Absolute Midnight

“Boa . . .” Candy growled.

Laguna Munn nodded. “She took from the child what I stopped her taking from you.” She tenderly stroked her son’s cheek. “You just stay here, sweet one,” she said to him. “Mama will be back in just a few moments.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find her. And take back what she took from him.”

She got to her feet, rising with surprising ease for so large boned a woman, looking down at Jollo all the while. It was only with the greatest difficulty that she finally separated her gaze from him.

“I’m so sorry,” Candy said. “If I’d known what she was capable of doing—”

“Don’t,” Mrs. Munn said, waving Candy’s apology away. “We have more urgent business than talk. Will you please stay with him, maybe talk to him a little so his spirit stays near?”

“Of course.”

“She’s not a real Princess, you know,” Mrs. Munn said with an odd deliberation in her voice, like an amateur actor reciting lines. “She may have a crown and a title but they mean nothing. True royalty is a state of the soul. It belongs to those who have the gift of empathy, of compassion, of vision. That’s how people are led to do great things, even in cold, brutal times. But this . . . Boa . . .” Her lips curled when she spoke the two syllables: Bow-ah. “. . . attempted to first take your life, and then my Jollo’s, just to put some flesh on her spirit. That’s not the act of a Princess. To attack someone who had been her sanctuary? And then a child? Where is the nobility in that? I’ll tell you. There is none. Because your Princess Boa is a fake! She has no more royal blood in her than I do.”

There was a furious shriek from overhead—

“Liar! Liar!”

—and the branches shook so violently that a green rain of torn leaves fluttered down.

“There you are,” Candy heard Laguna Munn mutter under her breath. “I knew you were up there somewhere, you vicious little—”

A branch overhead creaked loudly, drawing Candy’s gaze up through the knotted branches to the place where Boa was squatting, her form delineated by narrow rays of violet light that passed up through her body from her soles to her scalp and from her head to her heels, throwing off a loop of incandescence when they crossed at her waist. She rocked back and forth on the branch, and then suddenly spat on Laguna Munn’s now upturned face.

“What are you staring at, you fat, old buzzard?” Boa said.

Mrs. Munn pulled a large handkerchief out of the sleeve of her dress. “Nothing of any worth,” she replied as she wiped her face. “Just you!”

And with that she sprang up from the ground into the canopy where Boa was squatting, leaving her handkerchief to drop to the ground.

“Take care of Jollo!” she yelled to Candy as she disappeared into the shadowed canopy. Then the nearby trees shook as Boa attempted her escape into it, and the chase overhead moved off up the slope, leaving Candy alone with the sick child.

Chapter 15 Face-to-Face

MAMA?” JOLLO SAID WHEN Candy sat down beside him. She didn’t need to correct his error. “Wait, you’re not Mama.”

“Your mom won’t be long,” Candy told him. “I’m just here to look after you until she comes back.”

“Candy.”

“Yes.”

“She came out of you, didn’t she? The girl who killed me.”

“You’re not dead, Jollo. And your mom’s not going to let you die.”

“There’s some things even Mama can’t control,” Jollo said. His voice was getting weaker, word by word.

“Listen to me,” Candy said. “I know what the Princess did to you was horrible. She tried to do the same thing to me. But hold on. Please.”

“What for?”

“What for?”

“Don’t worry. You don’t have to answer that.” He raised his head off the ground and squinted at Candy. “Tell me about the Constrictor.”

“The what?”

“Boa,” he said, his face suddenly becoming a playground of mischief. “Get it? Ha! I just made that up.”

At the moment death was forgotten, anything was possible. Candy grinned. There was such sweetness in him she saw, hidden behind his melancholy.

“She was there inside you all the time?”

“Yes, she was there.”

“But you didn’t know what a monster she was, did you?”

Candy shook her head. “I had no idea,” she said. “She was part of me.”

“And now? How does it feel?”

“Empty.”

“You feel alone?”

“Yes . . .”

“Still, it’s better that she’s gone.”

Candy took a moment to consider this before replying.

“Yes. It’s better.”

Before Jollo could ask any further questions, a welcome and familiar figure appeared between the trees. “It’s only me!”

“Malingo!”

“Same old geshrat,” he said. “But who’s this?”

