Absolute Midnight

“—of a child?”

“You did. Who you are is the stone on which you stand. Now no more—”

There were two more brutal stings in quick succession. Then another three.

“She’s breaking through. Take your weapon!”

Once again she was offering her hand to Candy, and once again Candy was seeing nothing but an empty palm. There was a desperate urgency to the problem. Boa and her nauseating Sepulcaphs were a cracked plate of air away.

“Look again!” Mrs. Munn insisted. “Look away. Clear your head. Then look again. It’s right there!”

“What is?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Like a poisonous snake?”

She had but to ask, and there it was in Mrs. Munn’s hands: a seven-foot-long snake, its colors—a toxic yellow-green with a band of glistening black running along its length—designed to tell anyone that it was a venomous thing.

“Good choice, girl!” Mrs. Munn said, in a tone so ambiguous Candy had no idea whether she was serious or not. “Here! Take it!”

She tossed the snake at Candy, who, more out of instinct than intention, caught it in both hands.

“Now what?” she said.

Chapter 17 Snake Talk (#ulink_fd5ca426-6d37-561b-aa28-ce931a64ee77)

JOLLO?”

There was no response from the wizened figure on the ground. His eyes were closed, and his pupils were motionless behind his gray, papery lids. Malingo kneeled down beside him, and spoke to him again:

“Are you still there?” he asked.

For several seconds there was no response. Then his gummy green eyelids opened and he spoke. His words were slurred, his voice watery.

“I’m still here. I just needed to rest. Everything was too noisy with my eyes open,” he said.

Malingo glanced up at Covenantis, hoping he’d know the significance of Jollo’s confusion of senses, but Covenantis’s focus was neither with his brother nor Malingo. Covenantis was turned away from his brother in the direction of the sound of—

“Shattering air,” Covenantis said.

“I didn’t even know air could shatter,” Malingo said.

“Glass can be poured like treacle if it’s hot enough. Did you not know that either?” Covenantis replied. “Are all geshrats so stupid?”

The noise came again. And again. Malingo was now looking in the same direction as Covenantis, curious as to what shattered air looked like. Suddenly, Jollo seized hold of Malingo’s arm, first with one hand then with both, pulling himself up into a sitting position, his eyes opening wide.

“She’s there,” he said, staring with eerie accuracy in precisely the same direction as his brother.

Malingo didn’t need to ask Jollo of whom he was speaking. There was only one “she” in the boys’ universe. And all Jollo wanted right now was the comfort of her presence.

“Mama . . .” said Jollo. “Find her, Covenantis.”

“She’s coming, little brother.”

“Hurry her up. Please?”

“I can’t hurry her when she has such important work, brother.”

“I’m almost dead,” Jollo said. “I want to see her one last time . . .”

“Hush, Jollo. No more talk of death.”

“Easy to say when it’s not your life that’s . . . fading away.” His face became a tragic mask. “I want my mama.”

“She’ll come as soon as she can,” Covenantis said, only this time much more quietly, his voice filled with sorrow as though he knew, however fast she came it would never be fast enough.

“Don’t look up!” Mrs. Munn yelled over another round of shattering air. “Just be ready!”

“What do you mean?”

“You wanted the snake. Get ready to use it!”

Candy felt stupid and angry and confused all at once. She’d never imagined letting Boa go would escalate into such chaos: the Princess nearly killing Mrs. Munn, her firstborn, and Candy, and now breaking through Mrs. Munn’s defenses, still no doubt wearing the Sepulcaphs. The mere thought of them was enough to stir up nausea, so Candy concentrated on the snake.

Its body was too thick for her to get her hand around, but it didn’t seem to want to escape her grip. Quite the reverse. It slid the cool, dry length of its tail twice around one of her arms and then, raising up its large head so that it could look down imperiously at Candy it said, “I think myself a very fine snake. Do you not agree?”

Its speech, which was as elegant and smooth as its motion, came as no great surprise to Candy. It had been the greatest disappointment of growing up—far more wounding than finding out that there was neither an Oz nor a Santa Claus—to discover that though animals talked often and wisely in the stories she loved, few of them did so in life. It made perfect sense then that a creature she had fashioned in a moment of blind instinct would possess the power of speech.

“Are you the one who called me into being?” the serpent inquired.

“Yes, I’m the one.”

“Lovely work, if one may be so bold,” the snake said, admiring his gleaming coils. “I would have done nothing different. Not a scale. One finds oneself . . . perfect.” He looked a little embarrassed. “Oh dear, I think I’m in love,” he said, kissing his own coils.

“Aren’t you poisonous?” Candy said.

“Indeed. I can taste the bitterness of my own poison. One is of course immune to one’s own toxins, but if a single drop fell on your tongue—”

“Dead?”

“Guaranteed.”

“Quick?”

“Of course not! What’s a poison worth if it’s quick?”

“Painless?”