After all, his mother, Soraya, would be on his side. Maybe you are correct to believe that the left way around is the right way, and that the rest of us are not right, but wrong. That’s what she had said, and that was more than enough for him.
“I’ll go with you,” said Bear, the dog, loyally.
“I’ll go, too,” said Dog, the bear, not quite as enthusiastically.
And then Luka recalled the really important part of what Rashid Khalifa had told him about the Mountain: “To climb Mount Knowledge, you have to know who you are.” Luka, sleepy, bedtime Luka at home far away and long ago, hadn’t really understood. “Doesn’t everyone know that?” he asked. “I mean, I’m just me, right? And you’re you?” Rashid had caressed his hair, which always soothed Luka and made him drowsy. “People think they’re all sorts of things they aren’t,” he said. “They think they’re talented when they’re not, they think they’re powerful when they’re actually just bullies, they think they’re good when they’re bad. People fool themselves all the time, and they don’t know that they’re fools.”
“Well, I’m me, anyway; that’s all there is to it,” Luka said, just as he fell asleep.
“There he is! There’s the Fire Thief! There he goes!”
“It’s Coyote! He has a burning brand between his teeth!”
“Look at him go! See him dodge and swerve!”
“Stop him!—oh, they’ll never catch him!—stop that Coyote! oh, he’s like hairy lightning!—stop, thief! stop the Fire Thief!”
Luka snapped out of his reverie and saw Coyote emerging from the shadows at the foot of Mount Knowledge with fire blazing from his mouth, and streaking around the Mountain toward its far side, running faster than Luka would have believed it was possible for a coyote to run. He was heading across stony ground in the opposite direction from the Rainbow Bridge, leading his pursuers deliberately away from Luka’s probable escape route and into the Wild Waste that lay beyond the Lake. This was an area of semi-desert, more properly known as the Waste of Time, a large expanse of arid land which had been overrun, long ago, by a virulent outbreak of Slackerweed. This rapidly spreading weed, previously unknown in the Magic World, had first choked and destroyed all other plant life—except for a few of the hardiest cacti—and then bizarrely self-destructed, as if it had no idea what to do with itself, and no real desire to find out. It just lay apathetically on the ground until it withered away, leaving behind this yellow wilderness dotted with the skulls of long-dead creatures. Snakes slithered out from under rocks and buzzards wheeled overhead, and it was well known that the gods, accustomed as they were to luxury and opulence, were not fond of entering this zone, where, Rashid Khalifa had told Luka, the air moved slowly, the breeze blew without any real sense of direction, and there was something in that wind that induced carelessness, laziness, and sleep. Only a few of the guardian deities who had answered the Fire Alarm had been willing to follow Coyote into the Waste, and their pursuit of the fleeing animal seemed slower, groggier, and less purposeful than it should have been. Coyote, however, seemed immune to the infectious lethargy in the air. “The Wild Waste is his natural habitat,” Luka thought. “He’ll give those gods a good run for their money there.” And positioned at intervals along the route Coyote had chosen were the Lion, the Big Bear, the Little Bear, the Wolf, the Squirrel, and the Frog. Would the Waste of Time affect them, Luka wondered, or had Coyote discovered an antidote? It wasn’t important. The decoy relay had begun.
He heard Coyote’s voice in his head, saying, Put your best foot forward an make your glory run. And all around him were excited dragons and a barking dog and a roaring bear, and Nuthog was saying, “It’s now or never, young Luka, and if you can’t find the way Left, as you say, then you’d best let us fly you up there and take your chances. Move! This is the moment of Truth!”
