Days of Magic, Nights of War Page 31

  “We Carrions have a warship, called the Wormwood. I have ordered it to meet us at the coast. We will pursue Candy Quackenbush until we catch up with her. If she is given safe haven in any place, that place will be destroyed.” He reached down and caught a handful of the boy’s hair, hauling him to his feet. “Now stop looking pitiful, boy. This is going to be amusing. We’re going to take lives. Isn’t that what you came into my employ to do?”

  Letheo nodded, tears of agony and relief in equal measure pouring down his face.

  “Good. Maybe I’ll even let you take the life of Candy Quackenbush herself, if I am feeling generous. Would you like that, Letheo? Well? WOULD YOU LIKE THAT?”

  Again, that pained affirmation.

  “Then we understand each other. Go pack my books.”

  He pushed Letheo toward the door.

  “Oh, and boy?”

  “Yes, Lord?”

  “Never contemplate betrayal again. If you ever do—look at me, Letheo—”

  The boy turned at the door and stared with a strange defiance at his Lord.

  “If it ever passes through your head for a moment to betray me—” Carrion said, “that moment will be your last.”

  Chapter 45

  A Decision

  WITH CANDY AND MALINGO piloting the glyph, the craft quickly moved away from the snow-blanketed landscape of Efreet and out over the Izabella. There was a glimmer of the morning in the east, but above the travelers’ heads the stars were still bright. For a little time no one said anything: each was lost in their own little sphere of meditation.

  At last Candy felt a presence at her side and glanced around to see a handsome but tired young man with dark skin, bright green eyes and bright red dreadlocks standing beside her.

  “We weren’t properly introduced,” he said, very quietly, so as not to disrupt the contemplations of their fellow travelers. “I’m Finnegan Hob.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Candy said. “I’m Candy Quackenbush.”

  “Thank you for what you did back there,” Finnegan said. “You saved all our lives.”

  “You saved mine,” Candy replied. “Thank you.”

  “What were you doing on the roof of the Dead Man’s House?”

  “Trying to avoid being killed by Christopher Carrion.”

  Finnegan shook his head heavily, as though he was tired of the whole monstrous, murderous world. “Did he tell you why he wanted to kill you?”

  “He thinks I’m going to upset all his plans.”

  “Plans to do what?” Finnegan asked.

  Candy thought hard, trying to remember precisely what Carrion had said to her.

  “He told me he was going to bring—what were the words?—oh yes: the great dark. Absolute Midnight. And he talked about sacbrood. They were going to help him, he said. No moon. No stars.”

  “Sacbrood?” said Finnegan. “They’re extinct.”

  “I beg to differ,” said Two-Toed Tom. “There were sac-brood nests found when Pixler dug the foundations for Commexo City.”

  “Really. Did he kill them?”

  “No. I heard he sold them to Carrion. For his private zoo.”

  Finnegan shook his head. “Well, that was clever of him. Pixler likes profit. Doesn’t care where he makes it.”

  “But I don’t see how the sacbrood would help him put out the stars,” Finnegan said.

  “No,” said Mischief. “He’s crazy.”

  “You agree?” Finnegan said to Candy. “Carrion’s crazy?”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  “What about the way he came after you?” said McBean. “That seemed like insanity to me. You’re not even a real threat to him.”

  “Well, even if he thinks I am, I won’t be a threat for long,” Candy replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  Candy gazed out over the exquisite patchwork laid below: light and dark, landscape and sea. After a few seconds she said: “Because I won’t be here.”

  Feeling the strange intensity of Finnegan’s stare, Candy looked back at him again. The light from the east had found its way into his eyes; their green had flecks of gold in it. For a moment they held each other’s gazes. There was something familiar about him, she thought. About the green and gold. Was it possible that somehow they’d met before? Had she passed him on the street in Tazmagor, or in the Yebba Dim Day, and met his gaze, as she was meeting it now, if only for a moment? She wanted to ask him, but she didn’t know how to say it without sounding strange.

