Abarat 2: Days of Magic, Nights of War

She and Malingo looked at the photograph. The colors weren’t quite true, but Guumat caught them looking like a pair of happy tourists, with their brightly colored, rumpled clothes, so they were quite happy.

Photograph in hand, they headed down the steep hill to the harbor and the ferry.

“You know, I’ve been thinking…” Candy said as they made their way through the crowd.

“Uh-oh.”

“Seeing the Princess Breath made me want to learn more. About magic.”

“No, Candy.”

“Come on, Malingo! Teach me. You know all about conjurations—”

“A little. Just a little.”

“It’s more than a little. You told me once that you spent every hour that Wolfswinkel was asleep studying his grimoires and his treatises.”

The subject of the wizard Wolfswinkel wasn’t often raised between them: the memories were so painful for Malingo. He’d been sold into slavery as a child (by his own father), and his life as Wolfswinkel’s possession had been an endless round of beatings and humiliations. It had only been Candy’s arrival at the wizard’s house that had given him the opportunity to finally escape his enslavement.

“Magic can be dangerous,” Malingo said. “There are laws and rules. Suppose I teach you the wrong things and we start to unknit the fabric of time and space? Don’t laugh! It’s possible. I read in one of Wolfswinkel’s books that magic was the beginning of the world. It could be the end too.”

Candy looked irritated.

“Don’t be cross,” Malingo said. “I just don’t have the right to teach you things that I don’t really understand myself.”

Candy walked for a while in silence. “Okay,” she said finally.

Malingo cast Candy a sideways glance. “Are we still friends?” he said.

She looked up at him and smiled. “Of course,” she said. “Always.”

2 WHAT THERE IS TO SEE (#ulink_18f42e74-d717-5f14-ad46-7ebbcbe5110c)

AFTER THAT CONVERSATION THEY never mentioned the subject of magic again. They just went on with their island hopping, using the time-honored guide to the islands, Klepp’s Almenak, as their chief source of information. Every now and again they’d get a feeling that the Criss-Cross Man was closing in on them, and they’d cut short their exploring and move on. About ten days after they’d left Tazmagor, their travels brought them to the island of Orlando’s Cap. It was little more than a bare rock with an asylum for the insane built on its highest point. The asylum had been vacated many years before, but its interior bore the unmistakable signs of the madness of its occupants. The white walls were covered with strange scrawlings that here and there became a recognizable image—a lizard, a bird—only to dwindle into scrawlings again.

“What happened to all the people who used to be in here?” Candy wondered.

Malingo didn’t know. But they quickly agreed that this wasn’t a spot where they wanted to linger. The asylum had strange, sad echoes. So they went back to the tiny harbor to wait for another boat. There was an old man sitting on the dock, coiling a length of frayed rope. He had the strangest look on his face, his eyes all knotted up, as though he were blind. This wasn’t the case, however. As soon as Candy and Malingo arrived, he began to stare at them.

“You shouldn’t have come back here,” he growled.

“Me?” Malingo said.

“No, not you. Her. Her!” He pointed at Candy. “They’ll lock you away.”

“Who will?”

“They will, soon as they know what you are,” the man said, getting to his feet.

“You keep your distance,” Malingo warned.

“I’m not going to touch her,” the man replied. “I’m not that brave. But I see. Oh, I see. I know what you are, girl, and I know what you’ll do.” He shook his head. “Don’t you worry, I won’t touch you. No sir. I wouldn’t do a damn-fool thing like that.”

And so saying he edged around them, being sure to keep his distance, and ran off down the creaking dock, disappearing among the rocks.

“Well, I guess that’s what happens when you let the crazy folks out,” Malingo said with forced brightness.

“What was he seeing?”

“He was crazy, lady.”

“No, he really seemed to be seeing something. The way he was staring at me.”

Malingo shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. He had his copy of the Almenak open and used it to nimbly change the subject. “You know I’ve always wanted to see Hap’s Vault,” he said.

“Really?” said Candy, still staring at the rocks where the man had fled. “Isn’t it just a cave?”

“Well, this is what Klepp says—” Malingo read aloud from the Almenak. “‘Huffaker’—Hap’s Vault’s on Huffaker, which is at Nine O’clock in the Evening—‘Huffaker is an impressive island, topographically speaking. Its rock formations—especially those below ground—are both vast and elaborately beautiful, resembling natural cathedrals and temples.’ Interesting, huh? You want to go?”

Candy was still distracted. Her yes was barely audible.

“But listen to this,” Malingo went on, doing his best to draw her thoughts away from the old man’s talk. “‘The greatest of these is Hap’s Vault’…blah, blah, blah…‘discovered by Lydia Hap’…blah, blah, blah…‘It is Miss Hap who was the first to suggest the Chamber of the Skein.’ ”

“What’s the Skein?” Candy said, becoming a little more interested now.

“I quote: ‘It is the thread that joins all things—living and dead, sentient and unthinking—to all other things—’”

Now Candy was interested. She came to stand beside Malingo, looking at the Almenak over his shoulder. He went on reading aloud. “‘According to the persuasive Miss Hap, the thread originates in the Vault at Huffaker, appearing momentarily as a kind of flickering light before winding its way invisibly through the Abarat…connecting us, one to another.’” He closed the Almenak. “Don’t you think we should see this?”

“Why not?”

The island of Huffaker stood just one Hour from the Yebba Dim Day, the first island Candy had ever visited when she’d come to the Abarat. But whereas the great carved head of the Yebba Dim Day still had a few streaks of late light in the sky above it, Huffaker was smothered in darkness, a thick mass of clouds obscuring the stars. Candy and Malingo stayed in a threadbare hotel close to the harbor, where they ate and laid their plans for the journey, and after a few hours of sleep they set out on the dark but well sign-posted road that led to the Vault. They’d had the foresight to pack food and drink, which they needed. The journey was considerably longer than they’d been led to expect by the owner of the hotel, who’d given them some directions. Occasionally they’d hear the sound of an animal pursuing and bringing down another in the murk, but otherwise the journey was uneventful.

When they finally reached the caves themselves, they found that a few of the steep passageways had flaming torches mounted in brackets along the cold walls to illuminate the route. Surprisingly, given how extraordinary the phenomenon sounded, there were no other visitors here to witness it. They were alone as they followed the steeply inclined passageway that led them into the Vault. But they needed no guide to tell them when they had reached their destination.

“Oh Lordy Lou…” said Malingo. “Look at this place.”

His voice echoed back and forth across the vast cavern they had come into. From its ceiling—which was so far beyond the reach of the torches’ light as to be in total darkness—there hung dozens of stalactites. They were immense, each easily the size of an inverted church spire. They were the roosts of Abaratian bats, a detail Klepp had failed to mention in his Almenak. The creatures were much larger than any bat Candy had seen in the Abarat, and they boasted a constellation of seven bright eyes.

As for the depths of the cavern, they were as inky black as the ceiling.

“It’s so much bigger than I expected it to be,” Candy said.

“But where’s the Skein?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll see it if we stand in the middle of the bridge.”

Malingo gave her an uneasy look. The bridge that hung over the unfathomable darkness of the Vault didn’t look very secure. Its timbers were cracked and antiquated, its ropes frayed and thin.