Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 35

stealing away

THERE WERE TIMES, CANDY knew, when it was best to be honest. But not always. Sometimes telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth brought nothing but trouble. And truth, like lies, often just got worse if you tried to clean up the mess with more of the same. She was in that very situation now.

When she’d emerged from the alleyway following her conversation with Carrion, and found her gang of friends, she had something very urgent to tell them: information given to her by Carrion. Midnight was on its way: a darkness that was clearly designed to kill everything in its path. But she couldn’t tell them such news and not expect them to ask her how she’d come by it. They’d want to know. She could scarcely blame that. In their position, faced with the same news, she’d want to know its course too. But that’s where the lies had to be told.

If she told them she’d spent the last few minutes in conversation with Christopher Carrion, they’d be debating whether he could be trusted until Midnight came and blacked out everything. So she reported the story as Carrion had explained it, but told them the information had come from one of the women of the Fantomaya. It was difficult enough reporting such bizarre news in the midst of the market crowd, doing her best to make herself heard over the din of the stall-owners yelling their prices. Candy told them only of the sacbrood. For once, John Serpent believed her. The rest thought this woman from the Fantomaya was either crazy or an impostor.

“I don’t believe it,” John Mischief said. “You can’t plague the whole world with darkness. It’s not plausible.”

“Why not?” Candy said. “Because it hasn’t happened yet?”

“Do you trust these women?” Betty Thunder asked her.

“Yes. I think what I’m telling you is the truth. It doesn’t help much”—she looked at Mischief—“to say it can’t be done because it’s being done. Right now. It certainly explains the birds.”

“Oh, Lordy Lou,” Malingo murmured. “The birds.”

Now the doubt began to melt.

“We saw them too,” Legitimate Eddie said. “All flying east . . .”

“Away from the sacbrood,” Tom said. “That makes sense. I’ve certainly never seen a migration like that before.”

“There’s never been one,” Malingo said.

“All right,” John Mischief said, “so this thing is happening: what do we do?”

“As much as I hate to say it, I think we should go to the Yebba Dim Day,” Candy said, “to that Council that hates me so much.”

“My mother’s on Babilonium,” Betty said. “I’ve got to go to her.”

“I’m going with you,” said Tom. “My Macy is there. We should be together if the world is going to end.”

“I think Babilonium might already be in the dark,” Candy said.

Silent tears ran down Betty’s cheeks. Clyde hugged her.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re going. The three of us.”

“Why is Mater Motley doing this?” Tom wanted to know.

“Because she’s a venomous piece of work,” John Serpent said. “And yes, I do realize a man called Serpent shouldn’t be tossing words like venomous around, but I’ve plenty more. She’s a vicious, loathsome, life-hating monster. I vote we skip the trip to the Yebba Dim Day and go straight to Gorgossium and call her down from her tower.”

“And what do we do if she comes down?” John Slop said.

Serpent didn’t offer up a reply.

“I think we should start walking down to the harbor while we talk,” Candy suggested. “We have to find a boat.”

“We should get three boats, then,” Geneva said. “I’ll go to the Nonce and find Finnegan.”

They had emerged from the market by now, and on the quieter street that took them back down toward the harbor. They were about to talk at a more natural volume, though Candy dropped her voice to a whisper and shared the other piece of information regarding Mater Motley’s plans: the part about the beasts.

“Lordy Lou,” Geneva said. “This is very bad.”

“And the part about the darkness wasn’t?” Mischief said.

“Are there a lot of creatures hidden away in the darkness?” Tom said.

“Oh yes,” said Eddie.

“How do you know?” Candy said.

“I wasn’t always a great actor,” Eddie said. “Before I took to the stage I made a nice business out of tracking down the Ziaveign and putting them out of their misery.”

“Zia-what?” Candy said.

“Ziaveign. Eight Dynasties’ destroyers and fiends.”

“This gets worse and worse,” said John Slop, looking rather pale.

“Did you say you put them out of their misery?” Mischief said.

“I worked with my two brothers,” Eddie said, “and yes, we did kill them when we were able to do so. Of course that was much more expensive. Much too expensive in the end. It cost my brothers their lives.”

A heavy silence fell on the company.

