7. LIGHT AND WATER

   "WHERE ARE YOU, CHILD ?" Shape growled as he ascended.
   The sound of his voice, and the thump and drag of his limping step, froze Candy for a moment. This was like something from a nightmare: being hunted down by some hellish beast; some vile creature that wanted to eat her alive, limb by limb, finger by finger.
   No!
   She shook herself from her trance of terror. She wasn't going to let this abomination take her!
   She looked around the room for a door that led out onto the narrow balcony that encircled the room. The door in question was directly behind her. She went over to it and turned the handle. It was locked, but that presented no problem to her, not in her present panicked state. She put her shoulder to the rotted wood and forced it open quite easily. Then she stepped out onto the balcony. The boards had been more exposed to the extremes of Minnesota's summers and winters than the interior floors—and they instantly gave way beneath her weight. She threw herself forward and grabbed hold of the rusted iron railing. Her speed probably saved her life, because two heartbeats later the whole patch of floorboards beneath her right foot crumbled away. Had she not had the support of the railing, she would have surely fallen through the hole and probably dropped to her death.
   Very gingerly, she hauled her foot out of the hole and sought out a more reliable place to stand. She could still hear Shape in the tower behind her, calling out singsong threats to her as he climbed. It was some horrible little nursery song he was singing. The kind only a monster like Shape would have had sung to him in his cradle.

   "O little one, My little one, Come with me, Your life is done. Forget the future, Forget the past. Life is over: Breathe your last."

   Doing her best to blot out the sound of Shape's obscene little lullaby, she scanned the landscape around the lighthouse.
   "Mischief!" she yelled. "Where did you go?"
   She only had to call once. Then he was there, racing toward the tower through the grass. There was blood on his hands, she saw. Had he wounded Shape? She dared hope so.
   "Lady Candy? Are you all right?"
   "I can't find any light up here, Mischief! I'm sorry."
   "He's coming, lady!"
   "I know, Mischief. Believe me: I know. But there's no light —"
   "There should be a cup and ball up there. Isn't there a cup and ball?"
   "What?"
   "The oldest game, Candy. Light is the oldest game —"
   Candy glanced back inside. Yes, there was a cup, of sorts, sitting on top of the inverted pyramid.
   "Yes! There's a cup!" she yelled back down to the brothers.
   "Put the ball in it!" Mischief replied.
   "What ball? There isn't any ball."
   "There should be a ball." ;
   "Well there isn't one!"
   "So look !" yelled John Serpent.
   Candy didn't waste time telling Serpent to be more polite. She had only seconds to spare before Shape made an entrance into the round room, she knew. So she stopped talking and did as Mischief suggested, stepping over the hole she'd made in the platform and returning to look for the ball.
   She listened as she scoured the room. To judge by the sound of his feet, Shape was close to the top of the stairs. Then—just as she was certain he was about to open the door—she heard the welcome sound of splintering timber, and her pursuer loosed a shout of alarm. His weight had apparently been too much for the staircase. She heard a series of crashes as broken portions of the steps fell away into the stairwell. A moment of silence followed, when she dared hope that perhaps Shape had fallen down the stairwell along with the broken stairs and was lying at the bottom of the flight. But instead of the distant moans she'd hoped to hear, there came an outburst of words in a language she had never heard before. She didn't need a translator to recognize them as curses.
   She crossed to the door and glanced down, just to see what had happened. A large portion of the staircase—five or six stairs—had indeed collapsed under Mendelson Shape's weight. But he had somehow managed to avoid the full fall by jumping back down the stairs before they had collapsed beneath him. This left a sizeable gap for him to get across before he could continue his ascent. She was disappointed that he wasn't dead or comatose at the bottom, but this was better than nothing.
   Looking up at her, he made horns of his forefinger and smallest finger, which he jabbed threateningly in Candy's direction. No doubt had he possessed the power to strike her dead on the spot, dead she would have been. But all he could do was curse and point, so she left him to it and went back to search for the missing ball.
   As she did so, she heard Mischief yelling up at her from outside. Obviously he'd heard the din.
   "I'm coming in, Lady Candy!"
   She went to the outer door and called down to him.
   "No ! Stay where you are. You can't get up here anyway. The stairs have collapsed!"
   She saw him looking through the holes in the tower wall to confirm what she'd told him. He was aghast.
   "How will you get down?" he said, apparently more concerned with her safety now than with the oldest game in the world.
   "I'll find a way when the time comes," Candy said. "First I'm going to find this stupid ball."
   "We're coming in!" he said again.
   "Wait!" she told him. "You just stay there. Please !'
   Without waiting for an answer, she went down on her haunches and started a systematic search of the floor, looking for the missing part of this bizarre puzzle. It was not immediately visible, but there were several places where the boards had rotted completely, leaving holes in the floor. She went to each one, pulling up the worm-eaten boards to get a better look at what lay beneath. They came away easily, in showers of splinters, dust and dried beetle corpses.
   The first hole revealed nothing. The second, the same. But the third was the charm. There it was: rolled away under the boards. A small turquoise-and-silver ball. She had to tear away a little more of the rotted boards before she could fish it out between her fingers. When she finally succeeded, she discovered that it was surprisingly heavy for its size. It wasn't wood or plastic; it was metal. And elegantly engraved on its blue-green surface was a design she knew! There it was, etched into the metal: the doodle she'd drawn so obsessively in her workbook.
   She didn't have any time to wonder at this. Behind her she heard a series of fierce grunts from the stairwell, followed by another crash. She knew in an instant what was going on. In his ambition to get to her, Shape had dared to try and jump the gap in the stairs.
   She glanced up at the door, which stood open a few inches. Through it she could see Shape. He had succeeded in leaping over the gap, and he was coming up the remaining stairs two at a time, his razor claws making a horrid squeal on the timbers that lined the stairwell.
   Candy looked at the small, simple cup that sat on the pyramid. Mischief's words echoed in her head.
   Light's the oldest game in the world —
   Shape was at the door, staring with one pinprick pupil through the crack at Candy, his jaws wide, dripping foam like the maw of a mad dog. He started to sing his lullaby, again, but more softly now, more liltingly.


"Forget the future
Forget the past,
Life is over:
Breathe jour last."


   As he sang he pushed the door, slowly, as though this was some game.
   Candy didn't have time to cross to the pyramid and put the ball in the cup. If she wasted those three or four seconds then Shape would be through the door and tearing out her throat, no doubt of it.
   She had no choice: she had to play the game.
   She took a deep breath and threw the ball. It wasn't a good throw. The ball hit the edge of the cup instead of landing in it, and for several seconds it circled the rim, threatening to topple out.
   "Please ," she willed it quietly, staring at the ball like a gambler watching a roulette wheel, knowing she had this throw and only this throw; there would be no second chance.
   And still the ball rolled around the rim of the cup, undecided where to fall.
   "Go on ," she murmured, trying to ignore the creak of the door behind her.
   The ball made one last, lazy circle of the rim, and then rocked back and forth for a moment and toppled into the cup, rattling around for a few seconds, before finally settling.
   Shape let out a sound that was as far from human as any throat that was fashioned like his could make: a profound din that rose from a hiss to the noise of a creature tormented to the edge of madness. As he loosed this unearthly sound, he pushed open the door, threw Candy aside and reached for the ball so as to snatch it out of the cup.
   But the tower was having none of that. Some process beyond Candy's comprehension had begun with that simple throw of hers. An invisible force was in the air, and it pitched Shape back, its power sufficient to carry him out through the door.
   Outside, Candy heard Mischief and his brothers whooping like a pack of ecstatic dogs. Though they couldn't possibly see what she'd done, they knew she'd succeeded. Nor was it hard for Candy to understand how they knew. There was a wave of pure energy emanating from the pyramid. She felt the fine hairs at the base of her skull starting to prickle, and behind her eyes the design of the ball burned blue and green and gold.
   She retreated a step, then another, her eyes fixed on the ball, cup, and pyramid.
   And then, to her astonishment, the pyramid began to move on its pinpoint axis. It quickly gathered speed, and as it did so a fire seemed to be ignited in its heart, and a silvery luminescence—flickering tentatively at first but quickly becoming solid and strong—flowed out through the designs on the sides of the device.

