Abarat: Absolute Midnight
Page 42
The landscape had changed, even in the short time they’d been running. The wind had shifted, and the smoke from the volcano was drifting north, toward the Edge of the World. It obscured almost completely the remains of the Stormwalker, along with most of Mount Galigali’s northern flank. It only thinned out as it came close to the Nephauree. Or was it that the smoke had been consumed by the creature? That made sense. There was a jaundiced taint to the Nephauree now, as though it had somehow inhaled all the sulfurous filth in the cloud, and plucked up by its own devices shards of white-hot stone that hung like nascent stars in the Nephauree’s universe.
She took all this in—the smoke, the stolen yellow tainting the Nephauree, the bright white stars—in one brief glance. Then, realizing what she had not seen, looked again.
The stitchlings had gone. The burning ones, the ones that had just a flicker of fire here and there, and even those that had emerged from the wreckage whole: all of them, gone. The Nephauree had destroyed them all. Now the Nephauree had nothing left to delay it. Candy and Gazza were its only targets. And after them it came.
Candy didn’t look back a third time. She didn’t need to. She could feel the motion of the alien as it closed in on them; a profound disturbance in the ground over which she and Gazza were running.
There were people coming to meet them from the crowd of survivors at the far end of the island. And leading that crowd was John Mischief, arms outstretched. The gesture was optimistic, but the expression on his face was not. Even at this distance Candy could see that Mischief’s eyes were looking past Candy and Gazza. He was looking at the Nephauree. And he could see something terrible beyond words was about to happen.
“Bad news,” the bird said. “It’s attacking.”
Candy’s heart jumped, hearing the voice of the creature.
“Malingo?”
She slowed her run looking for the bird and, failing to find it, stopped entirely. Suddenly, down it swooped to hover in front of her. It was indeed Malingo. Or rather his head, the wound of his neck closed up and the leathery outgrowths on either side of his head flapping to keep him in the air.
“You’re alive!” Despite their desperate situation she couldn’t help but laugh: “Ha! Look at you!”
“This is how geshrats are born,” he said. “Heads with wing-ears. Our bodies are replaceable. I’ll just grow a new one when this is all over.”
“You never told me.”
“You never asked.”
“Well, that’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” said John Moot.
“I disagree,” said John Serpent.
“Of course you do!” said John Mischief.
“Hey! I’m glad Malingo’s alive too,” Gazza said, “but we still have a problem.”
The Nephauree was no longer pursuing them. It had halted, twenty yards or so from Candy, Gazza and Malingo. Though Candy had seen countless images of power in her journeys through the Abarat, she’d never witnessed anything quite the equal of this. It was immense: a looming mass of contradictions. Despite its gaseous-liquid form there were places where the clotted darkness had a steely sheen to it, and others where it seemed the fine lines she’d seen drawn on its darkness had been etched there on countless previous occasions, an intricate matrix of line upon line upon line, darker even than the darkness into which they’d been scratched.
“Oh dear,” said John Fillet.
“What’s it doing?”
“Nothing good,” Candy said.
There was an insistent downward motion to the darkness now, the force of its substance pressing upon the solidified lava. It cracked open: jagged ruptures in the ground, which rapidly spread toward Candy and Gazza. There was nothing mysterious about either the motion of the fissures or of the light blazing out of them. The fissures were under the control of the Nephauree and they opened onto the molten magma that ran beneath the island.
Their way back to Mischief and the rest of the survivors was now denied. The widest of the fissures—seven feet wide and getting wider—had clearly been created to cut them off from their friends. They were being herded toward the northwestern corner of the island, where the waters of the Sea of Izabella became a roaring-white frenzy as they plunged helplessly on past the coast of Scoriae and over the Edge of the World. There was no real shore. The black lava rock simply sloped a little steeper before it met the panicking waters as they went to meet Oblivion.
The Nephauree was a stranger to itself, its mind a shadow on the wall of a chamber where the worst atrocities one living thing could visit upon another were commonplace. All it knew was the processes of fear, and how to multiply them. In the case of the young witch and her friends, it simply drove them back toward the waters until they were trapped between two unpleasant deaths: to be plunged into the white waters of the Izabella and drowned, or to drop into one of the fissures and be cooked alive.
At least, this had been its master plan. But the fracturing of the ground wasn’t proceeding as speedily as it had planned. There were more urgent claims upon its time right now than watching the little witch perish. It had come here to witness the elevation of the woman Mater Motley, into whose hands its species’ priests had put great power, for reasons more to do with their own Grand Designs than in service of her Imperial ambition. But she had underestimated the enemy, despite the elegance of her plotting.
The battle had been messier than the Nephauree had anticipated, but it had been won in the end. Even so, the priests who had dispatched the Nephauree here would not be pleased with the way things had gone. The sooner they had this news, the sooner they could make whatever strategic changes they judged appropriate. So the Nephauree could not afford to linger any longer. It needed this business with the girl and the fisherman over with, once and for all.
