“Methis!”
The zethek was wearing the most pitiful of expressions, and Candy couldn’t help but feel another spasm of guilt. The creature was no doubt feeling claustrophobic, locked up in a little cage. After all, he had wings.
Wait: wings! Methis had wings!
“Listen to me,” she said to the zethek.
Before she could get any further, somebody grabbed hold of Candy’s collar and hauled her to her feet.
“You leave our freaks alone, girl!” Mrs. Scattamun snarled. She stank of old liquor and cheap perfume. “Hey, you!” she yelled to the Criss-Cross Man. “I’ve got your girl! You want to come and take her away?”
Chapter 10
“The Freaks Are Out! The Freaks Are Out!”
CANDY HAD TO THINK quickly. Houlihan was no more than ten strides away. He wouldn’t let her slip through his lethal fingers this time. She glanced at Methis, who was looking up at her with a forlorn expression. The zethek was still dangerous, she knew. Still hungry. Could she possibly make an ally out of him? After all, they both wanted the same thing right now, didn’t they? To be out of this place. He out of reach of the Scattamuns, she out of reach of Houlihan. Could they perhaps do together what they could not do apart?
It was worth a try.
Wrenching herself free from Mrs. Scattamun, she reached around the side of the cage and hauled the heavy iron bolt open. Methis didn’t seem to understand what she’d done, because he didn’t move, but the horrendous Mrs. Scattamun understood perfectly well.
“You wretched girl!” she seethed, catching hold of Candy again and shaking her violently. In so doing she knocked Candy against the cage, and the unbolted door swung open.
Methis looked lazily over his shoulder.
“Move!” Candy said to him.
Mrs. Scattamun was still shaking her and calling for her husband while she did so.
“Mr. Scattamun! Fetch your whip! Quickly, Mr. Scattamun! The new freak is escaping!”
“Hold the girl!” Houlihan yelled to Mrs. Scattamun. “Hold her!”
But Candy had had quite enough of being shaken, thank you. She gave the Scattamun woman a good elbow in the ribs. She expelled a sour breath and let go of Candy. Then she stumbled backward. The Criss-Cross Man was directly in her path. The woman fell against him—much to his irritation—blocking his route to his intended victim.
Candy quickly reached through the bars and gave Methis a nudge, telling him again to move. This time he seemed to understand. He pushed the cage door open and quickly slipped out. Before he could get out of reach, Candy threw herself forward and caught hold of one of his front limbs, pulling herself toward him. As she did so, she glanced back to see an irritated Houlihan knocking off Mrs. Scattamun’s hat as he scrambled to his feet. The hat smashed as it hit the ground. The stink of formaldehyde sharpened the air. Mrs. Scattamun let out a keening sound.
“My chitterbee!” she shrieked. “Neville, this man’s broken my chitterbee!”
Her husband was in no mood for consolations. He had picked up his freak-taming whip and now raised it, preparing to strike out at Candy. Methis spread his wings with a swooping sound. Then he ran down the passageway between the cages, flapping his wings, with Candy still hanging on to him.
“Fly!” she yelled to the zethek. “Or he’ll have you back in the cage! Go on, Methis! FLY!”
Then she pulled herself onto Methis’ back and held on for dear life.
Candy heard Scattamun’s whip crack. His aim was good. She felt a sting of pain around her wrist and glanced down to see that the whip was wrapped around her wrist and hand three or four times. It hurt like crazy, but more than that, it made her mad. How dare this man take a whip to her? She glanced back over her shoulder.
“You . . . you . . . freak!” she yelled at him. She caught hold of the whip in her hand, and by sheer luck at the same moment Methis’ wing beats carried them both up into the air. The whip was jerked out of Scattamun’s grip.
“Oh, you stupid, stupid man!” Mrs. Scattamun shouted, and caught hold of the trailing handle of the whip, while Candy unwrapped the other end from her wrist. As Candy and Methis rose into the air, Mrs. Scattamun stumbled after them between the cages, unwilling to let the whip go. After a few steps one of the freaks casually put his foot out and tripped her up. She fell heavily, and Candy let the whip drop on top of the sprawled figure. She was still shrieking at her husband, her curses getting more elaborate by the syllable.
