Abarat: Absolute Midnight (15 page)

Part Four
The Dawning of the Dark

No need to fear the beast

That comes alone to your door,

For loneliness will be its undoing

Nor need you fear those beasts

That hunt in packs.

They will die when divided from their clan.

Fear only the one

That does not come at all.

It is already here, standing in your shoes.

—The last sermon of Bishop Nautyress

Chapter 26
The Church of the Children of Eden

“C
ANDY
? W
E
’
RE ALMOST THERE
.”

Even though Candy had told Malingo not to wake her, she surely couldn’t have meant him to leave her sleeping once they’d arrived. Still, he’d learned to be delicate when he was rousing her from sleep.

There was no great urgency. The ferry had only just sailed into Tazmagor Harbor. It would be several minutes before they docked. Even so, there was an unease among the passengers that was nothing to do with their arrival. Their voices were shrill, their laughter forced. Malingo knew why. There was a mysterious sense of foreboding in the air. Something was coming: something that wasn’t welcome. He had no more idea of the approaching something than the passengers who hurried past him. But it wasn’t good. His stomach was tied in knots, and there was an itch behind his eyes that he first remembered feeling the day his father took him to be sold. He did his best to put the itch and the unease out of his mind so as to concentrate on waking Candy. He put his hand on hers, and shook her gently.

“Come on, Candy. Time to wake up.” There was no response. He shook her again. “Come on,” he said, leaning toward her now. “You’ll have to finish this dream another time. Wake up.”

“I’m just dreaming this,” Candy reminded her father. “I don’t have to listen to you. I can wake up at any time.”

“Well you’d better not, because if you do”—he pointed to Melissa—“
she
is going to be the one who suffers.”

“Stop it, Bill,” Melissa said.

“Why? Because you think I don’t mean it? I mean it. Ask your daughter.”

“There’s stuff in his head right now he can’t control, Mom,” Candy said. “Somebody stronger might have fought against it. Dad just didn’t want to.”

“You’re going to regret that,” he said.

“Candy? What’s wrong?” Malingo asked her.

The expression on Candy’s sleeping face was no longer calm. A frown furrowed her brow, and the corners of her mouth were turned down.

“You’re starting to scare me,” Malingo said. “Why won’t you wake up? Can you even hear me?”

Did she nod her head?
If she did it, was the tiniest of motions.

“Oh, Lordy Lou. What is going on? Please wake up.”

Now it seemed she shook her head, though the motion was as subtle as her nod. So subtle he wasn’t sure she’d moved her head at all.

“Is it that you don’t want to wake up right now?”

And again she nodded. Or at least he thought she did.

“All right . . .” Malingo said, doing his best to sound calm. “If you want to stay asleep, I guess that’s okay. There’s not much I can do about it anyway. You just keep dreaming. I’ll deal with things on this end.”

There was neither a nod nor a shake by way of response. Her face simply became more intensely troubled.

It was strange to be walking the streets of Chickentown again, even stranger to be walking them at her father’s side—though of course she was invisible to everyone but him—and to see people’s responses to him and how his reputation had changed in the time she’d been away. A few people were openly afraid of him. They either crossed over the street to avoid him or hurriedly ducked into stores. But others, seeing him coming, made sure to pay him their respects. Some simply nodded or offered a quick “good afternoon.” But not one of them was able to entirely conceal the unease they felt in his presence. A few of them actually called him Reverend, which Candy knew she’d never get used to. Reverend! Her father, the brutal alcoholic who beat his wife and children: Reverend! Her mother had been right: things had certainly changed in Chickentown.

Once they were off Main Street and there weren’t so many people to see him apparently talking to himself, he said to Candy, “Did you see how much respect I get?”

“Yes, I saw.”

“Surprised you, didn’t it?
Didn’t it?
”

She wanted to defy him even now. She wanted to tell him that it was all an empty illusion, and she knew it. But then she thought of her mother. The man at her side was capable of doing terrible things, she didn’t doubt it. So she answered him, “Yes. I guess it did surprise me.”

“But what you don’t understand is that these people are frightened. They can smell the freaks: the things that got washed into the streets and left here. And they’re afraid. What I do is take the fear away.”

“How?”

“None of your business. Salvation’s a very private industry. They pay for the privilege, I can tell you that. I don’t take a cent of it. All their contributions go back into the church. And everybody’s glad to give. I’m bringing some comfort and maybe some happiness back into their lives. That’s worth a few dollars of anybody’s money. Here we are. Home sweet home.”

He was talking about a plain, one-story brick building, now painted a garish green, which Candy must have walked past hundreds of times in her life. It had a big bulletin board on the small lawn at the front which bore a single message:

The member of
The Sloppy
’s crew who found Malingo and Candy still aboard fifteen minutes after the ship had docked, was, much to Malingo’s surprise and relief, another geshrat. Talking to one of his own people made the complicated business of explaining their situation a little easier. It became easier still when the ferryman said, “You’re Malingo, right?”

