Salman Rushdie - Luka and the Fire of Life

Luka ran to stand between them. Their trunks were stretched straight out in front of them now, pointing the way. The carpet came down low over the Forking Paths and accelerated. Trees, shrubs and rivers passed swiftly by beneath them. Then all at once the Elephant Duck called, ‘Stop!’ and they had arrived.

It was getting dark, and Luka couldn’t see what was so different about this particular river, but he hoped with all his might that the Memory Birds were right. ‘Down,’ said the Elephant Drake. ‘We need to touch it, just to be sure.’ The carpet flew lower and lower until it was hovering just above the water’s surface. The Elephant Duck put the tip of her trunk into the river and then lifted up her head triumphantly. ‘Sure!’ she shouted, and with cries of happiness both Elephant Birds jumped off the flying carpet into the rediscovered River of Time. ‘Home!’ they yelled. ‘No question! This is the place!’ They squirted great jets of River water over each other, and then controlled themselves. The River of Time deserved to be treated with care. It was not a toy. ‘Certain,’ said the Elephant Drake. ‘One hundred per cent.’ He gave a little bow. Bear the dog, who prided himself on his own nose, was impressed and, perhaps, a little ashamed that he had not been the one to find the way. Dog the bear was impressed and embarrassed as well, and grumpily neglected to offer the Memory Birds his congratulations. Nobodaddy seemed lost in thought and didn’t say anything, either. ‘Thank you, ladies, boys, ordinary-nosed animals, and strange supernatural figures who are, to be honest, a little creepy,’ said the Elephant Drake pointedly. ‘Thank you all very much. There is no need to applaud.’

Night in the World of Magic can be livelier than the day, depending on your exact location. In Peristan, the Country of Imaginary Beings, the night is when the ogres, the bhoots , usually creep about trying to abduct sleeping peris. In the City of Dreams, Khwáb, the night is the time when all its inhabitants’ dreams come to life and are acted out in the streets – love affairs, quarrels, monsters, horrors, joys all throng those darkened lanes, and sometimes your dream may, at the night’s end, hop into someone else’s head, and theirs end up, confusingly, surprisingly, in yours. And in Ott, as Soraya was telling Luka, everyone’s behaviour was always naughtiest, wildest and least predictable in the hours between sunset and dawn. Otters ate too much, drank too much, stole their best friends’ cars, insulted their grandmothers, and threw rocks at the bronze face of the First King of Ott, her ancestor, whose equestrian statue stood at the palace gate. ‘We are a badly behaved people, it’s true,’ she sighed, ‘but we are good at heart.’

In the Trillion and One Forking Paths, however, night was eerily quiet. No bats flew across the face of the moon, no silvery elves glimmered behind bushes, no savage gorgons lurked, waiting to turn the unwary traveller to stone. The silence, the empty hush, was almost frightening. No crickets chirruped, no distant voices called across the water, no nocturnal animals prowled. Soraya, seeing that Luka was a little unnerved by the quiet, tried to inject a note of normalcy into the scene. ‘Help me fold this carpet up,’ she commanded, adding, in good Otter fashion, ‘unless you’re too clumsy or ill-mannered, of course.’

They had floated the Argo on the River and boarded her. The Memory Birds wouldn’t need to pull the vessel – the flying carpet Resham could easily do that. But even a magic rug appreciates a few hours’ rest, and Soraya on the deck of the Argo was putting Resham away for the night. Luka took two corners of the soft silken fabric and followed her commands, and saw, to his amazement, that the carpet just went on folding, and folding, and folding as if it were made of folding air. In the end it had folded away into a square no larger or bulkier than a handkerchief, and all its enchanted furnishings had vanished with it. ‘There,’ said Soraya, putting the carpet into a pocket. ‘Thank you, Luka.’ And then, remembering herself, she added, ‘Not that you were really very much use.’

The animals were already asleep. Nobodaddy, who never slept, was behaving as if he was fatigued in a very human sort of way – resting quietly, squatting at the Argo ’s prow, with his hands wrapped around his legs and his head resting on his knees, still wearing that panama hat. Luka realised that his father must have staged a small recovery, because Nobodaddy was looking slightly more transparent than he had recently. ‘Perhaps that’s why he’s tired,’ Luka thought. ‘The stronger my father gets, the weaker this Nobodaddy becomes.’

It would be a mistake, Luka knew, to pin too many hopes on this happy reversal. He had heard that ill people sometimes experienced a little misleading ‘improvement’ before sliding downhill to their… to their ends… He was feeling very tired himself, but couldn’t allow himself to sleep. ‘We have to go on,’ he said to Soraya. ‘Why is everyone behaving as if we have time to spare?’

The stars were out overhead, and they were dancing again, the way they had on the night Rashid fell Asleep, and Luka didn’t know if that was a good sign, but he was afraid it might be a bad one. ‘Let’s go,’ he pleaded. But Soraya came towards him and hugged him in a way that wasn’t insulting at all, and a moment later he was fast asleep in her arms.

He woke up early, well before dawn, but he wasn’t the first to open his eyes. The Memory Birds and animals were still asleep, but Nobodaddy was pacing up and down looking worried (was that a good or bad sign? Luka wondered). Soraya was staring towards the far horizon, and if Luka didn’t know she was fearless he would have said she was afraid. He went to stand beside her, and to his surprise she took his hand in her own and held it tightly. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, and she shook her head violently and did not at first reply. Then in a quiet voice she said, ‘I should never have brought you here. This is no place for you.’

Luka answered impatiently, ‘It’s fine. We’re here now. We should get on and find the saving point.’

‘And then what?’ Soraya asked.

‘Then,’ Luka stammered, ‘then, we’ll do whatever comes next.’

‘I told you the carpet can’t pass through the Great Rings of Fire,’ Soraya said. ‘But the Heart of Magic, and everything you’re looking for, lies beyond them. It’s useless. We’re lucky to have got this far. I should take you back.’

‘About these Rings of Fire -’ Luka began.

‘Don’t ask,’ she replied. ‘They are immense and impassable, that’s all. The Grandmaster makes sure of that.’

‘And when you say the Grandmaster -’

‘It’s just impossible,’ she burst out, and there were actual tears in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. It can’t be done.’

Nobodaddy had been quiet for a long time, but now he intervened. ‘If that is so,’ he said, ‘the boy probably needs to find it out for himself. And besides, he still has six hundred and fifteen lives to spare, plus one more that he will obviously need to hold on to. And so do his dog and his bear.’

Soraya opened her mouth to argue, but Luka began to bustle about the Argo . ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ he shouted, and the animals grudgingly did as he asked. He turned to Soraya and said firmly, ‘To the saving point. Please.’

She nodded her head in surrender. ‘Have it your own way,’ she said, and took the flying carpet out of her pocket.

There were steel rings at each corner of the carpet, Luka now realised (but had they been there the night before, when Resham was being folded up?), and the Argo was now attached to these rings by ropes. The Elephant Duck and Elephant Drake took it in turns to sit on the carpet and guide it through the labyrinth of decoy waterways along the true River of Time. And even though the carpet flew swiftly, it was a long journey, and Luka was relieved when he finally saw the golden ball of the saving point up ahead, bobbing up and down like a small buoy. In recognition of the Memory Birds’ role as guides, he asked them to punch the ball, and the Elephant Duck jumped into the River and butted the golden orb with her head. The number in the top right-hand corner of Luka’s field of vision changed rapidly from 3 to 4, 5 and then 6; but he wasn’t paying attention, because the moment the Elephant Duck hit the saving point, the whole world changed, too.