Abarat - Barker Clive. Страница 17

"Set your watch to Eight," Mischief said to Candy.

"I don't understand," Candy said. "One minute it looks like it's dawn, the next it's night, and now you're saying set my watch to eight o'clock."

"That's because we're now in the Straits of Dusk," said John Sallow, as though the matter were simplicity itself. "It's always Eight in the Evening here."

Candy looked well and truly confused.

"Don't worry," said Deaux-Deaux. "Eventually you'll get the knack of it. For now just go with the flow . It's easier that way."

While Candy set her watch to eight o'clock, the Sea-Skippers brought them around the front of the immense head of the Yebba Dim Day.

A steep staircase ran like a vein up the side of the place, and more light poured from a host of windows and doors. There was a great riotous commotion coming out of the head, the din of voices shouting and singing and crying and laughing, all echoing across the water.

"So, lady," said Deaux-Deaux, "here we are."

The Sea-Skippers brought them to a tiny harbor in the nook where the titan's chest met his arm. There were a number of small red boats in the harbor, many of which were in the process of entering or leaving—and a sizeable crowd on the quayside. The entrance of the four Sea-Skippers—along with their passengers—caused a good deal of confusion and comment.

Very soon people were appearing from inside the Great Head to see what all the brouhaha was about. Among these newcomers were several people in uniforms.

"Police!" said John Sallow sharply.

The word was echoed among his brothers.

"Police?"

"Police!"

"Police!"

Mischief turned to Candy and swiftly caught hold of her arm.

"So quickly—" he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I have to go. So quickly."

"Because of the police?"

"Keep your voice down," said John Serpent; his usual charmless self.

"Hush !" Mischief said to him. "Don't you ever talk to my lady that way again!"

"Your lady!" Serpent snorted, as though in these final snatched moments he wanted to express his contempt for Mischief's respectful handling of Candy. But there was no time. Not for Serpent; nor for Mischief; not even for Candy to say more than a hurried: "Good-bye!"

The police were coming down the dock, parting the crowd as they advanced. Candy doubted that they'd recognized the criminals yet (though Mischief's antlers made him exceptionally easy to spot); but they were interested in these new arrivals, and Mischief wasn't going to allow their general curiosity to turn into an arrest scene.

"Do you have a permit for those Sea-Skippers?" one of the policemen hollered.

"This is where we part, lady," Mischief said. "We'll meet again, I know we will."

He took her hand, turned it over, and lightly kissed the palm. Then he jumped into the water.

"Hey, you!" a second policeman yelled, barging through the crowd to make his way to the end of the quayside. "It's him!" he yelled.

"Oh no," Candy heard Deaux-Deaux say. "This is a pleasant introduction to the Yebba Dim Day."

"We should have gone to Speckle Frew," said Tropella. "It would have been a sight quieter."

"Well, it's too late now," said Pux.

"He's getting away!" the second policeman was shouting.

"Who ?" came the reply from one of his companions.

"Whatshisname! The one who cleared out Malleus Nyce's house in Tazmagor! Him ! Whatshisface!" He was steadily becoming redder and redder as his frustration mounted. "The master criminal !"

At which point about seven people in the crowd said: "John Mischief!" at the same time.

"Yeah! That's what I said," the policeman replied lamely. "John Mischief !"

Now all eyes, both those of the crowd and of the officers, were fixed on the patch of turbulent water where John Mischief had last been seen.

One of the policemen, a huge blue-skinned man with a square-cut orange beard, now attempted to commandeer one of the faster-looking boats in the little harbor, apparently intending to give chase in it. But its owner—who was almost as big as the officer, and had the advantage of being six or seven yards away, across a span of grimy dock water—wasn't playing.

"You! Get that boat over here!" the officer yelled.

The man deliberately neglected to look in the officer's direction and proceeded to maneuver his vessel out through the knot of boats. Clearly the idea of losing his precious boat to a belligerent officer with more testosterone than sea-sense had made him nervous. The attempted retreat enraged the officer even more.

"Come back!" he yelled. "Your vessel is commandeered!"

"Let it be, Branx!" one of the other officers called. "There are plenty of other boats."

But Officer Branx wasn't going to have his authority disregarded. Pulling off his jacket and boots, he jumped into the dirty water and began to swim toward the retreating vessel, yelling as he went.

