“So why is it naked and holding a bow and arrow? That doesn’t seem a particularly charitable or Christian thing to do.”
“I’m just telling you what I read,” said Fat Charlie. “Where have you been? I was worried about you.”
“I’m all right. I’ve just been avoiding birds, trying to get my head around all this.”
“You’ve noticed there aren’t any birds around today?” said Fat Charlie.
“I’ve noticed. I don’t really know what to make of it. But I’ve been thinking. And you know,” said Spider, “there’s something wrong with this whole thing.”
“Everything, for a start,” said Fat Charlie.
“No. I mean there’s something wrong with the Bird Woman trying to hurt us.”
“Yup. It’s wrong. It’s a very, very bad thing to do. Do you want to tell her, or shall I?”
“Not wrong like that. Wrong like—well, think about it. I mean, despite the Hitchcock film, birds aren’t the best thing to hurt someone with. They may be death-on-wings for insects but they really aren’t very good at attacking people. Millions of years of learning that, on the whole, people will probably eat you first. Their first instinct is to leave us alone.”
“Not all of them,” said Fat Charlie. “Not vultures. Or ravens. But they only turn up on the battlefield, when the fighting’s done. Waiting for you to die.”
“What?”
“I said, except for vultures and ravens. I didn’t mean anything…”
“No.” Spider concentrated. “No, it’s gone. You made me think of something, and I almost had it. Look, have you got hold of Mrs. Dunwiddy yet?”
“I phoned Mrs. Higgler, but there isn’t any answer.”
“Well go and talk to them.”
“It’s all very well for you to say that, but I’m skint. Broke. Cleaned out. I can’t keep flying back and forwards across the Atlantic. I don’t even have a job any longer. I’m—”
Spider reached into his black-and-scarlet jacket and pulled out a wallet. He took out a sheaf of notes in an assortment of currencies, pushed them into Fat Charlie’s hand. “Here. This should be enough to get you there and back. Just get the feather.”
Fat Charlie said, “Listen. Has it occurred to you that maybe Dad isn’t dead after all?”
“What?”
“Well, I was thinking. Maybe all this was one of his jokes. It feels like the kind of thing he’d do, doesn’t it?”
Spider said, “I don’t know. Could be.”
Fat Charlie said, “I’m sure it is. That’s the first thing I’m going to do. I’m going to head down to his grave and—”
But he said nothing else, because that was when the birds came. They were city birds; sparrows and starlings, pigeons and crows, thousands upon thousands of them, and they wove and wound as they flew like a tapestry, forming a wall of birds coming toward Fat Charlie and Spider down Regent Street. A feathered phalanx huge as the side of a skyscraper, perfectly flat, perfectly impossible, all of it in motion, weaving and fluttering and swooping; Fat Charlie saw it, but it would not fit inside his mind, slipping and twisting and thinning the whole time inside his head. He looked up at it and tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
Spider jerked at Fat Charlie’s elbow. He shouted “Run!”
Fat Charlie turned to run. Spider was methodically folding his newspaper, putting it down on the bin.
“You run too!”
“It doesn’t want you. Not yet,” said Spider, and he grinned. It was a grin that had, in its time, persuaded more people than you can imagine to do things they did not want to do; and Fat Charlie really wanted to run. “Get the feather. Get Dad, too, if you think he’s still around. Just go.”
Fat Charlie went.
The wall of birds swirled and transformed, became a whirlwind of birds heading for the statue of Eros and the man beneath it. Fat Charlie ran into a doorway and watched as the base of the dark tornado slammed into Spider. Fat Charlie imagined he could hear his brother screaming over the deafening whirr of wings. Maybe he could.
And then the birds dispersed and the street was empty. The wind teased a handful of feathers along the gray pavement.
Fat Charlie stood there and felt sick. If any of the passers-by had noticed what had happened, they had not reacted. Somehow, he was certain that no one had seen it but him.
There was a woman standing beneath the statue, near where his brother had been. Her ragged brown coat flapped in the wind. Fat Charlie walked back to her. “Look,” he said, “When I said to make him go away, I meant just to get him out of my life. Not do whatever it is you’ve done to him.”
She looked into his face and said nothing. There is a madness in the eyes of some birds of prey, a ferocity that can be perfectly intimidating. Fat Charlie tried not to be intimidated by it. “I made a mistake,” he said. “I’m willing to pay for it. Take me instead. Bring him back.”
She continued to stare. Then she said, “Do not doubt your turn shall come, Compé Anansi’s child. In time.”