Anansi Boys

“You want him to go,” she said. “Say it. My time is precious.” She folded her arms and stared at him with mad eyes. “I am not scared of Anansi.”

He remembered Mrs. Dunwiddy’s voice. “Um,” said Fat Charlie. “I mustn’t make promises. And I have to ask for something of equal value. I mean, it has to be a trade.”

The Bird Woman looked displeased, but she nodded. “Then I shall give you something of equal value in trade. I give my word.” She put her hand over his hand, as if she was giving him something, then squeezed his hand closed. “Now say it.”

“I give you Anansi’s bloodline,” Fat Charlie said.

“It is good,” said a voice, and at that she went, quite literally, to pieces.

Where a woman had been standing, there was now a flock of birds, which were flying, as if startled by a gunshot, all in different directions. Now the sky filled with birds, more birds than Fat Charlie had ever imagined, brown birds and black, wheeling and crossing and flowing like a cloud of black smoke vaster than the mind could hold, like a cloud of midges as big as the world.

“You’ll make him go away, now?” called Fat Charlie, shouting the words into the darkening milky sky. The birds slipped and slid in the sky. Each moved only a fraction, and they kept flying, but suddenly Fat Charlie was staring up at a face in the sky, a face made of swirling birds. It was very big.

It said his name in the screams and caws and calls of a thousand, thousand, thousand birds, and lips the size of tower blocks formed the words in the sky.

Then the face dissolved into madness and chaos as the birds that made it flew down from that pale sky, flew straight toward him. He covered his face with his hands, trying to protect himself.

The pain in his cheek was harsh and sudden. For an instant he believed that one of the birds must have gashed him, torn at his cheek with its beak or talons. Then he saw where he was.

“Don’t hit me again!” he said. “It’s all right. You don’t have to hit me!”

On the table, the penguins were guttering low; their heads and shoulders were gone, and now the flames were burning in the shapeless black-and-white blobs that had once been their bellies, their feet in frozen pools of blackish candle wax. There were three old women staring at him.

Miss Noles threw the contents of a glass of water into his face.

“You didn’t have to do that either,” he said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Mrs. Dunwiddy came into the room. She was holding a small brown glass bottle triumphantly. “Smelling salts,” she announced. “I know I got some somewhere. I buy these in, oh, sixty-seven, sixty-eight. I don’t know if they still any good.” She peered at Fat Charlie, then scowled. “He wake up. Who did wake him up?”

“He wasn’t breathing,” said Mrs. Bustamonte. “So I give him a slap.”

“And I pour water on him,” said Miss Noles, “which help bring him around the rest of the way.”

“I don’t need smelling salts,” said Fat Charlie. “I’m already wet and in pain.” But, with elderly hands, Mrs. Dunwiddy had removed the cap from the bottle, and she was pushing it under his nose. He breathed in as he moved back, and inhaled a wave of ammonia. His eyes watered, and he felt as if he had been punched in the nose. Water dripped down his face.

“There,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy. “Feeling better now?”

“What time is it?” asked Fat Charlie.

“It’s almost five in the morning,” said Mrs. Higgler. She took a swig of coffee from her gigantic mug. “We all worried about you. You better tell us what happened.”

Fat Charlie tried to remember. It was not that it had evaporated, as dreams do, more as if the experience of the last few hours had happened to somebody else, someone who was not him, and he had to contact that person by some hitherto unpracticed form of telepathy. It was all a jumble in his mind, the technicolor Ozness of the other place dissolving back into the sepia tones of reality. “There were caves. I asked for help. There were lots of animals there. Animals who were people. None of them wanted to help. They were all scared of my daddy. Then one of them said she would help me.”

“She?” said Mrs. Bustamonte.

“Some of them were men, and some of them were women,” said Fat Charlie. “This one was a woman.”

“Do you know what she was? Crocodile? Hyena? Mouse?”

He shrugged. “I might have remembered before people started hitting me and pouring water on me. And putting things in

my nose. It drives stuff out of your head.”

Mrs. Dunwiddy said, “Do you remember what I tell you? Not giving anything away? Only trade?”

“Yes,” he said, vaguely proud of himself. “Yes. There was a monkey who wanted me to give him things, and I said no. Look, I think I need a drink.”

Mrs. Bustamonte took a glass of something from the table. “We thought maybe you need a drink. So we put the sherry through the strainer. There may be a few mixed herbs in there, but nothin‘ big.”