Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 38

An Old Trick

WITH THE JOHN BROTHERS at the helm of The Piper, the harbor at Tazmagor was soon out of sight, erased by the sea spray that was thrown up by the waters of Mama Izabella. Candy went into the boat’s wheelhouse and consulted the very old charts—all of which were covered with notes about where the boat’s owner had been successful in finding schools of ninkas, fool fish, and even the triple-beaked, ten-tentacled decapi.

“You know what?” John Fillet said.

“No, what?” said John Moot.

“I think our glorious leader has taken a liking to our new crew member,” John Fillet said.

Candy kept her eyes on the chart, though there was very little information there of use.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Fillet,” Candy said.

“It’s not just Fillet,” John Slop said.

“We all noticed it,” said John Pluckitt.

“You can’t keep much from the John Brothers,” said John Drowze.

“It’s none of your business,” Candy said.

“I’m sorry,” John Mischief said.

“You’re all such gossips.”

“The point is—” Mischief started to say.

“The point is whatever you think you saw, you saw wrong. Lordy Lou, the boy was going to stab you.”

“So you stopped him by throwing your arms around him,” said John Serpent. “Yes, we saw.”

“I am not having any further discussion on the subject.”

She stopped and turned to look directly at what she’d seen from the corner of her eye. The Piper was plunged into a thick fog, making the end of one Hour and the beginning of another. The light continued to dim, but the darkness wasn’t black. There were shifting patches of blue and purple in it now.

“We’re going to be coming out of the other side of this very shortly,” Mischief said.

The brothers were back at the wheel now, their smiles erased. Fun time was over. Candy went to the wheelhouse windows to look for some sign of the coming Hour. But the windows were filthy with an accumulation of salt and bird droppings.

“Any sign of The Great Head?” Sallow asked her.

“I can’t see anything. But I’ll hang on tight. And you guys? Keep the gossip to yourselves in the future.”

“So we were wrong?” Mischief said with a smirk that defined his name. “You don’t like him?”

Candy left the wheelhouse without answering.

There was a ladder that brought her up to the roof of the wheelhouse, and a railing for her to keep hold of, for which she was grateful. The swell was growing with every wave. The boat reeled and shuddered.

“Mind if I join you?” Malingo called up to her.

“Of course not,” Candy yelled back. “Come on up!”

Seconds later, Malingo was standing at her right-hand side, hanging on to the iron railing as tightly as she was.

“If we’re on the right course, we should be seeing The Great Head from behind,” he said.

“In which direction?”

“Hopefully dead ahead.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“Neither can I. But the fog is thinning, I think.”

“Oh. You’re right! I see it, Malingo.” She laughed. “I feared the worst, but it’s still standing!” Candy called down to Mischief. “I see it! Off the port bow!”

Mischief cut The Piper’s engines, sensing perhaps that everyone aboard needed to have a quiet moment in order to think about what lay ahead. The powerful currents met out of the boundary of the fog and into the murky twilight in which The Great Head stood. Even viewed from behind, The Head was an extraordinary monument, the towers that crowned its cranium so cunningly designed that they seemed to rise naturally out of the structure of the skull.

A bonfire was blazing on the top of the tallest of the towers. It was not a natural fire. The flames were violet and silver and when they rose to sufficient heights they threw off lattices and other geometric forms, then briefly blazed as if being tested against the twilight sky. She watched the flames without even blinking, mesmerized.

“I think it’s sending a message,” Eddie said from the deck. “They look like sentences being written in the air.”

“Really?” said Malingo.

“He might be right,” Candy said, watching the flames closely. “Oh . . . wait. Yes. Look!”

She pointed past The Head. There was a cloud of roiling darkness laid along the horizon; its shadow, erasing all below as it advanced across the moonlit sea. The moon itself, two-thirds full, its face already touched by the seething fingers of darkness. And of course The Great Head, its huge, simple form—at least seen from behind—stoic, immovable. That was both its strength and its weakness, of course. It would not move, it could not move; and when darkness had come and gone, it would still be standing. Apparently it had occupants who lacked Candy’s faith, however. There were maybe forty boats in the vicinity of The Head all in the process of making a departure.

“What are those idiots doing?” Malingo said.

“And where do they think they’re going to go?” Candy replied.

Some of those departing had seen the approaching cloud and the sight of it had obviously made them reconsider their plans. Several boats, many overloaded with passengers, were turning around, or at least attempting to. The consequences were inevitable. Boats rocked and turned over, pitching their living cargo into the water.

