Abarat: The First Book of Hours a-1 Read online

  Everywhere she looked there was something to amaze. Besides the citizens there were countless animals in the city, wild and domesticated. White-faced monkeys, like troupes of clowns, were on the roofs baring their scarlet bottoms to passersby. Beasts the size of chinchillas but resembling golden lions ran back and forth along the power cables looped between the houses, while a snake, pure white but for its turquoise eyes, wove cunningly between the feet of the crowd, chattering like an excited parrot. To her left a thing that might have had a lobster for a mother and Picasso for a father was clinging to a wall, drawing a flattering self-portrait on the white plaster with a stick of charcoal. To her right a man with a firebrand was trying to persuade a cow with an infestation of yellow grasshoppers leaping over its body to get out of his house.

  The grasshoppers weren’t the only insects in the city. Far from it. The air was filled with buzzing life. High overhead birds dined on clouds of mites that blazed like pinpricks of fire. Butterflies the size of Candy’s hand moved just above the heads of the crowd, and now and then alighted on a favored head, as though it were a flower. Some were transparent, their veins running with brilliant blue blood. Others were fleshy and fat; these the preferred food of a creature that was as decadently designed as a peacock, its body vestigial, its tail vast, painted with colors for which Candy had no name.

  And on all sides—among these astonishments—were things that were absurdly recognizable. Televisions were on in many of the houses, their screens visible through undraped windows. A cartoon boy was tap-dancing on one screen, singing some sentimental song on another, and on a third a number of wrestlers fought: humans matched with enormous striped insects that looked thoroughly bored with the proceedings. There was much else that Candy recognized. The smell of burned meat and spilled beer. The sound of boys fighting. Laughter, like any other laughter. Tears, like any other tears. To her amazement, she heard English spoken everywhere, though there were dozens of dialects. And of course the mouth parts that delivered the words also went some way to shape the nature of the English that was being spoken: some of it was high and nasal, a singsong variation that almost seemed about to become music. From other directions came a guttural version that descended at times into growls and yappings.

  All this, and she had advanced perhaps fifty yards in the Yebba Dim Day.

  The houses at the lower end of The Great Head, where she was presently walking, were all red, their fronts bowed. She quickly grasped why. They were made of boats, or the remains of boats. To judge by the nets that were hung as makeshift doors, the occupants of these houses were the families of fishermen who’d settled here. They’d dragged their vessels out of the cool evening air, and taken a hammer and crowbar to the cabins and the deck and hold, peeling apart the boards, so as to make some kind of habitation on land. There was no order to any of this; people just seemed to take whatever space was available. How else to explain the chaotic arrangement of vessels, one on top of the other?

  As for power, it seemed to be nakedly stolen from those higher up in the city (and therefore, presumably, more wealthy). Cables ran down the walls, entering houses and exiting again, to provide service for the next house.

  It was not a foolproof system by any means. At any one moment, looking up at the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of heaped-up houses, somebody’s lights were flickering, or there was an argument going on about the cables. No doubt the presence of monkeys and birds, pecking at the cables, or simply swinging from them, did not improve matters.

  It was a wonder, Candy thought, that this outlandish collection of people, animals and habitations worked at all. She could not imagine the people of Chickentown putting up with such chaotic diversity. What would they think of the ladder-legged creature or the smoke creature, or the baby beast throwing nuts in the air?

  I need to remember as many details as I can, so when I get back home I can tell everybody what it was like, down to the last brick, the last butterfly. I wonder, she thought to herself, if they make cameras here? If they have televisions, she reasoned, then surely they have cameras.

  Of course she’d first have to find out if the few soaked and screwed-up dollars she had in the bottom of her pocket were worth anything here. If they were, and she could find somewhere to purchase a camera, then she could make a proper record of what she was seeing. Then she’d have proof, absolute proof that this place, with all its wonders, existed.

  “Are you cold?”

