“The cards!” Lupta said.
His grip on the cards was too weak. When the wind came gushing again it snatched them from his hand, and with what sounded like a ripple of applause as they slapped against one another, they were carried away, out into the naked air.
“Let them go,” the blind man said.
“But how will you make money without your cards?”
“Heaven will provide. Or else it won’t, and I’ll go hungry.” He got to his feet. “In a way it confirms my decision. My life here is over. It’s time I went to see the Hours one last time before they and I pass.”
“You mean they’re coming to an end?”
“Yes. Many things will end soon. Cities, Princes, things foul and things fine. All will pass away.” He paused, looking up sightlessly at the sky. “Are there a lot of stars tonight?”
“Yes. Lots.”
“Oh good, very good. Will you lead me down to the North Road?”
“Don’t you want to go through the village? Say good-bye?”
“Would you?”
“No.”
“No. Just get me to the North Road. Once I have it beneath my feet, I’ll know where to go from there.”
Part One
The Dark Hours
—Anon.
Chapter 1
Toward Twilight
CANDY’S GANG OF ABARATIAN friends had plenty of plans laid to celebrate her safe return to the islands after the violence and insanity of the Hereafter. But they had barely finished welcoming her home with kisses and laughter (to which the John Brothers added an
It wouldn’t be an easy meeting, she knew. No doubt, the Council suspected that she was the cause of the events that had wrought so much destruction. They would want her to give them a full account of why and how she had come to make herself such powerful enemies as Mater Motley and her grandson, Christopher Carrion: enemies with the power to override the seal the Council had put on the Abarat and force the waters of the Izabella to do their bidding, causing it to form a wave powerful enough to wash over the threshold between worlds, and to fill Chickentown’s streets.
She quickly said her good-byes to those she’d only recently greeted again—Finnegan Hob, Two-Toed Tom, the John Brothers, Geneva—and with her geshrat friend Malingo for company she boarded the small boat the Council had sent and departed for the Straits of Dusk.
The journey was long, but went without incident. This was no thanks to the temperament of the Izabella, which was much stirred up, and carried on her tide plentiful evidence of the journey her waters had recently taken across the border between worlds. There were keepsakes from Chickentown floating everywhere: plastic toys, plastic bottles, and plastic furniture, not to mention boxes of cereal and cans of beer, pages of gossip magazines and broken televisions. A street sign, drowned chickens, the contents of somebody’s fridge, leftovers bobbing by sealed in plastic: half a sandwich, some meat loaf, and a slice of cherry pie.
“Strange,” Candy said, watching it all float by. “It makes me hungry.”
“There’s plenty of fish,” said the Abaratian in Council uniform who was guiding their boat through this detritus.
“I don’t see fish,” Malingo said.
The man leaned over the side of the boat, and with startling speed, he reached down into the water and pulled out a fat fish, yellow dotted with spots of bright blue. He proffered the creature, all panic and color, to Malingo.
“There,” he said. “Eat! It’s a sanshee fish. Very good meat.”
“No thanks. Not raw.”
“Please yourself.” He offered it to Candy. “Lady?”
“I’m not hungry, thank you.”
“Mind . . . if I . . . ?”
“Go ahead.”
The man opened his mouth much wider than Candy had thought possible, revealing two impressive parades of pointed teeth. The fish, much to Candy’s surprise uttered a high-pitched squeal, which died the moment its devourer bit off its head. Candy didn’t want to look revolted by what was probably a perfectly natural thing for the pilot to have done so she went back to looking at the bizarre reminders of Chickentown as they floated by, until finally the little vessel brought them into the busy harbor of the Yebba Dim Day.
Chapter 2
The Council Speaks its Minds
CANDY HAD EXPECTED TO be called into the Council Chamber, questioned by the Councilors about what she’d seen and experienced and then released to go back to join her friends. But it became apparent as soon as she presented herself before the Council that not all of the eleven individuals gathered here thought that she was an innocent victim of the calamitous events that had caused so much destruction, and that some punishment needed to be agreed upon.
One of Candy’s accusers, a woman called Nyritta Maku, who came from Huffaker, was the first to present her opinion, and she did so without any sweetening.
“It’s very clear that for reasons known only to yourself,” she said, her blue-skinned skull bound so as to form a series of soft-boned sub-skulls of diminishing size that hung like a tail, “you came to the Abarat without invitation from anyone in this Chamber, intending to cause trouble. You quickly did so. You liberated a geshrat from the employ of an imprisoned wizard without any permission to do so. You roused the fury of Mater Motley. That in itself would be reason for a stiff sentence. But there’s worse. We have already heard testimony that you have the arrogance to believe you have some significant part to play in the future of our islands.”
“I didn’t come here deliberately if that’s what you’re saying.”
“Have you made any such claims?”
“This is an accident. Me being here.”
“Answer the question.”