  “Hey, watch the road, will you?” said John Mischief, waving his hand between Candy and Finnegan as though to stir them from a trance.

  Blushing, Candy returned her attentions to piloting.

  “So tell us,” John Moot said chattily. “Where have you been since last we met?”

  “All over the place,” Candy told him. “Babilonium, Scoriae—”

  “What were you doing on Scoriae?”

  “It’s a long story,” Candy replied. “I’m going to write it all down when I get home. I’ll find a way of sending you a copy.”

  “When you get home?” said Malingo. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been doing some thinking,” Candy said. “And I’ve decided to go back to the Hereafter.”

  “In the name of Lordy Lou, why?”

  “Because wherever I go in the Abarat, things happen that probably shouldn’t. People get crazy. People get hurt. I think it would be . . . safer, I guess . . . if I just went home.”

  There was silence in the glyph for several seconds. Finally Malingo said: “You don’t mean that. You can’t.”

  “Yes, I do. I really do. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’m not going to change my mind, Malingo, so please don’t try.”

  She heard a deep, sad sigh from Malingo, and he slipped into the seat beside her. “Of course you must do whatever you think’s best,” he said softly. “It’s your life. But I’m going to miss you so much.”

  “And I’m going to miss you. But didn’t we both know I’d have to go back one day? I miss my family, Malingo. Well . . . at least I miss my mom. And I’ve got a life back there, believe it or not.”

  “Not like this life, surely,” said Two-Toed Tom.

  “No. Nothing like this life. I don’t have magic in me. Or if I do I don’t know that I do. Nobody tries to kill me. I suppose you’d say it’s a very boring life compared with this. But I can’t run away from it forever.”

  “Maybe you weren’t running away,” Finnegan said. “Maybe when you came here, you were running toward something. Have you thought of that?”

  Candy shook her head wearily. “Maybe I was. I don’t know anymore. It’s too much. It’s all too much.”

  “Let me pilot for a while,” Malingo said gently. “You’re tired.”

  “Yes,” Candy said. “Thank you. I am tired.”

  “You have every right,” Malingo replied. “The things you’ve done in the last eight weeks . . .”

  “You’d better take us back to the Lud Limbo,” Captain McBean said to Malingo. “If the young lady feels that it’s time to go, we should honor her wishes.”

  Candy said nothing. She just stared out of the window at the stars, remembering her astonishment when she’d first discovered that the constellations here were different from those that hung over Minnesota. I’m in another world, she’d thought, and her heart had been filled to brimming with all kinds of contradictory feelings: awe and fear, excitement and bewilderment. But it was time to let it go. Time to go back to 34 Followell Street and be an ordinary girl again (if that was possible); to get up and go to school every weekday, and on the weekends do her best to stay out of her father’s way. In truth, some part of her was a little afraid of being here in the Abarat, afraid that staying would be the death of her, sooner or later. And yet . . . and yet . . . there were so many people here who’d become dear to her; it made her heart ache already to think of being parted from them.

  “You’re sad,” said John Mischief.
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  Candy nodded. “I guess in my heart of hearts I don’t really want to go,” she admitted.

  “Then don’t,” said Finnegan. “If it hurts to leave, then stay.”

  “I think if I do that I’ll end up hurting even more.”

  “But why?” said Geneva. “You’ve made quite a name for yourself here. Back in the Hereafter, what would you be?”

  “Not much,” Candy admitted.

  A star fell overhead, silently arcing across the purple darkness. Candy watched as it hit the water, its brightness continuing to burn as it coursed its way into the depths.

  “So many wonderful things . . .” Candy said softly, “. . . so many new friends . . .” She drew a deep breath. “But if I stay, and any of you were to be hurt . . . or worse . . . I’d never forgive myself.”

  There was no arguing with this, of course, and nobody tried. Except for little Tria, who had not piped up until this moment.

  “I just want to say that I think you were born to be here,” she said. “And I think if you were to stay you would somehow change the Abarat forever.”

  Candy answered in a near whisper.

