He got up and walked a few paces away.

Then he turned. He ran back and, with all his momentum behind it, he kicked her, hard. She ducked her head out of the way, but the kick caught her shoulder and sent her sprawling.

Others came by: women, men, children. She received more slaps and kicks, and was confronted by teeth-baring displays of disgust. Shadow just lay in the dirt, where Little Boss’s kick had thrown her.

But the heatings by the men were not severe today. They saved their energy for each other. Many of them jabbered and punched each other, in noisy, inconclusive bouts. The elaborate politics of the men was taking some new turn.

Then there were no more kicks or slaps. The people walked-away, the rustle of their passing receding. Shadow was left alone. She dissolved, becoming only a mesh of crimson pain.

She knew herself only in relationship to other people: not through the place she lived, the skills she had. Ignored, it was as if she did not exist.

Now somebody crouched down before her. She smelled familiar warmth. She turned her head with difficulty; her neck was stiff. It was Termite, her mother. Beyond her Tumble, the infant, was playing with a lizard she had found, chasing it this way and that, picking it up by the tail and throwing it.

Termite, huge, strong, studied her daughter. Her face was twisted by uneasy disgust. But she probed at the scratches on Shadow’s legs, dipped her fingers into the blood that had dried around Shadow’s vagina, and tasted it. Then she inspected the ugly wound on Shadow’s hand. Fly maggots were wriggling there.

Termite groomed carefully around the edge of the wound. She pulled out the maggots, squeezed out pus, and licked the edges of the wound. Then she gathered a handful of thick, dark green leaves. She chewed these up, spitting them out into a green mass that stank powerfully, and scraped it over the wound.

It hurt sharply. Shadow squealed and pulled her hand back. But her mother was strong. Termite grabbed her hand and continued to tend the wound, despite Shadow’s struggles.

Tumble kept her distance. She would approach her mother, stare at Shadow and wrinkle her small nose, and retreat; then she would forget whatever she had smelled, and approach once more. She hovered a few paces away, attraction and repulsion balanced.

Later, Termite put her powerful arms under Shadow’s armpits, hauled her upright by main force, and dragged her into the shade of a fat, tall palm. She brought her food: figs, leaves and shoots. Shadow tried to pull her face away. Termite grabbed her jaw and pinched the joints until Shadow opened her mouth. She forced the food between Shadow’s lips, and pushed at her jaw until Shadow chewed and swallowed.

Shadow threw up.

Termite persisted.

By the time the roosting calls began to sound once more through the forest, Shadow was keeping down much of what she swallowed.

The people returned. The adults carried shaped cobbles, or bits of food. Some of the men had meat.

But there was much unrest. Squat and Little Boss were jabbering and throwing slaps at each other. Squat grabbed at a bloody animal leg Little Boss was carrying, trying to snatch it off him. Little Boss punched him hard in the nose, sending Squat flying back, and Little Boss took a defiant, bloody mouthful of his meat.

When the women started making their nests, Tumble climbed up her mother’s legs and clung onto her shoulders and head.

Once again Termite tried to make Shadow stand, but Shadow fell back and sprawled in the dirt. So Termite leaned over and let Shadow fall across her shoulders. She stood straight with a grunt, and Shadow’s arms and legs dangled at her back and belly.

With powerful gasps. Termite began to climb a palm, laden down by her infant and her nearly grown daughter.

Shadow’s head dangled at Termite’s back. She saw Termite’s legs and rump, a dark slope before her, powerful muscles working. With every jolt. Shadow felt her innards clench, and bright red pain flowed through her. Tumble’s small hands delivered stinging slaps to her unprotected backside.

High in a palm, Termite let Shadow slide into the crook of a branch. Sweating and panting. Termite quickly pulled branches together to make a nest. Then she grabbed Shadow by the armpits and pulled her into the nest.

Termite settled herself, curling around her daughter’s back. Whimpering, Tumble settled down in the nest at her mother’s back, on the far side from Shadow.

The light slid away. The world was black and grey.

Shadow closed her eyes. She slept, entering a deep dreamless sleep, with her mother’s warmth around her.

When she woke, in the first pink light of day, she found her thumb in her mouth, as if she was an infant. Memories flooded into her head. Her illness was like a tunnel of blood red, leading back to greener days beyond.

Her back was cold. Termite wasn’t there.

She sat up. Termite and Tumble were in the nest, on its far side. Termite was assiduously grooming her infant’s fur. Tumble was picking through a lump of faeces, seeking undigested food.

Shadow inspected the wound in her hand. Green, chewed-up fibre clung to it. She licked away the green stuff. There was no sign of maggots or pus, and much of the damaged area was scabbed over, although the scabs cracked when she flexed her thumb.

She hooted and scrambled towards her mother.

Termite sat on the edge of the nest, her long arms wrapped around Tumble, watching Shadow with a hard, still face.

Shadow sat for long heartbeats in the centre of the nest. She picked up bits of fur from the nest and teased them through her fingers. The scent of her mother was still there, mixed with the green smells of the tree. But there was a sourness too.

The sourness was her own smell, Shadow’s smell. Her mother, like her sister, could not bear to be with her, because of the smell. She ripped at her fur, screeching, and scattered handfuls of it around the disintegrating nest.

Termite watched impassively.

A stab of pain, lancing up from the depths of her gut, stopped Shadow dead.

She looked down at herself, her breasts and belly and legs. She felt a shiver of surprise that she was here, inside this body that stank so strangely.

The pain stabbed again, hot and white. She doubled over, and. vomit surged from her, sour and yellow.

It was a hard time for them all. With Big Boss weakening, the social order of the group was breaking down, and anger washed among the people like froth on a turbulent stream.

It went hard for Shadow. Pushed even from her mother’s protective circle, suddenly she was the lowest woman in the group. They all hated her, not just for her low place, but because of what she had become, this stinking, bleeding monster. She could not defend herself, from their beatings and the theft of her food.

But still she clung to the group. Still she made her nest each night, high in the trees, away from the cats and other predators, as close to the others as she dared approach. Much as she feared their fists, she was drawn back, for there was nowhere else to go.

And she was still ill. Her bleeding had stopped. She was afflicted by stomach cramps and pain deep in her back. Her breasts and belly started to swell. She was violently sick each morning. Her days were a blur of pain and loneliness. When she saw her shadow, of a hunched-over creature with hair ragged and filthy, she did not recognize herself.

But then, one day, she felt something squirm in her belly, a kicking foot.

Her head filled with memories, of blood and shit and milk. She remembered a woman lying on her back, legs askew, other women working to pull a pink, slick mass from her body, their hands sticky with blood.

Her loneliness sharpened into fear.