Abarat: Absolute Midnight

The Bad Boy just laughed.

“I’ll tell Mama!”

“Mama won’t stop me. Mama loves everything I do.”

“Well, aren’t you lucky?” Covenantis said, unable to entirely disguise his envy.

“Mama says I’m a genius!” the Bad Boy crowed.

“You are, darling, you are,” Laguna Munn said, entering the space as little more than a shadow of herself. “But this isn’t the time or the place to fool around.”

All it took was the sound of Laguna Munn’s voice and the creatures that had been scattered by the Bad Boy’s cavorting came back down on the instant, knitting themselves together—wing to claw to beak to coxcomb to fanning tail—forming a small prison around Candy.

“Better,” Laguna Munn said, her voice all-forgiving. “Pale Child?”

“Yes, Mama?” Covenantis said.

“Have you secured all the locks?”

Oh yes, Boa said. Got to have plenty of locks. I like the sound of that.

“What are the locks for?” Candy said aloud. “What are you keeping out?”

“Nothing’s being kept out—” Covenantis said, stopping only when his mother yelled his name, and dropping the last part of his reply to a whisper. “It’s you she’s keeping in.”

“Covenantis!”

“I’m coming, Mama!”

“Quickly now. I haven’t got much time.”

“I’ve got to go,” the Good Boy said to Candy. “I’ll be right outside.”

He pointed to a narrow slit of a door in between the wings and claws of the big bugs, and for the first time Candy realized that a solid little chamber had formed around her. The walls were draining of color even as she watched, and every last crack or flaw in the knitted forms sealed. What had been a colorful room made of flittering wings was becoming a silent concrete cell.

“Why are you locking me in?” Candy said.

“Conjurations this strong are unstable,” Covenantis said.

“What do you mean?”

“They can go wrong,” he whispered.

“Covenantis!” Laguna Munn shouted.

“Yes, Mama!”

“Stop talking to the girl. You can’t help her.”

“No, Mama!”

“She’ll probably be dead in under a minute.”

“I’m coming, Mama,” Covenantis said. He gave Candy a little shrug, and slipped out through the door, which closed, leaving no trace of its presence, not a crack.

Well . . . Boa said softly. You got us here. Better finish it. If you’ve got what it takes.

“I’ve got what it doesn’t take,” Candy replied, without hesitation.

Oh? And what’s that?

“Don’t be stupid,” Candy said. “You.”

And suddenly, the fear drained from Candy and she turned on the spot, addressing the cold, gray walls.

“I’m ready,” she told them. “Do whatever you have to do. Just get it over with. If you can avoid spilling blood, that’d be great. But if you can’t, you can’t.”

She didn’t have to wait very long for the cell to respond. Six shudders passed through its walls, ceiling and floor, like tides of life moving in its dead matter, resurrecting it. She understood now why she’d been given a peripheral glimpse of what the cell had been in its last incarnation: the flock of winged beings. She saw them haunting the gray walls still. One life inside another.

Was the lesson here that she would have been gray and lifeless as the walls if Boa’s soul had not come into her? Was she being warned that the life she was choosing would be a cell: gray and cold?

She didn’t believe it. And said so.

“I’m more than that,” she told the shimmering gray. “I’m not dead matter.”

Not yet, Boa crowed.

“Are you ready to do this?” Candy said and thought to both wall and Princess. “Because I’m getting bored with all these stupid threats.”

Stupid? Boa raged.

“Just do it,” Laguna Munn said, her voice quickening the powers in the walls. “Quick and clean.”

“Wait!” Candy said. “I just wanted Boa to know I’m sorry. If I’d known she was there I would have tried to set her free years ago.”

If you’re looking for absolution, Boa said, you won’t get it from me.

“Then that’s an end to that,” Laguna Munn said, her response making Candy realize with a shock that the old woman had been listening in on her thoughts from the beginning. “Let’s get this done, one way or the other. Candy! Palms to the wall. Quickly!”

Candy lay her palms on one of the walls. Instantly she could see the creatures dancing in the solid air beyond. Their wings and bodies shed the flakes of white gold that decorated them. They converged on Candy’s palms, the fragments flowing together into two gilded streams.

She felt them against her palms, breaking into deltas, spreading along the dry watercourses of the lines upon her hands, and then sinking deeper, dissolving her surface in order to flow into her veins. Her hands became translucent; the brightness inside her flesh was so intense she could see the strong simple lines of her finger bones, and the complicated design of her nerves.

The brightness quickened once it got to her elbows, like a fire blown by the wind into a thicket many summers dry. It raced up her arms, and across her body.

She felt it, but it didn’t hurt. It was more like being reminded that this was her.

She was real: and being real, and her, was—What? What was it? Who was it?

That was the big question, wasn’t it? When all the fireworks were over: Who was she?

You’re nothing, Boa said quietly.

Candy wanted to counter Boa’s insults. But her energies were focused elsewhere: on the rush of awakening that was passing through her body, down from her neck, over her torso, and up, filling the twice-souled vessel above.

Did you hear me? Boa said.

“Keep your petty insults to yourself, Boa,” Laguna Munn said. “You may have suffered a little, trapped in the child’s head. But Lordy Lou, there are worse deaths to suffer. Such as the real thing. Oh . . . and while we’re talking, I know what you’re thinking: that once all this is over you’ll have my sons running around doing your bidding!”

Boa said nothing.

“That’s what I thought. Well, forget it. There’s only room for one woman in the lives of my beautiful sons.”

Please, Boa protested. I’d never try to compromise the sacred relationships between you and your sons.

“I don’t believe you,” Laguna Munn replied plainly. “I think you’d try anything if you thought you could get away with it.”

I wouldn’t dream of it. I know what you’re capable of.

“You might think you do but you don’t have the first idea, so be careful.”

Understood.

“Good. Now, I should leave this chamber.”

“Wait,” Candy said. “Don’t go yet. I’m feeling dizzy.”