Abarat: Absolute Midnight Page 7

  Now she made a sound. Not a word, but a cry of horror as her ghastly undoing spread out from her backbone in all directions turning her flesh and bone to flakes of black ash. Only her head remained untouched, so that she might better witness every moment of her dissolution.

  But it was only long enough for her to see what her young beauty had been, and to turn her eyes up toward her destroyer one last time. Lone enough to murmur: “No.”

  Then her head went to ashes, and she was gone.

  “So dies a doubter,” the Old Mother said. “Any further questions?”

  There were none.

  Chapter 10

  The Sorrows of the Good Son

  LAGUNA MUNN CLIMBED DOWN from her chair and called for her second son, her Good Boy.

  “Covenantis? Where are you? I have need of you, boy!”

  A joyless little voice said, “I’m here, Mother,” and the boy Laguna Munn had reputedly made from all the good in her came into view. He was an unfortunate creature, as gray and dull as his Bad Boy brother had been glamorous and charismatic.

  “We have a guest,” said Laguna Munn.

  “I know, Mother,” he said, his voice colorless. “I was listening.”

  “That was rude, child.”

  “I meant no disrespect, Mother,” the boy replied, his mother’s chiding only serving to increase the sum of hopelessness in his empty eyes.

  “Lead her to the Circle of Conjurations, boy. She has come here to do dangerous work. The sooner it’s begun, the sooner it’s safely over.”

  “May I stay and watch you teach her?”

  “No. You may not. Unless you want to witness something that might well be the death of you.”

  “I don’t much mind,” Covenantis said, shrugging.

  His whole life was in that shrug. He seemed not to care whether he was alive or dead.

  “Where will you be?” Candy asked the incantatrix.

  “Right here.”

  “So how are you going to help me with the separation?”

  Laguna Munn looked at Candy with lazy amusement.

  “From a safe distance,” she replied.

  “What happens if something goes wrong?

  “I’ll have sight of you,” Laguna Munn said. “Don’t worry. If something goes wrong I’ll do what I can to fix it. But the responsibility for the outcome falls on you. Think of yourself as a surgeon delicately separating twins born joined together. Except that you are not only the surgeon—”

  “I’m also one of the babies,” Candy said, beginning to understand.

  “Exactly.” Laguna looked at Candy with new admiration. “You know, you’re smarter than you look.”

  “I look dumb? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No. Not necessarily,” she said, and then raised her hand, which was a fist, and opened it.

  Candy put her hand in her pocket and took out the photograph she and Malingo had taken in the market in the port city of Tazmagor, on Qualm Hah. In it, she was wearing the same clothes she was wearing now. She had purchased those clothes on a whim, but now that she took a closer look, she realized that she resembled her mother to an astonishing degree. She quickly put the photo back in her pocket. Laguna Munn was right: when this was all over, she was going to get a change of clothes as quickly as possible. She’d dress like the Nonce, she decided, all color and happiness.

  Before she had fully broken from her thoughts, Candy saw something bright move toward her from Laguna Munn’s palm. It came too fast for her to make sense of what it was, but she felt it strike her like a gust of cold wind. There was a flicker of light in her head and by the time it was extinguished Laguna Munn had disappeared, leaving only poor, gray Covenantis at Candy’s side.

  “Well, I suppose you’d better come with me then,” he said, showing not the least enthusiasm for the task.

  Candy shook the last reverberations of the light from her mind, and followed the boy. As he stepped in front of her, she caught her first glimpse of his lower anatomy. Until now, she had been so caught up by the pitiful expression on his face she hadn’t realized that below the belt, he looked more like a child-sized slug than a boy. His legs were fused into a single, boneless tube of gray-green muscle upon which the upper portion of his body, which was simply that of an ordinary boy, was raised up.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said without looking back at Candy.

  “And what’s that?”

  “Can that really be the son she made from the good in her? Because he doesn’t look very good. In fact he looks like a slug.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Yes, you were,” the boy said.