Since there was no roof on the Scattamun’s empire of malformations, Candy and Methis were able to rise freely in a widening spiral until they were maybe fifty feet above the island. The scene below was becoming more chaotic by the moment. The three escapees from the backstage area had by now come into the freak show and were going among the cages, opening them up with their teeth and fingers, even their agile tails.
It was very satisfying for Candy to watch the escalating pandemonium as the members of Scattamun’s bestiary threw open their cages and escaped, repeatedly knocking their sometime captors over in their haste to be at liberty. From her elevated position Candy was able to see how news of the escape was spreading through the crowd out on the boardwalk. Children were gathered into the arms of fretful parents as the shout went up: “The freaks are out! The freaks are out!”
As they continued to ascend, Candy heard a strange noise coming out of Methis and thought for a moment that he was sick. But the noise he was making, strange as it may have sounded, was simply laughter.
Malingo, meanwhile, had taken refuge behind Larval Lil’s Beer and Sweet Potato stand, where he had kept out of sight for a while, until he was certain that there was no danger of being apprehended by the Criss-Cross Man. He had persuaded one of the cooks to bring him a mug of red ale and a slice of pilgrim’s pie, and he was sitting among the garbage cans happily washing the pie down with ale when he heard somebody nearby talking excitedly about a girl he’d just seen, flying overhead in the grip of some monster or other.
That’s my Candy, he thought, and finishing off the last of the pilgrim’s pie, he scanned the glowing clouds. It didn’t take more than a minute or two for him to locate his lady. She was hanging on to the back of the zethek as they flew north. He was very happy, of course, to see that she hadn’t fallen victim to Houlihan (whose whereabouts he’d long since given up on), but watching his friend get smaller and smaller as Methis bore her away toward twilight made him fearful. He hadn’t been alone in this world since he’d escaped from Wolfswinkel’s house. He’d always had Candy at his side. Now he would have to go and look for her on his own. It was not a happy prospect.
He watched the girl and her winged mount steadily eroded by the gentle gloom of dusk. And then she was gone, and there were just a few stars, glittering fitfully in the sky low over Scoriae.
“Take care, lady,” he said to her softly. “Don’t worry. Wherever you are . . . I’ll find you.”
PART TWO
THINGS NEGLECTED, THINGS FORGOTTEN
The Hour! The Hour! Upon the Hour!
The Munkee spits and thickets cower,
And what has become of the Old Man’s power
But tears and trepidation?
The Hour! The Hour! Upon the Hour!
Mother’s mad and the milk’s gone sour,
But yesterday I found a flower
That sang Annunciation.
And when the Hours become Day,
And all the Days have passed away,
Will we not see—yes, you and me—
How sweet and bright the light will be
That comes of our Creation?
—Song of the Totemix
Chapter 11
Traveling North
THE BRIGHTNESS OF BABILONIUM’S Infinite Carnival didn’t light up every corner of the island, Candy soon discovered. The zethek carried her up a gentle slope, on the other side of which the garish lights of the pomps, parades, carousels and psychedelias gave sudden way to the hazy blue of early evening. The d
in from the crowds and from the roller coasters and from the barkers at the sideshows grew more remote. Soon only the occasional gust of wind brought a hint of that din to Candy’s ears, and after a little while, not even that. All she heard now was the creaking of the zethek’s wings and the occasional charmless rasp of the creature’s labored breathing.
