Clive Barker

Abarat

PROLOGUE: the mission
PART ONE: morningtide
1. ROOM NINETEEN
2. WHAT HENRY MURKITT LEFT BEHIND
3. DOODLE
4. "STREET ENDS"
5. A SHORE WITHOUT A SEA
6. THE LADY ASCENDS
7. LIGHT AND WATER
8. A MOMENT WITH MELISSA
9. EVENTS ON THE JETTY
PART TWO: twilight and beyond
10. THE WATERS
11. THE CARD PLAYERS
12. A TALK ON THE TIDE
13. IN THE GREAT HEAD
14. CARRION
PART THREE: where is when?
15. BUG
16. THE UNIVERSAL EYE
17. ALMENAK
18. THE TALE OF HARK'S HARBOR
19. ON VESPER'S ROCK
20. THE WORLD THROUGH BORROWED EYES
21. THE HUNT
PART FOUR: wicked strange
22. IN GALLOWS FOREST
23. THE MAN WHO MADE THE KID
24. DIGGER AND DRAGONS
25. MISCHIEF UNDONE
26. THE HOUSE OF LIES
27. WORDS WITH THE CRISS-CROSS MAN
28. A SLAVE'S SOUL
29. CAT'S EYES
30. "COME THOU GLYPH TO ME"
31. THE TWENTY-FIFTH HOUR
32. MONSOON
33. ALL THINGS IN TIME
34. DIFFERENT DESTINIES
Appendix: some excerpts from Klepp's Almenak

   To Emilian David Armstrong



   I dreamed a limitless book,
   A book unbound,
   Its leaves scattered in fantastic abundance.

   On every line there was a new horizon drawn,
   New heavens supposed;
   New states, new souls.

   One of those souls,
   Dozing through some imagined afternoon,
   Dreamed these words.
   And needing a hand to set them down,
   Made mine.

C. B.CONTENTS

PROLOGUE: the mission

   Three is the number of those who do holy work;
   Two is the number of those who do lover's work;
   One is the number of those who do perfect evil
   Or perfect good.

—From the notes of a monk of the Order of St. Oco; his name unknown

   The storm came up out of the southwest like a fiend, stalking its prey on legs of lightning.
   The wind it brought with it was as foul as the devil's own breath and it stirred up the peaceful waters of the sea. By the time the little red boat that the three women had chosen for their perilous voyage had emerged from the shelter of the islands, and was out in the open waters, the waves were as steep as cliffs, twenty-five, thirty feet tall.
   "Somebody sent this storm," said Joephi, who was doing her best to steer the boat, which was called The Lyre . The sail shook like a leaf in a tempest, swinging back and forth wildly, nearly impossible to hold down. "I swear, Diamanda, this is no natural storm!"
   Diamanda, the oldest of the three women, sat in the center of the tiny vessel with her dark blue robes gathered around her and their precious cargo pressed to her bosom.
   "Let's not get hysterical," she told Joephi and Mespa. She wiped a long piece of white hair out of her eyes. "Nobody saw us leave the Palace of Bowers. We escaped unseen, I'm certain of it."
   "So why this storm?" said Mespa, who was a black woman, renowned for her resilience, but who now looked close to being washed away by the rain beating down on the women's heads.
   "Why are you so surprised that the heavens complain?" Diamanda said. "Didn't we know the world would be turned upside down by what just happened?"
   Joephi fought with the sail, cursing it.
   "Indeed, isn't this the way it should be?" Diamanda went on. "Isn't it right that the sky is torn to tatters and the sea put in a frenzy? Would we prefer it if the world did not care?"
   "No, no of course not," said Mespa, holding on to the edge of the pitching boat, her face as white as her close-cropped hair was black. "I just wish we weren't out in the middle of it all."
   "Well, we are!" said the old woman. "And there's not a thing any of us can do about it. So I suggest you finish emptying your stomach, Mespa—"
   "It is empty," the sick woman said. "I have nothing left to bring."
   "—and you Joephi, handle the sail—"
   "Oh, Goddesses…"Joephi murmured. "Look ."
   "What is it?" said Diamanda.
   Joephi pointed up into the sky.
   Several stars had been shaken down from the firmament—great white cobs of fire piercing the clouds and falling seaward. One of them was heading directly toward The Lyre .
   "Down!" Joephi yelled, catching hold of the back of Diamanda's robes and pushing the old woman off her seat.
   Diamanda hated to be touched; manhandling , she called it. She started to berate Joephi roundly for what she'd done, but she was drowned out by the roaring sound of the falling star as it rushed toward the vessel. It burst the billowing sail of The Lyre , burning a hole right through the canvas, and then plunged into the sea, where it was extinguished with a great hissing sound.
   "I swear that was meant for us," Mespa said when they had all raised their heads from the boards. She helped Diamanda to her feet.
   "All right," the old lady replied, yelling over the din of the seething waters, "that was closer than I would have liked."
   "So you think we are targets?"
   "I don't know and I don't care," Diamanda said. "We just have to trust to the holiness of our mission."
   Mespa licked her pale lips before she chanced her next words.
   "Are we sure it's holy?" she said. "Perhaps what we're doing is sacrilegious. Perhaps she should be left to—"
   "Rest in peace ?" said Joephi.
   "Yes," Mespa replied.
   "She was barely more than a girl, Mespa," Joephi said. "She had a life of perfect love ahead of her, and it was stolen."
   "Joephi's right," said Diamanda. "Do you think a soul like hers would sleep quietly, with so much life left to live? So many dreams that she never saw come true?"
   Mespa nodded. "You're right, of course," she conceded. "We must do this work, whatever the cost."
   The thunderhead that had followed them from the islands was now directly overhead. It threw down a vile, icy rain, thick as phlegm, which struck the boards of The Lyre like drumming. The lightning came down around the trembling vessel on every side, its lurid light throwing the curling waves into silhouette as they rose to break over the boat.
   "The sail's no use to us now," said Joephi, looking up at the tattered canvas.
   "Then we must find other means," said Diamanda. "Mespa. Take hold of our cargo for a few moments. And be careful."
   With great reverence Mespa took the small box, its sides and lid decorated with the closely etched lines of talismans. Relieved of her burden, Diamanda walked down to the stern of The Lyre , the pitching of the boat threatening several times to throw her over the side before she reached the safety of the little seat. There she knelt and leaned forward, plunging her arthritic hands into the icy waters.
   "You'd best be careful," Mespa warned her. "There's a fifty-foot mantizac that's been following us for the last half hour. I saw it when I was throwing up."
   "No self-respecting fish is going to want my old bones," Diamanda said.
   She'd no sooner spoken than the mottled head of a mantizac– not quite the size Mespa had described, but still huge—broke the surface. Its vast maw gaped not more than a foot from Diamnda's outstretched arms.
   "Goddess !" the old lady yelled, withdrawing her hands and sitting up sharply.
   The frustrated fish pushed against the back of the boat, as if to nudge one of the human morsels on board into its own element.
   "So…" said Diamanda. "I think this calls for some moon-magic."
   "Wait," said Joephi. "You said if we used magic, we would risk drawing attention to ourselves."
   "So I did," Diamanda replied. "But in our present state we risk drowning or being eaten by that thing ." The mantizac was now moving up the side of The Lyre , turning up its enormous head and fixing the women with its silver-and-scarlet eye.
   Mespa clutched the little box even closer to her bosom. "It won't take me," she said, a profound terror in her voice.
   "No," said Diamanda reassuringly. "It won't."
   She raised her aged hands. Dark threads of energy moved through her veins and leaped from her fingertips, forming delicate shapes on the air, and then fled heavenward.
   "Lady Moon," she called. "You know we would not call on you unless we needed your intervention. So we do. Lady, we three are of no consequence. We ask this boon not for ourselves but for the soul of one who was taken from among us before she was ready to leave. Please, Lady, bear us all safely through this storm, so that her life may find continuance…"
   "Name our destination !" Joephi yelled over the roar of the water.
   "She knows our minds," Diamanda said.
   "Even so," Joephi replied. "Name it !"
   Diamanda glanced back at her companion, faintly irritated. "If you insist," she said. Then, reaching toward the sky again, she said: "Take us to the Hereafter ."
   "Good," said Joephi.
   "Lady, hear us—" Diamanda started to say.
   But she was interrupted by Mespa.
   "She heard, Diamanda."
   "What?"
   "She heard."
   The three women looked up. The roiling storm clouds were parting, as though pressed aside by titanic hands. Through the widening slit there came a shaft of moonlight: the purest white, yet somehow warm. It illuminated the trough between the waves where the women's boat was buried. It covered the vessel from end to end with light.
   "Thank you, Lady…" Diamanda murmured.
   The moonlight was moving over the boat, searching out every part of the tiny vessel, even to the shadowy keel that lay beneath the water. It blessed every nail and board from prow to stern, every grommet, every oar, every pivot, every fleck of paint, every inch of rope.
   It touched the women too, inspiring fresh life in their weary bones and warming their icy skin.
   All of this took perhaps ten seconds.
   Then the clouds began to close again, cutting the moonlight off. Just as abruptly as it had begun, the blessing was over.
   The sea seemed doubly dark when the light had passed away, the wind keener. But the timbers of the boat had acquired a subtle luminescence from the appearance of the moon, and they were stronger for the benediction they had received. The boat no longer creaked when it was broad-sided. Instead it seemed to rise effortlessly up the steep sides of the waves.
   "That's better," said Diamanda.
   She reached out to reclaim their precious cargo.
   "I can take care of it," Mespa protested.
   "I'm sure you can," said Diamanda. "But the responsibility lies with me. I know the world we're going to, remember? You don't."
   "You remember the way it was ," Joephi reminded her. "But it will have changed."
   "Very possibly," Diamanda agreed. "But I still have a better idea of what lies ahead of us than you two do. Now give me the box, Mespa."
   Mespa handed the treasure over, and the women's vessel carved its way through the lightless sea, picking up speed as it went, the bow lifting a little way above the waters.
   The rain continued to beat down on the women's heads, gathering in the bottom of the boat until it was four inches deep. But the voyagers took no notice of its assault. They simply sat together in grateful silence, as the magic of the moon hurried them toward their destination.
   "There !" said Joephi. She pointed off toward the distant shore. "I see the Hereafter."
   "I see it too!" said Mespa. "Oh, thank the Goddess! I see it! I see it!"
   "Hush yourselves," Diamanda said. "We don't want to draw attention."
   "It looks empty," Joephi said, scanning the landscape ahead. "You said there was a town."
   "There is a town. But it's a little distance from the harbor."
   "I see no harbor."
   "Well, there's not much of it left," Diamanda said. "It was burned down, long before my time."
   The keel of The Lyre was grating on the shore of the Hereafter. Joephi was first out, hauling on the rope and securing it to a piece of aged timber that was driven into the ground. Mespa helped Diamanda out, and the three of them stood side by side assessing the unpromising landscape spread before them. The storm had followed them across the divide between the two worlds, its fury undimmed.
   "Now, let's remember," said Diamanda, "we're here to do one thing and one thing only. We get our business done and then we leave. Remember: we should not be here."
   "We know that," said Mespa.
   "But let's not be hasty and make a mistake," Joephi said, glancing at the box Diamanda carried. "For her sake we have to do this right. We carry the hopes of the Abarat with us."
   Even Diamanda was quieted by this remark. She seemed to meditate on it for a long moment, her head downturned, the rain washing her white hair into curtains that framed the box she held. Then she said: "Are you both ready?"
   The other women murmured that yes, they were; and with Diamanda leading the way, they left the shore and headed through the rain-lashed grass, to find the place where providence had arranged they would do their holy work.

