Days of Magic, Nights of War Read online

  “I just think we should all be together as a family right now.”

  “Leave ’em to play their shoot-’em-ups,” Bill growled. “There’s no harm going to come to them.”

  “We don’t know that,” Melissa said, snapping off her yellow rubber gloves.

  “What are you talking about now?” Bill said, with the martyred air of a man who thought his wife was probably crazy, and that it wasn’t fair that he be left with the burden of her lunacy.

  “Never mind, Bill. I’m just going to go over there and bring them back.”

  “Melissa—”

  She dismissed any further debate with a shake of her head. Bill shrugged.

  “Whatever . . .” he muttered, turning up the sound of the television.

  Melissa didn’t attempt to express her fears to him. She was just glad, for once, that he was playing the couch potato. She didn’t have to worry about where he was. He was a hard man to love, but love him she did, and she wanted no hurt or harm to come to him.

  She picked up the car keys from the kitchen table and went out the back door, down the side of the house to the street. As she came out of the shadow of the house and into the sun, two things happened at more or less the same moment: a gust of wind came from the direction of the street, and Karen Portacio, who lived next door, called to her. She didn’t answer at first; her thoughts were on the wind and the smell it had brought to her nostrils. But Karen was talking at her insistently and plainly wanted a reply.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Melissa asked her.

  “If you’re thinking of driving somewhere, don’t bother,” Karen replied. “I just tried to get out onto Laurel Street, and it’s impossible. I think there must have been an accident somewhere, and everything’s backed up.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Melissa said. “I was going to pick up the kids. I guess I’ll just walk.”

  With that she pocketed the car keys and headed off down the street in the direction of the Gage house. After a few strides, Karen called after her: “Any news about Candy?”

  As soon as Karen spoke Candy’s name, Melissa realized what the smell was on the wind.

  “The sea . . .” she said to herself.

  “What did you say?”

  But Melissa was already hurrying off down the street—running now, not walking—determined to have her boys back with her before it was too late, and her fears came true.

  Chapter 48

  Stirring the Waters

  IT HAD ALWAYS SEEMED to Candy when she was younger that when she was going on a trip the getting there took forever, while the coming back only seemed to take half the time. Now, of course, she was no longer a child, and the place she was leaving wasn’t some summer camp or a theme park where she’d spent a happy, thoughtless day. She was leaving her paradise, her wonderland, and the sense of loss she felt was tearing at her heart. She couldn’t remember ever having a feeling like this before. No, that wasn’t true. There had been one other time. Five years ago her canary, Monty, whom she’d raised from an egg and hand-fed till he was old enough to feed himself, had gotten sick and died suddenly. She’d found him lying on the bottom of the cage, cold and stiff. She had not gone immediately to tell her mom, wanting to spend a quiet moment saying good-bye to him before the whole family came in. She laid him against her cheek and told him she loved him; told him to wait for her because one day she would come to the place where he had gone, and they would start another life together, which death would never interrupt. The feelings she’d had, talking to him but knowing he didn’t hear her, rubbing the back of his head but knowing he didn’t know that she was doing it: the terrible twisting ache in her chest as she said her good-byes to him, had been a hint of what she was feeling now.

  The trouble was, you never keep memories clear in your head for very long. Just as her memories of Monty had dimmed as the years passed, so, she knew, would her memories of the Abarat. What did she have to keep them fresh? The photograph she and Malingo had taken in Tazmagor? A copy of Klepp’s Almenak? It wasn’t much. As soon as she got home, she decided, the first thing she would do was write down everything she remembered—every last detail about the conversations she’d had and the things she’d seen and the food she’d eaten—

  “What are you thinking about?” said John Mischief.

  “Writing my memoirs,” Candy replied.

  “You’re a bit young to be doing that, aren’t you?” said John Moot.

  “Well, this is a special situation,” Candy replied. “I feel as though . . .” She stopped, because she could feel tears rising up in her again.

  “Go on,” said John Slop. “You feel as though . . .”

  “If I don’t remember all this now then maybe I’ll lose it.”

