Abarat: The First Book of Hours a-1

by Clive Barker

“Help yourself.”

  “Pity to let it go to waste.”

  He went to the crab and proceeded to plunge his hands into its gray-green entrails, claiming two healthy fistfuls of its bitter guts, his favorite portion of the animal, in part because it was the most despised. He was one of the rare—perhaps blessed—stitchlings who ate. Most of his kind had no means of digestion and elimination. Ignacio was a happy exception. Two thirds of his body were still functioning as ordinary human anatomy. He was plagued by constipation, and consequently, piles, but it was a small price to pay for the pleasure of eating the meat of a crab that still had a couple of nervous twitches in it.

  He glanced back up the beach at Mendelson.

  “What are you here to do?” he asked.

  “I’m here to ride whatever he’s raising back there,” Mendelson said gloomily. “And then I’m to fetch some girl for him.”

  “Is he thinking of getting married then?”

  “Not to this one,” Mendelson said sourly.

  “You know her?”

  “We’ve had our encounters. She comes from the Hereafter.”

  “Really?”

  Ignacio seized the crab by one of its spiny legs and hauled the carcass up over the stones to where Mendelson squatted.

  “You went to the Hereafter?” he said.

  Shape shrugged. “Yeah,” he said.

  “And? What was it like?”

  “What do you mean, what was it like? Oh. You mean: is it heaven?”

  He looked up at Ignacio, his beady eyes bright with contempt, even in the murk. “Is that what you think?”

  “No,” Ignacio said defensively. “Not necessarily.”

  “Angels guiding the souls of the dead to the immortal cities of light? The way the old preachers used to tell it?”

  “I don’t believe in all that nonsense,” Ignacio said, concealing his true hopes on the matter, which had indeed been optimistic. He’d liked the idea that somewhere beyond the Sea of Izabella lay a world where a stitchling such as himself might be healed, his hurts melted away, his mismatchings erased. But much as he wanted to believe in what the preachers pronounced, he trusted Shape.

  “So, this girl…”he went on, cracking the crab’s huge claws and trying to sound indifferent to the news he’d just heard.

  “Candy Quackenbush?”

  “That’s her name?”

  “That’s her name.”

  “She followed you here, and now you have to kill her?”

  “I don’t know if he wants her killed.”

  “But if he does?”

  “Then I kill her.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet, Ignacio. Why do you ask all these stupid questions?”

  “Because one day I want to be doing what you’re doing.”

  “If you think it’s some great honor, it’s not.”

  “It’s better than digging up mummified bodies. You get to travel to the Hereafter.”

  “It’s nothing special,” Shape said. “Now help me up.” He put out his arm so that Ignacio could haul him up onto his foot and stump.

  “I’m getting old, Ignacio. Old and tired.”

  “You need an assistant,” Ignacio said eagerly. “I could assist you. I could!”

  Shape glanced at Ignacio, shaking his head. “I work alone,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I only like the company of one person.”

  “Who?”

  “Me, you fool. Me!”

  “Oh…”

  Shape looked back to the boulders where Carrion was working. He had noticed something that Ignacio, in the midst of his envious chatter, had failed to catch.

  “The birds,” he said.

  The qwat birds, which had been silent in their crannies since Carrion’s arrival on the island, had risen into the air above the Rock without uttering a sound, and were now hovering in a vast black cloud, wingtip to wingtip, overhead.

  “That’s something rare,” Ignacio said, the wreckage of his stitched and overstitched face registering something close to wonder.

  He had no sooner set eyes on the flock than from the place among the boulders where Carrion was working there came a flicker of dark blue-purple light, followed by another, this time orange-red, followed by a third, the hue of bone. The colors rose into the air above the rocks, driving the cloud of qwats still higher, and there colors broke into fragments, darts and slivers of light interlacing, performing an elaborate dance.

  At this moment, the creator appeared from between the rocks, his hands raised in front of him as though he were conducting a symphony. Perhaps, in a sense, he was. Certainly the colors seemed to be responding to the subtle gestures he was making. They were becoming steadily more solid as he knitted them together.