It needed to break the ground more effectively. And for that, it already had a plan. It willed its body to exude two horns of matter, into which it rerouted the darkness that had been dropped into its bowels. Now that same weighty darkness climbed up into the “horns” it had formed, turning them into vast hammers.
And down they came: two hammerheads of darkness that slammed into the wounded ground! Instantly, a fresh network of fissures appeared from the place where its hammerheads had landed. They zigzagged toward Candy and Gazza, separating them from the Johns, and causing every crack that had already gaped between the Nephauree and its victims to become even wider, creating a network of new fissures that drove the witch and her friends back and back and back, until they were at the top of the narrow shore that led down to the water’s edge.
The Nephauree lifted its hammerheaded horns again, reaching up even higher than it had previously, and brought them down like a judge slamming down his gavel to pass the final sentence. The shock wave it sent made the ground to gape everywhere, causing the tiny parcel of shore where the witch and her friends stood to be separated from the rest of the ground.
“We’re in trouble,” was all Candy could say.
Then the waters tugged at their little portion of ground with so much strength that it could no longer resist the demand. It parted from the rest of the shore with a violent shudder that threw Candy and Gazza to their knees.
Then the current caught it, and it was borne inexorably toward that place where the Sea of Izabella was lost to Oblivion.
Chapter 75
The End of the World
THE WATERS OF THE Izabella did more than simply carry the fragment of shoreline toward the limits of reality. It spun the makeshift vessel round and round, rocking it from side to side as it did so. But none of these chaotic maneuvers were sufficient to prevent Malingo from coming in to land on the slippery surface, with only the tips of his wing-ears to prevent him from sliding straight across the water-slickened surface to be dumped in the crazed surf on the other side, where he would certainly have drowned. Luckily Candy saw him slide past her and instinctively reached out, grabbing hold of one of his flailing wings, halting him before the worst could happen.
“You could still fly back,” Candy said to Malingo.
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because we’re going to die!” Gazza said, sounding thoroughly furious. “I’d give my right arm for a chance to get off this damn rock.”
“Oh, really? And leave your lady?”
Gazza blushed.
“I knew it!” said Malingo.
“I knew it too,” Gazza said, looking to Candy. “From the moment I saw you. Don’t ask me how, but I did. I love you, Candy,” he said. “I’m glad I finally said it myself. I know it’s a bit late, but there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity, with one thing or another.”
Candy smiled at him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Malingo said.
“What?”
“You’re just smiling at him.”
Any further words were drowned out by a vast silence, as the roaring sound of the waters’ chaos was stilled suddenly and completely, and the gray-blue mist that veiled the place where the waters actually fell away, cleared.
The currents that had carried the fragment of Scoriae to that place now vanished, for here the sea herself gave up possession of all form and will and power, and were tossed over the End of the Abarat, broken into innumerable beads of water, illuminated for a few seconds by the firelight, then extinguished. What had been, in the Reality from which the beads of water had now departed, an irresistible force was now no more than a million million drops falling away into the Abyss.
“This is it,” Gazza said.
Candy thought, After this, there’ll be no more magic, no more visions, no more love, or hope or—
“No, wait,” she said aloud. “Wait!”
“Who are you talking to?” Gaz said.
“I want more!” she yelled into the Void.
“More what?”
“Everything!” she told him.
“Why are you smiling?” Gaz said.
“We’re going over the Edge of the World!” Malingo said. “If there’s some good news, tell it, before we’re gone forever.”
“Later,” Candy said. “I’ll tell you later.”
They had run out of sea. The piece of land lurched and began to fall. But before it fell, Candy had time to look back toward the shore of Scoriae, and saw with heartbreaking clarity, John Mischief and his brothers. They were all watching her from a place so close to the water’s edge that every fresh surge of water threatened to carry them all away. Indeed, they almost seemed to be inviting that very fate, so close to calamity were they standing.
“Go back!” Candy yelled to them, though she very much doubted her words were audible.
John Mischief cupped his hands to either side of his mouth and the brothers tried yelling something in unison. But the air refused to carry the sound; the silence between shore and sea went unstirred. Then the little scrap of Scoriae tipped, and over the Edge it went, going where so much of the Sea of Izabella had already gone.
Down and down and down—
The John Brothers shouted the same word at the same instant: her name, of course.
“Cannndddeeeee.”
It did no good. It changed nothing. The waters carried Candy, Gazza and Malingo away, and down they went, out of the John Brothers’ sight.
“She’s gone!” Mischief shouted.
“She can’t have,” said Fillet.
“Well she has!” Mischief raged.
“But . . . but . . . she was going to make everything all right,” John Moot whimpered.
“It never would have worked,” Serpent said. “A thing like the Nephauree is beyond anybody’s power to resist. It’ll kill us all now.”