"You bring that boat right back here! Do you hear me? Right back here !"

His absurd behavior had trebled the crowd on the dock. The wooden structure was creaking, sending up a warning to those perched on it that it would not be wise to perch there much longer. The warning was, however, ignored. And the noisier the crowd became, the more people emerged from the Great Head to see what was going on.

"You know, Candy," Tropella said, "I don't want another hurried good-bye—"

"But if I'm going to go without being noticed, this would be a smart time to do it?"

"Don't you agree?"

"Absolutely," Candy said.

Everybody's attention was on the swimming policeman, who had managed to reach the escapee in the boat and had hauled himself onboard where—despite cries from his fellow officers that he should desist—he proceeded to harangue the boat owner, who promptly hit the policeman with an oar. The oar broke, and Officer Branx toppled over the edge of the boat like a silent comedian, sinking into the filthy water.

Consternation! Now it was the boat owner who dived in to drag the unconscious man up out of the water, mindful, no doubt, of what the penalty would be if the overzealous officer drowned. The dowsing had shocked Policeman Branx out of his unconscious state however, and as soon as he surfaced, the altercation began afresh. The two men struggled and flailed in the water for a while, during which time Candy—having exchanged the very briefest of farewells with the Sea-Skippers—slipped away through the crowd toward the door of the Yebba Dim Day.

As she went she glanced over her shoulder, so as to have one last glimpse of her friends to fix in her head; just in case Mischief was overly optimistic in his beliefs, and none of them ever met again.

But Mischief had long gone, and all four Skippers had already leaped into the water and dived down under the boats so as to escape the harbor undetected.

Candy experienced a sudden and acute sense of loss. She felt utterly and painfully alone. Without John Mischief, how would she get by in this strange world?

It wasn't that she felt the need to turn around and go home. There was nothing for her back in Chickentown, or at least nothing that she wanted. She hated her father. And her mother, well, she just made her feel empty. No, there was nothing for her there. But coming here, entering this strange New World, was like being born again.

A new life, under new stars.

So it was with a curious mingling of anticipation and heavy heart that she pressed against the flow of the crowd and eventually brought herself through the doors and into the city that stood on the Straits of Dusk.

C andy had always prided herself upon having a vivid imagination. When, for instance, she privately compared her dreams with those her brothers described over the breakfast table, or her friends at school exchanged at break, she always discovered her own night visions were a lot wilder and weirder than anybody else's. But there was nothing she could remember dreaming—by day or night—that came close to the sight that greeted her in The Great Head of the Yebba Dim Day.

It was a city, a city built from the litter of the sea. The street beneath her feet was made from timbers that had clearly been in the water for a long time, and the walls were lined with barnacle-encrusted stone. There were three columns supporting the roof, made of coral fragments cemented together. They were buzzing hives of life unto themselves; their elaborately constructed walls pierced with dozens of windows, from which light poured.

There were three main streets that wound up and around these coral hives, and they were all lined with habitations and thronged with the Yebba Dim Day's citizens.

As far as Candy could see there were plenty of people who resembled folks she might have expected to see on the streets of Chickentown, give or take a sartorial detail: a hat, a coat, a wooden snout. But for every one person that looked perfectly human, there were two who looked perfectly other than human. The children of a thousand marriages between humankind and the great bestiary of the Abarat were abroad on the streets of the city.

Among those who passed her as she ventured up the street were creatures which seemed related to fish, to birds, to cats and dogs and lions and toads. And those were just the species she recognized. There were many more she did not; forms of face that her dream-life had never come near to showing her.

Though she was cold, she didn't care. Though she was weary to her marrow, and lost—oh so very lost—she didn't care. This was a New World rising before her, and it was filled with every kind of diversity.

A beautiful woman walked by wearing a hat like an aquarium. In it was a large fish whose poignant expression bore an uncanny resemblance to the woman on whose head it was balanced. A man half Candy's size ran by with a second man half the first fellow's size sitting in the hood of his robe, throwing nuts into the air. A creature with red ladders for legs was stalking its way through the crowd farther up the street, its enormous coxcomb bright orange. A cloud of blue smoke blew by, and as it passed a foggy face appeared in the cloud and smiled at Candy before the wind dispersed it.