   It was just before noon in Minnesota; even with a thin cloud layer covering the sun, the day was still bright. But the light that now began to spill through the hieroglyphics on the spinning pyramid was brighter still. They were brilliant streams, pouring out in all directions.
   She heard a soft, almost mournful, noise from Mendelson Shape. She glanced over at him. He was staring at the device with all the malice, all the intent to do harm, drained from his face. He was apparently resigned to whatever happened next. He could do nothing about the phenomenon except watch it.
   "Now look what you've done," he said, very, very softly.
   "What exactly have I done?" she said.
   "See for yourself," he replied, and for a moment he unhooked his gaze from the spinning pyramid so as to nod out at the world, beyond the lighthouse.
   She didn't have any fear of turning her back on him now. At least until this miraculous process was over, it seemed, he was pacified.
   She went to the door and stepped out, over the hole she'd made, to stand on the platform and see what she, and the game of ball and cup, had brought into being.
   The first thing she noticed was the blossom-cloud. It was no longer moving slowly, responding to the gentle dictates of the wind. It was moving speedily overhead, like an immense golden wheel with the tower in which she stood as its axis.
   She stood and admired the sight for a few moments, amazed at it. Then she looked down at the John brothers, who had turned their faces from the tower and were all looking out across the wide expanse of open prairie. What were they looking at ? she wondered. She knew there was nothing out there for many miles, not so much as a house. For some reason, though the suburbs of Chickentown had spread in every other direction from the heart of the town, they had never spread northwest beyond Widow White's house. This was empty land; unused, unwanted.
   And yet, there was something out there that John Mischief and his siblings wanted to see. Mischief was cupping his hands over his eyes as he stared into the faraway.
   Candy could feel the light from the pyramid like a physical presence, pressing against her back. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation. In fact, it was quite pleasurable. She imagined that she could sense the power of the light passing through her body, lending her its strength. She seemed to feel it being carried through her veins, spilling out of her pores and out on her breath. It was just a trick her mind was playing, she suspected. But then, perhaps not. Today she couldn't be certain of anything.
   Behind her, Mendelson Shape let out a plaintive moan, and a moment later, eight throats loosed a chorus of shouts from below.
   "What is it?" she called down to them.
   "Look, lady! Look!"
   She looked, following the brothers' collective gaze, and all that she'd seen today—all, in fact, that she'd ever seen in her life up to this extraordinary moment—became a kind of overture: and the astonishments began .
   There, in the distance, approaching over the rock and grass of Minnesota, rolling out of nowhere, there came a glittering sea.
   Candy's eyes had always been good (nobody in her family wore glasses); she knew her gaze didn't deceive her. There were waves coming, foaming as they rolled and broke and rolled again.
   Now she knew what she'd done up in the tower. She had called this sea out of the air, and like a dog answering the summons of its master, the waters were coming.
   "You did it !" Mischief was hollering, jumping up and down and twisting full circle in the air. "You did it, lady! Oh, look! Look !" He turned to stare up at her, his tears of bliss pouring down his face. "You see the waters ?"
   "I see them!" she shouted down to him, smiling at his joy. Then more quietly, she said: "Murkitt was right."
   The grasslands were still visible beneath the approaching tide, but the closer the sea came, the less solid the real world appeared to be, and the more the power of the waves took precedence.
   It wasn't just her sight that confirmed the reality of the approaching tide. She could smell the tang of the salt water on the wind; she could hear the draw and boom of the waves as they came closer, eroding the world she'd thought until now was the only one that existed, drowning it beneath the surf.
   "It's called the Sea of Izabella…" Mendelson Shape said behind her. Did she hear yearning in his voice? She thought she did.
   "That's where you come from?"
   "Not from the sea. From the islands. From the Abarat."
   "Abarat?"
   The word was completely foreign to her, but he spoke of it so confidently, how could she believe it did not exist?
   The Islands of the Abarat.
   "But you'll never see them," Shape said, the expression on his face losing its dreaminess, becoming threatening again. "The Abarat isn't for human eyes. You belong in this world, the Hereafter. I won't let you go into the water. I won't , you hear me?"
   The brief moment of gentility had apparently passed. He was once again his old, savage self. He pulled himself to his feet, blood running freely from the wound Mischief had made in his leg, and started toward her—
   Candy took a stumbling step backward, out of the door onto the broken platform. The wind had suddenly become chillier and stronger, its gusts carrying drops of moisture against her face. It wasn't rain that the wind carried, it was flecks of sea surf. She could taste their salt on her lips.
   "Mischief !" she yelled, taking a careful step back over the hole in the platform, and grabbing hold of the iron railing to keep herself from slipping.
   Shape was ducking through the door, his arms so long he was able to reach over the hole. One hand snatched hold of her belt with his fingers, his nails slicing the fabric of her blouse. The other went up to her throat, which it immediately encircled.
   She attempted to call for Mischief a second time, and at the same time tried to turn and look for him. But she could do neither. Shape had too tight a stranglehold upon her. She tried again to call out, but seeing what she was attempting to do, Shape tightened his grip still further, till tears of pain sprang into Candy's eyes and blotches of whiteness appeared at the corners of her vision.
   Desperate now, she reached up and grabbed at his vast hand, trying to tear it away from her throat. She was going to pass out very quickly if she couldn't get him to loosen his grip. But she didn't have the strength to pry so much as a single finger loose. And now the whiteness was spreading, threatening to blot out the world.
   She had one tiny hope. As the incident on the stairs had proved, the tower's rotting structure wasn't strong enough to support a creature of Shape's size and weight. If she could just pull him out from the doorway onto the boards of the platform, which her own weight had cracked, then maybe there was a chance that the boards would collapse beneath him, as the stairs had.
   She knew she had seconds, at best, to do something to save herself. His grip was like a vise, steadily closing. Her head was throbbing as though it was going to explode.
   She grabbed hold of the railing again, and inched her way along it, in the hope of pulling him after her, but even that was a lost cause. Her body was almost drained of strength.
   She looked into Shape's face as he continued to tighten his grasp on her neck. He was grinning with satisfaction, his eyes reflecting the bright waters that were assembling behind her; his teeth a grotesque parade of gray points, like the arrowheads she'd found sometimes lying in the long grass as a child.
   That was the last thought that passed through her head before unconsciousness overtook her: Shape had a mouthful of chiseled arrowheads—
   Then she seemed to feel the world crack beneath her and his hand slid off her throat as the platform folded up beneath them. There was a great eruption of splintered wood and a shout of alarm from Shape. His hand slipped off her neck. And suddenly she was falling through the broken platform, dropping to the ground in a rain of broken planks.
   Had she been conscious when she fell, she would have done herself very considerable damage. But luckily she passed out as she fell, and thus landed with every muscle in her body relaxed.
   And there she lay, lost to the world, sprawled in the grass at the foot of the lighthouse, while the waters of the Sea of Izabella came rolling in to meet their summoning light.

8. A MOMENT WITH MELISSA

   Several miles away from the place where her daughter lay unconscious in the grass, Melissa Quackenbush was out in the backyard of 34 Followell Street, cleaning the barbecue after work. It was a task she hated: scraping pieces of burned-to-charcoal chicken meat off the grill, while the armies of ants that had been devouring the remains scattered in all directions.
   Of course, it was always her job, never her husband's. The Lump, she called him behind his back, and not fondly. Right now he was sitting inside, slumped in front of some game show that he was only half watching through a haze of beer. In the early days after his being laid off, his lack of motivation to get up and find himself a new job had angered her. But now she was resigned to it, just as she was resigned to scraping off the remains of last week's barbecue from the grill. It was her life. It was not what she'd wanted, nor what she'd dreamed for herself—not remotely—but it was all she had: the Lump, and the kids, and a barbecue grill caked with carbonized chicken.
   And then, just as she was finishing with the task, she felt a gust of wind coming from somewhere far, far off. She'd worked up quite a sweat as she scraped at the caked meat, and the wind was welcome, cooling the beads of perspiration on her forehead and the back of her neck, where her graying hair had stuck to her skin.
   But it wasn't the temperature of the wind that made her close her eyes and luxuriate in it. No, it was the smell that it carried on its back.
   Absurd as it was, she could smell the sea. It was impossible, of course—how could the wind be carrying a smell over a thousand miles? But even as half her mind was saying: This can't possibly be the sea that I'm smelling , the other half was murmuring: But it is, it is .
   Another gust came against her face, and this time the smell it brought, and the feelings the smell evoked, were so strong they almost overwhelmed her.
   She dropped the can of cleaning spray. She dropped the metal spatula she'd been using to scrape off the meat.
   As they hit the paving stones, a memory came into her head from some long ago. It was a memory she wasn't even sure she was pleased to be conjuring up. But she had no choice in the matter. It came into her mind's eye so powerfully, so clearly, that it might have happened yesterday.
   She remembered rain, battering down on the top of the old Ford truck she and Bill had owned when they'd first been married. They'd run out of gas in the middle of the rainstorm and Bill had gone off to fetch enough gas to get them running again, leaving her alone in the middle of the downpour that had come out of nowhere. Alone in the dark and the cold.
   Well, no, that wasn't altogether true. She hadn't been completely alone. There'd been a baby in her belly. As Melissa had sat in that cold truck waiting for Bill to come back, Candy Francesca Quackenbush had been just an hour from being born. It was two in the morning and Melissa's water had just broken, and so, it seemed, had the waters of heaven itself, because to this day she could not remember being in a rainstorm so sudden and so intense.
   But it wasn't the rain or the cold or the kicking of the unborn child in her womb that she was remembering now. Something else had happened; something that the smell of seawater now pricking her nostrils had brought back into her head. The trouble was, she couldn't remember precisely what that something had been.
   She stepped away from the barbecue—away from the smell of burned chicken and cleaning fluid—to get a breath of purer air.
   And as she did so—as she inhaled the sea air that could not be sea air—another piece of the vision snapped into focus in her mind's eye.
   She'd been sitting there in the truck, with the rain beating a crazy tattoo on the roof, and suddenly, without warning, there had been light everywhere , flooding the old Ford's interior.
   Melissa didn't know why, but this memory—the vehicle filling up with pure white light—was somehow connected to the smell in the air. It didn't make any sense. Clearly her mind was playing tricks with her. Was she going crazy? Crazy with sadness and disappointment. Her eyes had started to sting, and tears now ran down her cheeks; ran and ran. She told herself not to be silly. What was she crying about?
   "I'm not crazy," she said to herself softly. Nevertheless, she felt suddenly lost, unanchorcd.
   There was an explanation for this, somewhere in her memory. The trouble was that she couldn't quite reach it.
   "Come on…" she said to herself.
   It was like having a name on the tip of her tongue, but not being able to bring it to mind.
   Frustrated with herself, and more than a little unnerved (maybe there was something wrong with her, smelling the ocean in the middle of Minnesota; maybe her life was making her nuts), she turned her back on the open sky and returned rather deliberately to the cloud of sour but familiar smells that hung around the barbecue. They weren't pleasant, but at least she understood them. Wiping her tears away with the back of her hand, she told herself to forget what she thought she was smelling, because it was a trick her nose was playing on her, no more nor less than that.
   Then she picked up the spatula and the can of cleaning fluid that she'd dropped, and she went back to her weary and unhappy work.