PART ONE: morningtide

   Life is short,
   And pleasures few,
   And holed the ship,
   And drowned the crew,
   But o! But o!
   How very blue
   The sea is!

—The last poem written by
Righteous Bandy,
the nomad Poet of Abarat

1. ROOM NINETEEN

   The project miss schwartz had set for Candy's class was simple enough. Everyone had a week to bring into school ten interesting facts about the town in which they all lived. Something about the history of Chickentown would be fine, she said, or, if students preferred, facts about the way the town was today, which meant, of course, the same old stuff about chicken farming in modern Minnesota.
   Candy had done her best. She'd visited the school library and scoured its shelves for something, anything , about the town that to her sounded vaguely interesting . There was nothing. Nada, zero, zip. There was a library on Naughton Street that was ten times the size of the school library; so she went there. Again, she scanned the shelves. There were a few books about Minnesota that mentioned the town, but the same boring facts were repeated in volume after volume. Chickentown had a population of 36,793 and it was the biggest producer of chicken meat in the state. One of the books, having mentioned the chickens, described the town as "otherwise undistinguished."
   Perfect , Candy thought. Ilive in a town that is otherwise undistinguished. Well, that was Fact Number One. She needed only nine more.
   "We live in the most boring town in the country," she complained to her mother, Melissa, when she returned home. "I can't find anything worth writing about for Miss Schwartz."
   Melissa Quackenbush was in the kitchen, making meatloaf. The kitchen door was closed, so as not to disturb Candy's father, Bill. He was in a beer-induced slumber in front of the television, and Candy's mother wanted to keep it that way. The longer he stayed unconscious, the easier it was for everyone in the house—including Candy's brothers, Don and Ricky—to get on with their lives. Nobody ever mentioned this aloud. It was a silent understanding between the members of the household. Life was more pleasant for everyone when Bill Quackenbush was asleep.
   "Why do you say it's boring ?" Melissa asked, as she seasoned the meatloaf.
   "Just take a look out there," Candy said.
   Melissa didn't bother, but that was only because she knew the scene outside the window all too well. Beyond the grimy glass was the family's chaotic backyard: the shin-high grass browned by the heat wave that had come unexpectedly in the middle of May, the inflatable pool they'd bought the previous summer and had never deflated and stowed away, now a dirty circle of red-and-white plastic at the far end of the yard. Beyond the collapsed pool was the broken fence. And beyond the fence? Another yard in not much better shape, and another, and another, until eventually the yards ended, and the streets too, and the empty grasslands began.
   "I know what you want for your project," she said.
   "Oh?" said Candy, going to the fridge and taking out a soda. "What do I want?"
   "You want something weird ," Melissa said, putting the meat into the baking tin and thumbing it down. "You've got a little morbid streak in you, just like your grandma Frances. She used to go to the funerals of complete strangers—"
   "She did not," Candy said with a laugh.
   "She did. I swear. She loved anything like that. You get it from her. You certainly don't get it from me or your dad."
   "Oh well, that really makes me feel welcome."
   "You know what I mean," Candy's mother protested.
   "So you don't think Chickentown is boring?" Candy said.
   "There are worse places, believe me," Melissa said. "At least it's got a bit of history…"
   "Not much of one. Not according to the books I looked at," Candy said.
   "You know who you should talk to?" Melissa said.
   "Who?"
   "Norma Lipnik. You remember Norma? She and I used to work at the Comfort Tree Hotel together?"
   "Vaguely," Candy said.
   "All kinds of strange things happen at hotels. And the Comfort Tree has been around since… oh, I don't know. You ask Norma, she'll tell you."
   "Is she the one with the white-blond hair, who always wore too much lipstick?"
   Melissa looked up at her daughter with a little smile. "Don't you go saying anything rude to her now."
   "I wouldn't do a thing like that."
   "I know how these things slip out with you."
   "Mom . I'll be really polite."
   "Good. You do that. She's the assistant manager there now, so if you're real nice to her, and you ask the right questions, I bet you she'll give you something for your project that nobody else in class will have."
   "Like what?"
   "You go over there and ask her. She'll remember you. Ask her to tell you about Henry Murkitt."
   "Who's Henry Murkitt?"
   "You go and ask her. It's your project. You should get out there and do some legwork. Like a detective."
   "Is there much to detect?" Candy said.
   "You'd be surprised."
   She was. The first surprise was Norma Lipnik herself, who was no longer the tacky woman that Candy remembered: her hair teased high and her dress too short. In the eight years or so since Candy had seen Norma, she had let her hair go naturally gray. The bright red lipstick was a thing of the past, as were the short dresses. But once Candy had introduced herself, Norma's new professional reserve was soon cast to the winds, and the warm gossipy woman Candy remembered emerged.
   "Lord, how you have grown, Candy," she said. "I never see you around; you or your mother. Is she doing okay?"
   "Yeah, I guess."
   "I heard your dad lost his job at the chicken factory. Had a little problem with the beer, so I was told?" Candy didn't have time to agree or deny this. "You know what? I think that sometimes people should be given second chances. If you don't give people second chances, how are they ever going to change?"
   "I don't know," Candy said, feeling uncomfortable.
   "Men." Norma said, "You stay away from them, darlin'. They are more trouble than they're worth. I'm on my third marriage, and I don't give that more than two months."
   "Oh—"
   "Anyway, you didn't come over here to listen to me chattering on. So how can I help you?"
   "I've got this project to do, about Chickentown," Candy explained. "It was set by Miss Schwartz, who always gives us these projects that are only fit for sixth graders. Besides, she doesn't like me very much—"
   "Oh, don't let her get you down, honey. There's always one who makes your life hell. You'll be out of school soon enough. What are you going to do then? Work over at the factory?"
   Candy felt a great weight settle on her shoulders, imagining that horrendous prospect.
   "I hope not," she said. "I want to do something more with my life."
   "But you don't know what?"

