Abarat 2: Days of Magic, Nights of War
A dazzling fantasy adventure for all ages, the second part of a quartet appearing at two yearly intervals, richly illustrated by the author. Film rights sold to Disney for $8 million on the paintings alone.The Abarat; a magical otherworld composed on an archipelago of twenty-five islands – one for each hour of the day, plus an island out of time.Candy Quackenbush, escaping her dull, dull life from the most boring place in our world, Chickentown, USA, finds that in the Abarat she has another existence entirely, one which links her to marvels and mysteries–and even to murder…In this, the second volume in Clive Barker's extraordinary fantasy for both adults and children, Candy's adventures in the amazing world of the Abarat are getting more strange by the Hour. Christopher Carrion, the Lord of Midnight, has sent his henchmen to capture her. Why? she wonders. What would Carrion want with a girl from Minnesota? And why is Candy beginning to feel that the world of the Abarat is familiar to her? Why can she speak words of magic she doesn't even remember learning?There is a mystery here. And Carrion, along with his fiendish grandmother, Mater Motley, suspects that whatever Candy is, she could spoil his plans to take control of the Abarat.Now Candy's companions must race against time to save her from the clutches of Carrion, and she must solve the mystery of her past before the forces of Night and Day clash and Absolute Midnight descends upon the islands.A final war is about to begin. And Candy is going to need to make some choices that will change her life forever…
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Abarat 2
Days of Magic, Nights of War
Clive Barker
For my mother,Joan
I dreamed I spoke in another’s language,
I dreamed I lived in another’s skin,
I dreamed I was my own beloved,
I dreamed I was a tiger’s kin.
I dreamed that Eden lived inside me,
And when I breathed a garden came,
I dreamed I knew all of Creation,
I dreamed I knew the Creator’s name.
I dreamed—and this dream was the finest—
That all I dreamed was real and true,
And we would live in joy forever,
You in me, and me in you.
C.B.
Table of Contents
PART ONE FREAKS, FOOLS AND FUGITIVES
1 PORTRAIT OF GIRL AND GESHRAT
10 “THE FREAKS ARE OUT! THE FREAKS ARE OUT!”
PART TWO THINGS NEGLECTED, THINGS FORGOTTEN
19 LIFE AND DEATH IN CHICKENTOWN
33 A VISIT TO MARAPOZSA STREET
37 THE OWNER OF THE DEAD MAN’S HOUSE
44 THE PRINCE AND THE BEAST-BOY
PART FOUR THE SEA COMES TO CHICKENTOWN
Here is a list of fearful things:
The jaws of sharks, a vulture’s wings,
The rabid bite of the dogs of war,
The voice of one who went before.
But most of all the mirror’s gaze,
Which counts us out our numbered days.
—Righteous Bandy, the nomad Poet of Abarat
OTTO HOULIHAN SAT IN the dark room and listened to the two creatures who had brought him here—a three-eyed thing by the name of Lazaru and its sidekick, Baby Pink-Eye—playing Knock the Devil Down in the corner. After their twenty-second game his nervousness and irritation began to get the better of him.
“How much longer am I going to have to wait?” he asked them.
Baby Pink-Eye, who had large reptilian claws and the face of a demented infant, puffed on a blue cigar and blew a cloud of acrid smoke in Houlihan’s direction.
“They call you the Criss-Cross Man, don’t they?” he said.
Houlihan nodded, giving Pink-Eye his coldest gaze, the kind of gaze that usually made men weak with fear. The creature was unimpressed.
“Think you’re scary, do you?” he said. “Ha! This is Gorgossium, Criss-Cross Man. This is the island of the Midnight Hour. Every dark, unthinkable thing that has ever happened at the dead of night has happened right here. So don’t try scaring me. You’re wasting your time.”
“I just asked—”
“Yes, yes, we heard you,” said Lazaru, the eye in the middle of her forehead rolling back and forth in a very unsettling fashion. “You’ll have to be patient. The Lord of Midnight will see you when he’s ready to see you.”
“Got some urgent news for him, have you?” said Baby Pink-Eye.
“That’s between him and me.”
“I warn you, he doesn’t like bad news,” said Lazaru. “He gets in a fury, doesn’t he, Pink-Eye?”
“Crazy is what he gets! Tears people apart with his bare hands.”
They glanced conspiratorially at each other. Houlihan said nothing. They were just trying to frighten him, and it wouldn’t work. He got up and went to the narrow window, looking out onto the tumorous landscape of the Midnight Island, phosphorescent with corruption. This much of what Baby Pink-Eye had said was true: Gorgossium was a place of terrors. He could see the glistening forms of countless monsters as they moved through the littered landscape; he could smell spicy-sweet incense rising from the mausoleums in the mist-shrouded cemetery; he could hear the shrill din of drills from the mines where the mud that filled Midnight’s armies of stitchlings was produced. Though he wasn’t going to let Lazaru or Pink-Eye see his unease, he would be glad when he’d made his report and he could leave for less terrifying places.
There was some murmuring behind him, and a moment later Lazaru announced: “The Prince of Midnight is ready to see you.”
Houlihan turned from the window to see that the door on the far side of the chamber was open and Baby Pink-Eye was gesturing for him to step through it.
“Hurry, hurry,” the infant said.
Houlihan went to the door and stood on the threshold. Out of the darkness of the room came the voice of Christopher Carrion, deep and joyless.
