Abarat - Barker Clive - Страница 30

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N obody — not even christopher carrion himself—knew every last secret of the Midnight Island. The place was a labyrinth, with its columns of black rock and its fathomless lakes, its mines, its forests, its steeps and its plains. It was the hiding place of countless ancient mysteries. Indeed he'd heard it said that every fear that had ever chilled the human heart was here on Gorgossium. All assembled at that terrible Hour when the past slips away from us and we are left in dark, not knowing what will come next. If anything.

Tonight, Carrion was out walking among Gorgossium's horrible splendors, meditating on what he had seen through the eyes of the moth he'd conjured out of human dust on Vesper's Rock.

He'd witnessed the flight to the Yebba Dim Day, and of course he'd seen the girl standing there on the tower of The Great Head, studying the islands. He'd taken pleasure in the look of terror on her face as his creation, guided by Shape, had swooped down to catch hold of her and carry her off. The journey back to Midnight had begun. Things had been going very well.

Then had come the appearance of the balloons and the attack on the moth. Carrion had watched the approach of the vessels in a state of impotent fury, listened in horror as their bolts flew. He'd heard Mendelson ordering the moth to descend, presumably in the hope of outmaneuvering their pursuers. But it was a lost cause. One of the bolts had struck home, wounding the moth's telepathic powers. The images in Carrion's mind's eye had gone blank.

He didn't care about the fate of the moth—it had been raised from dust and light and would now to dust and light return. Nor did Mendelson Shape's survival matter to him. All that concerned him was the moth's freight: the girl it had abducted from the towers of the Yebba Dim Day.

Though he'd only caught a brief glimpse of her—and her face had been obscured by some device she was wearing over her eyes— he had felt an extraordinary rush of recognition at the sight of her. She was somebody special; somebody important. Perhaps even somebody for whom he could feel love.

But even as his heart had quickened at the sight of the girl, his head had cautioned him to be careful. He had not had pleasant experiences where love was concerned. It could break your heart, if you weren't careful. It could make you feel so lost, so confused, and so worthless that life didn't seem worth living. This wasn't something he knew from books; these were the bitter lessons of his life.

He decided to think further on this, so rather than return to the Twelfth Tower he went walking, taking his favorite path through Gallows Forest. As he proceeded, his thoughts inevitably turned from the girl that he'd seen on the towers of the Yebba Dim Day to that other special one, the one who had caused him so much grief: his Princess Boa.

Though it was many years since she had hurt him, he still wore on his heart the scars she had left there.

In his eyes she had been beautiful beyond words, a creature of infinite charm and sweetness of nature. She had also been the daughter of King Claus, who ruled at that time an alliance of the Islands of Day. As such, she had been a perfect match for the Lord of Midnight. So he'd told her, in his letters to her.

"What a time of healing there would be," he'd written, "if you would consent to marry me. You who love the Daylight Hours, and I, who love the Night. Wouldn't we be perfect together? For centuries the islands have been at war, sometimes secret hostilities, sometimes open struggle; but always a conflict that ended in a terrible loss of life, and in a stalemate which advanced the cause of neither side.

"An end to all of that. An end to war, forever! If you would marry me, we would announce on our wedding day that all enmities between the Islands of Night and Day would henceforth cease; and that the old wounds would be healed away by the example of our love, and a new Age begin: an Age of Everlasting Love. The war-makers would be stripped of their weapons and made to turn their hands to some loving labor. On that day too I would intend to free all my many stitchlings, who have worked to defend Midnight from attack. This would be an act of faith on my part. In doing this, I would be announcing to the world that I would rather die unarmed, and in love, than ever pick up another sword.

"And I would name you, my darling, as my inspiration. You, my sweet Princess, would be the loving soul that the Abarat would thank for your power to quell the anger in the heart of Night."

There had been many such letters, and many to him from the Princess Boa, in which she'd told him how beautiful his sentiments were, and how much she wanted to believe that Carrion's Age of Love Everlasting was something that could indeed be brought about.