   Candy shook her head.
   "Don't worry, it'll come to you," Norma said. "I hope it does, because you don't want to get stuck here."
   "No, I don't. I really don't."
   "So you've got a project about Chickentown—"
   "Yes. And Mom said there were some things that went on in the hotel I should find out about. She said you'd know what she was talking about."
   "Did she indeed?" said Norma, with a teasing little smile.
   "She said to ask you about Henry—"
   "– Murkitt."
   "Yes. Henry Murkitt."
   "Poor old Henry. What else did she say? Did she tell you about Room Nineteen?"
   "No. She didn't mention anything about a room. She just gave me the name."
   "Well, I can tell you the tale," Norma said. "But I don't know if Murkitt's story is the kind of thing your Miss Schwartz will be looking for.
   "Why not?"
   "Well, because it's rather dark ," Norma said. "Tragic, in fact."
   Candy smiled. "Well, Mom says I'm morbid, so I'll probably like it."
   "Morbid, huh? All right," said Norma. "I guess I should tell you the whole darn thing. You see, Chickentown used to be called Murkitt."
   "Really? That wasn't in any of the books about Minnesota."
   "You know how it is. There's the history that finds its way into the books and there's the history that doesn't."
   "And Henry Murkitt?"
   "—is part of the history that doesn't."
   "Huh."
   Candy was fascinated. Remembering what her mother had said about doing some detective work, she took out her notebook and began to write in it. Murkitt. History we don't know .
   "So the town was named after Henry Murkitt?"
   "No," said Norma. "It was named after his grandfather Wallace Murkitt."
   "Why did they change it?"
   "I guess Chickentown fits, doesn't it? This place has got more damn chickens in it than it has people. And sometimes I think folks care more about the chickens than they do about each other. My husband works over at the factory, so that's all I ever hear from him and his friends—"
   "Chicken talk?"
   "Chickens, chickens and more darn chickens." Norma glanced at her watch. "You know I don't have much time to show you Room Nineteen today. I've got a big party of folks coming in. Can we do this another day?"
   "I've got to have the report in by tomorrow morning."
   "You kids, always leaving things to the last minute," Norma said. "Well, okay. We'll do this quickly. But you be sure to jot it all down, because I won't have time to say anything twice."
   "I'm ready," said Candy.
   Norma took her passkey from her pocket. "Linda?" she said to the woman working at the front desk, "I'm just going up to Room Nineteen."
   The woman frowned. "Really? What for?"
   The question went unanswered.
   "I won't be more than ten minutes," Norma said.
   She led Candy away from the reception area, talking as she went. "This is the new part of the hotel we're in right now," she explained. "It was built in 1964. But once we step through here" —she led Candy through a pair of double doors—"we're in the old hotel. It used to be called the High Seas Hotel. Don't ask me why."
   Even if Candy hadn't been told that there was a difference between the portion of the hotel she'd been in and the part that Norma had brought her into, she would have known it. The passageways were narrower here and less well lit. There was a sour smell of age in the air, as if somebody had left the gas on.
   "We only put people up in the old part of the hotel if all the other rooms are full. And that only happens when there's a Chicken Buyer's Conference. Even then, we try never to put people in Room Nineteen."
   "Why's that?"
   "Well, it's not that it's haunted , exactly. Though there have been stories. Personally, I think all that stuff about the afterlife is nonsense. You get one life and you'd better make the best of it. My sister got religion last year and she's shaping up for a sainthood, I swear."
   Norma had led Candy to the end of a passageway where there was a narrow staircase, illuminated by a single lamp. It cast a yellowish light that did nothing to flatter the charmless wallpaper and the cracking paintwork.
   Candy almost remarked that it was no wonder the management kept this part of the hotel out of the sight of guests, but she bit her tongue, remembering what her mother had said about keeping less courteous thoughts to herself.
   Up the creaking stairs they went. They were steep.
   "I should stop smoking," Norma remarked. "It'll be the death of me."
   There were two doors at the top. One was Room Seventeen. The other was Room Nineteen.
   Norma handed the passkey to Candy.
   "You want to open it?" Norma said.
   "Sure."
   Candy took the key and put it in the lock. "You have to jiggle it around a little."
   Candy jiggled. And after a little work, the key turned, and Candy opened the ill-oiled door of Room Nineteen.

2. WHAT HENRY MURKITT LEFT BEHIND

   It was dark inside the room; the air still and stale.
   "Why don't you go ahead and open the drapes, honey?" Norma said, taking the key back from Candy.
   Candy waited a moment for her eyes to become accustomed to the gloom, then she tentatively made her way across the room to the window. The thick fabric of the drapes felt greasy against her palms, as though they hadn't been cleaned in a very long time. She pulled. The drapes moved reluctantly along dust– and dirt-clogged rails. The glass Candy found herself looking through was as filthy as the fabric.
   "How long is it since anybody rented the room?" Candy said.
   "Actually I can't remember if there's been anybody in it since I've been at the hotel," Norma said.
   Candy looked out of the window. The view was no more inspiring to the senses or the soul than the view out of the kitchen window of 34 Followell Street, her home. Immediately below the window was a small courtyard at the back of the hotel, which contained five or six garbage cans, filled to over-brimming, and the skeletal remains of last year's Christmas tree, still wearing its shabby display of tinsel and artificial snow. Beyond the yard was Lincoln Street (or so Candy guessed; the journey through the hotel had completely disoriented her). She could see the tops of cars above the wall of the yard, and a Discount Drug Store on the opposite side of the street, its doors chained and padlocked, its shelves bare.
   "So," said Norma, calling Candy's attention back into Room Nineteen. "This is where Henry Murkitt stayed."
   "Did he come to the hotel often?"
   "To my knowledge," Norma said, "he came only once. But I'm not really sure about that, so don't quote me."
   Candy could understand why Henry would not have been a repeat visitor. The room was tiny. There was a narrow bed against the far wall and a chair in the corner with a small black television perched on it. In front of it was a second chair, on which was perched an over-filled ashtray.
   "Some of our employees come up here when they have half an hour to spare to catch up on the soap operas," Norma said, by way of explanation.
   "So they don't believe the room's haunted?"
   "Put it this way, honey," Norma said. "Whatever they believe it doesn't put them off coming up here."
   "What's through there?" Candy said, pointing to a door.
   "Look for yourself," Norma said.
   Candy opened the door and stepped into a minuscule bathroom that had not been cleaned in a very long time. In the mirror above the filthy sink she met her own reflection. Her eyes looked almost black in the murk of this little cell, and her dark hair needed a cut. But she liked her own face, even in such an unpromising light. She had her mother's smile, open and easy, and her father's frown; the deep, troubled frown that Bill Quackenbush wore in his beer-dreams. And of course her odd eyes: the left dark brown, the right blue; though the mirror reversed them.
   "When you've quite finished admiring yourself…" Norma said.
   Candy closed the bathroom door and went back to her note-taking to cover her embarrassment. There is no wallpaper on the walls of Room Nineteen , she wrote, just plaster painted a dirty white . One of the four walls had a curious abstract pattern on it, which was faintly pink. All in all, she could not have imagined a grimmer or more uncomfortable place.
   "So what can you tell me about Henry Murkitt?" she asked Norma.
   "Not that much," the woman replied. "His grandfather was the founding father of the town. In fact, we're all of us here because Wallace Murkitt decided he'd had enough of life on the trail. The story goes that his horse upped and died on him in the middle of the night, so they had no choice but to settle down right here in the middle of nowhere."
   Candy smiled. There was something about this little detail which absolutely fit with all she knew about her hometown. "So Chickentown exists because Wallace Murkitt's horse died?" she said.
   Norma seemed to get the bitter joke. "Yeah," she said. "I guess that about sums things up, doesn't it? But apparently Henry Murkitt was very proud of having his family's name on the town. It was something he used to boast about."
   "Then they changed it—"
   "Yes, well, I'll get to that in a moment. Really, poor Henry's life was a series of calamities toward the end. First his wife, Diamanda, left him. Nobody knows where she went. And then sometime in December 1947, the town council decided to change the name of the town. Henry took it very badly. On Christmas Eve he checked into the hotel, and the poor man never checked out again."
   Candy had guessed something like this was coming, but even so it made the little hairs on the nape of her neck prickle to hear Norma say it.
   "He died in this room?" Candy said softly.
   "Yes."
   "How? A heart attack?"
   Norma shook her head.
   "Oh, no…" said Candy, beginning to put the pieces together. "He killed himself?"
   "Yes. I'm afraid so."
   The room suddenly felt a little smaller, if that were possible, the corners—despite the sun that found its way through the dirtied glass—a little darker.
   "That's horrible," Candy said.
   "You'll learn, honey," Norma said. "Love can be the best thing in life. And it can be the worst. The absolute worst."
   Candy kept her silence. For the first time she saw how sad Norma's face had become in the years since they'd last met. How the corners of her mouth were drawn down and her brow deeply etched with lines.
   "But it wasn't just love that broke Henry Murkitt's heart," Norma said. "It was—"
   "—the fact that they changed the name of the town?" Candy said.
   "Yes. That's right. After all it was his family name. His name. His claim to a little bit of immortality, if you like. When that was gone, I guess he didn't think he had anything left to live for."
   "Poor man," Candy said, echoing Norma's earlier sentiments. "Did he leave a note? I mean, a suicide note?"
   "Yes. Of a kind. As far as I can gather he said something about waiting for his ship to come in."
   "What did he mean by that?" Candy said, jotting the phrase down.
   "Well, he was probably drunk, and a little crazy. But he had something in the back of his head about ships and the sea."
   "That's strange," Candy said.
   "It gets stranger," Norma said.
   She went to the small table beside the bed and opened the drawer. In it was a copy of Gideon's Bible and a strange object made of what looked like brass. She took it out.
   "According to the stories," she said, "this is the only object of any worth he had with him."
   "What is it?"
   Norma handed it to Candy. It was heavy and etched with numbers. There was a moving part that was designed to line up with the numbers.
   "It's a sextant," Norma said.
   Candy looked blank. "What's a sextant?"
   "It's something sailors use to find out where they are when they're out at sea. I don't exactly know how it works, but you line it up with the stars somehow and…" She shrugged. "You find out where you are."
   "And he had this with him?"
   "As I say: according to the stories. This very one."
   "Wouldn't the police have taken it?" Candy said.
   "You would think so. But as long as I've been working in the hotel that thing has been here in that drawer, beside the Gideon's Bible. Henry Murkitt's sextant."
   "Huh," said Candy, not at all sure what to make of any of this now. She handed the object back to Norma, who carefullyeven a little reverentlyreturned it to its place and slid the drawer closed. "So that and the note were all he left?" Candy asked.
   "No," said Norma. "He left something else."
   "What?"
   "Look around you," Norma replied.
   Candy looked. What was there here that could have belonged to Henry Murkitt? The furniture? Surely not? The age-worn rug under her feet? Perhaps, but it was unlikely. The lamp? No. What did that leave? There weren't any pictures on the walls, so—
   "Oh, wait a minute," she said, looking at the stains on the wall. "Not those?"
   Norma just looked at her, raising a perfectly plucked eyebrow. "Those?" Candy said.
   "No matter how many coats of paint the workmen put on that wall, the stains show through."
   Candy went closer to the wall, examining the marks. A part of her—the part that her morbid grandmother could take credit for—wanted to ask Norma the obvious question: how had the stains got up there? Had he shot himself, or used a razor? But there was another part that preferred not to know.
   "Horrible," she said.
   "That's what happens when people realize their lives aren't what they dreamed they'd be," Norma said. She glanced at her watch.
   "Oh Lord, look at the time. I've got to get going. That's the story of Henry Murkitt."
   "What a sad man," Candy said.
   "Well, I guess all of us are waiting for our ships to come in, one way or another," Norma said, going to the door and letting Candy out onto the gloomy landing. "Some of us still live in hope," she said with a half-hearted smile. "But you have to, don't you?"
   And with that she closed the door on the room where Henry Murkitt had breathed his last.

