Abarat: Absolute Midnight

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.”

“You’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.”