  “You’re right, I was.”

  “And you’re right. I do look like a slug. I’ve thought a lot about it. In fact it’s really the only thing I think about.”

  “And what have you found out, after all that thinking?”

  “Not much. Just that Mother never really loved the good in her. She thought it was boring. Worthless.”

  “Now, I’m sure—”

  “Don’t,” he said, raising his hand to stop her trying to pamper the hurt. “That only makes it worse. My mother’s ashamed of me. That’s the truth, plain and simple. It’s my evil little brother, with his glittering smiles, who gets all the glory. That’s what they call a paradox, isn’t it? I’m made from good, but I’m nothing to her. He’s made of all the evil in her and guess what: she loves him for it. Loves him! So now he’s the good son after all, because of all the love he’s been given. And me, who was made from her compassion and her gentility, was left out in the cold.”

  Candy felt a flicker of anxiety run through her. She understood Covenantis’s words all too clearly. She knew the glittering beauty of evil. She’d seen it, and been in some ways attracted by it. Why else had she felt so sympathetic to Carrion?

  “Stay here while I light the candles,” Covenantis said.

  Candy waited while he moved off into the shadows. It was only when he’d gone that Candy’s thoughts returned to the strange gesture Laguna Munn had made before she had gone from view. And with the memory came other recollections, stirred up by the woman’s gift and Candy realized exactly how many coincidences, instinctual maneuvers, and twists of fate were really pieces of Boa’s magic at work within her.

  She remembered it all now with uncanny clarity: she remembered the words that had come unbidden into her throat on the Parroto Parroto—Jassassakya-thüm!—and once spoken, they had had driven off the monstrous Zethek; she remembered instincts, when Mama Izabella had come at her across the grasslands, that had allowed her to relax in the grip of the sentient that might well have drowned her if she’d caused any trouble; and she remembered the way she’d fallen into a pattern of bittersweet exchanges with Carrion, who would have slaughtered her in a heartbeat if he hadn’t sensed something inside her that he knew. No, that he loved.

  For the first time, Candy realized just how much of Boa there might be in her. A spasm of panic seized Candy.

  “Oh no,” she said. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  Of course you can. You’ve come this far, haven’t you?

  “Do you think it’ll hurt?”

  Hurt? Boa replied. HURT? A cut finger hurts, girl. A cracked rib. But this is the end of a union of souls that has defined you since the day you were born. When the connection between us is severed you’ll lose forever pieces of your mind you thought were yours.

  “But they were yours. They were you.”

  Yes.

  “So why would I want them?”

  Because it’ll be an unspeakable agony to lose them. You see, I know what it’s like to be alone in my head. I’m used to it. But you . . . you have no idea of what you have invited down upon yourself.

  “I know perfectly well, I think,” Candy said.

  Do you? Well, for what it’s worth, I doubt you’ll keep your sanity. How could anyone stay sane when you can no longer recognize the face in the mirror?

  “That�
��s my face!” Candy protested. “A Quackenbush face!”

  But the eyes.

  “What about the eyes?”

  You’ll look at your reflection and the mind you’ll see staring back at you won’t be yours. All the memories of glory that you thought belonged to you, all the beautiful mysteries that you believed you’d discovered for yourself, all the ambitions you hold dear—none of them are yours.

  “I don’t believe you. You’re lying now the way you lied to Finnegan and Carrion.”

  You keep Finnegan out of this, Boa said.

  “Oh, feel a bit guilty do you?”

  I said—

  “I heard you.”

  There were a few moments of extremely strained silence between them. Then Boa said: Let. Me. Out. Of. This—PRISON!

  Covenantis appeared and looked at Candy with round, terrified eyes.

  “Did you hear that?” he said softly. “A human’s voice, I swear. Tell me it’s not just me.”

  “No, Covenantis, you’re perfectly sane. Will you get the conjuration underway please, before she gets murderous?”

  “It’s already begun. I’m going into the labyrinth to prepare the site of separation. Follow me there. But first repeat the sacred word nineteen times.”

