Candy sat in the midst of this springing up of life with tears of joy and amazement in her eyes. She had seldom felt so happy as she did right now.
Houlihan was not happy. It pleased him not at all to see this spectacle of conspicuous happiness, of golden light and joyful birdsong, of things coming forth into the living world with yelps of bliss. It disgusted and revolted him. Most of all, he was revolted by the Quackenbush girl, who was sitting at the heart of all these birthings wearing tears and an idiotic smile. Twice now he had ordered the stitchlings to venture into the chaos of light and life and bring her to him. But the stitchlings, even the mires, were stupid, superstitious creatures. They were intimidated by the flux of power that surrounded the girl. The only way he was going to be able to finish this wretched business off, Houlihan knew, was for him to venture into the tribe of Totemix and seize Candy with his own hands.
He wasn’t entirely weaponless. He had bought from a man in Huffaker a Star-Striker, a four-foot-long bat, which had been used in the ancient and brutal sport of Star-Striking. Strikers were moral things. They knew the difference between good and bad and chose to favor one or the other. The striker that Houlihan carried with him had been owned by a line of fearsome Star-Strikers, who had played the great game with brutal, and often lethal, efficiency. In other words, he carried a bat that had not only struck falling stars out of the air but had killed many innocents along the way. He liked its heft. It gave him confidence. It had all the authority of an executioner’s ax. He lifted it up and let it fall weightily on his shoulder. Then, doing his best to ignore all the brouhaha of the Totemix, he focused his attentions upon the girl from the Hereafter.
“Count the seconds, Candy Quackenbush,” he said. Something had cracked inside him, as he’d watched Candy among the Totemix. Whatever Carrion’s orders had been, he would not be bringing Candy back to Gorgossium alive. With the Star-Striker held tight in his hand he went in pursuit of the girl, determined to bring an end to her and her corruptions once and for all.
Chapter 17
The Star-Striker
BEING IN THE MIDST of the loosing of the Totemix was like nothing Candy had ever seen or felt before. The golden light that she’d first seen in her own hand now filled the air all around her, a great vortex in which many of the resurrected creatures still cavorted as though simply for the sheer pleasure of it. Was this what the beginning of the world had been like, she wondered? A kind of bright spiral-dance?
She wanted to be a part of that dance. She got to her feet and began to spin around in the middle of the light, laughing as if she were half crazy. Maybe she was. Maybe this whole adventure was a kind of mad dream, which she was inventing as she went along. If so, she didn’t want to wake up from it. There was too much to see, to much to—
Wait! As she spun around she caught an unwelcome glimpse of an interloper in this magic dance. The Criss-Cross Man had left his refuge by the door and was coming toward the center of the room, wielding a weapon of some kind. Arcs of blue-black lightning sprang from it, hitting the walls and even, on occasion, the ceiling. The weapon gave off a smell of burning sugar mingled with something fouler. The waves of golden power flowing from the Totemix recoiled from the weapon, as though in disgust at its essential nature.
To judge by the expression on Otto Houlihan’s face, he was pleasurably surprised at the weapon’s efficiency. He wielded it with two hands, cutting a dark swathe through the golden veils of life, hacking his way in Candy’s direction.
“It’s over, girl,” he said. “This is the end! The end!”
Candy stopped dancing and focused on Houlihan as best she could, looking for some way to slip past him.
“Filth!” she yelled.
“Over here!” the munkee replied.
Filth had clambered up a stack of shelves and was now squatting at the top.
“Get out of here!” Candy called to him. “And get all the Totemix out too!”
“Why?”
“Him!” Candy said, nodding toward the Criss-Cross Man.
Filth got the message immediately. Candy watched him start to scramble down the shelves, then she returned her attention to the enemy.
Houlihan had raised the dark weapon above his head.
“Star-Striker! Star-Striker!” Candy heard Filth yell. “Watch out, he’s got a Star-Striker!”
She glanced over her shoulder, wondering how far she had to retreat. Not very far, as it turned out. The eruption of power from the unleashing of the Totemix had thrown over a great mass of furniture; she would have to turn her back on Houlihan to clamber over it all, leaving her exposed to attack.
But what other option did she have? It was either that or remain standing here in the midst of the light, and letting him—
The light. Of course: the light.
She opened her hands and stared down at her palms. The golden glow she’d seen there was still shining as bright as ever. Motes and scraps of brightness were drawn to her fingers from the air.
It’s all part of the dance, she thought; the dust, her hands, the light that was spiraling around her: it’s all part of the same wonderful dance. And I’m in it.
She reached down and closed her hand around the bright air, then tugged at it. There was weight in the luminescence, and strength. It was like pulling on a piece of fabric; she could feel the light folding around her fingers, eager to make itself more intimate with her.
If Houlihan guessed what she was up to, she knew he would rush to quicken her end. But he was too intent on his weapon at that moment; his gaze was turned up lovingly toward the Star-Striker.
Candy had room in her heart to feel a little pang of sorrow for him, that he would never feel the joy that had been granted to her in the time she had explored the mysteries of the Abarat. He had chosen evil and darkness; poor, sad man that he was . . .
