Abarat: The First Book of Hours

“Any sign of Tom?”

“Not so far,” Geneva replied, still searching the water.

“And the worm?” the Captain said.

“Gone,” Geneva replied. “Slipped out of sight when we weren’t looking. How are the brothers?”

“Some, I think, are doing better than others,” the Captain said grimly. “I’ve stopped the blood from flowing, but none of them are conscious.” He dropped his voice, as though Mischief and his brothers might hear some of what he was saying. “It doesn’t look good,” he said.

At that moment, Tria piped up, her voice as pale as her skin.

“The Nonce,” she said.

Geneva looked up from the melancholy sight of Mischief and his brothers to see that the girl was pointing off to the port side.

A quarter of a mile from them, the waters of the Izabella grew considerably calmer. The storm clouds thinned out, and shafts of sunlight breached them. They illuminated a golden shore, and beyond that shore, a rising landscape of tropical lushness.

Geneva had not been back to the Nonce since the tragic hour of Finnegan’s wedding to the Princess Boa; and though she’d surmised, along with Tom, that this was indeed where Tria was leading them, her flesh tingled at the prospect of returning there.

“If there’s any hope for Mischief and his brothers,” Geneva said, “it’s on the Nonce.”

“What happens if one of them dies and the rest are still alive?” McBean said.

“We’ll deal with that problem when we get to it,” Geneva replied. Then more quietly, “Let’s just hope we don’t have to.”

Suddenly there was a rapping on the side of the boat—for all the world like somebody knocking on a door, desiring entrance—and Geneva turned around to see a very welcome sight. Two-Toed Tom was hauling himself up over the side of the lifeboat. She went to help him. He clambered into the boat and collapsed, gasping, on the boards.

“I… was… afraid… you’d sail off and give me up for dead.”

“We would have never done that,” said Geneva.

“What about our digger?” Tom replied, looking over at Mischief.

“He’s very badly wounded. We’re heading to the Nonce, Tom. Let’s hope we can get some help for him there.”

“It’s amazing he’s even alive,” Tom said admiringly. “He was in the dragon’s mouth.”

“That he was,” said the Captain. “If the brothers live, they’re going to have quite a tale to tell.”

The current was on their side; it carried them swiftly toward the island of the Nonce. The condition of the wounded Mischief and his brothers did not deteriorate significantly as they went, and as the bright shore beckoned, and the smell of blossoms sweetened the air, Geneva’s spirits began to rise just a little.

They were within perhaps six hundred yards of the beach when something nudged the little boat from below. Geneva went to the side of the vessel. She could see the reef below; the water was no more than fifteen feet deep. It was a beautiful spectacle: colored fish of every shape and size moving in shoals or happy solitude among the coral canyons.

And then, as she watched, panic seemed to seize them all. As a single animal they twitched and swam into hiding; gone in two heartbeats.

Geneva murmured the beginning of a prayer: “Goddesses, hear me in my hour of desperation—”

That was as far as she got. At that moment, a midnight-black stain spread through the water beneath the boat.

Geneva took a cautious step back from the edge of the lifeboat.

“Get the child, Captain,” she said, very quietly.

“Problem?” he murmured.

“Deja vu,” she said.

“I thought for certain it was—”

“Dead?” said the worm, as it rose out of the darkened waters. It was a truly grotesque sight. Geneva’s sword was still lodged in its throat, and the creature’s blood ran copiously from the wound, over the once pristine scales of its neck and upper body. Violent shudders passed through its body as though it was about to have a fit of titanic proportions.

“Do you have a gun, Captain?” Geneva murmured.

“Back in the Belbelo…”

“Something,” she said. “Anything. Kiss Curl?”

Carlotti moved down the little boat to look for something that they could use to defend themselves. His motion attracted the gaze of the worm, and without hesitation the creature swooped down. Kiss Curl didn’t have a chance. The dragon came up behind him, unhooked his jaw, and took Carlotti into its mouth whole.

“No!” Geneva yelled, flinging herself toward Kiss Curl to catch hold of him before he was swallowed. But the dragon threw back its head, like a bird taking a fish, and Carlotti slid out of sight into one of its bellies, as silent in death as he had been in life.

“Bastard thing!” Geneva said, tears of fury running down her cheeks.

The dragon made a terrible sound in its throat: a low joyless laughter. “Who will be next?” it said, scanning the survivors.

“McBean?” Geneva whispered.

“Yes?”

“Does the lifeboat have a flare gun?”

“I believe it does.”

“Can you get it?”

“Surely.”

“Very slowly, Captain. Take. Your. Time.”

The Captain did as Geneva had instructed. With great caution he lifted the center seat of the lifeboat, where there was a compartment containing emergency rations, and—yes!—a flare gun.

The worm meanwhile twitched and reeled. It was obviously getting closer to collapse with every passing moment. But that didn’t make it any less dangerous, Geneva knew. She had once seen a dragon take the lives of six people when it had all their swords driven into its head.

“Here,” the Captain said, oh-so-softly, and put the flare gun into Geneva’s hand.

It was a cumbersome thing, but Geneva knew she didn’t need to have perfect aim: her target was large.

Had the worm seen what they were doing? It opened its mouth and loosed a ragged noise, but the sound was more of anguish than of rage; the death tremors in its serpentine body were increasing with every beat of its heart.

Geneva brought the gun into view. The worm’s good eye flickered. There was a moment’s stillness, then the worm said:

“Damn you, woman.”

And Geneva fired the flare.

It left a smoky red trail, bright even in the light of the approaching day.

Though her aim didn’t need to be good, it was. The flare flew straight down the dragon’s throat, and for a moment the creature became the very image of its mythological self: the fire-breathing beast of the Testaments of Pottishak that Geneva had learned by heart at school.

“And yea, the Great Dragon Cascatheka Rendithius came upon the land like a plague, and fire came from its throat and blackened the living earth—”

She had scared herself many times as a child conjuring that image in her mind’s eye. But seeing it now —made flesh, made smoke—it was not so terrible. It was just a worm after all: petty and sly and cruel.

Then the gunpowder exploded, and two columns of blinding white fire blew out the monster’s eyes. The