Abarat

Belbelo , so that they would not be caught in the vortex when the vessel went under.

Tria went quietly to the bow of the little boat and took up her usual position.

'Emergency supplies?' Geneva said, gently easing Mischief's torn shirt out of his pants. The puncture wounds the dragon's teeth had left in his stomach and sides were ragged and deep. Blood was still oozing from them.

Carlotti went to the stern of the lifeboat and brought out the emergency first aid kit. He opened it up and started to select some bandages and gauze, while Geneva kept her hands pressed on the worst of the wounds, to prevent any further blood loss.

They were now a safe distance from the Belbelo , and McBean stopped rowing and put up the oars.

'I can take care of Mischief now,' the Captain said to Geneva. 'You look for Tom.'

He pointed to his telescope, which was lying on the floor of the lifeboat.

'Go on,' McBean said. Then, with a terrible sadness in his voice, 'I may have lost the Belbelo , but I'm still Captain of this boat. Find Tom; please God, find him.'

Geneva let McBean take over care of Mischief, and she started to scan the waters in the general vicinity of the spot where Tom had been thrown by the worm.

Some distance from the little lifeboat the broken body of the Belbelo moaned eerily, as the waters of the Izabella rushed into her hold. The Captain didn't look up from tending to Mischief. This was not a sight he wished to witness. The noise of the vessel's demise grew louder. Its timbers burst; its mast cracked and fell into the water, throwing up a great wall of water. Then, just before the sea finally closed over her, the Belbelo stopped sinking for a long moment, and in the sudden eerie hush her bell could be heard tolling.

Six times it rang, and then the tolling ceased and the rushing of the water began one final time, louder than ever. There was one last, terrible crack from out of the depths, and Captain McBean's noble little vessel went down to join the tens of thousands of ships the Sea of Izabella had claimed over the centuries.

Not once through all of this did the Captain raise his eyes from his patients.

When the noise of the Belbelo's sinking finally quieted, he said:

'Any sign of Tom?'

'Not so far,' Geneva replied, still searching the water.

'And the worm?' the Captain said.

'Gone,' Geneva replied. 'Slipped out of sight when we weren't looking. How are the brothers?'

'Some, I think, are doing better than others,' the Captain said grimly. 'I've stopped the blood from flowing, but none of them are conscious.' He dropped his voice, as though Mischief and his brothers might hear some of what he was saying. 'It doesn't look good,' he said.

At that moment, Tria piped up, her voice as pale as her skin.

'The Nonce,' she said.

Geneva looked up from the melancholy sight of Mischief and his brothers to see that the girl was pointing off to the port side.

A quarter of a mile from them, the waters of the Izabella grew considerably calmer. The storm clouds thinned out, and shafts of sunlight breached them. They illuminated a golden shore, and beyond that shore, a rising landscape of tropical lushness.

Geneva had not been back to the Nonce since the tragic hour of Finnegan's wedding to the Princess Boa; and though she'd surmised, along with Tom, that this was indeed where Tria was leading them, her flesh tingled at the prospect of returning there.

'If there's any hope for Mischief and his brothers,' Geneva said, 'it's on the Nonce.'

'What happens if one of them dies and the rest are still alive?' McBean said.

'We'll deal with that problem when we get to it,' Geneva replied. Then more quietly, 'Let's just hope we don't have to.'

Suddenly there was a rapping on the side of the boat—for all the world like somebody knocking on a door, desiring entrance—and Geneva turned around to see a very welcome sight. Two-Toed Tom was hauling himself up over the side of the lifeboat. She went to help him. He clambered into the boat and collapsed, gasping, on the boards.

'I… was… afraid… you'd sail off and give me up for dead.'

'We would have never done that,' said Geneva.

'What about our digger?' Tom replied, looking over at Mischief.

'He's very badly wounded. We're heading to the Nonce, Tom. Let's hope we can get some help for him there.'

'It's amazing he's even alive,' Tom said admiringly. 'He was in the dragon's mouth.'

'That he was,' said the Captain. 'If the brothers live, they're going to have quite a tale to tell.'

The current was on their side; it carried them swiftly toward the island of the Nonce. The condition of the wounded Mischief and his brothers did not deteriorate significantly as they went, and as the bright shore beckoned, and the smell of blossoms sweetened the air, Geneva's spirits began to rise just a little.

They were within perhaps six hundred yards of the beach when something nudged the little boat from below. Geneva went to the side of the vessel. She could see the reef below; the water was no more than fifteen feet deep. It was a beautiful spectacle: colored fish of every shape and size moving in shoals or happy solitude among the coral canyons.

And then, as she watched, panic seemed to seize them all. As a single animal they twitched and swam into hiding; gone in two heartbeats.

Geneva murmured the beginning of a prayer: 'Goddesses, hear me in my hour of desperation—'

That was as far as she got. At that moment, a midnight-black stain spread through the water beneath the boat.

Geneva took a cautious step back from the edge of the lifeboat.

'Get the child, Captain,' she said, very quietly.

'Problem?' he murmured.

'Dйjа vu,' she said.

'I thought for certain it was—'

'Dead ?' said the worm, as it rose out of the darkened waters. It was a truly grotesque sight. Geneva's sword was still lodged in its throat, and the creature's blood ran copiously from the wound, over the once pristine scales of its neck and upper body. Violent shudders passed through its body as though it was about to have a fit of titanic proportions.

'Do you have a gun, Captain?' Geneva murmured.

'Back in the Belbelo . . .'

'Something,' she said. 'Anything. Kiss Curl?'

Carlotti moved down the little boat to look for something that they could use to defend themselves. His motion attracted the gaze of the worm, and without hesitation the creature swooped down. Kiss Curl didn't have a chance. The dragon came up behind him, unhooked his jaw, and took Carlotti into its mouth whole.

'No !' Geneva yelled, flinging herself toward Kiss Curl to catch hold of him before he was swallowed. But the dragon threw back its head, like a bird taking a fish, and Carlotti slid out of sight into one of its bellies, as silent in death as he had been in life.

'Bastard thing!' Geneva said, tears of fury running down her cheeks.

The dragon made a terrible sound in its throat: a low joyless laughter. 'Who will be next?' it said, scanning the survivors.

'McBean?' Geneva whispered.

'Yes?'

'Does the lifeboat have a flare gun?'

'I believe it does.'

'Can you get it?'