All the while that she was shaping these thoughts, she was working at the light with her hands, subtly gathering it to her body. It came more easily by the moment; like attracting like. She could feel a comforting cocoon of light assembling around her, and the golden luminescence from her hands was now spreading up her arms. It was spilling off her face too, she knew; she could see it lightening the air in front of her. What must she look like, she thought? Perhaps a little terrifying?
Oh, to have the chance to walk the streets of Chickentown like this! Or better still, to go home to Followell Street and find her father sitting slumped in front of the TV, surrounded by beer cans and the stink of cigarettes. He would look up and see her standing there, shedding brightness. Maybe that would wake him out of his stupor!
She was momentarily distracted by the thought of her father, and in those few seconds Houlihan stepped forward to cut her down. In fact it almost seemed that the Star-Striker was doing the leading. The blow was just a heartbeat away. She drew a desperate breath. The light flooded her body, pouring inside her, filling her with its strength.
The next moment the Star-Striker came slicing down. Candy was there to meet it, a net of light spread between her hands. The weapon struck the net, and she saw the two opposing forces break against each other like two tremendous waves, light shattering dark shattering light shattering dark—
She felt the impact immediately, saw the needles of the Star-Striker’s force speeding toward her. But the light was her ally. It gathered around her to ward off the blow and keep her from harm, driving the needles back at their deliverer without even scratching her.
In the middle of this confrontation, her point of view was suddenly changed. She saw the room from someplace high above her head. Everything in the room was picked up by the powers that were unleashed there, picked up and carried into the same delirious flux. The objects that had been neatly arranged in the room when she’d first stepped into it were now thrown into fantastic confusion, spun around by the currents of the warring energies. Gigantic shells, strange musical instruments, carved mirrors, flowers of immense size, two pairs of jewel-encrusted boots, several shr
unken heads, a spindly skeleton dressed in rags, a doll’s house of exquisite elaboration (its doors and windows thrown open in the storm, adding a hundred rooms’ worth of Lilliputian furniture to the dance), and a great deal else Candy could not have put a name to. Then there were the Totemix, who were also whirling around, most of them laughing for the sheer joy of this ride; holding on to their tails so that they rolled around like airborne wheels, or surfing the tide of warring powers as though it was the greatest game in Creation.
Perhaps it was, Candy thought. Perhaps this struggle between light and dark was at the very heart of why she was here in the Abarat: the Night-world and the Day-world in a conflict that would in time draw everything into one tremendous, world-changing maelstrom.
She had lost sight of Houlihan for a time, but now she saw him again at the center of the swirling chaos. He was still holding on to the Star-Striker with both hands, but the expression on his face was no longer quite so confident. He seemed afraid. And with good reason. Every dark wave of power that the Star-Striker emitted was being thrown back by the light. He twisted and turned as he attempted to avoid the needles of darkness that flew his way.
“Let go of your weapon!” Candy yelled to him over the din of the vortex. “Do you hear me, Houlihan? LET IT GO!”
He heard her. But he couldn’t obey. His hands shook violently, as though he was genuinely attempting to make them release the weapon, but they refused to let it go. The Star-Striker was in control of his muscles. The murderous power he’d brought in his heart to help him execute Candy had turned against him. He was its victim now.
His face, which had never worn anything but a scowl or a smug smirk, was suddenly full of fear, his mouth open in the shape of a wordless howl. Unable to escape, all he could do was fling himself back and forth in his panic. At last he seemed to make a decision to try and break the Star-Striker. He raised it above his head and brought it down in a quick arc to hit the ground. But it did not break. Instead, it sent up a wave of darkness greater than any that had preceded it, which in turn drew down a fist of golden light to counter it. Had Houlihan been able to let go of the Star-Striker, he might have escaped the calamity. But he was caught in its midst, the two forces meeting where he stood.
It was more than his body and spirit could endure. He threw back his head as shards of power, flung off the darkness that was pouring from the Star-Striker, pierced him.
“No, please no!” he cried. “Help me!”
His cry became a shriek. Then, abruptly, it stopped.
The light of life, which had always burned with uncanny strength in Otto Houlihan’s stare, went out of him.
The very moment that his heart ceased to beat, the Star-Striker seemed to lose its power over his anatomy. His grip on the lethal bat loosened, and he fell to the ground like a dropped doll.
As for the Star-Striker itself, it held its position in the air for a few seconds, then it became subject to the very process it had helped unleash. A wave of knotted energies struck it, and it spun across the room, crashing into several orbiting objects before striking the wall and becoming impaled there.
And so, in a hail of darkness and light, the lethal battle of the Wunderkammen—and along with it, Houlihan’s pursuit of Candy—came to an end.
Chapter 18
Departure
WELL, THAT’S NOT SOMETHING you see very often,” Filth remarked. He was standing in the doorway, the fur all over his body standing on end thanks to the energies unleashed in the room. Sparks ran off the tips of the longer hairs and crackled in the air.
