Abarat: Absolute Midnight

“If I was to take a wild guess I’d say she’s trying to do that, Nyritta,” said the representative from the Nonce. It was a spiral of warm dappled light, in the midst of which flakes of poppy and white gold floated. “Just give her a chance to find the words.”

“Oh, you really like the lost ones, don’t you, Keemi.”

“I’m not lost,” Candy said. “I know my way around pretty well.”

“And why is that?” said a third Council member, her face an eight-eyed, four-petaled flower with a bright- throated mouth at its center. “Not only do you know your way around the islands, you also know a lot about the Abarataraba.”

“I’ve just heard stories here and there.”

“Stories!” said Yobias Thim, who had a row of candles around the brim of his hat. “You don’t learn to wield Feits and Wantons by hearing stories. I think what happened with Motley and Carrion and your knowledge of the Abarataraba are all part of the same suspicious business.”

“Let it be,” said Keemi. “We didn’t summon her here to Okizor to interrogate her about how she knows the Abarataraba.”

She glanced around at the Councilors, no two of whose physiognomies were alike. The representative from Orlando’s Cap had a brilliant coxcomb of scarlet and turquoise feathers, which were standing proud in his agitated state; while the face of Soma Plume’s representative, Helio Fatha, wavered as though he was gazing through a cloud of heat, and the dawning face of the Councilor from six a.m. was streaked with the promise of another day.

“Look, it’s true. I do know . . . things,” Candy admitted. “It started at the lighthouse, with me knowing how to summon the Izabella. I’m not saying I couldn’t do it, I could. I just don’t know how I did. Does it matter?”

“If this Council thinks it matters,” growled the stone visage from Efreet, “then it matters. And everything else should be of little consequence to you until the question has been satisfactorily answered.”

Candy nodded. “All right,” she said. “I’ll do my best. But it’s complicated.”

So saying, she began to tell them as best she could the parts that she did know, starting with the event from which everything else sprang: her birth, and the fact that just an hour or so before her mother got to the hospital on an empty, rain-lashed highway in the middle of nowhere, three women of the Fantomaya—Diamanda, Joephi and Mespa—had crossed the forbidden divide between the Abarat and the Hereafter looking for a hiding place for the soul of Princess Boa, whose murdered remains lay in the Nonce.

“They found my mother,” Candy said, “sitting, waiting for my dad to come back with gas for the truck . . .”

She paused, because there was a humming sound in her head, which was getting louder. It sounded as though her skull was filled with hundreds of agitated bees. She couldn’t think straight.

“They found my mother . . .” she said again, aware that her voice was slurring.

“Forget your mother for a moment,” said the representative from Ninnyhammer, a bipedal tarrie-cat called Jimothi Tarrie, who Candy had met before. “What do you know about the murder of Princess Boa?”

“Boa.”

“Yes.”

Huh. Boa.

“Quite . . . quite a lot,” Candy replied.

What she’d thought to be the voices of bees, was forming into syllables, the syllables into words, the words becoming sentences. There was somebody speaking in her head.

Don’t tell them anything, the voice said. They’re bureaucrats, all of them.

She knew the voice. She’d been hearing it all her life. She’d thought it was her voice. But just because the voice had been in her skull all her life didn’t make it hers. She said the other’s name without speaking it.

Princess Boa.

Yes, of course, the other woman said. Who else were you expecting?

“Jimothi Tarrie asked you a question,” Nyritta said.

“The death of the Princess . . .” Jimothi reminded her.

“Yes, I know,” Candy said.

Tell them nothing, Boa reiterated. Don’t let them intimidate you. They’ll use your words against you. Be very careful.

Candy was deeply unsettled by the presence of Boa’s voice—and especially unhappy that it should make itself audible to her now of all times—but she sensed that the advice she was being given was right. The Councilors were watching her with profound suspicion.

“. . . I heard bits of gossip,” she said to them. “But don’t really remember much . . .”

“But you’re here in the Abarat for a reason,” said Nyritta.

“Am I?” she countered.

“Well, don’t you know? You tell us. Are you?”

“I don’t . . . have any reason in my head, if that’s what you mean,” Candy said. “I think maybe I’m just here because I happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Nice work, Boa said. Now they don’t know what to think.

Boa’s assessment seemed right. There were a lot of frowns and puzzled looks around the Council table. But Candy wasn’t off the hook yet.

“Let’s change the subject,” Nyritta said.

“And go where?” Helio Fatha asked.

“What about Christopher Carrion?” Nyritta said to Candy. “You were somehow involved with him. Weren’t you?”

“Well, he tried to have me murdered, if you want to call that involvement.”

“No, no, no. Your enemy was Mater Motley. There was something else going on with Carrion. Admit it.”

“Like what?” Candy said.

She needed to lie now, Candy knew. The truth was that she was indeed aware of why Carrion had been drawn to her, but she wasn’t going to let the Councilors know about it. Not until she knew more herself. So she said it was a mystery to her. And a mystery, she didn’t neglect to remind them, that had almost cost her her life.

“Well, you survived to tell the tale,” Nyritta remarked, his voice dripping sarcasm.

“So why don’t you tell it, instead of meandering around explaining nothing at all?” Helio Fatha said.

“I’ve nothing to tell,” Candy replied.

“There are laws defending the Abarat from your kind, you know that, don’t you?”

“What will you do? Execute me?” Candy said. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. You’re not angels. Yes, you probably had good reason to protect yourselves from my kind. But no kind is perfect. Even Abaratians.”

Boa was right, Candy thought. They were a bunch of bullies. Just like her dad. Just like everyone else. And the more they bullied, the more she was determined not to give them any answers.

“I can’t help it whether you believe me or not. You can interrogate me all you like, but you’re just going to get the same answer. I don’t know anything!”

Helio Fatha snorted with contempt. “Ah, let her go!” he said. “This is a waste of time.”

“But she has powers, Fatha. She was seen wielding them.”

“So maybe she saw them in a book. Wasn’t she with that idiot Wolfswinkel for a time? Whatever she may have learned, she’ll forget it. Humankind can’t hold on to mystery.”

There was a long, irritated silence. Finally Candy said, “Can I go?”

“No,” said the stone-faced representative from Efreet. “We’re not finished with our questions.”

“Let the girl go, Zuprek,” Jimothi said.

“Neabas still has something to say,” the Efreetian replied.

“Get on with it.”

Neabas spoke like a snail edging along a knife. He looked like irridescent gossamer. “We all know she has some affection for the creature, though why that should be is incomprehensible. She’s plainly concealing a great