Abarat: The First Book of Hours a-1

by Clive Barker

  “Three in the Afternoon_ the island of the Nonce is a dreamy time. The labors of the day are more than half out, and our thoughts turn to what pleasures the twilight Hours may hopefully provide. Personally I enjoy a siesta around this time, and I can testify to the fact that those who doze in the Nonce do not conjure ordinary dreams. They imagine the Beginning of the World. I have done so myself several times; slept there and dreamed of some Edenic place where there was no enmity, nor division, between plan and animal, angel and man. This suggests to me that there is some validity to the claim, (which was made in the highest of metaphysical circles) that the Nonce is the island where life on the archipelago began.

  ”So, on to Gnomon, which lies at Four O’clock.

  “Here, I wish to interlude with a little piece of autobiography. Some years ago I lost my wife. Literally lost her, in a maze on Soma Plume. I was, needless to say, much distressed by this (I was uncommonly fond of her), and taking the advice of my brother-in-law I went to Gnomon in search of an oracle who might enlighten me as to my wife’s whereabouts.

  “Despite the bland reputation of the Hour (there’s nothing very mystical about Four in the Afternoon) the place is littered with the ruins of temples and other oracular sites. In some parts of the island the air is filled with whispering voices, like the scraps of a thousand unfulfilled prophecies. Personally I find it a rather unsettling place, its most distressing location being the North Shore, from the cliffs of which a visitor may look across the Straits of Limbo toward the island of Midnight. There is nothing of that despicable Hour visible at such a distance, of course, except for sheer rock and veils of roiling crimson mist. But it’s more than enough to get the most impoverished of imaginations feeling clammy. Anyway, back to my story…

  “The oracle I spoke with on Gnomon did indeed give me some information that finally led to the retrieval of the missing Mrs. Klepp. But while searching for the oracle I discovered an extremely strange phenomenon: Gnomon has upon it a number of roads that seem to have no destination. The theory I offer for this is that Gnomon was once part of the adjacent island of Soma Plume, which is twice its size. What cataclysm caused the land between the two islands to sink can only be guessed at, but it would certainly explain the mystery of the roads, because their destination would then be the Great Noahic Ziggurat on Soma Plume.

  “The Ziggurat has been, since time immemorial, a place of burial, and for that reason there are many who dub themselves explorers and gazetteers who have not dared venture there. Pah! to their cowardice, I say. In my travels I have never had dealings with the deceased that were ever less than pleasant. (This is particularly true of the long-since dead; those recently deceased can be irritable on occasion.) Anyway, I urge you not to be put off by the rumors about the Noahic Ziggurat. It is an astonishment.

  “Travelers by ship—especially those who are piloting their own vessels—should be warned that the next leg of the trip, the passage from Soma Plume to Babilonium, which lies but an Hour away at Six O’clock, can be treacherous. Not because the waters of the Izabella are particularly choppy thereabouts, but because there is always such a convergence of happy souls about the Hour of Six that navigation between the hundreds of boats which throng the straits is difficult. I’ve witnessed countless collisions and capsizings in the narrow band of water, even, I’m sorry to say, an occasional fatality, marring otherwise joyful expeditions.

  “What need I tell you about Babilonium? If you know even a little about these islands of ours, then the reputation of this pleasurable Hour will be perfectly familiar to you. If you are tired of Babilonium, so the saying goes, then you are tired of life, for among its tents and its stages, its hippodromes and its arenas, is every species of frolicsome thing that can be devised by masker, menagerist, musician, mountebank or magician. I have never left that island but with a sense that I have taken only a sip of its pleasures, and promising myself I will return there soon.

  “Perhaps the heaviness of my heart is increased because of the sight that lies ahead: the Island of Lengthening Shadows, Scoriae. You will forgive me if I don’t linger over the details of that ashen place overmuch. Scoriae depresses the soul.