  “Abarataraba?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that one count?”

  “No!”

  Then the last thing he said before disappearing into the maze, leaving Candy to feel as though at the very moment she was making a life-changing decision for herself—a very adult thing to do—he’d reduced her to a kid in the school yard.

  She smeared the last six Abarataraba into a single Abarrrarababa, and without alerting Covenantis to the fact that she was done counting and was coming, ready or not, she plunged into the maze, entering as Two-in-One and hopefully exiting as simply two.

  Chapter 11

  Severance

  CANDY TOOK FOUR CAUTIOUS steps into the darkened trees, each step delivering her into an even profounder darkness. On the fifth step, however, a flying creature appeared at the periphery of her vision. It buzzed like a big insect, and the brightness of its colors—turquoise and scarlet, speckled with flecks of white gold—defied the darkness.

  It darted around her head for a while then sped away. Candy took a fifth cautious step, then a sixth. Suddenly the creature reappeared, accompanied by several hundred identical beasts, which surrounded her with so much color and movement that she felt faintly nauseated.

  She closed her eyes to seal off the sight, but the chaotic motion of the creatures continued behind her eyelids.

  “What’s happening?” she said, raising her voice above the noise of the buzzing cloud. “Covenantis? Are you still there?”

  “Patience!” Candy heard the boy say.

  He’s frightened, Boa said, a distinct undercurrent of amusement in her words. This isn’t an easy thing to do. If he messes up, he’ll sacrifice your sanity. She let the laughter surface; there was undisguised malice in it. Wouldn’t that be a pity?

  “Covenantis,” Candy said. “Stay calm. Take your time.”

  “He never was very good at that, were you, brother?” said Jollo B’gog.

  “Stay out of here!” Covenantis said. “Mother! Mother!”

  “She was the one who said I could come and help,” the Bad Boy replied.

  “I don’t believe you,” Candy said, opening her eyes again.

  As she did so she saw the Bad Boy run through a wall of the colored creatures, who had assembled ahead of her in an intricate jigsaw of wings, limbs and heads. He yelled as he ran, scattering the assembled creatures. They rose up in front of her, the motion of their wings causing a gust of wind to come at her face, tasting of metal on her tongue.

  “Stop that!” Covenantis yelled, his voice shrill with anger.

  The Bad Boy just laughed.

  “I’ll tell Mama!”

  “Mama won’t stop me. Mama loves everything I do.”

  “Well, aren’t you lucky?” Covenantis said, unable to entirely disguise his envy.

  “Mama says I’m a genius!” the Bad Boy crowed.

  “You are, darling, you are,” Laguna Munn said, entering the space as little more than a shadow of herself. “But this isn’t the time or the place to fool around.”

  All it took was the sound of Laguna Munn’s voice and the creatures that had been scattered by the Bad Boy’s cavorting came back down on the instant, knitting themselves together—wing to claw to beak to coxcomb to fanning tail—forming a small prison around Candy.

  “Better,” Laguna Munn said, her voice all-forgiving. “Pale Child?”

  “Yes, Mama?” Covenantis said.

  “Have you secured all the locks?”

  Oh yes, Boa said. Got to have plenty of locks. I like the sound of that.

  “What are the locks for?” Candy said aloud. “What are you keeping out?”

  “Nothing’s being kept out—” Covenantis said, stopping only when his mother yelled his name, and dropping the last part of his reply to a whisper. “It’s you she’s keeping in.”

  “Covenantis!”

  “I’m coming, Mama!”

  “Quickly now. I haven’t got much time.”

  “I’ve got to go,” the Good Boy said to Candy. “I’ll be right outside.”

  He pointed to a narrow slit of a door in between the wings and claws of the big bugs, and for the first time Candy realized that a solid little chamber had formed around her. The walls were draining of color even as she watched, and every last crack or flaw in the knitted forms sealed. What had been a colorful room made of flittering wings was becoming a silent concrete cell.