  The woman who had addressed her looked as though she might have some Sea-Skipper in her heritage. Vestigial gills ran from the lower half of her cheek into her neck, and there was a faintly mottled quality to her skin. Her eyes had a subtle cast of silver about them.

  “Actually I am a little,” Candy said.

  “Come with me. I’m Izarith.”

  “I’m Candy Quackenbush. I’m new here.”

  “Yes, I could tell,” Izarith said. “It’s cold today; the water gets up through the stones. One day this place is just going to rot and collapse on itself.”

  “That would be a pity,” Candy said.

  “You don’t live here,” Izarith said, with a trace of bitterness. She led Candy to one of the houses made from fishing boats. As she followed the woman to the threshold, Candy felt just a little pang of doubt. Why was she being invited into Izarith’s house so quickly, without any real reason, beyond that of a stranger’s generosity?

  Izarith seemed to sense her unease. “Don’t come in if you don’t want to,” she said. “I just thought you looked in need of a fire to warm you through.”

  Before Candy could reply there was a series of crashes from outside the Head, accompanied by a din of yells and screams.

  “The dock!” Candy said, looking back toward the door.

  Obviously the jetty had finally given out beneath the weight of the crowd. There was a great rush of people out to see the calamity, which was of course only going to make matters worse out there. Izarith showed no desire to go and see what had happened. She just said: “Are you coming?”

  “Yes,” said Candy, offering the woman a smile of thanks and following her inside.

  Just as Izarith had promised there was a fire in the little hearth, which the woman fueled with a handful of what looked like dried seaweed. The kindling was consumed quickly and brightly. A soothing wave of warmth hit Candy. “Oh, that’s nice,” she said, warming her hands.

  On the floor in front of the fire was a child of perhaps two, her features one generation further removed from the sea-dwelling origins of her grandparents, or perhaps her great-great-grandparents.

  “This is Maiza. Maiza, this is Candy. Say hello.”

  “Hell. O,” said Maiza.

  With her duty to courtesy done, Maiza returned to playing with her toys, which were little more than painted blocks of wood. One of them was a boat, painted red; a crude copy, perhaps, of the vessel whose boards had built these walls.

  Izarith went to check on the other child in the room; a baby, asleep in a cot.

  “That’s Nazre,” she said. “He’s been sick since we came here. He was born at sea, and I believe he wants to go back there.”

  She bent low, talking softly to the baby.

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it, dearling? You want to be out away from here.”

  “You want that too?” Candy said.

  “With all my heart. I hate this place.”

  “Can’t you leave?”

  Izarith shook her head. “My husband, Ruthus, had a boat, and we used to fish around the Outer Islands, where the shoals are still good. But the boat was getting old. So we came here to trade it in for a new one. We had some money from the season’s fishing and we thought we’d be able to get a good boat. But there were no new boats to be had. Nobody’s building anymore. And now we’re almost out of money. So my husband’s working putting in toilets for the folks in the towers, and I’m stuck down here with the children.”

  As she told her tale, she pulled back a makeshift curtain which
divided the little room in two and, sorting through a box of garments, she selected a simple dress, which she gave to Candy.

  “Here,” she said. “Put this on. If you wear those wet clothes much longer you’ll get phlegmatic.”

  Gratefully, Candy put it on, feeling secretly ashamed of her initial suspicion. Izarith obviously had a good heart. She had very little to share, but what she had, she was offering.

  “It suits you,” Izarith said, as Candy tied a simple rope belt around her waist. The fabric of the dress was brown, but it had a subtle iridescence to it; a hint of blue and silver in its weave.

  “What’s the currency here?” Candy asked.

  Plainly Izarith was surprised by the question; understandably so. But she answered anyway. “It’s a zem,” she said. “Or a paterzem, which is a hundred zem note.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why do you ask this question?”

  Candy dug in the pocket of her jeans. “It’s just that I have some dollars,” she said.

