Abarat: Absolute Midnight Read online

  Their excited circling made it even harder for Bill to get a clear sense of the thing.

  What was this strange entity pinned to the wall? It seemed to be made of fabric rather than skin: a patchwork of four, perhaps five, colored materials that ranged from livid scarlet to one of polished black with a dash of vibrant blue.

  The beast didn’t appear to have any recognizable anatomy; there was no sign of anything resembling a head or even any of the features a head might have carried: it had no eyes that Bill could make out, nor ears, nor nose, nor mouth. Bill felt profoundly disappointed. Surely this couldn’t be the answer to the mystery of his nightly searches around town. The answer he’d been seeking had to be something more than some formless scraps of stained felt.

  However, though there was little about the creature he found beguiling, he was still curious about it.

  “What are you?” he asked, more to himself than anything.

  The creature’s response, much to Bill’s surprise, was to stretch out its four extremities and draw all its power into itself. Then it kicked off from the wall and flew at Bill as though plucked by an unseen hand.

  Bill was too slow, too surprised, to avoid it. The thing wrapped itself around him, blinding him completely. In the sudden darkness Bill’s sense of smell worked overtime. The beast stank! It had the stench of a heavy fur coat that had been put away soaking wet and had been left in a wardrobe to rot ever since.

  The stench oppressed him, disgusted him. He grabbed hold of the thing and tried to pull it off his head.

  “Finally,” the creature said, “William Quackenbush, you heard our call.”

  “Get off me!”

  “Only if you will listen to us.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes. You’re hearing five voices. There are five of us, William Quackenbush, here to serve you.”

  “To . . . serve me?” Bill stopped fighting with the thing. “You mean, like, to obey me?”

  “Yes!”

  Bill grinned a spittle-grin. “Anything I say?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then stop smothering me, you damn fools!”

  The five responded, instantly leaping off his head and back onto the wall again.

  “What are you?”

  “Well, why not? If he doesn’t like the truth because it sounds crazy, then he’s learned something hasn’t he?” the thing said to itself. Then it addressed Bill. “We were once five hats, belonging to members of the Noncian Magic Circle. But our owners were murdered and the murderer then celebrated his getting what he wanted by having a heart attack. So we were left looking for someone to give our powers to.”

  “And you chose me.”

  “Of course.”

  “Why ‘of course’? Nobody has ever willingly chosen me for anything.”

  “Why do you think, lord?”

  Bill knew the answer without having to think.

  “My daughter.”

  “Yes,” said the thing. “She has great power. No doubt it comes from you.”

  “From me? What does that mean?”

  “It means you will possess greater influence than you ever dreamed of owning. Even in your wildest dreams of godhood.”

  “I never dreamed of being God.”

  “Then wake up, William Quackenbush! Wake up and know the reality!”

  Though Bill was already awake, his instinctive self understood the deeper significance of what he was being told. The expression on his face opened like a door, and whatever was behind it caught the attention of the creature that had once been several hats.

  “Look at you, Billy-boy!” it said, its five voices suddenly changed and harmonizing in admiration. “Such a radiance there is out of you! Such a strong, clear light to drive all the fear away.”

  “Me?”

  “Who else? Think Billy-boy. Think. Who can deliver us from the terror that your child is about to call down upon the world if not you who made her?”

  At the moment when the creature had talked about Bill’s “radiance” the many silent birds Bill had seen rose into the air and circled around Bill in a vortex of bright black eyes and applauding wings.

  “What are they doing?” Bill asked the shapeless thing.

  “Paying homage to you.”

  “Well, I don’t like it.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Stop them.”

  “Stop them dead?”

  “Sure.”

  “Sure,” the creature said, catching perfectly the tone of Bill’s response.

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Never,” came the reply.

  A heartbeat later every single bird dropped out of the air and fell lifeless in the debris.

  “Better?” the creature said.

  Bill considered the silence.

  “A whole lot,” he finally replied. He laughed lightly. It was a laugh he’d forgotten he was capable of: that of a man who had nothing to lose and nothing to fear.