“You remember Jollo? Mrs. Munn’s boy?”

“He remembers me the way I was,” Jollo said. “Before Boa got to me.”

“So it worked,” Malingo said.

“Yes, she’s gone,” Candy said. “But she almost killed poor Jollo.”

“And you.”

“Well, yes. And me.”

“Where is she now?”

“Up in the trees somewhere,” Candy said.

“She’s running away from Mama,” Jollo said. He looked up at Candy. “Isn’t she?”

“That’s right.”

“But I want her back now. Just to say good-bye.”

“Maybe I should go and look for her,” Candy said.

“Yes . . .” Jollo said.

Candy took hold of Jollo’s hand. His fingers were sweaty but cold. “What do you think, Jollo? If I have Malingo stay with you, will you promise not to . . . not to . . .”

“Not to die?” Jollo said.

“Yes. Not to die.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll try. But bring Mama back soon. I want her here with me if . . . if I can’t stay any longer.”

“Don’t say that,” Candy said to him.

“It’s the truth,” he replied. “Mama says it’s bad to tell lies.”

“Well, yes,” Candy said. “It is.”

“So hurry,” he said, slipping his fingers out of Candy’s grasp. “Find her.” He turned to Malingo. “You were a slave to a wizard once, weren’t you?” he said.

“I was,” Malingo said.

“Come closer. I can’t see you in the darkness. There. That’s better. Tell me about it. Was he cruel? I heard he was cruel.”

Jollo’s interest in Candy had already slipped away; all his focus was now entirely upon Malingo. Candy got to her feet and left the two of them to talk, happy the boy was diverted.

“So how did you become a slave?” he said to Malingo.

“My father sold me . . .” Malingo began.

Candy didn’t hear any more. She retreated until she no longer had sight of Jollo, and he had no view of her. Only then did she turn her back on the place where he lay and face the tree-covered slope. This time she didn’t need any magic to plot a course to Mrs. Munn. She could hear the chase going on through the densely knitted canopy farther up the slope. Candy could even hear echoes of the incantatrix calling after Boa.

“There’s no way off this island, Boa.”

“Let me alone, will you?” Boa yelled back as she sprinted over the treetops. “I didn’t know the boy was your son. I swear I didn’t. I mean, how could I? There’s no family resemblance.”

“Liar! Liar!” Candy yelled right back, her interruption echoing that of Boa, minutes before. But she had more to say. “You knew exactly who he was, Boa. Because I knew. And if I knew then—”

“Stay out of this, Quackenbush!” Boa hollered. “Or you’ll be sorry!”

“I’m already sorry,” Candy yelled back. “I’m sorry I ever let you out of my head.”

“Ah, the sting of regret!” Boa crowed. “Well, it’s done, girl, and it can never be undone. So you’d better get used to it. I’m in the world now. Everything changes from now on. Everything.”

“Stay away from her, Candy!” Mrs. Munn hollered. “She’ll hurt you!”

“I’m not afraid of her,” Candy said.

“Liar, liar, funeral pyre!” Boa chanted.

“Well, one of us is going to have to tell the truth sooner or later,” Candy replied.

Boa finally reached the tree beneath which Candy stood, and looked down through the leaves, shaped in their fullness, like planets with golden rings around them. That Boa’s body was defined by the dual motion of bright rings was no accident. Her new skin—bought with the coin of Jollo’s suffering—had taken for inspiration the design of the foliage all around it.

“You want the truth,” Boa said, squatting on a branch so as to peer down at Candy through the canopy. “Then here: have it. I would have taken all the life force in you to heal me completely. But I was denied the total sum of you by that fat witch. And then when I do the only thing left to me—take her son—she comes howling after me as though I’d committed a crime. Ridiculous woman!”

“I heard that!”

“So? You think I’m afraid of you?”

“I know you are. I can smell the fear off you!”

There was a great commotion in the trees behind Boa. The branches were cracking as they were shaken and their motion becoming more violent as it got nearer.

“You are dead, you vile creature.”

“No. Death is what you will all inherit now. I am returned with life. But you . . . you will follow the child into oblivion, come soon, come late. No exceptions for children or lost girls. Everybody dies, come soon, come late. And you—”

She leaped off the branch where she’d been perched, heading for Candy as she descended. She grabbed hold of Candy’s face, throwing them both back through the barbed thickets to the ground. Her hand went from Candy’s face to her throat.

