Текст книги "Abarat: Absolute Midnight"

Автор книги: Клайв Баркер

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

It was a simple illusion, but it quickly gained credibility as new stalks sprayed upward in their dozens, forming intricate laceries of vein and nerve that began to conjure to shape of their possessor’s face. Though it was still little more than a skinless mask knitted of pulsing threads, there was a glimpse, even there, of the young woman who would soon come into being. She would be beautiful again, Candy thought. She would break hearts.

Candy hadn’t lifted herself up off the ground since her knees had buckled beneath her. She still knelt in the same spot, watching the vestigial form of Princess Boa attract to it the detritus of the life-forms shed by the chamber walls: withered flower housings, leaves, living and dead, all adding their sum to the patchwork that was slowly giving the Princess more substance. The surrounding flora and fauna were nourishing Boa’s body, and it was by their sacrifice alone that Candy’s life had been spared. But the process was going too slowly.

Candy could sense Boa’s frustration as she received these pitifully inadequate contributions to the body she was trying to grow again.

She opened her lips, and though her throat and tongue were unfinished, she managed to speak. It was light, more than a quiet whisper, but Candy heard it plainly.

“You look . . . nourishing . . .” she said.

“I’d make bad eating right now. You should find something healthier.”

“Hunger is hunger. And time is of the essence. . . .”

This time Candy forced her throat to form the question, though it was barely audible.

“Why is that exactly?” she said.

“Midnight,” Boa said simply. “It’s almost upon us. You don’t feel it, do you?”

“Midnight?”

“Midnight! I can feel it. The last darkness is coming, and it will blot out every light in the heavens.”

“No . . .”

“Saying no will change nothing. The Abarat is going to die in the dark. Every sun will be eclipsed, every moon blinded, every star in every constellation extinguished like a candle flame. But don’t worry. You won’t be here to suffer the consequences. You’ll be gone.”

“Where?”

“Who knows? Who’ll care? Nobody. You will have served your purpose. You had sixteen years of life, going places you would never have gone if you hadn’t had me hidden inside you. You have nothing to complain about. Now your life ends. And mine begins. There’s something quite pleasing about the balance, isn’t there?”

“I’m not done living . . .” Candy murmured.

“Well, I’m sorry,” Boa said, mocking Candy’s gravity.

“You don’t . . . understand,” Candy said.

“Trust me. There’s nothing you know that I don’t.”

“You’re wrong,” Candy said. Her voice was gaining strength as she drew upon the clarity Laguna Munn’s gift had given her. “I know how you played Carrion along all those years, making him think you loved him, when all you really wanted from him was the Abarataraba.”

“Listen to yourself,” Boa said. “To hear you, people might think you actually knew what you were talking about.”

Candy sighed.

“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know much about the Abarataraba. It’s a book of magic—”

“Stop! Stop! You’re embarrassing yourself. Don’t waste your last minutes worrying about something you’ll never understand. Death has come for you, Candy. And when it leaves it’s going to be taking you along with it. You, and every thought you ever had. Every hope, every dream. All gone. It’ll be like you never lived.”

“The dead don’t disappear. There are ghosts. I’ve met one. And I’ll be one, if necessary. I have energy and power.”

“You have nothing,” Boa said with a sudden burst of rage.

She reached out and seized hold of Candy. The effect, in both directions, was immediate. Now, as she drew power out of Candy directly the smoky air began to solidify into gray bone behind the latticework of veins and nerves that had first defined her features.

“Better,” Boa said, smiling through gritted teeth. “Much better.”

Every part of her body was speeding toward completion now. The fluids in Boa’s eye sockets bubbled like boiling water. Even in her diminished state Candy could still see the bizarrity in the sight before her.

“Oh, I like this,” Boa said, luxuriating in the bliss of her reconstruction.

This time there was enough of her flesh and bone in place that Candy could see a hint of the beautiful woman whose image Finnegan Hob had kept above his bed. But every sliver of Boa’s recovered beauty was being purchased at the expense of Candy’s life. Each time Boa’s greedy fingers touched Candy they left her more impoverished, more exhausted. And this was not the kind of exhaustion that she could sleep off in a few quiet hours. This was the other kind: the sleep from which there was no waking.

Death has come for you. Boa had uttered the words just a few minutes ago.

She hadn’t lied.

Chapter 13

Boa

WEAK THOUGH CANDY WAS—THE convulsions wracking her body with increasing frequency, her legs so exhausted she doubted they’d support her for more than two or three strides—she had no choice. She had to get out of the chamber quickly, or Boa’s appetite for her life force would be the death of her. In one small detail, luck was on her side.

Candy remembered hearing Laguna Munn’s voice. It felt ages ago, but the incantatrix made mention of the lock. Suddenly Candy realized that despite his mother’s instruction, Covenantis had failed to lock the chamber door. It had opened, just a crack. But it was sufficiently wider than the narrow shadow it cast. Without it, Candy would have had little or no chance of locating her escape route. But here it was!

