Luka and the Fire of Life

by Salman Rushdie

  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 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—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 anymore, Luka realized. She looked maybe one hundred seventeen, one thousand 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 realized, 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. Farther and farther 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 El Tiempo’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 El Tiempo 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 colored 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.

  “Excuse me,” harrumphed the Elephant Duck, “but aren’t you ignoring something important?”

  “Or someone,” said the Elephant Drake. “Two someones, in fact.”

  “Us,” the Elephant Duck clarified.

  “Who are we?” the Elephant Drake wanted to know. “Are we living-room ornaments, or are we, perhaps, the famous Memory Birds of the World of Magic?”

  “Are we surf-and-turf menu items,” the Elephant Duck went on, with a glare in Nobodaddy’s direction, “or have we perhaps spent our whole lives swimming in the River of Time, fishing for Eddies in the River of Time? …”

  “… drinking the River of Time, reading the River of Time? …”

  “… and, in sum, knowing the River of Time as intimately as if she were our Mother—which, in a way, she is, having nourished us all our lives—knowing it rather better, at any rate, than any Insultana of Ott, a place which isn’t even on the River.”

  “Meaning,” concluded the Elephant Drake triumphantly, “that if we can’t tell the real River from these Trillion Fakes, then, my dears, nobody can.”

  “There you are, then,” Soraya said to Luka, brazenly taking the credit. “I told you everything would be taken care of, and taken care of it is going to be.”

  Luka decided not to answer her back. It was her Flying Carpet, after all.

  An elephant’s trunk is an extraordinary organ. It can smell water from miles away. It can actually smell danger, being able to tell whether approaching strangers are friendly or hostile, and it can smell fear, too. And it can detect very particular scents from long distances: the odors of family members and friends, and of course the sweet smell of home. “Take us down,” said the Elephant Drake, and the Flying Carpet, expanded again to a roomier size, flew down toward the labyrinth of waterways. The two Elephant Birds stood at the front with their trunks lifted high in the air, curving downward at the tips. Luka watched the tips twitch in unison: left, right, and left again. It looked like the trunks were dancing with each other, he thought. But could they really smell out the River of Time when they were surrounded by so many other, and no doubt confusing, watery perfumes?

  While the Elephant Birds’ trunks were dancing, their ears, too, were hard at work, standing rigidly out from their heads and listening for the River’s whispers. Water is never silent when it moves. Brooks babble, streams burble, and a larger, slower river has deeper, more complicated things to say. Great rivers speak at low frequencies, too low for human ears to hear, too low even for dogs’ ears to pick up their words; and the River of Time told its tales at the lowest frequencies of all, and only elephants’ ears could listen to its songs. However, the Elephant Birds’ eyes were shut. Elephant eyes are small and dry and don’t see very far at all. Eyesight would be of no use in the search for the River of Time.

  Time passed. The Flying Carpet flew across the Trillion and One Forking Paths in long, side-to-side sweeps. The sun sank in the western sky. Everyone felt hungry and thirsty, until Soraya’s magic oak chest produced an array of snacks and drinks. “We’re lucky that the Elephant Birds have bird appetites instead of elephant hungers,” Luka thought, “because elephants eat all the time, and might empty out even that amazing chest.” The shadows of the afternoon lengthened across the landscape. The Elephant Birds said nothing. Luka felt less and less hopeful as the light failed. Maybe this was how the adventure ended, with all his hopes lost in a maze of water. Maybe this—“That way!” shouted the Elephant Duck, and the Elephant Drake confirmed. “Definitely, that way, about three miles away.”

  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 percent.” 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 behavior 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 traveler 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 realized 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 toward 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 toward 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 realized (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 numbers 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.

  Everything went dark, but night had not fallen. This was some sort of artificial, black, magic darkness, intended to frighten. Then, right in front of them, there arose out of the darkness an immense fireball, billowing up into the sky with a mighty roar, to form a giant flaming wall. “It goes all the way around the Heart of Magic,” S
oraya whispered. “You’re just seeing the front of it from here. That’s the first Ring.” Then there was a second and a third roar, each louder than the one before, and two more gigantic rings of flame appeared, the second ring larger than the first and the third larger than the second, so that they could move up and down around the first one, the three forming an impassable triple barrier, like three immense fiery doughnuts in the sky. The color of the fire, reddish-orange at first, paled quickly until the rings were almost white. “The hottest fire in existence,” Soraya told Luka. “White heat. Now do you understand what I’ve been trying to say?”

  Luka understood. If these burning doughnuts encircled the Heart of Magic—the Torrent of Words, the Lake of Wisdom, the Mountain of Knowledge, all of that—then the quest was hopeless. “This fire,” he said, without much hope, “the fire the Rings are made of—that isn’t the same fire as the Fire of Life—or is it?” Nobodaddy shook his head. “No,” he said. “This is the ordinary sort of fire, that turns whatever it touches to ash. The Fire of Life is the only flame that creates—that restores instead of destroying.”

  Luka was at a loss for words. He stood on the deck of the Argo in the darkness and stared at the sheets of flame. Bear, the dog, and Dog, the bear, came to stand in silence on either side of him. And then, without warning, they both began to laugh.

  “Ha! Ha! Ha!” barked Bear, the dog, and fell down and rolled onto his back and waggled his legs in the air. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” And Dog, the bear, began to dance a jig on the deck, which made the Argo lurch alarmingly from side to side. “Ho! Ho!” he roared. “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. After all that fuss … it’s just this?”