9. EVENTS ON THE JETTY

   Candy heard a chorus of voices, all speaking the same word.
   Lady , they were saying; lady, lady, lady …
   It took her several moments to realize that these many voices were all addressing her .
   It was the Johns speaking: Mischief, Fillet, Sallow, Moot, Drowze, Pluckitt, Serpent and Slop. They were all calling to her, trying to get her to wake up. She felt herself tentatively shaken. And—just as tentatively—she opened her eyes.
   Eight concerned faces were looking down at her: one large one and seven smaller.
   "Anything broken?" John Fillet said.
   Candy made a very cautious attempt to sit up. The back of her neck hurt, but it was no worse than the ache she sometimes woke with when she'd been sleeping in an odd position. She moved her legs and her arms. She wriggled her fingers.
   "No," she said, somewhat surprised at her good fortune, given the distance she'd fallen. "I don't think anything's broken."
   "Good," said John Sallow. "Then we can get moving."
   "Wait!" said Mischief. "She's only just—"
   "Sallow's right!" said John Fillet. "We haven't got time to wait. That damnable creep Shape is going to be down here in a few seconds."
   Shape! The sound of his name was enough to make Candy seize Mischief's arm and haul herself to her feet. The last thing she wanted was Mendelson Shape's claws around her throat a second time.
   "Where are we off to?" she wanted to know.
   "We're going home, lady," Mischief said. "You're going to yours. And we're going to ours." He put his hand into his inside pocket. "But before I go," he said, dropping his voice to a whisper as he spoke, "I wonder if you could possibly do something for me—for us all—until we meet again?"
   "What do you need?" Candy said.
   "I just need you to carry something for us. Something very precious."
   From the interior of his jacket he brought an object wrapped up in a little piece of coarsely woven cloth and secured with a brown leather thong that had been wrapped around it several times.
   "There's no need for you to know what it is," he said. "In fact, if you don't mind, it's better you don't. Just take it and keep it safe for us, will you? We'll be back, I promise you, when Carrion's forgotten about us, and we can chance the return trip."
   "Carrion?"
   "Christopher Carrion," John Serpent said, his voice laden with anxiety. "The Lord of Midnight."
   "Will you take it for us?" said John Mischief, proffering the little parcel.
   "I think if I'm going to carry something," Candy said, "I should at least know what it is. Especially if it's important."
   "What did I tell you?" Serpent said. "I knew she wouldn't be content with that 'It's better if you don't know' line. She's entirely too inquisitive, this one."
   "Well, if I'm going to be a messenger girl," Candy said, addressing John Serpent, "I think I have a right—"
   "Of course you do," Mischief said. "Open it up. Go on. It's all yours."
   Curiously enough the little parcel seemed to have almost no weight, except for that of the wrapping and the cord. Candy pulled at the large knot, which although it looked hard to undo seemed to solve itself the moment she began to pick at it. She felt something move in the parcel. The next moment there was a rush of light out of the bag, which momentarily filled her gaze. She saw several points of brightness appear before her, joined by darting lines of luminescence. They hovered for a moment, then the lights sank away into her unconscious and were gone.
   The whole spectacle—which couldn't have taken more than three seconds—left her speechless.
   "You have the Key now," John Mischief told her gravely. "I beg you to tell nobody you have it. Do you understand? Nobody ."
   "Whatever you say," she replied, looking at the empty bag, mystified. Then, after a moment: "I don't suppose you're going to tell me what door this key opens?"
   "Truly, lady; better not."
   He kissed her hand, bowing as he did so, and began to retreat from her. "Good-bye, lady," he said. "We have to go."
   Candy had been facing the tower throughout this conversation. Only now, as Mischief retreated from her, did she realize what a change had come over the world in the brief time in which she'd been unconscious.
   A ramshackle jetty had appeared out of the ground, and at its far end large waves were breaking, their weight sufficient to make the structure creak and shake down its entire length. Beyond the breaking waves the Sea of Izabella stretched off toward a misty blue horizon. Minnesota—at least as Candy had known it—had apparently disappeared, overwhelmed by this great expanse of invading water.
   "How…" Candy said, staring at the panorama slack-jawed with astonishment. "How is this possible?"
   "You called the waters, lady. You remember? With the cup and ball?"
   "I remember," she said.
   "Now I must go home on those waters," Mischief said. "And you must go back home to Chickentown. I'll return, I promise, when it's safe to do so. And I'll claim the Key. In the meanwhile, you cannot imagine what service you do to freedom throughout the islands by being the keeper of that Key."
   He bowed to her again and then—politely but firmly– he nodded toward Chickentown.
   "Go home, lady," he said, like a man attempting to send home a dog that didn't want to leave his side. "Go back where you're safe, before Shape gets down from the tower. Please . What you carry is of great significance. It can't be allowed to fall into Shape's hands. Or rather, into the hands of his master."
   "Why not? What happens if it does?"
   "I beg you, lady," Mischief said, the urgency in his voice mounting, "ask no more questions. The less you know, the better for you. If things go wrong in the Abarat and they come looking for you, you can claim ignorance. Now there's no more time for conversation—"
   He had reason for his urgency. There was a loud noise from out of the tower behind them, as Shape attempted to clamber back down the broken staircase. Judging by the din from within, it wasn't an easy job. His weight was causing yet more of the structure to collapse. But it would only be a matter of time, Candy knew, before he navigated the remnants of the staircase and was out through the door in pursuit of them all.
   "All right," she said, reluctantly conceding the urgency of her departure. "I'll go. But before I go, I have to have one proper look."
   "At what?"
   "The sea!" Candy said, pointing off down the jetty toward the open expanse of bright blue water.
   "She'll be the death of us," Serpent growled.
   "No," said Mischief. "She has a perfect right."
   Mischief grabbed hold of Candy's hand and helped her up onto the jetty. It creaked and swayed beneath them. But having dared the tower's stairs and balcony, Candy wasn't in the least intimidated by a little rotten wood. The jetty shook violently with every wave that struck it, but she was determined to get to the end of it and see the Sea of Izabella for herself.
   "It's amazing…" she said, as they proceeded down the length of the jetty. She'd never seen the sea before.
   All thought of Shape and his claws had vanished from her head. She was entranced by the spectacle before her.
   "I still don't see how it can have happened," she said. "A sea coming out of nowhere ."
   "Oh, this is the least of it, lady," Mischief said. "Out there, far off from here, are the twenty-five islands of the Abarat."
   "Twenty-five?"
   "One for every hour of the day. Plus the Twenty-Fifth Hour, which is called Odom's Spire, which is a Time Out of Time."
   It all sounded too strange and preposterous. But then here she was standing on a jetty looking out over a sea that hadn't existed ten minutes before. If the sea was real (and real it was, or else why was her face cold and wet?), then why not the islands too, waiting where the Sea of Izabella met the sky?
   They had come to the end of the jetty. She gazed out over the waters. Fish leaped up, silver and green; the wind carried sea birds the likes of which she had never seen or heard before.
   In just a few seconds Mischief and his brothers were going to be gone into these mysterious waters, and she was going to be left to return to her boring, suffocating life in Chickentown.
   Oh, God! Chickentown! After all this, these wonders, these miracles: Chickentown ! The thought was unbearable.
   "When will you come back?" she said to Mischief.
   "Wait, lady," Mischief replied.
   "What?"
   "Stay… very… still."
   As he spoke, he went into the outer pocket of his jacket and he pulled out—of all things—an old-fashioned pistol. It was a small weapon, and it looked as though it was made of brass.
   "What are you doing?" she said, dropping her voice to a whisper.
   "Doing what I can," he said softly, "to save our lives."
   She saw his eyes flicker over his shoulder, in the direction of somebody on the jetty behind her.
   "Shape?" she murmured.
   "Shape," he replied. "Please, lady. Don't move."
   So saying, he suddenly stepped to the side of her and he fired.
   There was a loud crack, and a plume of purple-blue smoke erupted from the barrel of the pistol. A moment later there was a second sound, much less loud, as the bullet struck its intended target.
   Candy knew immediately what John Mischief had done. He hadn't shot Shape. He'd fired at the cup on the top of the pyramid, and the ball had jumped out of it. She could instantly sense the massive change in the air around them.
   "Nice shot!" said Sallow. "Though why you couldn't have put a bullet through Shape's eye defeats me."
   "I take no pleasure in putting holes in living things," Mischief said, pocketing the gun.
   Candy glanced over her shoulder. Shape was standing about halfway along the jetty, glancing back toward the tower. It was clear that he too knew what Mischief had done. How could he doubt it? The air was vibrating with the news.
   "The tide's changing, lady," Mischief said. "And I have to go with it. Shape will follow me, all being well, because he believes I have the Key."
   "No, wait !" Candy said, seizing hold of Mischief's arm. "Don't do this!"
   "Don't do what?" said John Moot.
   "I don't want to go back to Chickentown."
   "Where else can you go?" said John Sallow.
   "With you!"
   "No," said John Serpent.
   "Yes," said Candy. "Please. I want to go into the water."
   "You have no idea of the risks you'd be taking."
   "I don't care," Candy said. "I hate where I live. I hate it with all my heart."
   As she spoke she felt the wind change direction. The waters around the jetty had become highly agitated now; almost frenzied, in fact. The tide was turning on itself, and in the process making the antiquated boards of the jetty rattle and shake. She knew she only had a few seconds to persuade Mischief and his brothers. Then they'd be gone, into the water and away with the tide; away to Abarat, wherever that was.
   And what chance did she have of ever seeing them again, once they'd gone? Sure, they'd tell her they'd come back again, but what was a promise worth? Not much, in her experience. How many times had her father promised never to slap her again? How many times had she heard him swear to her mother that he was going to give up drink forever? None of it meant anything.
   No, once they were gone, she might very well never see them again. And what would she be left with? A memory, and a life in Chickentown.
   "You can't do this to me," she told Mischief. "You can't leave me here, not knowing if you'll ever come back."
   As she spoke she heard the jetty creak behind her. She looked around, already knowing what she would see. Mendelson Shape was coming down the jetty toward them. For the first time she saw quite clearly why he limped (and perhaps why he hadn't been quite agile enough to catch hold of her). He was missing his right foot. It was severed at the ankle, and he walked on the stump as though it were a peg leg. If it gave him any pain he didn't display it. He wore his arrowhead tooth grin as he approached his victims, spreading his arms like an old-style preacher welcoming them into his lethal flock.
   Candy knew that she still had a chance to escape, but she had no desire to turn back.
   Even if it meant risking life and limb to stay here on the jetty with Mischief, it was worth the risk. She grabbed a fierce hold of Mischief's hand and said:
   "Wherever you all go, I go."
   Eight faces looked at her wearing eight different expressions. Fillet looked perplexed, Sallow blinked, Moot feigned indifference, Drowze laughed, Pluckitt sucked in his cheeks, Serpent scowled, and Slop blew out his lips in exasperation. Oh, and Mischief? He gave her a wide, but unquestionably desperate, smile.
   "You mean it?" he said.
   Shape was thirty yards from them, closing fast.
   "Yes, I mean it."
   "Then it seems we have no choice," he said. "We have to trust to the tide. Can you swim?"
   "Not very well."
   "Oh Lordy Lou," Mischief said, and this time all eight faces did the same thing: they rolled their eyes. "I suppose not very well will have to do."
   "Then what are we waiting for?" Candy said.
   In the time it had taken them to have this short conversation, Shape had halved the distance between his claws and their throats.
   "Can we please go ?" Drowze said, yelling louder than a head so small had any business yelling.
   Hand in hand, Candy and Mischief raced to the end of the jetty.
   "One —"said Fillet.
   "Two —"said Pluckitt.
   "Jump !"said Slop.
   And together they leaped into the air, committing their lives to the frenzied waters of the Sea of Izabella.

PART TWO: twilight and beyond

   "Believe me, when I say:
   There are two powers
   That command the soul.
   One is God.
   The other is the tide."

Anon.

