. Lots of Chinese and Indian restaurants are closing down and being replaced by New Zealand ones, and you can walk past any bistro and see aliens of all shapes and sizes dining out on puha, kumara and lamb.
There’s just Alison and me now. Josh studied engineering in Christchurch, then, a couple of years ago, he left on a longer journey. We drove him up to Shannon, then stood watching from behind the safety of 80 centimetres of reinforced glass as the spear of light rose straight up into the night sky. Neither of us had much to say on the drive home.
Tonight we’re out on the deck, using the telescope that Myrtle and George gave us as a parting gift. Golden lights move serenely through the field of view, far above Earth’s atmosphere. We swing our telescope towards the patch of sky, dark and almost empty, where we know our son now lives, studying, learning. Sometimes we get a message, Josh smiling and telling us he’s fine against a background of lights, or bodies with too many legs, or places we cannot recognise or even comprehend.
I’m retired, and Alison’s not far off. One day soon, we’ll sell our house—the worst house on the best street—and after a few weeks of touring round and saying goodbye to friends, we’ll take that road to Shannon. Before they left, George and Myrtle said to look them up one day. I think we will.
From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7
Nnedi Okorafor
Appendix 820 of The Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide. This series of audio files was created by TreeFrog7. It has been automatically translated into text
ENTRY 1 (20.09 hours) Some clumsy beast has been stalking us. It only comes out at night and it moves with no regard for the bushes, plants and detritus on the jungle floor. It sounds big and is probably dangerous. And…I think it brings the smell of flowers with it. I can smell it now, like sweet lilacs. Does Morituri36 even notice? I wonder. Regardless of the creature’s presence, he continues to compile information and I put it together and upload the finished entries into the Greeny Jungle Field Guide. That’s our mission and our system.
“Down with ignorance! Upload information!” We are true Great Explorers of Knowledge and Adventure. Joukoujou willing, we’ll survive this day as we have the hundreds of others since choosing to dedicate our lives to informing the ignorant masses about this great jungle.
Whatever is stalking us, we’ll deal with it when the time comes.
Field guide entry (uploaded at 14.26 hours)
God Bug:
The God Bug is an insect of the taxonomic order Ahuhu-ebe, which includes all beetles. It is common in the Greeny Jungle. Usually blue, sometimes green. When it feels the urge, it spontaneously multiplies, becoming two independent god bugs. As it multiplies it may make a soft popping or giggling sound. There have been rare cases where one has multiplied into four or five. They are docile, almost playful insects. Diurnal.
*note: For some reason, this common insect has not previously been listed in the Greeny Jungle Field Guide. This may be because the god bug is also found in the city. Or maybe this is another example of the field guide’s incompleteness.
ENTRY 2 (18.55 hours)
Disgusting.
Everything here is disgusting. It rains constantly. The ground is always ankle-deep red-brown mud. There are a thousand types of biting and stinging insects. We have to sleep in the trees but the trees, bushes, and plants are noisy with buzzes, growls, snorts, screeches, clicks, whistles, too. Especially at night. The air reeks of moss, the syrupy scent of flowers, ripe palm nuts and rotting mangoes. And the jungle traps heat like a sealed glass tube held over a fire. The Greeny Jungle is a tough place to be while pregnant.
The heat leaves me light-headed. I vomit at least three times a day because of the strong smells. Yes, still, even in my eighth month. But though my sensitive nose makes for great discomfort, it makes for even greater documentation. You’d be amazed at how many floral and faunal specimens show themselves first and foremost with scent.
Yesterday, my nose led me to a tree full of those hairy pink spiders with striped orange legs. A year and half ago, Morituri36 and I uploaded a field guide entry on these creatures. We named them treebeards. They were our hundredth entry. Their bites paralyse your fingers and cause an intense headache. If these spiders ever became common back home they’d cause society to break down within a week. Imagine people unable to type on their computers!
Unfortunately, yesterday, I forgot that treebeards give off a strong smell that is very similar to figs. I thought I’d found a fig tree. I love figs, especially since becoming pregnant. The sky was cloudy. Any other day, I’d have seen all those webs. Instead, I walked right into them and the spiders descended on me like rain. Understandably, they thought I was attacking their home. Not good.
Morituri36 happened to be in the middle of one of his bouts when it happened. I had to save myself by running from the tree, throwing myself in the mud and dead leaves and rolling like crazy, the roots of some tree grinding into my back. Then I just lay there looking up…into the leaves and ripe fruit of a giant fig tree. The smell of real figs was all around me. Treebeards and figs, can you believe it!
Only my left hand was stung. I have to type with my right. I’m left-handed so this has been very, very annoying. I’ll be better in a few days.
What a husband I have. He cannot even save his wife from bush spiders. What has this place made us into? But can I blame him for having dulled senses due to his junglemyelitis? Maybe. I have been exploring this jungle right beside him all these years. He has been the only human face I’ve had to look at, too. Yet the trees do not “close in” on me. I do not need to have the sun and moonlight wash over my face for at least four hours a day. My brain isn’t muddled with an irrational fear of shadows that makes me rant and rave once in a while. And I’d have yelled stop before he walked under a tree full of treebeards. Idiot.
The sun is setting and I can hear and smell it again—the creature following us. It’s definitely nocturnal.
Field Guide Entry (uploaded at 01:55 hours)
Treebeard:
The Treebeard is a spider of the taxonic order Udide, which includes all joint-legged anti-spine creatures with eight legs. The treebeard is bright pink with orange stripes on its legs and about the size of a flashdisk. It is called a “treebeard” because it is covered with think pink hairs that grow longest around the belly, about the length of an adult’s index finger. When sitting in a tree, it looks like the tree has a small pink beard. Treebeards are highly social creatures and known to create “cities” in large leafy trees. These treebeard cities give off the strong smell of figs that can drift as far as a half mile radius. Warning: Treebeard poison causes near paralysis of the fingers and toes. One must tolerate this aggravation for only a few days. Diurnal.