Luka and the Fire of Life (12 page)

The Mists were upon him, all-encompassing and blinding, and then, with no sort of a sound at all, the flying carpet had entered the whiteness, but the Mists of Time touched none of them, because the carpet, too, possessed defence mechanisms, and had put up some sort of invisible shield around itself, a force field that was plainly strong enough to keep the Mists at bay. Safe in this little bubble, just as Soraya had promised they would be –
have faith in the carpet
, she had said – the travellers began the Crossing.

‘Oh, goodness,’ cried the Elephant Duck, ‘we are going into Oblivion. What an awful thing to ask a Memory Bird to do.’

* * *

It was like being blind, Luka thought, except maybe blindness was full of colours and shapes, of brightnesses and darknesses and dots and flashes, which, after all, was how things looked behind his eyelids whenever he closed his eyes. He knew that deafness could fill up your ears with static and all sorts of buzzing, ringing sounds, so perhaps blindness filled up your eyes in the same useless way. This blindness was different, though; it felt, well,
absolute
. He remembered Nobodaddy asking him, ‘What was there before the Bang?’ and realised that this whiteness, this absence of everything, might be the answer. You couldn’t even call it a place. It was what there was when there wasn’t a place to be in. Now he knew what people meant when they talked about things being lost in the Mists of Time. When people said that it was just a figure of speech, but these Mists were not just words. They were what there was before there were any words at all.

The whiteness wasn’t the same as blankness, though; it moved, it was active, stirring round and round the carpet, like a broth made out of nothing. Nothing Soup. The carpet was flying as fast as it could, and that was very, very fast, but it seemed to be motionless. In the bubble there was no wind, and around the bubble there was nothing to look at that might give you the feeling of movement. It would probably have felt the same, Luka thought, if the carpet had stopped dead in the middle of the Mists, so that they were marooned there for ever. And the moment he thought that, that was how it began to feel. They weren’t moving at all. Here in this time before Time they were adrift, forgotten, lost. What was it the Elephant Duck had called this place?
Oblivion
. The place of total forgetting, of
nothingness, of not-being.
Limbo
, religious people used to say. The place between Heaven and Hell.

Luka felt alone. He wasn’t alone, obviously, everyone was still there, but he felt horribly lonely. He wanted his mother, he missed his brother, he wished his father hadn’t fallen Asleep. He wanted his room, his friends, his street, his neighbourhood, his school. He wanted his life to go back to being the way it had always been. The Mists of Time curled around the carpet and he began to imagine fingers in the whiteness, long tendril-like fingers clutching at him, trying to grab him and wipe him clean. Alone in the Mists of Time (even though not actually alone) he began to wonder what on earth he had done. He had broken the first rule of childhood –
don’t talk to strangers
– and had actually allowed a stranger to take him away from safety into the least safe place he had ever seen in his life. So he was a fool and would probably pay for his folly. And who was this stranger, anyway? He said he had not been
sent
but
summoned
. As if a dying man – and, yes, there in the Mists of Time Luka was at last able to say that word, if only to himself in the privacy of his thoughts – as if his dying father would summon his own death. He wasn’t sure whether he believed that or not. How stupid was it to go off into the blue – into the white – with a person – a
creature
! – you didn’t entirely believe or wholly trust? Luka had always been thought of as a sensible boy, but he had just disproved that theory, big time. He was the least sensible boy he knew.

He looked across at his dog and his bear. Neither of them spoke, but he could see in their eyes that they, too, were in the grip of a deep loneliness. The stories they had told when they
acquired the power of speech, the stories of their lives, seemed to be slipping away from them. Perhaps they had never been those people, perhaps those were just dreams they had had, banal dreams of being noblemen; didn’t everyone dream of being a prince? The truth of those stories slipped away from them, here in the white, white void, and they were just animals again, and going towards an uncertain doom.

