Abarat

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.

The glyph threw itself over and over, three hundred and sixty degrees, flipping so fast its passengers remained in their seats. Candy heard poor Malingo yelling in mortal terror beside her, then all the sounds that were filling her head—Malingo's cries, the rushing of the wind, the crash of the glyph as it came to a violent halt— all of them disappeared.

She was plunged into a sudden and absolute silence, and a darkness just as sudden, just as absolute.

She couldn't feel the glyph beneath her; nor, when she reached out, could she feel Malingo at her side. She seemed to be floating in blank space, her body removed from all physical contact.

Then, of all things, she heard rain.

It was distant, but it was reassuringly real. Whatever this lightless place was, it rained here. Seconds later another sound came to find her. No, not one sound, two.

Two heartbeats .

Somebody was here in the darkness with her. And whoever it was, they were very close.

She tried to shape a question, a simple: 'Who's there?' But for some reason her mouth wouldn't obey the instruction. All she could do was wait and listen, while the twinned hearts beat on, and the downpour continued.

For some reason she wasn't afraid. There was something reassuring about the mingling of heartbeats and rain.

And finally, there came a third sound. The last sound she expected to hear in this mysterious place: her mother's voice.

'Please don't be long, Bill ,' Melissa Quackenbush said. 'I can't wait long .'

Her voice sounded remote from Candy, dulled not by distance but by something placed between them. A wall of some kind.

'Did you hear me, honey? I don't like being here on my own.'

Here ? Candy thought. What did her mother mean by that? Was Melissa Quackenbush in the Twenty-Fifth Hour with her? Surely not. Besides, there was something about the way her mother sounded that made Candy think that it was a younger woman who was speaking. It wasn't the tired, sad woman she'd last seen making meatloaf in the kitchen in Followell Street. How long, for instance, had it been since she'd heard her mother call her father honey ? Years.

And now—astonishment upon astonishment—she heard her father's voice replying.

Like Melissa's voice, Bill Quackenbush's speech was muted. But again, it was a gentler, more loving version of her father Candy was now hearing.

'I promise I'll be quick, sweetheart. You just hold on. I'll be back in just a few minutes.'

'Maybe I should come with you … 'Melissa said.

'In your condition, baby ?' Bill Quackenbush replied lovingly. 'I don't think that would be too smart. It's cold out here. You stay in the car and keep that blanket wrapped up tight around you, and I'll be back so fast you won't even know I've gone. I love you, Lambkins.'

'I love you too, Nachos.'

Lambkins? Nachos ? Candy had never heard her parents exchange pet names, not even when she was very young. Perhaps she'd forgotten, but she doubted it. Lambkins and Nachos she would have remembered. She felt slightly uncomfortable, as though she was spying on a secret part of her mother and father's life. A part that belonged in some distant Once Upon a Time when they'd both been young and happily in love. Probably before—

'Before I was born ,' Candy murmured to herself.

This time, for some reason, her mouth obeyed her instruction, and the words came out.

She even got an answer.

'That's right ,' said a woman, somewhere in the darkness ahead of her. It wasn't her mother who replied to her. This woman had subtle Abaratian inflections in her words, her tone warm and reassuring. 'You haven't been born yet ,' she said to Candy.

'I don't understand.'

'We just wanted to give you a hint of your past ,' said a second woman, her voice slightly lighter than that of the first speaker. 'You need to know who you were before you became who you're going to be.'

'How do you know who I was?' Candy said. 'Or who I'm going to be? Who are you, anyway?'

Questions .

Questions.

'Questions.'

A third woman laughed along with the other two, and as they did so there was a gentle blossoming of light in Candy's vicinity. By it she saw all three women. In the middle of the trio, standing a little closer to Candy than her companions, was a woman who looked to be extraordinarily old. Her face was deeply etched with lines, and her hair—which was woven into navel-length braids— was pure white. But she still carried herself with great elegance, even in her antique phase. Nor did she seem weakened by age.