Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 41

Dragon Dust

“YOU CAN’T BE HER,” Finnegan said. There was a tremor in his voice. “She was dead. I held her in my arms.”

“I know. I was there.”

“No!”

“I thought you’d be happy—”

“If you were real—”

“Do you remember the letter you found? Written by your grandfather from the battlefield of the Nonce, during the last war? The letter to your grandmother? You read a part of it to me.”

“Go on,” Finnegan replied. His voice was hushed now.

“I remember there was a part of it that made you angry because it was your grandfather’s story about what happened after death. You thought he was wrong. It was a selfish letter, you said. Because your grandfather wasn’t thinking about how it would affect someone who read it. You were so furious, you wanted your grandfather to know how you felt.”

“Yes. I remember. I couldn’t tell him, though, because he was dead.”

The smile came back to Boa’s face, bright as ever.

“You’re trying to trick me, Finnegan Hob. You’re trying to catch me out, aren’t you?”

“I don’t see how.”

“You know he wasn’t dead. He was alive when you read that letter to me.”

Both members of her audience, man and dragon, gazed at her in astonishment.

“All right,” Finn said. “It’s you. I don’t know how, but it is.”

“I thought you’d be happier to see me.”

“Well . . . you know . . . you were dead. I’ve lived thinking you were dead. Buried in that royal mausoleum on the Nonce. And you weren’t.”

“No. I was a prisoner. But I escaped.” Her smile became laughter. “I escaped, Finn! And I’m back, to love you.”

Finnegan tried to put on a smile but it didn’t quite stick. “It just seems so impossible.”

“Of course it seems that way. But then yesterday you wouldn’t have thought you’d be seeing the stars go out, would you?”

“Is that why you’re here? Are you responsible for that?”

“For murdering the stars?” she said. As she spoke there was a subtle change in her very being. Something caught fire in her, and threw off a garish light. It was in her skin, in her eyes, in her throat. “Do you think I’m capable of that, Finn? Of throwing the world into darkness?” She had lowered her head, like a wild animal preparing to charge. “Well . . . do you?”

“I don’t know what you’re capable of,” Finnegan said. “How could I?”

“Because I’m your Princess.”

“Stop saying that.”

“But it’s the truth. Look at me, Finn! Look! Am I not the same woman you were about to marry?”

“Too much the same,” he said, half turning his face from hers, as though he might better break the spell of her perfection if he looked at her askance, and in breaking it, might see what hid behind her beauty. But it didn’t work. He still had to ask her: “How can I believe what I see if I don’t understand how it happened?”

“Touch me, Finn, and I’ll tell you.” She offered him a playful little smile. “I promise I won’t turn into a monster when you touch me.” She walked toward him raising her arm to proffer her hand. “Please, Finn. I’m begging you. I’ve waited a long time.”

“Waited where? Who was holding you prisoner?”

“Touch me and I’ll tell you. Go on. I came back so I could be with you, Finn. Where’s the harm in a little touch?”

“I don’t know.”

“There is none,” she said. “Here. Look.” She took hold of his hand. “I’m real. I’m warm.”

Finally, Finn smiled, his hand moving up over the back of her hand, his thumb tenderly brushing the bone of her wrist. He could feel her blood pulsing through her veins. And, as promised, Boa told him everything, more or less. She told how while the wedding guests had been watching the struggle between Finnegan and the dragon, the women of the Fantomaya had reached into her dead body and claimed her soul, how they’d carried it across the divide between the Abarat and the Hereafter, and hidden it in the womb of a woman who was very close to giving birth.

“So this was all planned out?” Finnegan said.

“I really don’t know, to tell you the truth. I don’t see how it could have been. The Fantomaya just wanted to protect my soul, and when they saw a chance to hide it—somewhere no one from the Abarat was going to look—they took it. The child was born a few hours later. But you had already worked most of it out for yourself, hadn’t you?” Boa said. “I saw the confusion on your face several times. You felt something for the girl but you didn’t know what or why. I’m right, aren’t I?” She took a half step toward him, her hand going up to his face. “There’s nothing to feel guilty about,” she said. “You weren’t seeing her. You were seeing me through her. I was her prisoner. I had no defense against her. All I could do was stay locked up in that head of hers and watch her despicable little life go by year after year. Wondering what was happening here. Always, always thinking about you. Wondering who you’d married now that I was dead.”

“Finn, it’s all lies,” Maas insisted.

“Then none of it can do any harm, can it?” Finnegan replied.