  Then, very gently he brought them down out of the air. At his silent instruction they settled on the long flat boulder that was the highest point of Vesper’s Rock. There, finally, they began to cohere and form a recognizable shape.

  “Is that what you’re going to fly on?” Ignacio said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  “Apparently.”

  “Good luck,” he said.

  A vast moth, its hairy abdomen twelve feet long, and four or five times thicker than Shape’s body, was now perched on the rock, its newly formed anatomy still shedding flecks of color.

  Apart from its gargantuan size, it was close in appearance to a commonplace moth. It had long, feathery antennae and six long, fine legs.

  But it wasn’t until Carrion ordered it to “Fly! Let me see you fly!” that its true eloquence was revealed.

  When it rose up above the island and spread its wings, the markings on them seemed to resemble a vast, screaming face, unfolding against the sky then folding again, then again unfolding. It was as though heaven itself was giving vent to its anguish, as beat upon beat the great creature ascended.

  “Shape!” Carrion yelled.

  “Yes sir! I’m coming.”

  Carrion was gesturing to the creature, summoning it back down onto the rock. Shape came to his side.

  “Lord.”

  “Prettier than a glyph, don’t you think?” Carrion said, as the moth settled on the long boulder.

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “Climb on its back and fetch me that girl,” the Lord of Midnight instructed.

  “Does it know where to look?”

  “It will take your direction. But I suggest you start at the Yebba Dim Day. And don’t try and get clever with it. It may not have much of a brain, but I can see what it sees, and I can feel what it feels. That’s why I’m sending you on this, and not a glyph. So if you try to trick me in any way—

  “Trick you?” Shape protested. “Lord, why would I—”

  “The girl is mine, Shape. Don’t think you can fly away with her. You understand me? You bring her right back to the Twelfth Tower.”

  “I understand.”

  “There’s something about her that makes me uneasy. I want to know why she was brought here—”

  “I told you, Lord. It was an accident. I saw it all.”

  “I don’t believe in accidents, Shape. Everything is working toward some greater plan.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do I have a place in that plan?”

  Carrion gave Shape a hollow stare.

  “Yes, Shape. Unlikely as it seems, I suppose even you have a purpose. Now go. The longer you wait the more chance that she’s moved on.”

  “I’ll find her for you,” Shape promised.

  “And—”

  “Yes. I know. I’ll bring her straight back here to Midnight. Straight back to you.”

  20. The World through Borrowed Eyes

  Of one thing Candy was absolutely certain: there was no sight on earth to equal the view from the top of the colossal head of the Yebba Dim Day. Wherever she looked from that high, windswept platform, she saw wonders.

  She had help, of course. Not only did sh
e have Samuel Hastrim Klepp the Fifth by her side to point out things (and to occasionally catch hold of her arm when a particularly strong gust of wind threatened to carry her over the edge of The Great Head), he had also supplied two very accommodating squid, which clung to their heads, and then so positioned their boneless bodies that their eyes—which were immensely strong—could be used as telescopic lenses.

  Klepp’s squid were his pets. One he had called Squbb and the other Squiller. At first Candy found it a little odd to be wearing a living creature, but she supposed it was like any animal that worked with a human companion: a horse, a dog, a trained rat. It was just one more reminder that she was not in Chickentown.

  “If you want to get closer to something,” Klepp said to Candy, “just say ‘A little closer if you don’t mind, Squiller’. Or: ‘A little farther away if you don’t mind, Squiller’. It’s important you be precise and polite in the way you speak to them. They’re very particular about the little courtesies.”

  Candy didn’t have any difficulty getting the trick of this, and after only a minute or two Squiller had made himself so much at home on her head that it was no more peculiar than wearing a hat that had been left in a box of fish for a few days.

