"I fixed things," said Charlie. "For us. I think. I'm not really sure...." And he wasn't. Now the song was over, the content of the song was unraveling like a dream in the morning.

He pointed to the cave mouth that was blocked by rocks. "Did you do that?"

"Yeah," said Spider. "Seemed the least I could do. Tiger will dig his way out eventually, though. I wish I'd done something worse than just shut the door on him, to be honest."

"Not to worry," said Charlie. "I did. Something much worse."

He watched the animals disperse. His father was nowhere to be seen, which did not surprise him. "Come on," he said. "We ought to be getting back."

SPIDER WENT BACKTO SEE ROSIE AT VISITING TIME. HE WAScarrying a large box of chocolates, the largest that the hospital gift shop sold.

"For you," he said.

"Thanks."

"They told me," she said, "that they think my mum's going to pull through. Apparently she opened her eyes and asked for porridge. The doctor said it's a miracle."

"Yup. Your mother asking for food. Certainly sounds like a miracle to me."

She swatted his arm with her hand, then left her hand resting on his arm.

"You know," she said, after a while, "You're going to think this is silly of me. But when I was in the dark, with Mum, I thought that you were helping me. I felt like you were keeping the beast at bay. That if you hadn't've done what you were doing, he would have killed us."

"Um. I probably helped."

"Really?"

"I don't know. I think so. I was in trouble as well, and I thought about you."

"Were you in very big trouble?"

"Enormous. Yes."

"Will you pour me a glass of water, please?"

He did. She said, "Spider, what do youdo? "

"Do?"

"For a job."

"Whatever I feel like doing."

"I think," she said, "I may stay here, for a bit. The nurses have been telling me how much they need teachers here. I'd like to see that I was making a difference."

"That might be fun."

"And what would you do, if I did?"

"Oh. Well, if you were here, I'm sure I could find something to keep me busy."

Their fingers twined, tight as a ship's knot.

"Do you think we can make this work?" she asked.

"I think so," said Spider, soberly. "And if I get bored with you, I'll just go away and do something else. So not to worry."

"Oh," said Rosie, "I'm not worried." And she wasn't. There was steel in her voice beneath the softness. You could tell where her mother got it from.

CHARLIE FOUND DAISYON A DECK CHAIR OUT ON THE BEACH.He thought she was asleep in the sun. When his shadow touched her, she said, "Hello Charlie." She didn't open her eyes.

"How did you know it was me?"

"Your hat smells like a cigar. Are you going to be getting rid of it soon?"

"No," said Charlie. "I told you. Family heirloom. I plan to wear it till I die, then leave it to my children. So. Do you still have a job with the police force?"

"Sort of," she said. "My boss said that it's been decided that what I was suffering from was nervous exhaustion brought on by overwork, and I'm on sick leave until I feel well enough to come back."

"Ah. And when will that be?"

"Not sure," she said. "Can you pass the suntan oil?"

He had a box in his pocket. He took it out and put it on the arm of the deck chair. "In a minute. Er." He paused. "You know," he said, "we've already done the big embarrassing one of these at gunpoint." He opened the box. "But this is for you, from me. Well, Rosie returned it to me. And we can swap it for one you like. Pick out a different one. Probably it won't even fit. But it's yours. If you want it. And um. Me."

She reached into the box and took out the engagement ring.

"Hmph. All right," she said. "As long as you're not just doing it to get the lime back."

TIGER PROWLED.HIS TAIL LASHED IRRITABLY FROM SIDE TOside as he paced back and forth across the mouth of his cave. His eyes burned like emerald torches in the shadows.

"Whole world and everything used to be mine," said Tiger. "Moon and stars and sun and stories. I owned them all."

"I feel it incumbent on me to point out," said a small voice from the back of the cave, "that you said that already."

Tiger paused in his pacing; he turned then and insinuated himself into the back of his cave, rippling as he walked, like a fur rug over hydraulic springs. He padded back until he came to the carcass of an ox, and he said, in a quiet voice, "Ibeg your pardon."

There was a scrabbling from inside the carcass. The tip of a nose protruded from the rib cage. "Actually," it said, "I was, so to speak, agreeing with you. That was what I was doing."

Little white hands pulled a thin strip of dried meat from between two ribs, revealing a small animal the color of dirty snow. It might have been an albino mongoose, or perhaps some particularly shifty kind of weasel in its winter coat. It had a scavenger's eyes.

