The Hour! The Hour! Upon the Hour!
Mother’s mad and the milk’s gone sour,
But yesterday I found a flower
That sang Annunciation.
And when the Hours become Day,
And all the Days have passed away,
Will we not see—yes, you and me—
How sweet and bright the light will be
That comes of our Creation?
—Song of the Totemix
THE BRIGHTNESS OF BABILONIUM’S Infinite Carnival didn’t light up every corner of the island, Candy soon discovered. The zethek carried her up a gentle slope, on the other side of which the garish lights of the pomps, parades, carousels and psychedelias gave sudden way to the hazy blue of early evening. The din from the crowds and from the roller coasters and from the barkers at the sideshows grew more remote. Soon only the occasional gust of wind brought a hint of that din to Candy’s ears, and after a little while, not even that. All she heard now was the creaking of the zethek’s wings and the occasional charmless rasp of the creature’s labored breathing.
Beneath them, the landscape was little more than a wilderness of reddish dirt dotted with a few solitary trees, all spindly and undernourished, which threw their long shadows eastward. Now and again she saw a farmhouse, with a couple of cultivated fields beside it, and cattle settling down after their evening milking. Though of course it was always dusk here, wasn’t it? The evening stars were always rising in the east; the flowers opening to meet the moon. It would be a very pleasant Hour to live in, with the day almost ending but the night not yet begun. It had been different, she thought, in the Carnival. There the lights had lent the sky a false brightness, and the din had driven out the aching hush that was all around her now. Perhaps that was why Six O’clock had been chosen as a place to put the razzmatology of the Carnival: it was a kind of defense against the darkening Hour, a way of delaying the darkness with laughter and games. But it couldn’t be put off forever. The farther north they traveled, the longer the shadows became, and the red of the earth darkened to purple and to black as the light steadily faded from the sky.
Candy did her best to be an undemanding passenger. She didn’t move too much, and she kept her mouth shut. Her greatest fear was that the zethek would realize that he was in no danger of being recaptured and would swing around and head back to Gorgossium. But so far the beast seemed content to fly on northward. Even when they cleared the coast of Babilonium and began to cross the straits between Six and Seven, he did not show any sign of wanting to turn. But he did swoop down toward the water and skim it, looking, Candy guessed, for fish to scoop up out of the water. Candy hoped he didn’t actually catch sight of anything, because if he plunged his head into the water she would almost certainly be thrown off his back. Luckily the gathering darkness and the wind ruffling the surface of the water made fish spotting difficult, and they flew on over the murky straits without incident.
The island of Scoriae was visible ahead, with the magnificent, ominous cone of Mount Galigali at its heart. She knew very little about this Hour, beyond the few facts she’d read in Klepp’s Almenak. It had mentioned, she remembered, that there had once been three beautiful cities on the island—Gosh, Mycassius and Divinium—and that an eruption of Mount Galigali had destroyed all three cities, leaving no survivors, or so she thought she remembered. She had no idea how long it was since the eruption had occurred, but she could see that the larval paths had marked the island like wide black scars, and no seed had sprouted on them nor house been built since the liquid rock had cooled.
There was only one place, at the westbound edge of the island, where the gloom and sterility were relieved somewhat. There, a bank of pale, pliant mist had gathered, as though nestling the spot, and rising from this gently moving cloud was a forest of tall trees. They had to be a particularly Abaratian species, Candy reasoned; no trees in the Hereafter (at least none she’d ever been taught about in school) thrived in a place where there was only the last blush of sunlight in the sky. Perhaps these were trees that fed not on sunlight but on the light of the moon and stars.
Fatigue, and perhaps hunger, were now taking a serious toll on Methis’ flying skills. He was rocking from side to side as he flew, sometimes so severely that one or the other of his wing tips would graze the tops of the waves. His feet plowed the water too, on occasion, throwing up a cold spray.
Candy decided this was the time to break her silence and offer a few words of encouragement.
“We’re going to make it!” she said to him. “We’ve just got to get to the shore. It’s no more than a quarter of a mile.”
Methis didn’t reply. He just flew on, his flight becoming more erratic with every wing beat.
Candy could hear the waves splashing on the shore now, and her view of the mist-shrouded trees was better and better. It looked like a place she might lay down her head and sleep for a while. She had lost track of how long it was since she’d enjoyed a good long sleep.
But first they had to reach the shore, and now with every yard they covered that seemed to be a more and yet more remote possibility. Methis was laboring hard; his breath was raw and painful.
“We can do it!” Candy said to him. “I swear…we can.”
This time the exhausted creature responded to her.
“What’s with this we? I don’t see you flapping your wings.”
“I would if I had wings to flap.”
“But you don’t, do you? You’re just a burden.”
As he spoke, there was a surge of surf in front of them and a massive creature—not a mantizac, but something that looked more like a rabid walrus—lunged out of the water. Its snaggle-toothed maw snapped just inches from Methis’ snout, then the monster fell back into the sea, throwing up a great wall of icy water.
There was a panicky moment or two when Methis was flying blind through the spray, and all Candy could do was cling to him and hope for the best. Then she felt a strong wind against her face and shook the water from her eyes to see that Methis was climbing steeply to avoid a second attack. She slid down over his wet back and would surely have lost her grip and fallen had he not quickly leveled off again.
“Damn gilleyants!” he yelled.
“It’s still below us!” Candy warned.
The gilleyant was breaching again, this time roaring as it threw its immense bulk out of the water. Then it came back down again with another great splash.
“Well, it’s not getting us,” Methis said.
The encounter had put some fresh life into the zethek. He flew on toward the island, keeping his new elevation, at least until they were so close to the shore that the water was no more than three or four feet deep. Only then did he swoop down again, making an inelegant landing in the soft amber sand.
They lay there on the beach for a while, gasping with relief and exhaustion. It didn’t take very long for Candy’s teeth to begin to chatter. The gilleyant’s cavorting had soaked her to the skin, and now the wind was chilling her.
She got to her feet, wrapping her arms around herself. “I have to find a fire or I’m going to catch pneumonia.”
Methis also got up, his expression as miserable as ever.
“We won’t see each other again after this, I daresay,” he said. “So I suppose I should wish you luck.”
“Oh,