Abarat: The First Book of Hours

“Don’t struggle,” he said softly. “It’ll be worse for the both of us if you fight him, believe me.”

Hearing the delicacy in Malingo’s voice, Candy looked up and met his gaze. There was a sweetness in his eyes she had not expected to find there, the Halloween horror of his face concealing something far gentler.

“Bring her back here,” Wolfswinkel yelled. “And be quick about it.”

Malingo duly pulled Candy away from the front door and into the second room, where Kaspar was standing in front of a long mirror, rearranging the ridiculous tower of hats on his head.

“I suggest you take Malingo’s advice,” Wolfswinkel said. “You really don’t want to be on my bad side.”

Candy ignored him, struggling to free herself from Malingo’s grip. But it was a lost cause. The creature was considerably stronger than she was. And to add to his physical strength, he gave off a dizzying smell, a bittersweet mixture of cloves and cinnamon and rotted limes.

“Now listen, my dear,” Wolfswinkel said, “you have to calm down. You’re only going to exhaust yourself, struggling like that. I’m not going to do any harm to you as long as you behave.”

He turned away from the mirror and walked across to the other side of the room, where a large square of tile on the floor had been painted an eye-pricking blue. At each corner of the square was a short, fat candle.

“Candles, illume,” Kaspar said, and with a little sound like a snatched breath each of the candles ignited itself.

“Brighter!” he instructed them, and the flames grew longer, the illumination they threw up making every other lamp in the room inconsequential.

“Now,” said Kaspar, turning his attention back to Candy. “Let’s see what secrets you’re keeping from me, shall we? Malingo, you know what to do.”

Malingo pushed Candy toward the blue square. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“I heard that,” Wolfswinkel said. “I don’t know why you’re trying to curry favor with this girl. She can’t be of any use to you.”

“I’m just—”

“Shut up!” Kaspar snapped. “Put her in the light! Go on!”

Malingo gave Candy a second little shove and she stumbled forward into the square. As she did so, she felt her body pass through an invisible barrier. Within the square, she felt a peculiar pressure on her, as though the air inside the design was heavier than the air outside, and it was pressing against her body from every side. It was not by any means a pleasurable sensation. The pressure made it harder for her to draw breath, and her head ached furiously.

Not only that, but being in the painted box sealed her off from the outside world. Now—though she could see Wolfswinkel giving orders to Malingo—she could not hear his voice. Clearly there was now some kind of invisible wall around her. She tested the thesis by extending her hand. It was like pushing her fingers into cold fat. The thickened air congealed against her skin, and the sensation was so disgusting that Candy withdrew her hand before she even reached the limits of her persistence.

Wolfswinkel, meanwhile, was waving his staff around as though he were writing letters in the air.

The candles flickered; the cell convulsed around Candy.

And then, much to her horror, she felt something pulling at her. Not at her hand or arm, but at some place in the center of her head. It didn’t make her headache any worse, but she still felt somehow invaded by the sensation. It was as though Wolfswinkel was reaching inside her to pull something out. She saw strange smears of images appearing in the air at the end of Wolfswinkel’s staff, and as they settled and focused she realized that these images were recognizable to her. Ten, twenty, thirty pictures appeared, all plucked out of her memories. There was 34 Followell Street, where she’d stood so often, dreaming of the far away. There was her bedroom, and her mother’s face, and the schoolyard, and Widow White’s house, with its front lawn covered in colored pinwheels.

Apparently none of these images was of the slightest interest to Wolfswinkel, because he erased them with an irritated wave of his staff.

He gathered his strength for a second summoning, and a new wave of images emerged from Candy’s head, these more recent. First there was the lighthouse, and the ramshackle jetty of Hark’s Harbor. Then there was Mischief and Shape and the turbulent waters of the Sea of Izabella; then the Sea-Skippers, and the Yebba Dim Day.

In the midst of all these familiar sights, however, was one Candy didn’t recognize. It was a shape made of blue-green light that looked like a short length of braided ribbon which had been put in the deep freeze. There were tiny crystals glinting on it, and from one end spilled a trail of brightness that broke into tiny pinpoints of intense luminescence before they melted on the air.

At the sight of it Wolfswinkel paused, the color rising in his already ruddied cheeks. There was a look of shock on his face, of disbelief.

“Will you look at that?” he mouthed.

An ugly, avaricious smile had begun to creep onto his face. He left his staff to stand by itself, and he spat onto his palms, rubbing them together before wiping them on his trouser legs. With his hand thus prepared, he reached forward to take hold of the strange object that he’d conjured from out of Candy’s mind. Though it wasn’t solid (how could it be, when it was made of pure thought?) it nevertheless seemed to gain a measure of solidity as his hands closed around it.

Candy felt a terrible wrenching pain in her skull as Wolfswinkel’s fingers took possession of the object. There were flashes of white at the corners of her eyes, which rapidly spread, so that in a matter of moments they washed out her sight completely.

Her legs grew suddenly weak beneath her. She toppled forward against the invisible wall of her square blue cell, and then collapsed to the tiled floor.

The last thing she remembered was the sound of Malingo’s voice, breaking through from the other side.

He didn’t speak her name. He simply let out a cry of distress. It echoed in Candy’s throbbing head for a moment. Then it faded away, and she was lost to blissful unconsciousness.

27. Words with the Criss-Cross Man

Candy woke with the worst headache she’d ever experienced in her life, but at least she was no longer in the cell in which KasparWolfswinkel had imprisoned her. She was lying sprawled on a decadently overstuffed velvet chaise lounge, tossed there along with a load of old books. She sat up, her hand going up to her throbbing brow. She felt mildly feverish, and her eyes burned behind her lids when she blinked.

Wolfswinkel was talking in the next room, sounding half crazy with excitement.

“Yes… yes… I know what I have, believe me! This is the Pyramid Key, right here in my hand. Somebody had put it in her thoughts, but I’ve got it now.”

Candy got to her feet, fighting her giddiness, and went to the door between the rooms. As she approached it, however, something dropped into view in front of her. It was Malingo. He was hanging upside down from the rafters, with one long, orange and partially bent finger pressed to his lips. Candy pointed through the door, indicating that she wanted to see Wolfswinkel, but he waved her away. Candy did as instructed. Bizarre though Malingo was, there was something about his gaze that not only endeared him to her, but also made her instinctively trust him.

He climbed over the ceiling and, still inverted, clambered down the wall, using minuscule cracks in the plaster as toe- and fingerholds. Then he flipped over and dropped lightly to the ground three or four yards from Candy, his expression and his posture tentative, as though he was nervous in case all he earned for his troubles was a blow.

“It’s all right,” Candy whispered. “I’m not going to hit you. You don’t have to be frightened of me.”

Malingo sidled up to her.

“You have to get out of here,” he whispered. “My master’s a very cruel man.”

“What are you two talking about?” Wolfswinkel yelled from the other room. “Show yourself, child!