Haroun and the Sea of Stories (11 page)

Haroun was rather shocked. ‘That sounds like mutinous talk to me,’ he suggested, and Iff, Goopy, Bagha and Mali found that very interesting indeed. ‘What’s a Mutinus?’ asked Iff, curiously. ‘Is it a plant?’ Mali inquired.

‘You don’t understand,’ Haroun tried to say. ‘It’s an Adjective.’

‘Nonsense,’ said the Water Genie. ‘Adjectives can’t talk.’

‘Money talks, they say,’ Haroun found himself arguing (all this argument around him was proving infectious), ‘so why not Adjectives? Come to that, why not anything?’

The others fell silent for a sullen moment, and then simply changed the subject back to the issue of the day: which should take priority, saving Batcheat or the Ocean? But Rashid Khalifa gave Haroun a wink, which made him feel a little less crushed.

The sounds of heated quarrelling came across the water from the Barge-Birds: ‘I say it’s a Wild Goose Chase to go after Batcheat!’ –‘Yes, and what’s more, she looks like a Wild Goose, too.’ —‘How dare you, sirrah? That’s our beloved Princess you’re talking about; our estimable Prince Bolo’s intended and beauteous bride!’ ‘—Beauteous? Have you forgotten that voice, that nose, those teeth …?’ —‘Okay, okay. No need to go into that.’ Haroun noticed that old General Kitab himself, mounted on a winged mechanical horse very like Bolo’s, was flitting from Barge-Bird to Barge-Bird to keep in touch with the various discussions; and such was the freedom evidently allowed to the Pages and other citizens of Gup, that the old General seemed perfectly happy to listen to these tirades of insults and insubordination without batting an eyelid. In fact, it looked to Haroun as if the General was on many occasions actually provoking such disputes, and then joining in with enthusiastic glee, sometimes taking one side, and at other times (just for fun) expressing the opposite point of view.

‘What an army!’ Haroun mused. ‘If any soldiers behaved like this on Earth, they’d be court-martialled quick as thinking.’

‘But but but what is the point of giving persons Freedom of Speech,’ declaimed Butt the Hoopoe, ‘if you then say they must not utilize same? And is not the Power of Speech the greatest Power of all? Then surely it must be exercised to the full?’

‘It’s certainly getting a lot of exercise today,’ Haroun replied. ‘I don’t believe you Guppees could keep a secret to save your lives.’

‘We could
tell
secrets to save our lives, however,’ Iff replied. ‘I, for example, know a large many secrets of great juiciness and interest.’

‘I, also,’ Butt the Hoopoe said without moving its beak. ‘Shall we begin?’

‘No,’ said Haroun flatly. ‘We shall not begin.’ Rashid was beside himself with delight. ‘Well, well, well, young Haroun Khalifa,’ he chortled, ‘you certainly did make some blinking funny friends.’

And so the Guppee armada proceeded on its merry way, with all its members busily dissecting General Kitab’s most secret battle-plans (which, of course, he cheerfully revealed to anyone who cared to ask). These plans were itemized, scrutinized, rationalized, analysed, mulled over, chewed over, made much of, made little of, and even, after interminable wranglings, agreed. And when Rashid Khalifa, who was beginning to be as dubious as Haroun about the value of so much loose talk, ventured to question its wisdom,—then Iff and Butt and Mali and Goopy and Bagha fell to arguing about this question, too, with as much energy and passion as before.

Only Prince Bolo remained aloof. Prince Bolo rode his flying mechanical steed through the sky at the head of the Guppee forces, saying nothing, looking neither to left nor right, his eyes fixed on the far horizon. For him there was no argument; Batcheat came first; the issue was beyond dispute.

‘How is it,’ Haroun wondered, ‘that Bolo can be so certain, when every other Guppee in this armada seems to take for ever to make up his mind about anything?’

It was Mali, the Floating Gardener, striding along beside him, walking on the water, who replied in flowery voice through fleshy lilac lips.

‘It is Love,’ Mali said. ‘It is all for Love. Which is a wonderful and dashing matter. But which can also be a very foolish thing.’

~ ~ ~

The light failed slowly, then more quickly. They were in the Twilight Strip!