3. DOODLE

   Miss schwartz, candy's history teacher, was not in a pleasant mood at the best of times, but today her mood was fouler than usual. As she went around the classroom, returning the project papers on Chickentown, only her few favorite students (who were usually boys) earned anything close to good marks. Everyone else was being criticized.
   But nothing the rest of the class had faced compared with Miss Schwartz's attack on Candy's paper.
   "Facts , Candy Quackenbush," the woman said, tossing Candy's paper about Henry Murkitt's demise down on her desk. "I asked for facts. And what do you give me—?"
   "Those are facts, Miss—"
   "Don't answer back," Miss Schwartz snapped. "These are not facts. They are morbid pieces of gossip. Nothing more. This work– like most of your work—is worthless."
   "But I was in that room in the Comfort Tree Hotel," she said. "I saw Henry Murkitt's sextant."
   "Are you hopelessly gullible?" said Schwartz. "Or are you just plain stupid? Every hotel has some kind of ridiculous ghost story. Can't you tell the difference between fact and fiction?"
   "But, Miss Schwartz, I swear these are facts."
   "You get an 'F,' Candy."
   "That's not fair," Candy protested.
   Miss Schwartz's upper lip began to twitch, a sure sign that she was going to start yelling soon.
   "Don't talk back to me !" she said, her volume rising. "If you don't stop indulging in these dim-witted fantasies of yours, and start doing some real work, you're going to fail this class completely. And I'll personally see you held back a year for your laziness and your insolence."
   There was a lot of tittering from the back of the class, where the coven of Candy's enemies, led by Deborah Hackbarth, all sat. Miss Schwartz threw them a silencing look, which worked; but Candy knew they were smiling behind their hands, passing notes back and forth about Candy's humiliation.
   "Why can't you be normal ?" Miss Schwartz said. "Give me work like this from Ruth Ferris." She leafed through the pages.
   Miss Schwartz held up the paper, so that everybody could see what an exemplary piece of work Ruth had done. "You see these graphs?" Miss Schwartz was flicking through the pages of colored graphs Ruth had thoughtfully provided as appendices to her paper. "You know what they're about? Well, do you, Candy?"

