Abarat, стр. 21

M aybe it was the warmth of the fire, maybe it was the strange scent of the dress she'd been given, maybe it was simply the fact that she was exhausted; whatever the reason, Candy slipped into a pleasant doze in front of Izarith's fire, while little Maiza played singsong games beside her. It wasn't a deep enough sleep to bring dreams, just a few flickering memories of sights she'd seen in the last few hours. The lighthouse, in all its ragged glory, standing in the long grass, neglected, but waiting. The turquoise ball, etched with the very same design she'd drawn on her workbook. The Sea of Izabella rolling out of nowhere, like a foaming miracle—

She opened her eyes suddenly, her heart jumping. Maiza had suddenly stopped her singing and had gone from the spot on the ragged rug beside her. She had retreated to the corner of the room, close to her brother's cot, her eyes fearful.

Behind her, Candy heard a whirring sound. Something told her to move very cautiously, which she did, turning her head oh-so-slowly to discover what was making such a peculiar noise.

Hovering in the middle of the room was a creature that looked to Candy like a cross between a very large locust and a dragonfly. Its wings were bright green, and it had uncannily large eyes, beneath which lay a design on its head that looked at first glance like a smile.

She glanced back at Maiza. Plainly the poor child didn't know what to make of this thing any more than Candy. She was gripping hold of the edge of the cot as though she was ready to climb in and hide with her brother if the creature made a move toward her.

Candy didn't have any time for bugs, big or small. Back in Chickentown they often had plagues of flies, because of the factories, and there was nothing she hated more than to go into the kitchen and find a host of big blue insects crawling on the dishes her mother had left caked with food in the sink before she went to work. Candy had no sentimentality about flies. She'd take a cloth and whip at them, catching them in mid-flight and killing them when they hit the ground.

She knew where they'd been: in the coops, eating chicken excrement, or feeding on the caked blood that stank in the gutters around the slaughterhouse. They were flying diseases as far as she was concerned. The only good fly was a dead fly. The same with roaches, which periodically invaded the Quackenbush house on Followell Street. Again, no mercy.

But this was a bug of a different order, and Candy wasn't sure how to treat it. For one thing, it was so big; more like a bird than an insect. She wasn't afraid of it stinging or biting her; she was quite ready to risk that. But she was afraid of enraging it and then having it turn on the children. She decided rather than swatting it like a very large wasp, she'd treat it as if it were a bird and try to coax it out it through the door.

"Maiza?"

"I want Muma."

"She's coming back soon. I want you to sit very still, yes?"

"Yes."

Having instructed the child, Candy tried to position herself so that she could shoo the insect through the door. But wherever she moved around the room, the creature repositioned itself, so that it was always staring directly at her, like an eager photographer determined to get a shot of her. When she approached it, the thing made no sign of retreating, but instead extended its neck so that its bug eyes seemed to get even bigger.

All this maneuvering gave Candy plenty of time to study the thing and appreciate its intricacies.

She should not have been surprised that a world which contained such a strange species as the Sea-Skippers should have insects as bizarre as this, but the more she looked at it, the more unusual it seemed. Its eyes had an unnerving depth to them, as if behind the layer of blue-green sheen was something more than insectoid intelligence.

In fact there was something almost too intelligent about the way it looked at her. Weren't bugs supposed to be stupid? Why then did this thing study her as though it had a mind of its own?

She tried everything to usher the creature out of the door, but it wouldn't go, so she decided to try Plan Two. When a bird got into the house (a rare event, but one that made Candy's mother become panicky), it always fell to Candy to get it out. She applied the same method now.

She went to the narrow pallet against the far wall, where apparently Izarith, her husband and Maiza slept, and picked up a sheet. When she turned, she found the creature had followed her across the room. Before it had time to work out what she was doing, she snatched up the sheet, threw it over the creature, and pulled it to the ground.

The dragonfly instantly began to flap wildly and give off what sounded remarkably like a baby sobbing, rising scales of complaint which the sheet did very little to muffle. Candy held on tight, attempting to capture the creature without hurting it. She gathered up the sheet beneath the insect and gently transported it to the door. But she had not counted on the violence of the creature's motion. It flapped so wildly—and its wings were so strong—that it began to tear the thin fabric open as if it were no more than a paper bag.

