Abarat: Absolute Midnight

“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.

“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,