by Clive Barker
He did his best to keep his balance, but he failed. Down he went, falling hard on his backside, his humiliation complete. There was no further for Kaspar Wolfswinkel to fall.
The last sight Candy had of him, before the glyph carried them away from the shattered dome, was Kaspar Wolfswinkel as the silent comedian, struggling to get to his feet and falling down again, his face now as besmirched as his suit and shoes.
The sight made her laugh, and the wind carried her laughter away over the darkened slopes of Ninnyhammer.
Jimothi Tarrie, who was kneeling in the long grass giving the last rites to one of his dying sisters, heard the girl’s triumphant laughter, and despite the fact that he had lost five of his dearest in the battle with Houlihan’s monstrous crew, managed to make a little smile.
Otto Houlihan heard the laughter too, as he sent his surviving mires back to their glyphs to give chase. He had left three of his creatures on the battlefield, their hoods clawed off them by the tarrie-cats, the stinking mud running out of their suits. He wasn’t optimistic that the mires pursuing the girl and the slave in their makeshift glyph would catch up with them. Mires were fearless fighters, but they didn’t have brilliant intellects. They needed close instruction or they rapidly lost their grasp on their purpose. More than likely the clouds over Ninnyhammer would conceal their quarry from them, and after a time they would forget why they were up there and begin circling around. Unless they received fresh directions they would simply continue to circle and circle and circle, until their glyphs ran out of significance and crashed.
But Houlihan—though he was sorely tempted—could not afford to give chase personally. The girl was important to Carrion, and the Key was more important still. His priority was to go back up to the house and get Wolfswinkel to hand the Key over. The girl would have to wait. It wouldn’t be difficult to find Candy Quackenbush again. She was noticeable, that one. There was something about the eyes; something about the bearing. She’d find it hard to hide.
He ascended the little hill on which Wolfswinkel had built his domain and stepped into the chaotic ruins, calling the wizard’s name. There was no immediate reply so he went through the living room and up the stairs to the dome. He’d seen the glass shattering of course, so he knew what to expect when he got up there. What he didn’t anticipate was the sight of Kaspar Wolfswinkel standing in his underwear, socks, and mud-smeared blue shoes, staring up at the star-filled sky through the gaping remains of his precious dome.
His dirtied clothes lay in a heap on the floor.
His near-nakedness was not a pretty sight.
“The Key,” Houlihan said.
“Yes, yes,” Wolfswinkel said, going to his pile of muddied vestments and searching through the pockets. “I have it here.”
“You will be rewarded,” Houlihan said to him.
“I should hope so,” Wolfswinkel said, handing the Key over to Houlihan. He was trembling, the Criss-Cross Man saw.
“What’s troubling you?” Houlihan said.
“Oh, besides all this?” Wolfswinkel said, spreading his arms and circling on the spot. “Well, I’ll tell you what’s troubling me. That girl.”
“What about her?”
“Her presence here is no accident, Otto. You do realize that?”
“It’s occurred to me. But what’s your evidence for this?”
“She finds it too easy, Otto.”
“Easy?”
“Being here,” said Wolfswinkel. “Back in the old days, before the harbors were closed—”
“You weren’t even born, Kaspar.”
“No, but I can read, Otto. And all the books agree: it took visitors from the Hereafter days, weeks, sometimes months to become acclimatized to being in the Abarat. If you tried to speed up the process, people went crazy. Their fragile imaginations couldn’t take it.”
“Well, they’re weak,” Houlihan said.
“You’re missing the point, Otto, as usual. I’m talking about the girl. This Candy Quackenbush. For her, being here is nothing. She’s doing magic as though she was born to it. Born to it, Houlihan! What does that tell you?”
“I don’t know,” Houlihan said.
“I’ll tell you what it tells me.”
“What?”
“She’s been here before.”
“Huh. Well that’s something for Carrion to puzzle out,” Houlihan said, plainly not interested in debating the subject with Wolfswinkel.
“What about me?” Kaspar said.
“What about you?”
“I found the Key. And the girl.”
“Then lost her. You let her slip away.”
“It wasn’t my fault. That was your damn mires. They could have had her. Anyway, two minutes ago you were telling me I’d be well rewarded.”
“That was before I had the Key in my hand.”
Wolfswinkel’s lip curled. “You—”
“Now, now, Kaspar. No foul language. Accept your error. She was in your charge.”
“What could I do? She turned my slave against me. He broke my staff.”
“That seems rather careless of you,” Otto said. “What was he doing with your staff in the first place?”
“I was outnumbered by them!” Wolfswinkel protested.
“By a girl and a geshrat?”
Wolfswinkel paused. Then, narrowing his eyes, he pointed his fat forefinger at the Criss-Cross Man. “I know what you’re doing, Otto,” he said.
“And what’s that?” Houlihan replied.
“You’re going to try and take all the glory for yourself and leave me with all the blame.”
“Oh, Kaspar. You are so paranoid.”
“That is what you’re going to do, isn’t it?”
“Very possibly,” said Houlihan, with a little smile. “But you can’t tell me you wouldn’t do the very same thing if you were in a similar situation.”