“Do we know each other?”

“No. I’ve just heard all the stories. My sister, Yambeeni, follows everything you and the girl do as best she can. There’s a lot of rumors. People invent things about you I’m sure, just so they’ve got something new to talk about.”

“I didn’t realize anybody cared.”

“Ha! You’re kidding? You and Candy—is it okay if I call her Candy, or should it be, like, Miss Quackenbush or some-such?”

“No, I’m sure Candy would be fine.”

“I’m Gambittmo, by the way. Bithy, Mo, but usually Gambat. Like Gambittmo the geshrat, only shortened. Gambat Yoot.”

“It’s good to meet you, Gambat.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Could I get your autograph? It’s for my sister? She will
flap her fins
!”

Gambat demonstrated what was obviously a family trait by flapping his own orange fins, which were uncommonly large.

“Your sister would want
my
autograph?” Malingo said.

“Are you kidding?
Of course.
She’s a big fan. I am too, only it’s really the girls who go crazy. She knows all the details. How you saved Miss Quackenbush—sorry I can’t call her Candy, it just doesn’t sound right—from that crazy wizard guy, Wolfswinkel. We went to the house on Ninnyhammer, my sister and me. Saw all the stuff in the story. I mean, you can’t touch anything. It’s all roped off. But there’s the proof. It all happened. Oh, and maybe on the next page just something for me?”

Malingo accepted the notebook and then the pen, which had a small carved and painted copy of the Commexo Kid’s head on the end of it, grinning from ear to ear.

“Sorry about the stupid pen. A passenger left it. I hate the Kid.”

“Yeah?”

“That toothing grin. Like everything’s just dandy.”

“And it isn’t?”

“You ever met one of our people with money? Didn’t think so. We don’t have power, or money, or people to lead us. Why do you think we’re all talking about you?”

Malingo looked up at Gambat, searching his face for a hint of mockery. But he could find none. Candy’s head lolled around as she slept.

“Is Miss Quackenbush okay? Does she need maybe a doctor?”

“No, I don’t think so. She’ll be fine. She’s just tired. What do you want me to write?”

“Oh . . . I don’t know. Anything you like. Her name’s Yambeeni. Y-A-M-B-Two Es-N-I.” While Malingo signed, his new friend chatted on. “Just between us, you two can stay up here for as long as you like. We’re not heading back to Ninnyhammer for five or six hours. We’ve got to clean up the trash the passengers left. Oh,
you are the gesher.
Look at that! She gets a drawing too?”

“It’s not much, but—”

“You drew that so fast! That’s amazing!” There was a pause. Then he said, “What is it?”

“Just something I see in dreams,” Malingo told him. “It’s a huge baby in a very small boat.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. I just dream it.”

“Well, she’s going to flap so hard she’ll fly. Thank you. That is spaf, gesher, totally spaf.” Grinning a grin that was almost as broad as the Kid’s, he studied the autograph and drawing, and went on his way.

Brief as the exchange had been, it left Malingo with a lot to think about. It was a huge shock to discover that there were members of his beleaguered nation who not only knew of him, but were proud of having him numbered among them. For as long as there’d been books written, the Geshrat nation had been judged to be a lower order of being. They were menials, tradition stated: scrawny, dull-witted creatures without a maker of trinkets, trousers or trouble, in their tribe’s history.

Was it possible that he, who had come to believe over the years that his father’s lack of grief when he sold him had been perfectly understandable? He was a worthless thing that no one, not even his own father, would be sorry to lose. Perhaps he judged himself too harshly, and too soon.

Candy groaned in her sleep, shaking Malingo out of his stupor. What was he doing thinking about himself, when Candy was still
lost
in slumber? For the first time in this journey at Candy’s side he felt the need of some of the others. Two-Toed Tom, Geneva Peachtree or Finnegan Hob. Someone he could talk this problem through with. Anyone but the John Brothers. They just had too many opinions.

But wishing he had their company wouldn’t make it so. He was on his own, in the silent company of the person who meant more to him than anyone ever had. Suddenly, he was afraid for her.

Bill told Ricky to stay outside the church and keep watch. He then led Candy inside the church which was as unremarkable on the inside as it had been on the outside. The pews were rows of cheap wooden chairs, the altar a table covered with a plain white cloth. There was no cross.

“As you can see,” Bill Quackenbush went on, leading his dreaming daughter down toward the altar, “we don’t go in for anything fancy here. The message is what’s important.”

“And what is the message, Dad?”

“Don’t call me that anymore. There’s nothing between us.”