"Whole world and everything used to be mine. Moon and stars and sun and stories. I owned them all." Then he said, "Would have been mine again."

Tiger stared down at the little beast. Then, without warning, one huge paw descended, smashing the rib cage, breaking the carcass into foul-smelling fragments, pinning the little animal to the floor; it wriggled and writhed, but it could not escape.

"You are here," said Tiger, his huge head nose to nose with the pale animal's tiny head, "you are here under my sufferance. Do you understand that? Because the next time you say something irritating, I shall bite your head off."

"Mmmph," said the weasely thing.

"You wouldn't like it if I bit off your head, would you?"

"Nngk," said the smaller animal. Its eyes were a pale blue, two chips of ice, and they glinted as it twisted uncomfortably beneath the weight of the huge paw.

"So will you promise me that you will behave, and you will be quiet?" rumbled Tiger. He lifted his paw a little to allow the beast to speak.

"Indeedy," said the small white thing, extremely politely. Then, with one weasely movement, it twisted and sank its sharp little teeth into Tiger's paw. Tiger bellowed in pain, whipped the paw back, sending the little animal flying through the air. It struck the rock ceiling, bounced over to a ledge, and from there it darted, like a dirty white streak, to the very back of the cave, where the ceiling got low and close to the floor, and where there were many hiding places for a small animal, places a larger animal could not go.

Tiger padded as far back into the cave as it could easily walk. "You think I can't wait?" he asked. "You have to come out sooner or later. I'm not going anywhere." Tiger lay down. He closed his eyes and soon began to make fairly convincing snoring noises.

After about half an hour of snoring from Tiger, the pale animal crept out from the rocks and slipped from shadow to shadow, making for a large bone that still had plenty of good meat on it, if you didn't mind a certain rankness, and it didn't. Still, to get to the bone, it would have to pass the great beast. It lurked in the shadows, then it ventured out on little silent feet.

As it passed the sleeping Tiger, a forepaw shot out, and a claw slammed down on the creature's tail, pinning it down. Another paw held the little creature behind the neck. The great cat opened its eyes. "Frankly," it said, "we appear to be stuck with each other. So all I'm asking is that you make an effort. We can both make an effort. I rather doubt that we'll ever be friends, but perhaps we could learn to tolerate each other."

"I take your point," said the small ferretty thing. "Needs must, as they say, when the Devil drives."

"That's an example of what I'm saying," said Tiger. "You just have to learn when to keep your mouth shut."

"It's an ill wind," said the little animal, "that blows nobody any good."

"Now you're irritating me again," said Tiger. "I'm trying to tell you. Don't irritate me, and I won't bite off your head."

"You keep using the phrase 'bite my head off.' Now when you say 'bite my head off,' I take it I can assume that this is actually some kind of metaphorical statement, implying that you'll shout at me, perhaps rather angrily?"

"Bite your head off. Then crunch it. Then chew it. Then swallow it," said Tiger. "Neither of us can leave until Anansi's child forgets we're here. The way that bastard seems to have arranged things, even if I kill you in the morning you'll be reincarnated back in this blasted cave by the end of the afternoon. So don't irritate me."

The small white animal said, "Ah well. Another day-"

"If you say 'another dollar,' " said Tiger, "I will be irritated, and there will be serious consequences. Don't. Say anything. Irritating. Do you understand?"

There was a brief silence in the cave at the end of the world. It was broken by a small, weasely voice saying, "Absatively."

It started to say, "Oww!" but the noise was suddenly and effectively silenced.

And then there was nothing in that place but the sound of crunching.

THE THING THEYDON'T TELL YOU ABOUT COFFINS IN THE LITERATURE, because frankly it's not much of a selling point to the people who are buying them, is just how comfortable they are.

Mr. Nancy was extremely satisfied with his coffin. Now that all the excitement was over, he'd gone back to his coffin and was comfortably dozing. Every once in a while he would wake and remember where he was, then he'd roll over and go back to sleep.

The grave, as has been pointed out, is a fine place, not to mention a private one, and is thus an excellent place to get a little downtime. Six feet down, best kind there is. Another twenty years or so, he thought, and he would have to think about getting up.

He opened one eye when the funeral started.

He could hear them up above him: Callyanne Higgler and the Bustamonte woman and the other one, the thin one, not to mention a small horde of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren, all of them sighing and wailing and crying their eyes out for the late Mrs. Dunwiddy.