  “You have dollars?” Izarith replied, her mouth wide in astonishment.

  “Yes. A few.”

  Candy pulled the sodden notes out and carefully spread them on the hearth, where they steamed in front of the fire.

  Izarith’s eyes didn’t leave the bills from the moment they appeared. It was almost as though she was witnessing a miracle.

  “Where did you get those…?” she said, her voice breathless with astonishment. Finally she tore her gaze from the hearth and looked up at Candy.

  “Wait,” she said. “Is it possible?”

  “Is what possible?”

  “Do you… come from the Hereafter?”

  Candy nodded. “Actually I come from a place called America.”

  “America.” Izarith spoke the word like a prayer. “You have dollars, and you come from America.” She shook her head in disbelief.

  Candy went down on her haunches before the fire and peeled the now almost dried dollars off the hearth. “Here,” she said, offering them to Izarith. “You have them.”

  Izarith shook her head, her expression one of almost religious awe.

  “No, no I couldn’t. Not dollars. Angels use dollars, not Skizmut like me.”

  “Take it from me,” Candy said, “I’m not an angel. Very far from it. And what’s a Skizmut?”

  “My people are Skizmut. Or they were, generations ago. The bloodline’s been diluted, over the years. You have to go back to my great-grandfather for a pure Skizmut.”

  She looked melancholy; an expression which suited the form of her face better than any other.

  “Why so sad?”

  “I just wish I could go back into the deeps and make my home there, away from all this…”

  Izarith cast her sad eyes toward the window, which was without frames or panes. The crowd outside moved like a relentless parade. Candy could see how hard it would be to exist in this tiny hovel, with the twilight throng moving up and down the street outside, all the hours that God sent.

  “When you say the deeps,” Candy replied, “do you mean the sea?”

  “Yes. Mama Izabella. The Skizmut had cities down there. Deep in the ocean. Beautiful cities, made of white stone.”

  “Have you ever seen them?”

  “No, of course not. After two generations, you lose the way of the fish. I would drown, like you.”

  “So what can you do?”

  “Live on a boat, as close as we can to the deeps. Live with the rhythm of Mother Izabella beneath us.”

  “Well, perhaps the dollars will help you and Ruthus buy a boat,” Candy said.

  Candy handed Izarith a ten and one single, keeping six for herself.

  Izarith laughed out loud, the music in her laughter so infectious that her daughter, Maiza, started laughing too.

  “Eleven dollars? Eleven. It would buy two boats! Three boats! It’s like eleven paterzem! More, I think!” She looked up, suddenly anxious. “And this is really for me?” she said, as though she was afraid the gift would be reclaimed.

  “It’s all yours,” Candy said, feeling a little” odd about sounding too magnanimous. After all, it was only eleven bucks.

  “I’m going to spend a little piece of this one,” Izarith said, selecting a single, and pocketing the rest. “I’m going to buy some food. The children haven’t eaten this day. I think you haven’t either.” Her eyes were shining; their joy increased by the silvery luster that was the gift of her Skizmut breeding. “Will you stay with them, while I go out?” she said.

  “Of course,” Candy said. She suddenly realized she was starving.

  “And Maiza?”

  “Yes, Muma?”

  “Will you be kind to the lady from the Hereafter, while I fetch bread and milk?”

  “Grish fritters!” said Maiza.

  “Is that what you want? Grish fritters with noga seeds?”

  “Grish fritter with noga seeds! Grish fritter with noga seeds!”

  “I won’t be long,” Izarith said.

  “We’ll be fine,” Candy said, sitting down beside the child in front of the fire. “Won’t we, Maiza?”

  The child smiled again, her tiny teeth semitranslucent, carrying a hint of blue. “Grish fritters with noga seeds!” she said. “All for me!”