  He glanced at his watch.

  “Almost dawn,” he said. “I’d better be going. What do I do with you?”

  “Wear us. On your head. Like a turban.”

  “Foreigners wear those.”

  “You are a foreigner, Billy-boy. You don’t belong here. You’ll get used to wearing us. In our previous life we made very impressive hats. We’ve just come unglued of late.”

  “I know exactly how you feel,” Bill said. “But that’s all going to change now, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed it is,” said the remnants of Kaspar Wolfswinkel’s five hats. “You’ve found us. Everything changes now.”

  Chapter 6

  Under Jibarish

  RUTHUS’S LITTLE BOAT CARRIED Candy and Malingo southwest down the Straits of Dusk and between the islands of Huffaker and Ninnyhammer to Jibarish, in the wilds of which a tribe of women called the Qwarv lived by preying on weary travelers, who they then cooked and ate. Rumor had it that Laguna Munn, the sorceress they had come to find, was sympathetic to the Qwarv, despite their appetites, tending to them when they were sick, and even accepting their offer to eat with them on occasion. Certainly the island was a fit place for such repugnant events to occur. It stood at Eleven O’clock at Night: just one hour from the horror of Midnight.

  The islands were still, however, slivers of time sealed off from one another. Only sounds would find their way through for some reason, echoes of echoes, eerily remote. But it wasn’t difficult to identify the sounds from the nearby Hour of Gorgossium. There was demolition going on. Massive land-clearing engines were at work, bringing down walls, digging up foundations. The noise echoed off the heights of Jibarish’s west-facing cliffs.

  “What are they doing over there?” Malingo wondered aloud.

  “It’s best not to ask,” Ruthus said in a hushed tone. “Or even think about it.” He stared up at the stars, which were so bright over Jibarish that the sum of their light was greater than even the brightest moon. “Better to think of the beauty of light, yes, than to think of what’s going on in the darkness. Curiosity kills. I lost my brother Skafta—my twin brother—just because he asked too many questions.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Candy said.

  “Thank you, Candy. Now, where do you want me to let you off? On the big island or the little one?”

  “I didn’t know there was a big one and a little one.”

  “Oh yes. Of course. The Qwarv rule the big island. The little one is for ordinary folks. And the witch, of course.”

  “By witch, you mean Laguna Munn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that’s the island we want.”

  “You’re going to see the incantatrix?”

  “Yes.”

  “You do know she’s crazy?”

  “Yes. We’ve heard people say that. But people say a lot of things that aren’t true.”

  “About you, you mean?”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “They do, you know. They say all kinds of wacko t
hings.”

  “Like what?” Malingo said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Candy said. “I don’t need to hear silly things people dream up. They don’t know me.”

  “And you as well, Malingi,” said Ruthus.

  “Malingo,” said Malingo.

  “They say terrible things about you too.”

  “Now I have to know.”

  “You’ve got a choice, geshrat. Either I tell you some ridiculous gossip I heard, and while I’m wasting my time doing that the current throws us up on those rocks, or I forget the nonsense and do the job you’re paying me for.”

  “Get us to solid ground,” Malingo said, sounding disappointed.

  “Happily,” Ruthus said, and turned his attention back to the wheel.

  The waters around the boat were becoming frenzied.

  “You know . . . I don’t want to be telling you your job,” Candy said, “but if you’re not careful the current’s going to carry us into that cave. You do see it, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I see it,” Ruthus yelled over the roar and rage of the Izabella. “That’s where we’re going.”

  “But the water’s—”

  “Very rough.”

  “Yes.”

  “Frenzied.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’d better hold on tight, hadn’t you?”

  Before another word could be exchanged, the boat entered the cave. The passage into the cave forced the foaming waters to climb and quicken, quicken and climb, until the top two feet of the boat’s mast were snapped off as it scraped the roof. For a few terrifying moments it seemed the entire boat and those aboard would be scraped to mush and splinters against the roof. But, as quickly as the waters had risen, they subsided again without any further damage done. The channel widened and the racing current eased.