There was a lot of panicked shouting and cries for help. There were some voices too, that did not express such terror and confusion. They did not shout, they sang: a great multitude of voices rising together to sing in Old Abaratian. It mattered not at all that Candy couldn’t make any sense of the words. The majestic calm in the tune reassured Candy the way her favorite Christmas carol, “Silent Night,” reassured her. She wondered if they knew the story of love being born in a stable, with shepherds and kings, and a bright star, high above, to mark the place, and for a moment, she wasn’t on a boat drifting on an alien sea as a living darkness eclipsed the moon. For a moment, she was back on Followell Street, on a night long gone, before she’d come to fear the stink of beer on her father’s breath.

“The moon’s almost gone,” Malingo said, monotone.

“You don’t sound very bothered about it,” Candy said.

“Well, what can I do about it? It’s a big cloud, and I’m a geshrat with a fish-gutting knife I got from a stowaway, which I wouldn’t know how to use properly anyway. I should give it back to him.”

“No,” Candy said very firmly. “You hang on to that. You might need it one of these days.”

“One of these days? There aren’t going to be any more days.”

“Oh, there will be,” said John Mischief. He’d climbed up to share the view. “Clouds come. Clouds go. It’s the way clouds are. You can’t rely on them. They’re too . . .”

“Flighty?” John Moot suggested.

“The very word!” Slop said.

“It’s not that simple. This isn’t an ordinary cloud. It can’t be blown apart by a gust of wind. It’s a living thing,” she protested.

“How come you know all these things?”

“Because she’s becoming a shaman,” said John Drowze.

As Candy drew breath to remark that she didn’t much like being talked about as if she wasn’t there, she heard somebody call her name. A woman’s voice. For a moment, she panicked. Boa? No. It couldn’t be. She glanced around, looking for the person who’d spoken. The brothers, meanwhile, continued to discuss Candy’s shamanic potential as though she wasn’t even there, and the tempers on both sides of the argument were becoming ragged.

“If she’s a shaman,” said Slop, “then I’m an only child.”

“He’s right,” said Fillet. “The girl’s half crazy—”

“Only half?” said Sallow.

“You underestimate her,” John Mischief said. “Yes, she’s a little unpredictable, but that’s what we need if the Abarat’s to survive.”

“She knows more than’s good for her—”

“More than she knows she knows—”

Candy? Come here.

Meanwhile, the debate raged on.

“Fillet’s right!”

“She’s a sweet girl—”

“But all that power—”

“She can’t deal with it—”

“And what if you’re wrong?”

Pay no attention to their babble, Candy, the voice said.

You’re not Boa, are you? she asked, knowing she only had to form the thought for it to be heard.

No.

Lordy Lou . . .

Please. We have very little time, Candy. You’re going to have to step away from them for a minute or two.

Step away? Are you kidding? Candy replied. I’m on a boat.

We know, another said. We can see you.

When the second voice spoke, Candy knew who she was talking to. She scanned the water looking for some sign of the women of the Fantomaya.

Leave your chatty friends on the boat. Come and talk to us.

Where are you?

Fourteen paces off the stern. Come to us, Candy. Quickly. Mater Motley’s seamstresses are after us. They’re riding fever wheels, and they’re moving fast.

What’s a fever wheel?

If you see one you’ll know and if you don’t then you’re blessed not to have the sight in your head.

Now that Candy knew where to look, she saw Joephi and Mespa. They appeared to be simply standing on the swell, illuminated by a light in the water that surged and then waned again in rhythm with the waves. Even at this distance Candy could see that the journey had taken a considerable toll on them. Their robes were dirty and tattered, and their faces and arms bloodied.

Come on, Joephi said, beckoning to Candy.

I can’t walk on water.

Yes, you can, Mespa said. Have faith in yourself.

I’m going to sink.

Faith. Hurry!

She turned back toward Malingo and the John Brothers.

“I’ll be right back,” she said to them.

Then she climbed down the ladder. Legitimate Eddie was staring up at the bizarre bonfire blazing on top of The Great Head.

“There’s one of them up there,” he said.

“One who?”

“One of the eight. Gan Nug!”

He pointed and Candy looked up at the Head to see that there was indeed a tall creature there, his stylish clothes, high-coiffed hair and reptilian wings garishly lit by the pyre he tended.

“Any idea what he’s doing?” Candy asked him, keeping up the same casual tone as she clambered over the side of the boat.

“Calling something up, I dare say,” Eddie replied. “From the depths.”

“Wait! Wait!” Gazza said. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

She looked up at him. The light from the swaying lanterns made his face seem to shift, the only steady thing his immense gold eyes.