  “Scoriae is not, of course, the only island of the Abarat that can so readily overshadow a man’s natural capacity for joy. So, as I’ve said elsewhere, does Midnight. So too, for different reasons (which I’ll come to later) does The Isle of the Black Egg, which stands at Four in the Morning; and even Speckle Frew, which stands at Five. But there is much about Scoriae which invites a particular mournfulness. It is bleak, of course: a sprawling mass of laval rock and black dust, with the open wound of the volcano. Mount Galigali, at its center. Galigali’s spewings and raging have, over the ages, claimed three magnificent cities: Gosh, Divinium and Mycassius. To wander in the ruins of any of the the three is a melancholy business. All were noble cities, filled with fine and loving souls. Not one of these souls, to my knowledge, survived Galigali’s tantrums. Only the signs of their lives remain to us, clotted in volcanic ash: their temples, their racetracks, their nurseries.

  “I remarked earlier that I have never met a dead fellow whose company I did not enjoy. I should except some of the ghosts of Gosh, who were_on one occasion some years back_rude enough to drive me out of their city with their howlings and their batterings. But I should add this: that I had just reached the safety of my boat when Galigali gave a growl and belched a rain of liquid rock, which fell where I had been exploring mere minutes before. The ghosts, in short, had meant me no harm with their assault. They simply didn’t want to add my name to the toll of Galigali’s victims.

  “Now we must make a journey from one side of the Abarat to the other, moving in a south-southwesterly direction. The journey, of course, still takes an hour, for we are going to Eight O’clock in the Evening, to the Yebba Dim Day.

  “The island of Yebba_The Great Head, as it is colloquially called is carved in the likeness of its sometime owner, Gorki Doodat, and is a warren of tunnels and tiny, ramshackle habitations. Perched on Doodat’s stone cranium (an addition only made after the potentate’s passing) are hall a dozen towers occupied by those personages rich enough for such lofty apartments. Reportedly some of these towers contain inhabitants of immense age: the ancients of the Aeph Nation, who were the first architects of the islands. I cannot confirm or deny these rumors.

  “Over the years the Yebba Dim Day has become the informal capital of the Inner Islands, and much bureaucratic work is done in the labyrinths of Gorki Doodat’s head. Here an Abaratic may obtain birth papers, death papers, sea charts, maps and the like. The price list is on the wall close to the entrance to The Great Head. In main cases the price of maps and charts has remained at a zem or two in all the years that I’ve been exploring the islands. My own modest printing press is here at Eight O’clock, a small office at the base of the towers.

  “The Yebba Dim Day marks the last hurrah of daylight. By the time we reach Huffaker, which stands at Nine O’clock in the Evening, every last trace of sunlight has departed from the skies.

  Huffaker is an impressive island, topographically speaking. Its rock formations_especially those below ground—are both vast and elaborately beautiful, resembling natural cathedrals and temples. The greatest of these is Hap’s Vault, discovered by one Lydia Hap. Even if it were, simply a cavern it would be notable enough for the uncanny precision of its symmetries. But it is not. It is Miss Hap who was the first to suggest the Chamber of Skein.

  “The Skein? How do I begin to describe the Skein?

  “The word, of course, has humble origins. It means a length of yarn or thread that has been wound on a reel. But the Abaratic Skein, as Lydia Hap describes it, is something far more significant. It is the thread that joins all things_living and dead, sentient and unthinking to all other things. According to the persuasive Miss Hap, the thread originates in the Vault at Huffaker, appearing momentarily as a kind of flickering light before winding its way invisibly through the Abarat, to begin the task
of connecting us, one to another. I have twice visited the Vault, and on both occasions saw phenomena that could well fit Lydia Hap’s theory: line lines of light crisscrossing the cavern.

  Perhaps what I saw was an optical illusion, and the idea of Infinite Connectedness is pure sentimental invention. But what we want to believe and what is true are, I think, more closely related than the Rationalists would sometimes have us believe. Personally, I do not doubt that some power connects us to everything else in our archipelago. Even if we would wish it otherwise_for we are not just joined to what pleases our eyes and our morals, but also to what is shameful and ugly_we are indisputably a part of a greater system than ourselves. Until somebody comes along with a better idea, Lydia Hap’s Skein will do very nicely.