Mr. Nancy thought about pushing one hand up through the turf and grabbing Callyanne Higgler's ankle. It was something he'd wanted to do ever since he sawCarrie at a drive-in, thirty years earlier, but now that the opportunity presented itself, he found himself able to resist the temptation. Honestly, he couldn't be bothered. She'd only scream and have a heart attack and die, and then the damn Garden of Rest would get even more crowded than it already was.

Too much like hard work, anyway. There were good dreams to be dreamed in the world beneath the soil.Twenty years, he thought.Maybe twenty-five . By that time, he might even have grandchildren. It's always interesting to see how the grandchildren turn out.

He could hear Callyanne Higgler wailing and carrying on up above him. Then she stopped her sobbing long enough to announce, "Still. It's not as if she don't have a good life and a long one. That woman's a hundred and three years old when she passes from us."

"Hunnert and four!" said an irritated voice from under the ground beside him.

Mr. Nancy reached one insubstantial arm out and tapped the new coffin sharply on the side. "Keep it down, there, woman," he barked. "Some of us is tryin' to sleep."

ROSIE HAD MADEIT CLEAR TO SPIDER THAT SHE EXPECTEDhim to get a steady job, the kind that involved getting up in the morning and going somewhere.

So one morning, the day before Rosie was to be discharged from the hospital, Spider got up early and went down to the town library. He logged on to the library computer, sauntered onto the Internet and, very carefully, cleared out all Grahame Coats's remaining bank accounts, the ones that the police forces of several continents had so far failed to find. He arranged for the stud farm in Argentina to be sold. He bought a small, off-the-peg company, endowed it with the money, and applied for charitable status. He sent off an e-mail, in the name of Roger Bronstein, hiring a lawyer to administer the foundation's business, and suggested that the lawyer might wish to seek out Miss Rosie Noah, late of London, currently of Saint Andrews, and hire her to Do Good.

Rosie was hired. Her first task was to find office space.

Following this, Spider spent four full days walking (and, at nights, sleeping on) the beach that circled most of the island, tasting the food in each of the dining establishments he encountered along the way until he came to Dawson's Fish Shack. He tried the fried flying fish, the boiled green figs, the grilled chicken, and the coconut pie, then he went back into the kitchen and found the chef, who was also the owner, and offered him money enough for partnership and cooking lessons.

Dawson's Fish Shack is now a restaurant, and Mr. Dawson has retired. Sometimes Spider's out front and sometimes he's back in the kitchen: you go down there and look for him, you'll see him. The food is the best on the island. He's fatter than he used to be, though not as fat as he'll wind up if he keeps tasting everything he cooks.

Not that Rosie minds.

She does some teaching, and some helping out, and a lot of Doing Good, and if she ever misses London she never lets it show. Rosie's mother, on the other hand, misses London continually and vocally, but takes any suggestion that she might want to return there as an attempt to part her from her as-yet-unborn (and, for that matter, unconceived) grandchildren.

Nothing would give this author greater pleasure than to be able to assure you that, following her return from the valley of the shadow of death, Rosie's mother became a new person, a jolly woman with a kind word for everyone, that her newfound appetite for food was only matched by her appetite for life and all if had to offer. Alas, respect for the truth compels perfect honesty and the truth is that when she came out of hospital Rosie's mother was still herself, just as suspicious and uncharitable as ever, although significantly more frail and now given to sleeping with the light on.

She announced that she would be selling her flat in London and would move to wherever in the world Spider and Rosie were, to be near her grandchildren; and, as time went on, she would drop pointed comments about the lack of grandchildren, the quantity and motility of Spider's spermatozoa, the frequency and positions of Spider and Rosie's sexual relations, and the relative cheapness and ease ofin vitro fertilization, to the point where Spider seriously began to think about not going to bed with Rosie anymore, just to spite Rosie's mother. He thought about this for about eleven seconds one afternoon, while Rosie's mother was handing them photocopies of an article from a magazine that she had found which suggested that Rosie should stand on her head for half an hour after sex; and he mentioned these thoughts to Rosie that night, and she laughed and told him that her mother wasn't allowed in their bedroom anyway, and that she wasn't going to be standing on her head after making love for anybody.

Mrs. Noah has a flat in Williamstown, near Spider and Rosie's house, and twice a week one of Callyanne Higgler's many nieces looks in on her, does the vacuuming, dusts the glass fruit (the wax fruit melted in the island heat), and makes a little food and leaves it in the fridge, and sometimes Rosie's mum eats it and sometimes she doesn't.