Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 44

Pariah

THE PIPER HAD PLAYED its last tune. Its boards creaked and cracked as one desperate soul after another sought to save themselves from the seething, bloody waters of the Izabella. They were already littered with the bodies of those who had died in the collapse of The Great Head or had fallen prey to the countless beasts that had risen from the depths with the Requiax. Terror had made them mindless and merciless, clawing at one another as they attempted to clamber up onto the boat, even though it was lurching wildly.

“This is the end,” Malingo said. “Candy, I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have ended like this. What am I saying? It should never have ended. I thought we would go on forever, I really did.”

“It’s not over yet!” Gazza said. “Look up! Look up!”

Everyone did as Gazza instructed. Nine or ten winged constructions that looked like the skeletons of vast birds, were circling high above The Piper. Their broad skulls were crowned with elaborately woven ziggurats of blazing bone, their wings, fully twenty feet wide, gilded by firelight.

And in the many ribbed bodies of these extraordinary mechanisms, lying flat along their midsections, were their pilots. One of which was Geneva.

“Candy! Be ready!”

“Geneva?”

“Of course!”

“It is!”

Candy could scarcely believe what she was seeing, but there she was, Geneva Peachtree, lying in the long cage of the bone-glider’s body.

“I couldn’t leave you to die!” Geneva yelled. “But I needed help!”

“You’d better be quick!” Gazza hollered. “We’re going down fast.”

“Geneva, be careful,” Candy shouted. “Don’t get pulled down! These people—”

“Smallest first!” Geneva ordered. “Malingo, pick up Eddie!”

“Now?”

“Now!”

What happened next was so fast and so extraordinary Candy could scarcely believe it was happening. Two of the fliers swooped down toward The Piper, as Malingo lifted a protesting Eddie up—

“Put me down!”

—first onto his shoulders, and then—

“I don’t need help, geshrat!”

That was all he had time to say. The fliers were carrying between them a hammock, which scooped Eddie up like a fish in a net, lifting him into the air. Their burden was nowhere near heavy enough to prevent them from rising again with their catch.

“You’re next, Candy,” Geneva yelled.

“No, it has to be Gazza! I won’t go until he goes.”

Geneva knew she had no time to argue with the girl, so she didn’t even try.

“Gazza it is!” she said.

“Wait!” Gazza protested. “Don’t I get to have—”

“An opinion?” Geneva yelled.

“Yes!”

“No! You’ve only got one chance at this!”

Two more fliers swooped down, needing to drop lower this time, not only because Gazza wasn’t raised up on Malingo’s shoulders but because in the half minute since Eddie’s rescue, The Piper had sunk significantly lower in the water.

“Now you!” Malingo said to Candy.

“No, I won’t—”

“We heard that already,” John Serpent snapped. “Don’t be selfish, Candy.”

“What?”

For the first time, Candy found all the brothers staring at her. “If we drown, it’ll be a pity. If you go it’s a tragedy. And you know it. We’ll get Malingo, don’t worry.”

In that instant some combustible substance in the rubble of The Great Head erupted in garish flame, and its light illuminated John Serpent’s face.

“Go,” he said.

She nodded.

“I’m ready!” she yelled to Geneva. The words were barely out of her lips when the third pair of fliers swooped down and she was lifted up, and up, and up, into the safety of the sky, where the bone-gliders wheeled.

Some time later, every soul aboard The Piper was safely deposited back onto the lantern-lit northeastern shore of Ninnyhammer, where Candy found she had a host of reunions awaiting. The first Abaratian to have ever shown her hospitality, Izarith, along with her two children, was there. So was the munkee called Filth she’d met in the Twilight Palace, and the members of the Totemix. It was no accident that all the people she’d encountered along the way to this place and moment were here.

“We watched you from the first step you took into the Abarat,” Geneva explained to her.

“When you say we, you mean—”

“All of us. The Kalifee.”

“It’s more than just us, though,” said Izarith.

“Not many more,” Geneva said quietly.

“Sad but true,” one of the Totemix said. “We’ve known this Midnight was coming sooner or later. We’ve read the omens.”

“So we started assembling a force—”

“The best of the best,” Filth said, his fingers plunged deep into one of his nostrils.

“Appearances can be deceptive,” Geneva remarked, catching the look on Candy’s face as she watched Filth snot mining.

“Kalifee means troublemakers. Rebels,” Izarith explained. “But we haven’t managed to do much to defy Mater Motley. She’s clever—”

“Or we’re too stupid,” said Filth. “Maybe a bit of both.”

There were more familiar faces appearing, stepping out of the shadows into the lantern light: Jimothi, head of the tarrie-cats, and some faces she remembered from the crowded boardwalks of Babilonium.

“Why was the Mazathatt watching me?” Candy asked Geneva.

“We thought you were working for her. The Hag.”

“Why?”

