Abarat - Barker Clive - Страница 59

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FOR A TRAVELER IN THE ABARAT there can be few documents as useful, or as thorough in their contents, as Klepp's Almenak .

It was first published some two hundred years ago, and it is a stew of fact and fiction, in which the author, Samuel Hastrim Klepp, writes one moment as a practical explorer, the next as a mythologist. There are significant errors on every page, but there is some reason to believe that Klepp knew that he was playing fast and loose with the truth. He speaks at one point of his "leavening the flat bread of what we know, w ith the yeast of what we dream may come to pass ."

However questionable its value as a work of truth, there is no doubting the hold Klepp's Almenuk has on the hearts of the people of the Abarat. The Almenak is updated yearly by the current descendant of Klepp, Samuel Hastrim the Fifth. He has kept the contents of the pamphlet much the same as it always was: it chronicles holy days around the archipelago; carrier tables of tides and stars; lists all manner of event, mythical and actual. It carries the rules of two of the Abarat's favorite sports: Mycassian Bug Wrestling and Star-Striking. It also lists Celestial Events, both Benign and Apocalyptic, carries news of appearing islands, and for those with a taste for grim inevitability, it chronicles the— steadyif infinitesimalsinkage of other islands. Besides these, contained within the Almenak 's pages are news of Extinctions, Migrations, Emancipations, and Redefinitions of the Infinite, while for those seeking more practical information it contains maps of every major city, including those that have been destroyed by time or calamity.

It is, in short, the essential guide to the archipelago. Even if (as one Jengo Johnson once calculated), no less than fifty-seven percent of its information is for some reason or other questionable, every sailor and traveling salesman who crosses the Abarat, every pilgrim and pig farmer about the business of worship or gelding, has a copy of the Almenak within reach, and each finds in its contradictory pages something of value.

I would, if I could, reproduce it all here. But that's of course impossible. I will limit myself instead to Klepp's eloquent descriptions of the major Hours, including the Twenty-Fifth, with a few references to what the author dubs "Rocks of Some Significance" (though it is necessarily incomplete; small islands appear and disappear in the Sea of Izabella all the time; a complete listing would be out of date the moment it was printed).

I will list the Hours, as Klepp did, beginning at Noon.

However, I strongly urge anyone tempted to use the information that follows as a literal guide to the islands to proceed with extreme caution. It is worth remembering Samuel Klepp the First died having become lost on one of the Outer Islands. He was found, dead from exposure, with a copy of his own Almenak in his hand. According to a detailed map in the Almenak that he himself had drawn, there was supposed to be a small town that bore his name on the very spot where he had perished; he had no doubt been looking for the town when exposure overtook him. As it happened, no such town existed.

But since his death a town has been founded at that place, to service the sightseers who come to see the spot where the great Almenak maker perished. And yes, it is called Klepp.

His map, then, was correct. It was simply premature.

Such things happen often in the archipelago, especially on those islands closest to the Twenty-Fifth Hour. So be warned.

Here, then, are some brief excerpts from Klepp's descriptions of the Twenty-Five Islands of the Abarat.

"Of the island of Yzil , which is Noon, let me say this: it is a place of exceptional beauty and fruitfulness. Furthermore it does a soul good (sometimes) to stand with the sun directly over his head. Here at Yzil, a man hoping for fame might be reminded to live in the moment and not care too much where his shadow may fall tomorrow, but rather concern himself with where it lies today.

"The island is temperate and lush. A gentle breeze passes constantly through the thick foliage, and there are creatures of every shape and size being wafted through the greenery. It is said their singular source is a Creatrix of very ancient origins, called the Princess Breath, who makes her home here on Yzil, and is in the infinite and rapturous process of conjuring life-forms from her divine essence, which the breeze carries through the canopy and out across the Sea of Izabella. There caught by this tide or that, they are carried out across the islands to populate them with new kinds of life.

"At One O'clock , which lies to the south-southeast of Yzil, is the island of Hobarookus . Traditionally this has been a haunt of sea bandits and buccaneers. One O'clock being my lunching hour I have many times sought a healthy repast upon this island, and may happily report that whatever fiendish piratical types haunt the island, their presence has not deterred the cooks of Hobarookus from becoming fair geniuses of their craft. I will tell you plainly, there is no better food to be had at any Hour.

