The Five Fakirs of Faizabad (12 page)

“Yes, that’s right,” said Mr. Burton. “Mr. Rakshasas used to go and sit inside an omphalos stone when he wanted to do some serious thinking. The stone has a hollow center.”

“Did he now?” said Nimrod.

“Oh, yes. He once said that he regarded the inside of an omphalos stone as a better place for thinking than the great British Library.”

“That wouldn’t be difficult,” said Groanin. “Some of the stupidest people in the world work at the British Library. I should know. I used to work there myself.”

“Do shut up, Groanin,” said Nimrod. “So then, I suppose I’ll have to go to Delphi.”

Mr. Burton shook his head. “The one in the museum at Delphi is a fake,” he said. “But there is a real one in Jerusalem. In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That’s the one that Mr. Rakshasas always favored.” He bowed to Nimrod. “It would be my honor to accompany you, Nimrod, as I did once accompany Rakshasas.”

“Good idea,” said Nimrod. “So, here’s the plan: Philippa and Moo will fly to Bumby, while Mr. Burton, Groanin, John, Zagreus, and myself will fly to Jerusalem.” Nimrod frowned. “Which reminds me. Where is that boy? And where is that Jinx?”

“You say that there is no sign of him down below?” asked Mr. Burton.

“No,” said Philippa. “And frankly, I am a little worried.”

Mr. Burton looked sheepish. “I think I might be able to provide an explanation,” he said.

W
hat is it, Mr. Burton?” asked Philippa. “Do you know where my brother, John, is?”

“No, I do not know that. But if your brother has left the mountain, then perhaps I can offer a reason why. He was most aggrieved at his lack of cleverness. Upset with himself that he did not guess any of the three riddles I set you yesterday. I think he wished to prove his worth in some way. That is why he came to seek my advice. Most particularly he wished to know what happened to our mutual friend, Mr. Rakshasas.”

“And?” Philippa’s tone was impatient.

“The boy asked to look into the past,” explained Mr. Burton. “Into my ink spot.”

“Ink spot divination?” Nimrod sounded surprised. “You can do that, too?”

“I learned it from a great Egyptian sorcerer,” said Mr. Burton. “A Mr. Jonathan Burge, of Heliopolis, Cairo. A most capable fellow.”

“Well, what did he see in your ink spot?” asked Groanin. He, too, was beginning to feel worried about John.

“In my ink spot he saw that Mr. Rakshasas has undergone samsara, the process of rebirth, and has been made flesh again. Or to be more exact, flesh and fur.”

“What, you mean like reincarnated?” said Groanin.

“Yes,” said Mr. Burton.

“Who is he now?” asked Groanin.

“Not who. What. According to what John saw in the ink spot, Mr. Rakshasas is now a wolf.” “A wolf?”

“A wolf living quite happily in Yellowstone National Park,” said Mr. Burton. “That is a park in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, I believe.”

“Thanks,” said Philippa drily. “I know where it is.” She looked at Nimrod. “Did you know about this, Uncle Nimrod?”

“No. But it’s what Mr. Rakshasas believed would happen to him after he died. So I’m not particularly surprised. Mr. Burton? Do you think John might have gone to Yellowstone to see Mr. Rakshasas in his new incarnation?”

“Yes, it’s possible,” said Mr. Burton. “But I think there was also another reason that he has left the mountain. Something more serious, perhaps.”

“What was that?”

“I cannot say for sure, but as well as looking into the past he looked into the future, and there he saw something that was most alarming to him. He didn’t say what it was, however, and I didn’t press him to tell me. My own experience
of looking into the future has persuaded me that it’s a very personal matter. I confess I warned him of the dangers of future gazing but still he wished to look.”

“And you let him look?” said Nimrod.

“He wished it,” said Mr. Burton.

“If you only knew the problems we have with wishes,” observed Philippa.

“You got that right,” observed Groanin. “I say, you have got that right, miss.”

“But he’s just a boy,” Nimrod told Mr. Burton.

Mr. Burton shrugged. “I have no experience of boys except that I suppose I was once one myself, a very long, long time ago. Why should I say no to him? I liked him. I explained the hazards of looking at tomorrow and the year after, but he was adamant as Adam himself. Besides, this is no ordinary boy, Nimrod. He is a powerful djinn. Who better than he to look after himself, wherever he has gone?”

