Salman Rushdie - Luka and the Fire of Life

Nobodaddy looked pleased in the way that Rashid Khalifa looked pleased when Luka did well at mathematical calculation. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Knowing a magic creature’s name gives you power over it, yes it does! If you knew her name you could call her and she would have to come. Unfortunately, she is known by dozens of names, and maybe none of them are the real one. Keep your own name secret, that’s my advice. Because if they know your name in the Magic World, who knows what they might do with it.’

‘Do you know her name, then,’ Luka said impatiently, ‘or are you going on and on in this way to hide the fact that you don’t?’

‘Ooh, that stings,’ said Nobodaddy languidly, fanning himself with his hat. ‘What a sharp little tongue! You’d make a good Otter. As a matter of fact,’ he went on hastily, seeing Luka open his mouth again, ‘I’ve narrowed it down. After much thought and analysis, I’ve got it down to half a dozen. Six of the best. I’m pretty sure it’s one of those.’

‘“Pretty sure” isn’t very impressive,’ Luka said.

‘I haven’t had a chance to try them out,’ Nobodaddy replied, sounding indignant. ‘But why don’t you have a go right now and we’ll settle the matter once and for all?’

So Luka called out the names Nobodaddy gave him, one by one. ‘Bilqis! Makeda! Saba! Kandaka! Nicaula!’ The woman on the flying carpet ignored them all. Nobodaddy, looking crestfallen, suggested a few more names, but with decreasing conviction. Luka tried them too. ‘Meroë! Nana! Um… what did you say?’

‘Chalchiuhtlicue,’ Nobodaddy repeated doubtfully.

‘Chalchi…’ Luka began, then stopped.

‘… uhtlicue,’ Nobodaddy prompted.

‘Chalchiuhtlicue,’ Luka shouted, triumphantly.

‘It means “the woman in the jade skirt”,’ Nobodaddy explained.

‘I don’t care what it means,’ said Luka, ‘because it’s having no effect, so it obviously isn’t her name.’

For a moment Luka fell into a terrible sadness. He would never be able to get out of this mess, never be able to find the Fire of Life or save his father. This strange version of his father, Nobodaddy, was the only father he had now, and he wouldn’t have him for long, either. He would lose his father and his father’s fatal copy; it was time to get used to that horrible fact. All he would have left was his mother, and her beautiful voice…

‘I know the Insultana’s name,’ he said suddenly, and stepping out from the shadow of the awning, he called in a loud, clear voice, ‘Soraya!’

Time stopped. The descending jets of betel juice, the rotten tomatoes, the egg missiles froze in mid-flight; the Rats became motionless, like photographs of themselves; in the sky the Otters stood still on their carpets in attitudes of war, and the flying rugs, as if turned to stone, no longer flapped in the breeze; even Bear, Dog and Nobodaddy were as stiff as waxworks. In all that timeless universe only two people moved. One was Luka; the other, swooping down on King Solomon’s Carpet, Resham , and coming to a halt right in front of him, was the brilliant and slightly frightening Insultana of Ott. Except that Luka wasn’t scared of her. This was his father’s World of Magic, and therefore it was to be expected that this young Queen, the most important female person in that world, had the same name as Luka’s mother, the most important woman in his, and his father’s, world. ‘You summoned me,’ she said. ‘You guessed my name, which stopped Time, so here I am. What do you want?’

There are moments in life – not enough of them, but they do occur – when even young boys find exactly the right words to say at exactly the right time; when, like a gift, the right idea occurs to you just when you most need it. This, for Luka, was one such moment. He found himself saying to the great ruler of Ott, without fully knowing where in his head he had found the words, ‘I believe we can help each other, Insultana Soraya. There is something I need you to help me with, urgently, and in return I have an idea for you that might just win you this war.’

Soraya leaned forward. ‘Just tell me what you want from me,’ she commanded, in her rough Otter way, and Luka, his usually fluent tongue paralysed, pointed to the golden ball atop the Rathouse dome. ‘Yes, I see,’ said Soraya of Ott, ‘and afterwards, my young milord, no doubt you will wish to return to the River and be on your way.’ Luka nodded dumbly, not even surprised by how much the Insultana knew. ‘That is nothing,’ she said, and motioned Luka to come aboard the flying carpet, revealing a kinder nature than her sharp words implied.

An instant later the carpet took off, with Luka, caught off balance, lying flat on his back upon it; and an instant after that, they were at the golden ball, and Luka was able to get up and thump it, and heard the satisfying ding of a level being saved, and saw in the upper right-hand corner of his field of vision the single-digit number climbing to 2. And then they were down on the ground again, next to Nobodaddy and Dog and Bear, all of whom were still frozen in time, and Soraya was saying, ‘Now it’s your turn. Or was that just big talk? Boys like you – you’re all mouth and no trousers, as the saying goes.’

‘Itching powder,’ Luka said humbly, thinking that it didn’t sound like such an impressive idea. But the Insultana was listening hard now, so Luka went ahead and told her, shyly and with considerable embarrassment, about his own military history, and the victory over the Imperial Highness Army in the Great Playground Wars. Soraya gave the impression of hanging on his every word, and when he had finished she gave a low, impressed whistle.

‘Itching-powder bombs,’ she said, mostly to herself. ‘Why did we never think of that? Those could work. Rats hate itches! Those should work. Yes! They will work!’ To Luka’s amazement and secret delight, she leaned down and kissed him three times, on the left cheek, then the right, and then the left again. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You are a man of your word.’

It was said of the Flying Carpet of King Solomon that it could carry any number of people, no matter how large that number might be, and any weight of goods, no matter how heavy that weight, and that it could grow until it was immensely large, as much as sixty miles long and sixty miles wide. When the weather called for shade, an army of birds would gather above it like a parasol, and the wind would blow it wherever it wanted to go, as fast as the blinking of an eye. But these were only stories, and what Luka saw next he saw with his own eyes: the Insultana Soraya spread her arms wide, and the wind leapt up at her bidding. Then she quite simply disappeared, and, no more than ninety seconds later, reappeared; but this time the carpet was much larger and on it were literally tens of thousands of small paper airplanes. It was obvious that the ruler of Ott was capable of getting things done pretty quickly. An instant after her reappearance, the paper airplanes had taken flight and distributed themselves among all the members of her personal air force, which was still frozen in time like everything else as far as Luka could see. In the whole observable world only he and the Insultana and the armada of paper planes were moving. Also the green-and-gold Carpet of King Solomon, which, after passing out its cargo, returned to the size of a largish domestic rug.

‘How did you do that?’ Luka asked, and then added, ‘Never mind,’ knowing the answer before it was given. ‘I know. A P2C2E, and the itching-powder bombs were made at super-speed by M2C2Ds. Machines Too Complicated To Describe.’

‘I’m willing to bet,’ said the Insultana, ‘that you didn’t learn that at school.’