“You should be careful with your affections, Finnegan Hob. There is a greater wickedness close to you than the crimes any of the beasts whose bones we stand among may have committed. Some of them were weak. Some of them were stupid. And some had masters who demanded they do terrible things. But there were innocents here too. You know that, Finnegan.”

“You’re right. I concede it. I killed in anger. I killed in loneliness. I will make my peace with the spirits here. But not now. We have other problems right now.”

“By other problems, you mean Midnight’s Empire?” Maas said.

“Since when did it become an Empire?” he said.

Maas shrugged.

“I don’t know that it ever did. That’s just the way Mater Motley spoke of it. The darkness that’s gathering. It’s her work. She will see herself Empress of the islands if she has her way.”

“Is darkness so terrible?”

“This darkness, yes. And it’s spreading like the plague. I think a woman with your skills might know a thing or two, Princess,” Maas said, turning to Boa.

“Don’t listen, Finn. He’s doing exactly what I told you he’d do. He’s trying to poison our happiness.”

“What skills, Maas?” Finnegan said. “What are you talking about? If you have something to say—”

“He has nothing to say,” Boa said quickly. “It’s all dragon slime he means to coat me with. I’ve been in their jaws before, Finn. I know how they stink. The closest he gets to having any real humanity in him is when he dines on it.”

“Nicely done, Princess,” Maas said with sour appreciation. “Inflame his rage with talk of dragons and maybe he’ll forget that he really doesn’t trust you.”

“Enough, Maas,” Finnegan said sharply. “Just because the stars have gone out, and the world is likely to go with them, it doesn’t mean I’ll simply forgive every utterance that spills out of you. An insult is an insult. And trust me, Maas, one more word spoken against my Princess and your head will fall farther than any star.”

Whether out of fear for his life or from a genuine sense of contrition, Maas laid his clawed hands, right over left, across his heart.

“Forgive me, Finnegan Hob,” he said inclining that burdensome head, “I have been too long in the company of the dead. I have forgotten simple courtesies.”

“Not good enough,” Boa said.

She took hold of Finnegan’s hand, and he felt a surge of cold power move down her arm and through her palm into his. It felt as though his arm was actually gaining muscle mass, and he was glad of it. There would be enemies out there in Midnight’s Empire that had only risen up now because the circumstances were propitious: he would need all the strength he owned to protect Boa from their assaults. It wouldn’t be easy, but with her help he would find a way to get them to a place of safety, assuming such a place existed.

“How do you feel?” Boa asked him.

“Good,” he said. He shook the arm she’d touched as though it had been asleep all his life and was now waking up.

“It feels a lot stronger than it did before you . . . what did you do?”

“Just rolled away a stone,” Boa said, “that had been between you and what was always in you. Take out your sword.”

He did so, the blade making a sound like the chiming of a perfect bell as it slid from the sheath.

“It’s never felt so light before.”

“Nor has it ever been so sharp,” Boa said, making a pass over the sword with her hand. A gleam of light ran up along the blade. “Now,” she said softly, “use it.”

“Use it to do what?”

“What it was meant to do. Kill.”

“Maas?”

“Of course.”

“He has no harm in him, my lady.”

“I say he does, Finnegan. Trust me. Kill him. Then we need never to think of him again.”

Maas made no attempt to move while his fate was considered. He simply waited, his hands still pressed to his chest.

“Do it!” Boa said.

“He has nothing left, Princess. Look at him.”

“I’d forgotten how much hard work you can be,” she said. “You never could see what was right in front of you.”

“You’re right in front of me, Princess. And right now you’re very hard to see. I’m trying. I really am. But there’s something . . .”

“Of course,” she said with weary irritation. “There’s always going to be more of me to find. Or it would all get boring very quickly, wouldn’t it?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she was there before him.

“You’re going to tell me this isn’t the time for games, because ‘very soon the world’s going to end’ and I’m here to say if it really is going to end then we may as well have some fun before it’s all over.”

“Agreed.”

“Good. So let me have my fun.”

“Doing what?”

“Finishing the job!”

“You’re both crazy . . .” Maas said, the words passing around the boneyard like a rumor, gathering force with every echo.

“Very likely,” Finnegan said.

“You think?” Boa said. “All those years locked away. All those years grieving. Making me crazy. Oh, I know crazy. I’ve had more than my share of crazy.”

“It’s over.”

“Almost . . .”

“No, it is. Whatever’s out there, we’ll deal with it together.”

“Finn, you’ve got to finish what we’re doing here.”

“It’s done.”