10. THE WATERS

   The sea of izabella was considerably colder than Candy had expected. It was gaspingly cold; iced-to-the-marrow cold. But it was too late for her to change her mind now. With the ball knocked out of the cup by Mischief's bullet, the Sea of Izabella was retreating from the jetty at the same extraordinary speed at which it had first appeared. And it was carrying Candy and the John brothers along with it.
   The waters seemed to have a life of their own; several times the sheer force of their energies threatened to pull her under. But Mischief had the trick of it.
   "Don't try to swim," he yelled to her over the roar of the retreating seas. "Just trust to Mama Izabella to take us where She wants to take us."
   Candy had little choice, she quickly realized. The sea was an irresistible power. So why not just lie back and enjoy the ride?
   She did so, and it worked like a charm. The moment Candy stopped flailing, and trusted the sea not to harm her, the Izabella buoyed her up, the waves lifting her so high that on occasion she caught sight of the jetty and the lighthouse. They were already very far off, left behind in another world.
   She scanned the waters looking for Shape, but she couldn't see him.
   "You're looking for Mr. Shape?" said John Slop.
   He didn't need to yell any longer. Now that they were a good distance from the shore, the waves were no longer so noisy.
   "Yes, I was," Candy said, spitting out water every five or six words. "But I don't see him."
   "He has a glyph ," Mischief said, by way of explanation.
   "A glyph? What's a glyph?"
   "It's a craft; a flying machine. Well, actually it's words that turn into a flying machine."
   "She doesn't understand what you're saying, Mischief," John Sallow said.
   Sallow was right. Candy was completely confused by what Mischief was telling her. Words that turn into vehicles? Despite the look of incomprehension on her face, Mischief pressed on with his explanation.
   "The better you are at magic, the more quickly you can conjure a glyph. For the really expert magician, someone who knows his summonings, it can be almost instantaneous. Two or three words and you've got a flying machine. But it will take Shape several minutes to conjure it. He's not a bright fellow. And if you get the conjuration wrong, it can be very messy."
   "Messy? Why?"
   "Because glyphs get you up in the air," Mischief said, pointing skyward. "But if they fail for some reason—"
   "You fall," said Candy.
   "You fall," Mischief said. "One of my sisters died in a decaying glyph."
   "Oh, I'm sorry," Candy said.
   "She was being abducted at the time," he said rather matter-of-factly.
   "That's terrible."
   "We later found out she'd arranged it all."
   "I don't understand. Arranged to be abducted?"
   "Yes. She was in love with this fellow, you see, who did not love her. So she arranged to be abducted so that he would come after her and save her."
   "And did he?"
   "No."
   "So she died for love."
   "It happens," said John Fillet.
   "And what of you, lady?" said John Drowze. "Do you have any sisters?"
   "No."
   "Brothers? Mother? Father?"
   "Yes. Yes. And yes."
   "I don't see you mourning the fact that you may never see them again," John Serpent said, rather sharply.
   "Be quiet, John," Mischief snapped.
   "She may as well hear the truth," John Serpent replied. "There's a very good chance she will never see her home again."
   Something about the expression on his face suggested to Candy that he was taking pleasure in attempting to scare her. "We're going to the Abarat, girl," Serpent went on. "It's a very unpredictable place."
   "So's the Hereafter," Candy said, not about to be intimidated by Serpent.
   "Nothing to compare!" Serpent said. "A few tornadoes? A few poxes? Inconsequential stuff. The Abarat has terrors that will turn your hair white! That's even assuming we reach the islands."
   "What do you mean?"
   "I mean that Mama Izabella contains a wide variety of beasts that will have you as an appetizer."
   "Enough , Serpent," Mischief said.
   "Does he mean sharks?" Candy said, not wishing to exhibit too much nervousness, but already scanning the waters for a telltale dorsal fin.
   "Sharks I'm not familiar with," Mischief replied. "But the Great Green Mantizac would certainly swallow us whole. We're not red, you see."
   "Red?"
   "The creatures in the Izabella leave the color red alone. That's why all the ships and boats and ferries on the Sea of Izabella—every single one—are painted red."
   Candy was listening to this, but in truth she was only half hearing it. The flurry of events on the jetty hadn't given her time to properly think through the consequences of what she was doing. Now she had committed herself to the waters, and there was no way back. Perhaps she might never see her family again.
   What would it be like in the house, when the family realized that she'd gone? They would surely assume the worst: think she'd been abducted or simply run away.
   It was her mother she was most concerned about, because she'd take it the hardest. Hopefully there'd be some way to get a message to her when she reached their destination.
   "You're not regretting that you came, I hope?" Mischief said, his expression suggesting he was feeling a little guilty for his own part in this.
   "No," Candy replied firmly. "Absolutely not."
   The words had no sooner escaped her lips than a big wave lifted her up and wrenched her away from the John brothers. In just a couple of seconds, she and Mischief were carried away from one another. She heard three or four of the brothers yelling to her, but she couldn't make sense of what they were saying. She caught sight of them in the dip between the waves, but the glimpse was brief. The next moment they were gone.
   "I'm over here !" she yelled, hoping that Mischief was a stronger swimmer than she was and would be able to make his way back to her. But the words were no sooner out of her mouth than another wave of substantial size came along and carried her even farther away from the spot where they'd been parted.
   A little twitch of fear clutched her stomach.
   "Don't panic," she told herself. "Whatever you do, don't panic." But her own advice was hard to take. The waves were getting larger all the time, each one carrying her a little higher than the one that preceded it and then delivering her into an even deeper trough.
   However much she told herself not to be afraid, there was no escaping from the facts. She was suddenly alone in an alien sea, filled with all kinds of—
   Her panic stopped in its tracks, shocked out of her by a sight of such peculiarity all other concerns were forgotten.
   There, squatting around a small table at the bottom of the next wave were four card players. The table around which they were sitting was apparently floating freely a couple of inches above the surface of the water, and the players were squatted around it, the very picture of nonchalance.
   Candy just had time to think, I've seen everything now .
   Then another wave caught her, and she was carried down its steep blue slope into the midst of the game.

11. THE CARD PLAYERS

   The four players were a mixture of species. Their skin was scaly and had a silvery-green gleam to it, while their hands, in which they held fans of very battered playing cards, were webbed. Their faces, however, possessed all the features of a human face but seasoned with a hint of fish. The game they were immersed in seemed to be demanding their full attention, because not one of the four noticed Candy until she came barreling down the flank of the wave and all but collided with their table.
   "Hey! Watch out!" a female among the quartet complained. "And keep your distance. No spectators!"
   Three of the players were looking up at Candy now, while the fourth took the opportunity to take a surreptitious peek at the cards held by the players to his left and right. As soon as he'd done so, he concealed his cheating by feigning a great deal of interest in Candy.
   "You look lost," said the cheat, who was a male of this hybrid species. His accent seemed vaguely French.
   "Yes, I suppose I am," said Candy, spitting out water. "Actually, I suppose I'm very lost."
   "Help her, Deaux-Deaux," the cheat casually said to the player on his left. "You're going to lose this game anyway."
   "How do you know?"
   It was the fourth player, a female, who offered up the answer. Because you always lose, my dear," she said, patting his shoulder. "Now go and help the girl."
   Deaux-Deaux glanced at his hand of cards, and seeming to realize that he was indeed going to lose, tossed them down onto the table.
   "I don't see why we can't play water polo like everybody else," he complained, with more than a hint of piscatorial pout.
   Then he drained the liquor glass that was sitting on the table in front of him and did something that defied all expectation. He got up from the table, and using his enormous feet, he skipped over the water to Candy, then squatted down again in the sea beside her. The smell of his breath was potent, and he seemed to have some difficulty fixing his focus on her.
   She was familiar with people in this condition, and it irritated her, but she was happier to have company in the water than to be alone.
   "I'm Deaux-Deaux," the creature said.
   "Yes, I heard," Candy said. "I'm Candy Quackenbush."
   "You're from the Hereafter, aren't you?" he said as they bobbed up and down together.
   "Yes, I am."
   "If you're thinking of going back, it's going to be a long trip."
   "No, no, I don't want to go back," Candy said. "I'm headed for the Abarat."
   "You are?"
   At the mention of the Abarat, there was a show of interest from the rest of the table. Two of the three other players threw in their hands, leaving the cheat protesting that this was unfair because he had the winning hand.
   "That's because you cheated, Pux," one of the females said, and getting up in the same casual fashion as Deaux-Deaux, skipped over to Candy. Unlike her partner, she was not drunk. Indeed she studied their human visitor with a curious intensity, which put Candy in mind of the look Mischief had first given her.
   "Are you by any chance responsible for this occurrence?"
   "Which occurrence would that be?" Candy said.
   "You are, aren't you?" the female said. "I'm Tropella, by the way."
   "I'm very pleased—"
   "Yes, yes," Tropella said impatiently. "You called the Izabella, didn't you?"
   Candy saw no reason not to tell the truth. "Yes," she admitted. "I called the sea. I didn't realize what I was doing when—"
   Again, rather rudely, she was cut off. "Yes, yes. But why? It is forbidden."
   "Oh, let the girl alone," Deaux-Deaux said.
   "No, but this is not to be taken lightly. The waters were never to go back to the Hereafter. We all know that. So why—"
   "Look," said Candy, interrupting her questioner with the same curtness she'd received from Tropella. "Can we have this conversation later? I have a friend somewhere in the sea. And I've lost him."
   "Oh Lordy Lou," said Deaux-Deaux. "What's his name?"
   "Well, there're eight of them. He has these brothers and they live—"
   "On his head?" Deaux-Deaux said, leaning closer to Candy, his eyes wide.
   "Yes. You know him?"
   "That can only be John Mischief," Tropella said.
   "Yes, that's him."
   At the mention of John Mischief's presence hereabouts, the remaining card player abandoned their table and skipped over to Candy. She had all their attention now.
   "You know John Mischief?" Tropella said.
   "A little."
   "He's a master criminal," Pux chimed in. "Wanted on several Hours for grand larceny and the Lord alone knows what else."
   "Really? He didn't seem like a criminal to me. In fact, he was very polite."
   "Oh, we don't care if he's a criminal," said Tropella. "The laws of the land aren't like the laws of the sea. We don't have courts and prisons."
   "We don't have a lot of thieves," Pux said, "because we don't have much to steal."
   "We're all Sea-Skippers, by the way," Deaux-Deaux explained.
   "And you?" Tropella said, still studying Candy with that odd intensity of hers. "You were not wanted there, perhaps?"
   "I'm sorry?"
   "You weren't wanted in your world. Your business is in the Abarat ."
   Tropella didn't seem to require Candy to confirm or deny this; she was simply informing her of something she'd already decided.
   "I wonder if we could do something about finding Mischief?" Candy said, looking from face to face.
   "Deaux-Deaux," Pux said, "you have the largest voice."
   "Oh. My pleasure," said Deaux-Deaux.
   He clambered somewhat unsteadily onto the surface of the water and skipped up the side of the next large wave. Having reached the top, he stood there and hollered, confirming the fact that he did indeed have a voice of operatic proportions.
   "Mister Mischief!" he yelled. "We have your girlfriend and we will eat her in two minutes with a small side salad, unless you come here and save her." He grinned at Candy. "Just kidding," he said. "Well, Mister Mischief,"he yelled again. "Where are you ?"
   "He is joking?" Candy said to Pux.
   "Oh yes," said Pux. "We wouldn't eat an important person like you. Sometimes we'll take a sailor, but—" He shrugged. "—so would you if it was always fish. Yellow fish, green fish, blue fish. Fish with funny little eyes that go pop in your mouth. It gets so boring, eating fish. So yes, we eat a sailor now and then. But not you. You we will see safely to your destination. On that you may rely."
   Deaux-Deaux was still hollering, running up waves like a man running up a down escalator so as to stay at the top.
   "Hey, Mischief! We are very, very hungry."
   "I think the joke's—"
   Candy was about to say over . But she never finished the sentence. Before she could do so, John Mischief erupted out of the water behind Deaux-Deaux and grabbed him around the waist. Deaux-Deaux toppled backwards, and the two of them flailed wildly in the water for half a minute—the brothers hollering all manner of threats—until Pux and Tropella were able to skip over and bring the altercation to a halt.
   "Hey, hey," Deaux-Deaux said, climbing back onto the water to retreat from a furious Mischief. He held his webbed hands up palms out, to keep his attacker at bay. "It was a joke. A little joke. I was just trying to get your attention. We mean your cutie-pie no harm. I mean, what kind of fish-folk do you think we are? Tell him, Candy."
   "They've all been very kind to me," Candy confirmed. "Nobody's laid a finger on me."
   The Johns were not convinced. They were all exchanging fiercely suspicious glances.
   "If it was a joke," John Drowze said fiercely, "then it was an extremely asinine joke."
   "I would have drowned without their help," Candy said, attempting to cool the situation down. "I swear. I was starting to panic."
   "But you're right," Pux said. "It was an imbecilic stupid joke. So, please, in the name of peace let us carry you both to the Abarat. The Izabella can be rough, and we would not wish to see two such significant personages drown."
   "You would carry us?" said John Mischief, smiling his unruly smile. "Truly?"
   "Truly," said Tropella. "It's the least we can do."
   It certainly sounded like a good idea to Candy. Despite the fact that she'd done as John Mischief had suggested, and relied on Mama Izabella to bear her up, she was still extremely tired. The icy water and the pummeling of the waves—not to mention the pursuits that had preceded this aquatic adventure—had taken their toll.
   "What do you think?" Candy said to the Johns. "Should we accept the ride?"
   "I think it's up to you," Mischief said.
   "Good," Candy said. "Then I say yes ?
   "Yes?" Pux said to Mischief.
   "If the lady says yes, then yes it is," Mischief replied.
   "Splendid," said the fourth card player. "I'm Kocono, by the way. And I just want to say what a delight it is to meet Mr. Mischief. Tropella was right, we don't care about the law of the land. So they say you're a criminal, so what? You're a master . That's what counts."
   The Johns erupted into a chaotic din of denials and explanations at Kocono's little speech. Candy only caught fragments of their defenses in the uproar, but they sounded distinctly contradictory. She was very amused.
   "Is it true?" she said, laughing, as the protestations grew wilder. "Are you all master criminals?"
   "Put it this way…" John Slop began.
   "Be careful now," John Moot warned his brother.
   "We're not saints."
   "So it is true," Candy replied.
   Mischief nodded. "It's true," he conceded. "You're in the company of eight world-class thieves," he said, not without a little touch of pride. "Saints we are not."
   "But then," said Deaux-Deaux, "who is?" He thought on this. "Besides saints."
   With this matter settled, Candy and Mischief were each lifted up between two of the Sea-Skippers, their legs propped up on the creature skipping ahead of them, and supported by those skipping behind. If it wasn't the most comfortable way to travel, it was certainly preferable to being immersed in the cold water, in fear of drowning or being nibbled at by Great Green Mantizacs.
   "Which island are you going to?" Pux asked Candy.
   "I don't know," she replied. "This is my first visit."
   The Sea-Skippers looked at the Johns for an answer.
   It was John Drowze who replied. "I say we go to the Yebba Dim Day, in the Straits of Dusk."
   There was a general consensus from the brothers.
   "TheYebba Dim Day it is," Kocono announced.
   "Wait," Candy said. "Don't forget your table."
   "Oh, Mizza will find her own way home," Kocono said. "Mizza!"
   A head with large, rather woebegone features—and a square cranium almost as flat as the shell on which the Sea-Skippers' cards and liquor glass still stood—appeared from the water.
   "You want me to wait for you at Tazmagor?" the creature said.
   "Yes, please," said Kocono.
   "It was nice playing on you," Deaux-Deaux said. "As always."
   "Oh, think nothing of it," the Card Table replied, and paddled off through the swell.
   Candy shook her head. For some reason, out of the back of her skull came the memory of her beloved uncle Fred, her mother's elder brother, who'd worked in a zoo in Chicago, cleaning up after the animals. Once, he'd been taking her around the place, pointing out his favorite animals, who were all oddities. The two-toed sloths, the anteaters, the mules.
   "If you ever doubted that God had a sense of humor, all you'd have to do is look at some of these guys," he'd remarked.
   Candy smiled to herself, picturing Uncle Fred's round, bald face as he looked fondly down at her. No doubt the sight of Mizza the Floating Card Table would have had him laughing until the tears trickled down his face.
   "What are you smiling at, lady?" Mischief asked Candy.
   But before she had a chance to explain, the Sea-Skippers took off at a breath-snatching speed, and they were on their way to the Yebba Dim Day.

