Abarat: The First Book of Hours

Come thou glyph to me.”

“I don’t want to hurry you,” Jimothi said, glancing back at Candy, his eloquent eyes flickering with anxiety, “but I can see the lights of three glyphs coming this way. It must be the Criss-Cross Man. I’m afraid you don’t have much time, my friend.”

Malingo didn’t break the rhythm of his invocation. He went on, around and around, snatching at the air. But nothing seemed to be happening. From the corner of her eye, Candy caught sight of Jimothi making a tiny, despairing shake of his head. She ignored his pessimism and instead went to stand with Malingo.

“Is there only room for one cook in this kitchen?” she said.

He was still circling and snatching, circling and snatching.

“The pot looks pretty empty to me,” Malingo said. “I need all the help I can get.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Candy said, stepping into the circle behind Malingo, copying his every move and syllable.

“Ithni asme ata,
Ithni manamee…”

It was remarkably easy, once she’d done it one time through. In fact, it was eerily easy, like a dance step she’d forgotten but remembered again immediately the music began, though where she’d heard the music of this magic before she could not possibly imagine. This was not a dance they danced in Chickentown.

“I think it’s working,” Malingo said hesitantly.

He was right.

Candy could feel a rush of kindled air coming out of the middle of the circle, and to her amazement she saw a myriad of tiny sparks igniting all around them: blue and white and red and gold.

Malingo let out a triumphant whoop, and his happiness seemed to further fuel the fire of creation. Now the sparks began to trail light, forming a luminescent matrix in the dark air. The glyph being conjured was a complex form, dominated by three broad strokes, between which there was a filigree of finer lines. Some rose up to form a kind of cabin. The rest swept down behind the craft where they knotted themselves together forming something that might have been the glyph’s engine. Moment by moment it looked more solid. In fact it now seemed so substantial it was hard to imagine that the space it now occupied had been empty just a little time before.

Candy looked over at Jimothi, who was staring with naked astonishment at what Malingo had achieved.

“I take it all back, my friend,” he said. “You are a wizard. Perhaps the first of your tribe to speak a glyph into creation, yes?”

Malingo had stopped circling. He now also stood back to admire the vehicle that was being called into existence.

“We are both wizards,” he said, looking at Candy with a stare that contained surprise and delight in equal measure.

Jimothi was once again consulting the skies through his telescope. “I think it’s time for you to go,” he said.

“There’s still more to do,” Candy said, looking at the unfinished glyph.

“It should finish itself,” Malingo told her. “At least that’s what Lumeric writes.”

Lumeric the Mutep knew its business. As Candy watched, the glyph continued to become more and more coherent, the lines of light running back and forth, knitting the matter of the vehicle, refining its form. But it was taking its own sweet time, and that was the problem.

“Is there no way to hurry it up?” Jimothi said.

“Not that I know of,” Malingo replied.

Candy glanced in the direction of the approaching enemy. She could now see the glyphs Jimothi had spoken of; all three considerably more elaborate than the vehicle that she and Malingo had conjured. But a craft was a craft; as long as it could carry them, it scarcely mattered what it looked like.

As she watched, Houlihan’s trio came in to land on a ridge perhaps four hundred yards from them. There they sat, looking like predatory animals.

“Why did they land over there?” Candy asked Jimothi.

“Because Houlihan is a military man. He sees traps and ambushes everywhere. He probably thinks we’ve got an army of ten thousand tarrie-cats hiding behind the hill. How I wish we had them. I’d tear him and his mires to pieces.”

“Mires? What are mires?”

“The creatures he brought with him. They’re a particularly brutal breed of stitchling.”

Candy was just about to ask Jimothi if she could take a look through his telescope to see these mires when a voice they all hoped had been silenced—at least for a while—echoed across the island.

“There’s nothing to be nervous about, Houlihan! There’s only three of them. And a few cats.”

It was Wolfswinkel, of course.

Candy glanced around at the house. The wizard had appeared in the dome, which functioned as a giant magnifying glass, grotesquely distorting Wolfswinkel’s face and body. It was as though he was being reflected in a vast fun-house mirror. His head bulged, and his body looked dwarfed, so that he resembled an infuriated fetus dressed in a banana-skin suit.

“Come and get them, Houlihan!” he screamed, pounding his tight red fists against the glass. “They’re weaponless! Kill the geshrat! He’s a mutinous slave! And beat that girl! Teach her a lesson.”

“I really hate that little man,” said Candy.

“There’s a lot worse than him, I’m afraid,” Jimothi replied.

“Such as…?”

“Try the Criss-Cross Man,” Jimothi said. “The list of his crimes is so long we could be here till the sun comes up over Ninnyhammer.”

Candy licked her parched lips and went back to studying the glyph. It was still polishing itself, much to her frustration. Malingo was also staring hard at it, as though he was trying to will it to finish its autocreation.

“What about you, Jimothi?” Candy said to the tarrie-man. “If we get away, what happens to you?”

“I’ll be fine and dandy,” Jimothi said. “Houlihan won’t touch me. He knows where to draw the line.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” said Jimothi. “Don’t worry about me. Oh, A’zo. He’s coming.”

Candy returned her gaze to the ridge. Houlihan and his gang of mires had vacated their glyphs and were approaching, confident—thanks to Wolfswinkel—that they had nothing to fear. Houlihan wore a long purple coat with a blood-red lining; his face was faintly jaundiced, and there seemed to be a checkerboard design tattooed upon his cheeks. The seven mires that followed on his heels were all bigger than he was, the largest nearly twice his size. Like all their vile species they were patchworks of flesh and fabric, all crudely sewn together. Their heads, however, were of inhuman design: like the skeletal remains of devils, with horns and snouts and vicious teeth. They all carried elaborately configured blades; three of them carried one in each hand.

All in all, it was a terrifying spectacle.

“How much longer?” she asked Malingo.

“I don’t know,” the geshrat replied. Then, with a little puff of pride: “It’s my first.” He glanced up at the approaching posse. “I suppose we could get in it now, but I’m afraid it would decay, and we’d fall out of it.”

At this juncture, there came a shout from Houlihan.

“Candy Quackenbush?’’ he hollered. “You are under arrest, by order of Christopher Carrion.”

Jimothi laid a light hand on Candy’s shoulder. “I’ll get the tarries to do what we can to delay him,” he said.