Beneath them, the landscape was little more than a wilderness of reddish dirt dotted with a few solitary trees, all spindly and undernourished, which threw their long shadows eastward. Now and again she saw a farmhouse, with a couple of cultivated fields beside it, and cattle settling down after their evening milking. Though of course it was always dusk here, wasn’t it? The evening stars were always rising in the east; the flowers opening to meet the moon. It would be a very pleasant Hour to live in, with the day almost ending but the night not yet begun. It had been different, she thought, in the Carnival. There the lights had lent the sky a false brightness, and the din had driven out the aching hush that was all around her now. Perhaps that was why Six O’clock had been chosen as a place to put the razzmatology of the Carnival: it was a kind of defense against the darkening Hour, a way of delaying the darkness with laughter and games. But it couldn’t be put off forever. The farther north they traveled, the longer the shadows became, and the red of the earth darkened to purple and to black as the light steadily faded from the sky.
Candy did her best to be an undemanding passenger. She didn’t move too much, and she kept her mouth shut. Her greatest fear was that the zethek would realize that he was in no danger of being recaptured and would swing around and head back to Gorgossium. But so far the beast seemed content to fly on northward. Even when they cleared the coast of Babilonium and began to cross the straits between Six and Seven, he did not show any sign of wanting to turn. But he did swoop down toward the water and skim it, looking, Candy guessed, for fish to scoop up out of the water. Candy hoped he didn’t actually catch sight of anything, because if he plunged his head into the water she would almost certainly be thrown off his back. Luckily the gathering darkness and the wind ruffling the surface of the water made fish spotting difficult, and they flew on over the murky straits without incident.
The island of Scoriae was visible ahead, with the magnificent, ominous cone of Mount Galigali at its heart. She knew very little about this Hour, beyond the few facts she’d read in Klepp’s Almenak. It had mentioned, she remembered, that there had once been three beautiful cities on the island—Gosh, Mycassius and Divinium—and that an eruption of Mount Galigali had destroyed all three cities, leaving no survivors, or so she thought she remembered. She had no idea how long it was since the eruption had occurred, but she could see that the larval paths had marked the island like wide black scars, and no seed had sprouted on them nor house been built since the liquid rock had cooled.
There was only one place, at the westbound edge of the island, where the gloom and sterility were relieved somewhat. There, a bank of pale, pliant mist had gathered, as though nestling the spot, and rising from this gently moving cloud was a forest of tall trees. They had to be a particularly Abaratian species, Candy reasoned; no trees in the Hereafter (at least none she’d ever been taught about in school) thrived in a place where there was only the last blush of sunlight in the sky. Perhaps these were trees that fed not on sunlight but on the light of the moon and stars.
Fatigue, and perhaps hunger, were now taking a serious toll on Methis’ flying skills. He was rocking from side to side as he flew, sometimes so severely that one or the other of his wing tips would graze the tops of the waves. His feet plowed the water too, on occasion, throwing up a cold spray.
Candy decided this was the time to break her silence and offer a few words of encouragement.
“We’re going to make it!” she said to him. “We’ve just got to get to the shore. It’s no more than a quarter of a mile.”
Methis didn’t reply. He just flew on, his flight becoming more erratic with every wing beat.
Candy could hear the waves splashing on the shore now, and her view of the mist-shrouded trees was better and better. It looked like a place she might lay down her head and sleep for a while. She had lost track of how long it was since she’d enjoyed a good long sleep.
But first they had to reach the shore, and now with every yard they covered that seemed to be a more and yet more remote possibility. Methis was laboring hard; his breath was raw and painful.
“We can do it!” Candy said to him. “I swear . . . we can.”
This time the exhausted creature responded to her.
“What’s with this we? I don’t see you flapping your wings.”
“I would if I had wings to flap.”
“But you don’t, do you? You’re just a burden.”
As he spoke, there was a surge of surf in front of them and a massive creature—not a mantizac, but something that looked more like a rabid walrus—lunged out of the water. Its snaggle-toothed maw snapped just inches from Methis’ snout, then the monster fell back into the sea, throwing up a great wall of icy water.
There was a panicky moment or two when Methis was flying blind through the spray, and all Candy could do was cling to him and hope for the best. Then she felt a strong wind against her face and shook the water from her eyes to see that Methis was climbing steeply to avoid a second attack. She slid down over his wet back and would surely have lost her grip and fallen had he not quickly leveled off again.
