Abarat: Absolute Midnight a-3

by Clive Barker

  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.

  Not that there wasn’t an even more calamitous fate awaiting them all, just a few seconds away. Though the actual spot where the waters fell off into the Abyss was veiled in spray, there was no doubting its proximity. The closer the suicidal current brought them to their final moments, the less noise the waters made, their roar and rush fading as they dropped off the Edge of the World.

  “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.

&
nbsp; “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 Gazza 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.

  While her thoughts fought, she pulled herself, hand over hand, along the length of the braided cry. She could see the length of it receding from her grip, and could fix her eyes upon the spot, no more than three hauling-lengths away, where it went from sight. What else could she do but follow her hands to the place, and find out the why and the how of it?

  And then—Lordy Lou—Malingo stopped yelling. Candy felt the cord slacken, and let out a panicked yell of her own, which instantly formed a turquoise ribbon in front of her, like her breath on a winter’s day, before fluttering away when she stopped her cry.

  She wasn’t going to let their chance to get out of the Void slip away. Whatever was on the other side of the wall of murk, it couldn’t be any worse than falling forever into Oblivion, could it? She forced her body to reach, reach—go on, fingers! Go on, hands!—beyond the end of the cord, which was already slipping up and away, carried by a gust of wind that smelled like lightning and pineapples.

  Her fingers went now, disappearing completely. Her hands searched, probing through the Void . . . and touched something on the other side of the Wall of Nothingness. It was moist and warm, as though it had been painted by a loaded brush, and as soon as she touched whatever it was, whatever it was reached toward her with the same urgency. Dozens of boneless feelers as thin as string wrapped themselves around her hands and wrists.

  “What’s in there?” Gazza wanted to know.

  “I’ve no idea,” she told him. “But it’s alive. And it’s got hold of me. It’s pulling.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  It didn’t, she realized. It was a tight grip, but it didn’t mean her harm.

  “It’s all right,” she murmured.

  “What?”

  “I said: it’s all right.”

  She saw a gleam of bright columns ripple past her face.

  “What was that?”

  The word that went by. It was written in turquoise on a strip of air the color of mangoes.

  “Malingo?”

  The three syllables came out of her mouth, and flowed in purples and blues in a woven streak of sound and color.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “I’m not afraid,” she told him.

  Again, her words poured out in woven stream of color: red, purple, blue. . . .

  “Oh, will you look at that. Words like ribbons.”

  And out the words came.

  Words like ribbons.

  Green and yellow and orange.

  “What’s happening?” Malingo said. “I just saw my name fly by.”

  “I know.” She reached out toward the source of the tentacles. A gust of wind blew from the place where her hand was. She felt it on her face. She heard it telling her, as winds will:

  Come away. Come away.

&nbs
p; It carried the words off toward Oblivion.

  “No, thanks . . .” she said very quietly, so quietly that the ribbon was translucent. “We’ve got somewhere to go.”

  She reached out as far as her muscles and joints would allow, and grabbed hold of whatever tentacles were growing from the Other Side.

  Something there understood the sign she was sending. And it pulled. Candy didn’t have time to offer further word to Malingo. It all happened too fast. Suddenly there were bits of color rushing at her, tiny bits, and with them, the briefest fragments of sound. Nothing made sense. It came too fast and it just got faster.

  Color, color, color . . .

  Note, note, note . . .

  Color, note. Color, note.

  Col—

  No—

  Col—

  No—

  Suddenly, nothing.

  A long, empty, gray hush.

  But she wasn’t afraid. She knew how these things worked now. Everything was a mirror.

  If prisons—

  O!

  —therefore liberty.

  It’s started.

  If seas—

  See it?

  —therefore shores.

  Hear it?

  If silence,

  Yes!

  Therefore song.

  And they were in another world entirely.

  Hopelessness is reasonable.

  But nothing of worth

  in my life

  came of reason.

  Not my love,

  not my art,

  not my heaven.

  So I am hopeful.

  —Zephario Carrion

  So Ends

  The Third Book of Abarat

  Copyright

  Abarat: Absolute Midnight

  Copyright © 2011 by Clive Barker

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