"Yes, you do," said Fat Charlie. He felt certain, and smart. Soon enough, he knew, he would feel like himself again, but he had sung a song to an audience, and he had enjoyed it. He had done it to save Daisy's life, and his own, and he had done both these things. "Let's talk out there." It was the song. While he had been singing, everything had become perfectly clear. It was still clear. He headed for the hallway, and Daisy and the maitre d' followed.

"What's your name?" he asked the maitre d'.

"I'm Clarissa."

"Hello, Clarissa. What's your last name?"

Daisy said, "Charlie, shouldn't we call the police?"

"In a minute. Clarissa what?"

"Higgler."

"And what's your relationship to Benjamin? The concierge?"

"He's my brother."

"And how exactly are you two related to Mrs. Higgler. To Callyanne Higgler?"

"They're my niece and nephew, Fat Charlie," said Mrs. Higgler, from the doorway. "Now, I think you better listen to your fiancee, and talk to the police. Don't you?"

SPIDER WAS SITTINGBY THE STREAM ON THE CLIFF TOP, WITHhis back to the cliff and a heap of throwing stones in front of him, when a man came loping out of the long grass. The man was naked, save for a pelt of sandy fur around his waist, behind which a tail hung down; he wore a necklace of teeth, sharp and white and pointed. His hair was long and black. He walked casually toward Spider as if he were merely out for an early-morning constitutional, and Spider's appearance there was a pleasant surprise.

Spider picked up a rock the size of a grapefruit, hefted it in his hand.

"Heya, Anansi's child," said the stranger. "I was just passing, and I noticed you, and wondered if there was anything I could do to help." His nose looked crooked and bruised.

Spider shook his head. He missed his tongue.

"Seeing you there, I find myself thinking, poor Anansi's child, he must be so hungry." The stranger smiled too widely. "Here. I've got food enough to share with you." He had a sack over his shoulder, and now he opened the sack and reached his right hand into it, producing a freshly killed black-tailed lamb. He held it by the neck. Its head lolled. "Your father and I ate together on many an occasion. Is there any reason that you and I cannot do likewise? You can make the fire and I will clean the lamb and make a spit to turn it. Can you not taste it already?"

Spider was so hungry he was light-headed. Had he still been in possession of his tongue, perhaps he would have saidyes, confident of his ability to talk himself out of trouble; but he had no tongue. He picked up a second rock in his left hand.

"So let us feast and be friends; and let there be no more misunderstandings," said the stranger.

And the vulture and the raven will clean my bones,thought Spider.

The stranger took another step toward Spider, who decided that this was his cue to throw the first rock. He had a good eye and an excellent arm, and the rock struck where he had intended it to strike, on the stranger's right arm; he dropped the lamb. The next rock hit the stranger on the side of the head-Spider had been aiming for a spot just between the too-widely-set eyes, but the man had moved.

The stranger ran then, a bounding run, with his tail straight out behind him. Sometimes he looked like a man when he ran, and sometimes he looked like a beast.

When he was gone, Spider walked to the place he had been, to retrieve the black-tailed lamb. It was moving, when he reached it, and for a heartbeat he imagined that it was still alive, but then he saw that the flesh was creeping with maggots. It stank, and the stench of the corpse helped Spider forget how hungry he was, for a little while.

He carried it at arm's length to the cliff edge and threw it down into the sea. Then he washed his hands in the stream.

He did not know how long he had been in this place. Time was stretched and squashed here. The sun was lowering on the horizon.

After the sun has set, and before the moon has risen,thought Spider.That is when the beast will be back.

THE IMPLACABLY CHEERFULREPRESENTATIVE OF THESaint Andrews Police force sat in the hotel front office with Daisy and Fat Charlie, and listened to everything each of them had to say with a placid but unimpressed smile on his wide face. Sometimes he would reach up a finger and scratch his moustache.

They told the police officer that a fugitive from justice called Grahame Coats had come in to them while they were eating dinner, and threatened Daisy with a gun. Which, they were also forced to admit, nobody but Daisy had actually seen. Then Fat Charlie told him about the incident with the black Mercedes and the bicycle, earlier that afternoon, and no, he hadn't actually seen who was driving the car. But he knew where it came from. He told the officer about the house on the cliff top.

