Abarat

So that was the way of it , Candy thought. One vote for lunacy, one vote for murder. Either way, if these two caught her, she would never live to learn from what she'd seen in the Time Out of Time.

She didn't wait to hear any more of their chatter. She fled into the darkness, which enveloped her completely. She could see no sign of a way out in any direction: no door, no window. Not so much as a sliver of light from the outside world.

There was nothing to be lost from yelling for help, she thought. After all, these clock-faced clowns knew where she was. So she called to Malingo, in the vain hope that he would hear her.

'Malingo? I'm over here!' (Wherever here was.) 'Please, if you can hear me, yell back.'

She got an answer, but it wasn't the one she wanted. It was an echo of what she'd just yelled, but the walls it had bounced off of had rearranged the words, and made nonsense of them.

'You can if me. Yell back here, hear? I'm over Malingo.'

Even the echoes had their own tricks in this place.

As the words died away, she heard two soft voices, horribly close.

'I believe we should take her, Brother Julius .'

'I believe we should, Brother Tempus, I believe we should.'

They sounded as though they were two or three yards away. She didn't wait for them to get any nearer. She headed off into the darkness again, not caring where she went, just determined not to allow the Fugit Brothers to catch up with her.

She couldn't run forever, she knew. It was only a matter of time before the clowns on her heels caught up with her. And then what? Well, they'd already laid out their options. Even if she escaped their clutches, the echoes, and the memory of her pursuers' circling faces, would take their toll. Whatever wonders she had witnessed here would be erased by insanity.

No! She couldn't let that happen. She ran on blindly, determined she was not going to be numbered among those who'd escaped the Twenty-Fifth too crazy to tell their tale.

32. MONSOON

The exhausted survivors of the sinking Belbelo spent their first day on the Island of the Nonce at the beach where they'd been washed ashore. Every time the tide came in it would bring more pieces of the wreckage up onto the sand: splintered timbers and rope, mostly. They didn't expect to have to build fires on the island (it was warm at Three O'clock in the Afternoon; what need would they have of fire?) so the timber was of very little use. But every now and again a box of supplies was washed up, including a box of emergency rations.

Unfortunately there was no medication for Mischief and his brothers, who were still in very poor condition. Though their wounds had stopped bleeding, there was no sign of consciousness returning. All Geneva, Tom, the Captain and Tria could do was to work together to build a small shelter out of branches and leaves, and lay the brothers in it, away from the heat of the midafternoon sun.

Luckily both Tom and the Captain still had their copies of Klepp's Almenak , and each had a different edition, so they were able to consult the pamphlet on a wide variety of matters.

'It isn't always reliable information,' Geneva cautioned them, as Tom proposed to make a stew of berries he'd found when he'd ventured a little deeper into the island. 'We could very well poison ourselves.'

'I doubt there'd be a recipe in the Almenak which produced poisonous food,' Tom said.

'So you say,' Geneva said, plainly unconvinced. 'But if we all get sick—'

While they'd been arguing about this, Tria had been picking up the berries, one by one, and sniffing them. A few, particularly the smaller, greenish berries, she tossed away. The rest she left in the bag in which Tom had collected them, and declared with her usual strange confidence: 'These are all right.'

The stew was duly cooked, and it proved to be delicious.

'We still could have got sick from the green ones,' Geneva reminded Tom and the Captain, 'if Tria hadn't stopped us from eating them.'

'Oh, for goodness sake, Geneva,' MeBean said, 'let it go. We've got more important things to worry about without arguing over stew.'

'Such as?'

'Such as him.' MeBean glanced in the direction of Mischief. 'I mean them,' he said, correcting himself. 'I'm afraid they're slipping away from us.'

'I don't know where we go for help,' said Tom. 'According to the Almenak , there aren't any towns on the island, so if there are any doctors around, they're living in the wild. There are a lot of churches, but Klepp describes most of them as abandoned.'

'There's the Palace of Bowers,' Geneva said. 'Perhaps there's still some people there…'

'How far is the Palace from here?' Captain MeBean asked Tom.

'See for yourself,' Tom said, proffering his edition of Klepp's Almenak so that all of them could see it. He pointed to a bay on the north-northwesterly side of the island. 'I believe we're here ,' he said. 'And the Palace is way over here . It's probably two days' walk, maybe more if the landscape between here and there is hilly.'

'Which it is,' said Geneva. 'The whole island is hilly. But we can still carry Mischief between us.'

'Is moving them a wise idea?' MeBean asked.

'I don't know,' Geneva replied, shaking her head. 'I'm no doctor.'

'That's the problem; none of us are,' said Tom. 'If I had to guess, I'd say moving them would be fatal, but maybe waiting here is an even worse idea.'

At that moment, everybody stopped staring at the map and looked up. The wind had suddenly risen, making the great blossom-filled banks of foliage in whose shadows they sat churn and sigh. And carried on that wind there came the sound of hundreds of voices, all singing a wordless song.

'We're not alone,' said the Captain.

The music was both majestic and serene.

'Snakes,' said Tria.

'Snakes?' said the Captain.

'She's right,' Tom told him. 'There's a red-and-yellow serpent on the island called the vigil snake. They sing. It says so in the Almenak .'

'I don't remember snakes on this island,' Geneva said.

'Yes you do,' said Tom. 'They were requested by the Princess—'

'For the wedding.'

'Exactly. Finnegan had them brought over from Scoriae, which is their natural habitat. Apparently they liked it here. Klepp said they all escaped in the confusion after… all that happened at the wedding. And they have no natural enemies here on the Nonce. So they bred and bred. Now they're everywhere.'

'Are they poisonous?' Tria asked. It was perhaps the first time that any of them had heard her voice any fear about the natural world.

'No,' said Tom. 'Very mild-mannered, as I remember. And very musical.'

'Amazing,' said the Captain. 'What are they singing? Is it just nonsense?'

'No,' said Tom. He read from the Almenak. ''The song that the Vigil Snake sings is in fact one immensely long word; the longest in the ancient language of the species. It is so long that an individual can sing it for a lifetime and never come to the end of it !'