Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 34

Unfinished

“I WOULD HAVE DIED,” HE said, “except that I knew you were still here, Princess. I think that’s what kept me from giving up completely. The thought of finding my way back to you. Oh, and my nightmares, of course.”

As he spoke, two of the filament creatures slid out of hiding among the tattered robes Carrion was wearing, and encircled his neck. Though they were not as bright as they’d once been, the phosphorescence they gave off was still enough to offer her a glimpse of Carrion’s face. He looked like something that had been thumbed out of mud and excrement, his eyes little more than pits in which there were slivers of light, his lips ragged strips of dirt and sinew that could not conceal his dead bone smile.

“Don’t look at me, Princess,” he said. He tried to turn away from her, to conceal his diminished state but he did so too quickly for his mismade legs. They failed him, and he stumbled. He would have fallen in the filth underfoot had he not reached out and forced his fingers—which for all their crude form, did not lack strength—into the rotted plaster and fractured stone.

“I’m ashamed that you should see me like this. But I needed to be in your presence, just for a little time. When you next see me—”

“She isn’t here,” Candy said.

“What?”

“We parted ways.”

“You drove her out?”

“Not all by myself. I needed help to be sure I had the details right. But she is gone. See for yourself. Look in my mind.” She approached his hunched-over figure as she spoke to him, raising her arm as she did so, offering contact. “Go on. Do whatever you need to do. I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

It was true. The Lord of Midnight who’d stalked her in the Dead Man’s House was nowhere visible in this frail shadow figure that stood before her now. He glanced at her face, his raw features riddled with suspicion. Then he reached out and touched her, fingertips to fingertips. She felt his inquiring presence in her, like ice water swallowed on a baking-hot day.

“She’d used you up,” she said to him. “So she left.”

She seemed to hear him calling for his Princess in her head. Just her name. No endearments. No filigrees. Just that plaintive crying out.

“You loved her, didn’t you?” Candy said. “You still do.”

Carrion raised his head a few inches and turned to look at Candy. There was such despair in that broken face, and such rage there too, mingled with it.

“Yes, I love her,” he said. “Of course I love her.”

“And she promised she’d love you, if you gave her what she wanted.”

Carrion made a tiny nod of his head.

“Which was . . . ?”

“Magic, of course. Nothing significant at the beginning, she just wanted to find out whether she had an aptitude for it.”

“Which she did.”

“Yes. Then of course she wanted more.”

“When was all this? Before I was born?”

“Of course, years and years. These things don’t happen quickly.”

“What do you mean: these things?”

“I mean I fell in love with her. She was a very powerful creature. But this was long before you were born, Candy. I was a very young man. I couldn’t resist her. I gave her access to the Abarataraba. And I think she probably started to steal secrets from it immediately. So many secrets. I let her steal whatever she wanted as proof of my love. I even built her a place where she could practice what she’d learned.”

“Where was that?”

“On the Isle of the Black Egg. Building her that place was my first big mistake. She told me she wanted her privacy, and I could only step foot there if she invited me. Which I didn’t do much. Sometimes I’d wait maybe two or three months before she’d deign to let me see her.”

“But you put up with it.”

“I loved her beyond all reason.”

“And she knew . . .”

“She knew.”

Before Carrion could reply, Candy heard John Mischief calling her name. Then Drowze. Then Serpent. She glanced back toward the market. There was no sign of them. But it was only a matter of time before one of them came looking.

“It’s time we parted, Carrion. If any of my friends see you they’ll assume the worst and you’ll get hurt.”

“Do you really care?”

“I suppose . . . yes. I suppose I must. Seems to me you’ve been hurt enough one way or another.”

“I’ve taken a lot of lives in my time. I don’t suppose that comes as any surprise.”

“Not really.”

“But you still wish me no harm? I find that . . . unusual, to say the least. It’s not as though you’re a sentimental girl.”

“I thought I saw you die once already,” Candy said. “And that was enough. Nobody needs to suffer that twice.”

“One life, one death . . . ?”

“Yes.”

“If only things were that equitable.”

“Well, aren’t they? You live a life, you die. That’s it.”

“No, Candy, that’s not it. We each of us die countless little deaths on our way to the last. We die out of shame and humiliation. We perish from despair. And of course we die for . . .” He stared at the garbage-strewn ground, the word he wanted to say defying him.

Candy said it for him.

“Love.”

He nodded, still looking at the ground. “Nothing else wounds so deeply and irreparably. Nothing else robs us of hope so much as being unloved by one we love.”

“Why can’t you let her go?”

“Because if I did, I’d have no reason to live.”

“Come on,” Candy said with a smile in her voice. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Have you ever loved, then lost your beloved?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Then let us remember to talk again, when things are different.”

Candy heard her name called again.

“Somebody is looking for you?” Carrion said.

“Yes. I have friends here. They’ll come looking for me soon.”

