Anansi Boys

“No,” said the Dragon, uncomfortably, “I most definitely would not.”

There was a flapping of wings like sails, and Charlie was alone on the beach. “That,” he said, “was much too easy.”

He kept on walking. He made up a song for his walk. Charlie had always wanted to make up songs, but he never did, mostly because of the conviction that if he ever had written a song, someone would have asked him to sing it, and that would not have been a good thing, much as death by hanging would not be a good thing. Now, he cared less and less, and he sang his song to the fireflies, who followed him up the hillside. It was a song about meeting the Bird Woman and finding his brother. He hoped the fireflies were enjoying it: their light seemed to be pulsing and flickering in time with the tune.

The Bird Woman was waiting for him at the top of the hill.

Charlie took off his hat. He pulled the feather from the hatband.

“Here. This is yours, I believe.”

She made no move to take it.

“Our deal’s over,” said Charlie. “I brought your feather. I want my brother. You took him. I want him back. Anansi’s bloodline was not mine to give.”

“And if I no longer have your brother?”

It was hard to tell, in the firefly light, but Charlie did not believe that her lips had moved. Her words surrounded him, however, in the cries of nightjars, and in the owls’ shrieks and hoots.

“I want my brother back,” he told her. “I want him whole and in one piece and uninjured. And I want him now. Or whatever went on between you and my father over the years was just the prelude. You know. The overture.”

Charlie had never threatened anyone before. He had no idea how he would carry out his threats—but he had no doubt that he would indeed carry them out.

“I had him,” she said, in the bittern’s distant boom “But I left him, tongueless, in Tiger’s world. I could not hurt your father’s line. Tiger could, once he found his courage.”

A hush. The night frogs and the night birds were perfectly silent. She stared at him impassively, her face almost part of the shadows. Her hand went into the pocket of her coat. “Give me the feather,” she said.

Charlie put it into her hand.

He felt lighter, then, as if she had taken more from him than just an old feather—

Then she placed something into his hand: something cold and damp. It felt like a lump of meat, and Charlie had to quell the urge to fling it away.

“Return it to him,” she said, in the voice of the night. “He has no quarrel with me now.”

“How do I get to Tiger’s world?”

“How did you get here?” she asked, sounding almost amused, and the night was complete, and Charlie was alone on the hill.

He opened his hand and looked at the lump of meat that sat there, floppy and ridged. It looked like a tongue, and he knew whose tongue it had to be.

He put the fedora back on his head, and he thought, Put my thinking cap on, and as he thought it, it didn’t seem so fu

He imagined the worlds as a web: it blazed in his mind, co

Spider had been a part of him once. He held onto this knowledge and let the web fill his mind. And in his hand was his brother’s tongue: that had been part of Spider until very recently, and it wished devoutly to be part of him again. Living things remember.

The wild light of the web burned about him. All Charlie needed to do was follow it—

He followed it, and the fireflies clustered around and traveled with him.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s me.”

Spider made a small, terrible noise.

In the glimmer of firefly light, Spider looked awful: he looked hunted and he looked hurt. There were scabs on his face and chest.

“I think this is probably yours,” said Charlie.

Spider took the tongue from his brother, with an exaggerated thank you gesture, placed it into his mouth, pushed it in, and held it down. Charlie watched and waited. Soon Spider seemed satisfied—he moved his mouth experimentally, pushing the tongue to one side and then to the other, as if he were preparing to shave off a moustache, opening his mouth widely and waggling his tongue about. He closed his mouth and stood up. Finally, in a voice that was still a little wobbly around the edges, he said, “Nice hat.”

Rosie made it to the top of the steps first, and she pushed open the wine cellar door. She stumbled into the house. She waited for her mother, then she slammed and bolted the cellar door. The power was out here, but the moon was high and nearly full, and, after the darkness, the pallid moonlight coming through the kitchen windows might as well have been floodlighting.

Boys and girls come out to play, thought Rosie. The moon does shine as bright as day—

“Phone the police,” said her mother.

“Where’s the phone?”

“How the hell should I know where the phone is? He’s still down there.”

“Right,” said Rosie, wondering whether she should find a phone to call the police or just get out of the house, but before she had reached a decision, it was too late.

There was a bang so loud it hurt her ears, and the door to the cellar crashed open.

The shadow came out of the cellar.

It was real. She knew it was real. She was looking at it. But it was impossible: it was the shadow of a great cat, shaggy and huge. Strangely, though, when the moonlight touched it, the shadow seemed darker. Rosie could not see its eyes, but she knew it was looking at her, and that it was hungry.

It was going to kill her. This was where it would end.

Her mother said, “It wants you, Rosie.”

“I know.”

Rosie picked up the nearest large object, a wooden block that had once held knives, and she threw it at the shadow as hard as she could, and then, without waiting to see if it made contact, she moved as fast as she could out of the kitchen, into the hallway. She knew where the front door was—

Something dark, something four-footed, moved faster: it bounded over her head, landing almost silently in front of her.

Rosie backed up against the wall. Her mouth was dry.

The beast was between them and the front door, and it was padding slowly toward Rosie, as if it had all the time in the world.

Her mother ran out of the kitchen then, then, ran past Rosie—tottered down the moonlit corridor toward the great shadow, her arms flailing. With her thin fists she punched the thing in the ribs. There was a pause, as if the world was holding its breath, and then it turned on her. A blur of motion and Rosie’s mother was down on the ground, while the shadow shook her like a dog with a rag doll between its teeth.

The doorbell rang.

Rosie wanted to call for help but instead she found she was screaming, loudly and insistently. Rosie, when confronted with an unexpected spider in a bathtub, was capable of screaming like a B-movie actress on her first encounter with a man in a rubber suit. Now she was in a dark house containing a shadowy tiger and a potential serial killer, and one, perhaps both, of those entities, had just attacked her mother. Her head thought of a couple of courses of action (the gun: the gun was down in the cellar. She ought to go down and get the gun. Or the door—she could try to get past her mother and the shadow and unlock the front door) but her lungs and her mouth would only scream.

Something banged at the front door. They’re trying to break in, she thought. They won’t get through that door. It’s solid.

Her mother lay on the floor in a patch of moonlight, and the shadow crouched above her, and it threw back its head and it roared, a deep rattling roar of fear and challenge and possession.