Abarat: The First Book of Hours - Barker Clive - Страница 67

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“Let me carry him!”Tom said, having to yell until his throat was a roar over the noise of cracking boughs and rolling thunder.

The Captain didn’t have an opportunity for argument. Tom simply picked up Mischief in his arms and, putting his head down so as not to be blinded by the rain, proceeded to climb to higher ground. The others followed, all carrying what they could rescue from their little encampment.

And still the rain came on, with mounting power, until the world was reduced to a deafening gray-green blur.

Step by step Tom climbed the slope, until he was two thirds of the way to the top. Then out of nowhere a large log came down the slope carried by the force of the flood. Tom tried to move aside to avoid being struck, but the weight of the brothers slowed him. The log caught him a heavy blow, knocking his legs out from under him. Down he went, and Mischief slipped from his arms. They were both carried back down the slope, knocking everybody else over as they descended.

When they reached the bottom, it was like being thrown into the midst of a fast-flowing river. Geneva caught hold of Tria to stop the child from being swept away down the beach and out into the sea. McBean in turn caught hold of Geneva with his right hand and grabbed a tree with his left, holding on for dear life until the monsoon had exhausted itself.

And still it mounted, beating down on their heads. It was as if the skies had opened and unleashed a hundred years of rain.

And then, just as abruptly as it had begun, it all ceased. It was as though a faucet had been turned off. The sun broke through the exhausted clouds, and it illuminated a battered world. Every single blossom had been stripped of its petals by the force of the rain. The smaller leaves had been pulled off the twigs, the larger ones shredded. Bushes had been uprooted and carried down onto the beach and into the surf, which was no longer white but tinted reddish brown by the mud that had been washed into it.

Weary from the relentless assault of the rain, McBean, Geneva, Tria and Tom stood ankle deep in mud and debris. Unable to speak, they stared up at the sky, watching the patches of blue grow between the thinning clouds.

As the warmth of the sun pierced the bruised canopy and touched the greenery around the survivors, they were all witness to a phenomenon that Klepp had failed to mention in his Altnenak. Apparently he had never been on the Nonce when a rainstorm had been unleashed, because if he had the ensuing miracle would surely have been reported in his Almenak’s pages.

Everywhere around them, the wounded plant life was beginning to grow again. Roots, many of which had been exposed by the force of the water, stretched down like gnarled fingers into the muddied ground. From broken twigs and cracked boughs new growth sprang up, healthy and green, buds fattening and bursting in front of their astonished eyes. Vines curled and climbed from the remains of their rain-beaten elders like eager green children, while ferns sprang up, uncoiling their tender shoots at such speed they were grazing the lower boughs of the trees in seconds.

“Oh. My,” Tom said.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Geneva asked the Captain.

He slowly shook his head.

“Never,” he said.

This spectacle of growth would have been extraordinary enough in itself; but there was more. The monsoon had awoken dormant elements in the greenery, parts of its blossoming anatomy that did not entirely resemble plants. Wasn’t that an eye surreptitiously opening in the head of a flower? And something uncannily like a mouth, gaping in the moisture-fattened bulbs of a plant that sat half in the earth and half out, like a bright green onion?

On all sides there were signs of this uncanny life: cracklings and mutterings and stretching and yes, even something like laughter, as though the plants were hugely amused by the sight of their own protean lives.

 It was Tria who first said: “Where’s Mischief?”

Everybody looked around. The John brothers were not to be seen. The Captain sent everyone in different directions, telling them to look quickly, as this was a matter of life and death.

“If they’re lying facedown in water, they could be drowning right now!”

His words gave urgency to everybody’s search. There were large, shallow pools of muddy rainwater at the bottom of the slope; they went through them from end to end on their hands and knees, desperately hoping to find Mischief before too much time passed.

Meanwhile, the greenery continued to become more active and more fruitful around them, the buds bursting like popcorn, releasing the sweet fragrance of new flowers. Some of the plants were so eager to be fruitful that they were already releasing clouds of pollen that filled the air like soft golden smoke.

The survivors, of course, noticed none of this. They were concerned about Mischief.

Nothing was said, but everyone was beginning to fear the worst. Perhaps the force of the water had carried him down the slope of the beach and out to sea. If not, where was he?

It was Tria—the ever-observant Tria—who pointed out what had happened to the rest of their belongings. The things that they’d attempted to save from the monsoon, and had successfully carried back up the slope, only to lose them again when they’d tumbled back down, were all in one spot. They had been gathered together, it seemed, by the large, serpentine tendrils of an enormous plant that sat in regal solitude at the bottom of the incline.

They went to examine it. The plant was continuing to grow and thrive, its huge seedpods shiny green with health. They creaked as they grew, and gave off the pungent smell of all green growing things. The plant was like a little grove unto itself, its outer layer a knotted thicket of freshly sprung and interwoven flora. It was here that articles from their encampment had been brought by the water. Now they were part of the elaborate network of tendrils, as though some ambitious intelligence in the plant was attempting to turn them into bizarre blossoms.

Beyond the thicket—at the heart of this miniature forest—the foliage grew considerably denser. So dense, in fact that it almost hid from sight an enormous seedpod, dripping with the juices of its recent creation.

“Will you take a look at that?” said Tom, parting the veil of tendrils.

“There,” Tria said. “He’s in there.”

“Mischief?” Geneva asked her.

Tria nodded.

The other three exchanged confounded looks.

“Here, Captain,” Tom said. “Lend me a hand, will you?”

They began to pull at the outer layer of the thicket, and the tendrils uncoiled and wrapped around their hands and arms, around their legs too. They were too thin—perhaps too playful—to do any real harm, but they still slowed the men’s advance.

“I wish I had a knife,” the Captain said.

“Oh, let me at it!” said Geneva. “You two will be fighting that stuff all day!”

She stepped between them and started to pull at the tangled mass. Now all three of them were in the midst of the green coils, and pieces of flora were flying in all directions.

But Geneva was a better tactician than the other two. She ducked down under the great mass of thicket, and then—once she was on the other side—pushed it out, like two enormous doors, which Tom and the Captain grabbed hold of, creating a passageway into the heart of the grove.

They were all breathless now, fragments of the leaves stuck to the sweat on their faces and caught on their eyelashes and in their hair.

They stood aside as Tria entered through the opening they’d made and approached the pod that all this foliage had been protecting.

“Be careful,” Tom said to her.

He’d no sooner spoken than the pod—which was hanging from a great looping network of vines—began to move. Small tremors ran through it, as though something inside was having a little fit. Its seam began to split with a sound of tearing canvas, spitting gobs of sweet juice as it did so.

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