“Who are those monsters chasing Coyote?” Luka needed to know. “If you don’t act fast,” Nuthog harrumphed panickedly, “they’ll be chasing you instead, soon enough. Saturn’s out there, as savage and violent as any immortal. He eats children, by the way. He’s done it before, with his own. And the bearded fellow with the snake wound round him is Zurvan, the Persian time god; you don’t want that snake to get within snapping distance, let me tell you! There goes the Dagda, look, that wild Irish fellow with the enormous club! And Xiuhtecutli, too, though he usually only roams about at night. Even Lingpao T’ien-tsun—they got him out of the Gossamer Library for once! Looks like they really want to stop the Fire Thief, and when they find out that the fire in Coyote’s mouth is a fake—that it’s just fire, and not the Fire of Life—then they’ll know he was only a decoy, and they’ll come after the real Fire Thief in all their fury. So if you know how to climb up this Mountain under your own steam, it would be a good idea to get on with it.”
To decide to do a thing was decidedly not the same thing as actually doing the thing, Luka quickly understood. He really had no idea of exactly how he was supposed to take the little tumble to the left that would shift him into the Widdershins Dimension in which the whole world, including the World of Magic, would morph into Planet Wrongway, the left-handers’ home, the southpaw variation of Planet Earth. He tried falling, jumping, and rolling to the left; he attempted to trip over his own feet; he asked Bear and Dog to knock him over; and finally, closing his eyes, he tried to feel the Left World pushing at his left shoulder, so that, by pushing back, he could fall through the invisible frontier and get to where he needed to be. None of it worked. His many falls left him considerably the worse for wear, bruised of shoulder and of hip, and with a battered and scratched left leg.
“It beats me,” he admitted, almost in despair.
“The thing about the Left-Hand Path,” said Nuthog gently, “is that you have to believe it’s going to be there.”
Just then a triumphant blast of the Fire Alarm announced the capture of the Fire Thief, followed by two blasts of renewed anguish that announced the hunt was still on. Nuthog whizzed off to investigate as soon as she heard the first blast, and returned to report that after the decoy fire had been passed from Coyote to Lion, and then all the way down the old relay team until it reached Frog, that doughty amphibian had swallowed it and dived into the Circular Sea; whereupon the enraged Worm Bottomfeeder had ended the carrera de distracción by swallowing Frog in a single greedy gulp. Four seconds later, Bottomfeeder spat the saliva-covered Frog out again, and roared with all its might to announce to the entire Magical World that this particular Fire Thief was a Common Fraud.
“They’re all coming this way now,” Nuthog panted, “and, to be frank, they’re mad as hell, so if you won’t let us fly you away from here, then at least run. Run for your life.”
“Yes, I probably should start running,” Luka thought. “After all, I was running before, when I stumbled the first time and took that magical step to the right.” It was hard to be certain of the laws of Magical Physics; ordinary physics was difficult enough. But what was it Rashid had said? “Time is not only Itself, but is an aspect of Movement and Space.” That was the point, wasn’t it? “So, umm, errr,” Luka thought, “if T is affected by M and S, then, ahhh, therefore, it follows—doesn’t it?—that S, which is to say ‘Space,’ including the Space between the Right-Handed and the Left-Handed Dimensions, must—probably, right?—be an aspect of T and M, i.e., ‘Time’ and ‘Movement.’ Or, urrgghh, to put it in English, it makes a difference how long it takes you to make your move, or, in other words, how fast you run.”
The ground began to tremble. “Is it an earthquake?” Luka cried. “No,” said Nuthog sadly. “It’s much worse than that. It’s the sound of several hundred angry gods moving at speed. It will take a lot more than four dragons to stop that crowd.”
Dog, the bear, stepped forward with sudden resolution. “You go,” he said to Luka. “Go this minute. Take off, bhag jao, amscray, vamoose. Go and do the deed. Bear and I can hold them up for quite a while.”
“How?” asked Nuthog skeptically.
“Ready,” said Bear, the dog.
Luka knew there was no time to discuss the matter. He turned to his left, tilted his left shoulder down a bit, put his left foot forward, and set off at a gallop, as if his life depended upon it. Which, in point of fact, it did.