Then at last there was a change. The whiteness thinned out. It was no longer everything and everywhere, but more like thick clouds in the sky as an airplane rushes through them, and there was something up ahead – yes! an opening – and here again was the forgotten sensation of speed, the feeling of the carpet going like a rocket towards the light, which was close now, and closer still, and finally
whoooosssshhhh
out they came into the light of a bright, sunny day. Everybody aboard the
Resham
was cheering loudly in their various fashions, and Luka, touching his cheeks, realised to his surprise that they were wet with tears. He heard a now-familiar
ding
, and the counter in the top right-hand corner of his field of vision climbed to 3. In all the excitement he hadn’t even seen the saving point, so how? ‘You weren’t looking,’ said Soraya. ‘That’s okay. I saved it for you.’

He looked down and saw the Great Stagnation. On this side of the Mists of Time, the River had expanded into a gigantic Swamp, which spread in every direction, as far as the eye could see. ‘It looks beautiful,’ he said. ‘It is beautiful,’ Soraya replied, ‘if beauty is what you’re looking for. Down there you’ll find rare alligators and giant woodpeckers and scented cypress trees and carnivorous sundew plants. But you will also lose your way, and indeed yourself, for it is in the nature of the Great
Stagnation to capture all who stray into it by inducing a sleepy laziness, a desire to remain there for ever, to ignore your true purpose and your old life and simply lie down under a tree and rest. The perfumes of the Stagnation are exceptional, too, but they are by no means innocent. Breathe in that beauty and you’ll smile contentedly and lie back on a tussock of grass … and be the captive of the Swamp for good.’

‘Thank goodness for you and your flying carpet,’ said Luka gratefully. ‘Meeting you was the luckiest day of my life.’

‘Or the unluckiest,’ said Soraya of Ott. ‘Because all I can do is bring you closer and closer to the greatest dangers you will ever face.’

That was a pleasant thought.

‘Don’t be tricked,’ the Insultana added, ‘by the golden Save button. There it is, right at the edge of the Stagnation, but if we go down there to punch it, we’ll breathe that goodnight scent and fall asleep and that will be the end of us. It’s not necessary, anyway. When we save at the end of the Forking Paths, it will automatically save the earlier levels.’

The idea of skipping the saving points made Luka nervous, because if for some reason he lost a life, would he have to cross the Great Stagnation all over again? ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Soraya said. ‘Worry about this instead.’ She was pointing straight ahead. In the distance Luka could make out the rim of a low, flat cloud formation that looked like it was spinning slowly round and round. ‘The Inescapable Whirlpool is under that,’ said Soraya. ‘Have you ever heard of El Niño?’ Luka frowned. ‘It’s that warm spot in the ocean, right?’ The Insultana of Ott looked impressed. ‘The Pacific Ocean,’ she said. ‘It’s enormous, as big as Amreeka,
and it shows up every seven or eight years and plays havoc with the weather.’ Luka knew that, or he remembered it when she said it, anyway. ‘What does that have to do with us?’ he asked. ‘We’re nowhere near the Pacific Ocean.’ Soraya pointed again. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is El Tiempo. It’s also as big as Amreeka, it also shows up every seven or eight years, right above the Whirlpool, and when it does, it does terrible things to Time. If you fall into the Whirlpool, where Time spins round, you’re stuck for ever, but if El Tiempo gets you, things start going a little crazy.’

‘But we’re too high up to be trapped by it, aren’t we?’ Luka anxiously asked.

‘Let’s hope so,’ Queen Soraya replied. Then she called for everyone’s attention. ‘To avoid being caught up in the unpredictable temporal distortions of the El Tiempo phenomenon,’ she announced, ‘I will reduce the carpet to the smallest size that can carry us all, and the
Argo
also, of course, large as she is. I will also be taking the carpet to its maximum height and will reactivate the shields to keep you all warm and to make sure there is air to breathe.’ This was serious. Everyone gathered at the centre of the rug and the edges closed in around them. The force field came on, and Soraya added, ‘I should tell you that this is the last time I will be able to use the shield, or else it will not have enough power left to get us back again.’ Luka wanted to ask her where the carpet’s power source was and how it was recharged, but judging by the expression on her face this was not the right time for inquisitive questions. Her eyes stayed fixed on the approaching El Tiempo, with the Inescapable Whirlpool below. And now the carpet began to rise.