  Though they had already been borne a considerable distance into the body of the island, there was a plentiful supply of light, its source the colonies of phosphorescent creatures that encrusted the walls and stalactites that hung from the roof. They were an unlikely marriage of crab and bat, their bizarre anatomies decorated with elaborate symmetrical designs.

  Directly ahead of them lay a small island, with a steep wall around it, and rising in a very sharp gradient, a single hillock covered with red-leaved trees (that apparently had no need of sunlight to prosper) and a maze of whitewashed buildings arrayed beneath the garish canopy.

  “We’ll need rope to scale that wall,” Malingo said.

  “Either that or we use that,” Candy said, pointing to a small door in the wall.

  “Oh . . .” said Malingo.

  Ruthus brought the boat around so that they could step out of the vessel and through the door.

  “Give my love to Izarith,” Candy said to Ruthus. “And tell her I’ll see her again soon.”

  Ruthus looked doubtful.

  “Are you sure you want me to just leave you here?” he said.

  “We don’t know how long we’ll be with Laguna Munn,” Candy said. “And I think things are getting chaotic. Everyone’s stirred up for some reason. So I really think you should go back and be with your family, Ruthus.”

  “And you, geshrat?”

  “Where she goes, I go,” Malingo replied.

  Ruthus shook his head.

  “Crazy, the both of you,” he remarked.

  “Well, if things go badly for us, you have nothing to blame yourself for, Ruthus,” Candy said. “We’re doing this in spite of your good advice.” She paused, smiled. “And we will see you again.”

  Malingo had already climbed out of the boat and was squatting on the narrow step, trying the door. It opened without any forcing.

  “Thank you again,” Candy said to Ruthus, and stepped out of the boat, heading through the small and roughly painted door in pursuit of Malingo.

  Before she stepped over the threshold, though, she glanced back down the bank. She had no chance to call good-bye to Ruthus. The possessive waters of the Izabella had already seized hold of the little boat and it was being carried away from the island, while the winged crabs applauded the boat’s escape with a mingled ovation of wing and claw.

  Chapter 7

  The sorrows of the Bad Son

  A STEEP, NARROW- STEPPED PATH wound its way up from the door in the wall through the trees. Candy and Malingo climbed. Though there was a wash of visible brightness through the orange-red canopy, very little of it found its way down to the path. There were, however, small lamps set beside the steps to light the way. Beyond their throw the thicket was dense and the darkness denser still. But it wasn’t deserted.

  “There’s plenty of eyes on us,” Candy said very quietly.

  “But no noises. No birds chirping. No insects buzzing around.”

  “Maybe there’s something else here. Something they’re scared of.”

  “Well, if there is,” Malingo said, speaking with a fake clarity, “I hope it knows we’re here to cause trouble.”

  His performance earned him a reply.

  “You say you’re here to cause trouble, geshrat,” said a young voice, “but saying it doesn’t make it true.”

  “Why are you here?” said a second voice.

  “The sons,” Malingo murmured, the words barely audible to Candy, who was standing a single step away from him.

  “Yes,” said the first voice. “We’re the sons.”

  “And we’ll hear you,” taunted the second, “however quietly you whisper. So don’t waste your time.”

  “Where are you?” Candy asked them, slowly climbing another step as she did so, and scanning the shadows off to their right, from which direction the voices had seemed to come.

  In her hand she quickly conjured a little ball of cloud-light; a cold flame she had learned to call up from Boa. It had been, Candy vaguely thought, one of the earliest pieces of magic Candy had filched from Boa’s collection. Candy squeezed it tightly.

