Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 58

Now, Because

CANDY SLID DOWN OFF the rock. Her visitor was standing with his back to one of the fires, so he was almost entirely in silhouette, except for his eyes, which despite their sightlessness had somehow drawn into them all the light being shed by the peeping stars. Either the cold, or simply fatigue, filled the old man’s body with tremors. Only the starlight remained constant.

“I don’t understand,” Candy said. “What do you want?”

Zephario reached into the pocket of his baggy jacket.

“I used to make money by reading these.”

Candy accepted whatever he was handing over to her.

“These are tarot cards, aren’t they?”

“An Abaratian deck. I lost my old deck to the wind a long time ago. But I found another.”

“These look different from the ones I saw in Chickentown.”

“They are. There are eighty-eight cards in an Abaratian deck, not seventy-eight. And of course the images are different. Not all of them. Some faces are ever present.”

Candy couldn’t see the designs on the cards clearly from where she was standing; there wasn’t sufficient light. But she could feel the visions on them, their vibrations moving through her fingertips, and they made her want to get a better look at them. So she moved out of the blind man’s shadow, turning the cards down and out, so they were lit by the flames. Now she saw them, it was no wonder her fingers had felt their power. Such visions! Some of the images were beautiful, some were terrifying, some of them made melancholy music in her head, like the lost songs of things that would never come into this world or any other.

She was unable to take her eyes off the flow of images long enough to look back at the blind man, but he didn’t mind.

“Lost forever,” she said to herself.

“I didn’t quite catch—”

“I’ve just always believed that nothing was really lost.”

“Ah. If only . . .”

“So . . . you saw me here? In one of the cards?”

“It wasn’t just one of them. You will wear many faces.”

“I don’t see me anywhere.”

“Good. Only a fool thinks he sees.”

“You’re Christopher’s father?”

“Quite so,” he said with a strange calm. “Christopher . . . oh, my sweet Christopher . . . he was so small once.”

Zephario lifted his hands, cupped side by side to show how small his beloved son had been. Candy took the opportunity to take hold of one of his hands.

“Here,” she said. “Your cards.”

“Please. You keep them. Use them. They are already mapped with what I’ve learned. Now you add your own journeys to mine and it’s all part of the Thread.”

“What?”

“The Thread. Do you not know of it?”

“No. But I do believe there is a pattern in the Hours; a hidden connection, which will show the greater order of things when the time is right.”

“Ah,” said Zephario, “you are wise. I want you to live, Candy. I want you to know the greater order, and if you wish to, pass it back to me, so that those among the dead who are lost—and there are many—find their way to the Embrace of Everything.”

“Everything . . . that’s in the air a lot, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that or Nothing at All. It’s an Age of Absolutes.”

“What comes after this Age?”

“I’ve no idea. Why would I?”

“You must have asked the cards how this is all going to end.”

“The cards don’t tell the future. It hasn’t happened yet. We hope that certain things will happen. But none of it’s guaranteed. We may want one kind of future and get another kind entirely. My daughters used to sing a rhyme. All these years later I still hear it.

“There is no tomorrow,

There never—”

“Was,” Candy said, picking up the rhyme immediately.

“Beg, steal or borrow,

Now, because—

There is no tomorrow

There never was.

Beg, steal or borrow

Now, because—

“We used to sing it too,” Candy said. “Why tell me this now?

“Because now is all there is. And because you sense her too,” he said.

“Oh,” Candy said.

“She’s not alone, is she?”

“No, of course not. She must have at least seven thousand stitchlings with her. That’s what Christopher told me.”

“Is he with her now?”

“I doubt it. She thinks he’s dead. Drowned in the streets of Chickentown.”

“But he isn’t, is he? I came here to find you so that you could help make peace between us. I want to see my son, one last time before I die. He’s all I have, lady. He’s all that I have left to love.”

“You might find loving him a bit difficult. He’s no saint.”

