Abarat: Absolute Midnight Read Online Free PDF Page B

to come back to us as quickly as possible.”
    “He will, don’t worry,” Candy replied.
    The man with the green beard, who had first incited the anger with his speechifying, was now breaking through the approaching little mob of bullies to lead it.
    “Are we going?” Ruthus yelled.
    “Oh, Lordy Lou, are we ever,” Candy said.
    “Then come on !”
    Candy jumped into the boat. Its boards creaked.
    “If ye’ve cracked her boards and you drown, don’t blame me.” Ruthus grinned.
    “We won’t drown,” Malingo said following Candy. “This girl has work to do. Great work!”
    Candy smiled. (It was true. What, or how, or when—she had no idea. But it was true.)
    Ruthus was racing to the wheelhouse yelling to Malingo as he did so: “Cut the rope, geshrat. Be quick!”
    The dock was reverberating as the mob, its numbers increasing, followed Green Beard’s lead.
    “I see you, girl!” he yelled, “and I know what you are!”
    “Rope’s severed, Ruthus!”
    “Hold on, then! And pray!”
    “Go!” Candy yelled to Ruthus.
    “Your crimes against the Abarat must be punished—”
    The last word was repeated by every hate-filled throat in the crowd. “Punished!” “Punished!” “Pun—”
    The third time, the threat was drowned out by the raucous roar of Ruthus’s little boat, as its engine came to life.
    A cloud of yellow exhaust fumes erupted from the stern of the boat, its density blotting all sight of the mob, just as its din had blotted all sound.
    Ruthus’s work was not over. They had got away from the dock, but they were not yet out of the harbor. And there were more opportunistic fishermen bringing in cargos of garbage all the time. If Ruthus’s boat had been any larger, it would have been caught in the confusion. But it was a tiny thing, and nimble-like, especially with Ruthus at the wheel. By the time the smoke trail had cleared, the boat was out of the harbor and into the Straits of Dusk.

Chapter 4
The Kid
     
    C ANDY ’ S ESCAPE FROM THE mob in the Yebba Dim Day had not gone unnoticed. The greatest concentration of eyes spying her jeopardy were at Three O’Clock in the Morning. At the heart of that extraordinary city was a vast round mansion, and at the heart of the mansion, a circular viewing chamber, where the innumerable mechanical spies that were scattered around the Abarat—perfect imitations of flora and fauna so cunningly crafted as to be indistinguishable from the real thing, but for the fact that each carried a miniscule camera—reported what they saw. There were literally thousands of screens in the Circular Room covering the inner and outer walls, and Rojo Pixler would have been there, watching the world he had brought into being—its little tragedies, it little farces, its little spectacles of love and death on full display—but today he was not riding around the room on his levitation disc, surveying the archipelago. The team of island-watchers was currently led by his trusted colleague, Dr. Voorzangler, wearing his beloved spectacles which offered the illusion that his two eyes were one. It was he who was noting any significant comings and goings, one of which was that of Candy Quackenbush. Voorzangler ordered his second, third, and fourth in command to be sure that each reminded the other to remind Voorzangler to report the movements of the girl from the Hereafter to the great architect when he finally returned.
    Though the phrase “when he returns” usually carried little significance, today it did. Today the great architect was surveying the site of his next great creation: an undersea city in the deepest trenches of the Sea of Izabella. Why? Voorzangler had asked Pixler more than once to which the answer had always been the same: to put a name to the hitherto nameless, and embrace the wonders that surely existed in the lightless deeps. And when innocent endeavors had been achieved and those creatures had been catalogued, then he would be able to undertake the true