The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, thought Fat Charlie, the line of the poem surfacing from some long-forgotten English lesson. And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold. He tried to remember what a cohort was, and failed. Probably, he decided, it was some kind of chariot.
Something moved, close to his elbow, and he realized that what he had thought was a brown rock, beneath the dead tree, was a man, sandy-colored, his back spotted like a leopard’s. His hair was very long and very black, and when he smiled his teeth were a big cat’s teeth. He only smiled briefly, and it was a smile without warmth or humor or friendship in it. He said, “I am Tiger. Your father, he injured me in a hundred ways and he insulted me in a thousand ways. Tiger does not forget.”
“I’m sorry,” said Fat Charlie.
“I’ll walk along with you,” said Tiger. “For a short while. You say that Anansi is dead?”
“Yes.”
“Well. Well, well. He played me for a fool so many times. Once, everything was mine—the stories, the stars, everything. He stole it all away from me. Maybe now he is dead people will stop telling those damn stories of his. Laughing at me.”
“I’m sure they will,” said Fat Charlie. “I’ve never laughed at you.”
Eyes the color of polished emeralds flashed in the man’s face. “Blood is blood,” was all he said. “Anansi’s bloodline is Anansi.”
“I am not my father,” said Fat Charlie.
Tiger bared his teeth. They were very sharp. “You don’t go around making people laugh at things,” explained Tiger. “It’s a big, serious world out there; nothing to laugh about. Not ever. You must teach the children to fear, teach them to tremble. Teach them to be cruel. Teach them to be the danger in the dark. Hide in the shadows, then pounce or spring or leap or drop, and always kill. You know what the true meaning of life is?”
“Um,” said Fat Charlie. “Is it love one another?”
“The meaning of life is the hot blood of your prey on your tongue, the meat that rends beneath your teeth, the corpse of your enemy left in the sun for the carrion eaters to finish. That is what life is. I am Tiger, and I am stronger than Anansi ever was, bigger, more dangerous, more powerful, crueler, wiser….”
Fat Charlie did not want to be in that place, talking to Tiger. It was not that Tiger was mad; it was that he was so earnest in his convictions, and all his convictions were uniformly unpleasant. Also, he reminded Fat Charlie of someone, and while he could not have told you who, he knew it was someone he disliked. “Will you help me get rid of my brother?”
Tiger coughed, as if he had a feather, or perhaps a whole blackbird, stuck in his throat.
“Would you like me to get you some water?” asked Fat Charlie.
Tiger eyed Fat Charlie with suspicion. “Last time Anansi offered me water, I wound up trying to eat the moon out of a pond, and I drowned.”
“I was just trying to help.”
“That was what he said.” Tiger leaned in to Fat Charlie, stared him in the eye. Close-up, he did not look even faintly human—his nose was too flat, his eyes were positioned differently, and he smelled like a cage at the zoo. His voice was a rumbling growl. “This is how you help me, Anansi’s child. You and all your blood. You keep well away from me. Understand? If you want to keep the meat on those bones.” He licked his lips then, with a tongue the red of fresh-killed flesh and longer than any human tongue had ever been.
Fat Charlie backed away, certain that if he turned, if he ran, he would feel Tiger’s teeth in his neck. There was nothing remotely human about the creature now: it was the size of a real tiger. It was every big cat that had turned man-eater, every tiger that had broken a human’s neck like a house cat dispatching a mouse. So he stared at Tiger as he edged backward, and soon enough the creature padded back to its dead tree and stretched out on the rocks and vanished into the patchy shadows, only the impatient swish of its tail betraying its position.
“Don’t you worry yourself about him,” said a woman, from a cave mouth. “Come here.”
Fat Charlie could not decide if she was attractive or monstrously ugly. He walked toward her.
“He come on all high-and-so-mighty, but he’s a-scairt of his own shadow. And he’s scairter of your daddy’s shadow. He got no strength in his jaws.”
There was something doglike about her face. No, not doglike….
“Now, me,” she continued, as he reached her, “me, I crush the bone. That’s where the good stuff is hid. That’s where the sweetest meats are hid, and nobody knows it but me.”
“I’m looking for someone to help me get rid of my brother.”
The woman threw back her head and laughed, a wild bray of a laugh, loud, long and insane, and Fat Charlie knew her then.
“You won’t find anyone here to help you,” she said. “They all suffered, when they went up against your father. Tiger hates you and your kind more than anyone has ever hated anything, but even he won’t do anything while your father’s out there in the world. Listen: Walk this path. You ask me, and I got a stone of prophecy behind my eye, you won’t find nobody to help you till you find an empty cave. Go in. Talk to whoever you find there. Understand me?”
“I think I do.”
She laughed. It was not a good laugh. “You want to stop with me for a while first? I’m an education. You know what they say—nothing leaner, meaner, or obscener than Hyena.”
Fat Charlie shook his head and kept walking, past the caves that line the rocky walls at the end of the world. As he passed the darkness of each cave, he would glance inside. There were people of all shapes and all sizes, tiny people and tall people, men and women. And as he passed, and as they moved in and out of the shadows, he would see flanks or scales, horns or claws.
Sometimes he scared them as he passed, and they would retreat into the back of the cave. Others would come forward, staring aggressively or curiously.
Something tumbled through the air from the rocks above a cave mouth and landed beside Fat Charlie. “Hello,” it said breathlessly.
“Hello,” said Fat Charlie.
The new one was excitable and hairy. Its arms and legs seemed all wrong. Fat Charlie tried to place it. The other animal-people were animals, yes, and people, too, and there was nothing strange or contradictory about this—the animalness and the humanness combined like the stripes on a zebra to make something other. This one, however, seemed both human and almost human, and the oddness of it made Fat Charlie’s teeth hurt. Then he got it.
“Monkey,” he said. “You’re Monkey.”
“Got a peach?” said Monkey. “Got a mango? Got a fig?”
“ ’Fraid not,” said Fat Charlie.
“Give me something to eat,” said Monkey. “I’ll be your friend.”
Mrs. Dunwiddy had warned him about this. Give nothing away, he thought. Make no promises.
“I’m not giving you anything, I’m afraid.”
“Who are you?” asked Monkey. “What are you? You seem like half a thing. Are you from here or from there?”
“Anansi was my father,” said Fat Charlie. “I’m looking for someone to help me deal with my brother, to make him go away.”