The Kármán Line, the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, is –
to put it simply – the line above which there isn’t enough air to support a flying carpet. That is the true frontier of our world, beyond which lies outer space, and it’s roughly sixty-two miles, or one hundred kilometres, above sea level. This was one of those useless facts that had become stuck in Luka’s memory on account of his great interest in intergalactic fiction, video games and science-fiction movies, and, goodness, he thought, it turned out not to be so useless after all, because that appeared to be where they were going. Up and up went the
Resham
, and the sky turned black and the stars began to shine, and even though they were protected by the carpet’s force field they all felt the chill of Infinity, and the bleak emptiness of space suddenly didn’t seem exciting at all.

Far, far below them as they climbed – perhaps
forty miles
below them already – swirled the Inescapable Whirlpool, creating loops in Time, and above it the treacherous El Tiempo; but even though they were as far from danger as it was possible to be, they were still in double trouble, because far, far below them as they climbed – perhaps
forty miles
below them already – swirled the Inescapable Whirlpool, creating loops in Time, and above it the treacherous El Tiempo; but even though they were as far from danger as it was possible to be, they were still in double trouble, because far, far below them as they climbed – perhaps
forty miles
below them already – swirled the Inescapable Whirlpool, creating loops in Time, and
above it the treacherous El Tiempo; but even though they were as far from danger as it was possible to be, they were still in double trouble, because far, far below them – perhaps
forty miles
below them already – swirled the Inescapable Whirlpool, creating loops in Time, and above it the treacherous El Tiempo; but even though they were as far from danger as it was possible to be, they were still in double trouble, because far, far below them as they climbed – and here the carpet broke out of the temporal whirlpool with a jerk that sent even Nobodaddy flying.

Only Soraya remained upright. ‘That’s one problem dealt with,’ she said, but she didn’t look seventeen any more, Luka realised, she looked maybe one hundred and seventeen, one thousand and seventeen years old, while he himself seemed to be getting younger by the minute, and Bear the dog was a puppy while Dog the bear looked rickety and frail. Even Nobodaddy had grown a white beard that reached down to his knees. If this went on much longer, Luka realised, they could forget about the Fire of Life, because El Tiempo would defeat them right here and now – whenever
now
was in this zone of messed-up years.

Once again, however, the Carpet of King Solomon proved equal to the task. Further and further it climbed, higher and higher, straining against the pull of the temporal traps below. And after a long, worrying time the moment came, the moment for which Luka had almost not dared to hope, when the
Resham
broke free of ElTiempo’s dark, invisible bonds. ‘We’re free,’ Soraya cried, and her face was her beautiful young face once again, and Bear was no longer a puppy, and Dog looked strong and fit. They were at the very zenith of their journey, just below the Kármán Line, and Luka stared with a kind of enchanted terror into the deeps of space, deciding that perhaps he preferred to keep his feet on the ground after all. And in a while the carpet began to descend, and ElTiempo and the Whirlpool were behind
them. There had been no way to reach the saving point, wherever it might have been. So the risks were growing. If for any reason Luka failed to punch the golden button at the end of the next level he would be condemned to defeat this one all over again, and without the benefit of the carpet’s shields he would not stand a chance. But there was no time for such defeatist thinking. The Trillion and One Forking Paths lay ahead.

They were approaching the upper reaches of the River of Time. The wide, lazy lower River was far behind them, and so was the treacherous middle. As they got closer to the River’s source in the Lake of Wisdom, the River’s flow should have dwindled, making it an ever narrower stream. And no doubt it had; but now there were numberless other streams all around it, streams flowing in and out of one another, looking from above like the myriad strands of an intricate, liquid tapestry. Which one was the River of Life? ‘They all look the same to me,’ Luka confessed. And Soraya had a confession of her own. ‘This is the level I’m least certain about,’ she said, a little shamefacedly. ‘But don’t worry! I’ll get you there! That’s an Otter promise!’ Luka was horrified. ‘You mean, when you said you could help me skip four levels, you weren’t sure about the last one? And we haven’t even saved our progress, so if you get this wrong we’ll be done for, we’ll have to do the last two all over again …?’ The Insultana was not accustomed to criticism, and her face coloured brightly; and she and Luka might have had quite a quarrel right then and there, if there hadn’t been loud harrumphing noises to distract them. But harrumphing noises there were, and they turned crossly away from each other to see what was going on.