Abarat

'That sounds like a Kleppism to me,' Geneva said. 'How would they ever learn it?'

'Good question,' said Tom. 'Maybe they're born with it, like a migration instinct?'

'Born with a song,' said Geneva.

Tom smiled. 'Yes. Don't you like that idea?'

'Liking it and having it be true aren't the same thing, Tom.'

'Huh. Sometimes you need to let things strike your heart and not your head, Geneva.'

'And what's that supposed to mean?' snapped Geneva.

'Never mind.'

'No, tell me Tom,' she said, bristling. 'Don't make sly remarks and then—'

'It wasn't sly.'

'Well, how else would you—'

'I resent being called—'

'And I resent—'

'Stop it,' said Tria. 'Both of you .' The girl had sudden tears in her eyes. 'Look at them.'

While the argument between Tom and Geneva had been mounting, Mischief and his brothers had started to breathe in a most terrible fashion, a rattle in their collective throats that did not bode well.

'Oh Lord…' Tom threw aside the Almenak and went over to the little bed of leaves and blossoms where they'd laid the brothers. 'This doesn't sound good at all.'

He went down on his knees beside Mischief and laid a hand on his brow. Mischief's eyes were rolling back and forth wildly behind his lids, and his breathing was getting quicker and shallower with every passing moment.

At the same time, as though there was some strange synchronicity in the air (the argument, the singing, the wind and now Mischief's anguish all happening within seconds of one another), the Captain looked skyward and announced: 'I think we should get our stuff under cover.'

He didn't need to explain why. A vast thunderhead moved over the sun as he spoke, and the wind in the trees grew suddenly stronger, stripping some of the more fragile blooms of their petals.

There was a sudden burst of activity as everyone did as the Captain had suggested. But fast though they were, they weren't fast enough to move everything before the rain began. There were a few scattered drops, and then—in a matter of seconds—the drops became a torrential downpour, the rain coming down with such vehemence they had to shout to make themselves heard.

'You and me, Tom!' the Captain yelled, 'We'll take Mischief together!'

'Where are we going?' Tom hollered.

'Up there !' McBean said, pointing up a small slope between the trees. The rainfall was so powerful that rivulets of sandy-brown water, carrying a freight of dead leaves, twigs, blossoms and the occasional dead rodent, were running down the slope. The area around Mischief's makeshift bed was already an inch deep in water.

There was a flash of lightning now, followed by a roll of thunder; the rain came on with fresh attack, as though it wanted to wash the world away.

'Let me carry him !'Tom said, having to yell until his throat was a roar over the noise of cracking boughs and rolling thunder.

The Captain didn't have an opportunity for argument. Tom simply picked up Mischief in his arms and, putting his head down so as not to be blinded by the rain, proceeded to climb to higher ground. The others followed, all carrying what they could rescue from their little encampment.

And still the rain came on, with mounting power, until the world was reduced to a deafening gray-green blur.

Step by step Tom climbed the slope, until he was two thirds of the way to the top. Then out of nowhere a large log came down the slope carried by the force of the flood. Tom tried to move aside to avoid being struck, but the weight of the brothers slowed him. The log caught him a heavy blow, knocking his legs out from under him. Down he went, and Mischief slipped from his arms. They were both carried back down the slope, knocking everybody else over as they descended.

When they reached the bottom, it was like being thrown into the midst of a fast-flowing river. Geneva caught hold of Tria to stop the child from being swept away down the beach and out into the sea. McBean in turn caught hold of Geneva with his right hand and grabbed a tree with his left, holding on for dear life until the monsoon had exhausted itself.

And still it mounted, beating down on their heads. It was as if the skies had opened and unleashed a hundred years of rain.

And then, just as abruptly as it had begun, it all ceased. It was as though a faucet had been turned off. The sun broke through the exhausted clouds, and it illuminated a battered world. Every single blossom had been stripped of its petals by the force of the rain. The smaller leaves had been pulled off the twigs, the larger ones shredded. Bushes had been uprooted and carried down onto the beach and into the surf, which was no longer white but tinted reddish brown by the mud that had been washed into it.

Weary from the relentless assault of the rain, McBean, Geneva, Tria and Tom stood ankle deep in mud and debris. Unable to speak, they stared up at the sky, watching the patches of blue grow between the thinning clouds.

As the warmth of the sun pierced the bruised canopy and touched the greenery around the survivors, they were all witness to a phenomenon that Klepp had failed to mention in his Altnenak . Apparently he had never been on the Nonce when a rainstorm had been unleashed, because if he had the ensuing miracle would surely have been reported in his Almenak's pages.

Everywhere around them, the wounded plant life was beginning to grow again. Roots, many of which had been exposed by the force of the water, stretched down like gnarled fingers into the muddied ground. From broken twigs and cracked boughs new growth sprang up, healthy and green, buds fattening and bursting in front of their astonished eyes. Vines curled and climbed from the remains of their rain-beaten elders like eager green children, while ferns sprang up, uncoiling their tender shoots at such speed they were grazing the lower boughs of the trees in seconds.

'Oh. My,' Tom said.

'Have you ever seen anything like this before?' Geneva asked the Captain.

He slowly shook his head.

'Never,' he said.

This spectacle of growth would have been extraordinary enough in itself; but there was more. The monsoon had awoken dormant elements in the greenery, parts of its blossoming anatomy that did not entirely resemble plants. Wasn't that an eye surreptitiously opening in the head of a flower? And something uncannily like a mouth, gaping in the moisture-fattened bulbs of a plant that sat half in the earth and half out, like a bright green onion?

On all sides there were signs of this uncanny life: cracklings and mutterings and stretching and yes, even something like laughter, as though the plants were hugely amused by the sight of their own protean lives.

It was Tria who first said: 'Where's Mischief?'

Everybody looked around. The John brothers were not to be seen. The Captain sent everyone in different directions, telling them to look quickly, as this was a matter of life and death.

'If they're lying facedown in water, they could be drowning right now!'

His words gave urgency to everybody's search. There were large, shallow pools of muddy rainwater at the bottom of the slope; they went through them from end to end on their hands and knees, desperately hoping to find Mischief before too much time passed.

Meanwhile, the greenery continued to become more active and more fruitful around them, the buds bursting like popcorn, releasing the sweet fragrance of new flowers. Some of the plants were so eager to be fruitful that they were already releasing clouds of pollen that filled the air like soft golden smoke.

The survivors, of course, noticed none of this. They were concerned about Mischief.

Nothing was said, but everyone was beginning to fear the worst. Perhaps the force of the water had carried him down the slope of the beach and out to sea. If not, where was he ?