“Like love, you mean? Because I don’t think you’ve felt that for any of us. Maybe Mom once, before you had us to hit—”

“Enough,” he said, his voice thick with old rage.

They were just a few yards from the altar now, and Candy saw six or seven other people in the darkened corner of the church. Her father had seen them too. That, she thought, was why he wanted to end their conversation.

“I’ve no interest in going over old errors, old sins.”

“Whose errors, Dad? Whose sins?”

She went on, pressing her father in the hope of getting him to really show his temper. Maybe some of the members of his congregation would think twice about their smiling Reverend if they saw the real Bill Quackenbush. The one she knew. The one that was vicious and violent.

Bill stepped in between the folks gathered in the corner, and very quietly said, “You’ve changed. I can feel the stench of your corruption, and it sickens me to my soul. I will do anything in my power to protect the good people who worship here from your perversions and abominations, the filth that you brought from that Other Place—”

“The Abarat, Dad. You can say it.”

“I won’t soil my tongue!”

He wasn’t quiet any longer. His fury echoed off the plain whitewashed walls.

“Listen to yourself, Dad!” Candy said.

“Don’t call me—”
He stopped himself, as his rant came to meet him from the far wall of the church. He stopped, and once again dropped his voice. “Clever little witch, aren’t you? You still know how to anger me. But I’m not falling for it.” He took a deep breath. “If you defy me one more time I will make your mother suffer. Do you understand me? Look at me, girl, when I’m talking to you. I want you to know who I really am.”

“The enemy,” Candy said.

Her father smiled.

“Finally we agree on something,” he said. He turned his back on her and called out to his followers. “Is the machinery all warmed up and ready to go?”

“I did it all exactly like you told me to, sir,” one of them said.

“Good. Very good.”

Chapter 27
Interrogation

A
ROUND THE TIME
G
AMBAT
was leaving Malingo and Candy on the upper deck of
The Sloppy
(now the happy owner of two autographs from the hand of the most famous geshrat alive) a convoy of five vessels was about to depart from the harbor at Vrokonkeff, on Gorgossium. The largest of these five, the
Kreyzu
, was flying a smoke flag in the billows of which the stylized image of a needle and thread had been worked, marking it as the bearer of the presumptive Empress of the Hours, Lady Midnight herself, Mater Motley. The four ships that accompanied the
Kreyzu
were armed from waterline to crow’s nest with cannons and stitchlings, all in service of protecting the Lady Midnight.

Her departure had been delayed, of course. She had returned to her tower with the girl, Maratien, to find that Taint Nerrow, the seamstress she’d left to clean the mosaic map of the Abarat that was laid into the floor of her chamber, had been thrown out of one of the chamber windows and lay dead at the bottom. Mater Motley had liked the Seamstress Nerrow; the woman had been loyal and zealous. It didn’t please her that circumstances obliged her to now interrogate the dead woman, which would cause the deceased profound anguish. Mater Motley was certain that, had she been able to offer her opinion, Taint Nerrow herself would have volunteered her suffering in return for the name of her murderer.

Events many years in the designing were about to come to fruition: events that would transform the islands and all that lived upon them forever. She—who would be the mistress of that transformed world—could not afford to let a force as powerful as Taint Nerrow’s murderer go uncaught. She needed to know who the trespasser had been, and quickly. She bent down and turned Taint’s corpse over. Her face had a crack down the middle. But there was little blood. Ordering the rest of the women to retreat a few steps, Motley threw up a Dome of Diligences around herself, the body, and Nerrow’s spirit, which was hovering over the corpse, attached by a decaying cord of ectoplasm.

“Calm yourself, woman,” Motley said. “I don’t need more than a minute or two of your time.”

“I don’t want—”

“You have no choice.”

“—to go back—”

“You have no choice.”

“—into the flesh.”

“You have no choice. Hear me, witch?”

Taint’s spirit, a smudge of a panicked shadow, repeatedly flew against the inside of the Dome of Diligences like a fly trapped in a jar.

The Empress quickly became weary of Nerrow’s panicked cavorting.

“Enough,” she said.

She reached out and caught hold of her seamstress’s spirit. The shadow flailed, desperate to be free. Several of Nerrow’s sisters watched on in silent horror.

“Neysentab,” said the Old Mother, and with these three syllables she unmade the Dome. “If any of you find necromancy hard to witness, then I suggest you avert your eyes.”

Several did exactly that, one or two of the sisters even walking away from the body of Taint Nerrow entirely so as not to even hear what was happening. Meanwhile, Mater Motley went down on her knees beside Taint Nerrow’s corpse, telling one of the remaining sisters, “Fathoon? Open her mouth wide and hold her head.”

Kunja Fathoon, who was a big-boned woman with huge hands, did as she was instructed.