  “From the grandiose scale of Huffaker, we move on to Ten O’clock, and the more modestly scaled Ninnyhammer, an island which boasts very little that’s noteworthy, excepting perhaps the small town of High Sladder, which is occupied by a tribe of feral tarrie-cats. On a hill to the northeast of the island is a house of odd construction with a dome that, when approaching the island by boat, can in some lights resemble an eye. I believe it has been the domicile of wizards over the years. I have little else to say about the island, having been sworn to secrecy on the matter of wizardly goings-on.

  “Close by, however, is a Rock of Some Distinction, called Alice Point. It is a tiny place, but it was for some years the best spot from which to see Odom’s Spire, which stands at the Twenty-Fifth Hour. A viewing platform was built on the Point, and large telescopes were brought to the island. A tempest of unusual ferocity brought the structure down after a time, however, and there is a body of opinion that believes this tempest originated in the Spire, because those who occupy the Twenty-Fifth Hour have no wish to be spied upon. I have heard these entities referenced to as the Fantomaya, but who or what these creatures might be is beyond me. The remains of the viewing tower, by the way, can still be seen if you sail close to Alice Point. But the Rock itself no longer has human occupants.

  “On then, to Eleven O’clock, and the island of Jibarish. This is truly a place of paradoxes. Though most of the island is bare rock, there is a curious mutability in the air here. You look away for a moment and that rock, which seemed so solid a moment ago, seems to have flowed into some new configuration. It’s easy to become lost here, though the island isn’t large; no path remains in the same place for long.

  “A tribe of women has traditionally occupied Jibarish, and it is their appetite for making the island unpalatable for visitors especially male visitors—that is largely responsible for the protean nature of the landscape. Over the centuries these extraordinary women have caused the elements of Jibarish to defy the laws by which those elements conventionally live. Rock is fluid here; fire burns cold; water is like iron; and the air—which we expect to serve our needs invisibly—is here a sovereign power in its own right. The very name of the island is derived from the means by which the air continues to alter the very words a visitor may speak, turning sense into nonsense or ‘jibberish.’

  “What comes next, of course, is the island of Midnight, also called Gorgossium. What few observations I will offer here must be prefaced with the confession that I have never set foot on that Hour, nor have any wish to do so.

  “Gorgossium is wreathed in red mists, which seem to have a serpentine life of their own. The old fortress of Iniquisit, with its thirteen towers, dominates the heights of Midnight and looks down with frightful authority on the joyless landscape below. The Carrion family has of course occupied Gorgossium since the beginning of written history, and what attributes the island that or may not possess (all this information is third or fourth hand) is their handiwork. A forest of gallows; a morbid garden that contains every harmful plant in creation; a collection of machines devised to torment and murder: all these are rumored to exist on the island.

  “But these are the least. There is a great deal more, which I will not sully the pages of’ this Almenak by relating. Instead I will move on, as one might move on past a fetid cadaver, in the hope of discovering some sweeter sight.

  “We are now, of course, in the very dead of night. The skies are star pricked overhead. There is a great quiet. And there is no quieter place in the Abarat than at One O’clock in the Morning, where the six Pyramids of Xuxux rise out of the dark and uncannily placid waters of the Izabella.

  “Not far from here, visible across the Straits of Segunda, is the Noahic Ziggurat on Soma Plume, which I have previously described. The silhouette of the Ziggurat is of course remarkably close to that of the Xuxux Pyramids, and there are those who have suggested that all seven structures were designed by the same hand and built by the same masons. I disagree. The tombs at Soma Plume are, as I stated earlier, calm and and curiously reassuring places. The six Pyramids at Xuxux, however (perhaps owing to their proximity to Midnight), are sites of mystery and tragedy. Four of the six have been broken into and gutted by thieves, but the two largest remain unpenetrated, their locks beyond the wits of even the most ambitious master criminal. There is little doubt that they are occupied, however. Something lives and breeds in the great Pyramids; I do not claim to know what.

  “Moving on to the northwest, we come to Idjit, which is (in the opinion of this explorer) an island of immense charm. I have never visited the island sober, I will admit, so my view may be somewhat influenced by that fact.

  But Idjit is an island that encourages excesses, a kind of happy foolishness.

