With that, Abigor spurred his steed. It galloped away, and then its wings began to beat and it rose up into the sky and vanished into the clouds.
Samuel emerged from his hiding place, and ran to where the Blacksmith’s remains lay.
“You could have told him where I was,” said Samuel as he stroked the hair of the Blacksmith’s severed head. “You could have told him, and he might have spared you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said the Blacksmith, “for I am not.”
And as he spoke, his expression changed. He looked puzzled, and his face became filled with a soft glow tinged faintly with amber, like the reflected light of a slowly setting sun.
“There is no pain,” he said. “It is gone.” He smiled at Samuel. “I did not betray you. I have redeemed myself. Now there is peace.”
Slowly, the pieces of his poor, butchered body faded away, and Samuel and Boswell were alone once more.
The Aston Martin and the ice-cream van were hidden beneath the heads of giant green toadstools that had sprouted from an area of damp, noisome earth, a forest of them that extended for miles. Nurd and Wormwood, along with the policemen and the dwarfs, watched as flights of demons passed overhead, some circling and descending, then ascending again once they had examined more closely whatever had attracted their attention on the ground. Then a great black steed broke through the clouds above and passed among their ranks, their rider urging the demons to ever-greater effort. His voice even carried to the odd little group watching him from below.
“Find the boy!” he cried. “Bring him to me!”
“I don’t like the look of him,” said Jolly.
“I don’t like the look of any of them,” said Dozy.
“Who’s the big lad on the horse, then?” Angry asked Nurd.
“Duke Abigor,” said Nurd. He sounded distracted. This wasn’t right. He had to assume that Abigor and his minions were looking for Samuel, but Samuel could only have been brought here by Mrs. Abernathy, and Duke Abigor and Mrs. Abernathy hated each other. Duke Abigor would do nothing to aid Mrs. Abernathy, yet now here he was, using his minions to search for the human Mrs. Abernathy loathed above all others. It could only mean that Abigor wanted Samuel for his own purposes.
“Whose side is he on?” asked Sergeant Rowan.
“His own,” said Nurd. “He’s looking for Samuel.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps because if he has Samuel, then Mrs. Abernathy doesn’t. Samuel is her way back to power, and Duke Abigor doesn’t want that. Duke Abigor wants to rule. I think that if he could find a way to get rid of the Great Malevolence himself then he’d do it, but he can’t, so he’ll have to settle for being second-in-command. To succeed, he has to ensure that Mrs. Abernathy is out of the picture. That means taking away any hope she has of regaining the Great Malevolence’s trust, and her only hope of that is to present him with Samuel.”
Sergeant Rowan looked at Nurd with a new respect.
“When did you get so clever?”
“When I realized that I wasn’t as clever as I thought,” Nurd replied. “We have to move. Samuel is nearby. I’m certain of it.”
But even as he spoke his sense of Samuel’s presence began to diminish, and he felt the boy’s spirit start to weaken. Something was very wrong, and Nurd willed Samuel to keep going and not to give up.
Hold on, Samuel, he thought. Hold on for just a little while longer…
Samuel and Boswell had left behind the crater of weapons, and the memory of the Blacksmith’s bravery. In the distance Samuel could see hills. He decided to head in that direction. He and Boswell might be able to find a place to hide there, for they were too vulnerable out here upon the open plain. But he was so tired. He could barely drag one foot along after the other, and he was also carrying Boswell, who was exhausted and had begun limping. Samuel’s nostrils burned and his lungs hurt from breathing the noxious air, tinged as it was with the stink of sulfur. His head grew lower with his spirits, for it seemed that his only hope of returning to his own world lay with the very woman he most wished to avoid. He understood the Blacksmith’s logic, but he did not want to face Mrs. Abernathy again. None of this was fair. He wished that he’d never seen the stupid portal, never tried to save the Earth, never met Nurd.
He shook his head. Where had that thought come from? It wasn’t true. Nurd was his friend. How could he think such a thing of a friend? But if Nurd was his friend, then where was he? Samuel had called out to him, but still he had not come. Perhaps Nurd didn’t care, and was just like all the rest. Even his father had abandoned him, and his mother had done nothing to prevent it, nothing. What was the point in continuing if even your own parents couldn’t be bothered to behave as they should?
