Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 70

Nothing But Stones

CANDY WATCHED THE BURNING, muddled army shambling down the slopes of Mount Galigali, with their Empress wearing her gown of souls leading, and the drifting form of the Nephauree both behind them and above, the nearly dead body of Zephario hanging in the shadowy air like a terrible trophy. Unsummoned, fragments of a song she’d heard first in Babilonium came to her head. A meaningless little nonsense, which she sang quietly to herself as she watched the army coming:

“I got a cold in my nose,

But it comes and it goes.

I got a cold in my brain,

Which nearly makes me insane.

I got a cold in my toe,

That I can’t get to go,

I got cold,

Cold,

Cold . . .”

And while the monsters came, she stood there, watching, knowing that she had no hope of stopping them. She looked back at the crowd that had emerged from the glyph, and saw that Malingo and Gazza had started to walk toward her. Gazza beckoned to her. She glanced one more time at the approaching enemy. They were still five minutes away, perhaps. But no more than that.

She turned and started to run toward Malingo and Gazza. Gazza was close enough to call to her now.

“Are you all right?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

He opened his arms as he approached her, and hugged her tight. She gave as good as she got, which only made him hug her more. Malingo put his own arms around them both, which nobody objected to.

“What do we do now?” Malingo said.

“We have to defend ourselves,” Candy said. “We’ve no other choice.”

“I’m all for a good fight,” Gazza said, “but we don’t have a hope against those things. Look at them! They’re burning and they still keep coming. No legs, so they crawl.”

Candy looked back toward the volcano. The approach of the stitchlings was indeed terrifying. Though a few of the most traumatically wounded creatures had finally perished on the slope, the greater number continued their shambling descent.

“The Abarataraba’s all used up,” Candy said. “There’s still some magic in me, but there’ll be no more glyphs, I’m afraid.”

“What about getting off the island by water?”

“There’s no chance of that,” Malingo said. “Izabella just pours away over the Edge of the World. If we got into the water, we’d go with it.”

“There’s going to be a lot of killing,” Candy said grimly. “We have to make a stand here.”

“We were all brought here to die anyway,” Malingo reminded her. “At least this way we have a chance.”

There was another eruption from the heart of Galigali: this one so violent it blew the front half of the Stormwalker apart. It did not draw Mater Motley’s gaze off the condemned, however. She simply kept walking down over the smoking slope.

“I wonder what happened to Christopher?” Candy wondered aloud.

“He’s there,” Malingo said.

“I don’t see him.”

“I did, I swear. He was a little way back from all the rest, but he was there.”

Candy looked up at the approaching army with fresh interest.

“You’re sure?” she said.

“Absolutely.”

“Huh,” Candy said. “Three generations of Carrions.” She looked at Gazza and Malingo. “I guess we’ll go meet them together.”