  The moment would come when she had one of Laguna Munn’s boys close enough to—

  There! A shadowy form moved across her field of vision. She didn’t hesitate. She raised her arm and let it go. It blazed yellow-white and blue, its illumination spilling only down at the figure Candy had willed it to illuminate. The cloud-light did its job and Candy saw the first of Laguna Munn’s boys. He looked like a little devil, Candy thought, with his stunted horns and his squat body made of shadow and shards of color, as though he’d stood in the way of an exploding stained-glass window, which hadn’t hurt him because his body was made of Dark Side of the Moon Jell-O.

  When he spoke, as now he did, his voice was completely mismatched with his appearance. He had the precise, well-cultured voice of a boy who’d been to a fancy school.

  “I’m Mama’s Bad Boy,” he said.

  “Oh really? And what’s your name?”

  He sighed, as though the question presented huge difficulties.

  “What’s the problem?” Candy said. “I only asked your name.”

  There was something in her plain, unpretentious Minnesotan soul that was not taking to Laguna Munn’s self-proclaimed Bad Boy.

  “Oh, I don’t know . . .” he said, nibbling at his thumbnail. “It’s just hard to choose when you’ve got so many. Would you like to know how many names I have?”

  She didn’t.

  “All right, I’m listening. How many?”

  “Seven hundred and nineteen,” he said rather proudly.

  “Wow,” Candy said flatly. Then, even more flatly, “Why?”

  “Because I can. Mama said I can have anything I like. So I have a lot of names. But you can call me . . . Thrashing Jam? No, no! Pieman Hambadikin? No! Jollo B’gog! Yes! Jollo B’gog it is!”

  “All right. And I’m—”

  “Candy Quackenbush of Chickencoop.”

  “Chickentown.”

  “Coop. Town. Whichever. And that’s your geshrat friend with you, Malingo. You saved him from being the slave of the wizard Kaspar Wolfswinkel.”

  “Yo
u’ve certainly done your homework,” Candy said.

  “Homework . . . homework . . .” Jollo B’gog said, puzzling over the word. “Oh. Work given to students by their tutors in your world, which they attempt to avoid doing by any possible means.” He grinned.

  “That’s right,” Candy said. “On the nose!”

  “On the nose!” Jollo B’gog said triumphantly. “I got it on the nose! I got it on the nose!”

  “Somebody’s enjoying themselves,” said a woman, somewhere beyond the spill of the light that Candy had shed on Jollo.

  The boy’s good humor instantly died away, not out of fear, Candy thought, but out of a peculiar reverence for the speaker.

  “Bad Boy?” she said.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Will you find our guest Malingo something to eat and drink, please?”

  “Of course, Mama.”

  “And send the girl up to me.”

  “As you wish, Mama.”

  Candy wanted to point out that she was also hungry and thirsty, but this wasn’t the time to be saying it, she knew.

  “All right, you heard Mama,” Jollo said to Candy. “She wants you to go to her, so all you need to do is follow the silver eye.” He pointed to a foot-wide eye, its pupil black, the lens of it silver, which hovered in between the trees.

  “Should I come?” Malingo said to Candy.

  “If I need you, I swear I’ll yell. Really loud.”

  “Happy?” Jollo said to Malingo. “If Mama tries to eat her, she’s going to yell.”

  “Your mother wouldn’t—”

  “No she wouldn’t, geshrat,” Jollo replied. “It’s humor. A joke?”

  “I know what a joke is,” Malingo said without much certainty. He looked for Candy, but she’d already followed the silver eye off the path into the darkness of the trees.

  “Come on, geshrat. Let’s get you fed,” Jollo said. “If you hear Candy call, you can go straight to her. I won’t even try to stop you. I promise.”

  Chapter 8

  Laguna Munn

  LAGUNA MUNN’S ISLAND HAD seemed small when viewed from Ruthus’s boat, but now that Candy was being led up through its darkened slopes it seemed far larger than she’d expected. She’d left the cloud-light behind her, but the silver eye shed its own light as it led her through the dense thicket. She was glad of its guidance. The ground beneath her feet was becoming steeper, and the trees she was moving between—sometimes having to force a gap large enough for her to get through—became steadily more gnarled and ancient.