“You, I say soon!”

Chapter 16 Laguna Munn Angered

IF CANDY HAD NOT had the sight of the Princess’s face to look up at, she would have quickly succumbed to her death grip. But luckily she only had to look up at Boa’s beautiful, hateful face to keep fighting, even though Boa’s hold on her throat had cut off most of her air. She just kept beating at Boa’s face, over and over and over, determined not to let the waves of darkness that lapped at her sight overwhelm her. But even with her fury at Boa to help keep her conscious she couldn’t hold back the black tide forever. Her blows were getting weaker, and Boa was showing not the least sign of being hurt or dissuaded from further attack. She stared down at Candy with the implacable gaze of an executioner.

And then, behind her joyless face, there was a blur of color, too chaotic for Candy’s weary eyes to make sense of.

But the voice that came with the colors was a different matter. That made perfect sense.

“Let go of the girl right now,” the incantatrix said, “or I swear I will break every bone in your body, Princess or no Princess.”

A moment later Boa’s hands let go of Candy’s throat and she gratefully inhaled two lungfuls of sweet, clean air. It took her body a little while to push back the tide that had come so close to drowning her, by which time the struggle between Laguna Munn and Boa had already taken the two of them some distance from the place where Candy lay. When she got to her feet and looked around she saw them a long way up the slope, standing several yards apart but locked together by several cords of conjuration—those pitched by Mrs. Munn, digging their blazing fingers into Boa, while the cords Boa had cast danced vicious tarantellas around Mrs. Munn. The cords had shed bright flakes of energy—some no larger than fireflies, others the size of burning birds—that littered the darkness around and above the circle of ash and blackened timber that the powers of the combatants had burned into being.

Candy knew when she was out of her league. These two were exchanging blows from a magic she had no comprehension of, much less the means to conjure. Even as she watched, each of the pair called out more incandescent hurts and harms, yelling their furies at each other in what Candy recognized as Old Abaratian, the mother tongue of time itself. She understood not even a syllable of what they were hurling back and forth. But there was strange proof of its potency in the branches and on the ground all around the fire-formed grove.

While most of the scraps of power remained in the arena’s zone of influence, a few escaped, and finding living subjects up among the branches and down between the roots, remade them. It was the sweet-songed capellajar birds that shed light on the spectacle, the magic transforming them into beasts that had something of the bat about them, and something about the lizard, their once modest beaks became snouts the length of their bodies, which pierced the dense lattice of branches, twigs and leaves as they descended from their high perches. The cavern’s crystalline roof threw down shafts of rainbow silver, lighting the shadow world below.

For a few seconds Candy was enraptured by the eccentric life-forms that were appearing from the trees and thicket: bizarre relatives of creatures that would have still had a certain strangeness to Candy, even in their unaltered state, but were even more extraordinary now.

The spectacle held her in thrall so completely that she failed to notice that the two women were no longer fighting in the burned-out grove, and were making their way back down the slope toward her, until she heard Mrs. Munn’s voice:

“Take it, girl!”

Candy persuaded her gaze to look away from the animals, and found that Laguna Munn was approaching her through the trees at an extraordinary rate, fearlessly careening through the thornbushes, no more than seven or eight strides from where Candy stood.

And again she shouted, as though the sense of what she was saying was utterly self-evident.

“Take it, girl!”

And as she shouted, and raced toward Candy, she offered up her right hand, which was partially open and completely empty.

“Be quick, girl. The vicious thing behind me means to take our lives!”

Candy looked back over Mrs. Munn’s shoulder and saw that Boa’s recently acquired flesh wore an expression of almost insane fury: her eyes gaping, her mouth gasping, and her lips curled back like those of a crazed dog, exposing not only her teeth but her gums too. Her body, though it was still without clothes, wore a pattern of shadowy stains that moved under the surface of her skin, dividing into smeared spots in one place and gathered into a single ragged shape in another, all constantly changing.

Even her face was stained: with a swarm of blots, then with rows of rising stripes, then a single black diamond, one form becoming another without lingering in any state for so much as a moment.