He ran without looking back. He heard the noise behind him, already loud, getting closer, growing much louder and becoming deafening, like the sound of a thousand jet engines roaring next to his eardrums; he felt the ground beneath his feet, which had already been trembling, begin to shake as if it had been seized by an uncontrollable terror; he saw the sky above him darken, and white lightning begin to stab through the black clouds. “Okay, so they can put on a show, these gods,” he told himself, to keep his courage up, “but remember they aren’t gods of anywhere or anyone anymore. They’re just circus animals, or caged creatures in a zoo.” But a less-confident voice whispered into his right ear, “That may be so, but even in a zoo you shouldn’t jump into the middle of the lions’ den.” He shook this thought off, put his head down, and sprinted harder. Nuthog’s advice was the only thing in his head. “The thing about the Left-Hand Path is that you have to believe it’s going to be there.” Then all at once the noise seemed to stop, the earth no longer shook, he felt as if he were floating at high speed rather than running, and that was when he saw the abyss.
“Behind the Mountain of Knowledge,” Rashid Khalifa used to say, “if you are very unlucky, you will find the Bottomless Pit known as the Abysm of Time. And that, by the by, is a rhyme. You pronounce it ‘abime’ and it rhymes with rhyme, which also rhymes with time. But if you fall into that rhyming Abysm it isn’t rhyme that you’ll have on your mind.”
Meanwhile, the thundering herd of ex-gods arrived at Mount Knowledge, and found two of the brightest stars of the Great Rings of Fire, the defunct circus of Captain Aag, waiting for them as calmly as the experienced artistes they were, and gesturing courteously to their outsized audience to settle down. Bear, the singing dog, and Dog, the dancing bear, had taken up their starting positions, along with their backing singers, the Changers, a quartet of giant metallic sows. The sight was unusual enough to stop the discarded deities in their tracks. Ra the Supreme held up his hand, and all the ranks of all the former gods, Egyptian, Assyrian, Norse, Greek, Roman, Aztec, Inca, and the rest, came clattering to a clumsy halt, full of screeches, collisions, and oaths. The Cyclopes accidentally elbowed one another in the eye, the fire gods’ burning swords singed the hair of the treasure-nymphs, a basilisk glared at a griffin and accidentally turned it to stone. The beauty goddesses, Aphrodite, cow-eared Hathor, and the rest, complained loudest. It appeared that the lower-ranked supernatural entities were taking advantage of the crowd of immortals to squeeze the Beauties’ bottoms, accidentally-on-purpose. Also, why exactly were minotaurs stepping on the Lovely Ladies’ feet? And, no, the Beauties absolutely did not appreciate snake-headed deities from rival mythological traditions looking up their togas. A little space, please, they demanded, a little respect. And shh, by the way, they hissed. There were performers here, and they were ready to begin.
“,” said Ra, “ .”
“What on earth was that?” asked Bear, the dog.
“He’s speaking Hieroglyph,” said Nuthog, “and what he says is, ‘Okay, this had better be good.’ ”
“Start dancing,” murmured Bear, the dog, to Dog, the bear. “And dance as you’ve never danced before.”
“And you start singing,” growled Dog, the bear, to Bear, the dog. “Sing as if your life depended upon it.”
“Which, in point of fact, it does,” chorused Nuthog, Sara, Badlo, and Jinn. “And ours, too, by the way,” Nuthog added. “No pressure, though. Break a leg.”
So Dog, the bear, began to dance, first a soft-shoe shuffle, then a rhythm tap, and then the African Gumboot Dance. Once he had warmed up, he went into the Broadway Style and at last his showstopping specialty, the Caribbean Juba, the most energetic tap dance of them all. The audience went crazy. He had them right where he wanted them; as his feet tapped, so did the feet of the ex-gods; as his hands clapped, so the junked deities clapped along; and when he twirled the Juba Twirl, well, those ancient relics discovered they could still get down and boogie! Ra the Supreme clapped right along with everyone else. “ ,” he roared, and Gyara-Jinn translated, “He says, ‘You make my pants want to get up and dance.’ ” Dog, the bear, shook his head in wonder. “But he isn’t wearing any pants,” he pointed out. “Just that little loincloth sort of thing that doesn’t exactly hide very much,” agreed Bear, the dog, “but let’s not argue.”