Wolfswinkel was defeated. He drew a deep, anguished breath. “At least tell Carrion I languish here,” he said, pitifully. “We used to be friends, Otto. Do something for me. Please.”
“I’m afraid our Lord Midnight is a practical man. He has what he needs from you. So now? You’re forgotten. It’s on to new business.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Life’s not fair, Kaspar. You know that. You had a slave for—how long?”
“Twelve years.”
“Did you treat him fairly? No, of course not. You beat him when you were in a bad mood, because it made you feel better, and when you felt better you beat him some more.”
“You think you’re clever, don’t you, Houlihan?” Wolfswinkel said, bitter tears of frustration and rage spilling into his eyes. “But let me tell you: the Hour of your undoing will come. If you don’t let me track this girl down and kill her, she’ll make such trouble for you—” He looked around at the ruins of his precious dome. “This is just the beginning, believe me.”
Houlihan went to the door.
“You like playing prophet of doom, don’t you? You always did, even back in school.”
Wolfswinkel reached out for this last, fragile hope. “Ah, school. Otto, do you remember how close we were back then?”
“Were we?” Houlihan said. Then, considering the forlorn figure before him, he managed a scrap of compassion.
“I’ll do what I can for you,” he said. “But I’m making no promises. These are unruly times. Crazy times.”
“All the better. In times like these a smart man profits.”
“And which of us is the smart one?” Houlihan said, smiling. “The one standing in his underwear covered in mud, or the man with the Key to his Master’s heaven in his pocket?
“Never mind, Kaspar,” Houlihan said, walking away from the door, leaving Wolfswinkel in the filth and chaos, unable to cross the threshold without having tarrie-cats on his throat. “All you can do is hope your chance for revenge comes around again, eh?”
“That would be something to look forward to, at least,” Wolfswinkel said.
&
nbsp; “Then I’ll leave you with this thought, Kaspar. If I do secure your freedom—”
Kaspar turned, the light of hope rekindled in his eyes.
“Yes?” he said. “What?”
“Then you must swear now that you will serve me. Be my cook, if I so desire. My knife washer, my floor scrubber.”
“Anything! Anything! Just get me out of here!”
“Good. Then we understand each other,” Houlihan said, turning away.
“Good night to you, Otto.”
“Good night to you, Kaspar,” said the Criss-Cross Man. “And sweet dreams.”
31. The Twenty-Fifth Hour
The trio of Houlihan’s glyphs came chasing after Candy and Malingo at considerable speed, but with a little maneuvering Candy left them behind in a bank of purple-blue cloud. Though she’d never driven a vehicle of any kind (besides her bike, which didn’t really count), she found the task of piloting the glyph remarkably easy. The craft responded quickly to her will and moved with a grace that pleased her greatly.
Once she and Malingo were convinced that their pursuers were not going to put in another appearance, she slowed their frantic pace and guided the glyph down so that they were just skimming the curling waves. That way if anything unpredictable were to happen to the glyph—if, for instance, it were to decay for some reason—they would not have more than a few feet to fall.
It was time for a little mutual congratulation.
“The way you conjured this thing!” Candy said. “It was amazing. I had no idea—”
“Well, I wasn’t really sure I could do it,” Malingo said. “But I guess in a tight squeeze you find out you can do all kinds of things you didn’t know you could do. Besides, I couldn’t have done it without your help.” He grasped Candy’s hand. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” Candy said. “We make a good team, you and me.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. I’d be on my way to Midnight if it weren’t for you.”
“And I’d be a slave if it weren’t for you.”
“See? A team. I think we should stick together for a while. Unless of course you’ve something else you need to do?”
Malingo laughed. “What would I have to do, that was more important than keeping you company?”
“Well… I thought, now that you’re free you’d want to go back and see your family.”
“I don’t know where they are. We were all split up when we were sold.”
“Who did the selling?”
“My father.”
“Your father sold you to Wolfswinkel?” Candy said, scarcely believing what she was hearing.
“No. My father sold me to a slave trader called Kafaree Skeller, and he sold me to Wolfswinkel.”
“How old were you?”
“Nine and three quarters,” Malingo said, with the precision of a child who’d been asked the same question. “I don’t blame my father. He had too many children. He couldn’t afford to keep all of us.”
“I don’t know how you can be so forgiving,” Candy said, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t be able to forgive my father if he did that to me. In fact, there are some things nowhere near as bad as that that I can’t forgive my father for.”
“Maybe you’ll feel differently when you get back home,” Malingo said.
“If I ever get back.”
“You will if you want to,” Malingo said. “And I’ll help you. My first responsibility is to you.”
“Malingo, you don’t have any responsibility to me.”
“But I owe you my freedom.”
“Exactly,” said Candy. “Freedom. No more being ordered around, by me or anybody else.”
Malingo nodded, as though the notion was very slowly beginning to make sense to him.
“Okay,” he said. “But what if I want to help you?”
“That would be nice. As I said, I think we make a very good team. But it’s your choice. And I think I should warn you that it isn’t always safe being around me. Ever since I arrived in the Abarat, it’s been one thing after another.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you, lady,” Malingo said. “You’re too important.”
