Luka and the Fire of Life (25 page)

Rashid Khalifa lay in his bed, Asleep with his mouth open, just as he had been when Luka had last seen him, and the tubes were still running into his arm, and the monitor by his bedside showed that his heart was still beating, but very, very faintly. He looked happy, though, he still looked happy, as if he were being told a story that he loved. And by his bedside stood Luka’s mother Soraya, with her fingers fluttering at her lips, and Luka understood, the moment he ran into the room and saw her, that she was about to kiss her fingertips and then touch Rashid’s mouth, because she was saying goodbye.

‘What on earth are you doing, running in here like a crazy person?’ Soraya cried, and then Bear the dog, Dog the bear and Haroun charged in as well. ‘Stop it, all of you,’ she demanded. ‘What is this? A playground? A circus? What?’

‘Please, Mum,’ Luka begged, ‘there’s no time to explain – please just let me do what I have to do.’ And without waiting for his mother’s reply, he popped an Ott Potato, glowing with the Fire of Life, into his father’s open mouth, where, to his amazement, it dissolved instantly. Luka, staring fiercely through his father’s lips, saw little tongues of fire dive down into Rashid’s insides; and then they were gone, and for an instant nothing happened, and Luka’s heart sank. ‘Aah,’ his mother was complaining, ‘what on earth have you done, you silly boy …?’ But then the scolding words died on her lips because she, and everyone else in the room, saw the colour return to Rashid’s face;
after which a glow of health spread across his cheeks, almost as if he were blushing with embarrassment; and the monitor by the bedside began to drum out a firm, regular heartbeat.

Rashid’s hands began to move. His right hand darted out without warning and started tickling Luka, and Soraya gasped to see it, half with delight at the miracle of it, half with something like fear. ‘Stop tickling me, Dad,’ Luka said joyfully, and Rashid Khalifa said without opening his eyes, ‘I’m not tickling you – Nobody is,’ and then he turned over on his side to attack Luka with his left hand as well. ‘You are, you are tickling me,’ Luka laughed, and Rashid Khalifa, opening his eyes, and grinning widely, said innocently, ‘Me? Tickling you? No, no. That’s just Nonsense.’

Rashid sat up, stretched, yawned, and gave Luka a funny, inquisitive look. ‘I’ve been having the strangest dream about you,’ he said. ‘Let me see if I can remember it. You went adventuring in the World of Magic, I think that was it, and the whole place was falling apart. Hmm, and there were Elephant Birds, and Respecto-Rats, and a real, honest-to-goodness Flying Carpet, and then there was the little matter of becoming a Fire Thief and stealing the Fire of Life. You wouldn’t by any chance know anything about that dream, young Luka? You wouldn’t by some unlikely chance be able to fill in the blanks?’

‘Maybe so and maybe no,’ said Luka shyly, ‘but you should know already, Dad, because, to be honest with you, it felt like you were right there with me all the time, advising me and filling me in, and I’d have been lost without you.’

‘That makes two of us, then,’ said the Shah of Blah, ‘because
I’d be lost right now if it wasn’t for your little exploit, that’s for sure. Or, your not-so-little exploit. Or, in fact, your super-colossal ultra-exploit. Not that I want you to grow a big head or anything. But the Fire of Life.
Really
. Quite a feat. Hmm, hmm. Ott Potatoes, is it? And could that thing hanging from your neck in fact be an actual Ott Pot?’

‘I don’t know what you two are talking about,’ said Soraya Khalifa contentedly, ‘but it’s good to hear the old rubbish being spoken in this house again.’

That wasn’t the end of the story, however. Just as Luka was relaxing, certain that his job was done at last, he heard an unpleasant bubbling noise welling up from a corner of his father’s bedroom and there, to his horror, was a Creature he thought he had seen for the last time when the Old Boy hurled him out into the deeps of space. It wasn’t wearing a vermilion bush shirt or a panama hat any more; it was colourless and faceless, because Rashid Khalifa had gone back into himself, and though this vile death-thing was plainly trying to gather itself into some sort of human shape, it succeeded only in looking twisted and hideous and sort of sticky, as if it were made out of glue. ‘You dont’ get rid of me as easily as that,’ it hissed. ‘You know why.
Somebody has to die
. I told you at the beginning there was a catch, and that’s it. Once I’ve been called into being, I don’t leave until I’ve swallowed a life. No arguments, okay? Somebody has to die.’

‘Go away,’ Luka shouted. ‘You lost. My father’s fine now. Just bubble off to wherever it is you go.’

Rashid, Soraya and Haroun looked at him in amazement. ‘Who are you talking to?’ Haroun asked. ‘There’s nothing in
that corner, you know.’ But Bear the dog and Dog the bear could see the Creature all right, and before Luka could say any more it was Bear who interrupted. ‘How about,’ he asked the Creature, ‘if an immortal being gives up his Immortality?’

‘Why is Bear barking like that?’ Soraya asked, bewildered. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening.’

‘Remember?’ Bear asked Luka urgently. ‘
I am Barak of the It-Barak, a thousand years old and more
? Turned into a dog by a Chinese curse? You didn’t like it much when I told you that, because you wanted me to be your dog and nothing else. Well, now that’s all I want to be, too. After a thousand years, that’s it. To hell with the past! And who wants to live for another thousand years? Enough of all that! I just want to be your dog, Bear.’

‘That’s too big a sacrifice,’ said Luka, overwhelmed by his dog’s loyalty and selfless courage. ‘I can’t ask you to make it.’

‘I’m not asking you to ask me,’ said Bear the dog.

‘That dog is a lot noisier than I recall,’ Rashid said. ‘Luka, can’t you quieten him down?’