She only allowed her gaze to linger on the shadow of the door for the briefest moment. She was afraid of giving anything away to Boa. Then, directing her gaze to the opposite wall—as if it was there that she’d guessed the door to be—she slowly started to haul herself to her feet.

Boa’s relentless appetite had robbed Candy’s body of strength and flexibility. It felt like a dead weight, which took every bit of willpower to get moving and keep moving. Every part of her seemed close to failure. Her lungs were like two stones inside her, while her heart fluttered like a torn paper bird. Her body would have to be stirred from its torpor if Candy was to have any hope of escaping this chamber. She would have to force her enfeebled arms to make her torso collaborate in its own survival.

“Come on,” she told herself through gritted teeth, “. . . move.”

Reluctantly, her body responded. But it hurt. Her heart-bird got panicky. The rest of her innards started to close down. She could taste something disgusting in her throat, as though her entrails were backed up like choked sewer pipes. She tried not to think about it, which was in fact quite easy because her mind was failing along with everything else.

She didn’t need much brainpower to recognize her mortal enemy, however. Boa was with her in the chamber, and she was a distressing sight. Without bones, Boa’s anatomy was a ragged mass of possibilities that had not yet congealed. Her fingers dangled like empty gloves, her face a long mask of lost intention, and her mouth, a hole without a tongue or teeth.

Boa’s appearance was so appalling that Candy forgot her exhaustion and scrambled to get out of her way. With a sudden rush of energy, Candy pushed herself up off the chamber floor, catching Boa off guard, and knocking her to the floor.

“Be still, witch!” Boa yelled. “Let’s have this over with, once and for all!”

Candy lurched toward the door, avoiding the coils which, had they encircled her and tightened their grip once more, would have ground her ribs to powder and her guts to meat and excrement.

She reached out to the shadow, which marked her destination, and slid her fingers around the door. It was no illusion. It was solid and real in her grip. She pulled, half expecting the door to protest its opening, but no. Despite its massive size, it was served by some kind of counterweight, which allowed it to swing open with only the most modest of effort on Candy’s part.

Her surprise made her careless. As she pulled the door open, Boa’s forefinger wrapped itself around her throat, tightening with the efficiency of a noose.

Candy instantly let go of the door, and forced her fingers down between neck and noose. But it wasn’t enough to keep Boa from putting so much pressure on Candy’s windpipe that she could no longer draw breath.

Candy’s thoughts were already in swift decay thanks to Boa’s theft. Now the sudden loss of oxygen robbed her mind of still more functions. Her thoughts became increasingly confused. What was she doing in this place? And the woman with the hole for a mouth; who was she?

Boa’s skills with her body were growing as fast as Candy’s body was drained. She spoke now, her voice crude.

“This is no way to die,” Boa said. “Where’s your dignity, girl? Stop struggling, and let me take what’s mine. You lived a fine life because of me. Brief, yes, but full of my insights. My lessons. My magic.”

Somebody outside the chamber walls, but close enough to have heard Boa’s speech, apparently found it very funny. Her mockery echoed around the chamber.

“Listen to yourself.” It was Laguna Munn. Again, the laughter ignited. “Such pretension. And from what? A cannibal. Yes, that’s the truth of it when you get down to the facts. You are able to devour the life of a girl who gave you sanctuary from those who had taken yours and would gladly have extinguished your soul. Let Candy go.”

“Oh no . . . there’s no letting go.”

“Is there not? We shall see about that.”

As she spoke, the wall opposite the door began to fold in upon itself, and the incantatrix came into view.

She was pointing at Boa, as she continued her accusations.

“Whatever was good in you, and bright, has gone to corruption.”

“You can say whatever you like, old woman,” Boa replied. “Your time’s over. There’s a new world about to be born.”

“Funny. I hear that a lot,” Laguna Munn said, her voice thick with contempt. “Now let the commoner go, Princess. If you really want to dine on flesh, you shouldn’t be eating the hoi polloi.”

The expression on Boa’s face suddenly cleared.

“Oh my. She is, isn’t she?”

“She’s not of noble birth, like you, Princess.”

“No,” Boa said, her tone deeply grateful. “If you hadn’t stopped me—” She released Candy from her grip. “I could have tainted myself.”

“And what a sad day that would have been for all those poor suffering aristocrats like yourself who would have lost a beloved sister.”

“Oh me! Oh, poor beloved me.”

As Candy stumbled out of Boa’s hold she turned and the subtle signs of deceit upon Boa’s face caught Candy’s attention. Boa didn’t wait to let Candy speak. She quickly was gone, out of the chamber and off up the wooded slope. Candy did her best to recover her equilibrium, but it was difficult. Boa’s thefts had left her body weak, and her thoughts ragged. She was only certain of one thing.