“I’m sorry,” Candy said finally. “That’s terrible.”

“They were fine, brave men. But the Eight Dynasties are strong. They may have been in hiding a long time, but that doesn’t mean they’re dead. They’ll rise up. That’s what Mater Motley is counting on.”

“She didn’t do all this alone,” John Mischief said. “She had help from that wretched grandson of hers.”

“Well, at least he’s dead and gone,” Geneva said.

Candy couldn’t bring herself to keep the truth from these people, who had done so much for her, any longer.

“Actually . . . he’s not,” she said.

“You know this for a fact?”

Candy nodded.

“How?”

“It’s complicated,” Candy said.

“What’s complicated about a man who lives in a fishbowl, pickled with his own nightmares?” Mischief replied. “And who has almost taken your life on several occasions? He’s dreck, dirt, excrement.”

Candy remembered her first glimpse of him in the alleyway. She’d thought something very similar: that Carrion was indeed made of filth. But in the end that was the fate of all flesh, wasn’t it? Everything decayed, went back to dirt, to the earth. But that wasn’t the whole story. People weren’t just walking sacks of meat. Unlike Carrion, she’d started to understand that there was something eternal, underlying, in everyone, perhaps even everything. A soul, for want of a better word, which—even when time had dimmed her sight and dulled her memories—would burn as brightly as it burned now.

Even if her memories seeped away, the sweet and sour of her life stolen from the meat of her mind, her soul would know its way to the net of remembrance that was being cast out over her life and all that touched it, gently retrieving the details of every moment. Cast out over and over, world without end. It wasn’t so surprising that these thoughts were being discussed in the room at the back of her head, while in the front of her mind the part of her that was in the here and now continued to talk with her friends. If ever there was a time in her life that she needed the comfort of this faith in the Eternal, it was Here and Now. She was part of a struggle that was older than life: the battle between Light and Darkness.

She was certain she belonged in this moment, in the company of these loving friends. She was here, in this world she loved so much, to play a part in its future. She didn’t understand, nor even particularly care to, how she had come to have a part in the approaching struggle. But everything she’d done since she’d first come here—her meeting with Malingo; with Wolfswinkel; her visit to the Time Out of Time; her pursuit of her own secret history that she’d pieced together from many sources; her strange relationship with Carrion; and her final liberation from the Princess Boa—all of it had been a preparation, an education, for being alive at this moment.

“What are you thinking about?” Malingo inquired.

“Everything,” she replied.

The atmosphere down at the harbor, which had been so odd when they’d got off the ferry, was even odder now. Some of the seabirds were still there, sitting in silent rows like bored jurists awaiting the beginning of a trial. But most of the people had left, and those who remained were gathered around a makeshift pulpit from which a crazed minister with long white hair and one ragged wing was preaching to them.

Candy listened to the creature talk about how the righteous would find their way to the light and the rest go into darkness; that was all she could stomach. She blocked its voice out, and looked in the opposite direction only to find that the missing seabirds had also found themselves a spiritual leader. Having forsaken their perch along the harbor wall they were now gathered in front of one of the shuttered restaurants, attending with many a beady black eye to a very large but very antiquated bird that looked like an albino vulture with a touch of pterodactyl in its blood. It was addressing its congregation in a language of crawings and chitterings, which was a great deal more complex, even eloquent, than the screech of a seagull.

As for the captains and crews of the small fishing boats that were tied up alongside the quayside, they had all departed, presumably to be with their families at this troubling time, or to drink in solitude.

“So now what do we do?” said Malingo, surveying the deserted dock.

“We choose boats that look sturdy and are fueled up, and we take them,” Eddie said.

“Just take them?”

“Yes! Lordy Lou, this isn’t the time to be arguing the moral niceties of the thing. There’s nobody here to barter with anyway.”

“Do we have to take boats?” Clyde said. “What about one of your glyphs?”

“I think we could probably conjure up a glyph between us but trust me, we don’t want to be in the air right now. Not with those things up there.”

“We’re safer on water,” Tom said.

“I trust Mama Izabella,” Candy said. “She’s not afraid of the dark. So we take some boats, yes? We can apologize when the lights go on again!”

“I wish there were some weapons we could lay our hands on too,” Geneva said.

