a soup or something? Did Cat die instantly, or did she lie on the roadside thinking about it? Did a passer-by whack her on the head with a shovel to put her out of her misery? Cats seem too transdimensional to get hit by traffic, but it happens all the time. All the time. Thinking I could keep her was crazy in the first place. My grandmother hates cats. Yakushima islanders keep chained-up dogs as guards. Cats take their own chances. I know nothing about litter trays, when you bring cats in, when you take them out, what injections they need. And look what happened to it when it dossed down with me: the Miyake curse strikes again. Anju climbed trees like a cat. A summer puma.
‘You are so, so, slow!’
I shout back up through the early mist and floppy leaves. ‘I’m snagged!’
‘You’re scared!’
‘I am not!’
Anju laughs her wild zither when she knows she is right. The forest floor is a long way down. I worry about rotted-through branches snapping. Anju never worries because I always do her worrying for her. She skip-reads her way up trees. She finds fingerholds in coarse bark and toeholds in smooth bark. Last week was our eleventh birthday, but already Anju can climb the gym ropes faster than any of the boys in our class, and, when she is in the mood, multiply fractions, read second-year texts and recite most Zax Omega adventures word for word. Wheatie says this is because she grabbed most of the brain cells when we were growing inside our mother. I finally unpick my T-shirt and climb after my sister, swift as a three-toed sloth with vertigo. Minutes later I find her on the top branch. Copper-skinned, willow-limbed, moss-stained, thorn-scored, dungareed, ponytail knotted back. Waves of spring sea wind break on the woods. ‘Welcome to my tree,’ she says. ‘Not bad,’ I admit, but it is better than ‘not bad’. I have never climbed so high before. We have already trekked up the razor escarpment to get here, so the view is awesome. The fortress-grey mountain-faces, the green river snaking out of the gorge, the hanging bridge, mishmash of roofs and power lines, port, timber yards, school soccer ground, gravel pit, Uncle Orange’s tea-fields, our secret beach, its foot rock, waves breaking on the shoals around the whalestone, the long island of Tanegashima where they launch satellites, glockenspiel clouds, the envelope where the sea seals the sky. Having bombed as tree-climber-in-chief, I appoint myself head cartographer. ‘Kagoshima is over there . . .’ I am afraid to let go and point, so I nod. Anju is squinting inland. ‘I think I can see Wheatie airing the futons.’ I can’t see our grandmother but I know Anju wants me to ask ‘Where?’ so I don’t. The mountains rise towards the interior. Miyanoura Peak props up the sky. Hill tribes live in the rainshadow – they decapitate the lost tourists and make the skulls into drinking bowls. And there is a pool where a real webby, scaly kappa lives – it catches swimmers, rams its fist up through their bum-holes and pulls out their hearts to eat. Yakushima islanders never go up into the mountains, except for the tourist guides. I feel a lump in my pocket and remember. ‘Want a champagne bomb?’
‘Sure.’
Anju suddenly monkey-shrieks, swings, and dangles down in front of me, giggling at my panic. Scared birds beat away near by. Her legs grip the branch above.
‘Don’t!’ is all I can blurt.
Anju bares her front teeth and chicken-wings her arms. ‘Anju the bat.’
‘Anju! Don’t!’
She swings to and fro. ‘I vant to suckkk your bluddd!’ Her hair clasp falls away and her ponytail streams earthward. ‘Bother. That was my last one.’
‘Don’t dangle like that! Stop it!’
‘Eiji’s a jellyfish, Eiji’s a jellyfish!’
I imagine her falling, ricocheting from branch to branch. ‘Stop it!’
‘You’re even uglier upside down. I can see your bogies. Hold the tube steady.’
‘Swing back up first!’
‘No. I was born first so you have to do what I say. Hold the pack steady.’ She extracts a sweet, unpeels the wrapper and watches it flutter away into the sea-greens. Watching me, she puts the sweet in her mouth, and lazily swings herself back upright. ‘You really are such a wuss!’
‘If you fell Wheatie would murder me.’
‘Wuss.’
My heartbeat gradually calms down.
‘What happens to you when you die?’ So Anju.
I don’t care as long as she stays upright. ‘How should I know?’
‘Nobody says the same thing. Wheatie says you go to the pure