Haroun and the Sea of Stories (10 page)

This remark so exasperated Haroun that in his exhaustion he swung an arm loosely at Blabbermouth’s head, catching the Page by surprise and knocking off the maroon velvet cap on his head …on
her
head, that is to say, because as the cap fell to the ground a great torrent of shiny black hair cascaded down over Blabbermouth’s shoulders. ‘What did you do
that
for?’ wailed the Page. ‘Now you’ve spoilt
everything
.’

‘You’re a girl,’ Haroun said, a little obviously.

‘
Shhh
,’ hissed Blabbermouth, stuffing her hair back under her cap. ‘You want to get me the
sack
or
what
?’ She dragged Haroun into a little alcove and drew a curtain to screen them from view. ‘You think it’s
easy
for a girl to get a job like this? Don’t you know girls have to
fool people
every
day
of their
lives
if they want to get
anywhere
? You probably had your whole life handed to you on a
plate
, probably got a whole
mouth
full of
silver spoons
, but some of us have to
fight
.’

‘You mean that just because you’re a girl you aren’t allowed to be a Page?’ Haroun asked, sleepily.

‘I suppose
you
only do what you’re
told
,’ Blabbermouth hotly rejoined. ‘I suppose you always eat up all the
food
on your plate, even the
cauliflower
. I suppose you …’

‘At least I could do something perfectly simple like showing someone where their bedroom is,’ Haroun butted in. Blabbermouth suddenly gave a broad, wicked grin. ‘I suppose
you
always go to bed when you’re told to,’ she said. ‘And you wouldn’t be at
all
interested in going up on to the palace
roof
through this secret passageway right
here
.’

And so, after Blabbermouth had pushed the button hidden in an elaborately carved wooden panel on one of the alcove’s curved walls, and after they had climbed the staircase that came into view when the panel slid away, Haroun sat on the flat roof of the palace in what was of course still dazzling sunshine, and gazed out at the view of the Land of Gup, and of the Pleasure Garden in which preparations for war were being made, and of the Lagoon in which a great flotilla of mechanical birds was assembling, and out across the endangered Ocean of the Streams of Story. Haroun realized, quite suddenly, that he had never felt more completely alive in his life, even if he was ready to drop with fatigue. And at that exact moment, without a word, Blabbermouth took three soft balls made of golden silk from one of her pockets, tossed them in the air so that they caught the sunlight, and began to juggle.

She juggled behind her back, over and under her leg, with her eyes closed, and lying down, until Haroun was speechless with admiration; and every so often she’d throw all the balls high into the air, reach into her pockets, and produce more of the soft golden spheres, until she was juggling nine balls, then ten, then eleven. And every time Haroun thought, ‘She can’t possibly keep them all up’, she’d add even more balls to her whirling galaxy of soft, silken suns.

It occurred to Haroun that Blabbermouth’s juggling reminded him of the greatest performances given by his father, Rashid Khalifa, the Shah of Blah. ‘I always thought storytelling was like juggling,’ he finally found the voice to say. ‘You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle them up and down, and if you’re good you don’t drop any. So maybe juggling is a kind of storytelling, too.’

Blabbermouth shrugged, caught up all her golden balls, and tucked them away in her pockets. ‘I don’t know anything about
that
,’ she said. ‘I just wanted you to
know
who you were
dealing
with here.’

~ ~ ~

Haroun woke up many hours later in a darkened room (they had finally found his bedroom, after asking another Page for help, and he had fallen asleep five seconds after Blabbermouth drew the heavy curtains and said goodnight).

Someone was sitting on his chest; someone’s hands were around his throat, squeezing it tightly.

It was Blabbermouth. ‘Rise and shine,’ she whispered menacingly. ‘And if you tell
anyone
about me, then the
next
time you’re asleep I
won’t stop squeezing
; you may be a
good
boy but I can be a
very
bad girl
indeed
.’

‘I won’t tell, I promise,’ Haroun gasped, and Blabbermouth released her grip, and grinned. ‘You’re okay, Haroun Khalifa,’ she said. ‘Now get out of bed before I have to drag you out. Time to report for duty. There’s an army in the Pleasure Garden, getting ready to march.’

Chapter 7

Into the Twilight Strip

‘Here’s another Princess Rescue Story I’m getting mixed up in,’ thought Haroun, yawning sleepily. ‘I wonder if this one will go wrong, too.’ He didn’t have to wonder for long. ‘By the way,’ Blabbermouth said casually. ‘I took the little
liberty
, at a certain Water Genie’s
express request
, of removing, from under your pillow, the Disconnecting Tool which you
stole
without so much as a
by-your-leave
.’

Haroun, aghast, searched frantically through his bedclothes; but the Disconnector was gone, and with it the means of getting an interview with the Walrus in order to get Rashid’s Story Water subscription renewed … ‘I thought you were my friend,’ he said accusingly. Blabbermouth shrugged. ‘Your plan’s
totally
out of
date
, anyway,’ she replied. ‘Iff told me all about it; but your
father’s
here
himself
now,
he
can sort out his
own
problem.’

‘You don’t get it,’ Haroun sadly said. ‘I wanted to do it for him.’

There was a fanfare of trumpets from the Pleasure Garden. Haroun jumped out of bed and ran to the window. Down below him in the Garden was a great commotion, or
rustling
, of Pages. Hundreds upon hundreds of extremely thin persons in rectangular uniforms that did, in fact, rustle exactly like paper (only much more loudly) were rushing about the Garden in a most disorderly fashion, arguing about the precise order in which they should line up, crying,
‘I’m
before you!’ —‘Don’t be ridiculous, that wouldn’t make sense, it’s plain that
I
must stand ahead of you …’

All the Pages were numbered, Haroun noted, so it should have been a simple matter to decide upon their sequence. He put this to Blabbermouth, who answered, ‘Things aren’t quite as
simple
as that in the
real world
, mister. There are
plenty
of Pages with the
same numbers
; so they have to work out which ‘
Chapter
’ they belong in, in which ‘
Volume
’, and so forth. Also quite often there are
errors
in the uniforms, so they’ve got on
completely
the
wrong
number anyway.’

