“I don’t know. But I expect they can do worse than that. Finish your hot chocolate.”
“But it’s hot.”
“And we’ll need a couple of bottles of water, won’t we? Garçon?”
A low susurrus of wings; the clack of more arriving birds; and beneath it all, low, burbling secretive coos.
The waiter brought them bottles of water. Spider, who was, Fat Charlie observed, now wearing his black-and-red leather jacket once more, put them into his pockets.
“They’re only pigeons,” said Fat Charlie, but even as he said it, he knew the words were inadequate. They were not just pigeons. They were an army. The statue of the fat man had almost vanished from view beneath the gray and purple feathers.
“I think I preferred birds before they thought about ganging up on us.”
Spider said, “And they’re everywhere.” Then he grabbed Fat Charlie’s hand. “Close your eyes.”
The birds rose as one bird then. Fat Charlie closed his eyes.
The pigeons came down like the wolf on the fold….
There was silence, and distance, and Fat Charlie thought, I’m in an oven. He opened his eyes and realized that it was true: an oven with red dunes that receded into the distance until they faded into a sky the color of mother-of-pearl.
“Desert,” said Spider. “Seemed like a good idea. Bird-free zone. Somewhere to finish a conversation. Here.” He handed Fat Charlie a bottle of water.
“Thanks.”
“So. Would you like to tell me where the birds come from?”
Fat Charlie said, “There’s this place. I went there. There were lots of animal-people there. They um. They all knew Dad. One of them was a woman, a sort of bird woman.”
Spider looked at him. “There’s this place? That’s not exactly very helpful.”
“There’s a mountainside with caves in it. And then there are these cliffs, and they go down into nothing. It’s like the end of the world.”
“It’s the beginning of the world,” corrected Spider. “I’ve heard of the caves. A girl I knew once told me all about them. Never been there, though. So you met the Bird Woman, and…?”
“She offered to make you go away. And, um. Well, I took her up on it.”
“That,” said Spider, with a movie-star smile, “was really stupid.”
“I didn’t tell her to hurt you.”
“What did you think she was going to do to get rid of me? Write me a stiff letter?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think. I was upset.”
“Great. Well, if she has her way, you’ll be upset, and I’ll be dead. You could have simply asked me to leave, you know.”
“I did!”
“Er. What did I say?”
“That you liked it in my house and you weren’t going anywhere.”
Spider drank some of the water. “So what exactly did you say to her?”
Fat Charlie tried to remember. Now he thought about it, it seemed an odd sort of thing to say. “Just that I was going to give her Anansi’s bloodline,” he said, reluctantly.
“You what?”
“It was what she asked me to say.”
Spider looked incredulous. “But that’s not just me. That’s both of us.”
Fat Charlie’s mouth was suddenly very dry. He hoped it was the desert air, and sipped his bottled water.
“Hang on. Why the desert?” asked Fat Charlie.
“No birds. Remember?”
“So what are those?” He pointed. At first they looked tiny, and then you realized that they were simply very high: they were circling, and wobbling on the wing.
“Vultures,” said Spider. “They don’t attack living things.”
“Right. And pigeons are scared of people,” said Fat Charlie. The dots in the sky circled lower, and the birds appeared to grow as they descended.
Spider said, “Point taken.” Then, “Shit.”
They weren’t alone. Someone was watching them on a distant dune. A casual observer might have mistaken the figure for a scarecrow.
Fat Charlie shouted, “Go away!” His voice was swallowed by the sand. “I take it all back. We don’t have a deal! Leave us alone!”
A flutter of overcoat on the hot wind, and the dune was now deserted.
Fat Charlie said, “She went away. Who would have thought it was going to be that simple?”
Spider touched his shoulder, and pointed. Now the woman in the brown overcoat was standing on the nearest ridge of sand, so close that Fat Charlie could see the glassy blacks of her eyes.
The vultures were raggedy black shadows, and then they landed: their naked mauve necks and scalps—featherless because that’s so much easier when you’re putting your head into rotting carcases—extended as they stared shortsightedly at the brothers, as if wondering whether to wait until the two men died or if they should do something to hurry the process along.
Spider said, “What else was there in the deal?”
“Um?”
“Was there anything else? Did she give you something to seal the bargain? Sometimes things like this involve a trade.”
The vultures were edging forward, a step at a time, closing their ranks, tightening the circle. There were more black slashes in the sky, growing and wobbling toward them. Spider’s hand closed around Fat Charlie’s hand.
“Close your eyes.”
The cold hit Fat Charlie like a punch to the gut. He took a deep breath and felt like someone had iced his lungs. He coughed and coughed while the wind howled like a great beast.
He opened his eyes. “Can I ask where we are this time?”
“Antarctica,” said Spider. He zipped up the front of his leather jacket, and did not seem to mind the cold. “It’s a bit chilly, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t you have any middle gears? Straight from desert to ice field.”
“No birds here,” said Spider.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just to go and sit inside a building that’s nice and bird-free? We could have lunch.”
Spider said, “Right. Now you’re complaining, just because it’s a little bit nippy.”
“It’s not a little bit nippy. It’s fifty below. And anyway, look.”
Fat Charlie pointed at the sky. A pale squiggle, like a miniature letter m chalked onto the sky, hung unmoving in the cold air. “Albatross,” he said.
“Frigate,” said Spider.
“Pardon?”
“It’s not an albatross. It’s a frigate. He probably hasn’t even noticed us.”
“Possibly not,” admitted Fat Charlie. “But they have.”
Spider turned, and said something else that sounded a lot like “frigate.” There may not have been a million penguins waddling and slipping and belly-sliding toward the brothers, but it certainly looked that way. As a general rule, the only things properly terrified by the approach of penguins tend to be small fish, but when the numbers get large enough….
Fat Charlie reached out without being told, and he held Spider’s hand. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he was somewhere warmer, although opening his eyes made no difference to what he saw. Everything was the color of night. “Have I gone blind?”