Luka and the Fire of Life (16 page)

On this occasion, however, it was the Greek Cypriot, Aphrodite, who was the last goddess standing. After Ishtar of Babylon and Freya, Queen of the Valkyries, had beaten each other unconscious in the mud-wrestling ring, the betting favourite, cow-eared Hathor – a shape-shifter like Jaldi and her sisters, only far more powerful, capable of turning herself into clouds and stones – had made the mistake of turning briefly into a fig tree, which had allowed Aphrodite to chop her down. So at the end of the battle it was Aphrodite who approached the great Mirror that was the Ultimate Arbiter of Beauty, and asked the famous question,
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
, and so on; Aphrodite it was who received the Mirror’s accolade,
You are the loveliest
, as was traditional. ‘Oh well,’ said Nobodaddy, ‘it’s good exercise, and they’ll all be back at it tomorrow. There’s not that much for them to do around here. It’s not as if they can stay home and watch TV, or go out to the gym.’

The victor, Aphrodite, passed through the crowd, waving
graciously, but a little robotically. She was within a few feet of Luka at one point, and he saw that her eyes were oddly glazed, and focused on infinity. ‘No wonder she can’t see anyone Real,’ he thought. ‘She has eyes only for herself.’

He looked around for Soraya, but she had disappeared. ‘She probably got bored,’ said Nobodaddy. ‘We’ll find her outside.’ As they left the Battle Hall, he pointed out some of the more remarkable audience members to Luka. The Humbaba of Assyria was a naked, scaly giant with a horned head and lion’s paws. His tail was a living snake with a little, flicking forked tongue. ‘And so is his willy,’ Luka noted with delight. ‘That’s quite something, a willy-snake, that’s a thing I’ve never seen before.’ And close behind this brand-new sight was a group of Central Asian Boramez, who looked like baby lambs, except that their legs were made of two different varieties of long. fleshy roots, like sweet potatoes and parsnips. ‘Lamb chops and two veg,’ Luka thought. ‘Yum! These creatures would make a complete, nourishing meal.’ There were several three-headed trolls in the crowd, and many disappointed Valkyries, who had been hoping for their girl Freya to come out on top. ‘
Nev
-er
mind
,’ they told one another in their sing-song, phlegmatic, good-natured Nordic way, ‘to-
morr
-ow
is
an-
oth
-er
day
.’

Soraya was waiting in front of the rhododendron bushes, looking innocent, which was such an unusual look for her that Luka immediately suspected she was up to something. ‘What’s going on?’ he began, then changed tack. ‘Never mind,’ he continued. ‘We’re wasting time. Let’s get going, okay?’

‘Once upon a time,’ said Soraya dreamily, ‘there was an Indian
tribe called the Karaoke. They didn’t have Fire, so they were sad and cold and never sang a note.’

‘This is no time for fairy tales,’ said Luka, but Soraya ignored him and continued. ‘Fire had been created by a god-type creature named Ekoarak,’ she said in the same dreamy, musical voice, which Luka had to admit was a beautiful voice, a voice exactly like his mother’s voice, which made it comforting to listen to, ‘but he had hidden it in a music box and given it, for safe keeping, to two old witches, with instructions that on no account were they to give it to the Karaoke –’

‘There’s a point in here somewhere, I hope,’ Luka interrupted, a little rudely, but that only made the Insultana smile, for, after all, it was the Otter way.

‘Coyote was the one who decided he would steal the Fire,’ she said. Bear the dog perked up. ‘This is a story about a heroic prairie dog?’ he said hopefully. Soraya ignored him. ‘He got the Lion, the Big Bear, the Little Bear, the Wolf, the Squirrel and the Frog to help him. They spaced themselves out between the witches’ tent and the Karaoke village and waited. Coyote told one Karaoke Indian to visit the witches and attack their tent. When he did so they came out with their broomsticks and ran after him to chase him away. Coyote ran inside, opened the box with his nose, stole the burning firebrand, and ran. When the witches saw him running with the Fire they forgot about the Indian and chased Coyote instead. Coyote ran like the wind, and when he was tired he passed the burning wood to the Lion, who ran as far as the Big Bear, who ran on to the Little Bear, and so on. Finally the Frog swallowed the Fire and dived under the river where the witches couldn’t follow him, and
then he jumped out on the far bank of the river and spat the Fire out onto dry wood in the Karaoke village, and the Fire crackled and burned and the flames rose high into the sky, and everybody cheered. Soon afterwards the Indian returned, having gone into the witches’ tent (while they were chasing Coyote) and stolen the whole music box, and after that the Karaoke village was warm, and everyone sang all the time, because the magical music box never stopped playing its selection of popular songs.’

‘Okay … y … y,’ said Luka doubtfully. ‘It’s a nice enough story, but …’

Coyote strolled out from behind the rhododendron bushes, looking Wild and Western and ready for trouble.
Buenas dias, kid
, he said, in a cool, slanting sort of way.
My friend here, that’s the Insultana, indicated you could probly use some help. You ask me, I reckon you need all the help you can git
. He gave a confident, wolfish laugh.
Hear this, Fire Thief. Aint nobody got more sperience than me in the fire-stealin line, xceptin maybe one individual – big individual he was, too – but after what happen to him last time aroun, he aint available. Caint be helped. Reckon he lost his nerve
.

‘What happened?’ Luka asked, not really wanting to know.

Taken
, said Coyote, bluntly.
Got his big self tied down on a rock. Si, señor. Spreadeagled on there at the mercy of the merciless. Eagle got to chewin on his liver all day, which liver then done fix itself up an grow back ever’ night on account of 3-J magic, so that Eagle he could jus go on munchin till the end of time. You want more?

‘No, thank you,’ Luka said, thinking, not for the first time, that he was a long, long way out of his depth. But he made his voice sound a lot braver than he felt and went on. ‘Also,’ he said, ‘I’m smelling a rat, to be honest with you. Everybody
has been telling me all along that the Fire has never been stolen in the whole history of the World of Magic. Now you tell me that you stole it, Coyote, and apparently this old-timer you’re talking about stole it, too? So what’s the truth? Has everyone been lying to me this whole time, and it’s actually easier to steal the Fire than anyone has admitted?’

Soraya replied, ‘We should have explained things better to you. Nobodaddy should have done it right at the outset, and so should I. You’re right to feel aggrieved. So this is the truth of it. The World of Magic has taken many forms in different times and places, and it has had many different names. It has changed its location, its geography and its laws, as the history of the Real World has moved from age to age. In several of those times and places, it’s true, Fire Thieves did make successful runs at the Fire of the Gods. But nobody has succeeded since the Heart of Magic assumed its current shape and form, in this place, in this time, here and now. That’s the truth. The Aalim have always been around – after all, there’s no escape from the Past, the Present and the Future, is there? – but for a long time they left the management of things to the gods of the period, the same ex-gods you see here, inefficient deities who didn’t always do such a good job. Now the Aalim have taken control of matters themselves. Everything has been reordered. The Fire of Life is impregnably defended. The Three Jos know everything. Jo-Hua knows even the smallest details of the Past, Jo-Hai can see even the smallest incident in the Present, and Jo-Aiga can foretell the Future. Nobody has managed to steal the Fire since they took charge.’

‘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 towards Coyote, humbly. ‘What sort of help did you have in mind?’ he asked.

This beautiful lady here she’s kindly disposed to you and I’m 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 you’ll need somebody to make a
carrera de distracción.
That’s 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 Jos 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 colouring 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 being 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 has 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 Metre 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 Metre 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.