Luka and the Fire of Life

by Salman Rushdie

  “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 toward Coyote humbly. “What sort of help did you have in mind?” he asked.

  This beautiful lady here, shes kindly disposed to you and Im 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 youll need somebody to make a carrera de distracción. Thats 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 Jo’s 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 coloring, 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 bein 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 had 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-Meter 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-Meter 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 mobilization, 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. Thats the Big Noise. Thats the Fire Alarm.

  “It must have been that Fire Bug who raised the Alarm,” Luka realized 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.”

  At long last the siren of the Fire Alarm died down, but the hysterical activity all around them became, if anything, even more frenzied. Soraya dragged Luka behind the rhododendron bushes. “When the Fire Alarm sounds it means two things,” she said. “It means that the Aalim know that someone is trying to steal the Fire of Life. And it m
eans that all the residents of the Heart of Magic are rendered capable of seeing intruders until the All Clear, which doesn’t sound until the thief is caught.”

  “You mean everyone can see me now?” Luka said in horror. “And Bear and Dog as well?” When they heard that, the dog and the bear ran and hid behind the rhododendrons as well. Soraya nodded. “Yes,” she said. “There’s only one course of action. You must abandon your plan, and climb aboard Resham, and I will fly as high as I can rise and as fast as I can ride and I will try to get you back to the Starting Point before they find you, because if they catch you they may Perminate all three of you on the spot, without asking for an explanation of your presence or giving a reason for their drastic measures. Or else they’ll put you on trial and Perminate you after that. The adventure is over, Luka Khalifa. It’s time to go home.”

  Luka was silent for a long moment. Then he said simply, “No.”

  Soraya smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Backchat he’s giving me now. ‘No,’ he says. Tell me your grand plan, hero boy. No, no! Let me guess! You’re going to take on all the gods and monsters of the Heart of Magic, with a dog, a bear, and four dragons as the sum total of your attack force; and you’re going to steal what has never been stolen, what nobody has tried to steal for hundreds of years, and then you’re going to get home? How? I’m supposed to wait around and give you a ride, is that it? Well, by all means. Go right ahead. That masterly scheme sounds like it will definitely work.”

  “You’re almost right,” Luka said. “But you forgot I’ll have Coyote’s decoy run helping me as well.”

  Hold it, chico, said Coyote, looking alarmed. Hold it there one minute. Didn I say the game jus changed? That offer aint no longer on the table.

  “Listen,” said Luka. “What do thieves do when the Fire Alarm sounds?”

  They run for their life. Aint nobody done it for hunnerds of years, but thats what they done then. Warnt no use. Even the old Titan back in the day, he got taken an tied to a rock and an old vulture started chewin—

  “Eagle,” said Luka. “You said it was an eagle.”

  ’Pinions differ as to the species of bird. Aint no doubt about the chewin.

  “So,” said Luka determinedly, “running isn’t any use, unless you run in an unexpected direction. And, now that the Fire Alarm has sounded, which is the one direction in which nobody will expect us to flee?”

  Nobodaddy was the one who answered Luka’s question. “Toward the Fire of Life,” he said. “Into the Heart of the Heart. Toward the danger. You’re right.”

  “Then,” said Luka, “that’s the way we’re going.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Fire of Life

  THE WHOLE WORLD OF MAGIC was on Red Alert. Jackal-headed Egyptian deities; fierce scorpion- and jaguar-men; giant one-eyed, man-eating Cyclopes; flute-playing centaurs, whose pipes could entice strangers into cracks in rocks where they would be imprisoned for all time; Assyrian treasure-nymphs made of gold and jewels, whose precious bodies could tempt thieves into their poisoned whipcord nets; flying griffins with lethal claws; flightless basilisks glaring in all directions with their deadly eyes; Valkyries on cloud-horses in the sky; bull-headed minotaurs; slithering snake-women; and huge rocs—larger than the one that bore Sinbad the Sailor to its nest—charged wildly across the land and through the air, answering the Fire Alarm, hunting, hunting. In the Circular Sea, after the Alarm sounded, mermaids rose from the waters singing siren songs to lure the foul intruders to their doom. Enormous island-sized creatures—krakens, zaratans, and monstrous rays—hung motionless on the Sea’s surface; if an intruder were to pause on the back of one of these beasts for a rest, it would dive and drown him, or flip over to reveal its giant mouth and its sharp triangular teeth, and swallow the trespasser down in bite-sized chunks. And most terrible of all was the gigantic Worm Bottomfeeder, who rose blind and roaring from the Sea’s usually silent depths, in a rage to consume the scoundrels who had triggered the Fire Alarm and disturbed its two-thousand-year sleep.