“And—”

“Well . . . they wouldn’t . . .” She struggled for the words. “I haven’t . . . I mean, what we . . .”

“What we?”

“We have a strange . . .”

“Go on. Say whatever it is you were going to say.”

“Friendship. We have a strange friendship.”

“That we do,” he said. “Are you ashamed of it? Of me?”

“No. It’s just . . . when people talk about you—”

“You don’t need to go on. I know my reputation. After all, I earned it.”

“Please,” Candy said. “Go. I’m going back to—”

“Wait. Before you rush off. You need to know something.”

“Well, be quick.”

“Go back to the Hereafter. Now. And go quickly. Take your friends if you want to save their lives.”

“Why?”

Carrion sighed.

“Why can’t you just take my word this once?”

“I’m me. I ask questions. And try to stop you from getting killed.”

“And now I’m returning the favor.”

“Are you saying that if I stay in the Abarat I’ll be killed?”

“Not just you. Most of the Abarat is about to change forever.”

“How? Why?”

Carrion drew an aching breath and spoke.

“You may as well know, I suppose, if it’ll persuade you to go.” He took another breath, deeper still. Then came the answer to her question. “I’ve reconnected with a few of my spies. I used to pay them to inform on my grandmother. The Old Hag has a few tricks up her sleeve. She’s creating something called a stormwalker.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“No. You shouldn’t. Second, an army of stitchlings has been assembled. Enough to provide ‘a knife for every heart,’ was the phrase my employee used.”

“Lordy Lou,” Candy whispered.

“And—”

“There’s more?”

“Much. Absolute Midnight, Candy. That’s what my grandmother calls it. She plans to block out the light. No moons, no suns, no stars. The sky will be dark over land and sea. And it will be cold.”

Candy felt dizzy. This was a lot of information to process in far too short a time.

“She has enough power to blot out the suns?”

“Not personally. She’s unleashed a living darkness. A species called the sacbrood, who’ve been growing in number for years. Now there are millions of them. Enough to cover the heavens from one end of the Abarat to the other.”

“And you were part of this?”

“She raised me to release them. I was to be the one she knew she could trust. After the fire, there was only she and I. Everything I had I owed to her, starting with my life. And she never let me forget it.”

“So the sacbrood cover the skies? There’s no light? No warmth? It’s like the end of the world?”

“That’s right.”

“But they can’t stay up there forever, can they?”

“No. They’ll die off after a time. But it’ll only take a few days of darkness for the real trouble to show itself. There are fiends all across the Hours who have been waiting for this Midnight. Enemies of the light, waiting for a chance to strike down those who loved the sun, moon, and stars. These enemies are monsters of every kind, but they have hatred in common. They’re all outcasts, pariahs; fiends who’ve escaped the gallows or the guillotine, and want revenge. Ghouls, Malefics, Wrathaki, Babelites; fifty kinds of monsters you could maybe name, and three times as many you could not. They’ve been out of sight for so long, living with the dead, or in thunderheads, or in places where the waters of the Izabella are all bruise and blood. So they’ve been hiding. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting until this Midnight, when they will finally get their chance to slaughter everything that smells of happiness.”

“A plot like this can’t have been completely unseen. What about the Council? Or people who see the future?”

“If anyone saw the truth and spoke it, then that was the end of them. My grandmother has never needed the law to get a judgment. She is her own judge, and her seamstresses her executioners. One needle, driven into the eye, or one knife—”

“All right,” Candy said. “I get the idea. I wish I knew you for a liar.”

“But I’m not.”

“No. You’re not. They’re coming out of the west, aren’t they?”

“How did you know?” Carrion said.

“The birds,” Candy replied.

It wasn’t much of an answer, but it seemed to be all that Carrion needed.

“Well, now it’s no longer a secret. There’s no need for anyone to move carefully. So it’ll spread quickly.”

“So what’s to be done? How do we defend ourselves?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. There is no defense, Candy. Just go back home while you still can. And be grateful that you’ve got Chickentown to go back to.”

“Back to Chickentown? No. I love the Abarat. I won’t give up on it.”

“So love it from afar. Sometimes it’s better that way.”

“There you are!”

She looked back down the alley. The John Brothers were heading toward her.

“Go,” she murmured to Carrion.

“Who’s your friend?” John Drowze wanted to know.

Carrion gave her one last puzzled look, then he started to stumble back away down the alley. She watched him take a few steps, then she turned back to face the brothers.

“Who was that?” Mischief said.

“It doesn’t matter, at least not now. We have more urgent problems. Where is everyone?”

Half the brothers were still looking back into the shadows where Candy’s mysterious friend had gone, while the rest were trying to follow Candy and there was an absurd moment when they went neither one way nor the other.

“Mischief, will you get your brothers in order? We have to ready ourselves.”

“For what?” Mischief said.

“The End of the World,” she replied.