She looked around at him. He was climbing up onto the top of the boulder followed by, much to Candy’s surprise, Betty Thunder. Candy took a good look around.
“How come we get to sit on the only rock?” she asked.
“You’re famous,” Gazza said. “So we get the rock.”
“Who are all these people?”
“We’re all the Empress’s prisoners.”
“Is it just the four of us?”
“No. Eddie and the Johns are here too,” Gazza said.
“What about Geneva? Tom? Clyde?”
Betty gave a sad shrug.
“We might find them, though,” said Malingo. “Eddie and the Johns are out there looking for them and trying to find out why we’re here. What we’ve all got in common.”
“She doesn’t like us,” Candy said. “What more reason does she need? She’s the Empress now. She doesn’t answer to anyone.”
“Everybody answers to somebody,” said Gazza.
Candy shrugged and stood up to survey the crowd. Bonfires were blazing in dozens of places around the camp. By their light, Candy saw that the crowd here was just as diverse as it had been on the boardwalks of Babilonium. Though these were prisoners, not pleasure seekers, the familiar exuberance of Abaratian life was visible: the same dream-bright colors that had no name; the same elaborate configurations of feathered crests and fanning tails; eyes that looked like smoking embers and rings that were decorated with constellations of golden eyes. The only real difference was in the noise the crowd made, or rather its absence. The pleasure seekers at Babilonium had whooped and shouted and howled at the dusky sky as if to call it down to join in the fun. But there were no whoops nor shouts here. Nor were there tears. Just whispered exchanges, and perhaps here and there some murmured prayers.
“They’re all watching the sky,” Candy said. “Seeing the cracks opening up.”
“Well, that
“She knew this would happen,” Candy said.
“She knew the darkness wouldn’t stay?”
“Of course,” Candy said, momentarily forgetting she’d kept her conversation with Carrion a secret. She quickly added a defensive, “I mean, how could she not? She had to know that whatever creatures she put up there wouldn’t live forever. Otherwise why would she have all the troublemakers locked up? It just makes sense.”
“What’s going to happen to us now?” Malingo said.
“We’re going to get out of here,” Candy said. “Before Mater Motley gets here.”
“What makes you think she’s going to come here?” Gazza asked.
“She’s worked a long time to get all her enemies in one place. She can take us all out at the same time.”
“
“Yes. And we’re hidden behind a volcano at the end of the world! Nobody will ever know if we’re murdered here. But she’ll want it soon, before some order is put back into things.”
“How can you be so sure?” said Betty.
“I just am. I think I have come to understand her . . . a little.”
“Well, I don’t see how we get the six of us out of here,” Betty said. “Maybe you and Malingo . . .”
“What do you mean
“When I say all of us,” Candy said, glancing back toward the compound and all the souls imprisoned within it, “I mean:
“There are stitchlings in every direction, Candy,” Gazza said.
“Yes, and no doubt she’ll bring more with her when she comes.”
“Lordy Lou . . .” Malingo murmured.
“How many more?” Gazza wanted to know.
“What does it matter?” Candy said.
“I need to know what we’re going to face,” he said to her.
“I don’t have precise numbers, Gaz. I wish I could explain it better, but I can’t. All I can say I know she’s coming, and that she’ll have a knife for every heart.”
She’d no sooner given her grim answer to his question than a commotion started running through the crowd. Candy tore her gaze away from her friends.
“What now?” she asked.
Candy walked to the edge of the boulder in time to see a blind man emerge in front of the crowd.
“Candy Quackenbush?” he said.
“Do I know you?”
“No,” said the blind man. “I’m Zephario Carrion. I believe you know my son.”
Chapter 58
Now, Because
CANDY SLID DOWN OFF the rock. Her visitor was standing with his back to one of the fires, so he was almost entirely in silhouette, except for his eyes, which despite their sightlessness had somehow drawn into them all the light being shed by the peeping stars. Either the cold, or simply fatigue, filled the old man’s body with tremors. Only the starlight remained constant.
“I don’t understand,” Candy said. “What do you want?”
Zephario reached into the pocket of his baggy jacket.
“I used to make money by reading these.”
Candy accepted whatever he was handing over to her.
“These are tarot cards, aren’t they?”
“An Abaratian deck. I lost my old deck to the wind a long time ago. But I found another.”
“These look different from the ones I saw in Chickentown.”
“They are. There are eighty-eight cards in an Abaratian deck, not seventy-eight. And of course the images are different. Not all of them. Some faces are ever present.”
Candy couldn’t see the designs on the cards clearly from where she was standing; there wasn’t sufficient light. But she could feel the visions on them, their vibrations moving through her fingertips, and they made her want to get a better look at them. So she moved out of the blind man’s shadow, turning the cards down and out, so they were lit by the flames. Now she saw them, it was no wonder her fingers had felt their power. Such visions! Some of the images were beautiful, some were terrifying, some of them made melancholy music in her head, like the lost songs of things that would never come into this world or any other.
She was unable to take her eyes off the flow of images long enough to look back at the blind man, but he didn’t mind.
“Lost forever,” she said to herself.
“I didn’t quite catch—”
“I’ve just always believed that nothing was really lost.”
“Ah. If only . . .”
“So . . . you saw me here? In one of the cards?”
“It wasn’t just one of them. You will wear many faces.”
“I don’t see me anywhere.”
“Good. Only a fool thinks he sees.”
“You’re Christopher’s father?”
“Quite so,” he said with a strange calm. “Christopher . . . oh, my sweet Christopher . . . he was so small once.”