He stopped walking. Ahead of him was a vast expanse of pure nothingness, a void that appeared to open blackly before him but was not really black at all, because at least “black” was something.33 The hole in time and space into which he and Boswell now stared was a relic of nonexistence, the last trace of all that had not been before the Multiverse was created. Looking into it made Samuel’s head hurt, because it had no length, or width, or depth. It had no gravity, nor could energy be transmitted through it. What Samuel and Boswell were seeing was not just the end of this dimension, and this universe, but the beginning and end of all universes, and as they gazed upon it they felt a great sense of loss overcome them, their spirits fell, and their will to continue was finally sapped, for clever young boys and smart, loyal dogs were never meant to face the bleakness of absolute nothingness. Slowly Samuel sank down, Boswell beside him, and together they looked into the Void, and the Void began to enter them.
XXIII
In Which Mrs. Abernathy Loses Her Temper, and We Meet Up Again with an Unpleasant Personage from Earlier in Our Tale
MRS. ABERNATHY’S VOICE ROSE to a shriek. Even the Watcher was taken aback at its volume and intensity.
“Nurd?” screamed Mrs. Abernathy. “Nurd? You’re telling me that that imbecile, that miserable excuse for a demon, is responsible for all this? But I banished him. I sent him to the Wasteland with his idiot servant, where he couldn’t be a nuisance anymore. How could—? How did—? I mean—”
Probably for the first time ever, words failed Mrs. Abernathy. Nurd? But he was so inconsequential, so inept, or so it had seemed. How could she have misjudged him so badly? She began to feel what might almost have been admiration for him, even if it was the kind that came before you began inflicting serious pain on the object of said admiration. The scale of what he had achieved, the great enterprise that he had managed to undo, was almost inconceivable. For a moment the revelation of Nurd’s involvement drove the Watcher’s second piece of news—the message from Old Ram that he had Samuel Johnson nearby—from her mind, but it quickly returned.
“I’ll deal with Nurd later,” she said. “For now, Samuel Johnson is our priority. You should have come to me before now, Watcher. I am disappointed in you.”
Had the Watcher been an entity of a different stripe, it might have felt obliged to protest at the unfairness of this, if only to obscure its other reason for remaining silent. After all, Mrs. Abernathy had been variously unconscious, overconcerned with her own vanity, and too keen on finding out the identities of those who were plotting against her to even allow the Watcher into her presence. It wasn’t entirely its fault that it had taken so long to relay Old Ram’s news to her. But the Watcher was not the kind of entity to complain, and had it done so, Mrs. Abernathy would not have listened, so it forced such thoughts from its mind, even as it wondered if thinking them was enough to make it a complainer after all.
Mrs. Abernathy spun on her heel, and the Watcher followed. Behind her lair was a stone courtyard, and in the courtyard a massive crested basilisk34 stood, saddled and ready. It hissed a greeting at its mistress as she climbed into the saddle. Spurs of bone emerged from Mrs. Abernathy’s heels, and she urged the creature toward the Forest of Broken Forms, the Watcher shadow
ing her from above.
Samuel was no longer angry at his mother. In fact, Samuel could no longer remember what his mother looked like. He knew that he had a mother, once, but he could not picture her in his mind. Likewise his father was a blur, but it didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered. The void coursed through him, emptying him of all feelings and memories, turning him into a husk, a hollow being. Beside Samuel, Boswell whined and tried to lick his master’s hand, but his strength was seeping from him. The sound caused Samuel to turn. He stared down at the dog and struggled to recall his name. Bos-something? Was that it?
And then even that was gone as the light in his eyes began to die.
Mrs. Abernathy’s basilisk stopped at the edge of the Forest of Broken Forms, beside the ruins of Old Ram’s home. She searched among the stones, half expecting to see Samuel Johnson buried in the rubble, but there was no sign of the boy, or of Old Ram. She examined the ground, and saw the tracks left by the Great Oak, and she knew what had happened there. With the Watcher at her heels, she entered the forest, the trees recoiling in terror, clearing a path for her until she and the basilisk reached the Great Oak. Unlike its smaller brethren, it showed no fear of her. If anything, it was Mrs. Abernathy who seemed wary of the massive tree, with its coiling roots and its twisted branches. Mrs. Abernathy might have been evil incarnate, and capable of acts of immense cruelty and harm, but the Great Oak was ancient, and strong, and dangerous. The vestiges of its humanity made it so.