“She would have killed me . . .”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Mrs. Munn replied. “But this is my rock, girl, and she has no—”

“Mama!”

The cry came from Covenantis. And as heart wrenching as his wails were, the terrible howl of anguish that followed was infinitely worse.

Laguna was clearly torn between her responsibilities to her injured guest, and those she had to her son. Candy simplified things:

“Go to the boy! I’ll be fine. I just need to recover my breath.” She looked up at Mrs. Munn. “Please,” she said, “don’t worry about me!”

Her plea was lent force by another sobbing cry from her son.

“Where are you, Mama?”

Laguna Munn looked at Candy one more time.

“Go!” Candy said.

Laguna Munn didn’t put up any further argument. Instead, she addressed the walls of the chamber.

“This girl is here as my guest. She’s hurt. Heal her.” She turned her attentions back toward Candy for a moment. “Stay here and let the chamber do its work. I’ll be back with my boys.”

“Be careful . . .”

“I know, girl, I know. Boa’s dangerous. But believe me, so am I. I’ve got a few tricks she wouldn’t want to see. Now heal. The dark Hours that are coming won’t wait for you to put yourself back together. Hurry up. The beginning’s been a long time over. And the end always comes sooner than you expect.”

And so saying, she left the girl who was truly Candy Quackenbush, nothing added or taken away, to the healing hush of the chamber.

Chapter 14

Empty

NEVER IN HER SIXTEEN years had Candy felt as alone as she felt now. Though she’d tried many times to imagine what it would be like without Boa in her head, her attempts had failed miserably. Only now, alone in the vastness of her thoughts did she sense the horror of such solitude. There would never again be a presence to silently share the state of being as Boa had. She was utterly, unconditionally alone.

How did people, ordinary people like those on Followell Street—even her own mother, even her father—deal with the loneliness? Did her dad drink himself senseless every night because it made the emptiness she was feeling right now hurt a little less? For them, was it the constant chattering of the television that helped them through the bad times? Or hurtful little power games like those Miss Schwartz played that helped them forget the hush in their heads?

Candy suddenly recalled the big billboard outside the Presbyterian Church on Munrow Street in Chickentown that had carried the same message for as long as Candy could remember:

THE LORD IS WITH YOU ALWAYS. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

Well he’s not with me now, Candy thought. Nobody’s with me. And I just have to live with things being like this from now on, because nobody’s going to step in to help change it. All I can do is—

A shriek interrupted her thoughts. Laguna Munn was shouting one word, its force fueled by horror and rage.

“NO!”

She stopped only when she ran out of breath. She inhaled and began again.

“NO!”

Finally, she let the word fall off into silence. Several seconds passed and then Candy heard her say, “My son. What have you done to my son?”

Candy didn’t wait for any more clues as to what had taken place. She got up headed for the door, realizing as she did so that while she’d been contemplating her loneliness, the sentient chamber had obeyed Laguna Munn’s instructions and begun the process of healing her. She was no longer shaking as she had been just a few minutes earlier. And her weakened legs had recovered some of their strength. Even her thoughts, which had been left muddied by Boa’s attacks, were clearer now.

Exiting the chamber, she didn’t need any further cries from the incantrix in order to discover her whereabouts. The powers she feared she’d lost to Boa’s devouring were unharmed. Once the chamber had washed from her thoughts the grime of Boa’s appetite, she remembered without effort how to locate Mrs. Munn in the darkness. All she had to do was follow the vibration that moved ahead of her, trusting it to choose a safe path up the slope.

The temperature quickly warmed up as she ascended; the air carried with it a smell like rotted meat that had been burned on a barbecue.

Bad magic, she thought.

Then she heard Mrs. Munn again, speaking softly somewhere ahead of her.

“What’s she done to you, child? Now you hush your weepin’. I’m right here. Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere, Mama.”

Candy saw a light now, no brighter than two candle flames, hovering in the air a few feet above the ground. The scene illuminated was a grim one.

Mrs. Munn was kneeling on the ground, tending to her favorite son, Jollo B’gog. He was in a terrible state. All the dark beauty he’d possessed when Candy and Malingo had first met him had gone. He was emaciated now, his bones jutting through his withered skin. His teeth were chattering, his eyes rolled up behind his lids.

“Listen to me, Jollo dear,” Mrs. Munn was telling him. “You’re not going to die. You hear me? I’m here.”

She stopped talking, and looked up in rage, her gaze instantly locating Candy. There was a flicker of lightning in her eyes.

“It’s only me,” Candy said. “Don’t—”

The lightning receded, and Laguna Munn looked back down at her son. “I want you to stay here with him. Keep him from any further harm while I find her.”

“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.