  “Maybe that’s a part of what I’m afraid of,” Candy said. “I think I should leave things the way they are, instead of getting mixed up in Abaratian life.”

  “Too late,” said John Drowze with a fond smile.

  “In the end it’s your decision,” said John Moot. “But for the record, we brothers are of the same opinion as young Tria. You should stay. If there are risks to take, we’ll all take them together.”

  Candy was utterly bewildered now, her thoughts in turmoil. There was so much love for her here. But then, wasn’t that why she couldn’t risk staying?

  Finally she said: “My mind’s made up.”

  “In which direction?” said Mischief.

  “I need to go back.”

  “If that’s your decision—” Geneva said, her tone suddenly businesslike.

  “It is.”

  “Then the least we can do is escort you to the shores of the Hereafter.”

  “The Izabella doesn’t flow that far,” Two-Toed Tom said.

  “There’s a conjuration for the tide,” McBean said. “It opens the way between the Abarat and the Hereafter.”

  “We know that one.” Mischief grinned.

  “The mariners used it in the old days,” McBean went on, “when ships used to go over all the time. My grandfather taught it to me.”

  “You know some magic?” Tom said. “You astonish me.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised what I know,” McBean said with a chuckle.

  “How long will it take us to get there?” Candy asked him.

  “Once we get to the Nonce and on board the Lud Limbo? Eight hours. Perhaps nine. As long as there are no storms toward dawn.”

  While he was talking, Candy glanced in Finnegan’s direction. He was still watching her, frowning slightly, as though he was trying to solve some puzzle. He smiled at her, and the smile made her heart ache more than ever, to think that somewhere in his head he had an answer to the question that she had only begun to ask once she came into the Abarat, and would never solve, she knew, once she left. It was the hardest puzzle that anybody had to solve:

  Who am I?

  PART FOUR

  THE SEA COMES TO CHICKENTOWN

  Do not blame the wind.

  It carries whatever freight

  It is laden with, fair or foul.

  It brings gossip,

  It brings laughter,

  It brings prayers

  And songs of love.

  It brings the chatter

  Of madmen and children,

  Not knowing one from the other.

  Do not blame the wind.

  —Zaosharan,

  poet of the Totemix

  Chapter 46

  Departures

  THE GLYPH TRAVELERS REACHED the northern shores of the Nonce with only a short time to spare. The craft they’d conjured together under Malingo’s tutelage was beginning to deteriorate rapidly, and they had barely landed on the dunes close to the Lud Limbo’s anchorage when the craft shuddered, its engine ceasing.

  They all got out of the vehicle and stood back to watch their magical creation unknit itself. It was a melancholy spectacle: like watching a bonfire that had once blazed high and mighty reduced to guttering, and then dying out altogether. But they kept watching, to the very end, out of a strange loyalty to the thing they’d made. Only when the last of the once-bright motes had faded into the air did they leave the spot and head over the dunes and across the beach to the little rowing boat that would carry them to the Lud Limbo.

  Candy was the last to get into the boat. She lingered on the shore for a minute or two, knowing that once she forsook Abaratian earth she would not step onto it again. She took the moment to remember all the places she’d been in her travels: the Yebba Dim Day, the island of Ninnyhammer, Odom’s Spire and the wonders of the Twenty-Fifth Hour; the cold terrors of Efreet and the wild Carnival of Babilonium; Scoriae and the beauty of the Twilight Palace; the Nonce and its endless visions and mysteries. In all she’d visited twelve of the twenty-five islands; not a bad piece of voyaging for less than eight weeks of travel. But she knew she had only scratched the surface of what the Abarat might have shown her. There was so much that she hadn’t seen, even on the islands that she’d visited. There were the ruined cities on the lower slopes of Mount Galigali, which she would have loved to have explored; and the miracles of evolution on the Nonce, which were glories unto themselves; not to mention the endless possibilities that were concealed behind the mirages of the Twenty-Fifth Hour. And of course there were thirteen islands that she had not even stepped upon, nor now ever would. Her heart was heavy at the thought. So many wonders she was leaving unwitnessed.