“You make a fair point,” sighed Nimrod. “All the same it’s very inconvenient that this should have happened now, in the midst of this crisis.”

“Someone should go after him,” said the butler. “And fetch him back home. A rescue mission, so to speak.”

“I agree with you, Groanin. And it’s brave of you to volunteer for the job. Stout fellow. Proud of you. I shall miss your tea, of course.”

“Me?” said Groanin. “In Yellowstone?”

“I’d go myself but there are more pressing matters to attend to.”

“Nimrod’s right,” said Philippa. “John will listen to you. He respects you.”

Groanin looked pained for a moment. “But there are bears in Yellowstone. Large ones. With very sharp claws and even sharper teeth.”

“Then I had better arm you with a discrimens,” said Nimrod. “An emergency wish that you could use in the event of, er … well, an emergency, such as meeting up with a grizzly bear, perhaps. Or being hunted by a pack of wolves. Or a mountain lion. Or being charged by an elk. Or attacked by a rattlesnake. Yes, I think there are lots of rattlesnakes in Yellowstone National Park. To say nothing about the park being one very, very large active volcano that is several centuries overdue for an eruption.”

Groanin smiled thinly. “Best say no more, eh, sir? Otherwise I shall feel quite unequal to the task of going at all.”

“You’ll enjoy it,” said Nimrod. “At this time of year, Yellowstone is extremely beautiful.”

“What time of year is it?” inquired Groanin. “In Yellowstone.”

“Spring, of course,” said Nimrod. “Although I believe there’s still plenty of snow about, so you’d better take that coat with you. Plus one or two other things. In fact, I’d better set you up with some proper equipment. All that Jack London stuff.”

“Yes, but how am I going to get there? The boy is using a flying carpet, which means he’ll get there sooner than any plane I might catch.”

“Hmm. Good point.” Nimrod sighed. “I suppose there’s only one thing for it. I’d better cut you off a chunk of my own carpet.”

“I thought Mr. Barkhiya said that only a djinn could fly one of these carpets,” objected Moo.

“That is true,” said Nimrod. “But Groanin will merely have to sit on his piece of flying carpet. I shall be doing the flying. By means of my own willpower. Happily, this will be easy enough. You remember that Mr. Barkhiya told us that all flying carpets were made from the one larger carpet once owned by King Solomon? Well, when directed to do so, one rug will follow the other. I shall simply direct the smaller carpet I cut from my larger one to pursue John’s carpet, with a special binding. Much as I would instruct a bloodhound to go after a scent. All Groanin will have to do is sit on the carpet until it gets to Yellowstone.”

“And the rug,” said Groanin. “This fragment of your own larger one. It won’t give out in the cold, will it? I don’t want to be stuck there in the middle of nowhere trying to fly a flipping yoga mat.”

“I can’t imagine why you think such a thing is even possible,” said Nimrod.

“Because, sir, I’ve been on adventures before. Things go wrong. I suppose that’s what makes them adventures, really. But I should much prefer it if they didn’t go wrong, see? I’m not much of a traveler at the best of times. A day in which nothing at all happens — and certainly nothing at all remarkable — is my idea of heaven.”

“Rest assured, Groanin,” said Nimrod. “I shall endeavor to make sure you travel in style, comfort, and safety.”

As soon as Philippa and Moo were airborne and bound for Bumby, Nimrod set about the preparations for Groanin’s flight. He faced his own flying carpet and for several minutes contemplated the best way to cut the thirty-one-foot square of blue and gold.

“Do I cut a strip from the edge?” he mused. “Or do I cut it in half? And with what? I wonder what Mr. Barkhiya uses when he does this sort of thing? And if there are any ceremonies to be observed. Light my lamp, I do wonder about that. After all, this is no ordinary Axminster. This carpet was once owned by King Solomon himself. I’d fly back to Fez and ask Mr. Barkhiya if there was time, but there isn’t. You really ought to get started after my nephew right away, Groanin.”

“Can’t you just use djinn power on it?” suggested Groanin. “Just zap it down the middle, laserlike?”