“You came from nowhere. But you had power,” Izarith said. “It was no accident that I invited you into the house, I’m afraid. That was me chancing to take a long look at you.”

“And?”

“We knew immediately you weren’t working for her. Evil stinks; you didn’t.”

“Thanks.”

“But we still had questions,” Geneva said. “We’d put together some pieces of the puzzle. We knew the Fantomaya had been tinkering with your mind before you were even born.”

“Doing what?” Candy said.

“Nothing that we didn’t think necessary,” said Mespa, who now also stepped out of the shadows with Joephi at her side. “We needed to keep you hidden from your lodger, and she from you. But it was a hastily conceived plan, and the magic was less than perfect.”

“We were arrogant,” Joephi said bitterly. “We thought our sisterhood was beyond error. Huh.” She shook her head. “It shames me still.”

“What do you mean: error?”

“It was poor thinking. Arrogance will do that.”

“We thought we had your life under control,” Joephi said. “But—”

“I changed,” Candy replied.

“Yes. Oh yes. You certainly did. Watching you deciding to go back to that little boat at the Yebba Dim Day even though you knew it was almost certain death to do so. Oh yes. We were in error.”

“Hence this moment with the good souls who fought the Hag in secret ways for years, and won little for their efforts.”

“And died,” Geneva said softly. “In ways only an abomination like the Hag could have conceived.”

“She was the reason we had such doubts about magic. We had come to think that it corrupted everything it touched. Look what it did to your people, Candy.”

“My people?”

“’Manity.”

“Is that what you call us?”

“It’s one of the politer terms.”

There was a subtle undercurrent of laughter.

“And what magic did you do to us?”

“Gave you power you lacked the skill to control.”

“Oh, that. Yes, I’ve seen some of that.”

“You mean your father’s cruelties?”

“Yes.”

“If you can find it in your heart to pity him . . .”

Candy thought about this for a moment. “No,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Well, that’s honest.”

“Was he always a man of vision?”

“My dad? Vision? Ha! You must be kidding. He likes beer, girlie magazines, kid’s cartoons, beer, being mean, and beer. He believes in nothing.”

“Well, he seems to have founded a religion.”

“You call that a religion? What was it called? The Church of Cold Pizza?” Her audience looked at her blankly. “Never mind. ’Manity joke.”

“We call it the Church of the Utter Void,” Geneva said. There was laughter now. “Abaratian joke.”

“Well, I don’t worship there,” Gazza said.

“There’s a time for everyone . . .” Geneva said flatly.

“Are you preaching for the Church of the Utter Void now?” Eddie said.

“No. But it has its attractions, doesn’t it? To have no more dreams you have to protect. To have nothing you love so much you live in fear of losing it. That wouldn’t be so bad . . .”

“It would be death,” said Candy.

“And would that really be so terrible?”

“Yes,” Candy said. “Of course it would. I didn’t just escape dying to go and give it all up because some preacher says it’s better that way. We still remember the light. We still remember happiness. Well, don’t we?”

“You make it sound very simple,” Geneva said.

“Well, to me it is. I want the Abarat to survive all this darkness, and come back stronger than ever. But I need to tell you something that might be important.”

“And what’s that?” said Mespa.

“On The Piper I realized that I still had a connection to Princess Boa. I could see through her eyes.”

“Oh, Lordy Lou!” John Mischief said. “Does that mean she can see through yours? Is she looking at us right now—”

“I don’t think so.”

“If she is, then she’ll know where we are!” Eddie said.

“Eddie, calm down.”

“Why didn’t you say something before now?”

“Because the feeling came and went. I think maybe it was just there for a few seconds. Perhaps because I thought I was going to die. I don’t know.”

“Even if this feeling has passed,” Geneva said, “Eddie’s right. You should have said something the moment you had a chance! You shouldn’t even be looking at me. Don’t look at anybody! I can’t believe you would be so stupid as to endanger our entire enterprise!”

“All right, all right!” Candy said.

She turned her back on them all, and stared up at the empty sky.

“There’s no need to treat me like a total leper,” she said more quietly. “I told you, Boa only came through for a few seconds. I don’t know why. Whatever the reason was, I can’t feel her presence any longer.”

“Which proves absolutely nothing,” Geneva said. “You know how sly she is. She could be behind your eyes right now and you wouldn’t even know it.”

“Well, she isn’t.”

“Candy. Think about it. How would you know whether she was or she wasn’t?”

“Because I’m not the ignorant girl I was when I lived in Chickentown. Because I threw her out of me, and just because there’s one little strand of her left in there doesn’t mean she still owns me. But I understand. She’s planted a little seed of doubt in you, and now I’m stuck with it.” She raised her arms in mock surrender. “I’m going to not look at any of you. I’m just going to walk down to the sea and think. And if she is looking out of my eyes all she’s going to see is blackness. Happy?”

And so saying she walked down to the water and looked out at the darkness, wondering as she did so as if the darkness was looking back at her.