For some reason the display touched a nerve in Candy. It was literally sickening; it made her stomach rebel, and it was all she could do not to keep herself from puking.

Mrs. Munn’s half-opened hand was now in front of Candy.

“Take it!” Mrs. Munn said. “Just do it!”

“Take what?”

“Whatever you see in my hand.”

“It’s empty.”

“Look again. And be quick.” Candy was aware of Boa’s shape rising up behind Mrs. Munn, and beating at the air above her. “I can’t hold her off for long. The power in her!”

Candy could hear Boa calling to her as she beat at the Air Armor the incantatrix had put up to keep her from finishing the chase. The Armor, a conjuration Candy knew of but couldn’t wield, made Boa’s voice slurred and remote, but Candy could still comprehend enough to know what Boa was doing. She was trying to sow seeds of doubt in Candy concerning Mrs. Munn.

“She says you’re crazy,” Candy said.

“She’s probably right,” Laguna Munn replied. “Did she make you want to vomit when you saw the Sepulcaphs?”

“Is that what they’re called? Yes. It was horrible.”

“If she tries it again, you run, put your eyes out, bury your head in the ground, just don’t look at the patterns. If she’s strong enough to keep them in her skin, which she is, she can make you puke yourself inside out.”

“That’s . . . that’s not possible. Is it?”

“I’m afraid it is. She almost had me doing it two minutes ago, up the hill. Me? On my own rock! Where she got power to wield Sepulcaphs is . . .” She shook her head. “. . . unbelievable.”

“She was taught by Christopher Carrion.”

“Interesting. And of course the question remains: where did he get it? The Hereafter doesn’t have power. That’s why you did business with us. But even the Abarat doesn’t contain wieldings that powerful.”

There was a sharp stinging sound, as more pieces of the Air Armor behind Laguna Munn shattered beneath Boa’s assault.

“Lordy Lou. How did you ever live with her?”

“She wasn’t like this.”

“Or she was and you suppressed it.”

“Huh. I never thought of that.”

“No wonder you were a dull little batrat of a child. All your energy was going into keeping this monster from breaking out.”

“Who said I was a dull little ratbat—”

“Batrat.”

“—of a child?”

“You did. Who you are is the stone on which you stand. Now no more—”

There were two more brutal stings in quick succession. Then another three.

“She’s breaking through. Take your weapon!”

Once again she was offering her hand to Candy, and once again Candy was seeing nothing but an empty palm. There was a desperate urgency to the problem. Boa and her nauseating Sepulcaphs were a cracked plate of air away.

“Look again!” Mrs. Munn insisted. “Look away. Clear your head. Then look again. It’s right there!”

“What is?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Like a poisonous snake?”

She had but to ask, and there it was in Mrs. Munn’s hands: a seven-foot-long snake, its colors—a toxic yellow-green with a band of glistening black running along its length—designed to tell anyone that it was a venomous thing.

“Good choice, girl!” Mrs. Munn said, in a tone so ambiguous Candy had no idea whether she was serious or not. “Here! Take it!”

She tossed the snake at Candy, who, more out of instinct than intention, caught it in both hands.

“Now what?” she said.

Chapter 17 Snake Talk

JOLLO?”

There was no response from the wizened figure on the ground. His eyes were closed, and his pupils were motionless behind his gray, papery lids. Malingo kneeled down beside him, and spoke to him again:

“Are you still there?” he asked.

For several seconds there was no response. Then his gummy green eyelids opened and he spoke. His words were slurred, his voice watery.

“I’m still here. I just needed to rest. Everything was too noisy with my eyes open,” he said.

Malingo glanced up at Covenantis, hoping he’d know the significance of Jollo’s confusion of senses, but Covenantis’s focus was neither with his brother nor Malingo. Covenantis was turned away from his brother in the direction of the sound of—

“Shattering air,” Covenantis said.

“I didn’t even know air could shatter,” Malingo said.

“Glass can be poured like treacle if it’s hot enough. Did you not know that either?” Covenantis replied. “Are all geshrats so stupid?”

The noise came again. And again. Malingo was now looking in the same direction as Covenantis, curious as to what shattered air looked like. Suddenly, Jollo seized hold of Malingo’s arm, first with one hand then with both, pulling himself up into a sitting position, his eyes opening wide.

