“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 DAISY ON 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 TO side 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, “I beg 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.