‘An Immortality,’ said the Creature in the corner hungrily. ‘Mmm! Yes, yes! To swallow an Immortality! To suck it out of the Immortal and fill up with it, leaving the ex-Immortal behind in mortal form! Oh yes. That would be very sweet indeed.’

‘Ahem,’ said Dog the bear suddenly. ‘There is something I would like to confess.’ At that moment, Luka thought, Dog looked sheepish, not bearish at all. ‘You know that story I told you – about being a prince who could spin air into gold? And Bulbul Dev the bird-headed ogre, and so on?’

‘Of course I remember,’ Luka said.

‘See, husband, now the bear is growling, and the boy is talking to the bear,’ said Soraya helplessly. ‘These animals – and your son as well – are really getting to be impossible to control.’

‘It wasn’t true,’ admitted Dog the bear, hanging his head in shame. ‘The only thing I spun out of thin air was that yarn, that shaggy-dog story – or shaggy-bear story, maybe I should say. I just thought I ought to have a good story to tell. I thought it was expected of me at the time, especially after Bear here sang that song about himself. I made it up to make myself look good. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Luka. ‘This is a storyteller’s house. You should know what it’s like by now. Everybody here makes up stories all the time.’

‘That’s settled, then,’ said Bear the dog. ‘Only one of us has an immortal life to give up, and that one is me.’ And without waiting for any further discussion he ran to the corner where the Creature was crouching, and leapt; and Luka saw the Creature open a ghastly sort-of-mouth impossibly wide, and he saw Bear being swallowed up by that mouth; and then Bear was ejected again, looking the same, only different, and the Creature had become Bear-shaped too: No-Bear, instead of Nobodaddy. ‘Ohh,’ cried the Creature, ‘Ohh, ecstasy, ecstasy!’ And there was a sort of backwards flash, as if light were being sucked into a point instead of exploding out from a point, and the Bear-Creature imploded,
whoommpppfff
, and then it wasn’t there any more.

‘Woof,’ said Bear the dog, wagging his tail.

‘What do you mean, “woof”?’ Luka demanded. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

‘Growl,’ said Dog the bear.

‘Oh,’ said Luka, understanding. ‘The magic part really is over now, isn’t it? And from now on you’re just my ordinary dog and my ordinary bear, and I’m just ordinary me.’

‘Woof,’ said Bear the dog, and jumped up against Luka and licked his face. Luka hugged him tightly. ‘After what you just did,’ he said, ‘I’ll never let anybody think of dogs as bad-luck animals, because it was a lucky day for all of us when you became my dog.’

‘Will somebody please tell me what is going on?’ Soraya said faintly.

‘It’s okay, Mum,’ said Luka, hugging her as tightly as he could. ‘Calm down. Life is finally back to being ordinary again.’

‘There’s nothing ordinary about you,’ his mother answered, kissing the top of his head. ‘And, ordinary life? In this family, we know there’s no such thing.’

On the flat roof of the Khalifa house, that cool evening, a dinner table was set out under the stars – yes, the stars had come out again! – and a feast was eaten, a feast of delicious slowly roasted meat and quickly pan-fried vegetables, of sour pickles and sweetmeats and cold pomegranate juice and hot tea, but also of some rarer foods and drinks – happiness soup, curried excitement and great-relief ice cream. At the very centre of the table, in their little Ott Pot, were the remaining five Ott Potatoes, glowing softly with the Fire of Life. ‘So this other Soraya you became so fond of,’ said Soraya Khalifa to Luka, just a little too sweetly, ‘she said that if a healthy person eats one of these it can give them long life, and maybe even let them live for ever?’

Luka shook his head. ‘No, Mum,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t the Insultana of Ott who said that. It was Ra the Supreme.’

In spite of a life spent with the fabled Shah of Blah, Soraya Khalifa had never entirely liked this fanciful stuff, which she now had to put up with from both her sons as well as her storyteller husband. Tonight, though, she was making a real effort. ‘And this Ra…’ she began, and Luka finished the sentence for her, ‘… told me that personally, speaking in Hieroglyph, which was translated for me by a talking squirrel named Ratatat.’

‘Oh, never mind,’ said Soraya, giving up. ‘All’s well that ends well, and as for these so-called “Ott Potatoes”, I’ll just tuck them away in the pantry, and we can decide what to do with them on another day.’

Luka had just been wondering how it would be if he, his brother, his mother and his father could all live for ever. The idea struck him as more frightening than exciting. Maybe his dog Bear had been right, and it was better to do without Immortality, or even the possibility of it. Yes – maybe it would be better if Soraya hid the Ott Potatoes somewhere, so that all the Khalifas could slowly forget about their existence; and then maybe they, the Potatoes in their Pot, would finally get bored of waiting to be eaten, and would slip back across the Frontier into the World of Magic, and the Real World would be Real again, and life would be just that, life, and that would be more than enough.

The night sky was full of stars. ‘As we know,’ said Rashid Khalifa, ‘sometimes the stars start dancing, and then anything can happen. But some nights it’s good to see everything just staying put in its rightful place, so that we can all relax.’

‘Relax my foot,’ said Soraya. ‘The stars may not be dancing, but we’re certainly going to.’

She clapped her hands, and at once Dog the bear got up on his hind legs and began to stamp out the African Gumboot Dance, and Bear the dog jumped up and began to howl a Top Ten melody, and then the Khalifa family leapt to its feet and began to jig about energetically, and to join in the dog’s song as well. And we’ll leave them there, the rescued father, the loving mother, the older brother, and the young boy home from his great adventure, along with his lucky dog and his brotherly bear, up on the roof of their home on a cool night under the stationary, unchanging stars, singing and dancing.