“She’s there,” he said, staring with eerie accuracy in precisely the same direction as his brother.

Malingo didn’t need to ask Jollo of whom he was speaking. There was only one “she” in the boys’ universe. And all Jollo wanted right now was the comfort of her presence.

“Mama . . .” said Jollo. “Find her, Covenantis.”

“She’s coming, little brother.”

“Hurry her up. Please?”

“I can’t hurry her when she has such important work, brother.”

“I’m almost dead,” Jollo said. “I want to see her one last time . . .”

“Hush, Jollo. No more talk of death.”

“Easy to say when it’s not your life that’s . . . fading away.” His face became a tragic mask. “I want my mama.”

“She’ll come as soon as she can,” Covenantis said, only this time much more quietly, his voice filled with sorrow as though he knew, however fast she came it would never be fast enough.

“Don’t look up!” Mrs. Munn yelled over another round of shattering air. “Just be ready!”

“What do you mean?”

“You wanted the snake. Get ready to use it!”

Candy felt stupid and angry and confused all at once. She’d never imagined letting Boa go would escalate into such chaos: the Princess nearly killing Mrs. Munn, her firstborn, and Candy, and now breaking through Mrs. Munn’s defenses, still no doubt wearing the Sepulcaphs. The mere thought of them was enough to stir up nausea, so Candy concentrated on the snake.

Its body was too thick for her to get her hand around, but it didn’t seem to want to escape her grip. Quite the reverse. It slid the cool, dry length of its tail twice around one of her arms and then, raising up its large head so that it could look down imperiously at Candy it said, “I think myself a very fine snake. Do you not agree?”

Its speech, which was as elegant and smooth as its motion, came as no great surprise to Candy. It had been the greatest disappointment of growing up—far more wounding than finding out that there was neither an Oz nor a Santa Claus—to discover that though animals talked often and wisely in the stories she loved, few of them did so in life. It made perfect sense then that a creature she had fashioned in a moment of blind instinct would possess the power of speech.

“Are you the one who called me into being?” the serpent inquired.

“Yes, I’m the one.”

“Lovely work, if one may be so bold,” the snake said, admiring his gleaming coils. “I would have done nothing different. Not a scale. One finds oneself . . . perfect.” He looked a little embarrassed. “Oh dear, I think I’m in love,” he said, kissing his own coils.

“Aren’t you poisonous?” Candy said.

“Indeed. I can taste the bitterness of my own poison. One is of course immune to one’s own toxins, but if a single drop fell on your tongue—”

“Dead?”

“Guaranteed.”

“Quick?”

“Of course not! What’s a poison worth if it’s quick?”

“Painless?”

“No! What’s a—”

“Poison worth if it’s painless?”

“Precisely. My bite may be quite swift, but the consequence? I assure you, it’s the very worst. It feels like a fire is cooking your brains and your muscles are rotting on your bones.”

“Lordy Lou.”

Hearing the animal speak so lovingly of the agonies it could cause made Candy think of Christopher Carrion. Much like the snake’s poison, Carrion’s soup of nightmares had been lethal to others. But to Carrion, they’d been companions, trusted and loved. The similarity was too strong to be a coincidence. Candy had laced her invented snake with a little of Carrion’s essence.

The chat with the snake, along with Candy’s recollection of Carrion, had taken but a few seconds, during which time the sound of Boa battering on the last plate of air had grown steadily louder.

“Does your snake know what to do when Boa gets in?” Mrs. Munn yelled over the noise. “Because she’s a vehement one. She’s going to be through very soon, and you’d better be ready.”

“Oh, I think my snake knows his business,” Candy yelled back.

“Your snake, am I?”

“As long as you don’t object,” she said, doing her best to reproduce the snake’s imitation of high birth.

“Why would one mind?” the snake replied. “In truth, lady, one is both honored and moved.”

It raised its finely formed snout a little way, in order to deepen the bow that followed. Candy did her best to conceal her impatience (what part of her, conceiving of a snake, had created one with such humorless formality?) but it was difficult. The only thing that kept her from losing her composure was the serpent’s genuine commitment to her.

“You’ve won me over entirely,” it said to her. “I would kill the world for you, I swear I would.”

“Candy . . .” Mrs. Munn said. “Be quick or it’s ended.”