Abarat: Absolute Midnight

“So love it from afar. Sometimes it’s better that way.”

“There you are!”

She looked back down the alley. The John Brothers were heading toward her.

“Go,” she murmured to Carrion.

“Who’s your friend?” John Drowze wanted to know.

Carrion gave her one last puzzled look, then he started to stumble back away down the alley. She watched him take a few steps, then she turned back to face the brothers.

“Who was that?” Mischief said.

“It doesn’t matter, at least not now. We have more urgent problems. Where is everyone?”

Half the brothers were still looking back into the shadows where Candy’s mysterious friend had gone, while the rest were trying to follow Candy and there was an absurd moment when they went neither one way nor the other.

“Mischief, will you get your brothers in order? We have to ready ourselves.”

“For what?” Mischief said.

“The End of the World,” she replied.

Chapter 35

stealing away

THERE WERE TIMES, CANDY knew, when it was best to be honest. But not always. Sometimes telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth brought nothing but trouble. And truth, like lies, often just got worse if you tried to clean up the mess with more of the same. She was in that very situation now.

When she’d emerged from the alleyway following her conversation with Carrion, and found her gang of friends, she had something very urgent to tell them: information given to her by Carrion. Midnight was on its way: a darkness that was clearly designed to kill everything in its path. But she couldn’t tell them such news and not expect them to ask her how she’d come by it. They’d want to know. She could scarcely blame that. In their position, faced with the same news, she’d want to know its course too. But that’s where the lies had to be told.

If she told them she’d spent the last few minutes in conversation with Christopher Carrion, they’d be debating whether he could be trusted until Midnight came and blacked out everything. So she reported the story as Carrion had explained it, but told them the information had come from one of the women of the Fantomaya. It was difficult enough reporting such bizarre news in the midst of the market crowd, doing her best to make herself heard over the din of the stall-owners yelling their prices. Candy told them only of the sacbrood. For once, John Serpent believed her. The rest thought this woman from the Fantomaya was either crazy or an impostor.

“I don’t believe it,” John Mischief said. “You can’t plague the whole world with darkness. It’s not plausible.”

“Why not?” Candy said. “Because it hasn’t happened yet?”

“Do you trust these women?” Betty Thunder asked her.

“Yes. I think what I’m telling you is the truth. It doesn’t help much”—she looked at Mischief—“to say it can’t be done because it’s being done. Right now. It certainly explains the birds.”

“Oh, Lordy Lou,” Malingo murmured. “The birds.”

Now the doubt began to melt.

“We saw them too,” Legitimate Eddie said. “All flying east . . .”

“Away from the sacbrood,” Tom said. “That makes sense. I’ve certainly never seen a migration like that before.”

“There’s never been one,” Malingo said.

“All right,” John Mischief said, “so this thing is happening: what do we do?”

“As much as I hate to say it, I think we should go to the Yebba Dim Day,” Candy said, “to that Council that hates me so much.”

“My mother’s on Babilonium,” Betty said. “I’ve got to go to her.”

“I’m going with you,” said Tom. “My Macy is there. We should be together if the world is going to end.”

“I think Babilonium might already be in the dark,” Candy said.

Silent tears ran down Betty’s cheeks. Clyde hugged her.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re going. The three of us.”

“Why is Mater Motley doing this?” Tom wanted to know.

“Because she’s a venomous piece of work,” John Serpent said. “And yes, I do realize a man called Serpent shouldn’t be tossing words like venomous around, but I’ve plenty more. She’s a vicious, loathsome, life-hating monster. I vote we skip the trip to the Yebba Dim Day and go straight to Gorgossium and call her down from her tower.”

“And what do we do if she comes down?” John Slop said.

Serpent didn’t offer up a reply.

“I think we should start walking down to the harbor while we talk,” Candy suggested. “We have to find a boat.”

“We should get three boats, then,” Geneva said. “I’ll go to the Nonce and find Finnegan.”

They had emerged from the market by now, and on the quieter street that took them back down toward the harbor. They were about to talk at a more natural volume, though Candy dropped her voice to a whisper and shared the other piece of information regarding Mater Motley’s plans: the part about the beasts.

“Lordy Lou,” Geneva said. “This is very bad.”

“And the part about the darkness wasn’t?” Mischief said.

“Are there a lot of creatures hidden away in the darkness?” Tom said.

“Oh yes,” said Eddie.

“How do you know?” Candy said.

“I wasn’t always a great actor,” Eddie said. “Before I took to the stage I made a nice business out of tracking down the Ziaveign and putting them out of their misery.”

“Zia-what?” Candy said.

“Ziaveign. Eight Dynasties’ destroyers and fiends.”

“This gets worse and worse,” said John Slop, looking rather pale.

“Did you say you put them out of their misery?” Mischief said.

“I worked with my two brothers,” Eddie said, “and yes, we did kill them when we were able to do so. Of course that was much more expensive. Much too expensive in the end. It cost my brothers their lives.”

A heavy silence fell on the company.

“I’m sorry,” Candy said finally. “That’s terrible.”

“They were fine, brave men. But the Eight Dynasties are strong. They may have been in hiding a long time, but that doesn’t mean they’re dead. They’ll rise up. That’s what Mater Motley is counting on.”

“She didn’t do all this alone,” John Mischief said. “She had help from that wretched grandson of hers.”

“Well, at least he’s dead and gone,” Geneva said.

Candy couldn’t bring herself to keep the truth from these people, who had done so much for her, any longer.

“Actually . . . he’s not,” she said.

“You know this for a fact?”

Candy nodded.

“How?”

“It’s complicated,” Candy said.

“What’s complicated about a man who lives in a fishbowl, pickled with his own nightmares?” Mischief replied. “And who has almost taken your life on several occasions? He’s dreck, dirt, excrement.”

Candy remembered her first glimpse of him in the alleyway. She’d thought something very similar: that