  14. Carrion

  Over his many years of service to Christopher Carrion, Mendelson Shape had come to know the geography of the Twelfth Tower on the island of Gorgossium very well. He knew his way around the kitchens and the scrying rooms, he knew his way down through the vaults and the Black Chapel and through the Rooms of Tears.

  But today when he returned to the Tower with the news that he had lost everything (the Key, Mischief and his accomplice in his theft, the girl called Candy), Shape was told by Carrion’s lumpen-headed servant Naw that he was to report to a chamber he had never visited before: the Great Library close to the top of the Tower.

  Dutifully he did so. It was the largest room he had ever entered in his life: a vast, round, windowless chamber, with stacks of books rising perhaps forty feet into the air.

  Waiting there for his master to arrive, Mendelson was not a happy man. He was dressed in a long shabby coat that was lined with werewolf baby wool, but it didn’t keep the cold from his marrow. His teeth wanted to chatter, but he kept them from doing so. It would not be good to show fear, he knew. Carrion would only be inspired to cruelty if he sensed that the creature he was talking to was afraid.

  Mendelson had witnessed Carrion’s cruelties many times. Sometimes he’d come to this Tower and it seemed there’d been somebody weeping or screaming or begging for mercy behind every door: all Carrion’s handiwork. Even today, climbing the stairs to the Great Library, he’d heard somebody behind the stones, sealed in forever in some dark narrow space in the walls, calling out to him, sobbing for light, a piece of bread, mercy.

  But this was the wrong place to look for mercy, Mendelson knew. The vaulted ceilings of the Twelfth Tower, which were painted with scenes designed to terrify, had looked down on many a dreadful scene, and none had ended—Mendelson was certain—with the granting of mercy.

  His footless leg was aching, but he did not dare sit down, in case Carrion entered and caught him lounging. Instead, to pass the time, he went to one of the many tables in the Library, stacked with books that had presumably been brought down from the shelves because they had caught Carrion’s eye.

  One, set on a little lectern for easy reading, was a book Shape remembered from his childhood: Pincoffin’s Rhymes and Nonsenses. The book had been a favorite of his, containing many a rhyme and lullaby he still knew by heart, including the one he’d sung to the girl from the Hereafter. It was open to a grim little nursery song he had forgotten. But now, reading it, he was enchanted anew.

  Scarebaby, scarebaby,

  Where do you run?

  Out in the graveyard,

  To have you some fun?

  Dancing with skeletons

  Up from the ground?

  Doing a jig

>   On the burial mound?

  His lips moved as he scanned the words and it brought back a distant memory of his mother, Miasma Shape, sitting with her three boys—Nizz, Naught and Mendelson—reading aloud from Pincoffin’s opus. Oh, how he’d idolized his mother! He read on.

  Scarebaby, scarebaby,

  Horrid you are!

  With the wings of a bat,

  And a face with a scar,

  The fangs of a vampire,

  The tail of a snake;

  You open your mouth

  And the noise that you make

  Is a song that the Devil sings,

  Bitter and loud.

  Tell me, my baby,

  Was your mother proud?

  “A song that the Devil sings.” That was a phrase that had lingered in his head over the years, though he had forgotten, until now, its source. He had many times wondered if he could ever hope to make such a song.

  He let a sound escape his throat now. A low, menacing growl that was magnified by the circular chamber. Oh yes, that sounded like something to put fear into the hearts of his enemies. That was the noise, he thought to himself, that he would make when he found that wretched girl again: a sound so horrible, her wits would crumble.

  He made a louder noise still, and from the top of the stacks of books, disturbed by the din, there swooped two winged creatures that descended to a point about three feet over his head and there hovered. They were the size of vultures and they had ashen, bloated faces, like monstrous cherubs.

  “What do you want?” he said, staring up at them.

  Their tiny whiteless eyes fixed on him for a moment, then they seemed to decide that he was nothing of importance and returned to their roosts, climbing in wide spirals to the top of the stacks. Mendelson returned to the final verse of the poem.