  “You won’t lose it,” John Fillet said.

  “Are you sure?” Candy said. “My aunt Jessica got this disease called Alzheimer’s. And bit by bit she forgot everything in her life. We had to put signs up all over her house, so she’d be reminded to do even simple things. Locking the doors, turning lights off. Then she started to forget the names of her friends, and then her own family. It was horrible. For her, for everybody. Suppose the same thing happened to me, only all the things I forgot were all the things about Abarat?”

  “But this is different, Candy. This is a two-way street.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s not just a question of you remembering Abarat. Abarat is also going to remember you.”

  Now the tears did fill Candy’s eyes. “It will?” she said.

  “Oh yes,” said Mischief. “Tell her, brothers.”

  “Yes!” the John brothers all said in chorus. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  The happy moment was interrupted an instant later by a yell from Finnegan, who had climbed the mast of the Lud Limbo to the crow’s nest to get a better look at what lay ahead. It was not the vista that lay in front of the vessel that was making him raise the alarm, however. It was a sight that was coming up from behind.

  “Vessel to stern!” he yelled down from the nest. “Vessel to stern!”

  Everybody on board followed Finnegan’s instructions and looked back. A patch of sickly yellow fog had formed on the surface of the Izabella, and as they watched the fog churned and divided like a great curtain and a vessel, fully ten times the size of the Lud Limbo, came into view. It was monstrous: in size, yes, but in detail too. There were cast-iron icons of mythic beasts everywhere over its hull; the sails looked as though they’d been sewn together from shrouds, some still bearing the stains of death, while from the bowels of the vessel came the moans of terrible suffering.

  “It’s Carrion’s ship!” Two-Toed Tom yelled.

  “The Wormwood!” Captain McBean hollered. “Lords and ladies save our souls, we are being pursued by the Wormwood!” He sounded almost disbelieving, as though his mind couldn’t entirely accept what his eyes were showing him: that this, the most notorious warship that had ever sailed the Izabella, was right there behind them. “The Wormwood!” he kept saying. “The Wormwood! The Wormwood!” as though by some paradoxical magic the calling of the beast’s name would unmake it.

  But still it came. And the closer the two ships got to each other, the more the crew of the Lud Limbo realized their jeopardy. The Wormwood wasn’t just a fearsome vessel, it housed a terrifying crew. Stitchlings of every horrendous shape hung from the rigging and the railings and skittered on the deck of the vessel. Some had been sewn together in parodies of nameable animals: a monstrous spider, for instance, made of brightly colored patchwork; another beast that appeared to be distantly related to a pack of wild dogs, snapping and growling as though rabid (which perhaps they were). In the rigging were stitchling birds that looked like a lunatic version of the pterodactyl. They hopped on the crossbeams, shrieking and snapping at one another.

  Candy had spotted an absurdly overdressed figure, his cheeks rouged and his bald head tattooed, parading on the poop deck. “Who is that?” she asked.

&nbs
p; “That’s Admiral H. H. Bloat,” said Captain McBean. “One of the vilest men ever to set sail on the Izabella.”

  “And beside him . . .” said Tria, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “That’s him, isn’t it?”

  It was Candy who replied. “Yes, that’s him,” she said. “That’s Christopher Carrion.”

  Tria had seen him before, of course, on Efreet; but he was no longer the ominous figure in furs hung with mummified heads. Now he wore magnificent decorated robes in black and gold and scarlet.

  “Look away . . .” said a voice at Candy’s side. It was Mischief. “Please. Look away.”

  “He can’t hurt me here,” Candy replied.

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  Even as Mischief spoke, Carrion made a hook of the finger of his left hand and beckoned to Candy. Again she heard John Mischief at her side. But she refused to be intimidated by Carrion’s theatrics. She just kept looking at him.

  “Lady . . .” Mischief said again.

  “I’m not going to be frightened just because he’s staring at me.”

  John Moot said, “It’s not Carrion we’re worried about.”

  “What then?”

  “It’s the wave.”

  “What wave?”

