Abarat: The First Book of Hours

“It didn’t sound like the wind,” Candy said, getting up out of her chair. “It sounded like a voice. Like somebody crying.”

“Oh! Crying! Well, yes. Of course there’s crying! I didn’t want to depress you when you first arrived, but there are several mourners here in the house with me.”

“Mourners?”

“One of my friends—a dear, dear friend—was killed by the tarrie-cats just yesterday, and we’re having a wake on his behalf. You know, gathering to toast his memory and tell tales of what a fine fellow he was.”

“Really?” Candy said. Something about this explanation didn’t quite ring true. “If there’s a wake going on,” she said, “then why are you wearing a bright yellow suit?”

Wolfswinkel glanced down at his jaundiced ensemble, then feigned a look of surprise. “This is yellow!” he said. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, dear,” he said pitifully. “Poor Kaspar. The blindness is getting worse.”

“You’re saying you didn’t realize that was a yellow suit?” said Candy, more and more certain that her suspicions were correct, and that this strange little man was for some reason deceiving her.

“Yes,” Kaspar said, putting his hand to his brow, as though the drama was too much for him. But Candy wasn’t convinced by his hammy theatrics. Her real interest now was to discover who had made the grieving sound she’d heard.

She got up from her chair and went to the adjoining door, through which the sound of sobbing had come.

“Where are all these mourners then?” she said, as she went. Kaspar moved to stop her, but he wasn’t quick enough. Candy stepped through the door into the next room.

Just as she’d suspected, there was neither a casket here, nor a corpse, nor so much as a single mourner. There was simply a dark, cluttered room, one of its walls dominated by a huge portrait of Kaspar sitting on an animal that looked like a cross between a giant armadillo and a camel.

“There’s no wake going on in this house!” Candy snapped. “You were lying to me. I can’t bear liars!”

Kaspar had followed her through the door. “So what if I was?” he replied, nonchalantly. “It’s my house. I can lie in my house if I want to. I can run around in the nude yelling hallelujahs if I so desire.”

“Didn’t anybody ever tell you it was rude to lie?”

“Maybe I can’t help it,” Kaspar said. “Maybe I’ve got an incurable disease that makes me lie. Poor Kaspar.”

“Oh,” Candy said. “And do you have such a disease?”

“Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t.”

“Oh, stop it,” Candy snapped, her temper stretched to breaking point. “Can’t you simply tell me the truth?”

“Well… yes, I suppose I could. But where would the fun be in that?”

“You know what?” Candy said. “This is a ridiculous conversation. And you are a ridiculous little man.”

She turned on her heel and started to walk back toward the door she’d just walked through.

“I wouldn’t go out there if I were you. The tarrie-cats are still out there.”

“So what?” said Candy. “I’d prefer to take my chances with them than stay in here another—”

Before she could finish, Kaspar stepped into the doorway, blocking her path.

“What are you doing?” Candy said. “Get out of my way.”

He didn’t reply to this. He simply raised his arm, put his stubby-fingered hand over Candy’s face, and shoved.

Candy stumbled backward, her foot catching on a rucked-up rug. Down she went, on her tailbone. It hurt, and she yelped.

“I think you should stop being so judgmental, little missy,” Wolfswinkel said, every little trace of kindliness abruptly gone from his face. He stood over her and looked her dead in the eye. “Believe me, I’ve done worse than lying in my life. A whole lot worse.”

“I believe you have,” Candy said softly.

She started to scramble to her feet. Wolfswinkel neatly kicked the legs from under her, and down she went for a second time. She was beginning to get a little scared of Wolfswinkel now. He might look like a clown, with his stupid hats and his yellow suit, but then she’d always been a little afraid of clowns.

“I want to leave now,” she told him.

“Do you indeed? Well, I’m afraid you’re not going to. You’re going to stay here with me.”

“You can’t keep me here. I’m not—”

“—a child? You are to me. To me you are an infant. A baby with no one to protect you. I’d lay a bet that nobody even knows you’re here.”

Candy didn’t reply, but her silence was all the confirmation Wolfswinkel required.

“I didn’t lie about one thing,” Kaspar said.

“What was that?”

“I did whisper an incantation when I saw you. I prayed you’d make the mistake of ignoring the tarrie-cats who were trying to warn you about coming up here. Lo and behold, my supplications were answered! Into my hands you came, like a stupid little fish.”

“One minute I’m a baby, the next minute I’m a fish,” Candy snapped. “Make up your mind!”

She was feeling more afraid of Wolfswinkel by the moment, but she wasn’t going to show it.

“My error,” Kaspar said. “You’re not a baby, and you’re not a fish. You’re a hostage.”

“A what?”

“You heard me: a hostage. I’ll bet there are people out there who would pay a few thousand zem to have you in their hands.”

“Well, you can forget that,” Candy said. “I don’t have any friends in the Abarat.”

“Now who’s lying?” Wolfswinkel said, bending down to poke Candy. “Of course you’ve got friends. A pretty girl like you? You’ve probably got half a dozen boys pining away for you.”

Candy laughed out loud at the preposterousness of this.

“Then you have family.”

“Not here I don’t,” Candy said, thinking, while she spoke, of how quickly she could squirm out from between Wolfswinkel’s legs and get to the door. “My parents are—”

“—in Chickentown.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” said Wolfswinkel. “Well give me time. I’ll find somebody here who wants you. Somebody who’ll pay a price. Malingo? Where are you? Malingo! Present yourself before me right now, or I’ll have your hide for boot leather.”

“I’m here,” said a voice from above, and there—hanging upside down from a roof beam—was a creature that resembled a Halloween mask come to life. His skin was a mottled orange, the pupils in his dark-rimmed eyes dark slits. There were four knobbly horns on his head, and two large fans of leathery skin spread from either side of his head, where ordinary folks would have had ears. He was wearing a dirty T-shirt and an even dirtier pair of pants.

He would have made a fearful sight if he hadn’t worn such a pitiful expression on his face. Seeing him, Candy thought back to the weeping she’d heard when she’d first come into the house. This Malingo was surely the source of that unhappiness.

“Come down here and catch hold of this wretched child for me,” Wolfswinkel told him. “Now!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.”

Malingo began to clamber down out of the rafters.

But before he could reach ground level, Candy was away. She gave Kaspar a two-handed shove in the belly and then she raced back to the door between the rooms, darting through to the front room. Malingo was on the ground now. She could hear the slap of his bare feet as he raced over the tiled floor in pursuit of her. He was fast. She was barely halfway across the room when he caught hold of her. “