Looking into the distance, where darkness gathered like a storm-cloud, Haroun felt his courage weaken. ‘With our absurd armada,’ he despaired, ‘how can we ever succeed in that world, where there isn’t even light to see the enemy by?’ The closer they came to the shores of the Land of Chup, the more formidable the prospect of the Chupwala Army became. It was a suicidal mission, Haroun became convinced; they would be defeated, and Batcheat would perish, and the Ocean would be irreparably ruined, and all stories would come to a final end. The sky was dim and purplish now, and it echoed his fatalistic mood.

‘But but but don’t take this seriously,’ Butt the Hoopoe intervened kindly. ‘You are suffering from a Heart-Shadow. It happens to most people the first time they see the Twilight Strip and the Darkness beyond. I, of course, do not suffer in this way, having no Heart: a further advantage, by the way, of being a machine. —But but but don’t worry. You’ll get acclimatized. It will pass.’

‘To look on the bright side,’ said Rashid Khalifa, ‘these Laminations certainly work. I can’t feel the cold at all.’

~ ~ ~

Goopy and Bagha were coughing and spluttering more and more. The coastline of Chup was in sight, and a bleak-looking thing it was; and in these coastal waters the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in the filthiest state Haroun had seen up to now. The poisons had had the effect of muting the colours of the Story Streams, dulling them all down towards greyness; and it was in the colours that the best parts of the Stories in those Streams were encoded: their vividness, lightness and vivacity. So the loss of colour was a terrible kind of damage. Worse yet, the Ocean in these parts had lost much of its warmth. No longer did the waters give off that soft, subtle steam that could fill a person with fantastic dreams; here they were cool to the touch and clammy to boot.

The poison was cooling the Ocean down.

Goopy and Bagha panicked:

‘If this all goes on (hic, cough) we’re all lost!’

‘The Ocean will (cough, hic) become a Frost!’

Then it was time to set foot on the shores of Chup.

On those twilit shores, no bird sang. No wind blew. No voice spoke. Feet falling on shingle made no sound, as if the pebbles were coated in some unknown muffling material. The air smelt stale and stenchy. Thorn-bushes clustered around white-barked, leafless trees, trees like sallow ghosts. The many shadows seemed to be alive. Yet the Guppees were not attacked as they landed: no skirmishes on the shingle. No archers hiding in the bushes. All was stillness and cold. The silence and darkness seemed content to bide their time.

‘The further into the darkness they lure us, the more the odds are in their favour,’ said Rashid in a dull voice. ‘And they know we will come, because they are holding Batcheat.’

‘I thought Love was supposed to conquer all,’ Haroun thought, ‘but on this occasion it looks as if it could make monkeys—or mincemeat—of the lot of us.’

A beachhead was established, and tents had been raised to make the first Guppee camp. General Kitab and Prince Bolo sent Blabbermouth to fetch Rashid Khalifa. Haroun, delighted to see the Page again, went along with his father. ‘Storyteller,’ cried Bolo in his most swashbuckling manner, ‘now is the hour when you must lead us to the Chupwala tents. Great matters are afoot! Batcheat’s release cannot be delayed!’

Haroun and Blabbermouth, along with the General, the Prince, and the Shah of Blah, went stealthily through the thorn-bushes, to scout out the neighbourhood; and after a short time Rashid stopped and pointed, without saying a word.

There was a small clearing up ahead, and in this leafless glade was a man who looked almost like a shadow, and who held a sword whose blade was dark as night. The man was alone, but turned and leapt and kicked and slashed his sword constantly, as though battling an invisible opponent. Then, as they drew nearer, Haroun saw that the man was actually fighting
against his own shadow
; which, in turn, was fighting back with equal ferocity, attention and skill.

‘Look,’ whispered Haroun, ‘the shadow’s movements don’t match the man’s.’ Rashid silenced him with a glance, but what he had said was the truth: the shadow plainly possessed a will of its own. It dodged and ducked, it stretched itself out until it was as long as a shadow cast by the last rays of the setting sun, and then it bunched itself as tight as a shade at noon, when the sun is directly overhead. Its sword lengthened and shrank, its body twisted and altered constantly. How could one ever hope to defeat such an opponent, wondered Haroun.