Candy laughed. “Me? Important? Malingo, you don’t understand. A few days ago I was a lost schoolgirl from a place called Chickentown.”
“Whatever you were back there, lady, it’s not what you are here. You can make magic…”
“Yes. That is strange,” said Candy, bringing back to mind her strange familiarity with the working of spells. “So many times on this journey I’ve felt as though… I don’t know… almost as though I’d been here before. Yet I know that’s impossible.”
“Maybe it’s in your blood,” Malingo suggested. “Maybe a relative of yours came here, in the distant past?”
“That’s a possibility,” Candy replied.
She pictured the faded photographs lined up on the wall of the Almenak Press: the old jetty of Hark’s Harbor, with its row of stores and the great vessel moored at the quayside. Was it possible that one of the people in that crowd had been a relative of hers?
“Wolfswinkel’s grandfather used to trade with your people all the time. He made a fortune from it.”
“Selling what?”
“Abaratian magic. Copies of Lumeric’s Six. That kind of thing.”
“Surely that must have been forbidden?”
“Oh certainly. He was selling some of the most precious secrets of the Abarat. Anything for profit.”
“Which reminds me,” Candy said. “What was it with the hats? Magic doesn’t always come in the form of headgear, does it?”
Malingo laughed. “No, of course not, it can be in any form: a thought, a word, a fish, even in a glass of water. But you see it was a tradition of the Noncian Magic Circle that you kept most of your power in your hat. I don’t know how it started; probably as a joke. But once it began, it stuck. And then when Wolfswinkel killed all the other magicians and he wanted to transfer their power to something more convenient, he couldn’t. They’d all put their power in the hats when they were a circle, and once the circle was broken—”
“He was stuck with the hats.”
“Exactly.”
“How very undignified for Ol’ Banana Suit.”
“Oh yes, he was in a fine state when he found out. He went crazy for a week.”
“Changing the subject—”
“Yes?”
“Do you have any idea where we are?”
They had entered a patch of dense shadow, cast by mountainous peaks of clouds that were passing overhead. In the sea below them an enormous shoal of fish, possessed of some exquisite luminescence, moved into view. Their brightness seemed to turn the world on its head: light spilling up from below, while darkness was cast down from the sky.
“Where did you intend to take us?” Malingo asked Candy.
“Back to the Yebba Dim Day. I know a man at The Great Head called Samuel Klepp. He could give us some advice about how to—”
Before she could finish speaking, the glyph, which until now had been proceeding forward effortlessly, did a very peculiar thing. It made a sideways motion, as though something was tugging on it. For a moment it zigzagged wildly, and Candy had to use all her willpower to stop it from veering off in another direction.
She finally brought it back on course, but the swerve had unnerved her.
“What was that?” she said. “Is the glyph deteriorating?”
Malingo slapped the side of the vehicle with the flat of his hand. “I don’t think so,” he said. “It feels solid enough.”
“Then, what—oh no, Malingo, it’s happening again!”
The glyph veered a second time, much more violently than it had the first, and for a moment it seemed that they were about to be pitched into the sea. Malingo slid from his seat, and would have fallen had Candy not caught hold of him at the last possible moment and hauled him back to safety.
The glyph, meanwhile, was gathering speed. It seemed
to have elected a new destination and was simply racing toward it, all previous instructions forgotten. All Candy and Malingo could do was hang on for dear life.
“Can’t you slow it down?” Malingo yelled to Candy over the rushing of the wind.
“I’m trying!” she hollered. “But it doesn’t want to listen to me. Something’s got hold of us, Malingo!”
She glanced over at her companion, who had an expression of raw astonishment on his face.
“What?” she said.
“Look.” His awed voice was so low she didn’t hear the word; she only saw its shape replied on his lips. She saw too the shape of the words that followed:
“The Twenty-Fifth Hour,” he said.
Candy looked up.
Straight ahead of the hurtling glyph was the vast column of spiraling cloud that Samuel Klepp had pointed out to her. It was indeed the Twenty-Fifth Hour, the Time Out of Time.
“Something in there must be pulling us,” Candy yelled.
“But what?” said Malingo. “And why?”
Candy shook her head. “I guess we’re going to find out very soon,” she said.
There was no doubt of that. The vehicle was moving so fast that the sea and sky were virtually a blur. Candy had relinquished all mental control over the vehicle. There was no purpose in wasting energy fighting a power so much greater than her own.
But as the glyph rushed toward the cloud she could not help but remember the stories she’d been told about the travelers who had entered the Time Out of Time. Most had never returned, Klepp had told her. And those who had come out of the cloud had returned crazy. Not a happy thought.
“Maybe we should throw ourselves out?” she yelled to Malingo over the whistling of the wind.
“At this speed?” he yelled back. “It would be the death of us!”
He was probably right. But then what would happen when they hit the wall of cloud that concealed the wonders—or the terrors—of the Twenty-Fifth Hour? Wouldn’t that be equally suicidal?
And then—all in one sudden moment—it became too late to pitch themselves out.