"My father, King Claus, and my brother Quiffin have both advised me to accept your noble entreaties" the Princess had written, "but my lord, I am far from certain that I can do as you all desire me to do. If 1 fail to feel in my heart the depth of love that a union of our souls surely demands, things would never go well between us. Please understand that I wish you no discourtesy in speaking this way. I only desire to speak truthfully so that there be no misunderstanding"

Her letter, full of doubt (there was no outright refusal, at least not at the beginning) had hurt him. For long nights after receiving it he could not bring himself to eat, or to speak to anyone.

Finally, he had penned a response, begging her to reconsider.

"If you are concerned about my appearance, lady" he had said, "please be reassured: my grandmother Mater Motley has promised to use her skills in the magical arts to erase the marks that a life of grief and loneliness have left upon me. Should you agree to a union between us—and though you say your soul is not touched by love for me, I yet dare hope I may earn that love —theny your Midnight Prince would be made new again, as any lover should be: new in your eyes, new in my own, and new, finally, in the eyes of the world ."

But all his reassurances could not persuade the Princess Boa to change her mind. She wrote back to him with great tenderness, but there was always uncertainty in what she wrote. She wasn't saying no , outright, because her father agreed with Carrion and saw a great opportunity for peace between Day and Night if his daughter and the Lord of Midnight were to marry. But for her to say yes, she would have to be rid of all the questions that haunted her.

She had dreams, she had written, that did not reassure her.

He had written back, asking her what dreams these were.

The Princess Boa had not been specific in her response. She'd only said that the dreams frightened her, and though she did not doubt Carrion's good and honorable intentions toward her, she could not put these visions out of her head.

As he walked through Gallows Forest, the vultures and the ravens kept pace with him, the ravens flying from tree to tree overhead, the vultures hopping at his feet, fighting between themselves for the place closest to his heels. He remembered how he had labored over the letters he had written back to her, determined to convince her that the dreams she was having were of no significance, and that she should take comfort in his undying devotion to her.

"I will protect you ," he had written, "from any power that threatens you. I will put myself between you and Death itself. Please, lady, be assured: there is no demon in air, earth or sea that can threaten you ."

Whenever he had sent a letter to her there had always been a trial by hope while he had waited for her reply. And then a terrible moment when that reply had finally arrived and his fingers had become thick and fumbling with unease as he struggled to open the envelope.

The answer never satisfied him.

He pressed her, over and over, to stop punishing him with indecision. And finally, after much importuning on his part, the Princess had given him a clear answer. It could not, indeed, have been clearer. She did not love him, could not love him, and would never love him.

He'd almost drowned in the wave of self-hatred that had broken over him when he read that final reply. He knew why she was telling him no, and it had nothing to do with her nightmares. It was something else; something far simpler.

She hated him.

That was the terrible truth of the matter. However tenderly phrased her refusal, he could read between the lines of her letter. She thought he was an ugly, scarred, nightmare-ridden grotesque, and she hated him with all her heart.

That was the beginning, the middle and the end of the matter.

His long, meditative amble through the trees had brought him into the heart of the forest now, where the great gallows of the past had been planted. Some still had rotted nooses tied to their beams, and a few of those nooses still supported the remains of executed men and women, mummified in their last, ghastly poses, mouths stretched grotesquely wide. Some had had their tongues plucked out by hungry ravens, and many of the birds in this vicinity had come to possess the voices of those whose tongues they ate. Now they chattered like men as they hopped around on the bloodred branches that had sprouted from the gallows.

"What a night to be hanged, eh?"

"I was hanged on a night like this. How my wife cried!"

"Mine didn't."

"Why not?"

"She was the reason I had a noose around my throat!"

"You killed her?"

"I surely did! She cooked the worst bread-pudding in Tazmagor !"

The Lord of Midnight put the absurdly grim gossip out of his head and let his thoughts go back to the girl he had seen through the moth's eyes on the towers of the Yebba Dim Day. Though she had fallen out of the air when the moth was killed, she was still alive; of that Carrion was irrationally certain. And sooner or later he would find her and speak to her.

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