   "Let me guess," said Candy. "Chickens?"
   "Yes. Chickens. Ruth wrote about the number one industry in our community: chickens."
   "Maybe that's because her father is the factory manager," Candy said, throwing the perfect Miss R. Ferris a sour look. She knew– everybody knew, including Miss Schwartz—that Ruth's pretty little charts and flow diagrams ("From Egg to Chicken Nugget") had been copied out of her father's glossy brochures for Applebaum's Farms.
   "Who cares about chickens?" Candy said.
   "Chickens are the lifeblood of this town, Candy Quackenbush. Without chickens, your father wouldn't have a job."
   "He doesn't have a job, Miss Schwartz," said Deborah.
   "Oh. Well—"
   "He likes his beer too much."
   "All right, that's enough Deborah," said Miss Schwartz, sensing that things were getting out of hand. "You see how disruptive you are, Candy?"
   "What did I do?" Candy protested.
   "We waste far too much time on you in class. Far too much—"
   She stopped speaking because her eyes had alighted on Candy's workbook. She snatched it up off the desk. For some reason Candy had started drawing wavy patterns on the cover of her book a couple of days before, her hand simply making the marks without her mind consciously instructing it to do so. "What is this ?" Miss Schwartz demanded, flipping through the pages of the workbook.
   The interior was decorated in the same way as the cover: tightly set lines, hundreds of them, waving up and down all over the page. "It's bad enough you bring these morbid stories of yours into school," Miss Schwartz was saying. "Now you're defacing school property?"
   "It's just a doodle," Candy said.
   "Good Lord, are you going crazy? There are pages and pages of this rubbish." Miss Schwartz held the workbook at arm's length as though it might infect her. "What do you think you're doing? What are these?"
   For some reason, as Miss Schwartz stared down at her, Candy thought of Henry Murkitt, sitting in Room Nineteen on that distant Christmas Eve, waiting for his ship to come in.
   Thinking of him, she realized what she'd been drawing so obsessively in her workbook.
   "It's the sea," she said quietly.
   "It's what ?" said Miss Schwartz, her voice oozing contempt.
   "It's the sea. I was drawing the sea."
   "Were you indeed? Well, it may look like the sea to you , but it looks like two weeks in detention to me."
   There was a little eruption of laughter from the back of the class. This time Miss Schwartz didn't hush it. She simply tossed the defaced workbook onto Candy's desk. It was a bad throw. Instead of landing neatly in front of the disgraced Candy, it skimmed across the desk, taking the paper about Henry Murkitt, along with several pens, pencils and a blue plastic ruler, off the other side and onto the floor.
   The laughter halted. There was a hush while one of the pens rolled to a halt. Then Miss Schwartz said: "I want you to pick all that trash up."
   Candy didn't reply, at least not at first. She remained in her seat, not moving a muscle.
   "Did you hear me, Candy Quackenbush?"
   The Hackbarth clique was in hog heaven. They watched with smirks on their faces as Candy sat in her seat, still refusing to move.
   "Candy?" Miss Schwartz.
   "I heard you, Miss Schwartz."
   "Then pick them up."
   "I didn't knock them off the desk, Miss Schwartz."
   "Ibeg your pardon ?"
   "I said: I didn't knock them off the desk. You did. So I think you should pick them up."
   All the blood had drained from Miss Schwartz's face. The only color that remained was the purple of the shadows under her eyes.
   "Get up," she said.
   "Miss Schwartz?"
   "You heard me. I said get up. I want you down at the principal's office right now ."
   Candy's heart was beating furiously and her hands were clammy. But she wasn't going to let Miss Schwartz or any of her enemies in class see that she was nervous.
   She was irritated with herself for letting Miss Schwartz escalate this stupid showdown. Maybe the principal would be more sympathetic to Candy's researches than Miss Schwartz, but Candy doubted that she'd even get to show him her paper. All Miss Schwartz would want to talk about was Candy's insolence.
   Unfortunately it was a subject the principal took very seriously. Only a month ago he had talked to the whole school about that very subject. There would be a policy of zero tolerance, he told everyone, toward pupils who were disrespectful to teachers. Any student who crossed the line, he'd said, between civility and rudeness of any kind could expect serious consequences. He had meant what he said. Two weeks ago he had expelled two students for what he had called "extreme discourtesy" toward a teacher.
   Candy half wondered if there was still time to apologize; but she knew it was a lost cause. Miss Schwartz wanted to see Candy squirming in front of the principal, and she wasn't going to let anything keep her from witnessing that.
   "You're still sitting down, Quackenbush," the woman said. "What did I tell you? Well?"
   "Go to the principal's office, Miss Schwartz."
   "So move your lazy behind."
   Candy bit her tongue and got up. Her chair made an ugly squeal as she pushed it back. There was more nervous laughter from one or two places around the class, but mostly there was silence, even from the loquacious Deborah Hackbarth. Nobody wanted to draw Miss Schwartz's venomous attention in their direction right now.
   "And pick up your workbook, Quackenbush," Miss Schwartz said. "I want you to explain your defacing of school property to the principal."
   Candy didn't argue. She dutifully went down on her haunches and gathered up all the things that Miss Schwartz had knocked off her desk: the pencils, the pens, the workbook and the paper on Henry Murkitt.
   "Give that stupid paper and the workbook to me," Miss Schwartz said.
   "I'm not going to destroy them," Candy protested.
   "Just give them to me ," Miss Schwartz demanded, her voice almost cracking with rage.
   Candy put the pens and pencils down on her desk and gave the book and paper to Miss Schwartz. Then—without looking around at the rest of the class—she made her way to the door.
   Once she was outside the classroom in the eerie hush of the corridor, she felt a peculiar sense of relief . She knew she should be feeling full of regret and self-recrimination, but the truth was that a significant part of her was glad she'd said what she'd said. Miss Schwartz had picked on her one too many times.
   She was a ridiculous woman anyway, with her endless snide remarks and her ludicrous obsession with chickens.
   "Who cares about chickens ?" Candy said, her voice echoing down the empty passageway.
   The door at the end of the corridor was open. Through it she could see the sunlit yard, and beyond the yard the school gate and the street. It would be so easy, she thought, just to walk out of here right now and never have to hear Miss Schwartz pontificate on the Glories of Chicken Farming ever again.
   What was she thinking? She couldn't do that. She'd be expelled for certain.
   So what ? said a voice at the back of her head. Just walk out. Go on. Walk out.
   For some reason, the doodles that she had drawn in her workbook came back into her mind. Only this time, instead of being black lines on gray, recycled paper, they were bright in her mind; very bright. And all kinds of colors, the way the sun appeared in your mind if you looked at it for a moment and then closed your eyes. Dozens of little suns: green and red and gold; then colors, too, that you couldn't even name. That was the way the lines looked in Candy's mind's eye.
   And they were moving . The wavy lines were rolling across the darkness inside her skull, rolling and breaking, the brilliant colors bursting into arabesques of white and silver.
   Behind her she heard a familiar sound: the click, click, click of Miss Schwartz's heels.
   "What are you still doing in the corridor, Candy Quackenbush?" she yelled down the corridor. "I told you to report to the principal's office."
   Everyone in the classes along the passage had heard the woman, Candy knew. Tomorrow she'd be the butt of every idiotic joke. Candy glanced over her shoulder. Miss Schwartz was gaining on her, her arms crossed in front of her bosom. Held captive behind them was the evidence for the prosecution: Candy's workbook and the paper on Henry Murkitt. Poor Henry Murkitt, sitting in that cold little room in the hotel, waiting with his sextant for a ship to come and find him. Checking the stars, consulting his watch. Waiting and waiting until he could stand the wait no longer.
   Candy looked away from Miss Schwartz, her gaze returning to the rectangle of brightness at the end of the corridor.
   And still the lines rolled on in her mind's eye. Rolled and broke. Rolled and broke.
   "Where do you think you're going?" Miss Schwartz demanded.
   Candy's feet knew, even if her brain was a little slow at catching up with the idea. They were taking her out of here.
   "You head right back to the principal's office!" Miss Schwartz called after her.
   Candy didn't really hear the woman's words very clearly now. The lines in her head were making a sound , like the din of white noise on an untuned television. It washed away Miss Schwartz's demands.
   "Candy Quackenbush! Come back here!"
   Her shrill voice was being heard from one end of the school to the other, but the person to whom they were directed was deaf to them.
   Out she went, with Miss Schwartz pursuing her, inventing new threats and demands to throw in Candy's direction. Candy took no notice of them.
   She stepped over the threshold and out into the bright morning.
   A little portion of her mind still said: Candy, turn around. What are you doing? They'll expel you for certain , but the voice was too small to convince her feet.
   At the threshold, she broke into a run. It took her thirty seconds to reach the school gate and get out into the street.
   A few students caught sight of her as she made her departure. Those who knew her said they'd never seen Candy Quackenbush looking happier.

4. "STREET ENDS"

   The bright rolling doodle stayed in candy's mind's eye, even though her feet had obeyed its instruction and carried her out through the school gates and into the street. She briefly thought about going home, but the notion didn't stay in her head for long. She had no desire to be back in Followell Street. Though her mom would be at work, her father would be up and about by now, and he'd want to know why she had returned from school in the middle of the morning.
   So she walked in the opposite direction: down Spalding Street to the intersection with Lennox; over Lennox and on toward the Comfort Tree Hotel on Stillman Street. She had half a thought to call in at the hotel and tell Norma Lipnik exactly what had happened when she'd tried to tell the sad story of Henry Murkitt. Perhaps she could even persuade Norma to lend her the passkey so that she could go back up to Room Nineteen and look at the sextant again. Hold it in her hands and examine it; see if she got a clearer picture of poor Henry's last hours when she did so.
   But once she got to the hotel, she found the desire to see the sextant was not as important as another desire, one which she could not name or comprehend, but which kept her going, on past the hotel to the intersection of Stillman and Lincoln.
   Here, for a moment, she stopped. The streets were busy in both directions, at least busy for Chickentown. There were four or five cars waiting at the lights every time they turned red. One of the drivers was Frank Wrightson, who had been a drinking buddy of her father's until six months before, when they'd had a big falling-out. It had ended in a shouting match outside the house and a few blows half-heartedly exchanged. The men had not spoken to each other since.
   "Hey, Candy!" Frank yelled as he drove by.
   She waved, trying not to look too guilty for being out in the street in the middle of a Thursday morning.
   "No school today?" Frank yelled.
   Candy was just trying to figure out a way to answer this without lying to Frank Wrightson, when the woman in the car behind his truck honked her horn to hurry him on his way. Returning Candy's wave, he drove off.
   Which way now ? she thought. She couldn't wait at the intersection forever.
   And then the decision was made for her. A gust of wind came down Stillman Street from the direction of the chicken factory. It stank of chicken excrement and worse. I'm not going to take Stillman Street , she thought to herself. So that left Lincoln. Without another thought, she turned the corner, and as soon as she'd done so she knew that was the decision she was supposed to make.
   Not only did the foul smell disappear almost completely, but there—at the far end of the street, where Lincoln ran out of houses and gave way to the prairie—was a cloud, vast and shaped like some enormous flower, blossoming as the wind carried it south, away from town.
   For some reason the sight of it—its golden color, its shape, its sheer size—put everything she'd left behind—Miss Schwartz and her stupidities, Deborah Hackbarth and the rest, even the smell on Stillman Street—out of her head.
   Smiling as she walked, she headed on past the hotel and on down Lincoln Street toward the cloud.
   The wavy lines in her head began to fade now, as though they had done their job by getting her out wandering until she came in sight of this blossom-cloud. She'd seen it; she had her destination.
   The houses were thinning out now as she approached the end of Lincoln Street. She could remember venturing so far in this direction only once before, and that was because Patti Gibson, who'd been her best friend three years ago, had brought her down here to show her one of the few memorable front lawns in Chickentown. It had belonged to an old woman by the name of Lavinia White, known to all as the Widow White. In place of flowers, Lavinia had "planted" plastic pinwheels in the grass, the kind constructed of brightly colored plastic that made a whirring sound when the wind spun them. No doubt the Widow White was a little bit crazy, because she hadn't simply put three or four of these things in her garden; she'd planted hundreds, in place of ordinary flowers. Some bright scarlet, some eye-pricking green, some striped or spiraled. It had been quite a sight, Candy remembered.
   To her astonishment she found that they were still there. She heard them before she saw them, the massed noise of their whirring coming to meet her down Lincoln Street. When she came in sight of them, she found that they were all rather the worse for wear. Clearly the Widow White had not replaced the pinwheels with new ones over the last few seasons, and many had been knocked over by the wind, or had lost their plastic blooms, and she'd simply left the sticks in the dirt. But perhaps one in three of them remained operational, and that still provided a bizarre spectacle.
   Candy glanced up at the house itself as she passed, and there in the upper window, sitting in a wheelchair watching the world go by (or as much of the world as would pass by the last house in the street before the grasslands began) was old Widow White herself. She had her eyes on Candy, so Candy gave her a wave and a smile. The Widow White returned neither.
   There was no barricade or fence at the end of the street. Just a sign, placed at the limit of the asphalt that stated, with absurd redundancy:
   STREET ENDS
   "Oh really?" said Candy, looking up at the sign. Beyond it, there was just rolling prairie and the cloud. It had grown in size in the time that Candy had taken to walk the length of Lincoln Street, and it was no longer moving away from town. The wind had changed direction, and now seemed to be coming from the north. It had a curious tang to it, which was not the smell of the factory and its clotted drains. She didn't know what it was.
   She glanced back over her shoulder down the length of Lincoln Street. From here it was a half-hour walk home, at least. If the great gilded cloud was bringing rain, then she was going to get wet on her way back to Followell Street. But she had no desire to start the homeward trek, not for a little while, at least. She had no idea of what lay ahead of her besides the wild hills and the long grass, and the orange milkweed, the larkspur, and prairie lilies in among the grass.
   But walking for a while where nobody (except the Widow White) knew she'd gone was better than going home to listen to her father in the first stages of the day's drinking, raging on about the injustices of his life.
   Without another thought she walked on past the STREET ENDS sign, catching it with her palm as she went so that it rocked in the shallow hole some lazy workman had made for it, and headed out into the gently swaying grass.
   Butterflies and bees wove ahead of her, as if they were showing her the way. She followed them, happily. When next she looked back, the shoulder-high grass had almost obscured Chickentown from sight. She didn't care. She had a good sense of direction. When the time came for her to find her way back, she'd be able to do just that. Her eyes glued to the great swelling mass of the cloud, she walked on, her griefs and humiliations left somewhere behind her, where the road ended and the ocean of grass and flowers began.

