She led him away so it was just the two of them, all snugglewise and cuddleup. The other mummies thought this strange – and said so – but Effi was their knee woman and a rapper like her mummy Sharun before her. Drivers came and went while the knee woman remained, a power to be reckoned with on the island of Ham. Effi told little Symun the old legends of Ham, from before the Breakup and the Book that had ordained it, legends that, she maintained, went back to the MadeinChina, when the world had been created out of the maelstrom. Am iz shaypd lyke a feetus, she intoned, coz í iz 1. According to Effi, Ham was the aborted child of the Mutha, an ancient warrior queen of the giants, who leaped from island to island across the archipelago of Ing, pursued by her treacherous enemies. Fearing herself about to be caught, the Mutha sucked seawater into her vagina as an abortifacient, then squatted in the Great Lagoon and voided herself of Ham. When her pursuers saw the foetus, they were terrified, because it was an abomination – part moto and part human – and so they fled.