“But the dragon still has a head on his shoulders.”

“I’m not killing him, Boa.”

“Fine. Then I will.”

“You don’t want his blood on your hands.”

“Don’t tell me what I want,” she said.

“These are powerful spirits, Boa.”

“You’re afraid of ghosts now?” she said, her contempt diseasing the air between them.

“Not fear. Respect.”

“For what? For Maas?” She glanced toward the place where Deetha Maas had last been standing, but he’d moved.

“Come here, worm!” she said. There wasn’t a great deal of volume in her voice but there was immense power there, and it instantly carried to every corner of the boneyard. “I! Will! Have! Your! Lying! Head!”

Maas had disappeared.

With every syllable Boa spoke her utterances grew in power, so that by the time she’d reached the fifth word the sound was causing the smaller bones on the slopes to shake themselves loose and tumble down the inclines like mobs of bones assembling in every part of the ossuary. The bones didn’t just slide down the slopes. They skipped, they tumbled, they leaped and somersaulted. Nor did their motion cease when they reached the bottom of the slope.

Instead, they cavorted among the shards and the bone dust, conferring upon the agitation they had carried down the slopes. As the clouds of dust rose into the darkness, they started to create unmistakable shapes, made from the dust’s memory of the beasts it had once been. The dragons were returning! No matter how large they had looked or how complex their forms and colors had been, it was all encoded in every mote of dust. Each beast in every grain remembered; they were waiting in every particle of dust in their entirety. Their majestic shapes sprang up from death throughout the caverns—the iridescence of their scales, the gilded beauty of their eyes, and the purples and reds and greens of their massive wings.

“Maas!” Boa yelled. “Why are you doing this? I demand you kill these things right now.”

“He can’t kill what’s already dead, Princess,” Finnegan said.

“This is dragon magic. I don’t like it. Maas!”

“I’m here,” the priest said, though now it was harder to be sure the direction from which his voice was coming.

“Show yourself, Maas. Finnegan’s not going to hurt you.” In the same breath she dropped her voice to the lowest of whispers and to Finnegan: “Slice off the top half of his head. He’s dangerous.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“If you’re too weak to do what has to be done—”

She raised her left hand, in which she was holding a brilliant blade.

“Maas!” she called out. “Where are you?”

She stopped in mid-syllable, and her eyes lost their hold on Finnegan. Her mouth couldn’t hold the words she had yet to say, nor could her hand hold the knife. It fell from her fingers and as it did so Finnegan caught a smeared glimpse of Deetha Maas, standing behind and a little to the right of the Princess. He had his hand at the back of her neck, touching some vital place, injecting his magical Order of Silence into her.

“Please! Don’t—” Finnegan said.

“Don’t what? Gut her the way she was about to gut me? She fully intended to do it, you know. You were too weak. She wanted it done fast, didn’t she? ‘He’s dangerous.’ That’s what she said about me. Doesn’t that make you wonder? Why am I so dangerous?”

“Just let her go, Maas. I won’t hurt you—”

“Don’t you want to know her secrets, Finnegan?”

“Not from you I don’t. Just let her go.”

“You’re going to have to see for yourself, then.”

“See what?”

“Her little hideaway on Huffaker.”

“Huffaker? She doesn’t even like—”

“You can both go, courtesy of the powers of this place.” The ghost dragons continued to roil around, their images rising up on all sides. “I think the dead must want to forgive you. They look at you with pity, Finnegan, for what you have to suffer. I know you think the suffering is over now that she’s come back but you’re wrong. It’s just begun.”

“Let her go, Maas.”

“To Huffaker, both of you!”

Finnegan felt the air throb around him, and the forms of the ghosts became remote.

“Maas!” Finnegan yelled.

Then the cavern was gone, and he was standing out in the darkness of another island, another Hour. In that darkness there was only one source of light: it was coming from the crack of a door, a little way from where Finnegan stood.

Again, the air throbbed. And his Princess was suddenly beside him.

“The knife,” she said, looking down. “It was in my hand!”

“Boa. We’re on Huffaker. He said you used to come here.” He glanced back at her, but there was too much darkness for him to see her. “Is that true?”

Boa looked and realized Finnegan was right. She sighed.

“Yes, love. It’s true. And I suppose you had to see sooner or later, didn’t you? Come. Let me show you my secrets.”

They walked together through the darkness to the threshold of the door, where the light fell. There was no sound around them. Nothing moved. Nothing sang. It was just the two of them as they approached the door.

“Touch nothing,” she said, and led the way inside.