12. A TALK ON THE TIDE

   It was a bizarre journey for candy. for john Mischief too, she suspected. Even though the noise of the sea and the slap of the Sea-Skippers' feet on the waters prevented them from conversing, Mischief and his brothers would occasionally erupt in laughter, as though they were revisiting their recent adventures and were suddenly hugely amused by the fact that it was ending in this comfortable but faintly absurd fashion.
   For her part, Candy found the rhythm of the travel quite relaxing after a while and was so lulled that she let her eyes close. Sleep quickly overtook her strangely fatigued body. When she opened her eyes, an hour and twenty minutes later, according to her watch, the sky was darkening overhead.
   She was by habit a great sky watcher, and she knew the names of many of the stars and constellations. But though a sprinkling of stars had appeared as the darkness deepened, she found she could recognize none of the configurations ranged above her. At first she assumed she was simply looking at the sky from a different angle, and so was failing to recognize what was in fact a perfectly obvious constellation. But as she continued to study the heavens as they darkened to night (an unnatural night, by Minnesotan standards: it was barely two in the afternoon), she realized that she was not mistaken. There were no recognizable arrangements of stars up there.
   This was not the same heaven that hung over Minnesota.
   For some reason she found this much more disquieting than the fact of the Sea of Izabella appearing from nowhere, or the prospect of some hitherto unvisited archipelago of islands awaiting her somewhere ahead.
   She had assumed (naively, perhaps) that at least the stars would be constant. After all, hadn't the same stars she knew by name hung over all the other fantastic worlds that had existed on earth? Over Atlantis, over El Dorado, over Avalon? How could something so eternal, so immutable, be so altered ?
   It distressed her, and yes, it made her a little afraid of what lay ahead. Apparently the Abarat wasn't just another part of the planet she knew, simply hidden from the sight of ordinary eyes. It was a different world entirely. Perhaps it had different religions, different ideas about good and evil, about what was real and what wasn't.

   But it was too late to turn her back on all of this. After all, something here had called her, hadn't it? Wasn't that why she'd been drawing on her workbook the same design she'd found on the ball in the lighthouse: because for some urgent reason the ball had been sending out a portion of its power (a power to summon seas), and her mind had been ready to receive it? She'd done so without any conscious thought: drawn, and redrawn the design in a dreamy state. She'd even walked away from the principal's office without giving what she was doing any deep thought, simply going where her feet and her instincts had led her.
   Though this all had looked accidental at the time, perhaps none of it was. Perhaps, as Tropella had said, Candy had business in the Abarat . Was it possible?
   She was just a schoolgirl from Chickentown. What business could she have in a world she hadn't even seen?
   But then was the idea any less likely than the fact that the sky over her head was now filled with stars from the heavens of another universe? Even the darkness between those stars—the darkness of space itself—was not like space as she saw it from her bedroom window. There were subtle colors pulsing through it: shades of deepest purple and rich royal blue, moving like tides across the sky, ready to be swum or sailed.

   In the time that she'd been turning all these wild ideas over, the Sea of Izabella had quieted down considerably. The waters were virtually flat now, and the step of the Sea-Skippers more hushed because it was easier going. It was even possible for Candy and the Johns to chat normally, as their bearers skipped side by side.
   "We're moving through the Ring of Darkness right now," John Drowze explained. "That light you see ahead of us"—Candy had not seen any light before, but now that it was pointed out, she saw a distinct paling of the sky close to the horizon—"the light at Efreet—"
   "—one of the Unfettered Islands," Sallow broke in to add.
   "What does that mean?"
   "It means they govern themselves," said John Slop. "They don't pay taxes to the Abaratian government, nor are they part of the Commexo Company."
   "Oh, don't get political on us, Slop," John Drowze complained.
   "I just wanted her to understand the complexities of—"
   "Nobody understands the complexities of the islands anymore," John Mischief said despairingly. "It used to be so simple. You had the Islands of Night and the Islands of Day—"
   "And almost constant war," John Serpent interjected.
   "At least everybody knew where they stood. You had your allegiances and you lived and died by them. But now?" He made a noise of profound disgust. "Now who knows?"
   "Oh, do stop," said John Drowze wearily.
   If there was more to be said on the subject (and undoubtedly there was) nobody got to say it, because at that moment Pux whispered—
   "Quiet, everyone."
   "What's the problem?" said Serpent.
   "Lookup."
   Everybody turned their gazes skyward. There were dark forms, like those of huge birds with the bodies of men, circling around, blotting out the stars.
   "Vlitters," said Deaux-Deaux.
   "They won't touch us," Sallow opined.
   "Maybe not," said Pux. "But if they see us, they can report us to Inflixia Grueskin. We're in her waters."
   Candy didn't ask for the details on Inflixia Grueskin; the name was descriptive enough.
   "Are you going under the Gilholly Bridge?" Mischief whispered.
   "It's the quickest way," said Tropella. "And we're all getting tired. Trust us. We know what we're doing."
   Mischief duly fell silent. By degrees the travelers approached the bridge in question, which spanned perhaps half a mile's width of glacial water between two islands. On one side the light was still embryonic, barely delineating the shapes of the cliffs and the immense buildings that were perched on top of them. On the other side, the light was noticeably brighter. Candy could see a temple of some kind, or perhaps the ruins of a temple, and beside it a row of pillars.
   One of the creatures Pux had referred to as Vlitters swooped down and skimmed the shining water, its lower jaw cutting through the reflection of the starlit heavens. Candy caught only a glimpse as it dived, skimmed and rose again. It was an odd-looking beast: a cross between a bat and a human being. Though it had failed to see the Sea-Skippers and their passengers, the Vlitter did see something edible. It scooped up a fish the size of a baby, which let out a furious doglike yelping as it was taken, and continued to yelp until the Vlitter consumed it, mercifully somewhere too high up to be seen.
   They moved on, with the yelping of the doomed dog-fish still echoing off the walls of the temple and the cliffs, away from the calm waters beneath the bridge. The sea became steadily rougher as they cleared the protection of the islands, and Candy was glad for all their sakes that the journey's end was close at hand. What would she have done, she wondered, if she hadn't the good fortune to meet the card players at their game? She would surely have drowned, despite all that Mischief had told her about relying on the kind arms of Mama Izabella.
   They moved off to the left now, and what Candy saw ahead was yet another puzzlement. The sky, which had seemed to be growing lighter, was darkening once again. There was an immense bank of blue-gray mist filling the panorama ahead of them, and there were more stars showing through the mist. No doubt of it, the glimpse of day she'd seen had been only that: a glimpse. Now night was approaching again.
   The sight of this murky vista was clearly a welcome one for the Sea-Skippers.
   Pux was so happy he broke out into song as he skipped. The ditty was sung to the familiar tune of "O Christmas Tree," but the words were unexpected.


"O woe is me!
O woe is me!
I used to have a Hamster Tree!
But it was eaten by a newt,
And now I have no cuddly fruit!
O woe is me! "O woe is me!
I used to have a Hamster Treeee!


   "You like my song?" Pux said, when he was done.
   "It wasn't quite what I was expecting," Candy said. "But yes. It was certainly… um… unusual."
   "I'll teach it to you!" Pux said. "Then you'll have something to sing as you go around the Yebba Dim Day and people will think, Oh she's one of us ."
   "Is this a very well-known song?"
   "Believe it or not," said John Serpent, his expression one of profound distaste, as usual, "yes."
   "Then I should learn it," Candy said, secretly glad to be causing the condescending John Serpent a little discomfort. "So," said Mischief. "From the top. Altogether now."
   Everybody joined in with the song this time (except Serpent and Moot), and Candy quickly picked it up. By the time they came to the fourth rendition, Pux said:
   "This time a solo, from Miss Quackenbush."
   "Oh no…"
   "Oh yes," said Deaux-Deaux. "We've carried you all this way. The least you can do is sing us a song."
   It was a reasonable request. So Candy sang out her first Abaratian song as the mist ahead began to thin, and they skipped their way into the Straits of Dusk.
   "Nice. Very nice," said Pux when she was done. "Now I'll teach you another."
   "No, I think one's enough, for now. Maybe another time."
   "I don't imagine there will be another time," said Tropella. "We very rarely come into the shipping routes. It's not safe. If we go to sleep on the waves, we risk getting mown down by a ferry. That's why we head back out to the Ring of Darkness. It's safer there."
   "Don't be so sure you won't meet this lady again," Mischief said to the company. "I believe she's in your lives forever now. And we're in hers. There are some people, you know, who are too important to ever be forgotten. I think she's one of them."
   Candy smiled; it was a sweet speech, even if she didn't quite believe it.
   Nobody seemed to know what to say when Mischief had finished, so there was just a thoughtful silence for a minute or two as the mists ahead of them continued to part.
   "Ah…" said John Sallow. "I do believe I see the Yebba Dim Day."
   The last scraps of mist parted now, and their destination came into view. It was not an island in any sense that Candy understood the word. It seemed to be a huge stone-and-metal head, with towers built on top of its cranium, all filled with pinprick windows, from which beams of light emerged to pierce the mist.
   "Set your watch to Eight," Mischief said to Candy.
   "I don't understand," Candy said. "One minute it looks like it's dawn, the next it's night, and now you're saying set my watch to eight o'clock."
   "That's because we're now in the Straits of Dusk," said John Sallow, as though the matter were simplicity itself. "It's always Eight in the Evening here."
   Candy looked well and truly confused.
   "Don't worry," said Deaux-Deaux. "Eventually you'll get the knack of it. For now just go with the flow . It's easier that way."
   While Candy set her watch to eight o'clock, the Sea-Skippers brought them around the front of the immense head of the Yebba Dim Day.
   A steep staircase ran like a vein up the side of the place, and more light poured from a host of windows and doors. There was a great riotous commotion coming out of the head, the din of voices shouting and singing and crying and laughing, all echoing across the water.
   "So, lady," said Deaux-Deaux, "here we are."
   The Sea-Skippers brought them to a tiny harbor in the nook where the titan's chest met his arm. There were a number of small red boats in the harbor, many of which were in the process of entering or leaving—and a sizeable crowd on the quayside. The entrance of the four Sea-Skippers—along with their passengers—caused a good deal of confusion and comment.
   Very soon people were appearing from inside the Great Head to see what all the brouhaha was about. Among these newcomers were several people in uniforms.
   "Police!" said John Sallow sharply.
   The word was echoed among his brothers.
   "Police?"
   "Police!"
   "Police!"
   Mischief turned to Candy and swiftly caught hold of her arm.
   "So quickly—" he said.
   "What do you mean?"
   "I have to go. So quickly."
   "Because of the police?"
   "Keep your voice down," said John Serpent; his usual charmless self.
   "Hush !" Mischief said to him. "Don't you ever talk to my lady that way again!"
   "Your lady!" Serpent snorted, as though in these final snatched moments he wanted to express his contempt for Mischief's respectful handling of Candy. But there was no time. Not for Serpent; nor for Mischief; not even for Candy to say more than a hurried: "Good-bye!"
   The police were coming down the dock, parting the crowd as they advanced. Candy doubted that they'd recognized the criminals yet (though Mischief's antlers made him exceptionally easy to spot); but they were interested in these new arrivals, and Mischief wasn't going to allow their general curiosity to turn into an arrest scene.
   "Do you have a permit for those Sea-Skippers?" one of the policemen hollered.
   "This is where we part, lady," Mischief said. "We'll meet again, I know we will."
   He took her hand, turned it over, and lightly kissed the palm. Then he jumped into the water.
   "Hey, you!" a second policeman yelled, barging through the crowd to make his way to the end of the quayside. "It's him!" he yelled.
   "Oh no," Candy heard Deaux-Deaux say. "This is a pleasant introduction to the Yebba Dim Day."
   "We should have gone to Speckle Frew," said Tropella. "It would have been a sight quieter."
   "Well, it's too late now," said Pux.
   "He's getting away!" the second policeman was shouting.
   "Who ?" came the reply from one of his companions.
   "Whatshisname! The one who cleared out Malleus Nyce's house in Tazmagor! Him ! Whatshisface!" He was steadily becoming redder and redder as his frustration mounted. "The master criminal !"
   At which point about seven people in the crowd said: "John Mischief!" at the same time.
   "Yeah! That's what I said," the policeman replied lamely. "John Mischief !"
   Now all eyes, both those of the crowd and of the officers, were fixed on the patch of turbulent water where John Mischief had last been seen.
   One of the policemen, a huge blue-skinned man with a square-cut orange beard, now attempted to commandeer one of the faster-looking boats in the little harbor, apparently intending to give chase in it. But its owner—who was almost as big as the officer, and had the advantage of being six or seven yards away, across a span of grimy dock water—wasn't playing.
   "You! Get that boat over here!" the officer yelled.
   The man deliberately neglected to look in the officer's direction and proceeded to maneuver his vessel out through the knot of boats. Clearly the idea of losing his precious boat to a belligerent officer with more testosterone than sea-sense had made him nervous. The attempted retreat enraged the officer even more.
   "Come back!" he yelled. "Your vessel is commandeered!"
   "Let it be, Branx!" one of the other officers called. "There are plenty of other boats."
   But Officer Branx wasn't going to have his authority disregarded. Pulling off his jacket and boots, he jumped into the dirty water and began to swim toward the retreating vessel, yelling as he went.
   "You bring that boat right back here! Do you hear me? Right back here !"
   His absurd behavior had trebled the crowd on the dock. The wooden structure was creaking, sending up a warning to those perched on it that it would not be wise to perch there much longer. The warning was, however, ignored. And the noisier the crowd became, the more people emerged from the Great Head to see what was going on.
   "You know, Candy," Tropella said, "I don't want another hurried good-bye—"
   "But if I'm going to go without being noticed, this would be a smart time to do it?"
   "Don't you agree?"
   "Absolutely," Candy said.
   Everybody's attention was on the swimming policeman, who had managed to reach the escapee in the boat and had hauled himself onboard where—despite cries from his fellow officers that he should desist—he proceeded to harangue the boat owner, who promptly hit the policeman with an oar. The oar broke, and Officer Branx toppled over the edge of the boat like a silent comedian, sinking into the filthy water.
   Consternation! Now it was the boat owner who dived in to drag the unconscious man up out of the water, mindful, no doubt, of what the penalty would be if the overzealous officer drowned. The dowsing had shocked Policeman Branx out of his unconscious state however, and as soon as he surfaced, the altercation began afresh. The two men struggled and flailed in the water for a while, during which time Candy—having exchanged the very briefest of farewells with the Sea-Skippers—slipped away through the crowd toward the door of the Yebba Dim Day.
   As she went she glanced over her shoulder, so as to have one last glimpse of her friends to fix in her head; just in case Mischief was overly optimistic in his beliefs, and none of them ever met again.
   But Mischief had long gone, and all four Skippers had already leaped into the water and dived down under the boats so as to escape the harbor undetected.
   Candy experienced a sudden and acute sense of loss. She felt utterly and painfully alone. Without John Mischief, how would she get by in this strange world?
   It wasn't that she felt the need to turn around and go home. There was nothing for her back in Chickentown, or at least nothing that she wanted. She hated her father. And her mother, well, she just made her feel empty. No, there was nothing for her there. But coming here, entering this strange New World, was like being born again.
   A new life, under new stars.
   So it was with a curious mingling of anticipation and heavy heart that she pressed against the flow of the crowd and eventually brought herself through the doors and into the city that stood on the Straits of Dusk.

13. IN THE GREAT HEAD

   Candy had always prided herself upon having a vivid imagination. When, for instance, she privately compared her dreams with those her brothers described over the breakfast table, or her friends at school exchanged at break, she always discovered her own night visions were a lot wilder and weirder than anybody else's. But there was nothing she could remember dreaming—by day or night—that came close to the sight that greeted her in The Great Head of the Yebba Dim Day.
   It was a city, a city built from the litter of the sea. The street beneath her feet was made from timbers that had clearly been in the water for a long time, and the walls were lined with barnacle-encrusted stone. There were three columns supporting the roof, made of coral fragments cemented together. They were buzzing hives of life unto themselves; their elaborately constructed walls pierced with dozens of windows, from which light poured.
   There were three main streets that wound up and around these coral hives, and they were all lined with habitations and thronged with the Yebba Dim Day's citizens.
   As far as Candy could see there were plenty of people who resembled folks she might have expected to see on the streets of Chickentown, give or take a sartorial detail: a hat, a coat, a wooden snout. But for every one person that looked perfectly human, there were two who looked perfectly other than human. The children of a thousand marriages between humankind and the great bestiary of the Abarat were abroad on the streets of the city.
   Among those who passed her as she ventured up the street were creatures which seemed related to fish, to birds, to cats and dogs and lions and toads. And those were just the species she recognized. There were many more she did not; forms of face that her dream-life had never come near to showing her.
   Though she was cold, she didn't care. Though she was weary to her marrow, and lost—oh so very lost—she didn't care. This was a New World rising before her, and it was filled with every kind of diversity.
   A beautiful woman walked by wearing a hat like an aquarium. In it was a large fish whose poignant expression bore an uncanny resemblance to the woman on whose head it was balanced. A man half Candy's size ran by with a second man half the first fellow's size sitting in the hood of his robe, throwing nuts into the air. A creature with red ladders for legs was stalking its way through the crowd farther up the street, its enormous coxcomb bright orange. A cloud of blue smoke blew by, and as it passed a foggy face appeared in the cloud and smiled at Candy before the wind dispersed it.

   Everywhere she looked there was something to amaze. Besides the citizens there were countless animals in the city, wild and domesticated. White-faced monkeys, like troupes of clowns, were on the roofs baring their scarlet bottoms to passersby. Beasts the size of chinchillas but resembling golden lions ran back and forth along the power cables looped between the houses, while a snake, pure white but for its turquoise eyes, wove cunningly between the feet of the crowd, chattering like an excited parrot. To her left a thing that might have had a lobster for a mother and Picasso for a father was clinging to a wall, drawing a flattering self-portrait on the white plaster with a stick of charcoal. To her right a man with a firebrand was trying to persuade a cow with an infestation of yellow grasshoppers leaping over its body to get out of his house.
   The grasshoppers weren't the only insects in the city. Far from it. The air was filled with buzzing life. High overhead birds dined on clouds of mites that blazed like pinpricks of fire. Butterflies the size of Candy's hand moved just above the heads of the crowd, and now and then alighted on a favored head, as though it were a flower. Some were transparent, their veins running with brilliant blue blood. Others were fleshy and fat; these the preferred food of a creature that was as decadently designed as a peacock, its body vestigial, its tail vast, painted with colors for which Candy had no name.
   And on all sides—among these astonishments—were things that were absurdly recognizable. Televisions were on in many of the houses, their screens visible through undraped windows. A cartoon boy was tap-dancing on one screen, singing some sentimental song on another, and on a third a number of wrestlers fought: humans matched with enormous striped insects that looked thoroughly bored with the proceedings. There was much else that Candy recognized. The smell of burned meat and spilled beer. The sound of boys fighting. Laughter, like any other laughter. Tears, like any other tears. To her amazement, she heard English spoken everywhere, though there were dozens of dialects. And of course the mouth parts that delivered the words also went some way to shape the nature of the English that was being spoken: some of it was high and nasal, a singsong variation that almost seemed about to become music. From other directions came a guttural version that descended at times into growls and yappings.
   All this, and she had advanced perhaps fifty yards in the Yebba Dim Day.
   The houses at the lower end of The Great Head, where she was presently walking, were all red, their fronts bowed. She quickly grasped why. They were made of boats, or the remains of boats. To judge by the nets that were hung as makeshift doors, the occupants of these houses were the families of fishermen who'd settled here. They'd dragged their vessels out of the cool evening air, and taken a hammer and crowbar to the cabins and the deck and hold, peeling apart the boards, so as to make some kind of habitation on land. There was no order to any of this; people just seemed to take whatever space was available. How else to explain the chaotic arrangement of vessels, one on top of the other?
   As for power, it seemed to be nakedly stolen from those higher up in the city (and therefore, presumably, more wealthy). Cables ran down the walls, entering houses and exiting again, to provide service for the next house.

   It was not a foolproof system by any means. At any one moment, looking up at the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of heaped-up houses, somebody's lights were flickering, or there was an argument going on about the cables. No doubt the presence of monkeys and birds, pecking at the cables, or simply swinging from them, did not improve matters.
   It was a wonder, Candy thought, that this outlandish collection of people, animals and habitations worked at all. She could not imagine the people of Chickentown putting up with such chaotic diversity. What would they think of the ladder-legged creature or the smoke creature, or the baby beast throwing nuts in the air?
   I need to remember as many details as I can, so when I get back home I can tell everybody what it was like, down to the last brick, the last butterfly. I wonder , she thought to herself, if they make cameras here? If they have televisions , she reasoned, then surely they have cameras .
   Of course she'd first have to find out if the few soaked and screwed-up dollars she had in the bottom of her pocket were worth anything here. If they were, and she could find somewhere to purchase a camera, then she could make a proper record of what she was seeing. Then she'd have proof, absolute proof that this place, with all its wonders, existed.
   "Are you cold?"
   The woman who had addressed her looked as though she might have some Sea-Skipper in her heritage. Vestigial gills ran from the lower half of her cheek into her neck, and there was a faintly mottled quality to her skin. Her eyes had a subtle cast of silver about them.
   "Actually I am a little," Candy said.
   "Come with me. I'm Izarith."
   "I'm Candy Quackenbush. I'm new here."
   "Yes, I could tell," Izarith said. "It's cold today; the water gets up through the stones. One day this place is just going to rot and collapse on itself."
   "That would be a pity," Candy said.
   "You don't live here," Izarith said, with a trace of bitterness. She led Candy to one of the houses made from fishing boats. As she followed the woman to the threshold, Candy felt just a little pang of doubt. Why was she being invited into Izarith's house so quickly, without any real reason, beyond that of a stranger's generosity?
   Izarith seemed to sense her unease. "Don't come in if you don't want to," she said. "I just thought you looked in need of a fire to warm you through."
   Before Candy could reply there was a series of crashes from outside the Head, accompanied by a din of yells and screams.
   "The dock!" Candy said, looking back toward the door.

   Obviously the jetty had finally given out beneath the weight of the crowd. There was a great rush of people out to see the calamity, which was of course only going to make matters worse out there. Izarith showed no desire to go and see what had happened. She just said: "Are you coming?"
   "Yes," said Candy, offering the woman a smile of thanks and following her inside.
   Just as Izarith had promised there was a fire in the little hearth, which the woman fueled with a handful of what looked like dried seaweed. The kindling was consumed quickly and brightly. A soothing wave of warmth hit Candy. "Oh, that's nice," she said, warming her hands.
   On the floor in front of the fire was a child of perhaps two, her features one generation further removed from the sea-dwelling origins of her grandparents, or perhaps her great-great-grandparents.
   "This is Maiza. Maiza, this is Candy. Say hello."
   "Hell. O," said Maiza.
   With her duty to courtesy done, Maiza returned to playing with her toys, which were little more than painted blocks of wood. One of them was a boat, painted red; a crude copy, perhaps, of the vessel whose boards had built these walls.
   Izarith went to check on the other child in the room; a baby, asleep in a cot.
   "That's Nazre," she said. "He's been sick since we came here. He was born at sea, and I believe he wants to go back there."
   She bent low, talking softly to the baby.
   "That's what you want, isn't it, dearling? You want to be out away from here."
   "You want that too?" Candy said.
   "With all my heart. I hate this place."
   "Can't you leave?"
   Izarith shook her head. "My husband, Ruthus, had a boat, and we used to fish around the Outer Islands, where the shoals are still good. But the boat was getting old. So we came here to trade it in for a new one. We had some money from the season's fishing and we thought we'd be able to get a good boat. But there were no new boats to be had. Nobody's building anymore. And now we're almost out of money. So my husband's working putting in toilets for the folks in the towers, and I'm stuck down here with the children."
   As she told her tale, she pulled back a makeshift curtain which divided the little room in two and, sorting through a box of garments, she selected a simple dress, which she gave to Candy.
   "Here," she said. "Put this on. If you wear those wet clothes much longer you'll get phlegmatic."
   Gratefully, Candy put it on, feeling secretly ashamed of her initial suspicion. Izarith obviously had a good heart. She had very little to share, but what she had, she was offering.
   "It suits you," Izarith said, as Candy tied a simple rope belt around her waist. The fabric of the dress was brown, but it had a subtle iridescence to it; a hint of blue and silver in its weave.
   "What's the currency here?" Candy asked.
   Plainly Izarith was surprised by the question; understandably so. But she answered anyway. "It's a zem," she said. "Or a paterzem, which is a hundred zem note."
   "Oh."
   "Why do you ask this question?"
   Candy dug in the pocket of her jeans. "It's just that I have some dollars," she said.
   "You have dollars ?" Izarith replied, her mouth wide in astonishment.
   "Yes. A few."
   Candy pulled the sodden notes out and carefully spread them on the hearth, where they steamed in front of the fire.
   Izarith's eyes didn't leave the bills from the moment they appeared. It was almost as though she was witnessing a miracle.
   "Where did you get those… ?" she said, her voice breathless with astonishment. Finally she tore her gaze from the hearth and looked up at Candy.
   "Wait," she said. "Is it possible?"
   "Is what possible?"
   "Do you… come from the Hereafter?"
   Candy nodded. "Actually I come from a place called America."
   "America." Izarith spoke the word like a prayer. "You have dollars, and you come from America." She shook her head in disbelief.
   Candy went down on her haunches before the fire and peeled the now almost dried dollars off the hearth. "Here," she said, offering them to Izarith. "You have them."
   Izarith shook her head, her expression one of almost religious awe.
   "No, no I couldn't. Not dollars. Angels use dollars, not Skizmut like me."
   "Take it from me," Candy said, "I'm not an angel. Very far from it. And what's a Skizmut?"
   "My people are Skizmut. Or they were, generations ago. The bloodline's been diluted, over the years. You have to go back to my great-grandfather for a pure Skizmut."
   She looked melancholy; an expression which suited the form of her face better than any other.
   "Why so sad?"
   "I just wish I could go back into the deeps and make my home there, away from all this…"
   Izarith cast her sad eyes toward the window, which was without frames or panes. The crowd outside moved like a relentless parade. Candy could see how hard it would be to exist in this tiny hovel, with the twilight throng moving up and down the street outside, all the hours that God sent.
   "When you say the deeps," Candy replied, "do you mean the sea?"
   "Yes. Mama Izabella. The Skizmut had cities down there. Deep in the ocean. Beautiful cities, made of white stone."
   "Have you ever seen them?"
   "No, of course not. After two generations, you lose the way of the fish. I would drown, like you."
   "So what can you do?"
   "Live on a boat, as close as we can to the deeps. Live with the rhythm of Mother Izabella beneath us."
   "Well, perhaps the dollars will help you and Ruthus buy a boat," Candy said.
   Candy handed Izarith a ten and one single, keeping six for herself.
   Izarith laughed out loud, the music in her laughter so infectious that her daughter, Maiza, started laughing too.
   "Eleven dollars? Eleven . It would buy two boats! Three boats! It's like eleven paterzem! More, I think!" She looked up, suddenly anxious. "And this is really for me?" she said, as though she was afraid the gift would be reclaimed.
   "It's all yours," Candy said, feeling a little" odd about sounding too magnanimous. After all, it was only eleven bucks.
   "I'm going to spend a little piece of this one," Izarith said, selecting a single, and pocketing the rest. "I'm going to buy some food. The children haven't eaten this day. I think you haven't either." Her eyes were shining; their joy increased by the silvery luster that was the gift of her Skizmut breeding. "Will you stay with them, while I go out?" she said.

   "Of course," Candy said. She suddenly realized she was starving.
   "And Maiza?"
   "Yes, Muma?"
   "Will you be kind to the lady from the Hereafter, while I fetch bread and milk?"
   "Grish fritters!" said Maiza.
   "Is that what you want? Grish fritters with noga seeds?"
   "Grish fritter with noga seeds! Grish fritter with noga seeds!"
   "I won't be long," Izarith said.
   "We'll be fine," Candy said, sitting down beside the child in front of the fire. "Won't we, Maiza?"
   The child smiled again, her tiny teeth semitranslucent, carrying a hint of blue. "Grish fritters with noga seeds!" she said. "All for me!"

14. CARRION

   Over his many years of service to Christopher Carrion, Mendelson Shape had come to know the geography of the Twelfth Tower on the island of Gorgossium very well. He knew his way around the kitchens and the scrying rooms, he knew his way down through the vaults and the Black Chapel and through the Rooms of Tears.
   But today when he returned to the Tower with the news that he had lost everything (the Key, Mischief and his accomplice in his theft, the girl called Candy), Shape was told by Carrion's lumpen-headed servant Naw that he was to report to a chamber he had never visited before: the Great Library close to the top of the Tower.
   Dutifully he did so. It was the largest room he had ever entered in his life: a vast, round, windowless chamber, with stacks of books rising perhaps forty feet into the air.
   Waiting there for his master to arrive, Mendelson was not a happy man. He was dressed in a long shabby coat that was lined with werewolf baby wool, but it didn't keep the cold from his marrow. His teeth wanted to chatter, but he kept them from doing so. It would not be good to show fear, he knew. Carrion would only be inspired to cruelty if he sensed that the creature he was talking to was afraid.
   Mendelson had witnessed Carrion's cruelties many times. Sometimes he'd come to this Tower and it seemed there'd been somebody weeping or screaming or begging for mercy behind every door: all Carrion's handiwork. Even today, climbing the stairs to the Great Library, he'd heard somebody behind the stones, sealed in forever in some dark narrow space in the walls, calling out to him, sobbing for light, a piece of bread, mercy.
   But this was the wrong place to look for mercy, Mendelson knew. The vaulted ceilings of the Twelfth Tower, which were painted with scenes designed to terrify, had looked down on many a dreadful scene, and none had ended—Mendelson was certain—with the granting of mercy.
   His footless leg was aching, but he did not dare sit down, in case Carrion entered and caught him lounging. Instead, to pass the time, he went to one of the many tables in the Library, stacked with books that had presumably been brought down from the shelves because they had caught Carrion's eye.
   One, set on a little lectern for easy reading, was a book Shape remembered from his childhood: Pincoffin's Rhymes and Nonsenses . The book had been a favorite of his, containing many a rhyme and lullaby he still knew by heart, including the one he'd sung to the girl from the Hereafter. It was open to a grim little nursery song he had forgotten. But now, reading it, he was enchanted anew.


Scarebaby, scarebaby,
Where do you run?
Out in the graveyard,
To have you some fun?
Dancing with skeletons
Up from the ground?
Doing a jig
On the burial mound?


   His lips moved as he scanned the words and it brought back a distant memory of his mother, Miasma Shape, sitting with her three boys—Nizz, Naught and Mendelson—reading aloud from Pincoffin's opus. Oh, how he'd idolized his mother! He read on.


Scarebaby, scarebaby,
Horrid you are!
With the wings of a bat,
And a face with a scar,
The fangs of a vampire,
The tail of a snake;
You open your mouth
And the noise that you make
Is a song that the Devil sings,
Bitter and loud.
Tell me, my baby,
Was your mother proud?


   "A song that the Devil sings ." That was a phrase that had lingered in his head over the years, though he had forgotten, until now, its source. He had many times wondered if he could ever hope to make such a song.
   He let a sound escape his throat now. A low, menacing growl that was magnified by the circular chamber. Oh yes, that sounded like something to put fear into the hearts of his enemies. That was the noise, he thought to himself, that he would make when he found that wretched girl again: a sound so horrible, her wits would crumble.
   He made a louder noise still, and from the top of the stacks of books, disturbed by the din, there swooped two winged creatures that descended to a point about three feet over his head and there hovered. They were the size of vultures and they had ashen, bloated faces, like monstrous cherubs.
   "What do you want?" he said, staring up at them.
   Their tiny whiteless eyes fixed on him for a moment, then they seemed to decide that he was nothing of importance and returned to their roosts, climbing in wide spirals to the top of the stacks. Mendelson returned to the final verse of the poem.


Scarebaby, scarebaby,
Where do you run?
Not out to the morning,
Not out in the sun. Y
ou live in my nightmares,
You hide from the day;
And there, little —


   "Shape?"
   The one-footed man turned.
   The voice had come out of the shadows, across the room. No door had opened to let the speaker in. He'd been here all the time, watching Mendelson. Listening to him practice his growls.
   Mendelson didn't move. He simply studied the shadows, waiting for the appearance of the person who had addressed him. He knew of course, who that somebody was. It was the Lord of Midnight himself: Christopher Carrion.
   "Sit," the voice said. "Please, Shape, sit. Are you fond of books?"
   The voice was deep and—even in the simplest of questions– was somehow tinged with despair. It was the voice of someone who had walked in the abyss.
   Mendelson could see him now, faintly. He was an imposing figure, six foot six or more, his long robes black, which was why he had blended so well with the shadows.
   He walked toward Shape, and the candles on the table illuminated him a little.
   He had the most piercing eyes of any man Mendelson had met. They glistened in his bald, pale head. As always, he wore a collar of translucent material that resembled glass, which had been devised to cover the lower half of his head. It was filled with a blue fluid, which was now suddenly lit up by the presence of several snaking forms. They flickered in their fluid—some white as summer lightning, some yellow as sliced fat—weaving bright patterns around the Lord of Midnight's head. Plainly he took pleasure in their proximity, perhaps even a kind of comfort. When one of them brushed against his skin, he smiled, and that smile was so ghastly it made Mendelson want to run from the room.
   He knew from what Naw had told him why Carrion smiled that smile, and what those bright shapes were. Carrion had found a way to channel every nightmarish thought and image out of the coils of his brain and bring them into this semiphysical form. He breathed the fluid, the flickering forms ran in and out of his mouth and nostrils, soaking his soul in his own nightmares.
   His voice, reverberating through this soup of dark visions, was tinged with the power of those nightmares; their terror touched every syllable he spoke.
   "The books, Shape…"
   "Yes? Oh yes, the books. I have books. A few."
   "And what else do you have?" Carrion said.
   The serpentine lights flickered around Midnight's head. His eyes fixed on Mendelson.
   "Or don't have?"
   "You mean the Key?"
   "Yes, of course. The Key. What else would I mean?"
   "Lord, please forgive me. I don't have the Key."
   Mendelson waited, fearing that Carrion would come at him; strike him, perhaps. But no. He just stood there, piercing Shape with his hollow gaze.
   "Go on," he said quietly.
   "I… I found the men who stole it from you."
   "John Mischief and his brothers."
   "Yes."
   "He escaped with the Key to Efreet and took a boat to the Hereafter. I went after him, and I sank the boat, and thought I would have him—"
   "But?"
   "The tide was with him. It carried him all the way to the other side."
   "All the way to the Hereafter?" Carrion said, with a little touch of yearning in his voice.
   "Yes."
   "How is it there?" he said, almost conversationally.
   "I saw very little of it. I was trying to catch Mischief."
   "Of course you were. You were doing your honest best, but he kept avoiding you. Eight heads are better than one, eh? You were outnumbered."
   "I was, Lord," Mendelson said, beginning to dare think that his master understood the hazards his servant Shape had endured to get all the way to the Hereafter and back.
   Carrion went to the largest of the chairs in the Chamber. He sat down in it and knitted his hands together lightly in front of him, as if in prayer.
   "So?" he said.
   "So…?"
   "Tell me what happened."
   "Oh. Well… I almost caught up with him, at Hark's Harbor."
   "The Harbor? I thought it was destroyed."
   "There are some minor portions remaining, Lord. A lighthouse. A jetty."
   "No ships?"
   "No ships. I think those that were scuttled are buried in the earth. Anyway, I saw none."
   "So, go on. You went to the Harbor and—"
   "He had an accomplice."
   "Besides his brothers?"
   "Yes. A girl. A girl from the Hereafter."
   "Ah! He had an accomplice. And a girl, to boot. Poor Shape. You didn't stand a chance."
   "No, Lord."
   "So he gave her the Key?"
   "Did he? I don't know. Yes. Possibly."
   "Did he or did he not give her the Key?" Carrion asked, his voice subtly gaining in volume and menace.
   Mendelson looked at the floor. His teeth had begun to chatter, though he'd promised himself he would not let them.
   "Look at me, Shape."
   Mendelson was afraid to do so. He kept his eyes downcast, like a man confronted by an enraged animal.
   "I said: look at me !"
   Shape seemed to feel something catch hold of his head and jerk it back, so that he was forced to look at the man sitting before him. An instant later that same power pressed on his shoulders, driving him down onto the mosaic floor with such force that his knee bones cracked like whips.
   Carrion's face looked skeletal, the marks around his mouth (where, according to rumor, his grandmother Mater Motley had once sewn up his lips) like the teeth of a skull; the arid flesh above the line of the fluid close to mummified. Only his eyes had any real life. And that was an insane life, crazed beyond recall.
   There was nothing in the world Mendelson Shape wanted more than to be out of the Library at that moment.
   "You failed me ," Carrion said.
   His voice seemed to resonate in Mendelson's head, so that Shape was suddenly and sickeningly aware of the form of his own skull, of the death's head he carried just out of sight behind his skin.
   "I'm sorry. I did all I could. I swear."
   "What was the name of this girl?"
   "I heard only one name. Candy."
   Carrion's upper lip curled at the very idea of sweetness. "Would you know her again if you saw her?"
   "Yes. Of course."
   "Then it seems I must let you live, Mendelson. You have dealt with this girl. Presumably you know something of her nature?"
   "Yes. I believe I do," Shape said, through his chattering teeth. He wanted desperately to look away from Carrion's face, but the Lord of Midnight held him there.
   "I think she probably has the Key, don't you?"
   "But Mischief—"
   "Gave it to her."
   "I didn't see such a thing, Lord."
   "But he will have done so."
   "If I may ask… what makes you so sure?"
   "Because he's like you. He's tired of the chase. He wants somebody else to be the object of my eye, at least for a while." Carrion paused for a moment and looked up at the ceiling. The cherubic beasts, roused from their roosts by the sound of the torment below were circling in the Library vault, enjoying the spectacle.
   Finally, Carrion said: "You have to go back and find me this girl."
   "But, Lord—"
   "Yes?"
   "She came here."
   Carrion rose from his seat. "You saw her, here ?"
   "No. I saw the tide carry her away."
   "So she could have drowned! She could be in the belly of a mantizac !"
   He came at Mendelson finally, his hands raised. Filled with a kind of terrible relief that he was getting what he deserved, Shape felt himself lifted up, though Carrion made no contact with him. He was thrown across the nearest table and the books—including Pincoffin's Rhymes —went flying. Mendelson was held down by an invisible force, so strong it kept his breath from coming freely. He heard his breastbone creak.
   "Listen to me, Shape ," Carrion said. "Your brothers are dead for their failures, and you will join theminthe lime pit if you do not succeed in this last venture. Do you understand ?"
   Mendelson could barely manage a nod.
   "Find me this… Candy. If she's dead, find me her body. I can interrogate the dead if I need to. I want to know what kind of creature she is. The tide carried her, you say?"
   "It seemed that way," Mendelson said.
   "That's strange. After all that happened, I'm sure Our Lady Izabella would drown most souls, rather than carry them here."
   Carrion took his eyes off Shape for the first time in several minutes, and Shape felt the weight of the power upon him relax somewhat. "There is something strange here," Carrion said, half to himself. "Something mysterious."
   "How will I find her, Lord, in all the islands?"
   "You will have help for that," Carrion said, his wrath apparently quenched. "Go down to the kitchens. Eat. Wait for word from Naw. I will see you again when I have some clue…"
   "Yes, Lord."
   "A girl , eh?" Carrion said, as though amused at the notion.
   Then he moved away, and was enveloped by the darkness.
   The bone-cracking weight removed from his chest, Shape rolled off the table, gasping for breath.
   In the vaulted ceiling above, the vile cherubs were still circling, chattering to one another as they went, excited by the violence they'd just witnessed.
   Mendelson ignored them. He hauled himself up to his foot and stump, and waited a few moments until the ache in his chest subsided.
   Then he hobbled to the door and headed away down to the kitchens, promising to himself he would burn his few books when he went home, for fear they would put him in mind of the terrors he had just endured.

PART THREE: where is when?

   "The Day is words and rage.
   The Day is order, earth and gold.
   It is the philosophers in their cities;
   It is the map-makers in their wastelands.
   It is roads and milestones,
   It is panic, laughter and sobriety;
   White, and all enumerated things.
   It is flesh; it is revenge; it is visibility.
   The Night is blue and black.
   The Night is silence, poetry and love.
   It is the dancers in their grove of bones.
   It is all transforming things.
   It is fate, it is freedom. It is masks and silver and ambiguity,
   It is blood; it is forgiveness; It is the invisible music of instinct."

—Fasher Demerondo