Anansi Boys

“Obviously not,” said Daisy.

“Very. Very grateful,” said the police chief, patting her shoulder in a way that set Daisy’s teeth on edge. “This little lady saved that woman’s life,” he told Charlie, giving his shoulder a patronizing pat for good measure, before setting off with the doctors down the corridor.

“So what’s happening?” asked Charlie.

“Well, Grahame Coats is dead,” she said. “More or less. And they don’t hold out any hope for Rosie’s mum, either.”

“I see,” said Charlie. He thought about this. Then he finished thinking and came to a decision. Said, “Would you mind if I just chatted to my brother for a bit? I think he and I need to talk.”

“I’m going back to the hotel anyway. I’m going to check my e-mail. Probably going to have to say sorry on the phone a lot. Find out if I still have a career.”

“But you’re a hero, aren’t you?”

“I don’t think that’s what anyone was paying me for,” she said, a little wanly. “Come and find me at the hotel when you’re done.”

Spider and Charlie walked down the Williamstown high street in the morning sun.

“You know, that really is a good hat,” said Spider.

“You really think so?”

“Yeah. Can I try it on?”

Charlie gave Spider the green fedora. Spider put it on, looked at his reflection in a shop window. He made a face and gave Charlie the hat back. “Well,” he said, disappointed, “it looks good on you, anyway.”

Charlie pushed his fedora back onto his head. Some hats can only be worn if you’re willing to be jaunty, to set them at an angle and to walk beneath them with a spring in your stride as if you’re only a step away from dancing. They demand a lot of you. This hat was one of those, and Charlie was up to it. He said, “Rosie’s mum is dying.”

“Yeah.”

“I really, really never liked her.”

“I didn’t know her as well as you did. But given time, I’m sure I would have really, really disliked her too.”

Charlie said, “We have to try and save her life, don’t we?” He said it without enthusiasm, like someone pointing out it was time to visit the dentist.

“I don’t think we can do things like that.”

“Dad did something like it for mum. He got her better, for a while.”

“But that was him. I don’t know how we’d do that.”

Charlie said, “The place at the end of the world. With the caves.”

“Beginning of the world, not the end. What about it?”

“Can we just get there? Without all that candles-and-herbs malarkey?”

Spider was quiet. Then he nodded, “I think so.”

They turned together, turned in a direction that wasn’t usually there, and they walked away from the Williamstown high street.

Now the sun was rising, and Charlie and Spider walked across a beach littered with skulls. They were not proper human skulls, and they covered the beach like yellow pebbles. Charlie avoided them where he could, while Spider crunched his way through them. At the end of the beach they took a left turn that was left to absolutely everything, and the mountains at the beginning of the world towered above them and the cliffs fell away below.

Charlie remembered the last time he was here, and it seemed like a thousand years ago. “Where is everyone?” he said aloud, and his voice echoed against the rocks and came back to him. He said, loudly, “Hello?”

And then they were there, watching him. All of them. They seemed grander, now, less human, more animal, wilder. He realized that he had seen them as people last time because he had expected to meet people. But they were not people. Arrayed on the rocks above them were Lion and Elephant, Crocodile and Python, Rabbit and Scorpion, and the rest of them, hundreds of them, and they stared at him with eyes unsmiling: animals he recognized; animals that no one living would be able to identify. All the animals that have ever been in stories. All the animals that people have dreamed of, worshipped, or placated.

Charlie saw all of them.