because there are no words. The shark was not swimming in air. I know that is what it will sound like, but he was not. We were not under the water either. We could breathe and walk and run just as he could swim, although not nearly so fast, and even fight the current a little.
The worst thing of all was he came and went and came and went, so that it seemed almost that we were running or fighting him by flashes of lightning, and sometimes he was Hanga, taller than the king and smiling at me while he herded us.
No. The most worst thing was really that he was herding everybody but me. He drove them toward the beach the way a dog drives sheep, Mary, Langi, Adam, and Mark, and he would have let me escape. (I wonder sometimes why I did not. This was a new me, a me I doubt I will ever see again.)
His jaws were real, and sometimes I could hear them snap when I could not see him. I shouted, calling him by name, and I believe I shouted that he was breaking our agreement, that to hurt my wives and my sons was to hurt me. To give the devil his due, I do not think he understood. The old gods are very wise, as the king told me today; still, there are limits to their understanding.
I ran for the knife, the
We got them all out, Langi and I did. But Mark has lost his leg, and jaws three feet across had closed on Mary. That was Hanga himself, I feel sure.
Here is what I think. I think he could only make one of us see him at a time and that was why he flashed in and out. He is real. (God knows he is real!) Not really physical the way a stone is, but physical in other ways that I do not understand. Physical like and unlike light and radiation. He showed himself to each of us, each time for less than a second.
Mary wanted children, so she stopped the pill and did not tell me. That was what she told me when I drove Rob’s Jeep out to North Point. I was afraid. Not so much afraid of Hanga (though there was that too) but afraid she would not be there. Then somebody said, “Banzai!” It was exactly as if he were sitting next to me in the Jeep, except that there was nobody there. I said, “Banzai,” back, and I never heard him again, but after that I knew I would find her and I waited for her at the edge of the cliff.
She came back to me when the sun touched the Pacific, and the darker the night and the brighter the stars, the more real she was. Most of the time it was as if she were really in my arms. When the stars got dim and the first light showed in the east, she whispered, “I have to go,” and walked over the edge, walking north with the sun to her right and getting dimmer and dimmer.
I got dressed again and drove back and it was finished. That was the last thing Mary ever said to me, spoken a couple of days after she died.
She was not going to get back together with me at all; then she heard how sick I was in Uganda, and she thought the disease might have changed me. (It has. What does it matter about people at the “end of the earth” if you cannot be good to your own people, most of all to your own family?)
Taking off.
We are airborne at last. Oh, Mary! Mary starlight!
Langi and I will take Adam to his grandfather’s, then come back and stay with Mark (Brisbane or Melbourne) until he is well enough to come home.
The stewardess is serving lunch, and for the first time since it happened, I think I may be able to eat more than a mouthful. One stewardess, twenty or thirty people, which is all this plane will hold. News of the shark attack is driving tourists off the island.
As you see, I can print better with my left hand. I should be able to write eventually. The back of my right hand itches, even though it is gone. I wish I could scratch it.
Here comes the food.
An engine has quit. Pilot says no danger.
He is out there, swimming beside the plane. I watched him for a minute or more until he disappeared into a thunderhead. “The tree is my hat.” Oh, God.
Oh my God!
My blood brother.
What can I do?
Some things you may have thought fantastic in this are simply true. There really were Japanese detachments left behind on various Pacific islands, marooned detachments that stayed right where they were until the local people turned on them and killed those left alive.
And there really are mysterious ruins on many South Pacific islands.
This story was done as a radio play by Lawrence Santoro, with Neil Gaiman playing Rev. Robbins. Gahan Wilson was our announcer—but when we closed our eyes it was Boris Karloff. There was weird music, and the whole production was far grander than I could have imagined. Thank you, Larry!
Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon?
The reason I am writing this is to find my manager. I think her name is really probably June Moon or something, but nobody calls her that. I call her Junie and just about everybody else calls her Ms. Moon. She is short and kind of fat, with a big, wide mouth that she smiles with a lot and brown hair. She is pretty too. Real
