Abarat: The First Book of Hours

“I’ve never even been to Tazmagor.”

“You see how famous you are?” Jimothi said.

“I don’t understand why,” Candy said.

“Well, there are several good reasons,” Jimothi said. “One, of course, is your origins. You’re the first soul to have come through from the Hereafter in quite a while. Then there’s the fact that you seem to have left consternation wherever you traveled. Admittedly, none of this was of your doing. Others were causing trouble by pursuing you with such vehemence. But trouble is trouble.”

Candy sighed, still confused.

“And then,” said Jimothi, “there’s the matter of when you arrived.”

“Why’s that so important?”

“Well, because a lot of people, from street-corner elegiacs to the most respected bone-casters in the Abarat, have been saying for a long time that some transforming force was imminent. A force that would somehow upset the sad order of our lives.”

“Why sad?” said Candy. “What’s so sad about things?”

“Where do I begin?” Jimothi said softly. “Put it this way. We do not sleep well these days.”

“We?”

“Those of us who care to wonder where our lives are going. And what our dreams are worth. We wake with the taste of Midnight in our throats.”

“You mean Christopher Carrion?”

“He’s part of it. But he’s not the worst part of it,” Jimothi said. “After all, the House of Carrion has had its place in the balance of power since there were historians to write these things down. Darkness has always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light? It’s only when its ambitions become too grandiose that it must be opposed, disciplined, sometimes—if necessary—brought down for a time. Then it will rise again, as it must. In the end, following the Dark Road is no less honorable than following the Light, as long as it is done with a clear purpose.”

Candy was not sure she entirely understood what she was being told, but she was sure when she thought it all over that Jimothi’s observations would come to make sense. Anyway, she had no chance to ask the tarrie-cat questions. Jimothi was continuing to talk about the state of the Abarat, and Candy drank it all down.

“The real trouble is Commexo,” he said. “Rojo Pixler and his Kid. He buys holy sites and builds restaurants on them. And nobody seems to care. They’re too busy drinking his Panacea. It makes me sick. Hour by Hour, Day by Day, we’re letting him take the magic out of our lives. And what do we get in exchange? Soda and Panacea.” He shook his head in despair. “Do you begin to understand?” he said.

“A little,” Candy said.

“And now, here you come, out of the Hereafter. And the moment you arrive everybody starts to talk, everybody starts to wonder… is she the one?”

“The one?”

“To cure our ills. To save us from our own stupidities. To wake us up!”

Candy had no answer to this, except to say no, she wasn’t the one; she was a nobody. But Jimothi didn’t want to hear that, she knew. So she kept her silence.

“You’re an extraordinary spirit,” he said to her. “Of that I’m certain.”

Candy shook her head. “How can that…? I mean… me?” She sighed, the words failing her, just as she knew she would fail Jimothi’s high hopes for her. How could she wake up anybody? She’d been asleep herself until a few days ago, doodling in her dreams.

“Take courage in your purpose,” Jimothi said. “Even if it isn’t yet clear.”

Candy nodded.

“It’s amazing that you’ve survived your journey thus far. You do know that? Somebody must be taking care of you.”

His observation brought to mind all that Candy had faced in the hours since she’d met John Mischief: narrowly avoiding death at the hands of Mendelson Shape, and nearly drowning in the Sea of Izabella; the bolts of Pixler’s hunting party whistling past her head; then falling out of the skies, clinging to the corpse of the great moth. Finally, of course, there’d been her encounter with Wolfswinkel. Everywhere she looked there was jeopardy.

“This all began with a key,” she said, trying to make sense of what had brought her to this moment. “And Wolfswinkel took it, out of my mind. Can you get it back from him?”

“Unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about that. Although Wolfswinkel is a prisoner and I am his warden, I have no authority to take back what he has taken from you, any more than I can confiscate his hats.”

“Why not?”

Here Wolfswinkel, who had once again set his hats upon his head, spoke up:

“Because I’m a great magician, and a Doctor of Philosophy, and he’s just a flea-bitten tarrie, who happens to stand on two legs. He can’t do anything to me, except prevent me from getting off this wretched island. And all of that will change when Otto Houlihan gets here.”

“Houlihan!” Candy said. She’d been so engrossed in listening to Jimothi she’d forgotten Houlihan.

“What business does that wicked man have with you?” Jimothi asked.

It was Wolfswinkel who replied.

“Arrangements have been made to have him take her to the Lord Midnight, along with the Key she stole.”

“Go back to your house, wizard,” Jimothi said, waving Wolfswinkel away. “I don’t want to hear any more of you. Brothers and sisters, take him.” The cats, which had followed Wolfswinkel up the hill, gathered around him now, yowling as they pressed him back toward his prison.

“Damnable creatures,” Kaspar said. Then, calling back to Candy: “Why couldn’t you just have poisoned them when I asked you to?”

The cats set up a chorus of yowling that blotted out whatever else he had to say.

“He’s a lunatic,” Candy said.

“Maybe,” Jimothi replied, though he sounded doubtful. “I’m sorry you had to deal with him. But in the end he’s a very small player in a very large game.”

“Who’s organizing the game?” Candy wanted to know. “Christopher Carrion?”

“I’d rather not talk about him, if you don’t mind,” Jimothi said. “I believe the more you talk about death and darkness, the closer it comes.”

“I’m sorry,” Candy said. “This is all my fault.”

“How so?”

“Because I let that man have the Key. I should have fought him harder.”

“No, lady,” Malingo said, speaking for the first time since this whole exchange had begun. (He calls me lady, Candy thought, like John Mischief. That’s nice.) “You’re not responsible,” Malingo went on. “He had a Spell of Revelations on you. Nobody could have resisted something like that. At least, nobody who was not a magician.”

“He’s right,” Jimothi said. “Don’t blame yourself. It’s a waste of energy.”

Up on the hill Wolfswinkel slammed the door to his house. His threats and inanities were finally silenced, and so was the barrage of yowling that the tarrie-cats had set up to drown him out.

All that remained was the moan of the wind in the long grass. Its sighing put Candy in mind of home, of the tall-grass prairie around Chickentown. She suddenly felt a pang of loneliness. It wasn’t that she necessarily wanted to be back in the confines of Followell Street. It was just that the distance between this windy place and that modest little house seemed so immeasurably immense. Even the stars were different here, she remembered. Lord, even the stars.

Whatever this world was—a waking dream, another dimension, or simply a corner of Creation that God had made and forgotten—she was going to have to find herself a place in it and make sense of why she was here. If she didn’t, her loneliness would grow and consume her in time.

“So what happens to me now?” she said.

“A very good question,” Jimothi replied.