Abarat: The First Book of Hours a-1

by Clive Barker

  His route took him past a place among the trees where two masked men who’d been warders in his prison and had developed a deep enmity for one another were fighting with clubs. The pair were brothers, Wendigo and Chilek, and Carrion had amused himself some days earlier by casually sewing a seed of discord between the two (a rumor, no more, whispered in each ear, suggesting that one brother was attempting to become the prison’s warden behind the other’s back). It was a test, really, to see how long it would take for jealousy to overcome the once powerful love that the two brothers had borne one another. Not long, was the answer. Here they were now, fighting to the death over something that wasn’t even true.

  Unseen, Carrion watched from the shadows as the fight reached its grim conclusion. One brother slipped in the mush of rotted gallows leaves beneath their feet and went down in the dirt. The other man didn’t give his brother a chance to beg for mercy. He raised his club and delivered the coup de grace with a whoop of boyish glee.

  The victor’s moment of triumph didn’t last very long. The whoop died away, and the surviving brother seemed to wake from his trance of envy and bloodlust. He shook his head and pulled off his mask. Then—letting both mask and club drop from his hands—he fell to his knees beside his sibling. Recognition of what he’d done flooded his face.

  Carrion laughed, hugely amused. Hearing the laughter, Wendigo looked up from his brother’s body and stared off into the shadows.

  “Who’s there?” he demanded of the darkness.

  The sudden grief in his voice disturbed a flock of gallows ravens in the branches overhead. They too had been watching the fight, it seemed. Now they called to Wendigo as they swooped down around him.

  “Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!”

  He tried to wave them off, but they weren’t about to be driven away.

  Around and around they flew, some even daring to land on the man’s head to hop there and laugh into his ears. He struck wildly at them, but they were up and away before he could catch hold of their black and spindly legs. Defeated, now alone with his crime, Wendigo sank down sobbing in the dead leaves.

  Carrion left the ravens to their tormenting and Wendigo to his tears. His mood was improving by the moment.

  As he walked, a wind came out of the west and passed through the forest, whistling between the rotted teeth of the hanged men and sighing out of their eye sockets. The nooses creaked as the corpses swung back and forth.

  Carrion took off one of his gloves and put his bare hand up into the wind, his lips drawing back. They had been permanently scarred, those lips, by something that his grandmother had done to him many, many years before. Hearing him use the word love, Mater Motley had sewn his lips together, and left him that way, speechless and hungry, for the space of a day.

  “Where are you, child of the Hereafter?” Carrion wondered aloud.

  The wind carried his words away.

  “Come to me” he went on, as he walked through the swaying corpses toward the sea. “I won’t hurt you, child. I swear, on the tomb of my beloved.”

  And still the wind took his words. He let it. Perhaps his gift from the Hereafter would hear what he was telling her and do as he was asking.

  “Come to me” he said again, dropping his words to a whisper, imagining them finding their way into the ear of the trespasser. As she slept, perhaps, or as she stared out at the sea, just as he was staring out at the sea.

  “Do you hear me?” he said. “I’m waiting for you. Come to me. Come to me. Come to me.”

  23. The Man Who Made the Kid

  The great moth, though it was certainly dead, did not fall from the sky like a stone. Its wings were so large that it spiraled down like a kite that had lost the wind. Candy held on to its thorax, praying aloud:

  “Please, God, help me!”

  But the words were snatched out of her mouth by the speed of their descent, which grew faster and faster.

  She caught a glimpse of what lay below. It wasn’t bare rock, but it wasn’t a featherbed either: it was a stretch of what looked like moorland, with here and there a few scattered trees.

  And then—as if things weren’t bad enough—Mendelson Shape reached down around the body of the moth and began to shake her loose. Quite why he was doing this was beyond her; perhaps he was simply trying to lighten the load. Whatever his reasons, they were his undoing. In his attempt to throw Candy off, he lost his own grip on the animal and started to pitch forward over the moth’s head. In desperation he snatched hold of the moth’s antennae, but his body weight simply flipped the insect’s whole cadaver over.

