And here, Elphie is alone, herself alone in the center of the camp, outside the tents. It’s high noon, though the thick jungle canopy allows too little direct sunlight to prove the moment. Everyone is busy. She doesn’t know why. Nessa has the rheumy chest and is resting in the girls’ tent. Ti’imit and Boozy are conferring in Boozy’s tent, and the flaps are tied shut and go away, don’t bother us. Nanny is distracted in Melena’s quarters. Melena hasn’t gotten up for several days. All on his own, for once, Frex has taken a canoe a short distance upriver for some stores and to suss out the rice market exchange as a source of possible converts. For the first time Elphie feels—well, what is it she feels?
Is it loneliness or is it fear? She isn’t sure. There’s all this talk of the migration of jungle cats. They steal invisibly through the growth all around her, she can tell. Today the grown-ups have left Elphie alone. Probably in the hopes that she’ll be eaten alive. It isn’t fair. Nessa is safe in her cot. Only Elphie, standing in the middle of the circle of tents. Let the cats come and get me. It’ll serve you right if I get devoured.
She starts to chant a little. When she was younger, Nanny had sung to her, lullabies and husha-husha songs, but it’s been some time since music marked the silences of camp life. Elphie twists her fingers and makes up some nonsense words. Seppada seppada meppada me, somebody somebody, twiddledy twee. He-body, who-body, me-body, you-body. Riddle-dee ree. She hardly realizes that she is singing. The words come spring-loaded with a melodic intention so her voice just follows.
And this is when she makes the acquaintance of the polter-monkey.
She doesn’t call it that at first. It’s just a creature on the sidelines, crouching. It looks as if it is eating its own knuckles. More or less the size of Nessa—in fact, in the shade, Elphie has thought at first that it is Nessa, somehow hexed into greater mobility—though of course Nessa has no knuckles of her own to bite.
It turns sideways as if it is shy, but it doesn’t back away when Elphie takes a half step forward.
“You’re a nasty-looking little piece of monkey business,” says the girl.
The monkey swivels its head a quarter-turn and bares its considerable burden of teeth. It isn’t a smile, nor has Elphie been trolling for one.
But any monkey knows how to keep itself hidden if it wants to. So this nervy bundle of fuzzy shadow has come forward by its own design. Is it even really there, or is Elphie making it up out of boredom? In any case, the company is welcome. “What? What do you want?” The creature isn’t going to help her figure it out, but still it doesn’t flee. It opens its mouth again with a shocking hinged jaw. At first Elphie thinks it is yawning. Then she gets it, maybe, and replies with some more ribbony phrases. “Pumpernickel rock, snickerlicker snock,” she sings. At this the creature drops its curled hands to the ground. It is carrying something in one of them. Its mouth closes and its eyelids lower, as if anticipating sleep. She has sung it out of hiding, that’s what she’s done.
Better ghost company than none at all. It sways a little and holds its own elbows, a gesture looking uncommonly like one of Nanny’s. Out of green jungle air Elphie creates an aria to tease it forward. Having an audience spurs invention. She is forging a crescendo, and the polter-monkey is in a trance. And then—
“Elphie, for the love of Lurline, quit the caterwauling,” hollers Nanny. She and Boozy have burst simultaneously from their respective tents because Melena is having a bad dream or something and is screaming. Maybe to drown Elphie out? In any case, before the girl can see how or where, the polter-monkey has disappeared.
She’s furious. Leaving her alone all morning, and just when something decent is happening, messing it up.
“Boozy, some coconut oil or turtle butter, I have to get the rings off her, she’s complaining of the pressure. Elphie, tend to your sister!”
Elphie will go try out her new gambit of singing on her sister, who has been awakened by Nanny’s shouting and is braying for attention and service. But first Elphie skirts the grass where she thinks she’s seen that creature. On the ground lies the small pair of tongs that has gone missing.