  Amid the chaos of that World the Fire Gods rose in all their majesty to defend Vibgyor, the One Bridge to the Heart of the Heart, the rainbow arch that crossed the sundering Sea and enabled the favored few to enter the Aalim’s lands. Amaterasu the Japanese sun goddess emerged from the cave where she had sulked for two millennia after quarreling with her brother, the storm god, with the magic sword Kusanagi in her hand, and rays of sunlight flying outward from her head like spears. Beside her was the flaming child Kagutsuchi, whose burning birth had killed his mother, Izanami the Divine. And Surtr with his fiery sword and at his elbow his female companion, Sinmara, also bearing a lethal sword of fire. And Irish Bel. And Polynesian Mahuika with her fingernails of flame. And lame Hephaestus, the smith of Olympus, with his pale Roman echo, Vulcan, at his side. And Inti of the Incas, the Sun with the Human Face, and the Aztec Tonatiuh, thirsty for blood, Tonatiuh the former Lord of the Fifth World, to please whom twenty thousand people used to be sacrificed each year. And towering above them all like a giant pillar in the sky was falcon-headed Ra of Egypt, his piercingly sharp bird-eyes searching for the would-be thieves, with the Bennu bird sitting on his shoulder, the gray heron that was the Egyptian phoenix, and his mighty weapons, the wadjets, the disks of the sun, held urgently in his hands. These great colossi guarded the bridge and waited with clouds at their foreheads and murder in their eyes.

  Inhabitants of the Heart of Magic rushed freely across the Bridge in both directions, hunting, hunting, but for the hunted intruders—Luka thought—there appeared to be no way past the falcon eyes of Ra. Luka, hiding with his companions behind the rhododendron bushes, had the feeling that the thicket was shrinking, dwindling away and becoming a less and less adequate shelter. His heart was beating too rapidly. Things were definitely getting scary.

  “The good thing about all these ex-gods,” said Soraya comfortingly, “is that they’re all stuck in their old stories. I’m sure the Fire Bug will have reported accurately to the Aalim—‘a boy, a dog, a bear,’ he will have said—but when the Fire Alarm goes off, everyone here inevitably starts hunting for the Usual Suspects.”

  “Who are the Usual Suspects?” Luka wanted to know. He realized he was whispering, and that he wished Soraya would lower her voice as well.

  “Oh, the ones who were Fire Thieves in the times and places in which these gods were the gods,” Soraya said, waving an arm airily. “You know. Or,” she added, reverting to her old Insultana habits, “maybe you’re too ignorant. Maybe your father didn’t teach you as much as he should have. Maybe he didn’t know himself.” Then, seeing the expression on Luka’s face, she softened her voice and relented. “The Algonquin Indians got Rabbit to steal Fire for them,” she said, “and you know about Coyote already. Beaver and Nanabozho the Shape-Shifter did the same for other tribes. Possum tried and failed, but then Grandmother Spider stole Fire for the Cherokee in a clay urn, which reminds me”—Soraya paused for a moment—“that you will need this.”

  She was holding a little clay pot in her hands. Luka looked inside it. A small group of what looked like half a dozen black potatoes nestled on a bed of twigs. “This,” said Soraya, “is one of the famous Ott Pots, and there inside it are a few of the famous Ott Potatoes. Once the Fire of Life touches them, they’ll burn brightly, and they won’t easily be put out.” She hung the pot around his neck by its leather strap. “Where was I?” She thought for a minute, then resumed. “Oh, yes. Maui—that’s Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga to you—stole Fire from the fingernails of the fire goddess Mahuika and gave it to the Polynesians. She’ll definitely be on the lookout for him. And so on.”

  You neglected to include the First Thief, Coyote said. Oldest and greatest. King of the Hill. Inspiration to us all. Stole it for all mankind.

  “The Titan Prometheus,” Soraya said, “was the brother, oddly enough, of your friend the late, unlamented Captain Aag. Not that they ever got on. Couldn’t stand each other, in fact. Anyhow: three million four hund
red thousand years ago the Old Boy was indeed the first of the Fire Thieves. But after what happened to him back then, the searchers will probably not be on the lookout for another Fire Run by the old fellow.”

  “He lost his nerve,” Luka remembered.

  That warnt right of me to mention, Coyote said. ’Taint proper to dishonor the great. But since Hercules shot the eagle the Old Boy lives pretty quiet.

  “Or the vulture,” Luka said.

  Or the vulture. Warnt none of us there at the time to verify, and the Old Boy, he dont talk so much no more.

  “And another good thing about all this rushing about,” Soraya murmured in Luka’s ear, “is that it will allow you to get close to the bridge, if you rush about, too, and look like you’re searching for yourselves.”

  Theyll be looking for me an my associates, Coyote said. Best we part ways. Its fixin to get kindly heated in my vicinity. But look for me to make my run and then you put your best foot forward an make yours. He loped away without another word.

  All at once Luka realized that Nobodaddy had disappeared. One minute he had been there, listening, fidgeting with his Panama hat, and then without so much as a poof, he was nowhere to be seen. “What’s he up to, I’d very much like to know?” Luka thought. “I don’t feel good about him vanishing like this.” Soraya put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re better off without him,” she said. Then Nuthog, the red dragon, had her idea, and Luka put Nobodaddy out of his mind.