Abarat: Absolute Midnight

“Then stop cursing at us,” said John Mischief. “And make yourself useful. There’s nothing wrong at the helm. And the engine’s still going. Something’s jamming the propeller. Gazza, can you find out what it is?”

Gazza gave a quick “Aye, aye, Captain,” and raced toward the propeller. Peering into the water he said, “It’s just some piece of trash wrapped around the propeller. I’ll cut it away and—”

The boat lurched. First to port, then to starboard, then to port again, this time so deeply it took on water. All the desperate creatures they’d tried to leave behind had swum in pursuit of them, and they, plus a hundred others, had grabbed hold of The Piper.

This time there would be no saving the ship. This time she was going down, taking everyone aboard with her to feed the fishes.

Chapter 44

Pariah

THE PIPER HAD PLAYED its last tune. Its boards creaked and cracked as one desperate soul after another sought to save themselves from the seething, bloody waters of the Izabella. They were already littered with the bodies of those who had died in the collapse of The Great Head or had fallen prey to the countless beasts that had risen from the depths with the Requiax. Terror had made them mindless and merciless, clawing at one another as they attempted to clamber up onto the boat, even though it was lurching wildly.

“This is the end,” Malingo said. “Candy, I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have ended like this. What am I saying? It should never have ended. I thought we would go on forever, I really did.”

“It’s not over yet!” Gazza said. “Look up! Look up!”

Everyone did as Gazza instructed. Nine or ten winged constructions that looked like the skeletons of vast birds, were circling high above The Piper. Their broad skulls were crowned with elaborately woven ziggurats of blazing bone, their wings, fully twenty feet wide, gilded by firelight.

And in the many ribbed bodies of these extraordinary mechanisms, lying flat along their midsections, were their pilots. One of which was Geneva.

“Candy! Be ready!”

“Geneva?”

“Of course!”

“It is!”

Candy could scarcely believe what she was seeing, but there she was, Geneva Peachtree, lying in the long cage of the bone-glider’s body.

“I couldn’t leave you to die!” Geneva yelled. “But I needed help!”

“You’d better be quick!” Gazza hollered. “We’re going down fast.”

“Geneva, be careful,” Candy shouted. “Don’t get pulled down! These people—”

“Smallest first!” Geneva ordered. “Malingo, pick up Eddie!”

“Now?”

“Now!”

What happened next was so fast and so extraordinary Candy could scarcely believe it was happening. Two of the fliers swooped down toward The Piper, as Malingo lifted a protesting Eddie up—

“Put me down!”

—first onto his shoulders, and then—

“I don’t need help, geshrat!”

That was all he had time to say. The fliers were carrying between them a hammock, which scooped Eddie up like a fish in a net, lifting him into the air. Their burden was nowhere near heavy enough to prevent them from rising again with their catch.

“You’re next, Candy,” Geneva yelled.

“No, it has to be Gazza! I won’t go until he goes.”

Geneva knew she had no time to argue with the girl, so she didn’t even try.

“Gazza it is!” she said.

“Wait!” Gazza protested. “Don’t I get to have—”

“An opinion?” Geneva yelled.

“Yes!”

“No! You’ve only got one chance at this!”

Two more fliers swooped down, needing to drop lower this time, not only because Gazza wasn’t raised up on Malingo’s shoulders but because in the half minute since Eddie’s rescue, The Piper had sunk significantly lower in the water.

“Now you!” Malingo said to Candy.

“No, I won’t—”

“We heard that already,” John Serpent snapped. “Don’t be selfish, Candy.”

“What?”

For the first time, Candy found all the brothers staring at her. “If we drown, it’ll be a pity. If you go it’s a tragedy. And you know it. We’ll get Malingo, don’t worry.”

In that instant some combustible substance in the rubble of The Great Head erupted in garish flame, and its light illuminated John Serpent’s face.

“Go,” he said.

She nodded.

“I’m ready!” she yelled to Geneva. The words were barely out of her lips when the third pair of fliers swooped down and she was lifted up, and up, and up, into the safety of the sky, where the bone- gliders wheeled.

Some time later, every soul aboard The Piper was safely deposited back onto the lantern-lit northeastern shore of Ninnyhammer, where Candy found she had a host of reunions awaiting. The first Abaratian to have ever shown her hospitality, Izarith, along with her two children, was there. So was the munkee called Filth she’d met in the Twilight Palace, and the members of the Totemix. It was no accident that all the people she’d encountered along the way to this place and moment were here.

“We watched you from the first step you took into the Abarat,” Geneva explained to her.

“When you say we, you mean—”

“All of us. The Kalifee.”

“It’s more than just us, though,” said Izarith.

“Not many more,” Geneva said quietly.

“Sad but true,” one of the Totemix said. “We’ve known this Midnight was coming sooner or later. We’ve read the omens.”

“So we started assembling a force—”

“The best of the best,” Filth said, his fingers plunged deep into one of his nostrils.

“Appearances can be deceptive,” Geneva remarked, catching the look on Candy’s face as she watched Filth snot mining.

“Kalifee means troublemakers. Rebels,” Izarith explained. “But we haven’t managed to do much to defy Mater Motley. She’s clever—”

“Or we’re too stupid,” said Filth. “Maybe a bit of both.”

There were more familiar faces appearing, stepping out of the shadows into the lantern light: Jimothi, head of the tarrie-cats, and some faces she remembered from the crowded boardwalks of Babilonium.

“Why was the Mazathatt watching me?” Candy asked Geneva.

“We thought you were working for her. The Hag.”

“Why?”

“You came from nowhere. But you had power,” Izarith said. “It was no accident that I invited you into the house, I’m afraid. That was me chancing to take a long look at