“They’re all watching the sky,” Candy said. “Seeing the cracks opening up.”

“Well, that is a good thing, isn’t it?” Malingo said. “I saw a star just a little while ago. See it? Oh, and there!”

“She knew this would happen,” Candy said.

“She knew the darkness wouldn’t stay?”

“Of course,” Candy said, momentarily forgetting she’d kept her conversation with Carrion a secret. She quickly added a defensive, “I mean, how could she not? She had to know that whatever creatures she put up there wouldn’t live forever. Otherwise why would she have all the troublemakers locked up? It just makes sense.”

“What’s going to happen to us now?” Malingo said.

“We’re going to get out of here,” Candy said. “Before Mater Motley gets here.”

“What makes you think she’s going to come here?” Gazza asked.

“She’s worked a long time to get all her enemies in one place. She can take us all out at the same time.”

“What? There are thousands of us!” said Malingo.

“Yes. And we’re hidden behind a volcano at the end of the world! Nobody will ever know if we’re murdered here. But she’ll want it soon, before some order is put back into things.”

“How can you be so sure?” said Betty.

“I just am. I think I have come to understand her . . . a little.”

“Well, I don’t see how we get the six of us out of here,” Betty said. “Maybe you and Malingo . . .”

“No,” Candy said.

“What do you mean no? Is six too many?”

“When I say all of us,” Candy said, glancing back toward the compound and all the souls imprisoned within it, “I mean: All. Of. Us.”

“There are stitchlings in every direction, Candy,” Gazza said.

“Yes, and no doubt she’ll bring more with her when she comes.”

“Lordy Lou . . .” Malingo murmured.

“How many more?” Gazza wanted to know.

“What does it matter?” Candy said.

“I need to know what we’re going to face,” he said to her.

“I don’t have precise numbers, Gaz. I wish I could explain it better, but I can’t. All I can say I know she’s coming, and that she’ll have a knife for every heart.”

She’d no sooner given her grim answer to his question than a commotion started running through the crowd. Candy tore her gaze away from her friends.

“What now?” she asked.

Candy walked to the edge of the boulder in time to see a blind man emerge in front of the crowd.

“Candy Quackenbush?” he said.

“Do I know you?”

“No,” said the blind man. “I’m Zephario Carrion. I believe you know my son.”

Chapter 58

Now, Because

CANDY SLID DOWN OFF the rock. Her visitor was standing with his back to one of the fires, so he was almost entirely in silhouette, except for his eyes, which despite their sightlessness had somehow drawn into them all the light being shed by the peeping stars. Either the cold, or simply fatigue, filled the old man’s body with tremors. Only the starlight remained constant.

“I don’t understand,” Candy said. “What do you want?”

Zephario reached into the pocket of his baggy jacket.

“I used to make money by reading these.”

Candy accepted whatever he was handing over to her.

“These are tarot cards, aren’t they?”

“An Abaratian deck. I lost my old deck to the wind a long time ago. But I found another.”

“These look different from the ones I saw in Chickentown.”

“They are. There are eighty-eight cards in an Abaratian deck, not seventy-eight. And of course the images are different. Not all of them. Some faces are ever present.”

Candy couldn’t see the designs on the cards clearly from where she was standing; there wasn’t sufficient light. But she could feel the visions on them, their vibrations moving through her fingertips, and they made her want to get a better look at them. So she moved out of the blind man’s shadow, turning the cards down and out, so they were lit by the flames. Now she saw them, it was no wonder her fingers had felt their power. Such visions! Some of the images were beautiful, some were terrifying, some of them made melancholy music in her head, like the lost songs of things that would never come into this world or any other.

She was unable to take her eyes off the flow of images long enough to look back at the blind man, but he didn’t mind.

“Lost forever,” she said to herself.

“I didn’t quite catch—”

“I’ve just always believed that nothing was really lost.”

“Ah. If only . . .”

“So . . . you saw me here? In one of the cards?”

“It wasn’t just one of them. You will wear many faces.”

“I don’t see me anywhere.”

“Good. Only a fool thinks he sees.”

“You’re Christopher’s father?”

“Quite so,” he said with a strange calm. “Christopher . . . oh, my sweet Christopher . . . he was so small once.”

Zephario lifted his hands, cupped side by side to show how small his beloved son had been. Candy took the opportunity to take hold of one of his hands.

“Here,” she said. “Your cards.”

“Please. You keep them. Use them. They are already mapped with what I’ve learned. Now you add your own journeys to mine and it’s all part of the Thread.”

“What?”

“The Thread. Do you not know of it?”

“No. But I do believe there is a pattern in the Hours; a hidden connection, which will show the greater order of things when the time is right.”

“Ah,” said Zephario, “you are wise. I want you to live, Candy. I want you to know the greater order, and if you wish to, pass it back to me, so that those among the dead who are lost—and there are many—find their way to the Embrace of Everything.”

“Everything . . . that’s in the air a lot, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that or Nothing at All. It’s an Age of Absolutes.”

“What comes after this Age?”

“I’ve no idea. Why would I?”

“You must have asked the cards how this is all going to end.”

“The cards don’t tell the future. It hasn’t happened yet. We hope that certain things will happen. But none of it’s guaranteed. We may want one kind of future and get another kind entirely. My daughters used to sing a rhyme. All these years later I still hear it.

“There is no tomorrow,

There never—”

“Was,” Candy said, picking up the rhyme immediately.

“Beg, steal or borrow,

Now, because—

There is no tomorrow

There never was.

Beg, steal or borrow

Now, because—

“We used to sing it too,” Candy said. “Why tell me this now?

“Because now is all there is. And because you sense her too,” he said.

“Oh,” Candy said.

“She’s not alone, is she?”

“No, of course not. She must have at least seven thousand stitchlings with her. That’s what Christopher told me.”

“Is he with her now?”

“I doubt it. She thinks he’s dead. Drowned in the streets of Chickentown.”

“But he isn’t, is he? I came here to find you so that you could help make peace between us. I want to see my son, one last time before I die. He’s all I have, lady. He’s all that I have left to love.”

“You might find loving him a bit difficult. He’s no saint.”

“Well, nor was I. When he was born I was one of the most feared men in the Abarat. I thought that was something to be proud of, in my stupidity. I made it a point of pride to burn every harvest I hadn’t planted and tear down every tower that I hadn’t built. When I think of the harm I did . . .” He paused, drawing a ragged breath. Whatever memories his mind was seeing, they made him weep. “. . . My son can do no worse. I was only forty-two when the fire destroyed the mansion. It killed my wife, and all the children except for Christopher. Forty-two! It’s nothing, forty-two. But I managed to fill up that little time with so many shameful things. Terrible things. I just wanted to tell Christopher there’s still time . . .”

“Still time to do what?” Candy said.

“Heal those he’s hurt,” Zephario said.