5. A SHORE WITHOUT A SEA

   After perhaps ten minutes of walking, candy glanced back over her shoulder to see that the gentle swells and gullies she'd crossed to get to her present position had put Chickentown out of sight completely. Even the spire on the church on Hawthorne Street and the five stories of the town hall had vanished.
   She took a moment and turned on the spot, three hundred and sixty degrees. In every direction the landscape presented the same unremarkable vista of wind-blown grass, with two exceptions. Some way off to her right lay a small copse of trees, and nearly dead ahead of her was a much more curious sight: a kind of skeletal tower, set in the middle of this wilderness of grass and flowers.
   What was it? Some kind of watchtower? If it had been a watchtower then those who'd occupied it must have been very bored, with nothing to watch.
   Though it promised to be nothing more than a near ruin, she decided to make it her destination. She'd get there, sit for a while, and then head back. She was getting thirsty, for one thing. She wanted a glass of water. Maybe on the return journey she'd pick up some soda from Niles' Drug Store. She dug in her pocket, just to see what she had. Two singles, one five– and one ten-dollar bill. She pushed them down to the very bottom of her pocket, so they wouldn't slip out.

   The wind had become stronger in the time since she'd left the limits of Chickentown, and a little more bracing. There was still the smell of spring green in the air, but there was something else besides, something Candy couldn't quite name, but which teased her nevertheless.
   She walked toward the tower, her mind becoming pleasantly devoid of troubling thoughts. Miss Schwartz; letters threatening expulsion; her father in his drinking chair, staring up at her with that look of his, the look she knew meant trouble: all of it was left behind, where the street ended.
   Then her toe caught some object so that it skipped ahead of her through the grass. Just a stone, surely. Nevertheless, she bent down to take a closer look, and to her surprise she saw that it was not a stone at all, but a shell. It was large too: about the size of her balled fist, and there were a number of short spikes on it. It wasn't, she knew, a snail's shell. For one thing it was too big, and she had never seen a snail's shell with spikes. No, this was a sea shell, and it was clearly old. Its colors had faded, but she could still see an elaborate pattern upon it: a design that followed its diminishing spiral.
   She turned it over, brushed what looked suspiciously like sand out of its crevice, and put it to her ear. It was a trick her grandfather had first taught her, listening to the sea in a shell. And though she knew it was just an illusion—the subtle reverberations of the air in the shell's interior—she was still half persuaded by it; half certain she heard the sound of waves, as if the shell still had some memory of its life in the ocean.
   She listened. There it was.
   But what was a seashell doing out here?
   Had somebody dropped it while walking here? That seemed highly unlikely. Who went walking with seashells in their pocket?
   She looked down, wondering if anything else had been dropped in the vicinity. To her surprise, the answer was yes: there were a number of odd items scattered under her feet. More shells, for one thing, dozens of them. No, hundreds; some small, a few even larger than the one she'd picked up. Most were cracked or broken, but some were still intact, their shapes and designs more beautiful, more bizarre, than anything she'd ever seen in a book.
   And there was more besides, a lot more. As she studied the ground, her eyes becoming accustomed to picking out curiosities, the curiosities multiplied. There were pieces of wood scattered among the shells, most smoothed into little abstract sculptures by the pale, freckled sand that was mingled with the dark Minnesota dirt. As she bent to pick one of the sculptures up, she saw that there was glass here too: countless fragments—green, blue and white—turned into smoky jewels. She picked up three or four and examined them in the palm of her hand, walking a little way as she did so.
   There were more mysteries underfoot with every step she took. A large fish—its flesh pecked away by birds, and the remains baked by the sun. And even a piece of pottery, on which a fragment of an exquisite design remained: a blue figure staring at her with almost hypnotic intensity.