The shadow was attached to the warrior at the feet, but other than that seemed to be entirely free. It was as though its life in a land of darkness, of being a shadow concealed in shadows, had given it powers undreamt of by the shadows of a conventionally lit world. It was an awesome sight.

The warrior was a striking figure, too. His long, sleek hair hung to his waist in a thick ponytail. His face was painted green, with scarlet lips, exaggerated black brows and eyes, and white stripes on his cheeks. His bulky battle-dress of leather guards and thick thigh- and shoulder-pads made him seem even larger than he truly was. And his athleticism and swordsmanship were beyond anything Haroun had ever seen. No matter what tricks his shadow played, the warrior was its equal. And as they fought each other, standing toe to toe, Haroun began to think of their combat as a dance of great beauty and grace, a dance danced in perfect silence, because the music was playing inside the dancers’ heads.

Then he glimpsed the warrior’s eyes, and a chill struck at his heart. What terrifying eyes they were! Instead of whites, they had
blacks
; and the irises were grey as twilight, and the pupils were white as milk. ‘No wonder the Chupwalas like the dark,’ Haroun understood. ‘They must be blind as bats in the sunlight, because their eyes are the wrong way round, like a film negative that somebody forgot to print.’

As he watched the Shadow Warrior’s martial dance, Haroun thought about this strange adventure in which he had become involved. ‘How many opposites are at war in this battle between Gup and Chup!’ he marvelled. ‘Gup is bright and Chup is dark. Gup is warm and Chup is freezing cold. Gup is all chattering and noise, whereas Chup is silent as a shadow. Guppees love the Ocean, Chupwalas try to poison it. Guppees love Stories, and Speech; Chupwalas, it seems, hate these things just as strongly.’ It was a war between Love (of the Ocean, or the Princess) and Death (which was what Cultmaster Khattam-Shud had in mind for the Ocean, and for the Princess, too).

‘But it’s not as simple as that,’ he told himself, because the dance of the Shadow Warrior showed him that silence had its own grace and beauty (just as speech could be graceless and ugly); and that Action could be as noble as Words; and that creatures of darkness could be as lovely as the children of the light. ‘If Guppees and Chupwalas didn’t hate each other so,’ he thought, ‘they might actually find each other pretty interesting. Opposites attract, as they say.’

Just at that moment the Shadow Warrior stiffened; turned his strange eyes upon the bush behind which the Guppee party was hiding; and then sent his Shadow stretching out towards them. It reared up over them, holding its immensely elongated sword. The Shadow Warrior (sheathing
his
sword, which had no effect on the Shadow) walked slowly over to their hiding place. His hands were moving furiously in something like a dance of rage or hate. Faster and faster, more and more emphatic grew his hand movements; and then, in what might have been disgust, he let his hands drop, and began (horror of horrors!) to speak.

Chapter 8

Shadow Warriors

The effort of producing sounds twisted the Shadow Warrior’s already-striking face (green skin, scarlet lips, white-striped cheeks, etc.) into dreadful, contorted shapes. ‘Gogogol,’ he gurgled. ‘Kafkafka,’ he coughed.

‘Eh? What’s that? What’s the fellow saying?’ demanded Prince Bolo loudly. ‘Can’t make out a single word.’

‘What a
poser
, I
swear
,’ Blabbermouth hissed at Haroun. ‘Our Bolo. Talking so
big
and
rude
because he thinks it’ll stop us from noticing that he’s
scared
out of his
pants
.’

Haroun wondered why Blabbermouth remained in Prince Bolo’s service when she had such a low opinion of the gentleman; but he kept his mouth shut, partly because he didn’t want her to say something cutting and scornful to
him
; partly because he had started to like her a good deal, which made any opinion of hers okay with him; but mostly because there was a giant Shadow with a huge sword looming over them, and a Warrior grunting and spitting at them from a few feet away, and in short this was no time for chit-chat.

‘If, as it is said, people in the Land of Chup hardly talk at all these days, because of the Cultmaster’s decrees, then it’s not surprising that this Warrior has temporarily lost control of his voice,’ Rashid Khalifa was explaining to Prince Bolo, who was unimpressed.