Haroun watched the Pages jostling and arguing and shaking their fists in the air and tripping each other up, just to be awkward, and remarked: ‘It doesn’t seem like a very disciplined army to me.’

‘You shouldn’t judge a
book
by its
cover
,’ snapped Blabbermouth, after which (evidently a little put out) she announced she couldn’t wait for Haroun any longer, as she was already late; and of course Haroun had to race after her, still in his red nightshirt with the purple patches, without even brushing his teeth or hair, and without having had time to point out a number of flaws in her arguments. As they ran along corridors, up staircases, down staircases, through galleries, into courtyards, out of courtyards, along yet more corridors, Haroun panted, ‘In the first place, I wasn’t “judging the book by the cover”, as you suggested, because I could see all the
Pages
—and, in the second place, this isn’t the “real world”, not at all.’

‘Oh,
isn’t
it?’ Blabbermouth shot back. ‘That’s the
trouble
with you
sad city
types: you think a place has to be
miserable
and
dull as ditchwater
before you believe it’s real.’

‘Would you do me a favour?’ Haroun panted. ‘Would you ask somebody the way?’

~ ~ ~

By the time they reached the Garden, the Guppee Army—or ‘Library’—had completed the process of ‘Pagination and Collation’—that is to say, arranging itself in an orderly fashion—which Haroun had observed from his bedroom window. ‘See you
later
,’ gasped Blabbermouth, and fled in the direction of the Royal Pages in their maroon velvet caps who were standing neatly beside Prince Bolo as he capered and pranced dashingly (but a little foolishly) on his mechanical flying horse.

Haroun spotted Rashid without difficulty. His father had evidently overslept, too, and was, like Haroun, still tousle-headed and wearing nothing but a somewhat crumpled and dirty blue nightshirt.

Standing with Rashid Khalifa in a small pavilion full of playing fountains—and now waving cheerfully at Haroun, with the Disconnecting Tool in his hand—was the blue-bearded Water Genie, Iff.

Haroun put on a burst of speed, and reached them only just in time. ‘ … a great honour to meet you,’ Iff was saying. ‘Especially as it is no longer required to call you the Father of a Little Thief.’ Rashid frowned in puzzlement as Haroun arrived and said hurriedly, ‘I’ll explain later,’ and gave Iff a glare that reduced even him to silence. To change the subject, Haroun added, ‘Dad, wouldn’t you like to meet my
other
new friends—the really interesting ones, I mean?’

~ ~ ~

‘For Batcheat and the Ocean!’

The Guppee forces were ready to depart. The Pages had climbed into the long Barge-Birds waiting for them in the Lagoon; Floating Gardeners and Plentimaw Fishes were likewise at the ready; Water Genies astride their various flying machines stroked their whiskers impatiently. Rashid Khalifa climbed aboard Butt the Hoopoe behind Iff and Haroun. Mali, Goopy and Bagha were by their side. Haroun introduced them to his father; then, with a great cry, they were off.

‘How stupid we were not to dress more sensibly!’ Rashid lamented. ‘In these nightshirts, we’ll freeze solid in a few hours.’

‘Fortunately,’ said the Water Genie, ‘I brought along a supply of Laminations. Say please and thank you nicely and I might let you have some.’

‘Please and thank you nicely,’ Haroun said quickly.

Laminations turned out to be thin, transparent garments as shiny as dragonfly wings. Haroun and Rashid pulled long shirts of this material over their nightshirts, and drew on long leggings, too. To their amazement the Laminations stuck so tightly to their nightshirts and legs that they seemed to have vanished altogether. All Haroun could make out was a faint gleamy sheen on his clothes and skin that hadn’t been there before.

‘You won’t feel the cold now,’ Iff promised.

They had left the Lagoon, and Gup City was diminishing behind them; Butt the Hoopoe kept pace with the other speeding mechanical birds, and sprays of water were all around. ‘How life does change,’ Haroun marvelled. ‘Only last week, I was a boy who had never seen snow in my entire life, and now here I am, heading into an ice-wilderness on which the sun never shines, wearing nothing but my nightclothes and with some strange transparent stuff as my only protection from the cold. It’s a case of out of the frying pan into the fire.’

‘Ridiculous,’ said Butt the Hoopoe, having read Haroun’s mind. ‘A case of out of the fridge into the freezer, you mean.’

‘That’s unbelievable,’ cried Rashid Khalifa. ‘It spoke without moving its beak.’

~ ~ ~

The Guppee armada was well under way. Gradually Haroun became aware of what started out as a low buzz of noise and grew to a dull murmur and finally a rumbling roar. It took him a while to recognize that this was the sound of Guppees engaged in non-stop conversation and debate of growing intensity. ‘Sound carries over water,’ he remembered, but this quantity of sound would have carried even over a dry and barren waste. Water Genies, Floating Gardeners, Plentimaw Fishes and Pages were loudly arguing out the pro’s and con’s of the strategy to which they were committed.

Goopy and Bagha were as vocal on the subject as any of the other Plentimaws, and their bubbling cries of dissatisfaction grew louder as they moved further and further towards the Twilight Strip and the Land of Chup beyond:

‘Saving Batcheat! What a notion!’

‘What matters is to save the Ocean!’

‘That’s the plan to set in motion—’

‘—Find the source of the Poison Potion!’

‘The Ocean’s the important thing—’

‘—Worth more than the daughter of any king.’