Abarat: Absolute Midnight

conjured serpent to take out their lethal rage upon each other.

Chapter 19

The Price of Freedom

“A WALL OF BLUE FLAME Thorns is going around those two,” Mrs. Munn said as she hurried Candy away from the spot where they’d left Boa and the snake to match their venomous skills. The incantatrix was no longer the figure of calm power and confident abundance she’d been when Candy had first met her. The colors in her dress had been somehow removed, and one of her feather antennae had been torn out. Everywhere there was evidence of how hard the last few minutes had been. She was scratched, bruised, and sweating: an exhausted fighter still standing, but only by sheer force of will.

“When will the wall go up?” Candy asked her.

“It’s already up. No, girl, don’t look back! Lordy Lou, when are you going to learn some caution? You’re not playing games. The Boa girl may have been a civilized tenant when she was sharing your head, but that simply testifies to the power of your influence. You must have kept her villainy subdued, without knowing you were doing it. But she’s loose now.”

“What about the wall of Flame Thorns?”

“Oh, that’s not going to detain her for very long. Nor is that ridiculous snake of yours.”

“You were right. I should have made an ax—”

“It would have been no more use than . . . the . . . snake.” As Mrs. Munn’s words slowed down so did her pace until she was standing still, Candy beside her, staring off into the trees. Candy looked for some sign of Malingo, or of Jollo and Covenantis, but the shadows between the trees seemed particularly dense directly ahead of them: almost clotted.

“What’s wrong?” Candy said.

“One of the boys,” Mrs. Munn said. “Something’s happened to one of my boys.”

She started to pick up speed again, moving swiftly, parting the darkness ahead of her like a curtain with a few muttered words. Candy kept up, but there was no longer room for them to walk side by side: the trees and the shadows were too tightly packed. She could only follow after Mrs. Munn as she wove between the trees.

Finally, a figure appeared from the darkness ahead of them. It was Malingo. Even before Mrs. Munn had reached him, he began to apologize:

“I didn’t know how to stop him. He had these words . . . from one of your books—”

“Jollo was doing magic?”

“No, Mrs. Munn. It was Covenantis. He started reciting some sort of conjuration—” He put his hand up to his face, which was wet with tears. “I tried to stop him, but he took no notice. He wasn’t reading from a book so I couldn’t take the words away from him. He had them all in his head.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Mrs. Munn said. “He’s a very intelligent child. That’s a piece of the good I put in him before he was born.” She studied the clogged darkness that lay ahead of them. “Where is he now?” she said.

“He’s still with Jollo. But I don’t know exactly where.” He frowned, and shook his head, confounded by his own stupidity. “They should be right there behind me, because almost as soon as I went off looking for you both—I couldn’t have taken more than two or three paces—I thought: this is wrong. I should do as Candy said and stay with them. So I turned back, and there was shadow, thick shadow, where there hadn’t been any before.”

“You know why.”

“Me?” Malingo said.

“You don’t have to say it,” Mrs. Munn replied, her voice softer than it had been until now. “Maybe you didn’t even realize you were running from it.”

“I wasn’t running from anything. I told you. I didn’t even know what was happening.”

Laguna Munn moved past Malingo, advancing toward a place from which all light had been driven. “But you heard it in the words he was saying.”

“It wasn’t a language I understood.”

“Even so, you heard it,” she said.

It wasn’t a question. She was merely stating what they both knew. He didn’t attempt to avoid admitting the truth any longer.

“Yes, I heard,” he said.

“Heard what?” Candy asked.

“Death,” he said.

And as if responding to that summoning word, the shadows ahead of the incantatrix tore themselves apart as though they were made of wet newspaper. Malingo didn’t want to see, at least not yet. He slipped between two trees, allowing Candy to follow Mrs. Munn, who had now passed beyond the shredded shadows, and was looking at what lay between the trees directly ahead of her.

The boy was dead, no doubt of that. His body had withered considerably more since Candy had last seen him, his flesh so drained of its vital juices that the bright, dark creature he had once been had gone entirely. What was left looked like a dwarf lying in a baggy shirt made of skin.

He looks so small, Candy thought: small and colorless. Jollo’s skin had been as black as the night sky, with fireworks streaking through it. Where had all that darkness and color gone? Death had scoured Jollo’s remains so completely clean that it looked more like his brother’s body.

Either that or—

Or what?

“I don’t think that’s Jollo, Mrs. Munn,” Candy said very quietly, as though the news might disturb the dead.

“I know,” Mrs. Munn replied.

The fact that the corpse was so very small now made sense. The remains before them weren’t those of the beloved and well-fed Jollo B’gog. It was Covenantis’s body, Candy realized, which lay in the grass.

“What happened to him?” Candy said, her voice hushed with horror. “Did the magic he was wielding backfire?”

“No. The wielding worked exactly as he wished it to,” Jollo said.

As he spoke he emerged from between the trees on the far side of his brother’s body. All trace of the damage Boa had done to him in consuming his life force had been healed, and Jollo was once again the gleaming, glorious creature he’d been when he’d first introduced himself to Candy and Malingo: his mother’s pride and joy. All he lacked was his dazzling grin.

“He used the Old Magic, Mama. I had nothing to do with it, I swear. He just gave me his life. I didn’t even know you could do something like that.”

“You can’t. Not easily. You have to find the right conjuration, and learn it perfectly, speak it perfectly. And then, of course, you have to be ready to give up your life.”

“That’s what he did, Mama. I didn’t even know he was doing it. I swear I didn’t.”

“So your brother gave up his life out of the goodness of his heart?”

“Not of his heart, Mama. Yours. That’s what you made him out of, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Munn stared hard at Jollo, clearly assessing his honesty. “And you, boy, I made from all the wickedness in me. My capacity for cruelty. And for vengefulness. And for lies.”

“Are you saying I’m a liar, Mama?” Jollo said. He literally bristled at the idea. His glossy black coat, which had lain so perfectly flat that Candy hadn’t even realized Jollo had fur until this moment, now stood up in three parallel ridges that went from the front of his head to the back, and described a spiral on his belly, centered where a normal child had a navel.

“Don’t you raise your hackles at me, boy!”

“Then don’t call me a liar when I’m not.”

“Your brother is dead, Jollo. I need to know why!”

“Then ask the geshrat!” Jollo said. “He saw it all!”

Mrs. Munn looked to Candy. “Where did your friend go?”