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Broketooth. ‘That one’s not going to make Hannimanni.’
    ‘Make Hannimanni what ?’ said Kinnick-Tiddit, an older cousin of mine.
    ‘ Become Hannimanni,’ said Broketooth. ‘Make us a new Hannimanni, of himself. Take over. He weren’t big enough anyway. Lands, my tooth hurts, this early. Come up, sun.’
    A new Hannimanni? What was she talking about?
    ‘Take over?’ said Kinnick-Tiddit.
    ‘Well, look at Our Father,’ said Broketooth.
    Several of us came out of the overhang and did so.
    There He was, flat along Top Ledge.
    ‘He looks dead already. Paw Him, someone. Go up there.’
    ‘You go. You paw Him.’
    ‘No, you. I’ve got this babby. Go on. He should be up and running about. Look, everywhere, they’re popping up, those smellies.’
    A growl bubbled inside Hannimanni, but there was no gleam of eyes. Every other head of us, though, the eyes were opening – plink here, plink there, mammies and babbies alike. Heads were poking up all about, look-look, foreheads wrinkling. On every rock and ledge the piles of us were clamming together tighter, while all around our borders loser-heads bobbed up, bobbed down, bobbed up somewhere else.
    I sat in the middle of a pile; all the bobbing, all the looking about, made me feel chittery. I had to chew on an old, not-very-choice piece of sweet-rooty to stop myself bursting out of the clammed pile and running – running anywhere, anywhere there wasn’t a bachelor bobbing up right in front of me – which wasn’t smart, with so many of them about.
    Everyone was getting to the same state. The ones with the babs was worst, crooning and twitching and trying to talk away their fear.
    ‘If we were to go right up on the top of the House,’ said someone, ‘right up onto the lap of that carvenservant, onto its head, maybe a ring of our teeth would keep them back, keep them off us.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Broketooth nastily. ‘Or maybe if we grew wings. Or maybe if we just now grew twice as big as we are, with twice as long teeth.’
    ‘There’s got to be some way,’ whimpered a mammy.
    Broketooth just sucked on her tooth. Everyone would have preferred to hear her scoff more, but she didn’t.
    The bachelors were getting bolder, particularly as the centre of us was deadish grey Hannimanni lying there, instead of the explosion of danger that He usually was. Any moment now, I thought, He will bound up and start priding around and snapping His lips back, going big at these smelly boys, pissing on everything, making the world smell right again. Any moment.
    But He continued to lie. His eyes, among all our fearful ones, were idle, soft in the firstening light, as if this were a day of leisure just dawning, not of battle. I swallowed a hard piece of rooty and chewed off another.
    A loser – a big one! I didn’t know they grew so big in the wild – he danced right up the House and paused by Top Ledge. Then he came forward to sniff the situation of our Hannimanni.
    ‘Insolence!’ chattered a frightened mam.
    ‘You stink !’ shouted another at the line of bachelors creeping towards us. Everyone at the edge drew in their tails, and some showed teeth at them.
    The big one leaned right in close to Hannimanni, who lay there drowsy, showing the very tips of His teeth, His lip too languorous to roll back and cover them.
    On a House-ledge across from us, a pile of wives blew apart. I heard the scutter and the screaming, but I didn’t look. I was busy – we were all busy – watching these dancers mince forward, shrink back, try different roundabout ways at us. Bachelor heads hung out from the stone above, whiskers against the sky; they were there at the edge of my eye just as the fleeing mammies and children were there, even while I was fixed, all of me, on the biggest, nearest dancer as he propped and sneaked towards the overhang.
    I could see everything, smell all the smells; everything was still. Even this bachelor was still, for the moment, because Broketooth had snarled. I