The man touched his pepper-and-salt moustache, thoughtfully. "Indeed, there is a house where you describe. However, it does not belong to your man Coats. Far from it. You are describing the house of Basil Finnegan, an extremely respectable man. For many years, Mr. Finnegan has had a healthy interest in law and order. He has given money to schools, but more important, he contributed a healthy sum toward the construction of the new police station."

"He put a gun to my stomach," said Daisy. "He told me that unless we came with him, he'd shoot."

"If this was Mr. Finnegan, little lady," said the police officer, "I'm sure that there is a perfectly simple explanation." He opened his briefcase, produced a thick sheaf of papers. "I'll tell you what. You think about the matter. Sleep on it. If, in the morning, you are convinced that it was more than high spirits, you simply have to fill in this form, and drop off all three copies at the police station. Ask for the new police station, at the back of the city square. Everyone knows where it is."

He shook both of their hands and went on his way.

"You should have told him you were a cop too," said Fat Charlie. "He might have taken you more seriously."

"I don't think it would have done any good," she said. "Anyone who calls you 'little lady' has already excluded you from the set of people worth listening to."

They walked out into the hotel reception.

"Where did she go?" asked Fat Charlie.

Benjamin Higgler said, "Aunt Callyanne? She's waiting for you in the conference room."

"THERE," SAID ROSIE."I KNEW I COULD DO IT, IF I JUST KEPTswinging."

"He'll kill you."

"He's going to kill us anyway."

"It won't work."

"Mum. Have you got a better idea?"

"He'll see you."

"Mum. Will you please stop being so negative? If you've got any suggestions that would help, please say them. Otherwise just don't bother. Okay?"

Silence.

Then, "I could show him my bum."

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Er. Instead of?"

"In addition to."

Silence. Then Rosie said, "Well, it couldn't hurt."

"HULLO, MRS. HIGGLER,"SAID FAT CHARLIE. "I WANT THEfeather back."

"What make you think I got your feather?" she asked, arms folded across her vast bosom.

"Mrs. Dunwiddy told me."

Mrs. Higgler seemed surprised by this, for the first time. "Louella did tell you I got the feather?"

"She said you had the feather."

"I keeping it safe." Mrs. Higgler gestured toward Daisy with her mug of coffee. "You can't expect me to start talkin' in front of her. I don't know her."

"This is Daisy. You can say anything to her you'd say to me."

"She's your fiancee," said Mrs. Higgler. "I heard."

Fat Charlie could feel his cheeks starting to burn. "She's not my-we aren't, actually. I had to say something to get her away from the man with the gun. It seemed the simplest thing."

Mrs. Higgler looked at him. Behind her thick spectacles, her eyes began to twinkle. "I know that," she said. "It was during your song. In front of an audience." She shook her head, in the way that old people like to do when pondering the foolishness of the young. She opened her black purse, took out an envelope, passed it to Fat Charlie. "I promised Louella I keep it safe."

Fat Charlie took out the feather from the envelope, half-crushed, from where he had been holding it tightly the night of the seance. "Okay," he said. "Feather. Excellent. Now," he said to Mrs. Higgler, "What exactly do I do with it?"

"You don't know?"

Fat Charlie's mother had told him, when he was young, to count to ten before he lost his temper. He counted, silently and unhurriedly, to ten, whereupon he lost his temper. "Of course I don't know what to do with it, you stupid old woman! In the last two weeks I've been arrested, I've lost my fiancee and my job, I've watched my semi-imaginary brother get eaten by a wall of birds in Piccadilly Circus, I've flown back and forth across the Atlantic like some kind of lunatic transatlantic ping-pong ball, and today I got up in front of an audience and I, and Isang because my psycho ex-boss had a gun barrel against the stomach of the girl I'm having dinner with. All I'm trying to do is sort out the mess my life has turned into sinceyou suggested I might want to talk to my brother. So, no. No, I don't know what to do with this bloody feather. Burn it? Chop it up and eat it? Build a nest with it? Hold it out in front of me and jump out of the window?"