  It was now Shape who started to pray aloud for help, though he did so in a language Candy didn’t understand. His pleadings were no more efficacious than Candy’s had been. She heard him clawing his way up over the moth, each breath a sob. But he was lost. His pleadings became more desperate than ever; then the wind gusted with particular force, and he was carried away. Candy glimpsed him as he swept past her. He plunged out of sight through the darkened air, leaving her lying face up on the belly of the insect as it too plummeted earthward. The spread of the moth’s wings slowed its descent, which was about the only good news about Candy’s situation. She held on tight, anticipating a massive blow when they hit the ground.

  But she was lucky. The wind had carried the moth away from the rocks where Mendelson had fallen, and toward one of the copses. The insect’s body landed in the canopy. Twigs and branches snapped, and the huge body threatened to continue its fall to earth, but the young trees had sufficient resilience to bear the moth’s body up.

  Leaves flew into the air and came spiraling down on top of Candy. She lay absolutely still, waiting for the last of the motion to subside. Then she gently rolled over onto her stomach and peered down through the creaking branches.

  The ground was still twenty feet below her, perhaps more. She needed to proceed with extreme caution, she knew, if she was going to get down to terra firma without doing herself harm. As it turned out, it wasn’t too much of a problem. The trees presented her with easy hand- and foot-holds. Though she still was shaky from the last few minutes of high drama, she managed to clamber down to earth without any further incident.

  The first thing she did was to relieve Squiller of his duty by gently unknitting him from her head. The poor squid was trembling violently. She did her best to reassure him with soft words.

  “It’s okay,” she told him. “We’re perfectly safe now.”

  She would have to get him back to the water as soon as possible. Squiller had been serving her sight for an hour or more; she was surprised he was still alive.

  Now that she was on the ground she took stock of the situation. What place was this? Or, more correctly, given that she was in the Abarat, what Hour?

  It was dark here—darker than the Yebba Dim Day—but not yet deep night. Her guess was that this was Ten O’clock in the Evening, which she remembered from her lessons with Klepp was the island of Ninnyhammer.

  There was a little chill in the air, and on the breeze, from some distance away, she could hear an orchestra playing some mournful music.

  She ventured to the edge of the little stand of trees to see if she could discover the source of the music. She did so easily. As she peered out from the trees, two of the hunters set their balloons down gently, not fifty yards away from her, the floodlights on their gondolas illuminating the ground in every direction. Rather than step out into the light and make herself a potential target for the hunters she retreated into the cover of the trees again and watched while events unfolded.

  First she heard the sound of the gondola doors being opened, and then—with a quiet hum—a set of steps emerged, so that these pampered hunters didn’t have to jump the short distance from the doorway to the ground.

  The three men who emerged were all wearing identical clothes: high-collared gray suits and highly polished gray boots. The leader—to judge by the way that the other two men fawned upon him—was not the oldest. He was a diminutive young
man with a shock of orange hair that fell over his brow, and the perpetually narrowed eyes of one who was deeply suspicious of the world.

  The other two—his bodyguards, perhaps—were almost twice his size, and they instantly proceeded to survey the territory into which their leader was wandering. Both carried guns.

  Finally, bringing up the rear of this little group was a black man so tall he had to bend his head in order to get out through the gondola’s door. He wore a pair of small silver glasses and he carried some kind of large electronic tablet, the screen of which gave off a pulsing glow that illuminated his face with light: sometimes white, sometimes turquoise, sometimes orange. He attended closely to everything the man with the orange hair said or did, and in response his long agile fingers moved restlessly back and forth over the tablet, missing no detail of whatever his boss said or did as he set it down.

  The man with the suspicious eyes had already fixed his gaze upon the moth in the tree; and he approached the creature, talking as he went.