“Well, nor was I. When he was born I was one of the most feared men in the Abarat. I thought that was something to be proud of, in my stupidity. I made it a point of pride to burn every harvest I hadn’t planted and tear down every tower that I hadn’t built. When I think of the harm I did . . .” He paused, drawing a ragged breath. Whatever memories his mind was seeing, they made him weep. “. . . My son can do no worse. I was only forty-two when the fire destroyed the mansion. It killed my wife, and all the children except for Christopher. Forty-two! It’s nothing, forty-two. But I managed to fill up that little time with so many shameful things. Terrible things. I just wanted to tell Christopher there’s still time . . .”

“Still time to do what?” Candy said.

“Heal those he’s hurt,” Zephario said.

“You can’t heal the dead.”

“You’re quite the plain speaker, aren’t you?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it. My son has done a lot of terrible things. I see the stain he leaves behind him, on whatever he’s touched. Even on you.”

Candy suddenly felt as though somebody had just emptied a bucket of sewer water over her head. How clear was the stain on her that a blind man could see it?

“You do know it wasn’t me he wanted, right? It was Princess Boa. She’d been hidden in me all my life. I didn’t know she was there until . . . until I found the Abarat. Or it found me.”

“Are you sure?”

“About what?”

“Christopher wanting Boa and not you?”

“Yes. I know it,” Candy said, nodding.

“I saw you in a vision once, while I was laying out the cards. I had no idea who you were, but you were talking to Christopher, who was lying down, barely able to lift his head . . .”

“That was back in Chickentown. Yes. He was very weak. I thought for certain he was going to die. He wanted to talk to Boa, and of course I let him.”

“What did he want from her?”

“He wanted them to die together.”

“And she was ready to go along with that?”

“No, I don’t think she was. I can’t be sure . . .”

“Even though you were sharing a mind?”

“Sometimes I couldn’t find her. She hid from me. Even in my own head. Why does it matter?”

“Does he know that you and the Princess are—?”

“No longer together? Yes, he knows. I saw him, in Tazmagor. He came to find me . . . well, no, to find her, but in the end all he got was me. He came to warn one of us about what was coming.”

Some tension that Candy hadn’t seen in the blind man’s face until now suddenly melted away.

“You know that for certain?”

“What? That he’d wanted to save my life? Or her life? Yes. Yes, I know that for certain. Why? Does it matter?”

“That he has a shred of goodness in him? That he cares enough about somebody to put himself in harm’s way? Yes, it matters a great deal. Only to me, perhaps. But then I’m the only one who has to live with the knowledge anyway.”

“The knowledge of . . .”

“All the terrible things he did. The families he destroyed. The love he destroyed. I was a bad man before the fire, Candy. I’ll be the first to say so. But I didn’t teach him to murder people with their own nightmares. That was my mother’s doing. The Mad Hag of Gorgossium . . . and now our Empress and executioner. She’s there . . .” As he spoke, he pointed to the card that had surfaced in Candy’s hands. She’d been sifting through them as they talked and one had drawn the blind man’s attention. “My mother,” he said.

The image on the card was one of heart-stopping terror. In a bare room, lacking even the most rudimentary comfort or decoration was a single occupant: a small unclothed figure stood looking at a window that filled most of the left-hand quadrant of the picture. Through it, staring down at him, was the vast bloodless face of a devourer, its teeth glittering.

“I don’t think this is your mother,” Candy said.

“It’s a symbol, not a likeness,” Zephario replied. “There is a difference. That thing at the window represents the power that allowed my mother to do all that she’s done. It is Nephauree. One of Those Who Walk Behind the Stars.”

Candy could feel cold emanating from the painted image. It made her head throb.

“It’s Nephauree magic she wields. That’s why she’s been able to do so much harm. I pray my son has not made the same bargains with them.”

“Why?”

“Because the price of that power will be a terrible thing to pay. I could perhaps persuade him to turn his back on the Nephauree if I could speak with him.”

“Then talk to him.”

“I need your help to do that.”

“This isn’t something I had planned for.”

“I have no wish to put you in harm’s way—”

“That’s not what worries me.”

“I have no money—”

“I wouldn’t want it even if you did,” Candy replied.

“Then what do you want?”

“We need to leave this place, Zephario.”

“Well, that shouldn’t be difficult. You have the power to make a glyph, do you not?”

“Oh, I do. And this one is going to be very unusual.”