All around the Wunderkammen, objects were coming to a rest, gently dropping out of the air and landing in the confusion of things that already littered the floor. Some of the Totemix were already rooting through the litter, especially the simpler creatures, whose first cogent thought upon being awakened from their frozen state was to fill their bellies. They soon realized that a stuffed reptile or a painted fan made very unnourishing repasts and quickly began to venture out of the Wunderkammen in search of something more filling. None of them left, however, without first coming over to Candy and inclining their heads, paying their respects to their liberator. Only then did they hurry away.
“Shall we go?” Filth said.
Candy nodded.
Outside the door they found the Criss-Cross Man’s stitchlings. They had beaten a hasty retreat as soon as things inside the Wunderkammen had become too crazy, but they lay close to its threshold now, facedown on the palace tiles. All motivation had apparently been sapped from them once their leader had perished.
At the door Candy looked back at the Star-Striker, which was still buried to half its length in the wall. A thin veil of blue-black smoke rose from the weapon, and occasionally a large pearl of darkness formed on the handle, which immediately drew the attention of wandering barbs of light. They closed upon these last fragments of darkness and burned them away in a heartbeat.
“Do you think it’s safe to just leave it here?” she said.
“Well, personally I don’t fancy touching it,” Filth said. “Not after what it did. Besides, nobody comes here. . . .”
“Somebody’ll come looking for him eventually,” Candy said, nodding toward the sprawled body of the Criss-Cross Man.
“Maybe,” Filth replied. “Maybe not. If it was Carrion who sent him—”
“It was.”
“Then he probably already knows his agent’s dead. And he won’t care about burying the body, will he? He’ll leave the carcass here for the filch crows and the mange hounds to take. After all, if anybody believes in the natural order of decay, it’s a man called Carrion.”
“So you think I should just leave it all like this?”
“I would. You’ve got more important business right now than burying evil men. You have quite a power inside you, girl. If I were you, I’d be wondering why. There’s only one soul I ever knew who had that kind of capacity inside her, and she’s—”
He stopped in midsentence and looked at Candy with a most peculiar expression on his face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
“I should stay out of this business,” Filth said, almost as though he was instructing himself. “It’s too mighty for the likes of me. There may be rituals to be performed, sacred poems to be spoken. I should be very careful.”
Candy saw the anxiety on his face and knew that it would be unfair to press him to speak anymore.
“I understand,” she said.
“Really?”
“Really,” she said. “You’re saying I’ve got to go and finish this magical business myself.”
“Well . . . yes. I’m just a fool, me. A dead King’s jester. I’m good for a joke and a pie in the face. But not magic . . .”
The song that had brought her here was being played again. But this time there were words with it; or at least she heard words. Perhaps they were in her head, in her memory.
Whichever, they made a strange kind of sense to her.
“What a voyage this has been,
This life of mine!
Every Hour I wake
To find some new blossom
Hanging in the trees over my head!
Blossoms the shape of clouds,
Blossoms the shape of fire
Blossoms the shape of love.
All that has already passed away
And all that is still to come
On this long strange road.”
Off many Hours to the west of Scoriae, on the south side of Odom’s Spire, the Twenty-Fifth Island, three women of the Fantomaya—Diamanda, Mespa and Joephi—sat with a bottle of brandy, some of the most pungent furini cheese ever made, along with a fresh loaf of twice-thatched bread, and watched the gray-blue expanse of the Izabella.
Things had been strange of late, they all agreed. Nor did they have much argument about why there was such a hiccup in the usual flow of the Abarat’s energies.
“Candy,” Joephi said, without the least doubt. “This is all bec
ause of Candy.”
“Well, we can scarcely blame her without also blaming ourselves,” Mespa said. “We should have talked to her earlier, while she was still in the Hereafter, instead of leaving her to discover things for herself.”
“Personally, I think it’s better she discovers them for herself, and learns how to deal with them, than that we simply instruct her,” Diamanda said. She was much the oldest of the three, and today she felt it. The responsibilities of what they had together unleashed on the Abarat weighed heavily upon her. “No girl of her age is going to take well to instruction from us, or anybody,” she went on. “And it’s not as if she were an ordinary girl. She’s got powers moving in her—”
“Exactly!” said Joephi. “Exactly! She has powers moving in her. And we’re letting her wander the islands unsupervised? It’s playing with fire, Diamanda. It’s a very dangerous game.”
Diamanda got up and walked down to the water, where the little waves broke against the stony shore. She rubbed her aching back as she stared at the sea.
“Damn these old bones of mine,” she said. Then, returning to the subject in hand: “From the very beginning of this enterprise we have been risking a great deal. We’ve always known that. There could have been terrible consequences at just about every stage of our endeavor. And now . . . now I begin to fear that things will get very much worse before they get better.”
“Is that a prophecy?”
“Call it an informed guess,” Diamanda said, turning back to face her sisters. “At times like this—times of change, I mean—we have to plan for the very worst of eventualities. We have to hope and pray that they don’t happen, but we still have to plan . . .”