  “If you’d just unglue your eyes from the Prince of Darkness for a minute, you’d see,” said John Serpent.

  With more difficulty than she’d anticipated, Candy took her gaze off Carrion. There was no missing what the Johns were talking about. In the half minute or so that Candy had been meeting Carrion’s stare, a great swell of water had appeared from beneath the Wormwood, lifting her up on its foamy back.

  “We’re in trouble,” Captain McBean said grimly.

  The wave was growing in size and speed by the moment. Clearly it would soon possess staggering power, not only to carry the monstrous vessel forward, but to destroy anything that lay in the wave’s path.

  “I didn’t realize Carrion had elemental powers,” John Mischief yelled as he watched the Izabella become more and more frenzied.

  “I don’t think it’s him,” said Finnegan, clinging to the rigging of the Lud Limbo with one hand and watching the warship through a telescope, which he held in the other. “It’s his grandmother! Mater Motley.”

  He had no sooner uttered the witch’s name than there was a surge of blistering energy that rose up out of the bowels of the Wormwood, and the woman who had unleashed the Izabella rose into view. Her stick-thin arms were raised, and her gray hair swirled around her head.

  As she appeared, everybody on board the Lud Limbo heard her voice, and for every person it was as though she were speaking to them and them alone. Her message was grim and simple:

  The Lud Limbo is about to sink. When it goes down, you will all drown. Make your peace with death. And be quick about it.

  As she finished her speech, the boiling body of water beneath the warship suddenly rose up like a tower of water.

  “DROWN THEM!” the old woman yelled.

  Chapter 49

  Into the Hereafter

  AS THE WAVE BENEATH Carrion’s ship continued to grow, the power that was creating it summoned up from the depths great multitudes of fish, many of which were not designed ever to meet the light. Some blew up like balloons as soon as they surfaced, then exploded. Others, conversely, met the light in a state of writhing pleasure, as though they were in ecstasy to have themselves finally revealed in every repugnant detail. And repugnant they were, many of them, their flesh bloated and gray-green, their eyes ghastly lanterns; their mouths gaping and lined with needle barbs. Some were so far from being recognizable creatures that they lacked eyes and mouths but were just writhing shreds of life, roiling in the tumult like the skins of damned souls.

  And all this was just in the froth of that frenzied sea. Beneath the bubbling surf was a massive body of dark, glistening water, which lifted the immense bulk of the Wormwood. First the stern, then the shuddering mass of the ship itself, which threw its shadow down on the Lud Limbo.

  “We’re in trouble!” Geneva yelled. “Look at all those stitchlings!”

  A terrifying number of the creatures had issued from the bowels of the warship and were now climbing up into the rigging or lining the decks in some ragtag approximation of a military assembly.

  “There’s a couple of battalions of those damnable things,” Tom said.

  “We’ve certainly got a fight on our hands,” said Finnegan.

  “We’re all going to die. That’s the truth of it,” said John Slop. “If we’re not drowned first, of course.”

  “Whose clever idea was it to head back to the Hereafter anyway?” John Serpent said, casting an accusing glance at Candy.

  “Belay that kind of talk!” said the Captain. “Or I’ll throw the offender overboard!”

  The other brothers all whispered hush in John Serpent’s direction. They weren’t going to suffer just because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

  “We all knew the risks of coming on this journey,” Finnegan pointed out. “So let’s just get on with it, shall we? We should prepare for hand-to-hand combat. Who has weapons?”

  There was a show of arms. It wasn’t a very encouraging sight. Mischief had a short-blade knife, as did Tom. McBean had two antiquated pistols and a rusty sword; Tria (surprisingly) had two thin, finely polished knives; Finnegan had what looked like a machete. The rest had only their bare hands and their will.

  Before Finnegan could comment on this meager show of defenses, McBean yelled:

  “Brace yourselves!”

