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So saying, he opened his mouth and inhaled so powerfully that Candy had to fight to keep herself from being pulled straight into the maw.
Kud wasn’t interested in such tricks. He shoved Nattum aside. “I take her!” he said. “I’m hungry.”
Nattum shoved back.
“So am I!” he growled.
While she was being fought over, Candy took the opportunity to yell for help.
“Somebody! Malingo? Charry?”
“Too late,” said Kud, and leaning over the edge of the hold he caught hold of her and pulled her up. He was so quick and violent that Candy lost her grip on Methis. Her feet slid over the slimy fish for a moment; then she was in the air, being hauled toward Kud’s mouth, which now also opened like a toothed tunnel.
The next moment everything went dark. Her head—much to her horror—was in the mouth of the beast.
5 THE SPEAKING OF A WORD (#ulink_0decce38-98a9-550c-849f-40df0329c322)
THOUGH HER ENTIRE SKULL was suddenly enclosed by the zethek’s mouth, Candy was still able to hear one thing from the outside world. Just one stupid thing. It was the squeaking voice of the Commexo Kid, singing his eternally optimistic little song.
“Happy! Happy! Happy!” it squealed.
She offered up a little prayer in that dark moment, to ask any God or Goddess, of Abarat or the Hereafter, who would listen. It was a very simple prayer. It simply said: Please don’t let that ridiculous Kid be the last thing I hear before I die—
And, thank the divinities, her prayer was answered.
There was a dull thud directly above her, and she felt the tension of Kud’s jaws relax. She instantly pulled her head out of his mouth. This time the slickness of the fish beneath her was to her advantage. She slid across the carpet of smatterlings in time to see Kud collapse among the fish. She took her eyes off him and looked up at her savior.
It was Malingo. He was standing there with Skebble’s hammer in his hand. He smiled at Candy. But his moment of triumph was short. In the next instant Kud rose up roaring from his slimy bed of fish and pulled the legs out from under Malingo, who fell down on his back.
“Ah-ha!” Kud yelled, laying eyes on the hammer that slipped out of Malingo’s hand when he fell. Kud snatched it up and got to his feet. The brightness in his bones had become a furious blaze in the last few minutes. In the sockets of his skull, two dots of scarlet rage flickered as he turned his stare toward Candy. He looked like something from a ghost-train ride. Wielding the hammer, he raced at Candy.
“Run!” Malingo yelled.
But she had nowhere to run to. There was a zethek to the left of her and one to the right, and behind her a solid wall. A skeletal smile spread over Kud’s face.
“Any last words?” he said as he lifted the hammer above his head.
“Come on,” he growled. “You must have something in your head.”
Curiously, she did have something in her head: a word she could not even remember hearing until this moment—
Kud seemed to see the confusion in her eyes.
“Speak!” he said, striking the wall to the left of her head with the hammer. The reverberations echoed all around the hold. The dead smatterlings convulsed, as though they’d been given a spasm of life. “Talk to me!” Kud said, striking the wall to the right of Candy’s head. Showers of sparks erupted from the spot, and the fish jumped a second time.
Candy put her hand up to her throat. There was a word there. She could feel it, like something she’d eaten but not quite swallowed. It wanted to be spoken. That she was certain about. It wanted to be spoken.
And who was she to deny it its ambitions? She let the syllables rise up, unbidden. And spoke them.
“Jassassakya-thüm!”
she said.
From the corner of her eye she saw Malingo sit bolt upright on the bed of fish.
“Oh Lordy Lou…” he said, his voice hushed with awe. “How do you know that word?”
“I don’t,” Candy said.
But the air knew it. The walls knew it. No sooner were the syllables out of her lips than everything began to vibrate in response to the sound of whatever Candy had said. And with each vibration the air and the walls repeated the syllables in their own strange fashion.
Jassassakya-thüm!
Jassassakya-thüm!
Jassassakya-thüm!
“What…have…you…done…girl?” Kud said.
Candy didn’t know. Malingo, on the other hand, did.
“She’s uttered a Word of Power,” he said.
“I have?” Candy replied. “I mean, I have. That’s what I’ve done.”
“Magic?” Kud said. He began to retreat from her now, the hammer sliding out of his fingers. “I knew there was something about you from the beginning. You’re a witch-girl! That’s what you are! A witchgirl!”
As the zethek’s panic grew, so did the reverberations. With each repetition they gathered strength.
Jassassakya-thüm!
Jassassakya-thüm!
Jassassakya-thüm!
“I think you should get out of here now,” Malingo yelled to Candy as the din climbed.
“What?”
“I said: Get out! Out!”
As he spoke he stumbled toward her through the fish, which were also vibrating in rhythm with the words. The zetheks paid no attention to him, nor to Candy. They were suffering from the effects of the word. They had their hands clamped over their ears, as though they were afraid it was deafening them, which perhaps it was.
“This is not a safe place to be,” Malingo said when he got to Candy’s side.
