Salman Rushdie - Luka and the Fire of Life

‘Oh,’ said Luka, feeling horribly deflated, because the notion that Nobodaddy and Soraya and everyone else had hidden from him the successful Thefts of Fire had briefly given him hope. If Coyote could do it, he had thought, then he could do it, too. But that short-lived burst of optimism fizzled out and died like a well-doused fire as Soraya explained the truth. He turned back towards Coyote, humbly. ‘What sort of help did you have in mind?’ he asked.

This beautiful lady here she’s kindly disposed to you and I’m indebted to her for old kindnesses , said Coyote, chewing something at the side of his mouth. She says maybe I could guide you through the inner country, which maybe I could at that. Says maybe you’ll need somebody to make a carrera de distracción. That’s a decoy run. Says I should see if I can get the old gang together and run that diversion for you while you make your crazy bid. Wants me to draw the 3-J attention way from you while you run for glory.

Then Soraya said something that drained all the hope out of Luka’s body. ‘I can’t take you in there,’ she said. ‘Into Aalim country. If they see the Flying Carpet of King Solomon the Wise entering their space, and if they become aware of him -’ here she nodded her head at Nobodaddy with a distasteful expression on her face – ‘and, believe me, they will become aware, then the game will be up right away; they’ll smell trouble and come down on us with all the power they have, and I’m not strong enough to fight them off for very long. That’s why I wanted to find Coyote. I want you to have a plan.’

‘I’m going with you,’ said Bear the dog, loyally.

‘I’m going too,’ said Dog the bear in a gruff, big-brotherish voice. ‘Somebody has to look after you.’

The Memory Birds shuffled their webbed feet awkwardly. ‘It’s not really our thing, fire-stealing,’ said the Elephant Duck.

‘We just remember stuff, that’s all. We’re just rememberers.’ And the Elephant Drake added clumsily, ‘We’ll always remember you.’

The Elephant Duck gave him a furious look. ‘What he means,’ she said, nudging her partner roughly, ‘is that we’ll wait with Queen Soraya for your return.’

The Elephant Drake harrumphed. ‘Obviously,’ he said. ‘I misspoke, obviously. We’ll obviously be waiting. Obviously, that is what I meant to say.’

Nobodaddy squatted down so that he could look Luka in the eye. ‘She’s right,’ he said, annoying Luka intensely by using Rashid Khalifa’s most serious and loving voice. ‘I can’t go with you. Not in there.’

‘Here’s something else you should have told me before now,’ Luka said angrily. ‘Both of you. How am I supposed to do this without you?’

Jaldibadal the Changer said firmly, ‘You still have us.’

Nuthog’s sisters had fully recovered from their icy ordeal by now, and nodded enthusiastically, which made their metal pig ears clank against the sides of their heads. ‘We are creatures of the Heart,’ said Badlo-Badlo – at least Luka thought it was Badlo, but with all their Changing it was hard to remember which of the four sisters was which. ‘That’s right,’ said – maybe – Bahut-Sara. ‘The Three Jos will not suspect us.’

‘Thank you,’ said Luka gratefully, ‘but maybe you could change back into dragons? Dragons might be more useful than metal pigs if we come under attack.’ The quadruple transformation was quickly completed, and Luka was pleased to see that there were differences in their colouring which made it easier to tell the Changers apart: Nuthog (Jaldi) was the red dragon, Badlo the green one, Sara the blue one, and Gyara-Jinn, the Changer with eleven possible transformations, the largest of the four, was golden.

‘Then it’s settled,’ Luka said. ‘Bear, Dog, Jaldi, Sara, Badlo, Jinn and me. Seven of us, into the Heart of the Heart.’

‘Call me Nuthog,’ said Nuthog. ‘We’re friends now. And I never liked my real name much anyhow.’

Coyote spat out the remnant of his dinner and cleared his throat. Aint you forgettin somethin here, chico ? Or is it your intent to insult me by declinin my offer in public an in spite of it being both generous an bona fide? An in spite of your ignorance and my particular expertise ?

Luka was genuinely unsure how to reply. This Coyote was a friend of Soraya’s, so that made him trustworthy, Luka supposed, but was he really necessary? Maybe the best way was just to creep in without doing anything to draw the Aalim’s attention in any direction at all, even the wrong one?

‘Just tell me one thing,’ he said, rounding on Nobodaddy, who he was beginning to dislike more and more, ‘how many levels do I still have to get through? I’ve got this single-digit counter up here on the right, saying Seven -’

‘Seven is excellent,’ said Nobodaddy. ‘Seven is actually impressive. But you won’t complete Level Eight unless you do succeed in stealing the Fire of Life -’

‘Which, let’s be clear, has never been done – at least, not in the current format of the Magical World,’ interjected Luka crossly. ‘Not under the Rules of the Game that are presently in effect.’

‘And Level Nine is the longest and hardest of all,’ Nobodaddy added. ‘That’s the one in which you have to get all the way back to the Start and jump back into the Real World without being caught. Oh, and you will have the entire World of Magic up in arms and chasing after you, by the way. That’s Level Nine.’

‘Wonderful. Thanks a lot,’ said Luka.

‘You’re welcome,’ said Nobodaddy in a cold, hard voice. ‘I seem to recall that this was your idea. I distinctly recall your saying, “Let’s go.” Was I perhaps mistaken?’ That wasn’t Luka’s father talking at all. That was a creature who was trying to suck his father’s life away. Luka suspected even more strongly than before that this whole adventure had just been Nobodaddy’s way of passing the time until his real work was done. It has just been something to do .

‘No,’ said Luka. ‘No, there was no mistake.’

Just then he heard a loud noise.

A loud, loud , LOUD noise.

In fact, to call this noise ‘loud’ was like saying that a tsunami was just a big wave. To describe how loud this loudness was, Luka thought, he would have to say, for example, that if the Himalayas were made of sound instead of stone and ice then this noise would have been Mount Everest; or maybe not Everest, but definitely one of the Eight Thousand Metre Peaks. Luka had learned from Rashid Khalifa, the least mountaineering of men, but a man who liked a good list, that there were fourteen Eight Thousand Metre Peaks on Earth: in descending order, Everest, K2, Kanchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu, Nanga Parbat, Annapurna, Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum II and the beautiful Xixabangma Feng. It wasn’t so easy to list his Fourteen Loudest Sounds, Luka thought, but he was quite sure this one was in the top three. So it was at the Kanchenjunga level, at the very least.

The sound went on, and on, and on, and Luka covered his ears. All around them pandemonium had broken out in the Heart of Magic. Crowds were running in all directions, flying creatures were taking to the air, swimming things to the water, riders to their horses. It was a general mobilisation, Luka thought, and then in a flash he understood what the sound was. It was a call to arms.

The game just changed, muchacho, Coyote trotted over to shout in Luka’s ear. You need help now, big time. Aint nobody heard that noise round here in hunnerds of years. That’s the Big Noise. That’s the Fire Alarm .

‘It must have been that Fire Bug who raised the Alarm,’ Luka realised at once, disgusted with himself for having forgotten about that little tale-telling flame, the World of Magic’s tiniest Security operative, but, it seemed, one of the most dangerous. ‘It was hovering by Captain Aag’s shoulder and then it disappeared. We didn’t pay attention to it, and now we’re paying the price for our carelessness.’