  Two seconds later, the Lud Limbo was struck from behind by the force of the waters Mater Motley’s magic had stirred up. Everybody was thrown forward, and for a few perilous moments it seemed the little vessel might very well be swamped. Finnegan was pitched out of the crow’s nest and would have hit the deck if he hadn’t caught hold of the rigging on the way down and clung there. The Lud Limbo rolled and reeled, its boards complaining at the punishment it was taking. But McBean had captained ships in some of the worst tempests the Sea of Izabella had ever stirred up. He knew how to turn the power of this surge of waters to their advantage.

  “Hold on for your lives!” he yelled, and swung the wheel around.

  The Lud Limbo veered starboard. Foam-headed waves broke over the deck, and the vessel shook from bow to stern. But the maneuver worked. McBean had brought the boat into the path of a very fast-moving current. And it carried the vessel away.

  “Clever,” said Carrion.

  He was standing in the bow of the Wormwood, his hands behind his back but spread wide, gripping his winged-toad staff. The distance between the Wormwood and the boat containing his prey was getting bigger by the moment, but he wasn’t concerned. The Wormwood had immense speed: a crew of giants in the hold, working their oars, and on deck Mater Motley and her witch-women seamstresses, whose power over the elements allowed them to bend the Izabella to their will. His grandmother and her terrifying entourage could raise tempests and water spouts; they could call up out of the deeps the ghosts of men drowned over the millennia: fishermen, pirates, admirals and cabin boys. And of course the monstrous creatures that made meals of the dead could also be raised up: species that made vile schools which had appeared so far like inconsequential things. The giant black-backed scorpion crabs that could cut a man in half with their claws; the tiny scalpel fish, who had been known to perform entire surgeries on drowning men, operations so immaculate that their bodies had been retrieved and studied by the doctors in Commexo City; furnace fish, which by some unknown means kept fires stoked in their five stomachs, where they cooked their catch before devouring it in the normal way through a sixth stomach.

  But the presence of all these creatures caused problems. The frenzied waters were becoming so thick with roused life that the progress of the Wormwood was being slowed.

  “Grandmother!” Carrion yelled.

  Mater Motley failed to heed his summons. He yelled again, and still she ignored him. His fury r
ising, he sought out Admiral Bloat and found him at the railing, with two midshipmen providing primed pistols for him, firing down into the surf at creatures that were seething there.

  “Admiral, what in hell’s name are you doing?”

  “Practicing my marksmanship,” Bloat replied. “See that vicious thing with the blue stripes? I took it out with one shot!”

  “We have more pressing matters than your marksmanship, Admiral.”

  “Such as?”

  Carrion caught hold of Bloat’s fat arm and snatched the pistol from his hand, tossing it overboard. “The Lud Limbo, Bloat!” he said. “Our enemies are getting away!”

  “Then unhand me, sir,” the Admiral said with a tone of annoyance. “I will not act to apprehend the Lud Limbo until I am treated with the appropriate respect.”

  Carrion released the man as though he was something faintly gangrenous and let Bloat step away from him. The Admiral took out his telescope and assessed the position of the Lud Limbo, and then, with a great deal of bowing and scraping, he approached Mater Motley. There was a brief exchange, which Carrion didn’t attend to. Something else had caught his attention. There was a subtle shifting in the mists that covered the divide between the Abarat and the Hereafter. He could see, for the first time, glimpses of that other world: tall grasses, swaying and shimmering in the heat; and beyond the grass, the roofs of dwellings, and a steeple.

  “Chickentown . . .” he murmured.

  “Chickentown!” said Candy.

  “What?” said Mischief.

  “Where?” said Moot.

  “There!” she said, pointing to the sight. “You see it?”

  “I see it,” said Malingo.

  “That’s my hometown.”

  “We came upon it quickly!” said Geneva.

  “Look behind you, girl,” said John Serpent to Candy, not without a little maliciousness. “The Abarat’s going to be out of sight very soon. And you won’t be seeing it again.”

  It was true, Candy realized. Her final glimpse of the Abarat was imminent. Bracing herself, she looked over her shoulder. The Outer Islands had all but disappeared from sight—they were just amorphous forms in the mist— but she could still smell the flower-sweetened air that came across the water from places she would now never see, with names she would now never learn.