“There’s some friends of mine I need to talk to.”

Gazza looked out across the Izabella.

“Are those women walking on water?”

“Lordy Lou, you ask a lot of questions. Yes.”

“Witches?”

“I suppose so.”

“You’re one as well, are you?”

“Not really. I’m learning, but—”

Are you coming, Joephi said, or are you just going to flirt with the boy?

“They say you’re a boy.”

“The witch women?”

“Yes.”

“If you want to talk to Candy,” he hollered, his voice echoing off The Great Head, “then come to the boat!”

Come, Candy. Or if the boy has your heart, don’t. Just make up your mind.

“I’m coming,” she murmured, and set her foot on the water.

She tested her weight on the frothy water. The news wasn’t good.

My foot’s sinking!

“You’re going to drown!” Gazza yelled. “Get back up here.”

Are you barefoot? Mespa asked.

No, you didn’t say anything about—

Isn’t it obvious? It’s you who’s walking on water, not the shoes.

All right! No shoes.

She headed back to Gazza.

“Hold my hand.”

“Finally, some common sense!” he said.

“Don’t get excited. I’m just taking my shoes off. Keep hold.”

“I’m not letting go.”

“Oy. They bicker like man and wife,” said Eddie.

“All right. I’ve just . . . got to . . . got to get . . .”

The sentence came out in fragments as she struggled to get the shoes off her feet, attempting not to lose them as she did so. She liked the shoes. They were Abaratian: iridescent blue, with little animals performing on them in a shoe sky circus. But it was an awkward maneuver to reach over Gazza’s arm to get her fingers under her shoe to keep from—

Her left shoe slipped off and dropped into the water with a palliative plop. It sank instantly. The other shoe came off more easily, and for a few seconds, the last gleam of the smothered moon caught the animals prancing upon that perfect blue that no sky had ever been. She tossed it on deck.

“There,” she said to Gazza. “I’m ready.”

Then get on with it, Mespa said.

Candy let go of Gazza’s hand and walked back to the ladder, despite his protests. She set a naked foot, the left, down in the water. No, not in the water, on it. The surface wasn’t entirely solid, but certainly enough to support her. She glanced up. Malingo was looking down at her.

“Tell me you’re not going to walk!”

“Well . . . I’m a horrible swimmer,” Candy said, “so . . . yes!”

“You’re crazy.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling her,” Gazza said.

She suddenly felt the water that had supported her foot softening.

Don’t listen to doubt, Candy, Joephi said. All great things come of paradox.

“Don’t worry,” she said to Malingo as she took a breath and drew her gaze away from his disbelieving face.

“I’m not going to drown, Malingo. I’m not!”

“You can still turn back.”

“No. I can’t, Malingo. You know I can’t. I’ve been preparing for this test since I arrived—No—since I was born.”

“Utterly insane. The girl is . . .” Mischief muttered as he and the brothers joined Malingo in watching.

“I heard that,” Candy replied.

Forget them, Mespa said. This is when you prove your right to make history or drown in the water you want to walk on. You can. You are answerable only to your greater self, which in turn answers only to Creation.

She looked down at the foot that was going to take the step. If the Old Woman was to be unseated from the throne of the Midnight Empire then Candy had a part to play in that unseating. That, she understood. And if she was meant to play that part, she had to walk on water, and walk on water she would.

“I . . . am . . .” The water bore her up. “. . . going . . . to . . .” Yes! She could do this. “. . . walk!”

It isn’t a dream. It isn’t real. It’s just your mind and Creation thinking together. Walking together.

You make it sound so simple, Candy said.

It’s easier than drowning! Joephi said.

I’m not going to drown.

Then what?

I’ll walk!

And so she walked. It wasn’t as difficult as she’d expected. Every now and then she felt an eddy move against the sole of her foot, which was a little unsettling, but otherwise it was like walking on sand dunes: the rises gentle, the descents steeper. She kept her eyes on Mespa and Joephi all the way, and very soon she was close enough to see that the women were standing at the center of what appeared to be a vast spiral of fish: fish with luminous anatomies, some blue, some scarlet, some turquoise or gold.

The closer Candy got to Mespa and Joephi, however, the higher and tighter the curves of the spiral became, the smallest of the fishes being those that were describing intricate spirals directly beneath the feet of the women, offering their devotion to the Fantomaya, then descending through the center of the ziggurat toward a light far, far below that pulsed like a vast needlepoint heart.

“So,” Candy said, “what’s the news?”