  “Why are you locking me in?” Candy said.

  “Conjurations this strong are unstable,” Covenantis said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They can go wrong,” he whispered.

  “Covenantis!” Laguna Munn shouted.

  “Yes, Mama!”

  “Stop talking to the girl. You can’t help her.”

  “No, Mama!”

  “She’ll probably be dead in under a minute.”

  “I’m coming, Mama,” Covenantis said. He gave Candy a little shrug, and slipped out through the door, which closed, leaving no trace of its presence, not a crack.

  Well . . . Boa said softly. You got us here. Better finish it. If you’ve got what it takes.

  “I’ve got what it doesn’t take,” Candy replied, without hesitation.

  Oh? And what’s that?

  “Don’t be stupid,” Candy said. “You.”

  And suddenly, the fear drained from Candy and she turned on the spot, addressing the cold, gray walls.

  “I’m ready,” she told them. “Do whatever you have to do. Just get it over with. If you can avoid spilling blood, that’d be great. But if you can’t, you can’t.”

  She didn’t have to wait very long for the cell to respond. Six shudders passed through its walls, ceiling and floor, like tides of life moving in its dead matter, resurrecting it. She understood now why she’d been given a peripheral glimpse of what the cell had been in its last incarnation: the flock of winged beings. She saw them haunting the gray walls still. One life inside another.

  Was the lesson here that she would have been gray and lifeless as the walls if Boa’s soul had not come into her? Was she being warned that the life she was choosing would be a cell: gray and cold?

  She didn’t believe it. And said so.

  “I’m more than that,” she told the shimmering gray. “I’m not dead matter.”

  Not yet, Boa crowed.

  “Are you ready to do this?” Candy said and thought to both wall and Princess. “Because I’m getting bored with all these stupid threats.”

  Stupid? Boa raged.

  “Just do it,” Laguna Munn said, her voice quickening the powers in the walls. “Quick and clean.”

  “Wait!” Candy said. “I just wanted Boa to know I’m sorry. If I’d known she was there I would h
ave tried to set her free years ago.”

  If you’re looking for absolution, Boa said, you won’t get it from me.

  “Then that’s an end to that,” Laguna Munn said, her response making Candy realize with a shock that the old woman had been listening in on her thoughts from the beginning. “Let’s get this done, one way or the other. Candy! Palms to the wall. Quickly!”

  Candy lay her palms on one of the walls. Instantly she could see the creatures dancing in the solid air beyond. Their wings and bodies shed the flakes of white gold that decorated them. They converged on Candy’s palms, the fragments flowing together into two gilded streams.

  She felt them against her palms, breaking into deltas, spreading along the dry watercourses of the lines upon her hands, and then sinking deeper, dissolving her surface in order to flow into her veins. Her hands became translucent; the brightness inside her flesh was so intense she could see the strong simple lines of her finger bones, and the complicated design of her nerves.

  The brightness quickened once it got to her elbows, like a fire blown by the wind into a thicket many summers dry. It raced up her arms, and across her body.

  She felt it, but it didn’t hurt. It was more like being reminded that this was her.

  She was real: and being real, and her, was—What? What was it? Who was it?

  That was the big question, wasn’t it? When all the fireworks were over: Who was she?

  You’re nothing, Boa said quietly.

  Candy wanted to counter Boa’s insults. But her energies were focused elsewhere: on the rush of awakening that was passing through her body, down from her neck, over her torso, and up, filling the twice-souled vessel above.

  Did you hear me? Boa said.

  “Keep your petty insults to yourself, Boa,” Laguna Munn said. “You may have suffered a little, trapped in the child’s head. But Lordy Lou, there are worse deaths to suffer. Such as the real thing. Oh . . . and while we’re talking, I know what you’re thinking: that once all this is over you’ll have my sons running around doing your bidding!”

  Boa said nothing.

  “That’s what I thought. Well, forget it. There’s only room for one woman in the lives of my beautiful sons.”