Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 72

Truth

THE KNIFE DIDN’T REACH her. Eighteen inches from Candy’s skin, it struck something: an object that was completely invisible yet sufficiently solid to shatter the blade as though it had been made of ice.

“Who did this?” Mater Motley demanded. “Who did this?” She glanced down at Candy. “It wasn’t you, so don’t even try to claim it was.” She thrust her hand over Candy’s face and pushed her away. Her presence here, dead or alive, was suddenly of no interest to her. Somebody here had blocked the Imperial will, and she wanted to know who.

She turned her black gaze on those in her immediate vicinity, staring very hard at each dirty, scorched stitchling for a moment to assess their chances of guilt.

“You, was it? No. Too stupid. You? No. Your brains are burning. You perhaps? No, another cretin. Is nobody proud enough to own this act?”

Silence.

“Are you all just mud and cowardice? EVERY? SINGLE? ONE?”

Finally, a weary voice said:

“All right, don’t give yourself a fit, you old boneyard. If it’s all that important to you . . . I did it.”

The crowd of stitchlings parted, a figure emerged from behind a flickering Distraction Shield.

“You,” the Hag said.

“Me,” said Christopher Carrion.

“Why must you always defy me?”

“Oh, Lordy Lou. I didn’t want you to kill the girl.”

“And again I say: why? You had a reason to protect her when she had your Princess in residence. But now?”

“I don’t know,” Carrion said. “But please, don’t . . .”

The Hag thought for a moment, then grinned.

“A favor for a favor, then?”

Carrion’s thin lips curled.

“What do you want from me?”

“Tell your father, Christopher,” Mater Motley said. “Tell him how he’ll be welcomed.”

Candy turned this phrase over and over in her head and watched Carrion’s face very closely. Her belief that there was indeed a mystery here, some family secret that was teetering on the rim of revelation, was deepening. She still had absolutely no idea of what it was. Her one clue was that the Hag had made that bizarre remark that after death her son would not be alone.

Was there somebody else held prisoner in Mater Motley’s dolls? Another soul—or souls, perhaps? Yes, it was several—she knew it the instant she thought it—and they were all being held prisoner in all those wretched little dolls made of filth and rags.

Suddenly, she understood.

“The children!” Candy said. “Oh God, she’s got all the children!”

Mater Motley didn’t respond at first. She had already moved with unnatural speed to stand in front of Zephario and had begun to sing a death lullaby to him. But Candy’s outburst silenced the slaughter song.

“Shut her up,” she ordered Carrion. “Quickly, you fool. Shut her up!”

“What’s she saying?”

“It doesn’t matter what she’s saying! Just SHUT HER UP!”

For a few seconds the Hag unglued her gaze from Zephario and threw Carrion a look, which briefly lit up his face with a burst of stinging, bitter green light, as though she’d just plunged his head in gangrenous waters. This was a new trick and it was only with the greatest effort that he succeeded in controlling his revulsion.

“Did you not hear me?” the Hag was saying.

“Yes,” Carrion said.

He didn’t need another lesson from his Empress. This newfound ability to render his own sanctuary poisonous was a terrifying escalation in her skills. He had no choice but to grovel. He stumbled toward Candy, his head roaring from the toxins still in his system, telling her as he did so: “You should have gone when I told you to. Now I have to kill you.”

“Have you heard a word I’ve said?” Candy asked.

“Not one more word!” Mater Motley instructed.

She’s afraid, Candy thought. I’ve got the truth!

The sudden certainty gave her voice power.

“Carrion, listen to me! She’s got your brothers and sisters!” Carrion looked at her through the strangely stained fluid in his collar with a look of puzzlement. “In the dolls. She’s got all your family right here with her.”

“SHUT HER UP!”

“Your father thinks they’re in paradise. It’s what kept him sane. But it was a lie, Christopher. Just another of her cruel, vicious lies. She’s had their souls all along.”

“In the dolls?” Now he started to understand.

“In the dolls.”

“And my mother too?”

“Don’t ask me. Ask—”

Carrion was already turning on his grandmother.

“Is it true?” he demanded. “Well, is it?”

“Haven’t you slit her throat yet?”

“I asked you a question.”

“You really want to know?”

“I asked, didn’t I?”

“Oh, you know me. I’m frugal. Nothing ever goes to waste. Not when it can be turned into power. I wasn’t going to let all those souls fly off to paradise when I could use them, here, close to me. They’re family, after all. My flesh and blood. They wouldn’t even have existed if I hadn’t endured the gross befoulments of the womb. I even let them sense one another, which does help them to hope. And they yearn, of course, for what they will never see again, never touch again, even though they’re so very close to one another.” She ran her bony fingers over the dolls as she spoke. “And the longer I keep them, the deeper the yearning gets.”

As Candy watched Carrion listening to this she thought she caught a glimpse of something she’d never seen in his eyes before. She’d seen him dangerous and despairing, loving and lost. But this, this was a singularity. Hatred.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said.

“What business was it—is it—of yours?”

“They’re my brothers and sisters.”

“You never knew them. Why should you care? You never cared before.”

“I thought they were in a happier place.”

“Well, who’s to say what they feel?”

“They feel everything . . .” Candy said.

“Shut up,” screeched the Hag.

“They feel everything—”

“I will—”

“—because they’re connected to everything.”

“—KILL YOU!”

“There’d be no power in them if they weren’t,” Candy continued, unmoved. “You only drain off what comes through them. But it comes from everything and everywhere.”

“The girl speaks the truth,” Zephario said very softly.

Candy glanced up at Carrion’s father, who was staring down at his son through his blind, bleeding eyes.

“Must I show you?” he said to Christopher softly.

There was no answer forthcoming from Carrion.

“Then I must.”

Strands of pale creamy mist were appearing in the fluid like a blindfold, concealing the innocent blue in his eyes as well as the nightmares, black at their center.

This had to be his father’s handiwork, Candy thought. Not that Carrion had resisted it. Zephario was showing his son a glimpse of the world they had both lost: of Carrion’s brothers and sisters, whose laughter, shrieks, tears and prayers he had many times imagined he’d heard.

“Your mother stayed in the house until the very end,” Zephario said. “I had to drag her out of there myself. That’s how I got the burns. I started to melt in the heat.”

“This is absurd,” the Empress muttered.

“You know it’s the truth, Mother,” said Zephario. “This is how it was, Christopher. Do you see? Do you see what your beloved grandmother did?”

Candy couldn’t, of course, share the vision, but she didn’t need to. She knew perfectly well what Carrion the Elder was sharing with the Younger: his mother, in extremis. Carrion had told Candy once that it was the first image he remembered, though at the time he’d no knowledge that it was his own mother he’d been watching die. She’d just been a screaming column of fire.

“I’ve seen enough, Father,” Carrion said.

Weakened by the visions, he blindly struggled to get to his feet, unable to see anything but the horror he was being shown.

“Father,” he said again, more violently this time. “Please. I’ve seen your memory now.” He got to his feet. “I believe you.”

And as he spoke the words, the clouds cleared away. Carrion’s eyes had never looked as blue as they did now, nor his pupils as black.