  There was a gray rain cloud taking shape over a patch of dense jungle not far from the beach, the conditions for its formation so perfect that it swelled up even as Candy watched it, and then unleashed a monsoonal rain. The treetops swayed and churned like a great, green sea, and watching it churn she was filled up with a great gratitude for all that she had been given a chance to see.

  “Are you coming?” said Finnegan.

  He had climbed back out of the boat and was standing just behind her.

  “Yes,” she replied reluctantly. “I just wanted to watch the storm a little longer.”

  “There are no storms in Minnesota?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “There are enormous storms. But nothing quite like that. Look at it!”

  “You know, you could still change your mind,” Finnegan said. “We could go adventuring together. I’d keep you safe.”

  “I know you would. And thank you. But I’ve made up my mind. It’s funny; back home people used to say I never made up my mind about things. I guess I didn’t care one way or another about anything. But I think maybe I’ve changed. Being here has changed me. I found . . .” She halted, searching for the right words. “. . . something to care about.”

  The thought suddenly caught her heart, and she felt tears rising up in her.

  “We should go,” she said, doing her best to keep the tears from coming. “You folks have more important things to do than wait around for me.”

  Finnegan nodded. “If you’re ready.”

  They waded out through the warm shallows, their feet making slow explosions of sand in the pristine water. Tria and Geneva had taken the oars and McBean the tiller. The boat breasted the waves with little difficulty, and they were soon beyond the surf and moving swiftly across the calmer waters that lay between the breaking waves and the spot where the Lud Limbo was anchored.

  They were no more than a few yards from the red hull of the vessel when Tria stood up in the boat and pointed back toward the shore.

  “Look! Look!” she yelled, her voice shrill with excitement.

  All eyes followed the line of Tria’s gaze. The cloud that had unleashed the monsoon had now thinned and had become a
rising spiral shape, through which the bright sun poured unhindered. It wasn’t the sun that was drawing Tria’s attention, however: it was what that light fell upon. There, on a ridge on the shoreward side of the forest, a shape that was green and glistening—as though just born out of the rain-drenched ground—was swelling and shifting. It was a human form, no doubt of that. A woman, her dress lush and full and decorated with either dewdrops or jewels.

  “Does anybody see what I see?” Tom said.

  “A woman,” Candy replied.

  “Not just any woman,” John Mischief said. “That’s Elathuria.”

  “It is,” Finnegan murmured. “By all the divinities of love, it is! Elathuria!”

  “But where’s Numa Child?” said Malingo.

  “Who?” Candy wanted to know.

  “The soul who loved her. Who would follow her around the island, waiting for her to be—”

  “There!” said Candy, with a big smile appearing on her face. “I see him!”

  And indeed there he was, climbing up the ridge, with his purple-blue wings folded neatly against his broad back.

  “Numa Child,” Candy said, turning the words over on her tongue to see how they sounded. “He’s really an angel? I mean, from heaven?”

  “Who knows?” Finnegan said. “But there they are, united again.”

  “Again?” said Candy, not knowing the story.

  “It’s a sad tale,” Finnegan said. “And I think you’re sad enough.”

  “Maybe another time,” Malingo said, then realized that there would not be another time and fell into gloomy silence.

  They all watched the scene play out on the now distant shore, Elathuria and Numa Child reunited for a brief time. Then the rain clouds broke a second time, and a veil of water concealed the reunion from sight.

  Carrion went down to Faithless Harbor on the southwestern peninsula of Efreet to find that news of the Wormwood’s imminent arrival had spread through the islands and that large numbers of people had assembled there to witness the arrival of the notorious warship.

  “What pitiful lives they must lead,” he said to Letheo as he scanned the crowds—rich men and women warm in their carriages, the laboring classes dressed in whatever protection their meager earnings would provide (ratty old goatskins or rodent skins sewn together; straw coats on some, rope coats on others, and everyone wearing wooden clogs).