Abarat

.'

'Doubtful ,' Diamanda went on. 'We hear all manner of rumors about the Requiax being on the move. And there are those who say that when they surface, it will be the end of the world as we know it .'

'You're scaring me,' Candy said.

'I forbid you to be scared ,' Diamanda replied, gently. 'She was neverscared, so you shouldn't be .'

'She?' said Candy. 'What do you mean, she?'

Curiously enough, all three women opened their mouths to reply to this, but before any of them could answer, there came the sound of a series of doors closing—maybe ten in all—the smallest of which sounded like the noise of a doll's house door, the largest a solid oak door, slamming somewhere nearby.

'He's coming ,' cried Joephi.

'We've got to be off, Candy ,' Diamanda said. 'Abraham Hollow, the Keeper of the Twenty-Fifth Hour, doesn't approve of anybody from the outside world being brought into the Time Out of Time. If he knew you were here, he'd have the Fugit Brothers tear you from limb to limb .'

'Nice,' said Candy. 'What do I do with all the questions I've still got?'

'Keep them for another time,' said Joephi.

'But I have so many ,' Candy said.

The women were clearly preparing to make a hasty exit, gathering up their robes, glancing around nervously as they did so. Obviously they did not want to encounter this Abraham Hollow.

'We'll find one another again' Diamanda said. 'Don't you worry about that. There is so much to tell, on both sides. Thank you for the news about Henry, by the way. You've shamed me into an apology.'

'But… he's dead,' Candy said.

'A matter of little consequence here ,' said Diamanda.

'Why?'

'Because this is the Twenty-Fifth Hour. Everything is Here. Everything is Now. Even Yesterday.'

'I don't—'

'Will you hurry up, Diamanda Murkitt ?' said Mespa, catching hold of the old woman's hand. 'I hear Old Abraham coming .'

'Yes, yes ,' said Diamanda. 'I'm coming. I just wanted her to understand —'

'We don't havetime ,' said Mespa.

'No time?' said Joephi, laughing. 'That's the one thing we surely have in abundance. Time and more time and time again .'

'Don't get clever ,' Mespa snapped. 'I don't want Abraham finding us. Any of us. NOW COME ON .'

She was pulling on Diamanda's arm now.

'I'm sorry,' the old lady said to Candy, 'there's so much more I wanted to show you here. And we won't get another chance to sneak you in, I'm afraid. Even this little peep took a lot of maneuvering —'

'Will you stop gabbing ?' Mespa said.

'Yes, yes. Coming.'

The light that had first revealed the women was brightening all around them. In a few seconds they would be gone. But before the sisters were eroded by the brightness, Diamanda reached out and touched Candy's arm.

'I envy you ,' she said.

'You do?'

'The journey ahead of you… it's going to be quite something. The things that are out there waiting to be discovered …' She smiled and shook her head. 'You cannot imagine ,' she said. 'Truly…you cannot imagine .'

Then her fingers drew back from Candy's arm, and the three women vanished into the flux of light.

As they disappeared, Candy caught a glimpse of the door slammer: Abraham Hollow, the Keeper of the Time Out of Time. He was no more than ten yards away, standing on the threshold of a door that he had just closed, and staring down at something at his feet. He was dressed in voluminous scarlet robes, and his thin face was possessed of that smoothness and translucence that sometimes comes with extreme old age. He wore tiny round black-lensed spectacles, which concealed his eyes, and had a matted mop of white hair on his head.

'There you are, Tattle,' he said, addressing a large piebald Abaratian rat, which had appeared from between his feet. With great effort Hollow bent down and offered the sleeve of his robe to the rat. The animal instantly scampered up the sleeve and ran along Hollow's stooped shoulder to his ear, as though whispering into it. Indeed, perhaps the rat was doing just that, because the old man then muttered to himself:

'An interloper, eh? I should maybe summon the brothers…'

He opened the door behind him and called back through it.

'Tempus! Julius!'

Time to go , Candy thought, before I'm caught trespassing . But in which direction should she run? There was darkness everywhere except for the light on the threshold where Abraham Hollow and his telltale rat stood. She decided the best thing to do was simply turn her back on the old man and run in the opposite direction.

She did exactly that, racing off into the darkness, and silently cursing the three sisters for heading off without taking her with them.

'There !' said Abraham Hollow. 'I hear our trespasser's feet. Over there !'

Candy glanced back over her shoulder. The door at which Hollow and Tattle stood had been flung wide, as had the door behind it, and the door behind that door. And through them came the Fugit Brothers.

Candy had been warned, of course, about the dangers of the Twenty-Fifth. She'd been told how all the people who'd ventured here over the years had either disappeared, or been driven mad. One glimpse of the Fugit Brothers and she understood why. They had the faces of clowns: white skin, gaping mouths and pop eyes. But that was the least of it. What was truly distressing was the fact that their features—their eyes, their mouths, their noses, their ears, and even the three little tufts of red hair they sported, were moving around their faces like the hands of crazy clocks. Despite the fact that their mouths were on the move, they still spoke:

'I see her, Brother Julius!' said one of the brothers.

'Me too, Brother Tempus. Me too!'

'I say we tear out her heart, Brother Julius!'

'I say we make her crazy first, Brother Tempus!'