Mater Motley swiftly placed the spirit between Nerrow’s lips and ordered Fathoon to close the dead woman’s mouth and keep it closed whatever happened. Kunja Fathoon pinched the dead woman’s mouth to stop the spirit from exiting that way. She kept it pinched closed for as long as a minute. Nothing happened. And nothing. And still nothing. Then, suddenly, the woman’s leg twitched. Its motion was followed by an eruption of thrashings and kickings.

“Calm, Taint Nerrow. Calm,” Mater Motley said. “I know this must be horrible for you coming back into your broken body, but I only need a few questions answered.” She glanced up at Fathoon. “Are you ready?” Fathoon nodded. “Don’t weaken.”

“I won’t.”

“No,” Mater Motley said, her certainty confirmed by something in Fathoon’s eyes. “No, you won’t. Then let’s be done with this, shall we?”

“At your instruction, my lady.”

“Now.”

Fathoon uncovered Nerrow’s mouth.

“Cease this, Taint Nerrow! RIGHT NOW!”

The woman’s cries became less pitiful. Her contortions dwindled.

“That’s better,” the Old Mother said. “Now, answer me quickly and truthfully. Then I can let you go, and you can go to your death.”

Taint drew a second phlegmatic breath and then spoke, her voice unequivocally that of a dead woman: flat, thin, joyless.

“What did I do to deserve this?”

“The fault wasn’t yours, Nerrow. I simply want to know who murdered you.” Mater Motley leaned forward a little to catch the answer when it came. “Who was it, sister?”

“It was the Princess Boa.”

“Impossible!”

“I swear.”

“She’s been dead sixteen years, sister.”

“I know. Yet it was she.”

“And you have no doubt?”

“None. It was she. It was Boa. It was! It was!” Her reanimated body was beginning to defy her control. Her face was riddled with tiny tics and seizures. They seemed to give her pain, even though her nerves had only a ghost of life left in them.

Mater Motley studied the corpse at her feet without replying. Nerrow’s despairing eyes stared up at the woman who held her spirit hostage. “I’ve told you all I know. Let me go to death. It will be kinder than life was.”

“Well then . . .” the Old Mother said. “Let go, Fathoon. Peace in the Void, woman.
Be gone
.”

She had barely finished her sentence before the seamstress’s spirit had fled its confinement and was rising away from her prison and her imprisoner. Then the shadow-smudge had gone from sight, lightless against a lightless sky.

Mater Motley’s return to the Needle Tower, and her subsequent discoveries and dealings there, had delayed the departure of the
Kreyzu
a little over two hours. But once the immense vessel was out in the open waters it moved with extraordinary speed, the engine that blazed in the belly of the vessel—a brutal delirious conjoining of the harrowing with the depraved, the unforgivable with the insane—propelling the
Kreyzu
through the Izabella, defying every current.

The Izabella did not protest the vessel’s brutal power. The sea knew what dread influence had wrought the vessel, and had given it authority. She knew the monstrous power the Old Mother wielded. Simply by reading rumors and toxins in the streams that poured down the slopes of the islands into her tides, the Izabella knew how much worse things were soon to get. It would serve the myriad life-forms who dwelt within her waters no good to oppose the Midnight Empress for she was capable, the waters knew, of practically limitless acts of destruction. Not flesh nor wood nor stone nor dust was inviolate. She had it in her, this woman and her allies on high, to do death to every Hour of Day and Night if she did not get her way.

So for now, the Izabella decided, she must seem to do so. To have her will, however wicked.

Thus, untroubled by the sea’s enmity, the woman who would very soon change the Abarat out of all recognition speeded toward her destination.

On board the
Kreyzu
, the girl Maratien came into the Old Mother’s darkened cabin, her head reverentially bowed. She didn’t dare raise it until the Old Mother murmured, “What is it, child?”

“We are approaching the pyramids, my lady. You told me to come and tell you.”

Mater Motley rose from the hovering stone on which she sat and descended the air to come to the place where Maratien stood.

“Are you excited, child?”

“Should I be?”

“Oh yes. If you have the courage to stay with me today and for the days to come, I promise you that you’ll see such rare sights as will change forever the way you imagined the world to be. And of your place in it.”

“So I may watch?” Maratien said cautiously, not entirely certain that she had understood the invitation correctly.

“Of course. Right here at my side. And if you are as wise a child as I believe you to be, then you will take note of everything you see. Every detail. Because there may come a time when someone will ask you what it was like to have been there, and you will want to answer them truthfully.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Now go to Melli Shadder, one of my sisters—”

“I know her.”

“Tell her that I ordered you be given my warmest coat. It will be bitterly cold when all the suns go out, Maratien. Go on. I’ll wait for you.”

“You will?”

“Of course. I’ve waited for the better part of six centuries for this Hour. I can wait a few minutes more while you find yourself a coat.”