Clive Barker - Abarat

CLIVE BARKER

Harper Voyager An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in 2002

Copyright © 2002 by Clive Barker

Clive Barker asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006513704

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007301690

Version: 2017-11-02

“Above all, this is a deeply lovely catalogue of the strange. Islands carved into colossal heads, giant moths made of coloured ether, words that turn into aeroplanes, tentacled maggot-monsters: they dance past like a carnival, a true surrender to the weird.”

Guardian

“Always creating and always pushing into the farthest reaches of the human mind, [Barker] is an artist in every sense of the word. He is the great imaginer of our time.”

QUENTIN TARANTINO

“Clive Barker is a magician of the first order”

New York Daily News

“Keeps you effortlessly turning the pages”

New York Times Magazine

“A blend of Alice in Wonderland and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe ”

Entertainment Weekly

“Clever, but oh so creepy”

People

To Emilian David Armstrong

I dreamed a limitless book,

A book unbound,

Its leaves scattered in fantastic abundance.

On every line there was a new horizon drawn,

New heavens supposed;

New states, new souls.

One of those souls,

Dozing through some imagined afternoon,

Dreamed these words.

And needing a hand to set them down,

Made mine.

C. B.

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Epigraph

PROLOGUE: THE MISSION

PART ONE: MORNINGTIDE

1. Room Nineteen;

2. What Henry Murkitt Left Behind;

3. Doodle;

4. “Street Ends”

5. A Shore Without a Sea

6. The Lady Ascends

7. Light and Water

8. A Moment with Melissa

9. Events on the Jetty

PART TWO: TWILIGHT AND BEYOND

10. The Waters 97

11. The Card Players

12. A Talk on the Tide

13. In The Great Head

14. Carrion

PART THREE: WHERE IS WHEN?

15. Bug 153

16. The Universal Eye

17. Almenak

18. The Tale of Hark’s Harbor

19. On Vesper’s Rock

20. The World Through Borrowed Eyes

21. The Hunt

PART FOUR: WICKED STRANGE

22. In Gallows Forest

23. The Man Who Made the Kid

24. Digger and Dragons

25. Mischief Undone

26. The House of Lies

27. Words with the Criss-Cross Man

28. A Slave’s Soul

29. Cat’s Eyes

30. “Come Thou Glyph to Me”

31. The Twenty-Fifth Hour

32. Monsoon

33. All Things in Time

34. Different Destinies

Keep Reading

Appendix : Some Excerpts From Klepp’s Almenak

Excerpt

Prologue

PART ONE: Freaks, Fools And Fujitives

Chapter One: Portriat Of Girl And Geshrat

About the Author

Also By Clive Barker

About the Publisher

THE MISSION

Three is the number of those who do holy work; Two is the number of those who do lover’s work; One is the number of those who do perfect evil Or perfect good.

—From the notes of a monk

of the Order of St. Oco;

his name unknown

THE STORM CAME UP out of the southwest like a fiend, stalking its prey on legs of lightning.

The wind it brought with it was as foul as the devil’s own breath and it stirred up the peaceful waters of the sea. By the time the little red boat that the three women had chosen for their perilous voyage had emerged from the shelter of the islands, and was out in the open waters, the waves were as steep as cliffs, twenty-five, thirty feet tall.

“Somebody sent this storm,” said Joephi, who was doing her best to steer the boat, which was called The Lyre . The sail shook like a leaf in a tempest, swinging back and forth wildly, nearly impossible to hold down. “I swear, Diamanda, this is no natural storm!”

Diamanda, the oldest of the three women, sat in the center of the tiny vessel with her dark blue robes gathered around her and their precious cargo pressed to her bosom.

“Let’s not get hysterical,” she told Joephi and Mespa. She wiped a long piece of white hair out of her eyes. “Nobody saw us leave the Palace of Bowers. We escaped unseen, I’m certain of it.”

“So why this storm?” said Mespa, who was a black woman, renowned for her resilience, but who now looked close to being washed away by the rain beating down on the women’s heads.

“Why are you so surprised that the heavens complain?” Diamanda said. “Didn’t we know the world would be turned upside down by what just happened?”

Joephi fought with the sail, cursing it.

“Indeed, isn’t this the way it should be?” Diamanda went on. “Isn’t it right that the sky is torn to tatters and the sea put in a frenzy? Would we prefer it if the world did not care?”

“No, no of course not,” said Mespa, holding on to the edge of the pitching boat, her face as white as her close-cropped hair was black. “I just wish we weren’t out in the middle of it all.”

“Well, we are!” said the old woman. “And there’s not a thing any of us can do about it. So I suggest you finish emptying your stomach, Mespa—”

“It is empty,” the sick woman said. “I have nothing left to bring up.”

“—and you Joephi, handle the sail—”

“Oh, Goddesses …” Joephi murmured. “ Look .”

“What is it?” said Diamanda.

Joephi pointed up into the sky.

Several stars had been shaken down from the fir-mament—great white cobs of fire piercing the clouds and falling seaward. One of them was heading directly toward The Lyre .

“Down!” Joephi yelled, catching hold of the back of Diamanda’s robes and pushing the old woman off her seat.

Diamanda hated to be touched; manhandling , she called it. She started to berate Joephi roundly for what she’d done, but she was drowned out by the roaring sound of the falling star as it rushed toward the vessel. It burst the billowing sail of The Lyre , burning a hole right through the canvas, and then plunged into the sea, where it was extinguished with a great hissing sound.