  “Have you ever seen any life-form quite like this, Mr. Birch?” he said to the man in the silvered glasses. He didn’t wait for a reply. “Doggett?” Mr. Suspicion said, now addressing the larger of the two bodyguards. “You’d better get some grappling hooks and ropes, so we can bring this thing down. I want it preserved for our collection.”

  “It’s as good as done, Mr. Pixler,” Doggett said, and left the little company to get the work underway.

  Pixler? Candy said to herself. Was it possible that this little man was in fact the master architect of Commexo City?

  “What do you make of it, Birch?” Pixler asked his companion.

  The man came to Pixler’s side. He was fully two and a half feet taller than his boss, and despite the insipid, functional cut of the pale suits they were all wearing, he wore his with a curious elegance. “I’ve been going through Willsberger’s Flora and Fauna of the Islands and—”

  “There’s no entry for a giant moth?” Pixler said, gently patting his quiff to be sure it hadn’t lost its shape.

  “No.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Pixler said. “It’s my opinion that this thing was made by magic. Look at the color flowing out of it, Birch. It was a conjuration that made this. And a powerful one.” Pixler smiled. “It’s going to take time to root out all the magic in these islands. We’ve got a lot of books to burn, a lot of spirits to break—”

  Candy listened to the man speaking of book burnings and spirit breaking with a little smile of anticipation on his face, and it made her shudder. So this was the philosophy of Rojo Pixler, the great architect of Commexo City. It made grim listening.

  “I don’t want them going to their local shamans and witch doctors for their healing and their revelations. I want them coming to us. To me! If people want a taste of magic, let it be our magic. Sanitized. Systematized.”

  “Hallelujah,” Birch said.

  “You’re not mocking me, are you?” Pixler snapped, reeling around on the man, his finger jabbed in the man’s face.

  Birch raised his hands in surrender, the tablet slipping from his hands. “Good Lord, no. Absolutely not, sir.”

  Pixler laughed out loud. “A joke, Birch. A joke!” he said.

  “What?” said Birch, his expression empty.

  “Where’s your sense of humor?” Mr. Suspicion said.

  “Oh. A joke.”

  “Come on, Birch, lighten up. I trust you.”

  Birch bent down and picked up the tablet he’d dropped. As he did so, he shot Pixler a glance that the boss-man didn’t see, but Candy did. It spoke volumes. Under Birch’s loyal manner lay a deep-seated contempt for his employer.

  “Write this down for me, Birch,” Pixler said. “I want to announce an amnesty on all books of magic. If they’re turned over to us in Commexo City for burning in the next thirty days, I will personally guarantee that whoever hands the books over will be immune from prosecution.”

  “With respect,” Birch said, “there are no laws, sir, forbidding the practice of magic outside Commexo City. And again, with respect, I think it would be very hard to get any of the Island Councils to agree to put such a law into effect.”

  “What if we told these two-bit councilors that they could never have any further dealings with Commexo unless they did create such a law?” Pixler said.

  “That might work,” Birch said. “But what about the big players? The Carrion family has a vast magical library, I hear. Probably the largest on the islands. How do we get them to give that up?”

  “I’ll find a way,” Rojo said, his manner oozing confidence. “I always find a way, you know me.”

  “Wait,” said Birch softly.

  “What is it?”

  “Would you mind, sir?” Birch said, handing his glowing tablet over to his boss.

  “What’s the problem, Birch?” Pixler said.

  “None, sir,” Birch said, taking a small step away from his employer, toward the copse, then another, then a third.

  “Birch?”

  At that moment Birch’s steps became a long-legged dash into the undergrowth.

  Too late, Candy realized that she was the target of his pursuit. She turned and started to run, but before she could get more than a yard, he had his hands on her.

  “A spy?” Pixler yelled.

  “It’s just a girl,” Birch said, as he pulled Candy out of the shadows and into the blaze of light from the balloons. She complained loudly about his manhandling of her, but she had no choice in the matter. He was considerably stronger than she was, and he didn’t seem to care that he was bruising her in the process of holding on to her.