Mrs. Higgins looked sullen. "You have to ask Louella Dunwiddy."

"I'm not sure that I can. She wasn't looking very well the last time I saw her. And we don't have much time."

Daisy said, "Great. You got your feather back. Now, can we please talk about Grahame Coats?"

"It's not only a feather. It's the feather I swapped for my brother."

"So swap it back, and let's get on with things. We've got to do something."

"It's not as simple as that," said Fat Charlie. Then he stopped, and thought about what he had said and what she had said. He looked at Daisy admiringly. "God, you're smart," he said.

"I try," she said. "What did I say?"

They didn't have four old ladies, but they had Mrs. Higgler, Benjamin, and Daisy. Dinner was almost finished, so Clarissa, the maitre d', seemed perfectly happy to come and join them. They didn't have earths of four different colors, but there was white sand from the beach behind the hotel and black dirt from the flower bed in front of it, red mud at the side of the hotel, multicolored sand in test tubes in the gift shop. The candles they borrowed from the poolside bar were small and white, not tall and black. Mrs. Higgler assured them that she could find all the herbs they actually needed on the island, but Fat Charlie had Clarissa borrow a pouch of bouquet garni from the kitchen.

"I think it's all a matter of confidence," Fat Charlie explained. "The most important thing isn't the details. It's the magical atmosphere."

The magical atmosphere in this case was not enhanced by Benjamin Higgler's tendency to look around the table and burst into explosive giggles nor by Daisy's continually pointing out that the whole procedure was extremely silly.

Mrs. Higgler sprinkled the bouquet garni into a bowl of leftover white wine.

Mrs. Higgler began to hum. She raised her hands in encouragement, and the others began to hum along with her, like drunken bees. Fat Charlie waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.

"Fat Charlie," said Mrs. Higgler. "You hum too."

Fat Charlie swallowed. There's nothing to be scared of, he told himself: he had sung in front of a roomful of people; he had proposed marriage in front of an audience to a woman he barely knew. Humming would be a doddle.

He found the note that Mrs. Higgler was humming, and he let it vibrate in his throat....

He held his feather. He concentrated and he hummed.

Benjamin stopped giggling. His eyes widened. There was an expression of alarm on his face, and Fat Charlie was going to stop humming to find out what was troubling him, but the hum was inside him now, and the candles were flickering....

"Look at him!" said Benjamin. "He's-"

And Fat Charlie would have wondered what exactly he was, but it was too late to wonder.

Mists parted.

Fat Charlie was walking along a bridge, a long white footbridge across an expanse of gray water. A little way ahead of him, in the middle of the bridge, a man sat on a small wooden chair. The man was fishing. A green fedora hat covered his eyes. He appeared to be dozing, and he did not stir as Fat Charlie approached.

Fat Charlie recognized the man. He rested his hand on the man's shoulder.

"You know," he said, "I knew you were faking it. I didn't think you were really dead."

The man in the chair did not move, but he smiled. "Shows how much you know," said Anansi. "I'm dead as they come." He stretched luxuriantly, pulled a little black cheroot from behind his ear, and lit it with a match. "Yup. I'm dead. Figure I'll stay dead for a lickle while. If you don't die now and again, people start takin' you for granted."

Fat Charlie said "But."

Anansi touched his finger to his lips for silence. He picked up his fishing rod and began to wind the reel. He pointed to a small net. Fat Charlie picked it up, and held it out as his father lowered a silver fish, long and wriggling, into it. Anansi took the hook from the fish's mouth then dropped the fish into a white pail. "There," he said. "That's tonight's dinner taken care of."

For the first time it registered with Fat Charlie that it had been dark night when he had sat down at the table with Daisy and the Higglers, but that while the sun was low wherever he was now, it had not set.

His father folded up the chair, and gave Fat Charlie the chair and the bucket to carry. They began to walk along the bridge. "You know," said Mr. Nancy, "I always thought that if you ever came to talk to me, I'd tell you all manner of things. But you seem to be doing pretty good on your own. So what brings you here?"