Anansi Boys

He was a hunter.

He pulled himself up onto his hands and his knees, and then he padded, four-footed, out into the wine cellar.

He could see the women. They had found the steps up to the house, and they were edging up them blindly, hand-in-hand in the darkness.

One of them was old and stringy. The other was young and tender. The mouth salivated in something that was only partly Grahame Coats.

Fat Charlie left the bridge, with his father’s green fedora pushed back on his head, and he walked into the dusk. He walked up the rocky beach, slipping on the rocks, splashing into pools. Then he trod on something that moved. A stumble, and he stepped off it.

It rose into the air, and it kept rising. Whatever it was, it was enormous: he thought at first that it was the size of an elephant, but it grew bigger still.

Light, thought Fat Charlie. He sang aloud, and all the lightning bugs, the fireflies of that place, clustered around him, flickering off and on with their cold green luminescence, and in their light he could make out two eyes, bigger than dinner plates, staring down at him from a supercilious reptilian face.

He stared back. “Evening,” he said, cheerfully.

A voice from the creature, smooth as buttered oil. “He-llo,” it said. “Ding-dong. You look remarkably like dinner.”

“I’m Charlie Nancy,” said Charlie Nancy. “Who are you?”

“I am Dragon,” said the dragon. “And I shall devour you in one slow mouthful, little man in a hat.”

Charlie blinked. What would my father do? he wondered. What would Spider have done? He had absolutely no idea. Come on. After all, Spider’s sort of a part of me. I can do whatever he can do.

“Er. You’re bored with talking to me now, and you’re going to let me pass unhindered,” he told the dragon, with as much conviction as he was able to muster.

“Gosh. Good try. But I’m afraid I’m not,” said the dragon, enthusiastically. “Actually, I’m going to eat you.”

“You aren’t scared of limes, are you?” asked Charlie, before remembering that he’d given the lime to Daisy.

The creature laughed, scornfully. “I,” it said, “am frightened of nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing,” it said.

Charlie said, “Are you extremely frightened of nothing?”

“Absolutely terrified of it,” admitted the Dragon.

“You know,” said Charlie, “I have nothing in my pockets. Would you like to see it?”

“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 funny. The green fedora was not a thinking cap: but it was the kind of hat that would be worn by someone who not only thought but also came to conclusions of an important and vital kind.

He imagined the worlds as a web: it blazed in his mind, connecting him to everyone he knew. The strand that connected him to Spider was strong and bright, and it burned with a cold light, like a lightning bug or a star.

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.