She nodded. She was beginning to feel the distressing influence of the vibrations herself. Galatea was there to lift her up onto the deck. Then both girls turned to help Malingo, reaching down to catch hold of his long arms. Candy counted:
“One, two, three—”
And they hauled together, lifting him up with surprising ease.
The scene in the hold had become surreal. The Word was making the catch vibrate so violently that at first glance the fish seemed to be alive again. As for the zethek, they were like three flies caught in a jar, propelled back and forth across the hold, slamming against the sides. They seemed to have forgotten all about the possibility of escape. The word had made them crazy, or stupid, or both.
Skebble was standing on the opposite side of the hold. He pointed to Candy and yelled at her: “Make it stop! Or you’re going to shake my boat apart!”
He was right about the boat. The vibrations in the hold had spread throughout the vessel. The boards were shaking so violently nails were being spat into the air, the already cracked wheelhouse was rocking to and fro, the rigging was vibrating like the strings of a huge guitar; even the mast was swaying.
Candy looked over at Malingo.
“See?” she said. “If you’d taught me some magic I’d know how to turn this off.”
“Well, wait,” Malingo said. “Where did you learn that word?”
“I didn’t learn it.”
“You must have heard it somewhere.”
“No. I swear. It just appeared in my throat. I don’t know where it came from.”
“If you two have quite finished chatting?” Skebble hollered over the din. “My boat—”
“Yes!” Candy shouted back. “I know, I know!”
“Inhale it!” Malingo said.
“What?”
“The Word! Inhale the Word!”
“Inhale it?”
“Do as he says!” Galatea yelled. “Before the boat sinks!”
Everything was now shaking to the rhythm of the Word. There wasn’t a board or a rope or a hook from bow to stern that wasn’t in motion. In the hold the three zetheks were still being pitched around, sobbing for mercy.
Candy closed her eyes. Strangely enough, she could see the word that she’d uttered in her mind’s eye. There it was, clear as crystal.
Jass…assa…kya…thüm…
She emptied her lungs through her nostrils. Then, still keeping her eyes tightly shut, she drew a deep breath.
The word in her mind’s eye shook. Then it cracked, and it seemed to fly apart. Was it just her imagination, or could she feel it coming back into her throat? She swallowed hard, and the word was gone.
The reaction was instantaneous. The vibrations died away. The boards dropped back into place, peppered by nails. The mast stopped lurching to and fro. The fish stopped their grotesque cavorting.
The zetheks quickly realized that the attack had ceased. They unstopped their ears and shook their heads, as though to put their thoughts back in order.
“Go, brothers!” Nattum said. “Before the witch-girl tries some new trick!”
He didn’t wait to see that his siblings were doing as he suggested. He started to beat his wings furiously and climbed into the air, weaving a zigzag course skyward. Methis was about to follow; then he turned to Kud.
“Let’s ruin their catch!”
Skebble let out a howl of complaint. “No!” he yelled. “Don’t—”
His cry was ignored. The two creatures squatted down among the fish, and the vilest smell Candy had ever smelled in her life rose up from the hold.
“Are they—?”
Malingo nodded grimly.
“The catch! The catch!” Skebble was howling. “Oh, Lord, no! No!”
Methis and Kud thought all this was hugely amusing. Having done their worst, they beat their wings and lifted off.
“Damn you! Damn you!” Skebble yelled as they flew past.
“That was enough fish to feed the village for half a season,” Galatea said mournfully.
“And they poisoned it?” Malingo said.
“What do you think? Smell that stink. Who could ever eat something that smelled like that?”
Kud had by now escaped into the darkness, following Nattum back to Gorgossium. But Methis was so busy laughing at what they’d just done that he accidentally clipped the top of the mast with his wing. For a moment he struggled to recover himself but lost his momentum and fell back toward the Parroto Parroto, hitting the edge of the wheelhouse roof and bouncing off onto the deck, where he lay unconscious.
There was a moment of surprised silence from everybody on deck. The whole sequence of events—from Candy’s speaking of the Word to Methis’ crash—had taken at most a couple of minutes.
It was old Mizzel who broke the hush.
“Charry?” he said.
“Yes?”
“Get a rope. And you, Galatea, help him. Tie up this burden of filth.”
“What for?”
“Just do it!” Mizzel said. “And be quick about it, before the damn thing wakes up!”
6 TWO CONVERSATIONS (#ulink_48784fc3-b266-5139-a24e-3c066a0683f4)
“SO,” SAID MIZZEL, ONCE the stunned zethek was firmly secured. “You want to know my plan?”
They were all sitting at the bow of the boat, as far from the stink of the hold as they could get. Candy was still in a mild state of shock: what she’d just witnessed herself doing (speaking a word she didn’t even know she knew) needed to be thought about very carefully. But now was not the time to do the thinking. Mizzel had a plan, and he wanted to share it.
“We’re going to have to dump out all the smatterlings. Every last fish.”
“A lot of people are going to go hungry,” Galatea said.
