Divine Fantasy Read Online Free Page A

Once in a while I come to visit. Normally I’d be gone by now, but I saw that you were coming in today and decided to stay on for a bit.”
    “That’s nice,” I said sincerely, pulling my thoughts back to the conversation at hand. “I think I’d like to own an island. And be an eccentric millionaire.” Technically, I
was
a millionaire, but nowhere near his league of eccentricity or wealth, assuming he was telling the truth. I think that I might best be described as a pragmatic upper-middle-class loner.
    “Yes, it is very nice. Convenient even,” he agreed, though not specifying whether he referred to owning the island or being rich. “You like these olives? They are a new product for us. Most of our produce is grown locally, but we’ve had no luck with olive trees.”
    “I like all olives,” I said. “In that, I am not entirely particular. But these are exceptionally good.”
    He nodded. “I’ll be sure to see that we get more on the next supply ship. They go well with yellowfintuna, which is on the menu tonight. I can tell the kitchen to send some to the table if you like.”
    This was a weird but thoughtful gesture. Still, I declined. It was too soon for him to be doing me favors.
    “That’s okay. Let’s not upset the chef with special requests on the first day. I also try to limit myself to one jar per diem. Too much sodium in them,” I added. “It’s bad for my blood pressure.”
    He nodded again, and then hesitated an instant before speaking. Perhaps he was out of practice making small talk. When he did speak, I had the feeling that he had decided not to share whatever was really on his mind.
    “Well, I will leave you to your olives and to the turtles. I want to visit the mangroves this morning and make sure that last storm didn’t do any damage. A lot of endangered species nest over there. You should bring your camera when you come. There’s lots to photograph.”
    “Have the turtles finally made it?” I asked, rolling onto my left side out of his shadow and propping myself up on an elbow. I squinted at the Sylph’s Hole. For a moment it seemed that shadows in the water danced away from my view. Were they mostly nocturnal creatures, afraid of observation from the enormous land animal that had staked out their space?
    “Yes. They are here.” And he was right. I could finally see some nickel-sized emerald turtles with grayish shells paddling about in the frothy water.
    “They’re cute!” I exclaimed, sticking a fingerin the water and waggling it at them. “Not giants at all.”
    “We aim to please. Have fun on Cannibal Island, and perhaps I’ll see you at dinner.” There was a hint of smile in his voice.
    “Cannibal…,” I began, and then recalled that this was the old name for Fiji. I had read about this on the airplane. Thanks to the onboard magazine, I also knew that the country consisted of three hundred and twenty-two islands, and over one hundred of them were inhabited. Also it is smack-dab in the middle of the ocean, midway between Australia and Tahiti and due north of New Zealand. This is the long way of saying that it’s one hell of distance from anything.
    I turned back to look at my companion but he, like the real Ambrose Bierce, had disappeared into thin air, leaving not so much as a track in the sand, unless the deep gouge in the silky white beach some eight feet away could be considered a footprint. He might have been a hallucination for all the sign he left of his visit.
    “Weirder and weirder.”
    I rolled back to the turtles and picked up my camera, trying to recall how to make the zoom lens work.
    I didn’t believe that this stranger was really Ambrose Bierce, I assured myself. Of course not. Nevertheless, he was very plausible and pleasant, and I began to think idly about the commercial possibilities of a supposed biography about Ambrose Bierce in the years after Mexico. They do things like thatnow. It’s called speculative fiction. Two years ago there was a