Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 48

Smiles

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” Gazza asked. He had appeared over the top of the sand dune behind which Candy was summoning up a glyph big enough for two.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she told him. “I’m not even supposed to be looking at you.”

“Well, I am and you are.”

“Yes, so I see.”

“So where are you going? I know what you’re doing. I may be just a fisherman but I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You’re making a glyph. You’re flying away somewhere, leaving me—”

“I’m not leaving you. I’m going to find Finnegan.”

“Oh, good. So I can come?”

“No. I didn’t say—”

“You just said you weren’t leaving me.”

“Where’s Malingo?”

“All right, if you have to go, at least show me how to make a glyph for myself so I can follow you. I will. I can do anything if I want something badly enough.”

“I’m sure you could.”

“And I want to be wherever you are.”

“Gaz . . .”

“Is that wrong?”

“No. It’s not wrong. It’s just a bad time, that’s all.”

“You showed Malingo. He told me. So show me!”

“No!”

He ran down the slope of the dune at a rush, his piebald features bright with fury in the light off the solidifying glyph.

“You think I’m like all the rest, don’t you?”

“I don’t want you to get bent out of shape, but we don’t have time for this, Gaz.”

She turned her back on his stare.

“I’m not,” he said.

Candy stared hard at the ground, trying to remember where in the glyph summons she’d been. She was tired, and her fatigue was starting to affect her ability to get things done.

“Not what?”

“I’m not like all the others,” he said. He came around to the other side of the glyph so that she couldn’t continue to avoid engaging his stare. “I’m not waiting for the miraculous Candy Q to come up with all the answers—”

“Well, that’s good because I haven’t got any! Sometimes I think I don’t have anything except . . . except . . . except . . . you’re not to blame.” Candy looked up at him through the skeletal form of the glyph, its lines solidifying in the air.

“You look like you hate me right now,” he said.

“No,” Candy said. “Not hate. Just . . . why now?”

“Why now what?”

“You know why.”

“Do I?”

“Stop it.”

“Say it.”

“Say what?”

“What you feel. What we feel.”

“So I’m not just imagining it?”

“Oh, Lordy Lou,” he said, throwing up his arms. She couldn’t tell who he was angry at. Or whether he was even angry. “No. You’re not imagining it.”

“So do you . . . ?” she asked.

“Well . . .” he said.

“Because I do.”

“Ha!”

Such relief flooded his face. He grinned the grin of all grins.

“You should see the grin on your face,” he said to her.

“My face? What about on yours?”

The glyph finished itself while they were standing there, exchanging their grins. She sensed its stillness. So did he.

“Your magic’s done,” he said.

“I know.”

“You want me to go find Malingo?”

“In a minute.”

“We don’t have much—”

“Half a minute?”

“No. A minute’s good.”

Before they’d been mortal enemies, Candy and Deborah Hackbarth had been friends. And two summers before, when on the first day back at school after summer vacation they walked home together, exchanging tales of summer, Deborah had one big story to tell. His name was Wayne Something or other and she’d met him in Florida, where she’d gone to visit her grandmother. Wayne was the One, Deborah had said; she knew so because it felt right when she said it, which she had, over and over, during that long walk home, and Candy, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the conversation would falter for a moment, and her best friend would sew the seeds of their enmity with the oh-so-casual: “And what about your summer, Candy?”

How times had changed! Perhaps the street had survived the flooding of Chickentown by the Sea of Izabella and even now there were two girls sharing secrets as they wandered home from school, but Candy would never know. Not because Mater Motley’s all-devouring darkness would devour her, though that was possible. But because she didn’t care. She didn’t want to go back there. She could live and die here, under these troubled heavens, perhaps even staring at the troubled face on the other side of the glyph.

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Then came the first shot. A missile was fired out of the west by a weapon of such power that the projectile it launched toward the shore punched its way through Hour after Hour before striking its target. The trail of fire it left on the air was still decaying when a second projectile was fired, this one aimed much lower than the first, barely clearing the shore as it screeched overhead.

When it landed, the force of the explosion was powerful enough to knock Candy to the ground. She got to her feet, gasping for breath, and raced up the dune. To her relief she saw that Malingo, along with the rest of the refugees, had sought shelter among the rocks.

She cupped her hands around her mouth and called to him.

“Malingo!”

There was no answer from the landscape, which was illuminated afresh when a third volley came shrieking through, this one so low it clipped the hill that rose beyond the shore, sending up a plume of debris.

“I have to go, Malingo!” Candy screamed. “Be safe!”

When she turned back to the glyph, Gazza was already inside.

“We’re going together,” he said.

She had neither the time, nor in truth the will, to argue with him. They needed to be gone. Now. As she leaped into the glyph, the small, sleek gunship that had fired upon them appeared from the sea-mist that had, until now, veiled the sandy shore upon which they stood.

Behind it, Candy saw a vessel at least thirty times as big; its watchtowers and uniformed guards assuring its function. It was a prison ship, coming for them all. Candy willed the glyph into motion, but as it rose into the air, a fourth volley came suddenly from the west. It struck its target, and everything went dark.