Abarat: Absolute Midnight

reach—go on, fingers! Go on, hands!—beyond the end of the cord, which was already slipping up and away, carried by a gust of wind that smelled like lightning and pineapples.

Her fingers went now, disappearing completely. Her hands searched, probing through the Void . . . and touched something on the other side of the Wall of Nothingness. It was moist and warm, as though it had been painted by a loaded brush, and as soon as she touched whatever it was, whatever it was reached toward her with the same urgency. Dozens of boneless feelers as thin as string wrapped themselves around her hands and wrists.

“What’s in there?” Gazza wanted to know.

“I’ve no idea,” she told him. “But it’s alive. And it’s got hold of me. It’s pulling.”

“Does it hurt?”

It didn’t, she realized. It was a tight grip, but it didn’t mean her harm.

“It’s all right,” she murmured.

“What?”

“I said: it’s all right.”

She saw a gleam of bright columns ripple past her face.

“What was that?”

The word that went by. It was written in turquoise on a strip of air the color of mangoes.

“Malingo?”

The three syllables came out of her mouth, and flowed in purples and blues in a woven streak of sound and color.

“Yes?” he said.

“I’m not afraid,” she told him.

Again, her words poured out in woven stream of color: red, purple, blue. . . .

“Oh, will you look at that. Words like ribbons.”

And out the words came.

Words like ribbons.

Green and yellow and orange.

“What’s happening?” Malingo said. “I just saw my name fly by.”

“I know.” She reached out toward the source of the tentacles. A gust of wind blew from the place where her hand was. She felt it on her face. She heard it telling her, as winds will:

Come away. Come away.

It carried the words off toward Oblivion.

“No, thanks . . .” she said very quietly, so quietly that the ribbon was translucent. “We’ve got somewhere to go.”

She reached out as far as her muscles and joints would allow, and grabbed hold of whatever tentacles were growing from the Other Side.

Something there understood the sign she was sending. And it pulled. Candy didn’t have time to offer further word to Malingo. It all happened too fast. Suddenly there were bits of color rushing at her, tiny bits, and with them, the briefest fragments of sound. Nothing made sense. It came too fast and it just got faster.

Color, color, color . . .

Note, note, note . . .

Color, note. Color, note.

Col—

No—

Col—

No—

Suddenly, nothing.

A long, empty, gray hush.

But she wasn’t afraid. She knew how these things worked now. Everything was a mirror.

If prisons—

O!

—therefore liberty.

It’s started.

If seas—

See it?

—therefore shores.

Hear it?

If silence,

Yes!

Therefore song.

And they were in another world entirely.

Hopelessness is reasonable.

But nothing of worth

in my life

came of reason.

Not my love,

not my art,

not my heaven.

So I am hopeful.

—Zephario Carrion

So Ends

The Third Book of Abarat

Copyright

Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Copyright © 2011 by Clive Barker