   Fascinated by all this, she paused to examine her finds more closely. As she did so, she caught a movement in the long grass out of the corner of her eye. She dropped down onto her haunches, below the level of the tallest grass stalks, and there she stayed, suddenly and unaccountably nervous.
   She brushed the last of the sand off her fingers and watched for whatever had moved to move again.
   A hard gust of wind came through the grass, making it hiss as the stalks rubbed against one another.
   After perhaps a minute, during which the only motion was the bending of the grass, she decided to chance standing up.
   As she did so the thing she'd seen moving chose precisely the same moment to also stand upright, so that the pair of them, Candy and the stranger, rose like two swimmers emerging from a shallow sea.
   Candy let out a yelp of shock at the sight of the stranger. And then, once the shock had worn off, she started to laugh. The man—whoever he was—was wearing some kind of Halloween mask, or so it seemed. What other explanation could there be for his freakish appearance? His left eye was round and wild, while his right was narrow and sly, and his mouth, framed by a black mustache and beard, was downturned in misery.
   But none of this was as odd as what sprouted from the top of his head. There were large downy ears, and above them two enormous antlers, which would have resembled those of a stag except that there were seven heads (four on the left horn, three on the right) growing from them. Heads with eyes, noses and mouths.
   They weren't, she realized now, static, nor were they made of rubber and papier-mвchй. In short, it was not a mask the man was wearing. These heads sprouting from the antlers were alive , and they were all staring at Candy the way their owner was staring at her: eight pairs of eyes all studying her with the same manic intensity.
   She was speechless. But they were not. After a moment of silence the heads erupted into wild chatter, their manner highly agitated. Candy had no doubt about the subject of conversation. One minute the heads were looking at her, then they were facing one another, their volume rising as they attempted to out-talk one another.
   The only mouth that wasn't moving was that of the man himself. He simply studied Candy, his wild and sly expression slowly becoming one of tentative enquiry.
   Finally, he decided to approach her. Candy let out a little gasp of fear, and in response he raised his long-fingered hands as though to keep her from running away. The heads, meanwhile, were still chattering to one another.
   "Be quiet !" he ordered them. "You're frightening the lady!"
   All but one of the heads (the middle of the two on his right horn, a round-faced, sour individual) responded to his order. But this one kept talking.
   "Keep your distance from her, John Mischief," the head advised its big brother. "She may look harmless, but you can't trust them. Any of them."
   "I said hush up , John Serpent," the man said. "And I mean it."
   The head made a face and muttered something under its breath. But it finally stopped talking.
   "What's your name?" John Mischief asked Candy.
   "Me?" Candy said, as though there was anybody else in the vicinity to whom the question might be directed.
   "Oh Lordy Lou!" another of the heads remarked. "Yes,you, girl ."
   "Be polite, John Sallow," John Mischief said, reaching up (without taking his eyes off Candy) and lightly slapping the short-tempered head for its offense.
   Then, having hushed his companion, John Mischief said: "I do apologize for my brother, lady."
   Then—of all things—he bowed to her.
   It was not a deep bow. But there was something about the simple courtesy of the gesture that completely won Candy over. So what if John Mischief had seven extra heads; he'd bowed to her and called her lady . Nobody had ever done that to her before.
   She smiled with improbable delight.
   And the impish man called John Mischief, along with five of his seven siblings, smiled back.
   "Please," he said. "I don't wish to alarm you, lady. Believe me, that is the very last thing I wish to do. But there is somebody in this vicinity by the name of Shape."
   "Mendelson Shape," the smallest of the heads said.
   "As John Moot says: Mendelson Shape ."
   Before Candy could deal with any more information she needed a question answered. So she asked it.
   "Are you all called John?" she said.
   "Oh yes," said Mischief. "Tell her, brothers, left to right. Tell her what we are called."
   So they did.
   "John Fillet."
   "John Sallow."
   "John Moot."
   "John Drowze."
   "John Pluckitt."
   "John Serpent."
   "John Slop."
   "And I'm the head brother," the eighth wonder replied. "John Mischief."
   "Yes, I heard that part. I'm Candy Quackenbush."
   "I am extremely pleased to make your acquaintance," John Mischief said.
   He sounded completely sincere in this, and with good reason. To judge by his appearance, things had not gone well for him—or them —of late.
   Mischief's striped blue shirt was full of holes and there were stains on his loosely knotted tie, which were either food or blood; she guessed the latter. Then there was his smell. He was less than sweet, to say the least. His shirt clung to his chest, soaked with pungent sweat.
   "Have you been running from this man Shape?" Candy said.
   "She's observant," John Pluckitt said appreciatively. "I like that. And young, which is good. She can help us, Mischief."
   "Either that or she can get us in even deeper trouble," said John Serpent.
   "We're as deep as we can get," John Slop observed. "I say we trust the girl, Mischief. We've got absolutely nothing to lose."
   "What are they all talking about?" Candy asked Mischief.
   "Besides me."
   "The harbor," he replied.
   "What harbor?" Candy said. "There's no harbor here. This is Minnesota. We're hundreds of miles from the ocean. No, thousands."
   "Perhaps we're thousands of miles from any ocean you are familiar with, lady," said John Fillet, with a gap-toothed smile. "But there are oceans and oceans. Seas and seas."
   "What on earth is he talking about?" Candy asked Mischief.
   John Mischief pointed toward the tower that stood sixty or seventy yards from where they stood.
   "That, lady, is a lighthouse," he said.
   "No," said Candy, with a smile. The idea was preposterous. "Why would anybody—"
   "Look at it," said John Drowze. "It is a lighthouse ."
   Candy studied the odd tower again.
   Yes, she could see that indeed it could have been designed as a lighthouse. There were the rotted remains of a staircase, spiraling up the middle of it, leading to a room at the top, which might have housed a lamp. But so what?
   "Somebody was crazy," she remarked.
   "Why?" said John Slop.
   "Oh, come on," said Candy. "We've been through this. We're in Minnesota. There is no sea in—"
   Candy stopped mid-sentence. Mischief had put his hand to his mouth, hushing her.
   As he did so all of his brothers looked off in one direction or another. A few were sniffing the air, others tasting it on their lips. Whatever they did and wherever they looked, they all came to the same conclusion, and together they murmured two words.
   "Shape's here ," they said.

6. THE LADY ASCENDS

   Mischief instantly grabbed candy's arm and pulled her down into the long grass. His eyes were neither wild nor sly now. They were simply afraid. His brothers, meanwhile, were peering over the top of the grass in every direction, and now and then exchanging their own fearful looks. It was most peculiar for Candy to be with one person, and yet be in the company of a small crowd.
   "Lady," Mischief said, very softly, "I wonder if you would dare something for me?"
   "Dare?"
   "I would quite understand if you preferred not. This isn't your battle. But perhaps Providence put you here for a reason."
   "Go on," Candy said.
   Given how unhappy and purposeless she'd been feeling in the last few hours (no, not hours: months, even years), she was happy to listen to anybody with a theory about why she was here.
   "If I could distract Mendelson Shape's attention away from you for long enough, maybe you could get to the lighthouse, and climb the stairs? You carry far less weight than I, and the stairs may support you better."
   "What for?"
   "What do you mean: what for?"
   "Well, once I've climbed the stairs—"
   "She wants to know what she does next," John Slop said.
   "That's simple enough, lady," said John Fillet.
   "When you get to the top," said John Pluckitt, "you must light the light !'
   Candy glanced up at the ruined tower: at the spiraling spire of its staircase, and the rotting boards of its upper floor. She couldn't imagine the place was in working order, not in its present state.
   "Doesn't it need electricity?" she said. "I mean, I can't even see a lamp."
   "There's one up there, we swear," said John Moot. "Please trust us. We may be desperate, but we're not stupid. We wouldn't send you on a suicide mission."
   "So how do I make this lamp work?" Candy asked. "Is there an on-off switch?"
   "You'll know how to use it the moment you set eyes on it," Mischief said. "Light's the oldest game in the world ."
   She looked at them, her gaze going from face to face. They looked so frightened, so exhausted. "Please, lady," said Mischief. "You're our only chance now."
   "Just one more question—" Candy said.
   "No time," said Drowze. "I see Shape."
   "Where?" said Fillet, turning to follow his brother's gaze. He didn't need any further direction. He simply said. "Oh Lordy Lou, there he is."
   Candy raised her head six inches and looked in the same direction that Fillet and Drowze were looking. The rest of the brothers—Mischief included—followed that stare.
   And there, no more than a stone's throw from the spot where Candy and the brothers were crouched in the grass, was the object of their fear: Mendelson Shape.
   The sight of him made Candy shudder. He was twice the height of Mischief, and there was something spiderish about his grotesque anatomy. His almost fleshless limbs were so long, she could readily imagine him walking up a wall. On his back there was a curious arrangement of cruciform rods that almost looked like four swords which had been fused to his bony body. He was naked but for a pair of striped shorts, and he walked with a pronounced limp. But there was nothing frail about him. Despite the lack of muscle, and that limp of his, he looked like a creature born to do harm. His expression was joyless and sour, filled with hatred toward the world.
   Having got herself a glimpse of him, Candy ducked down quickly, before Shape's wrathful gaze came her way.
   Curiously, it was only now, seeing this second freakish creature, that she wondered if perhaps she wasn't having some kind of hallucination. How could such beings be here in the world with her?
   The same world as Chickentown, as Miss Schwartz and Deborah Hackbarth?
   "Before we go any further," she said to the brothers, "I need an answer to something."
   "Ask away," said John Swallow.
   "Am I dreaming this?"
   By way of reply, all eight brothers shook their heads, their faces for once expressing the same thing. No,this is no dream , those faces said.
   Nor, deep in her bones, had she expected the answer to be any different. They were all awake together, she and the brothers, and all in terrible jeopardy.
   Mischief saw the sequence of thoughts crossing her face. The doubt that she was even awake, and then the fear that indeed she was.
   "This is all Providence, I swear," he said to her. "You're here because you can light the light. You and only you."
   She did her best to put the fear out of her head and to concentrate on what John Mischief had just said. In a curious way it made sense that she was here because she had to be here. She thought of the doodle she'd made on her workbook; the way it had seemed to brighten in her mind's eye, inspiring her limbs to move . It was almost as though the doodle had been a sign, a ticket to this adventure. Why else, after living all her life in Chickentown, should she be here—in a place she'd never been before—today?
   This must be what John Mischief meant by Providence.
   "So, lady?" Mischief said. "What is your decision?"
   "If I'm not dreaming this, then perhaps it is Providence."
   "So you'll go?"
   "Yes, I'll go," Candy said simply.
   Mischief smiled again, only this time, they all smiled with him. Eight grateful faces, smiling at her for being here, and ready to chance her life. That was what was at stake right now, she didn't doubt it. The monster moving through the grass nearby would kill them all if he got his claws into them.
   "Good luck," Mischief whispered. "We'll see you again when you come down."
   And without offering any further instruction, he and his brothers darted off through the grass, bent double to keep out of Shape's sight until they were clear of her.
   Candy's heart was thumping so hard she could hear her pulse in her head. Ten, fifteen seconds passed. She listened. The grass hissed all around her. Strangely enough, she'd never felt so alive in her life.
   Another half minute went by. She was tempted to chance another peep above the surface of the swaying grass, to see whether Mendelson Shape was limping in her direction, but she was afraid to do so in case he was almost upon her.
   Then, to her infinite relief, she heard eight voices all yelling at the same time:
   "Hey, you! Mendelson Shmendelson! Looking for us? We're over here!"
   Candy waited a heartbeat, then she chanced a look.
   Shape, it seemed, had indeed been looking in her direction, and had she raised her head a second earlier would have seen her. But now he was swinging around, following the sound of the brothers' voices.
   At that moment, Mischief leaped up out of the grass and began racing away from the lighthouse, diverting Shape's attention.
   Shape threw open his arms, his huge, iron-taloned claws spread as wide as five-fingered fans.
   "There. You. Are !" he roared.
   His voice was as ugly as his anatomy: a guttural din that made Candy's stomach churn.
   As he spoke, the configuration of crosses on his back shifted, rising up like featherless, metallic wings. He reached over his shoulders and grabbed two of the blades, pulling them out of the scabbards in his leathery flesh. Then he started through the grass toward his prey.
   Candy knew she could not afford to delay. The brothers were chancing their lives so that she could attempt to reach the lighthouse unseen. She had to go now , or their courage would be entirely in vain.
   Candy didn't watch the pursuit a moment longer. Instead, she set her eyes on the lighthouse and she began to run , not even bothering to try and conceal herself by staying below the level of the grass. Simply depending for distraction upon Shape's terrible appetite to have the John brothers in his grasp.
   As she raced through the grass, she became aware that the great rain cloud that had first caught her eye was now directly above the lighthouse, hovering like a golden curtain over the drama below.
   Was this part of the makings of Providence too ? she wondered as she ran. Did clouds also have their place in the shape of things ?
   By the time the thought had passed through her head, she had reached the threshold of the lighthouse. She chanced a quick look over her shoulder at Mischief and his pursuer.
   Much to her horror she saw that her brief period of protection was over. Shape had given up chasing the brothers—realizing perhaps that the pursuit was just a diversion—and he had now turned his attention back toward the lighthouse.
   His eyes fixed upon Candy, and he let out a bloodcurdling cry at the sight of her. He spread his arms wide, and with swords in hand, he began to move toward her.
   He didn't run; he simply strode through the grass with terrible confidence in his uneven step, as if to say: I don't have to hurry. I've got all the time in the world. I've got you cornered, and there's no escape for you. You're mine.
   She turned away from the sight of his approach and pushed on the broken door. The hinges creaked, and there were a few moments of resistance, when she feared that fallen timbers on the other side might have blocked it. Then, with a deep grating sound, the door opened and Candy slipped inside.
   Though there were plenty of holes in the walls, and the sun came through in solid shafts, it was still far chillier inside than it was out. The cold air stank of rotting wood. Large fungi had prospered in the damp murk, and the boards beneath her feet were slick with mildew. She slipped twice before she had even reached the bottom of the stairs.
   The prospect before her looked dangerous. No doubt once upon a time the spiral wooden stairs had been perfectly safe to climb, but that was decades ago. Now all but a few of the railings had collapsed, and the structure which had supported the staircase had been devoured by woodworm and rot, so that it seemed the stairs themselves had virtually nothing to depend on for their solidity.