“Maybe some harpoons?” Eddie suggested.

“It’s worth a look . . .” Geneva said. “I’ll take whatever we can find. We don’t know what we’re going to be up against.”

“The worst of the worst,” Eddie said grimly. Since he’d confessed his monster-trapping past, and the grim price it had cost his brothers, Candy realized that Eddie had nothing left to lose. The sight of his pain made her speak up.

“We’re all going off in different directions,” she said, “and who knows when we’ll see one another again. Or even if. So I just want to say that I love you. And I’ve been blessed to have this time with you. I want you to know you’re the best friends anyone could have.”

She looked from face to face as she spoke, not even attempting to put on a smile. If she’d understood Carrion correctly, then this Midnight would mark the end of the Abarat as they’d all known it. And what would be left? An archipelago ruled over by the monstrous Empress, Mater Motley? Or simply a wasteland, destroyed by the poisonous work of the fiends this darkness would unleash?

As Malingo and Clyde searched for weapons, boats were chosen. Geneva, who was traveling in search of Finnegan, chose a small, sleek vessel that looked to have been designed for sport rather than commercial fishing. It was called The Loner. Two-Toed Tom took the helm of a vessel called simply Big Boat, which he, Betty, and Clyde chose for its size, given that they were hoping to evacuate more than just one person. Candy chose for sentiment’s sake a boat that reminded her of the harrowing journey on the Parroto Parroto: Malingo, Legitimate Eddie, and the Johns agreed to join her. John Mischief instantly had his brothers democratically vote him the Captain.

All three boats had lanterns hanging from their masts and from the eaves of their wheelhouses, but at Candy’s suggestion they went aboard several other vessels moored in the vicinity and borrowed their lanterns too. If they were truly going to meet a wave of darkness out there then they needed to be carrying as many light sources as possible. There was some debate as to whether they should go back to the market and get some provisions to sustain them, but before they could come to a conclusion on the matter it was taken out of their hands by the fact that six or seven of the potbellied minister’s righteous congregation had noticed Candy and her friends. They broke away from the assembly, yelling: “Thieves! You get away from those boats!”

“I’ll be going then,” Geneva said briskly. “I’ll see you all again soon. Travel safely.”

So saying, she fired up her boat and sped away from the dock.

The Big Boat, carrying Betty and Clyde, and captained by Tom, was right behind. The only thing holding up the departure of the third boat, The Piper, was dissention among the John Brothers about who was going to be second-in-command.

“We don’t have time for this!” Candy said. “Get moving! Right now!”

Her intervention had an immediate effect. The brothers grabbed the wheel and readied themselves.

The fastest member of the minister’s congregation was a young man with mottled purple-and-white skin and a very fierce look on his face. Without waiting for the others to catch up with him he leaped into The Piper, and went straight for Malingo, who was attempting to untie the rope that tethered the boat to the dock. Candy reacted straightaway, catching hold of the collar of his jacket and pulling the young man toward her. He wasn’t any taller than she was, but he was lean and strong and, despite the fact that he was trying to stop them, there was something in his eyes that—

He wrenched himself free and turned on Candy, yelling: “Stop! Right now!”

“Got no time!” Candy said, shaking away whatever it was she had felt a moment ago. “And no choice!”

There were yells meanwhile, from other members of the minister’s congregation.

“We’re coming, Gazza!” one of them yelled. “Don’t let them go!”

In a few more seconds, Candy knew, all would be lost. They’d never get away.

“Mischief!” she yelled.

At that very moment, The Piper shuddered as the engine turned on, and then jerked forward with such violence that Malingo, the piebald Gazza, and Candy were all thrown down onto the mess of nets and floats that littered the deck. Eddie, who was much shorter and therefore steadier, was the only one not to fall. He had found a large machete somewhere, and holding it aloft, he raced to the stern of The Piper where the rope still kept the boat from departing the dock. Candy sat up, throwing off a net stinking of fish in which she’d landed, only to see Legitimate, wielding the machete like a man who’d done it many a time and brought it down with all his strength, severing the rope that kept them from making their escape.

He did so with not a moment to spare. The rest of their pursuers were a stride or two from boarding The Piper. One of the men attempted to leap aboard the boat even as the rope was severed. The Piper sped forward, and the leaper landed in the water.