“Your turn now,” said Dog, the bear, to Bear, the dog, and the dog murmured back, “Let’s try a little flat-out flattery. After all, it’s been a while since anyone worshiped these folks properly.” Then he cleared his throat and burst into howlful melody, singing a series of honeyed odes to the gods of Babylon, Egypt, Asgard, Greece, and Rome, improvised from less specifically reverential tunes: “When I Wish upon Ishtar,” “It’s a Beautiful Frey,” “Long-winded Adulation Goes to Memphis on the Nile,” and so on. The show seemed to go well, and as he launched into his big finish, the metal sows oohed and clanged behind him.
“You’re dee-vine,” sang Bear, the dog, and the Clangers chorused,
“Ooh (clang), ooh (clang), ooh (clang).”
“You’re Level Nine,” sang Bear, the dog.
“Ooh (clang), ooh (clang), ooh (clang).”
“You gorgeous gods of mine,
I really wanna praise you!
Really am amazed by you!
Really wanna praise you now
’Cause you look so fine, my gods …”
“Ooh (clang), ooh (clang), ooh (clang).”
“My sweet gods …”
“Ooh (clang), ooh (clang), ooh (clang).”
“O, my gods …”
Bear was interrupted by an angry roar and a golden blaze of light. Ra the Supreme broke the spell of the music, rose into the sky, glowing furiously, and shot like a bullet toward the summit of Mount Knowledge. All the other ex-gods soared after him, looking like the grandest fireworks display in world history. Bear, the dog, looked disconsolate. “I lost my audience,” he said sadly. Dog, the bear, comforted him. “It wasn’t you. Something just happened up there,” he said. “Maybe it was something good. Let’s hope we bought young Luka enough time.”
An enormous white horse with eight legs galloped toward them, snorting angrily. “Let’s go and see if you did, shall we?” he said. “By which I mean, you’re both under arrest.” This was the real Slippy, King of the Horses, and he didn’t look at all pleased to see them. “As for you and your sisters,” he said to Gyara-Jinn and the other Changers, “you should consider yourselves seized as well. We’ll decide what to do about you later, but treason, may I remind you, is not a minor offense.”
When Luka saw the rhyming Abysm of Time ahead of him, he didn’t slow down, because now, at last, he could feel the ghostly pressure on his left shoulder that told him the Left-Hand Dimension was right there, right beside him, so he ran even faster, and then, at the very edge of the Abysm, he hurled himself to the left …
… and fell into the Bottomless Pit, and, as he plummeted through the blackness, flew apart into a million shiny fragments. When he came to his senses, his life-counter had subtracted one hundred lives, and he was running at the Abysm again; and again throwing himself left at that area of soft pressure; and again toppling into blackness and disintegrating.
And the third time, the same thing happened again. This time, when the shiny fragments of himself re-formed, and he saw that a total of three hundred lives had evaporated in just these few instants, leaving him with only 165, he lost his temper. “That’s pathetic, Luka Khalifa, to be honest with you,” he scolded himself. “If you can’t be serious now, after coming so far, then you deserve the Final Permination you are about to receive.”
… in which the Mountain was completely different! As a matter of fact, it was no longer a Mountain at all, but a low green hill dotted with oaks and elms and chinar trees and stands of poplars, and flower bushes around which honeybees buzzed, hummingbirds hummed, and larks warbled melodiously, while crested orange hoopoes strutted like princes on the grass; and there was a pretty path curling around it to the left, a path which looked like it might take Luka all the way to the top.
“I always knew the left-hand world would be much easier for me to handle than the right-hand one, if I could just find my way there,” Luka thought happily. “I bet you that if there was a doorknob anywhere around here, it would turn to the left. It seems that even Knowledge itself is not such a huge, frightening Mountain when the world is arranged to suit us lefties for a change.”
Luka and the Fire of Life Page 15
