Abarat: Absolute Midnight

“Even me?”

Zephario finally began to walk toward his son, and this time Carrion didn’t flinch. He simply stood there, waiting for his father to approach.

Candy searched Carrion’s features, looking for some sign of what he was feeling. But he was either letting nothing show or was not certain what he felt. Either way his face was blank, his eyes as empty as those of his father’s.

Candy had learned to become aware of how the feeling in the air changed when magic was at work, and it was at work now. Its source was Zephario. He was wielding the same power that he had wielded in those terrible moments on Mount Galigali, when he’d done something that had plucked them from certain death.

But what was he using it for now? What purpose was the magic serving?

She got her answer as Zephario came within reach of his son, and lifting his right hand, touched the collar. His fingers didn’t pause upon contact with the glass. They passed through it, their motion not slowing even an instant as they slid through the divide and into the mysterious fluid that Carrion and his nightmares lived upon and within. The nightmares raised their heads a little at the intrusion of the fingers, but quickly seemed to decide that, since their master saw no harm in them, then why should they, and lay their heads down again.

Zephario’s fingers reached out and touched his son’s cheek.

It seemed to Candy that in that moment, in that touch, all the suffering Zephario had spoke of—all the waste, all the anguish, all the death—poured out of the father and into the son. Memories Carrion had kept hidden all these years, even from himself, finally surfaced; and he remembered what it had felt like to be in the heart of the fire—

Features, which had moments before betrayed nothing, suddenly wore every agony carved on a living face. His mouth was drawn down, his brow became a mass of anguished forms, the traces of veins across his temples began to swell and throb, while the muscles of his jaws clenched.

“Oh, Father . . .” Carrion said. “. . . this hurts . . .”

“I will let you be,” Zephario said.

He broke his contact, and withdrew his hand from the collar, leaving the place where he had entered and exited unmarked.

“It all makes sense now,” Zephario said. “I never understood why the cards wanted to look for a child I knew would never care for me. And now I see why. The idea of seeing him again strengthened my heart. But it wasn’t the real reason I took this last journey. It was so that the blind man might see a terrible hidden thing.”

“The Nephauree,” Carrion murmured.

“You knew all along?”

“That she worked with them?” He looked up at his father out of the maze of pain he had discovered and Candy knew that the Christopher Carrion who was watching the world now would never have been able to make sense of his father’s fears until he had been made to remember the fire. Now he was reconnected to the horror of the burning of the Carrion Mansion, in all its terrible particulars. It wasn’t some ancient tale of a cruel thing done in a cruel time. It was living memory of the dying. The stench of burning hair and flesh and bone. The sound of screaming silenced as those who were crying out inhaled fire. It was a crime committed by the woman who taught him not to feel, that could never be forgotten or forgiven.

But what he knew, she knew. It had always been like that between them.

“I’m sorry, Father,” Christopher said.

“There’s nothing to apologize for, son.”

“You don’t understand. I just didn’t want the Hag to feel it. But your pain—my pain—was too strong. I let it slip away. She felt them!”

“What does that mean?” Candy asked.

“She knows he’s here now,” Christopher said. “She knows I’ve seen my father’s face. And she is very unhappy.”

Chapter 66

Love, Too Late

THERE HAD BEEN NO dissenting voice from anywhere throughout the glyph. The plan was simple: tell the ship where it was to go, and return with all possible speed to Scoriae.

“How?” said John Mischief.

“Good one,” said John Slop. “How?”

“Easy,” said Gaz. “We think.”

“We just have to think to make it obey?” Malingo said.

“I hope—”

Suddenly, the glyph responded to its creators’ instructions without a moment’s hesitation. It sped even deeper into the Void and then—when perhaps it sensed that it was so far from Scoriae that it was no longer visible, even to the keenest eye—it swung around.

“See?” Gazza said. “Here we go! I just hope wherever Candy is . . .”

“Do you think she knows we’re coming?” Malingo said.

“Yes,” Gazza said. “She knows.”

Events of great significance were happening out there, Candy knew. But what? She had to see.

“Window. Window. Window,” Candy said. “Carrion? I need to get to a window.”

It took a moment for the request to pierce Zephario’s anguish. Again, Candy had to say: “A window.”

“What about a window?”

“I have to find one.”

Zephario didn’t waste time with more questions. He reached out, open palmed, and touched the wall.

“I’ll wait with Christopher until she comes. You go, Candy. There’s nothing more you can do. Go on. I’m ready for her. It’s going to be quite a reunion.”

Even so, Candy paused. She wanted to be there when the Hag finally came face-to-face with the two men she had almost destroyed, but who had each survived, against all expectation. Candy, however, wasn’t here to watch. She was here to do some good.

“Go!” Zephario said. “I’ll find you again, somewhere. If not in this life, then in another.”

She didn’t like leaving him, but she knew she had to. She’d done what she could; now there was other work to do. Exactly what that work was she didn’t know, but her instincts told her it would all become clearer if she could just look out at the island. Perhaps they weren’t even over Scoriae any longer, but had drifted off out into the Void.

She got to the top of the next flight, and found herself surrounded by doors, all identical: gray, metallic, unmarked. She had no idea where she was in the vessel; all she had to rely upon was her instinct. It had served her well before and if she was lucky it would do so again. She just had to focus—

It was no sooner said than done. A door opened in front of her and she was running down a corridor, calling as she ran:

“Come on, windows. Come on! I’m here. Where are you?”

The corridor divided. Again she chose. Again she ran.

“Windows. Come on. Where are you?”

There were noises coming from all around her: through the walls, up from the metal gratings under her feet, and down from the tiled ceiling: shouts, roars, squeals, screams.

And thundering behind it all, the roar of the engines that fired up the storm on the legs of which the Stormwalker trod. She could run forever in this place, she knew, and never find—

Wait! A window! She sensed its presence like an open eye in the sealed brutal prism of this monstrous place. There was a door to her left. She opened it, moved through a passage to a second door, which again she opened. It brought her into a large chamber filled with what looked like suits of armor made