“I don’t like to ‘zap it’ as you say,” said Nimrod. “There’s the small matter of respect involved here. Using my power on the carpet might offend the ancient power that dwells within its silky fibers.” Nimrod shook his head. “No, using djinn power on this is quite out of the question. And quite possibly impossible.”

Groanin thought for a moment. Then he said, “I do happen to have a carpet knife in my luggage, sir, if that might help.”

“Perhaps the edge of the carpet is best. Ten feet wide still leaves me with twenty-one feet. What was that you said?”

“I have a carpet knife in my luggage, sir.”

Groanin went and fetched his knife and handed it over to his master.

“A carpet knife, Groanin? How on earth is it that you have one?”

“That carpet knife were me dad’s,” said Groanin. “He were a carpet fitter all his life, in Burnley. I keep it with me for sentimental reasons. Sometimes I just get it out and hold it and imagine me dad slicing a Berber twist pile on the floor of some semidetached in greater Manchester. It’s amazing, I can almost smell new carpets when I hold that knife.”

“A bit like Marcel Proust, you mean,” said Nimrod.

“I don’t know about Proust, but I do think it’s a bit ironic really, us planning to cut up this here carpet. If my dad was here now, he’d have it done in no time. No one could cut a carpet like my old dad.”

Nimrod handed back the knife to his butler. “Then you shall cut the carpet, Groanin,” he said. “We shall see if this is a talent you have inherited from him.”

“Very well, sir.” Groanin dropped down upon his knees and proceeded to cut the straightest line in a carpet that Nimrod had ever seen.

“Perfect,” said Nimrod. “There seems to be no end to your talents, Groanin. Well then. On you get.” Groanin fetched his luggage and sat cross-legged on the carpet and waited while Nimrod used his djinn power to add a large box of stores for the expedition. “Everything you might need is in those boxes, Groanin. Food, tents, a rifle, ammunition,
materials for making a fire. And I’ve attached a discrimens to your person just in case the rifle should prove not to be enough.”

“Thank you, sir. When I find John, what shall I do?”

“Go back to the house in Kensington and wait for me there. And don’t let him go gallivanting anywhere else.”

“Right you are, sir.”

Under Nimrod’s direction, the carpet carrying Groanin started to rise slowly in the air.

“Can’t help feeling just a little bit nervous, sir,” said Groanin. “After all, this is my first solo flight, so to speak.”

“Relax. Sit back. Enjoy the experience. You’ll be fine.”

“And you, sir?”

“Off to Jerusalem. With Mr. Burton here. In search of inspiration. Hard to say what that might look like. But I have a feeling we’ll know it when we see it.”

A
s anyone who has traveled on a flying carpet will tell you, the experience is a peculiar one. For one thing, the carpet itself feels quite solid, like a wooden floor; and for another, the air seems to slip to either side of the carpet so that the passenger does not have to endure the discomfort of having the wind in his face. All of this makes standing up on a flying carpet quite safe.

Groanin would have stood up but for his fear of heights. At only ten feet wide, the flying carpet seemed hardly wide enough and whenever the butler was obliged to fetch something from his box of stores, he had to crawl there on his hands and knees. It wasn’t that Groanin was acrophobic, which is the proper word to describe someone who has a fear of heights, but unlike the djinn, who have no fear of heights, most mundanes feel a little uncomfortable when they are several thousand feet in the air with only ten feet of Moroccan silk carpet to support them. So, wrapping himself tightly in
Nimrod’s fur coat, which was now Groanin’s fur coat, the butler pressed his back against the box of stores, closed his eyes, and did his best to put out of his mind all thoughts of the cold Atlantic Ocean beneath him. And after a while he fell asleep.

When, several hours later, he awoke, Groanin’s flying carpet was still over the Atlantic but it seemed to him that in some indefinable way his situation had somehow changed, and at least ten minutes had elapsed before he formed the idea that the carpet he was sitting upon was now narrower than it had been before.

Being a good butler, Groanin had a tape measure and, plucking up his courage, he hooked the end of the metallic measuring strip to one edge of the carpet and attempted to span its width.