  Certainly Squiller appeared to be eager to give Candy the best possible view of the Abarat. Half the time, she didn’t even need to ask him to alter his focus. He seemed to know what she wanted instinctively; as though he was reading the brain waves coming off her skull. Candy didn’t entirely discount the possibility. She’d read back at home that squid showed extraordinary means of communicating with one another; how much more likely was it that the equivalent species here would be blessed with some miraculous power? The whole world was filled with magic. At least that was the impression Klepp gave her as he named the islands of the archipelago and spoke of the miracles they contained.

  “Every island is a different Hour of the day,” he began by saying. “And on each island you’ll find all the things that our hearts and souls and minds and imaginations connect with that Hour. Look there.”

  He pointed toward a place not far from the Straits of Dusk.

  “You see that island wreathed in light and cloud?”

  Candy saw it. The cloud rose in a rolling spiral around what looked to be a vast mountain, or perhaps a tower of gargantuan size.

  “What is it?” Candy asked Klepp.

  “The Twenty-Fifth Hour,” he replied. “Sometimes called Odom’s Spire. It’s a place of mysteries and dreams.”

  “Who lives there?”

  “That’s one of those mysteries. Though I have heard the name Fantomaya associated with the place, I have no idea what it means.”

  Candy’s new squiddy friend Squiller did his best to focus on the clouds around Odom’s Spire, but for some reason the billowing spiral prevented her closer scrutiny.

  “If you’re looking for a glimpse of what’s on the other side of the cloud,” Klepp said, “don’t bother. The light plays tricks with the eyes, somehow, and you just can’t get a good grip on it. Then sometimes the clouds will part and give you the illusion that you’re going to see something—”

  “But you never do?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “So what would happen if you sailed a ship right into the clouds?”

  “Oh, people have certainly tried that,” Klepp said. “A few came out alive, but happily crazy. And of course completely incapable of describing anything they’d seen, while the rest—”

  “—didn’t come out at all?”

  “You guessed it. One of them was my father…” He let this information hang in the air for a moment. Then he said: “You look cold, my dear.”

  “It’s just the wind.”

  “Let me get you a jacket.”

  “No, I’m all right.”

  “I insist,” Klepp said. “I don’t want you getting pneumonia. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  He headed for the elevator. Candy didn’t protest. The wind was a lot chillier than she’d expected it to be.

  “You stay away from the edge now!” Samuel said, and pulling the elevator gate closed, he disappeared from sight.

  While he was gone, Candy and Squiller kept up their perusal of the islands. Samuel had named them all for her several times, and Candy now tested her memory by putting the names to the locations. Some she remembered easily, others she had to puzzle over for a while.

  The island to the west of the Yebba Dim Day was called Qualm Hah, and its red-roofed city was called… Tazmagor. Yes, that was it: Tazmagor. To the southeast of it was a mountainous island called Spake, which stood at Ten O’clock in the Morning. At Eleven O’clock was the Island of Nully, and at Twelve Noon, the island of Yzil, which was bathed in the warmest, most magical light imaginable.

  At One O’clock was either Orlando’s Cap or Hobarookus, she couldn’t remember which. At Two, conversely, was either Hobarookus or Orlando’s Cap.

  To the south-southeast lay another sun-drenched island, which was the place, she remembered, where Samuel had said life was supposed to have begun: Three O’clock in the Afternoon, also called the Nonce.

  At Four was Gnomon, at Five an island called Soma Plume, in the center of which was a vast Ziggurat. At Six, far to the east of the Yebba Dim Day, though separated by only two hours, was an island called Babilonium, where it looked as though life was fun all the time. There were several huge circus tents pitched in the middle of the island, and colored lights in their tens of thousands flickered in the branches of every tree. I have to go there, Candy thought to herself.

  To the north of Babilonium was an island the name of which she could not remember, though she remembered the name of the still-active volcano at its center, which was Mount Galigali. The tide of evening then wound around the archipelago, ending up where she was standing, at Eight in the Evening, looking down on the Straits of Dusk.