  “This is at first glance an unlikely place for clowns. It shares with neighboring Gorgossium a spiky, barren topography, and storms rage perpetually about the landscape. It has been calculated that a visitor to Idjit is more likely to be struck by lightning than a man on the Roosts of Efreet is to be hit by bird excrement. I can personally testify to this, f have been struck three times while climbing the heights of the island. The experience is quite refreshing, akin to taking a plunge in icy water. Yes, it certainly takes the breath away. But when it’s over, one is left either dead or invigorated. An extreme choice, I grant you, but life untouched by such extremes would be dull indeed.

  “Leaving Idjit and taking now a northeasterly course, we approach Pyon, with its instantly recognizable arch. Pyon was once a quiet island, but no longer. The work of an entrepreneur by the name of Rojo Pixler has transformed the island utterly. It was Pixler’s dream (some have said folly) to build the biggest city in the archipelago on Pyon, its lights so bright that the darkness of the Hour would be a grand irrelevance. Using funds built up through his titanically successful household products, Pixler has created his own dream city. By bringing together the genius of wizards and the skills of more conventional architects (all touched by their own genius) Pixler has not only transformed Pyon, but may eventually (and to the mind of this writer, regrettably) transform the entire archipelago. Nobody is safe from the Panacea, or from its relentlessly happy salesman, the Commexo Kid.

  “Pixler’s flying machines are now venturing far from the skies over Pyon, while his burrowings beneath the seabed, where he intends to build a second city, three times the size of Commexo City, have dug through layers of rock which is filled (so I’m told by friends who are experts in their fields) with never-to-be-duplicated evidence of our earliest beginnings.

  “But it is probably fair to say that a man like Rojo Pixler has no interest in the past. He looks only toward tomorrow. A life lived in perpetual expectation may be a fine thing for a time, but it’s a young man’s game. Mister Pixler has apparently yet to be touched by the shadow of his mortality. When that happens, I venture, he may be more respectful of all that lies quietly in the earth, as he will one day be its fellow.

  “I apologize for such dark ruminations, but they come to me naturally when i contemplate the gaud of Commexo city. Nor is there much comfort to be discovered in the so-called Outer Islands_of which Pyon was once a member. Now there are only four in that group: The Isle of the Black Egg, Speckle Frew, Efreet and Autla
nd. They are unquestionably the least pretty, the least charming, the least seductive of the archipelago. But that is not to say that they don’t possess a considerable degree of drama.

  “At Four O’clock, on The Isle of the Black Egg, for instance, lie the Pius Mountains, a range of needle-sharp crags that are the tallest natural phenomenon in the islands. (In fact the top of Odom’s Spire, at the Twenty-Fifth Hour, is closer to Heaven. But there is nothing natural about the Spire, I would submit. It is surely the work of some less than divine architect.) The Pius Mountains, despite their inaccessibility, are not unpopulated. In the early days of the Abarat, during the Celestial Wars, guerrilla forces hid there and used their aerie as a base for devastating attacks on the fleets of the empress Deviavex. The descendants of those, rebels still have communities in Pius Heights (as they call the mountains), and there live a life of blameless and uncommon purity

  “As to the black Egg, which gave the island its name, I can say only this: I have discovered to date two hundred and seventeen explanations for the name, each contradicting the next. As I cannot distinguish the value of any one explanation over any other, and it seems arbitrary to simply pick one for retelling here, I’d prefer to simply state that nobody knows how the island got its name and leave it at that.

  “‘Moving on west, along the line of the Outer Islands, we come to Five O’clock, and Speckle Frew. It is geographically an uneventful island; the earth sandy and covered with fine, sharp-edged grass, the wind always howling. Though the terrain is scarcely varied, the island is home to a wide variety of species, most of them dangerous. The Naught, the Scab-Faced Snouter, the Rife all have their habitats in the undulating grasslands of Speckle Frew. Anil when ground is contested, or eggs are trampled or stolen, the ensuing battles can be brutal and bloody. In short, Speckle Frew is less an island than it is a bestiary, and it is not to be trespassed lightly.