Abarat: Absolute Midnight

inhalation. This time, though the rain was still beating a tattoo on the stones as loudly as ever, the sound of the dead man drawing breath reverberated all along the shore, its resonance causing the stones beneath the stones, and those layered still deeper, to rattle against one another, the sum of their percussions so loud that the din of the deluge seemed inconsequential.

And as if driven off by that greater thundering, the storm clouds rolled inland, to pour their waters upon a place they had some hope of cleansing: someplace where the laws of life (and death) still held sway. The shore lay silent, except for the breathing of the dead man, and the sound of the Izabella as it threw its waves upon the stones.

The drumming of the stones finally ceased, its task complete. Carrion lived. His body was no longer the wretched, colorless thing it had been. Myriad forms of light were spilling into the air around it, memories of a life he almost lost. They seethed around him blazing with a living light this shore had not witnessed in many an age. In the flux of memories, Carrion began to whisper ancient incantations, designed to heal his broken body. In the time it took for the tide to turn, retreat, and turn again to once more climb the shore, the healing was complete. Healthy tissue spread over his wounds, sealing them and causing the rotted flesh to fall in strands and scraps onto the hard bed where he still lay.

The smaller crabs, the tiny, green sea lizards that had taken refuge beneath the stones, and the mekaks that had seen several of their kind killed by the Albino, returned now to the proximity of the man so as to feed on the putrid meat that the healed body had sloughed off. They had no fear of this man or his bright agents. He didn’t even see them as they scuttled over the stones around him, cleansing the shores of every last scrap of the death he had taken off in order to dress in life again.

After a time, he got to his feet. His memories still played in the darkness around him, their meaning—having been put to the purpose of Carrion’s rebirth—eaten away, leaving the darkness surrounding him swarming with the remnants of a life he’d lived once, died too. It was well lost. He would not make the same mistakes again.

The screech of metal on stone stirred him from his ruminations. He looked toward the water, and found there the source of the raw sound. The incoming tide had brought another souvenir of Chickentown to the Shore of the Departed. An entire truck, missing three of its wheels but still containing the slumped body of its driver, securely held in his seat by his seat belt, was being delivered to the shore.

Carrion’s face had betrayed no trace of feeling until now, when the subtlest of smiles appeared on a mouth still marked, even after his revival with the scars of his grandmother’s handiwork: the lines where she’d sewn his lips together for speaking the word love. He raised his hand to his mouth and ran his fingers over the scars. The smile died, not because Mater Motley had done him harm, but because she’d been right. Love was sickness. Love was self-slaughter. Love was poison and pain and humiliation.

He was reborn to be love’s enemy. To destroy it, utterly.

The thought gave him strength. He felt the power in his body surge, and with it a sudden desire to celebrate his return into the living, tender, fearful world.

He lifted his arm and pointed at the truck that was still in the water, the surf surging around it.

“Rise,” he told it.

The vehicle obeyed instantly, lurching violently as the water poured out of its engine. The driver lolled around like a drunkard at the wheel, as the truck continued its ungainly ascent. At Carrion’s feet the loyal nightmares, which had masterminded his return to life, fawned and cavorted as they watched their naked lord at play.

Carrion dropped his right hand to his waist, palm out, and the nightmares sprang to meet his fingers, coiling themselves up and around his wrist and arm so as to reach the precious place where they had been made: his head. Once they had swum in a collar filled with a soup of sibling terrors, which he had drunk and breathed. They would again, soon. But for now they made two blazing rings around his neck, and were in their heaven.

Carrion watched the truck ascend for a little while longer, and then uttered a syllable ordering its immolation. It instantly blew apart: a fireball of yellow-and-orange flame from which the burning fragments fell like tiny comets, meeting their reflections and extinction, in the sea. Carrion turned his gaunt, tragic face heavenward to watch the spectacle, and a single bark of laughter escaped his lips.

“Ha!”

Then, after a moment:

“What’s a resurrection without fireworks?”

Chapter 24

At the Preacher’s House

MALINGO ROWED THE LITTLE boat in the direction of Ninnyhammer. It wasn’t an Hour with the happiest of memories for either of them, given that Malingo had been Kaspar Wolfswinkel’s slave there for many years and Candy was very nearly murdered by the wizard in the process of escaping. But dark as their associations with Ninnyhammer were, the island was still the closest place to find a ferry that would take them to the massive harbor in Tazmagor on the Hour of Qualm Hah, which would ultimately lead them to the Nonce, and therefore to Finnegan Hob.

When they had reached Ninnyhammer, they decided upon a ferry called The Sloppy. And once they had bought their tickets, waited in line to board, and finally found chairs on the upper deck of the small steamer, the stresses of recent events took their toll, and Candy very soon began to doze.

“If I sleep . . .” Candy said, already halfway there, “I might go dream walking.”

“You mean sleepwalking?”

“No. This is that thing I told you about.”

“Ah. I remember. The Hereafter. Are you sure you’re safe there?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Malingo smiled. “Good.”

The ferry’s captain blew three blasts on the horn, sending plumes of white steam into the night sky. That was the last thing Candy knew of their departure. As the third plume floated to darkness, so did Candy. A blanket of sleep came down, and the ship, the sea, and stars all went away.

She didn’t rest in a dreamless state for long. By the time The Sloppy was out of Ninnyhammer’s harbor, Candy’s dreaming soul had gone home to 34 Followell Street.

She woke in the kitchen. It was daytime in the Hereafter. She glanced up at the clock above the fridge: a little after three. She went to the sink and looked out into the garden, hoping that her mother would be out there, sleeping in the rusted chair, her back turned to the house. Chance—or something like it—had arranged things perfectly. Her mom was indeed sitting in the old garden chair just as Candy had pictured her, asleep, which meant that this was indeed one of those precious times when they could talk together, dreamer to dreamer.

The first and only time they’d met this way before, Candy had left the encounter with a new determination to understand the mystery that had brought her into the Abarat in the first place, an impetus that had led, finally, to her separation from Princess Boa. Now she wanted to tell her mom all that had happened on Laguna Munn’s rock. Knowing that this dreamtime was unpredictable, and that they might be interrupted at any moment, she went straight outside.

She found her mother in exactly the same place she’d been when they’d met before, staring up at the sky. Melissa Quackenbush didn’t need to look around to know that Candy was with her.

“Hello, stranger,” she said.

“Hi, Mom. I missed you. I hope you’re not angry with me.”

“Why would I be angry?”

“Because I haven’t been home to see you since the battle.”

“No, honey, I’m not angry,” Melissa said, turning around now, and smiling at Candy. A true smile, full of love. “You’ve got a new life in the Abarat. And that day when the water came through—”

“The Sea of Izabella.”

“Yes, well, if what I saw that day is anything to go by, you’ve got your hands full. So no, I’m not angry. I worry about you. But things happen for a reason. I’ve always believed that. We don’t always know the reason. We just have to get on with things.”

“Everything’s going to be fine, Mom.”