  “Are you our moth maker?” Pixler said. “Did you do that?” He pointed to the dead moth, which was still in the trees, despite the attempts of Doggett and his team to bring it down.

  “She’s probably one of the local tribespeople,” Birch said, still holding Candy tight. “Some of them are mute, I believe.”

  “Are you mute?” Pixler said.

  “No,” Candy replied.

  “Ah. That’s one theory that bites the dust,” Pixler said.

  “Then who are you?” said Birch.

  “My name is Candy Quackenbush and for your information I was being abducted by that thing in the trees when you brave, clever gentlemen shot it out of the skies. You could have killed me!”

  Pixler listened to this little outburst with a mildly amused expression on his face.

  “I think you could probably let the young lady go now, Birch,” Pixler said.

  “She may be armed,” Birch said, not releasing Candy.

  “What have you got in your hand?” Doggett demanded.

  “That’s Squiller,” Candy said, looking down. To her distress she realized that in the last few minutes—while she’d been listening to the book-burning nonsenses Rojo Pixler was spouting—the life had finally gone from her little squid. Most likely it had been out of its native element too long.

  “Let me go!” she raged, digging at Birch with her elbows to get him to release her.

  “You heard what the girl told you,” Pixler said.

  Birch let go of Candy, but stayed within six inches of her in case she attempted to make a move on his boss.

  “Shall I take that from you?” Pixler said, his hands extended to receive Squiller’s body.

  “No, you can’t,” Candy said. “I’ll bury him myself. I want to say a little prayer.”

  “For a squid? My lord,” said Birch, “you are a primitive lot on this island.”

  “Don’t be so judgmental, Birch,” said Pixler. His voice had become softer. “My sister Filomena used to bury all her pets in the back garden when we were young. We had quite a little cemetery back there. I used to dig the hole, and she’d write a little prayer. These little rituals are important. Where are you from, child?”

  “A long way away,” Candy said.

  She suddenly felt a deep tremor of sadness go through her, and she wished with all her heart that she could sn
ap her fingers and be returned to her own backyard in Followell Street, where she could lay Squiller to rest beside Monty the canary and several deceased goldfish: the companions of her childhood. She could feel tears not that far off, and the last thing she wanted to do was weep in front of a couple of total strangers. So she said:

  “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bury Squiller in the woods. It’s been nice meeting you, Mr. Pixler. And you”—she looked at Birch—”not so nice.”

  “Well, that’s plain-speaking,” Pixler said.

  “We speak plainly in Minnesota.”

  “Minnesota?” said Birch. “What island is that?”

  “Minnesota isn’t in the Abarat, Birch,” Pixler said.

  “You mean—?”

  “Yes,” said Pixler. “Minnesota is in the Hereafter.”

  Leaving them to their discussion, Candy wandered off into the woods, making sure she kept well away from the area where the men were now at work under Doggett’s supervision, bringing the dead moth down from the branches.

  She found a place where the dirt looked relatively easy to penetrate and she proceeded to dig with her hands. When she’d got down a foot or so, she lay Squiller’s little body at the bottom of the hole and threw a fistful of earth over him. She’d only been to one funeral in her life—her grandmother’s—but she remembered a smattering of words from the ceremony.

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” she murmured. Then she improvised: “Thank you for your company, Squiller. I’m sorry you’re gone. I’m going to miss you.” She began to push the remaining dirt over the squid’s body as she spoke, covering it completely. “I hope wherever you’ve gone, it’s a place you want to be.” She sniffed hard, swallowing her salty tears. It wasn’t just Squiller’s impromptu funeral that had brought them on. It was thoughts of home, and of the great distance that lay between this place and the streets of Chickentown. “Now I’m alone,” she said to herself.

  “No, you’re not.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. Rojo Pixler was standing close by.