Abarat: The First Book of Hours

As the creature turned back, Geneva’s sword slashed across the dragon’s upper chest. The worm unleashed an agonized din; the pitch of its vibrations such that all the nails in the deck shot up out of the boards, leaving only the pitch that the shipwrights had used to seal the vessel holding the boards together.

Then it dived after Geneva with terrifying speed, its pursuit driving her back across the boat, her weight enough to crack the pitch and separate the boards.

In that instant the Belbelo—which had endured much, and mightily—became a doomed vessel.

“Hemmett!” Geneva yelled. The Captain had been at the wheel throughout the dragon’s attack, attempting to keep his vessel from capsizing in the tumult the worm had created. “Get Tria off the boat!”

“But my ship—”

“There’s no help for it, Captain! Save the child!”

As she spoke, the dragon’s jaws snapped closed, three inches from Geneva’s face. Its stinging, rancid blood, along with a wave of heat from its pierced lung, erupted from the wound she’d made in its chest, spattering her arms and neck, but she refused to let the pain drive her back. She held her ground, even though the wounded dragon snapped again and again, almost taking off her face. Luckily, with only one eye its spatial judgment was spoiled so that it repeatedly missed its target. But the sound when the teeth met was terrifyingly solid: like the din of an iron door slamming closed over and over.

Geneva took a deep breath and lifted her sword. She knew she would not have a second chance at the blow she was about to deliver. She would have to drive down, behind the solid breastbone, in order to pierce its heart. It would either find its way into the dragon’s vitals and kill the damned thing, or she would miss and the worm would swallow her.

Making a silent prayer to the ninety-one goddesses of her homeland, she raised her sword.

The creature was preparing to snap at her again. She could hear the muscles of its jaws creaking like an immense spring as they opened.

Trusting to the goddesses and her instinct to guide her, she ducked down beneath the dragon’s jaw and put the tip of her sword against its scaly throat. She met resistance immediately, as though she was pressing against bone. Cursing, she tried another place.

The dragon opened its mouth, expelling the stench of its stomachs.

This was it! She had to strike. It was now or never.

She pushed; and yes, the sword broke the armor of hard, gray-green scales and pierced its flesh.

She threw all her body weight against the sword. It was enough. The blade slid down behind the creature’s breastbone.

She felt the worm’s serpentine body shudder as the blade ran down into the cavity of its breast and pierced its vast heart. Its mouth, already gaping, opened a little wider still. And from deep, deep within the vile convolutions of the thing there came a noise like the growling of a thousand rabid dogs.

“Die,” she said to it, just loud enough that it would hear.

Then she twisted her blade in its heart. The rabid din got louder, and the stench from its stomachs became foul beyond measure: the smell of death released from the entrails of the beast.

Slowly, the dragon’s good eye slid to the left, so as to fix on Geneva one last time. It curled back its upper lip, baring its formidable array of teeth. But this was all an empty show. Its din was dying away. There was no real fury left in its wounded body.

The dragon trembled down to its stinking core. Then, putting both its front legs on the side of the sinking vessel, it pushed off.

Geneva let her sword slip out of her hands rather than risk being pulled into the sea as the dragon made its departure. She stumbled back onto the disintegrating deck, which was now six inches deep in water, scarcely believing that she’d bested the beast.

“Are you alive?” McBean yelled to her.

“Just,” she said.

While Geneva had been fighting with the dragon, McBean had broken out the little red lifeboat and had launched it over the opposite side of the Belbelo. Now he was hurriedly depositing Tria— for whom the dragon had forfeited its life—in the boat.

Kiss Curl Carlotti was meanwhile attempting to salvage as much as he could from the sinking vessel. The precious map which Tom and Geneva had been consulting went into the Captain’s hands for safekeeping. The rest —some food, some kegs of water, a few more weapons—were quickly stored at the bottom of the lifeboat.

Geneva drew a deep breath, thanked the goddesses for her survival, and started across the sinking vessel to the lifeboat. She scanned the waters as she did so, hoping against hope that the Izabella would give up the pair that she had claimed. The dragon had not yet sunk beneath the waves, she saw. Though weakened by blood loss— indeed barely able to lift its head above the waters—it continued to stay in the vicinity of the Belbelo, as though it hoped it might still claim its wounder. The Izabella was dark with its blood, and there was a yellowish steam rising off the waves, as if the mixture of salt water and the dragon’s fluids were causing some kind of alchemical reaction.

“Do you see any sign of Tom or Mischief?” the Captain asked Geneva.

“No,” she said grimly. “Nothing.”

“Here…” said a frail voice from the railing.

Geneva looked over the side of the ship. There, barely keeping their heads above the churning waters, were John Mischief and his siblings. Some of the brothers looked to have slipped into unconsciousness. Two had their eyes rolled back in their sockets, as if they were dead.

“Oh, Lord,” said McBean. “Let’s get them in the lifeboat.”

Together, Carlotti and Geneva hauled the limp body of Mischief and his brothers out of the water and into the lifeboat. Then McBean pushed the little vessel off from the sinking ship then proceeded to row away from the Belbelo, so that they would not be caught in the vortex when the vessel went under.

Tria went quietly to the bow of the little boat and took up her usual position.

“Emergency supplies?” Geneva said, gently easing Mischief’s torn shirt out of his pants. The puncture wounds the dragon’s teeth had left in his stomach and sides were ragged and deep. Blood was still oozing from them.

Carlotti went to the stern of the lifeboat and brought out the emergency first aid kit. He opened it up and started to select some bandages and gauze, while Geneva kept her hands pressed on the worst of the wounds, to prevent any further blood loss.

They were now a safe distance from the Belbelo, and McBean stopped rowing and put up the oars.

“I can take care of Mischief now,” the Captain said to Geneva. “You look for Tom.”

He pointed to his telescope, which was lying on the floor of the lifeboat.

“Go on,” McBean said. Then, with a terrible sadness in his voice, “I may have lost the Belbelo, but I’m still Captain of this boat. Find Tom; please God, find him.”

Geneva let McBean take over care of Mischief, and she started to scan the waters in the general vicinity of the spot where Tom had been thrown by the worm.

Some distance from the little lifeboat the broken body of the Belbelo moaned eerily, as the waters of the Izabella rushed into her hold. The Captain didn’t look up from tending to Mischief. This was not a sight he wished to witness. The noise of the vessel’s demise grew louder. Its timbers burst; its mast cracked and fell into the water, throwing up a great wall of water. Then, just before the sea finally closed over her, the Belbelo stopped sinking for a long moment, and in the sudden eerie hush her bell could be heard tolling.

Six times it rang, and then the tolling ceased and the rushing of the water began one final time, louder than ever. There was one last, terrible crack from out of the depths, and Captain McBean’s noble little vessel went down to join the tens of thousands of ships the Sea of Izabella had claimed over the centuries.

Not once through all of this did the Captain raise his eyes from his patients.

When the noise of the Belbelo’s sinking finally quieted, he said: