“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.
“
Please
“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
“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
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:
“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,
“
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
“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
,” Mischief said, by way of explanation.
“A glyph? What’s a glyph?”
“It’s a craft; a flying machine. Well, actually it’s
“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.”
“
“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.
“
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—