Abarat: Absolute Midnight

Chapter 39

Looking Forward, Looking Back

“THERE’S A LOT TO tell,” Joephi said, “and we don’t have much time. We don’t want the seamstresses trailing us here, to you.”

“Why did you have to come here in person?” Candy said. “You were putting thoughts in my head when I was on the boat. Couldn’t you have done that from a distance?”

“Believe me, we tried,” Mespa said. Her once close-cropped hair had grown out since Candy had last seen her, and the severity of her features had been mellowed by a profound sadness. “But your thoughts were busy dreaming.”

“I’m sorry. I had some family problems.”

“Your father?” said Joephi.

“Yes,” Candy said.

“The father,” Joephi said. “Of course. The father.”

It seemed Candy’s reply had provided an answer to a vexing problem.

“Why didn’t we think of him earlier?”

“Because he’s a drunken half-wit,” Mespa said bluntly.

“Was it my father you came to talk to me about?”

“Now that you raise the possibility, yes. We’re looking for pieces of the big picture, and we’re not doing very well. It’s possible your father’s important.”

“Who to?”

“To the future,” Mespa said.

“Are you sure there’s going to be one?”

“Why would you doubt it?”

“Because Carrion said—”

“Wait,” said Joephi. “Christopher Carrion spoke to you?”

“Yes. He was in Tazmagor when we passed through. It was he who told me to leave before things got any worse.”

“What form did he take?”

“He’s a mess.”

“Is he dead?”

“No. He’s alive. But only just. He said his nightmares saved him. They must have caught him at the last minute because I’ve never seen anybody look so sick and so broken before.”

“Well, that’s something to be grateful for,” Joephi said.

She looked at Candy, expecting some echo of this sentiment, but Candy couldn’t bring herself to celebrate Carrion’s wretched state. The significance of her silence wasn’t lost on either of the women.

“Ah, Janda, Janda,” Joephi said, digging her fingers into her long, red hair, which was wet, and pulling it away from her face. “B’yetta, B’yommo. ’Kathacooth, Monyurr—”

“Calm down, sister.”

“You say calm down as though our problem was the house catching fire. The fall of the Abarat is upon us, Mespa!”

“We will do our best to save it,” Mespa said. Her eyes went back to Candy. “With the only weapon we have.”

“A weapon against what? Who?”

“Christopher Carrion for a start.”

Candy looked away from the women’s faces down at the spiral that came to an end between them. A tiny luminous fish leaped clear of the water and turned three somersaults in the air before plopping back into the water to begin its long descent.

“You’re wrong about Carrion,” Candy said. “He’s no real danger. In fact, he was trying to get me to go back to the Hereafter. He was afraid for me.”

“You two have always had a strange relationship,” Mespa said.

“We three,” Candy said. “He loved her. And she used him.”

“Carrion’s incapable of love.”

“Again, you’re wrong,” Candy said. She felt anger suddenly rise up in her, too fierce to be silenced. “You’re very quick to make judgments, but you’re not always right.” The women said nothing, which was fine by Candy. “Boa is one of the real monsters,” she said. “But you didn’t see that. You were too busy accusing the Bad Man. The poor little Princess, the woman couldn’t be the wicked one, right?”

“That is so pitifully simpleminded—” Joephi said.

“Yes. It. Is,” Candy said. “You should have known better.”

“That’s not—”

“What you meant. I know. But it’s the truth. You put that vile creature in me and left me to deal with her.”

“We kept watch over you,” Mespa said. “And we saw your unhappiness. But it was no worse than the unhappiness of your contemporaries.”

“Where are the rest of your friends, by the way?” asked Joephi.

“Betty, Clyde, and Tom went to Babilonium. Geneva is going to look for Finnegan Hob. He’s somewhere on the Nonce.”

“He won’t be there for long,” Mespa said. “We see him traveling to Huffaker with—”

“Princess Boa,” Candy said, despondent.

“So it is true?”

“That we separated? Oh yes. I threw her out once and for all.”

Before either of the women could respond there was a fresh escalation in the shrieks and prayers that were emanating from The Great Head.

“What’s happening?” Candy said, looking past Mespa and Joephi at the boats just outside the harbor. The water there was seething and bubbling, she saw, the motion so violent that it overturned many of the boats.

“This is his work!” Candy said, looking up at the figure on top of the tallest of the towers. “Gan Nug!”

“How do you know—?”

As she spoke the tentacles of what was perhaps a leviathanic Abaratian sea monster rose up out of the frenzied waters. The massive tentacles uncurled and instantly proceeded to demolish The Great Head.

“Oh no . . .” Mespa murmured. “All those people.”

“We have to go,” Joephi said. “Save who we can.”

“We’ll go together,” Candy said.

“No,” said Mespa. “If you want to be useful, stop Boa.”

“How?”

“Use what you know,” Joephi said. “And what you don’t know, learn.”

There was a great roar of destruction from The Great Head as tentacles, which had quickly curled around the towers that had been The Head’s crowning glory, pulled them down. Now it all curled like a vast, breaking wave, stones and people raining seaward as the towers toppled. Any attempt at escape was a lost cause. What boats had not been overturned by the churning waters were now crushed by falling debris. None were saved.

The waters around the Yebba Dim Day were very quickly littered with the remains both of vessels and their passengers, all rolling in the bloody surf while the rain of stones continued to beat down upon them. As for Gan Nug, the summoner of this monstrosity, he and his uncanny bonfire still stood, hovering on the darkness, exactly where they’d been when they’d had the tower beneath them.

“Oh my . . .” Candy whispered. “I knew a woman and her two children who were in there.”

The Great Head continued its collapse, as the tentacles of the beast searched the rubble, their huge scale not denying them an atrocious delicacy. They picked over the rubble carefully, plucking here and there some poor