Abarat

'Unhand me, slave!' Wolfswinkel yelled.

'I am not your slave!' Malingo yelled back.

Clearly Wolfswinkel fought to be free of Malingo's hold. It looked as though Malingo was wrestling with two armfuls of invisible eels, all slathered in fat. Threats and curses poured from Wolfswinkel.

Tired of the wizard's endless mouthing, Malingo shook his prisoner back and forth.

'Show yourself ,' he demanded.

He had grabbed Wolfswinkel's neck, as far as Candy could guess, and was threatening to choke him.

'Take the hats off and show yourself .' he demanded.

A moment later a flickering form began to appear in Malingo's arms, and an irate Kaspar Wolfswinkel came into view. He had taken off his hats, and he was clutching three in each hand. By the expression on his face, he would gladly have murdered every living thing on Ninnyhammer at that instant—starting with Candy and Malingo, then going on to the tarries.

'So now, Kaspar,' said a voice behind Candy, 'you should perhaps go back to your house and stay there. You know you're not supposed to be running around.'

Candy turned, wondering who the speaker was, and found herself face-to-face with a two-legged creature who had clearly some familial relationship with the tarries. Its wide face was covered with a subtle down of red- dish-brown fur. Its luminous eyes were decidedly feline, as were the whiskers that sprouted from its cheeks. It had apparently wandered up the hill to see what was going on.

'She started all this, Jimothi!' Kaspar said, pointing at Candy. 'That damnable girl. Blame her , not me.'

'Oh, for A'zo's sake, be quiet, Wolfswinkel,' the creature said.

Much to Candy's surprise, Wolfswinkel did exactly that.

The creature returned to its gaze to Candy. 'My name is Jimothi Tarrie.'

'I'm very pleased to meet you.'

'And you, of course are the famous—or is it infamous?— Candy Quackenbush.'

'You know of me?'

'There have been very few visitors to these islands whose presence has been so widely discussed,' Jimothi said.

'Really?'

'Oh, certainly.' He smiled, showing his pointed teeth. 'I've been out among the islands these last two days, and it seems every second soul I met knows of you. Your celebrity grows by the Hour. People who can't possibly have met you claim they have.'

'Really?' said Candy.

'Believe me. Did you buy a slice of Furini from the cheese maker in Autland?'

'No.'

'Well, he says you did. What about the shoes you ordered from a cobbler in Tazmagor?'

'I've never even been to Tazmagor.'

'You see how famous you are?' Jimothi said.

'I don't understand why,' Candy said.

'Well, there are several good reasons,' Jimothi said. 'One, of course, is your origins. You're the first soul to have come through from the Hereafter in quite a while. Then there's the fact that you seem to have left consternation wherever you traveled. Admittedly, none of this was of your doing. Others were causing trouble by pursuing you with such vehemence. But trouble is trouble.'

Candy sighed, still confused.

'And then,' said Jimothi, 'there's the matter of when you arrived.'

'Why's that so important?'

'Well, because a lot of people, from street-corner elegiacs to the most respected bone-casters in the Abarat, have been saying for a long time that some transforming force was imminent. A force that would somehow upset the sad order of our lives.'

'Why sad?' said Candy. 'What's so sad about things?'

'Where do I begin?' Jimothi said softly. 'Put it this way. We do not sleep well these days.'

'We?'

'Those of us who care to wonder where our lives are going. And what our dreams are worth. We wake with the taste of Midnight in our throats.'

'You mean Christopher Carrion?'

'He's part of it. But he's not the worst part of it,' Jimothi said. 'After all, the House of Carrion has had its place in the balance of power since there were historians to write these things down. Darkness has always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light? It's only when its ambitions become too grandiose that it must be opposed, disciplined, sometimes—if necessary—brought down for a time. Then it will rise again, as it must. In the end, following the Dark Road is no less honorable than following the Light, as long as it is done with a clear purpose.'

Candy was not sure she entirely understood what she was being told, but she was sure when she thought it all over that Jimothi's observations would come to make sense. Anyway, she had no chance to ask the tarrie-cat questions. Jimothi was continuing to talk about the state of the Abarat, and Candy drank it all down.

'The real trouble is Commexo,' he said. 'Rojo Pixler and his Kid. He buys holy sites and builds restaurants on them. And nobody seems to care. They're too busy drinking his Panacea. It makes me sick. Hour by Hour, Day by Day, we're letting him take the magic out of our lives. And what do we get in exchange? Soda and Panacea.' He shook his head in despair. 'Do you begin to understand?' he said.

'A little,' Candy said.

'And now, here you come, out of the Hereafter. And the moment you arrive everybody starts to talk, everybody starts to wonder… is she the one?'

'The one?'

'To cure our ills. To save us from our own stupidities. To wake us up !'

Candy had no answer to this, except to say no, she wasn't the one; she was a nobody . But Jimothi didn't want to hear that, she knew. So she kept her silence.

'You're an extraordinary spirit,' he said to her. 'Of that I'm certain.'

Candy shook her head. 'How can that… ? I mean… me?' She sighed, the words failing her, just as she knew she would fail Jimothi's high hopes for her. How could she wake up anybody? She'd been asleep herself until a few days ago, doodling in her dreams.

'Take courage in your purpose,' Jimothi said. 'Even if it isn't yet clear.'

Candy nodded.

'It's amazing that you've survived your journey thus far. You do know that? Somebody must be taking care of you.'

His observation brought to mind all that Candy had faced in the hours since she'd met John Mischief: narrowly avoiding death at the hands of Mendelson Shape, and nearly drowning in the Sea of Izabella; the bolts of Pixler's hunting party whistling past her head; then falling out of the skies, clinging to the corpse of the great moth. Finally, of course, there'd been her encounter with Wolfswinkel. Everywhere she looked there was jeopardy.

'This all began with a key,' she said, trying to make sense of what had brought her to this moment. 'And Wolfswinkel took it, out of my mind. Can you get it back from him?'

'Unfortunately there's nothing I can do about that. Although Wolfswinkel is a prisoner and I am his warden, I have no authority to take back what he has taken from you, any more than I can confiscate his hats.'

'Why not?'

Here Wolfswinkel, who had once again set his hats upon his head, spoke up:

'Because I'm a great magician, and a Doctor of Philosophy, and he's just a flea-bitten tarrie, who happens to stand on two legs. He can't do anything to me, except prevent me from getting off this wretched island. And all of that will change when Otto Houlihan gets here.'

'Houlihan!' Candy said. She'd been so engrossed in listening to Jimothi she'd forgotten Houlihan.