  And then, in the vicinity of the Yebba Dim Day, lay a second series of islands. At Nine in the Evening was a place called Hap’s Vault. (She’d asked Samuel who Hap was, and he’d told her he didn’t remember.) At Ten in the Evening lay the island of Ninnyhammer, which had on it a town occupied by a species called tarrie-cats. The town was called High Sladder.

  The name of the island at Eleven had skipped her mind, but she remembered the name of the Midnight Isle: Gorgossium. It’s the most terrifying place in all the islands, Samuel Klepp had said: avoid it at all costs!

  There were six pyramids—some large, some small—at One in the Morning, which was called Xuxux, and at Two, another island, wreathed in darkness, the name of which escaped her. Next door to it, however, lay the island that was the most attractive to her eye, despite all that Samuel had said about its architect.

  The island was called Pyon, and covering it from one end to the other (and so bright with light it couldn’t have mattered that it was the middle of the night there) was Commexo City. The towers and the domes of Commexo City were completely unlike anything Candy had ever seen before: huge and elaborate configurations that looked as though they’d been conjured from a geometry that didn’t exist back home, then raised in defiance of physics.

  By contrast, the island beside it was an ominous place, with an impenetrable-looking mountain range. It was called The Isle of the Black Egg, and it was one of the Outer Islands, she remembered, along with Speckle Frew, which was at Five in the Morning. Beside Speckle Frew were the two islands, joined by the Gilholly Bridge that stood at Six and Seven in the Morning. That left only Obadiah, at Eight in the Morning, and she’d come full circle to the little sunlit city of Tazmagor, perched on the eastern flanks of Qualm Hah.

  “You’re looking rather pleased with yourself,” said Klepp, as he emerged from the elevator. In his hand he had a light green jacket, covered with small bright-red designs. She accepted it gratefully and put it on.

  “I was just trying to remember the islands,” she told him as she pulled the collar of the jacket up. “There were a few I couldn’t remember, bu
t I think I made quite a good—”

  She stopped talking.

  A terrible look had appeared on Klepp’s face. His eyes had grown huge, and he was no longer looking at Candy, but instead was staring past her into the sky high above her left shoulder.

  “What… is… it?” she said, almost scared to turn, but turning anyway.

  “Run!”he yelled.

  She heard him, but her feet failed to obey her. She was too astonished, and appalled, at the sight that filled the sky behind her.

  There was a moth swooping down on her, a moth with the wingspan of a small plane. And mounted on the back of this stupendous and terrifying insect was her old pursuer, Mendelson Shape.

  “There! You! Are!” he yelled at her.

  Now, finally, Candy’s feet agreed to obey her panic.

  She started to run toward the elevator, where Samuel Klepp was waiting to grab her and pull her to safety.

  But even as she ran, some instinct deep in her gut told her she wasn’t going to make it. The moth was coming down too fast. She could feel the freezing rush of its wings against her back, so fierce it almost threw her over. As she stumbled, the moth’s immense and many-jointed legs closed around her body and plucked her up off the roof of the tower.

  “Got you!” she heard Shape yelling triumphantly.

  Then he spoke some incomprehensible order to his mount, and the moth beat its vast wings and rose up into the air.

  Candy caught a smeared glimpse of Klepp’s horrified face as he reached up to try and snatch her out of the grip of the moth, but he was inches short of catching her hand.

  Then she was carried up and away, over the edge of The Great Head of the Yebba Dim Day. She was terrified. Her heart became like a drum, thumping in her chest, and in her head. A trickle of sweat ran down her spine.

  Poor Squiller was still attached to her face, clinging now more fiercely than ever. Candy was curiously thankful for his presence. It was like having a good luck talisman. As long as Squiller was with her, she felt, she would survive whatever lay ahead.

  Moving tentatively, so as not to alarm the moth (she was now hundreds of feet above the waters of the Sea of Izabella; to be dropped from such a height would certainly bring her adventures in the Abarat to a quick end), she put her hand up to stroke the squid.