Candy hastened her trip to the door, but the creature was too quick for her. It tore out of the sheet and rose into the air again, hovering and turning on the spot seven or eight times. Plainly it wanted to ascertain who'd played this trick on it. When it fixed upon its captor, it defiantly flew closer than ever, and Candy saw the darkness behind its eyes close up like a mechanical iris.

"You're not real," she said to it, amazed and annoyed at the same time. Amazed because she'd been fooled by its perfection for so long, and annoyed for exactly the same reason.

The thing was spying on her.

"Damn thing!" she said, whipping the sheet around, as she would have done in the kitchen at Followell Street if she'd been in pursuit of a bluebottle.

The creature was so big (and perhaps a little dizzied by its own maneuvers) that she quickly caught it in the sheet and brought it down. It struck the ground very hard.

As soon as it hit the floorboards, she knew that her guess about its true nature was correct. The sound it made was undeniably metallic.

She pulled off the sheet. The thing was lying on its side, one of its wings flapping weakly, the other entirely still, and its six legs pedaled slowly as though somebody had just snatched a bicycle from between them.

But even now, wounded and dizzied, it turned its bug eyes toward Candy, and she heard a humming sound that the noise of its wings had hitherto disguised.

It was the noise of the creature's mechanism she could hear, and it was clearly badly damaged.

Even so, Candy didn't trust it. She'd seen roaches she was sure were dead and gone push themselves up off the ground and nonchalantly walk away. As long as this strange beast had life in it, it presented a danger.

She went to the hearth and picked up the iron rod that was used to poke the fire. Then—keeping her distance from the thing—she touched the creature with the end of the poker.

What happened next came so fast that it caught Candy completely off guard. The creature suddenly flipped itself over, and crawled up the poker with the speed of a striking snake.

Before Candy had time to let go of the poker, the design beneath the bug's eyes opened up like the mouth of a crab, and a spike, about five inches long, emerged and jabbed Candy's hand in the cradle of flesh between her forefinger and her thumb. Blood ran out of the wound. Yelping, Candy dropped the iron poker.

She put the cut to her mouth immediately, tasting the tang of her own blood, and perhaps something of the creature's metallic innards, from whence the spike had come.

Meanwhile, the insect had dropped off the poker and was finally retreating. It was wounded, she saw; two of its legs were set awry and were being dragged behind it.

Even so, as it retreated, it underwent an extraordinary transformation.

Without missing a steady step of its speedy stride, its back opened up, two doors sliding out of sight. Its wings were then raised and folded and slid with perfect accuracy into the opening and its back closed up again. At the same time a host of other smaller changes were taking place in its anatomy. A telescopic tail appeared, almost doubling the insect's length when it reached its full measure, and a second rack of legs appeared along its abdomen. When its reconfiguration was complete it no longer resembled a locust or a dragonfly, but a huge centipede. Even its color seemed to have changed subtly, its bright greens bled of their intensity, so that now it was a sickly, mottled yellow.

It no longer tried to record Candy or her surroundings. All it wanted now was to be away as fast as possible, so as to avoid another attempt on its artificial life. Candy made no further attempt to stop it from escaping. It wasn't worth the risk.

The creature was now about two feet from freedom. And then, in walked Izarith. She failed to notice the thing scuttling beneath her feet. Good mother that she was, her eyes went first to her frightened daughter.

"Watch out!" Candy yelled.

Too late. Izarith had trodden on the tail of the creature, which cracked like the shell of a lobster.

Izarith looked down. The food she'd brought in with her fell from her hands. An expression of the most intense disgust came to her face.

She raised her foot to stomp on it again.

"Get it, Muma!" Maiza said, silent tears running down her cheeks.

"Be careful," Candy warned her, still trying to stop the blood flowing from her hand. "It fights back."

Izarith didn't seem to care; her house had been invaded and her child had been terrorized. She was furious. She stamped on it twice, bringing her heel down hard. The creature was fast, however. It tried to rush away between Izarith's legs. But she took a step back to stop it, and realizing the way was barred, the creature turned, its bug eyes scanning the wall to the right of the door. Picking up the poker that Candy had dropped, Izarith pursued the creature to the corner of the room.