Serpent turned to look back at the Nephauree. For once his worst expectations were wrong. Those Who Walk Behind the Stars were departing. Promises were baubles with which ephemeral beings distracted themselves. The Nephauree had their own, far more important dealings. The beast had already swung its massive form around, and it was now moving off through the smoke toward the volcano. Its motion drew still more sulfur out of the churning air, and the Nephauree’s color deepened again, to a dazzling yellow. Then, as though it had drawn a massive surge of power from feeding off the smoke, it quickened its step, throwing open its cosmic robes as it did so, and like a dark sail filled by a following wind, it swelled up, and stepped off the ground, climbing the filthy air so quickly that in less than ten seconds it had gone from sight completely.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Serpent remarked.
“Only you, Serpent,” said John Fillet, “would complain because our executioner left!”
“I’m only saying . . . it’s a bit—”
“Shut up, Serpent,” Mischief said. There was deep rage in his voice. “Don’t you understand what this means?”
“Oh,” said Serpent after a pregnant pause. “Lordy Lou.”
His voice, for once, was scoured of every last drop of sarcasm or insincerity.
“She’s dead,” said John Drowze.
“Not dead,” John Moot said.
“Yes, Moot: dead.”
“We don’t know for certain,” John Pluckitt said.
“For the first and probably the last time, I agree with Serpent,” Drowze said. “It’s no use denying what we saw with our own eyes.”
“And what did we see?” John Slop said. “Not very much, it seems to me. I certainly didn’t see them die.”
“You’re clutching at straws, brother. They went over the Edge of the World.”
“That they did,” Drowze agreed.
“They fell, no question,” John Moot said.
“They’re probably still falling,” Fillet said.
“So what happens to them?” Slop asked.
“She’ll live,” John Serpent said with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “If anyone’s capable of surviving falling over the Edge of the World, she is.”
John Mischief had lost his rage, and had gone back to contemplating the scene beyond the shore. Nothing had changed. The Izabella still rushed toward her dissolution, the fine spray that blurred the place where her waters fell away, which had briefly cleared and now concealed the place again.
“What are you looking at, Mischief?” Moot wanted to know.
“Everything. Nothing,” he replied.
“Well, that’s a waste of time,” Moot said. “We’ve got things to do. Important things.”
Mischief continued to look at the sea.
“Such as?” he said.
“Oh, come on, Mischief,” Moot said, “you know as well as I do.”
“Can’t think of anything.”
“Well, we got a body to bury for one,” Sallow said.
“That’s a pleasant prospect.”
“Then there’s the Eight Dynasties to deal with.”
“We can’t do that on our own.”
“We had a life before she came along,” John Fillet reminded him.
“Yes, John, but we were waiting,” John Mischief replied. “Weren’t we? That first day in the Hereafter was about more than a stolen key. We all felt that, didn’t we?”
“Yes . . .” said John Serpent. “. . . of course we did. I admit to it. I had a sense of . . .” He scoured his vocabulary for the right word. “. . . of imminence. That something of consequence was about to happen.”
“And then she came into our lives,” Mischief said. “And she changed everything.”
“Everything?” John Serpent said.
“Everything,” Mischief replied.
Chapter 76
And Beyond
FALLING AND FALLING AND falling through utter emptiness Candy, Malingo and Ga
zza quickly lost track of time; and—with no means of judging how far they’d fallen—of space too. The same colorless undifferentiated space to their left and to their right, and above and below. It didn’t even offer them the hope that darkness had offered: the chance that hidden somewhere was life, purpose, meaning. There was just a gray banality; a vast absence through which they tumbled without any way to judge the speed of their fall, or even, at times, whether they were falling at all.
They said nothing.
What was there to say, when there was nothing but nothing around you? There was no view to remark upon, no moon was rising, no trailing stars, nor sun departing, the sky in flames. Nor was there sky for it to fall from.
And still they fell.
Or perhaps only thought they fell. Dreamed it, perhaps.
Whatever the reason, it didn’t change their circumstances. To fall was—
to fall was—
to—
—fall.
Suddenly, there was something out of nothing. A flash of blue and scarlet, which instantly enveloped Malingo, and snatched him out of sight. Luckily he yelled his head off at this abduction and his long, loud cry appeared in the bland air, as though he’d scrawled it in a long trail of silver smoke. It was the first solid, or virtually solid, thing any of them had seen since they’d gone over the Edge. It wasn’t much of a lifeline, but it was better than the absence. So Candy caught hold of the silver strand, hoping that it wouldn’t go to nothing in her grip.
No.
It was solid.
“Grab hold of me!” she yelled to Gazza. He had his hand around her ankle before the words were out of her mouth.
Three thoughts came into Candy’s head at the same time, each demanding priority: one, that she hoped Malingo didn’t stop yelling; two, that they might not fall forever after all; and three, that she should have known, the moment she saw the mirrored word Abarataraba, that if there was a mirror of the islands along the horizontal axis, then it stood to reason that there’d also be one on the vertical. If to the left, then to the right. If above, then below.