“Flipping heck,” exclaimed Groanin as he read off the number on the strip. For there was no doubt in his mind that the carpet that had been ten feet wide on takeoff was now only eight feet wide. He was so shocked by this discovery that his nervous fingers switched off the spring return mechanism and the metallic strip of the tape measure zipped back with such force that Groanin dropped it onto the carpet, where it bounced twice and disappeared over the side and into the ocean. It seemed a very graphic demonstration of what now threatened to happen to Groanin himself. “Flipping heck,” repeated Groanin.

He crawled to one edge and found nothing amiss. And then crawled to the other — the edge he himself had cut
earlier — where immediately he perceived the problem. A thread of the flying carpet had come unraveled from the back corner and was now trailing in the air for miles behind, like a fishing line.

“Flipping heck,” said Groanin, and crawled back to his luggage to find a pair of scissors. Crawling back to the thread again, he snipped the thread off as neatly as he was able. And thinking he must have solved the problem, he went back to his former position leaning against the box of stores.

For a while he read a newspaper — Nimrod had thoughtfully added a copy of the
Daily Telegraph
to his box of stores — and this took his mind off things, which, of course, is why people read newspapers in the first place: to forget their own problems and enjoy reading about someone else’s. Another twenty minutes passed before Groanin looked up and, once again, was possessed of the horrible sensation that the carpet was narrower than before. Crawling back to the corner where he had snipped the loose thread, he was appalled to find another loose thread trailing hundreds of feet behind him.

“Flipping heck,” said Groanin, and he snipped the thread a second time. This time he stayed put to make sure that his scissor surgery had been effective and, after several vigilant minutes, he was just about to relax when several hundred feet of thread seemed to unravel at once.

Groanin yelped and snipped at the thread. But the same thing happened again, and again, and before long Groanin’s
scissors were snipping so much he felt like a demon barber in a gentleman’s hairdressers.

It was now uncomfortably clear to Groanin that after cutting the carpet on the mountaintop in Morocco, he had neglected to finish the edge of the carpet.

It was true, Groanin ought to have knotted one of the threads although he could hardly have known which one: There seemed to be thousands of them, although, in fact, there was really only one thread.

By now the whole frayed edge of the flying carpet — previously eight feet wide, but now perhaps just seven and a half — was trailing threads. They were flying somewhere over the United States but Groanin was close to panic. A hard landing on the ground from several thousand feet promised to be just as uncomfortable as a hard landing in the ocean.

“Blast that man, Nimrod,” Groanin shouted. “Blast him and his daft ideas. He’ll be the death of me, so he will.”

He shook his head in the hope that the motion might dislodge an idea that was sticking to the back of his mind like a boiled sweet.

“Flipping carpet,” he muttered. “I wish I knew what my dad would have done about this. I really do.”

For a moment, he pictured his dad, laying a carpet at Groanin’s childhood home in Burnley, and a Proustian smell of burning carpets filled the nostrils of his own remembrance of things past.

“Of course!” he exclaimed as suddenly he remembered
his father melting the fibers along the edge of the carpet with something hot. And straightaway he went to his luggage, found a lighter, and applied a flame along the tattered edge of the flying carpet.

There were two reasons why this was a very bad idea. One was that most of the carpets Groanin’s dad had fitted had been very cheap and made of nylon, which means it’s possible to melt a neat edge on a carpet. However, the flying carpet was not made of nylon, but silk, which is extremely flammable. Which was the other reason it was a bad idea for Groanin to apply a naked flame to the edge of the flying carpet.

For a moment it seemed to work. And then things turned from bad to worse as the carpet caught fire.

“Flipping heck,” yelled Groanin. “That’s all I flipping need. A flying carpet that’s on fire.”

He stared anxiously over the edge at the ground, with no idea where he was in relation to Yellowstone.

“If this isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is,” said Groanin. Thinking to use the discrimens given to him by Nimrod, he added, “I wish this flying carpet would now land safely.”

Nothing happened. The flying carpet did not slow or even dip toward the ground. If anything, the carpet seemed to climb a little higher to avoid a rain cloud that lay immediately ahead.

Groanin was baffled for as long as it took for him to remember that he had carelessly wished away his one discrimens when he had wished to know what his dad would have
done to the edge of the flying carpet to stop it from unraveling any farther.

He wondered which of the two problems now affecting his mode of airborne transport would precipitate him to the ground first: the fact that the carpet was still unraveling at the rate of about six inches an hour, or the fact that it was also on fire.