They were away! The only problem was their extra passenger: the youth called Gazza. He was still in a fighting fury.

“You!” he said, pointing his mottled finger at Candy. “I know who you are! The girl from the Hereafter!”

“Candy Qua—”

“I don’t care to know your name. I demand that you order your thugs to turn this boat around.”

“We can’t,” Candy said. “If you want to get off, you’ll have to jump and swim.”

The youth called Gazza pulled a short-bladed knife out of a sheath hanging from his belt.

“I’m not swimming,” he said.

“Well, we’re not turning back.”

“We’ll see about that,” Gazza said, and shoved Candy aside. Then, knife in hand, he headed toward the wheelhouse.

Malingo yelled a warning to Mischief, but the roar of the engine surely kept the brothers from hearing it. Gazza opened the wheelhouse door, and would have been through it, his knife raised, had Candy not lunged at him throwing one arm around his neck and slamming her fist down on the hand that held the knife. He didn’t drop it. But she managed to pull him away from the door, at which moment, by sheer chance, the boat cleared the harbor and hit the heavy swell of the open sea. The boat was briefly lifted into the air as it crested the first big wave, throwing Candy, with her arm still around Gazza’s throat, back onto the deck. He fell with her. On top of her, in fact.

This time he did lose the knife. And by the time all the blushing and scrambling and cursing and struggling to stand up again was over, Malingo had picked the knife up and Eddie, looking a lot more serious, indeed dangerous, than the short, green, egotistical comedian Candy had first met, had his stolen machete pointed at Gazza’s navel.

“I will gut you, sir,” he said, betraying a trace of actorly flamboyance in that last syllable only, “if you make any further attempt to do harm. I mean it. I can and I will. You can let go of him now, Miss Quackenbush. Unless of course, you feel there’s a reason to hang on to him that I hadn’t fathomed.”

Candy stared briefly into Gazza’s eyes.

“No,” she said, averting her gaze and feeling embarrassed but not entirely sure what she had to be embarrassed about. “He’s . . . fine. He’s not going to be stupid about this once we explain—”

“Never mind the explanations. All I wanted you to do was turn the boat around,” Gazza said.

The purple patches on his face had turned a very pale blue, and his eyes, which had shards of gold in them, were no longer fierce.

“You can still jump in and swim back.”

“I can’t swim.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Eddie said impatiently. “We’ve got work to do.”

“If he goes in the water,” Malingo said, “he’ll drown. I can’t have that on my conscience.”

“I don’t give two hoots about your conscience. The whole world is being overtaken by darkness and the dynasties—”

“We heard it, Eddie,” Malingo said.

“I know their names! All eight of them: Tarva Zan, the Binder, and Lailahlo, who sings babies to their graves. And Crawfeit and Quothman Shant, and Shote, who leaves plagues wherever he walks—”

“Is he okay?” Gazza said, looking at Candy, the colors in his eyes reeling around.

“No,” she said.

“—there’s Clowdeus Geefee, who killed my little brother. And Ogo Fro, who killed my big brother. Sent him down into a despair he never rose up from. And last—but very far from least—there’s Gan Nug, who talks to the creatures that are in waters, deep down below us right now.”

Mischief and the brothers had emerged from the wheelhouse to hear Eddie offer up his list.

“What’s going on out here?” John Slop said.

Gazza stared at Mischief and his brothers, and for the first time in the considerable while Candy had known the Johns, she saw them do something that was curiously eerie. All of them shifted their gazes and looked at Gazza at the same speed and the same moment. And then, all at the same time, they said: “What are you lookin’ at, kid?”

It was too much for Gazza. He dropped to his knees, presenting the diminutive Eddie with an easier target.

“All right,” he said, “I won’t fight. I won’t cause any trouble. I believe you. Whatever you say, I believe you.”

Candy laughed.

“That’s good to hear. Eddie, put down the knife. We already know he’s trustworthy.”

“Me?” Gazza said. “Absolutely. Totally and utterly. I’m with you.”

He looked up at her, the pastel motes in his eyes settling into blue irises in pale yellow eyes. They looked straight up at Candy, meeting her gaze and quickening her heart.