Island of the Sequined Love Nun

up. He had lived and died with courage. And he would still be alive if he hadn't met Tucker Case.
    "Fuck!" Tuck said to no one. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and squinted at the gunmetal waves.
    There was a flapping noise up by the mast and Tuck adjusted the steering oar to catch the wind. The sail filled again, but the flapping continued for a second before it stopped.
    Roberto caught the shroud line that was secured to the outrigger and did an upside-down swinging landing that left him looking to the back of the canoe.
    Tuck couldn't have been happier if it had been an angel hanging from his shroud line.
    "Roberto?"
    "Yes," the bat said. He was speaking in his own voice, not Vincent's. The accent Filipino, not Manhattan.
    Tuck almost burst out laughing. His mood swings were so rapid and wide now that he was afraid his sanity might be falling through the chasm. "I didn't recognize you without your glasses."
    "I no like the light," Roberto said.
    Tuck looked to Sepie, still Lying in the bow. "Look, Sepie, it's Roberto." The girl did not stir.
    "You are very sad about Kimi," Roberto said.
    "Yes," Tuck said, "I am sad."
    "He tell you he was great navigator and you no believe him."
    Tuck looked away. Something about bats increases shame by a factor of ten.
    "You are going the wrong way," the bat said. "Go that way." He pointed with a wing claw. The wind caught his wing and nearly spun him off the shroud line. He braced himself with the other wing claw and pointed again. "I mean that way."
    "You're shifting me," Tuck said.
    "That way."
    "That's north. I'm going to Guam. West."
    "That's west. I am born on Guam."
    "You're a bat."
    "You ever see a lost bat?"
    "No, but I've never seen a talking bat either."
    "See?" Roberto said, as if he had made his point. "That way."
    After all the evidence is in-after you've run all the facts by everything you know-and you're still lost, you have to do some things on faith. Tuck steered in the direction Roberto was pointing.
    A few minutes later he looked up to see Vincent sitting on the pile of coconuts in the center of the canoe. "Good call, listening to the bat," Vincent said. "I just wanted you to know that the Shark People are going to build some ladders."
    "Well, that's a useful bit of information," Tuck said.
    "It will be," Vincent said. Then he disappeared.

58 – Malink's Song
    "They're flying the new pilot in tomorrow," said Sebastian Curtis. "I told them that Tucker wouldn't fly, so he had to be eliminated. They weren't happy about losing the heart and lungs."
    Beth Curtis sat at her vanity, putting on her eye makeup for the appearance of the Sky Priestess. The red scarf was draped over the back of the chair. "Did you check the database? Maybe we can send another set of organs back with them. I can pick the chosen tonight and keep them in the clinic until tomorrow morning."
    "The customer already died," Curtis said.
    "Well, I guess he really was sick, then." She laughed, a girlish laugh full of music.
    Sebastian loved her laugh. He smiled over her shoulder into the mirror. "I'm glad you're not concerned about Tucker Case. I understand, Beth. Really. I was just jealous."
    "Tucker who? Oh, you mean Tucker dead-at-sea Case? 'Bastian, dear, I did what I did for us. I thought it would keep him under control. Write it off as one of life's little missteps. Besides, if he's not dead now, he will be in a day or so."
    "He made it here on the open ocean. Through a typhoon."
    "And with the navigator. Remember, I've seen him fly. He's dead. That old cannibal is probably munching on his bones right now." She checked her lipstick and winked at him in the mirror. "Showtime, darling."

    Malink trudged through the jungle, his shoulders aching from the basket of food he was carrying. Each day he had been taking food to Sarapul's hiding place. It was not that he didn't trust his people, but he did not want to burden any of them with such a weighty secret. The last of them to see the cannibal saw him covered with blood, gasping in the sand. Malink had told them that Sarapul was dead and that Malink had given his body to the sharks. A chief had to carry many secrets, and sometimes he had to lie to his people to spare them pain.
    After the third day, Malink was ready to let the cannibal go back to his house on the far side of the island. The guards were no longer searching, and the Sorcerer had stopped asking questions. Perhaps things would go back to the way they were. But maybe that wasn't