   She peered through one of the holes in the wall, just to confirm what she already knew: Mendelson Shape was still advancing toward the lighthouse.
   Unlikely as a safe ascent seemed, there was no way back now. Shape would be at the front door in just a few seconds. She had no choice but to try the stairs. She put her hand on the shaky bannister and began her cautious ascent.
   Outside in the long grass, the John brothers watched the silhouetted form of the lady Quackenbush as she started up the stairs.
   "She's something special, that one," Drowze murmured.
   "What makes you say that?" Moot remarked.
   "Look at her!" Drowze said. "Not many creatures of this wretched Hereafter would be so brave."
   "She's half mad," said Serpent, "that's why. I saw it in her eyes, right from the beginning. She's a little bit crazy."
   "So we send a crazy girl to do our handiwork for us?" Pluckitt said. "That's not very heroic."
   "Will you just shut your cake-holes , all of you?" Mischief snapped. "Drowze is right. There is something about the lady. When we first laid eyes on her, didn't anybody think they'd maybe seen her before ?" There was silence from above. "Well?"
   "You told us to shut our cake-holes," Sallow reminded him airily. "We're just obeying instructions."
   "Well, I think she's got a touch of magic about her," Mischief said, ignoring Sallow's riposte. He went to his belt and unsheathed the little knife that hung there. "And we have to protect her."
   "You're not…" Moot began.
   "… intending to attack…" Pluckitt continued.
   "… Mendelson Shape?" Slop went on.
   "Not with that pitiful excuse for a weapon?" Fillet concluded.
   "Well—" said Mischief. "Unless somebody has a better idea?"
   "He's twice our size!" said Sallow.
   "Three times!" said Moot.
   "He'll tear out our heart," said Slop.
   "Well, we can't leave the lady Quackenbush undefended," Mischief replied.
   "I vote we run," Moot said. "This is a lost cause, Mischief. At least if we get away now, the Key's safe with us. If we throw ourselves into the fray we're not just endangering our lives—"
   "—which are very valuable—" John Serpent remarked.
   "—we're endangering the Key," Moot reasoned. "We can't afford to do that."
   "Moot's right," said John Sallow. "We've got a chance to run. I vote we take it."
   "Out of the question," Mischief remarked. "She's risking her life for us."
   "As I observed," Sallow replied. "The creature's half mad."
   "And as I said," Mischief replied. "You can all shut your cake-holes, because you're wasting your breath. We're going to keep Shape away from her as long as we can."
   So saying, Mischief set off running through the grass toward Mendelson, his little knife at the ready.
   As he came within six or seven strides of his target, Shape sensed his presence and swung around, the swords whining through the air. His mouth was wide and foamy, as though he was working up an appetite as he approached the tower. The pupils of his eyes had gone to pinpricks, giving him an even more monstrous expression. His aim was poor. The blades missed the brothers by a foot or more, simply lopping off the feathery heads of the prairie grass.
   Mischief just ducked down and doubled his speed, running at the enemy.
   "Everybody—"he said. "Give the Warriors' Yell !"
   At which point all the Johns loosed a cry so discordant, so insane; so bestial—
   "EEEIIIGGGGORRRAAARRGUU—"
   –that even Shape hesitated, and for a moment looked as though he might retreat.
   Then he seemed to remember the absurdity of his enemy, and instead of backing away he came at them again with the swords. But the Johns were swift. Mischief darted under Shape's vast hand and pushed his little blade into Shape's thigh. The knife went in three or four inches and lodged there, blood spurting over Mischief's hand and arm. It was enough to make the monster let out a cry of rage and pain. He dropped the blades and clutched the wound, gritting his teeth as he pulled the knife out.
   Inside the lighthouse, Candy had climbed fifteen steps when she heard Mendelson's shout. She carefully ascended another three, until she could see through a hole in the wall. She had quite a good view. She could see that Mischief was playing David to Shape's Goliath out there.
   The sight gave her courage. Instead of advancing up the stairs tentatively, as she'd been doing, she picked up her speed. With every step she took, the whole structure rocked and groaned, but she reached the top of the flight without incident and found herself in a round room, perhaps eight or nine feet across.
   She'd reached the top of the lighthouse. But now that she was actually up here, where was the light? It was just as she'd feared. If there'd ever been a light up here (which she strongly doubted: this place was more folly than functional), then it had been stolen long ago, leaving just one strange item in the middle of the room: an inverted pyramid, perhaps three feet high and carefully balanced on its tip, its three sides decorated with a number of designs, like hieroglyphics. On the top of the pyramid (or rather on what had been its base) was a small, simple bowl. The purpose to which any of this obscure arrangement might have been put escaped Candy entirely.
   Then she recalled what Mischief had said, when she'd remarked that she couldn't even see a lamp up at the top of the tower. What was it exactly? He'd said something about light being the oldest game in the world? Perhaps this odd creation represented some kind of game , she thought. The problem was that she had no idea how to play it.
   And now, as if matters weren't bad enough, she heard the din of Shape beating down the lighthouse door; smashing it to smithereens in his fury. The noise reached a chaotic climax, followed by a few seconds of silence.
   Then came the limping footfall of the monster himself, as he climbed the lighthouse stairs to find her.