Abarat: The First Book of Hours, стр. 2

“She knows our minds,” Diamanda said.

“Even so,” Joephi replied. “Name it!”

Diamanda glanced back at her companion, faintly irritated. “If you insist,” she said. Then, reaching toward the sky again, she said: “Take us to the Hereafter.”

“Good,” said Joephi.

“Lady, hear us—” Diamanda started to say.

But she was interrupted by Mespa.

“She heard, Diamanda.”

“What?”

“She heard.”

The three women looked up. The roiling storm clouds were parting, as though pressed aside by titanic hands. Through the widening slit there came a shaft of moonlight: the purest white, yet somehow warm. It illuminated the trough between the waves where the women’s boat was buried. It covered the vessel from end to end with light.

“Thank you, Lady…” Diamanda murmured.

The moonlight was moving over the boat, searching out every part of the tiny vessel, even to the shadowy keel that lay beneath the water. It blessed every nail and board from prow to stern, every grommet, every oar, every pivot, every fleck of paint, every inch of rope.

It touched the women too, inspiring fresh life in their weary bones and warming their icy skin.

All of this took perhaps ten seconds.

Then the clouds began to close again, cutting the moonlight off. Just as abruptly as it had begun, the blessing was over.

The sea seemed doubly dark when the light had passed away, the wind keener. But the timbers of the boat had acquired a subtle luminescence from the appearance of the moon, and they were stronger for the benediction they had received. The boat no longer creaked when it was broad-sided. Instead it seemed to rise effortlessly up the steep sides of the waves.

“That’s better,” said Diamanda.

She reached out to reclaim their precious cargo.

“I can take care of it,” Mespa protested.

“I’m sure you can,” said Diamanda. “But the responsibility lies with me. I know the world we’re going to, remember? You don’t.”

“You remember the way it was,” Joephi reminded her. “But it will have changed.”

“Very possibly,” Diamanda agreed. “But I still have a better idea of what lies ahead of us than you two do. Now give me the box, Mespa.”

Mespa handed the treasure over, and the women’s vessel carved its way through the lightless sea, picking up speed as it went, the bow lifting a little way above the waters.

The rain continued to beat down on the women’s heads, gathering in the bottom of the boat until it was four inches deep. But the voyagers took no notice of its assault. They simply sat together in grateful silence, as the magic of the moon hurried them toward their destination.

“There!” said Joephi. She pointed off toward the distant shore. “I see the Hereafter.”

“I see it too!” said Mespa. “Oh, thank the Goddess! I see it! I see it!”

“Hush yourselves,” Diamanda said. “We don’t want to draw attention.”

“It looks empty,” Joephi said, scanning the landscape ahead. “You said there was a town.”

“There is a town. But it’s a little distance from the harbor.”

“I see no harbor.”

“Well, there’s not much of it left,” Diamanda said. “It was burned down, long before my time.”

The keel of The Lyre was grating on the shore of the Hereafter. Joephi was first out, hauling on the rope and securing it to a piece of aged timber that was driven into the ground. Mespa helped Diamanda out, and the three of them stood side by side assessing the unpromising landscape spread before them. The storm had followed them across the divide between the two worlds, its fury undimmed.

“Now, let’s remember,” said Diamanda, “we’re here to do one thing and one thing only. We get our business done and then we leave. Remember: we should not be here.”

“We know that,” said Mespa.

“But let’s not be hasty and make a mistake,” Joephi said, glancing at the box Diamanda carried. “For her sake we have to do this right. We carry the hopes of the Abarat with us.”

Even Diamanda was quieted by this remark. She seemed to meditate on it for a long moment, her head downturned, the rain washing her white hair into curtains that framed the box she held. Then she said: “Are you both ready?”

The other women murmured that yes, they were; and with Diamanda leading the way, they left the shore and headed through the rain-lashed grass, to find the place where providence had arranged they would do their holy work.

Part One.

Morningtide

1. Room Nineteen

The project Miss Schwartz had set for Candy’s class was simple enough. Everyone had a week to bring into school ten interesting facts about the town in which they all lived. Something about the history of Chickentown would be fine, she said, or, if students preferred, facts about the way the town was today, which meant, of course, the same old stuff about chicken farming in modern Minnesota.

Candy had done her best. She’d visited the school library and scoured its shelves for something, anything, about the town that to her sounded vaguely interesting. There was nothing. Nada, zero, zip. There was a library on Naughton Street that was ten times the size of the school library; so she went there. Again, she scanned the shelves. There were a few books about Minnesota that mentioned the town, but the same boring facts were repeated in volume after volume. Chickentown had a population of 36,793 and it was the biggest producer of chicken meat in the state. One of the books, having mentioned the chickens, described the town as “otherwise undistinguished.”

Perfect, Candy thought. I live in a town that is otherwise undistinguished. Well, that was Fact Number One. She needed only nine more.

“We live in the most boring town in the country,” she complained to her mother, Melissa, when she returned home. “I can’t find anything worth writing about for Miss Schwartz.”

Melissa Quackenbush was in the kitchen, making meatloaf. The kitchen door was closed, so as not to disturb Candy’s father, Bill. He was in a beer-induced slumber in front of the television, and Candy’s mother wanted to keep it that way. The longer he stayed unconscious, the easier it was for everyone in the house—including Candy’s brothers, Don and Ricky—to get on with their lives. Nobody ever mentioned this aloud. It was a silent understanding between the members of the household. Life was more pleasant for everyone when Bill Quackenbush was asleep.

“Why do you say it’s boring?” Melissa asked, as she seasoned the meatloaf.

“Just take a look out there,” Candy said.

Melissa didn’t bother, but that was only because she knew the scene outside the window all too well. Beyond the grimy glass was the family’s chaotic backyard: the shin-high grass browned by the heat wave that had come unexpectedly in the middle of May, the inflatable pool they’d bought the previous summer and had never deflated and stowed away, now a dirty circle of red-and-white plastic at the far end of the yard. Beyond the collapsed pool was the broken fence. And beyond the fence? Another yard in not much better shape, and another, and another, until eventually the yards ended, and the streets too, and the empty grasslands began.

“I know what you want for your project,” she said.

“Oh?” said Candy, going to the fridge and taking out a soda. “What do I want?”

“You want something weird,” Melissa said, putting the meat into the baking tin and thumbing it down. “You’ve got a little morbid streak in you, just like your grandma Frances. She used to go to the funerals of complete strangers—”