"The topography of the island of Hobarookus is unattractive. It's mostly rocky, though there are areas of the interior where the ground becomes unpredictably swampy. These areas, which the Hobarookians call the Sinks, are the habitats of kalukwa birds, which species reportedly hatch downy human babies from their eggs every ninth year. These children—if saved from being pecked to death by juveniles of the previous year's hatchingare often saved by the pirates and raised as their children. This means the island, far from resembling a vile enclave of thieves and murderers, resembles instead an island of wild children watched over fondly by that aforementioned vile enclave of thieves and murderers, like mothers watching over their errant (and occasionally lightly feathered) children.

"At Two lies Orlando's Cap , which is not an island I know well. An asylum for the insane is located here—so placed because its founder, Izzard Coyne, believed Two in the Afternoon to be an Hour that promotes a healing balm in the soul.

"The island, however, is so ill-favored that it's hard to imagine those prone to irrationality being much comforted there. The island's name, by the way, comes from its caplike shape. I can find no evidence of who Orlando was, nor, I suppose, do the sorrowful occupants of the island much care.

"It should be noted, for those interested in either the products of the insane mind or in art (and how often are those things one and the same!), that Coyne's healing methodologies included allowing his patients the means to create . Thus, scattered across Orlando's Cap are artifacts that his patients fashioned. Some are of humble ambition, but others seem to be entire fantastic worlds carved from stone or wood and often painted in hallucinatory colors.

"When we look at the way the islands are arranged in the Sea of Izabella, there seems to be a designing hand at work, which conspires with nature to unseat our expectations. Thus close beside the island of Orlando's Cap, which is a place of dour scenery (albeit enlivened by the creations of Coyne's patients) there lies the Nonce , which is to my eye the most beautiful of all the islands. How is it that they can be so different from one another, when they are divided by a passage of water so narrow you might skip it with a stone?

"Three in the Afternoon the island of the Nonce is a dreamy time. The labors of the day are more than half out, and our thoughts turn to what pleasures the twilight Hours may hopefully provide. Personally I enjoy a siesta around this time, and I can testify to the fact that those who doze in the Nonce do not conjure ordinary dreams. They imagine the Beginning of the World. I have done so myself several times; slept there and dreamed of some Edenic place where there was no enmity, nor division, between plan and animal, angel and man. This suggests to me that there is some validity to the claim, (which was made in the highest of metaphysical circles) that the Nonce is the island where life on the archipelago began. 

"So, on to Gnomon, which lies at Four O'clock .

"Here, I wish to interlude with a little piece of autobiography. Some years ago I lost my wife. Literally lost her, in a maze on Soma Plume. I was, needless to say, much distressed by this (I was uncommonly fond of her), and taking the advice of my brother-in-law I went to Gnomon in search of an oracle who might enlighten me as to my wife's whereabouts.

"Despite the bland reputation of the Hour (there's nothing very mystical about Four in the Afternoon) the place is littered with the ruins of temples and other oracular sites. In some parts of the island the air is filled with whispering voices, like the scraps of a thousand unfulfilled prophecies. Personally I find it a rather unsettling place, its most distressing location being the North Shore, from the cliffs of which a visitor may look across the Straits of Limbo toward the island of Midnight. There is nothing of that despicable Hour visible at such a distance, of course, except for sheer rock and veils of roiling crimson mist. But it's more than enough to get the most impoverished of imaginations feeling clammy. Anyway, back to my story…

"The oracle I spoke with on Gnomon did indeed give me some information that finally led to the retrieval of the missing Mrs. Klepp. But while searching for the oracle I discovered an extremely strange phenomenon: Gnomon has upon it a number of roads that seem to have no destination. The theory I offer for this is that Gnomon was once part of the adjacent island of Soma Plume, which is twice its size. What cataclysm caused the land between the two islands to sink can only be guessed at, but it would certainly explain the mystery of the roads, because their destination would then be the Great Noahic Ziggurat on Soma Plume .

"The Ziggurat has been, since time immemorial, a place of burial, and for that reason there are many who dub themselves explorers and gazetteers who have not dared venture there. Pah! to their cowardice, I say. In my travels I have never had dealings with the deceased that were ever less than pleasant. (This is particularly true of the long-since dead; those recently deceased can be irritable on occasion.) Anyway, I urge you not to be put off by the rumors about the Noahic Ziggurat. It is an astonishment.

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