Abarat

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 (#u1555276c-0c49-5f99-89e9-b0674a8986d9)

TWILIGHT AND BEYOND (#u1555276c-0c49-5f99-89e9-b0674a8986d9)

“Believe me, when I say:

There are two powers

That command the soul.

One is God.

The other is the tide.”

—Anon.

10 (#u1555276c-0c49-5f99-89e9-b0674a8986d9)

THE WATERS (#u1555276c-0c49-5f99-89e9-b0674a8986d9)

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.”