The Great Oak was also insane, the result of millennia of misery and painful, crooked growth. Its madness rendered it unpredictable, and Mrs. Abernathy knew that it would not be beyond the Great Oak’s capabilities to try to hurt her, or trap her with its roots and keep her here for its own amusement, torturing her as it had been tortured for so long, avenging some of its pain by visiting pain on another. She knew she was especially vulnerable now that she was no longer under the protection of the Great Malevolence, and she was glad of the Watcher’s presence beside her.
“It has been a long time since last you set foot here,” said the Great Oak. “You were not welcome then, and you are not welcome now.”
“What have you done with Old Ram?”
“No more than he deserved,” said the Great Oak, and its trunk split open beneath its gaping mouth like a vertical wound, revealing a hollow interior in which Old Ram hung suspended by ivy, moaning softly as branches tugged and tore at him, and roots dug into his flesh.
“There was a boy with him,” said Mrs. Abernathy.
“Boy?” said the Great Oak. “I saw no boy.”
And Mrs. Abernathy heard the surrounding trees laugh.
“Don’t lie to me. Do you have the boy?”
“There is no boy here,” said the Great Oak, and Mrs. Abernathy sensed that it spoke the truth.
“Then let Old Ram go,” she said.
“And why should I do that, when I enjoy toying with him so much?”
“I must talk with him, and I can’t do that while you’re hurting him.”
The ivy uncurled, the roots and branches retreated, and Old Ram was released from bondage. He climbed through the gap in the tree and knelt before Mrs. Abernathy.
“Thank you,” he said, stroking her feet with his clawed upper hooves. “Thank you, kind mistress, thank you.”
“The boy,” said Mrs. Abernathy. “Tell me about the boy.”
“Old Ram was holding him for you, him and his dog. He was sleeping, and he trusted Old Ram. Then Great Oak came and tore Old Ram’s home apart, and the boy escaped. Old Ram saw him crawl away, but Old Ram could do nothing to stop him. It is all the fault of the Great Oak. Punish him! Punish him!”
Mrs. Abernathy turned to the Great Oak.
“Is this true?”
The Great Oak creaked and rustled. “Old Ram had hurt us. It was Old Ram who had to be punished. I did not know that the boy was yours. It was my mistake.”
The Great Oak lowered two of its biggest branches, as though they were arms and he was extending them in supplication. Suddenly, they slashed at Mrs. Abernathy, smaller branches as sharp as knives radiating from their ends. Its roots erupted from the ground at her feet, twisting around her legs. The Watcher grabbed Mrs. Abernathy and tried to take flight, but now the surrounding trees were closing in and there was no room for the Watcher’s wings to unfold. Mrs. Abernathy’s basilisk spat venom, instantly rotting branches and roots, but the trees were too many, and lengths of ivy coiled around the basilisk’s mouth, holding it closed; and mud and filth were forced into its eyes, obscuring its lethal gaze. Meanwhile Old Ram cowered in the dirt, his hooves curled over his head, bleating in misery and alarm.
Six thick tentacles erupted from Mrs. Abernathy’s back, topped with sharp beaks that snapped at the branches and nipped at the roots, but the Great Oak was too strong, and too intent upon hurting Mrs. Abernathy now that she was within reach. Slowly, she and the Watcher were being enveloped. Already the Watcher’s arms were pinned to its sides, and Mrs. Abernathy was concealed from the waist down by twisted roots.
“Come to the Great Oak,” said the old tree. “Come, and be part of us.”
Mrs. Abernathy’s eyes began to glow whitely. She opened her mouth and clicked her tongue, and a small blue flame appeared between her teeth. She drew a deep breath into her lungs, then exhaled. Fire burst from her lips, a torrent of light and heat that struck at the heart of the Great Oak, igniting it both inside and out. It roared in pain, and instantly its branches and roots began to retreat, freeing Mrs. Abernathy and the Watcher. The Watcher spread its wings and carried them both upward and out of the forest as the other trees bent away from the flames, crying out in fear as the Great Oak’s struggles sent blue sparks in their direction. The basilisk freed itself and tore a path through the remaining trees, and Old Ram fled with it, running on all fours until he found himself at last beside what was left of his home, where Mrs. Abernathy was waiting for him.
“The boy,” she said. “Which way did he go?”