“Damn gilleyants!” he yelled.
“It’s still below us!” Candy warned.
The gilleyant was breaching again, this time roaring as it threw its immense bulk out of the water. Then it came back down again with another great splash.
“Well, it’s not getting us,” Methis said.
The encounter had put some fresh life into the zethek. He flew on toward the island, keeping his new elevation, at least until they were so close to the shore that the water was no more than three or four feet deep. Only then did he swoop down again, making an inelegant landing in the soft amber sand.
They lay there on the beach for a while, gasping with relief and exhaustion. It didn’t take very long for Candy’s teeth to begin to chatter. The gilleyant’s cavorting had soaked her to the skin, and now the wind was chilling her.
She got to her feet, wrapping her arms around herself. “I have to find a fire or I’m going to catch pneumonia.”
Methis also got up, his expression as miserable as ever.
“We won’t see each other again after this, I daresay,” he said. “So I suppose I should wish you luck.”
“Oh, well, that’s nice—”
“But I’m not going to. It seems to me you’re just a troublemaker, and the more luck you have the more trouble you’ll make.”
“Who for?”
“For innocent beasts like me,” Methis growled.
“Innocent!” Candy said. “You came to steal fish, remember?”
“Oh, stop the self-righteous talk! So I was going to steal a few fish. Big deal! For that I get beaten around by you and your magic, put in a cage and sold to a freak show, and then made to carry you on my back! Well, you know what? You can freeze to death right here for all I care.” He flapped his wings hard, deliberately aiming the icy draft in Candy’s direction. She shuddered.
“Enjoy yourself,” he said with a sneering smile. “If you’re lucky, maybe Galigali will explode. That’ll keep you warm.”
Candy was too cold to waste words on a reply. She just watched while the zethek flapped his wings violently to reach takeoff velocity and then ascended gracelessly into the air. He took a moment to fix the direction of Gorgossium, then he headed off across the water, staying close to the waves as he went, in the hope, presumably, of spotting an unlucky fish.
In less than a minute, he had disappeared from sight.
Chapter 12
Darkness and Anticipation
AT JUST ABOUT THE same time that Methis was heading back toward the Midnight Isle, a small vessel—the kind that n
o zethek would attack, hungry though they always were—was departing from Shadow Harbor, on the eastern flank of Gorgossium. The vessel was a funeral barge, beautifully appointed from bow to stern with black sails and blackbird plumage surrounding the place where the deceased would normally be laid. This was a funeral barge without a body, however. In addition to the eight oarsmen who labored to propel the vessel through the icy waters at a very nonfunereal pace, there was a small contingent of stitchling soldiers, who sat around the edges of the vessel, prepared to ward off any attacker. They were the best of troops, every one of them ready to give up his life for his master. And who was that master? The Lord of Midnight, of course.
He stood dressed in voluminous robes of thrice-burned silk (the blackest, most portentous; the silk of all melancholias) and studied the lightless waters of the Izabella as the barge sped on. Besides the soldiers and the oarsmen, he had two other companions on this vessel, but neither of them spoke. They knew better than to interrupt Christopher Carrion while he was in the midst of his meditations.
At last he seemed to put his thoughts aside, and turned to the two men he had brought with him.
“You may be wondering where we are heading today,” he said.
The men exchanged glances but said nothing.
“Speak. One or the other.”
It was Mendelson Shape (whose ancestors had been in the employ of the Carrion dynasty for generations) who chanced a reply. “I have wondered, Lord,” he said, eyes downcast.
“And have you by now guessed?”
“I think perhaps we’re on our way to Commexo City. I heard a rumor that Rojo Pixler is planning a descent into the deepest parts of the Izabella to see what lives down there.”
“I heard the same rumor,” Carrion said, still studying the dark waters. “He spies down into the depths and has made contact with the beasts that live in the trenches.”
“The Requiax,” Shape said.