Old Ram pointed to his right. “He was hiding behind those boulders, and that was the last Old Ram saw of him, but he could not have gone far. He is a child in a strange land, with only a dog for company. Let Old Ram come with you. Old Ram can help you find him. Old Ram is tired of this place.”
He looked back at the forest as blue flame rose from its heart, and he shivered.
“And the Great Oak will recover, and will come again for Old Ram,” he whispered.
Mrs. Abernathy strode to her basilisk and mounted it. As she did so, she saw two pale demons circling high above, drawn by the flames in the forest, and she knew them to be Abigor’s.
“Go where you will,” she said. “But if anyone asks you about the boy, deny all knowledge of him. If you do otherwise, I will hear of it, and I will have you tied and bound, and let the Great Oak have its way with you.”
Old Ram nodded, and thanked her again. Mrs. Abernathy and the Watcher waited until Abigor’s demons had descended to the forest before they took off themselves, traveling fast and true, until the basilisk found the trail of footsteps and paw prints left by Samuel and Boswell.
And they knew that he was near.
XXIV
In Which We Speculate on What, If Anything, Might Be Worse Than Evil
IF THERE IS ANYTHING worse than evil, it is nothingness. At least evil has a form, and a voice, and a purpose, however depraved. Perhaps some good can even come out of evil: a terrible deed of violence against someone weaker may lead others to act in order to ensure that such a deed is not perpetrated again, whereas before they might have been unaware of the reasons why an individual might behave in such a way, or they might simply have chosen to ignore them. And evil, as we saw with the Blacksmith, always contains within itself the possibility of its own redemption. It is not evil that is the enemy of hope: it is nothingness.
As Nurd felt Samuel’s life force ebb away, so too did he come to realize just where the boy was. Even in the grim, blasted regions of Hell, there wa
s only one place that could cause such a loss of self, eating away at all the substance of an individual, all that he loved and hated, all that he was and ever would be. It was the Void, the Emptiness, the Eternal Absence that even the Great Malevolence himself feared. So Nurd kept his foot pressed hard upon the accelerator and found himself pulling away from the ice-cream van, loaded down as it was with dwarfs, policemen, and rapidly dwindling supplies of ice cream. But as he drew closer to Samuel, the light in Samuel’s soul was fading. Nurd felt as though he were trying to reach a candle flame before it flickered for the last time, that he might wrap his hands around it and feed it the oxygen it needed to survive. Nurd knew that if Samuel continued to stare into the Void he would eventually be lost entirely, and nobody would ever be able to bring him back. Samuel and Boswell would become like statues of flesh and bone, with an empty place where their spirits once were (for animals have spirits too, and let no one tell you otherwise). Having endured so much, and having been separated by space and time only to be offered the chance of a reunion at last by Mrs. Abernathy’s vengeance, Nurd did not wish to see his friend’s essence sacrificed to the emptiness that underlay the chaos of Hell.
Faster and faster he drove, until Wormwood put a hand on his arm in warning, for now there were sharp and treacherous stones beneath their wheels. Were they to suffer a puncture or, worse, rupture the engine or break an axle, then Samuel and Boswell would not be saved. Reluctantly Nurd slowed down while high above their heads unseen eyes watched their progress, and reported it to others.
• • •
Samuel was almost entirely still. His eyes did not blink, his lips did not open, and he barely seemed to be breathing. Yet had anyone been watching him, they would have seen one small sign of movement. For even as all that had made him what he was—every memory, every thought, every spark of brightness and eccentricity—was being subsumed, his right hand continued to stroke Boswell’s fur, and, in response, his dog’s tail contributed the barest thump on the ground, but a thump nonetheless. Had Boswell not been present, Samuel would already have ceased to exist, leaving nothing more than the shell of a boy seated on the edge of a dark sea; and if Samuel had not been present, Boswell would have been little more than a stuffed animal withering away. But if a child loves an animal, and is loved in turn, there will always be a connection between them: they are spirits intertwined. And if the Void had feelings, which it clearly did not, it might well have experienced a sense of frustration at its inability to break down the defenses of the boy and the dog. Deep inside each of them was a wall protecting the best of themselves, but it was crumbling at last, like a dam finally giving way to the flood, and soon they would be drowned. The movements of Samuel’s hand began to slow, and the thumps of Boswell’s tail became less frequent, and their eyes grew dark as never-ending night fell upon their hearts.