The red squirrel was waiting for him on a low tree stump, nibbling at an acorn. “Greetings from Queen Soraya,” she said, bowing formally. “Ratatat’s the name. Oh, yes. Her Majesty the Insultana thought you might appreciate a little guidance.”
“She certainly has friends everywhere,” Luka marveled.
“We redheads like to stick together,” said Ratatat, bristling with pleasure. “And some of us (I don’t want to boast, but there it is) are Honorary Otters of long standing—oh, yes!—members of the highly confidential Ott List, the Insultana’s emergency undercover squadron—sleeper agents, if you will, lurking in our secret Ott Beds and available to the lady twenty-four/seven on her personal Ott Line, just in case she needs to activate us. But, much as I’d like to stop and chat about these Ott Topics, I do believe you might be in something of a hurry. So,” she went on quickly, noticing that Luka had opened his mouth to reply, and obliging him to shut it again, “let’s Ott-foot it up this so-called Mountain while we can.”
Luka almost skipped up that hill, so great was his determination and joy. He had Jumped to the Left, from a Mountain of Difficulty to a Hill of Ease, and the Fire of Life lay within his grasp. Soon he would be rushing home as fast as he could go, to pour the Fire into his father’s mouth, and then Rashid Khalifa would surely Awake, and there would be new stories told, and Soraya his mother would sing … “You do know,” said Ratatat the squirrel, “that there will be guards?”
“Guards?” Luka stopped dead in his tracks and almost shrieked the word, because somehow he hadn’t been expecting to encounter any further obstacles—not here in the Left-Hand Dimension, surely not! Happiness drained from him like blood from a wound.
“You wouldn’t expect the Fire of Life to be left unguarded, would you?” said Ratatat sternly, as if lecturing a slightly dim-witted student.
“Are there Fire Gods in this Magic World, too?” asked Luka, and then felt so foolish he actually blushed. “Well, yes, I suppose there must be—but aren’t they all somewhere else right now, guarding the Rainbow Bridge or searching for … well, for me, I suppose?”
“As well as Fire Gods,” said Ratatat, “there are Fire Guards. Oh, yes.”
Nowadays, the squirrel explained, the job of guarding the Fire of Life had been given to the most powerful Guard Spirits from all the world’s dead religions, a.k.a. mythologies. Spotted Kerberos, the fifty-headed dog of Greece and the former gatekeeper of the Underworld; Anzu, the Sumerian demon, with the face and paws of a lion and an eagle’s claws and wings; the decapitated but still living head of the Nordic giant Mimir, which had been guarding the Fire for so long that it had grown into, and become part of, Mount Knowledge itself; Fafnir, the superdragon, as big as the four Changers combined and a hundred times as powerful; and Argus Panoptes, the cowherd with the hundred eyes, who saw everything and missed nothing, were the five appointed guardians, each of them more ferocious than the last.
“Ah,” said Luka, feeling cross with himself. “Yes, I should have expected that. So, as you know everything, can you tell me how I am supposed to get around that little lot?”
“Cunning,” said Ratatat. “Do you have that? Because a good supply of that is what is recommended. Hermes, for example, tricked Argus once by cunningly singing him lullabies until all his hundred eyes closed and he fell asleep. Oh, yes. To steal the Fire of Life, you’ll need to be the cunning, devious, sneaky, tricky, weirdly twisted type. Is that, by any chance, the type of type you are?”
“No,” said Luka disconsolately, and sat down on the grassy slope. “I’m sorry to say that I’m not.”
As he spoke the sky darkened; storm clouds, black and lightning-lit, thickened overhead. “,” said a terrifying voice emanating from the heart of the clouds, “.”
“ ‘In that case,’ ” little Ratatat translated through teeth that were chattering with fear, “ ‘you might find this last step a trifle tough.’ ”
As the gods rose like a swarm of hornets toward the summit of Mount Knowledge, the Fire Alarm sounded the all clear, announcing the capture of the Fire Thief to the whole Heart of Magic. Bear, the dog, and Dog, the bear, who were being carried up to the top on the Horse King’s back, heard the triumphant notes of the siren and were plunged into gloom. Nuthog and her sisters were flying alongside them with their tails very much between their legs. “The jig is up, I’m sorry to say,” Nuthog told Bear and Dog, confirming their fears. “It’s time to pay the piper.”
At that instant the entire swarm of gods swerved sharply to the left—and, to Bear and Dog’s amazement, actually tore through the blue sky itself, as if it were made of paper, and charged through into another sky, which was full of storm clouds. The Horse King and his prisoners followed the swarm through the gigantic rip into the Left-Hand World, and Bear and Dog saw for the first time the transformed version of Mount Knowledge, which they both immediately thought to be the loveliest of green hills, even though the sky was dark and menacing, and the moment so forlorn. At the summit of Knowledge was a flower-strewn meadow crowned by a fine, spreading ash tree. In spite of the tree’s beauty, however, its name was the Tree of Terror, and under its boughs stood Luka Khalifa with a red squirrel on his shoulder and the Ott Pot hanging from his neck, guarded by his captor, Anzu the Sumerian thunder demon, with his lion’s body and eagle’s wings, who looked as if he was only just managing to restrain himself from ripping the boy to bits with his enormous claws. The rest of the Fire Guards, many-headed Kerberos; Mimir, the head without a body; Fafnir, the superdragon; and Argus Panoptes of the hundred eyes, were also angrily at hand. And beside the great tree was a small, slender-columned marble temple, scarcely larger than a humble garden shed. Inside the temple was a light that glowed with an almost shocking intensity, filling the air around the temple with warmth, radiance, and a crackle of energy, even in the thunderous mood of that time of failure, captivity, and imminent judgment; and above the pillared entrance to the temple stood a golden ball, the Saving Point at this impossible Level’s End. “That’s the glow of the Fire of Life,” Dog, the bear, growled quietly to Bear, the dog. “What a simple home it has, at the end of such a grand journey; and how close we came, and how sad that we didn’t—” Bear, the dog, interrupted sharply. “Don’t say that,” he barked. “This isn’t over.” But in his heart he believed it was.
The trial began. “,” roared Ra the Supreme, who seemed to have taken charge of events.
“Maat!” the crowd of gods roared back—which is to say roared, or shouted, or chirped, or hissed, depending on the god in question.
“ ,” shouted Ra.
“Maat has been disrupted and must be restored,” echoed the divine mob.
“,” Ra bellowed.
“Therefore let Maat be done.”
“What’s Maat?” Luka asked Ratatat the squirrel.
“Ahem,” said Ratatat, raising her eyebrows and twitching her whiskers professorially. “It is a reference to the divine music of the Universe—oh, yes!—and the structure of the World, and the nature of Time, the most basic of all Forces, which to interfere with is a crime—”
“In short?” Luka requested.
“Oh,” said Ratatat, looking a little disappointed. “Well, then, in brief, Ra means that order has been disturbed, and justice must be done.”
Luka discovered all at once that he was feeling extremely annoyed. How dare this posse of has-beens judge him? Who were they to tell him he should not try to save his father’s life? This was the moment at which he saw his companions arriving on the scene, and the sight of his beloved dog and bear and the four loyal Changers under arrest increased his irritation. These supernatural pensioners had some nerve, he thought. He would have to show them what was what.
“,” cried Ra the Supreme, “ .”
“Do I have to translate all that?” said Ratatat reluctantly.
“Yes,” Luka insisted.
“Fortunately for you,” said Ratatat, sighing a little, “I have an excellent memory, and an obliging nature as well. Yo
u won’t like it, though. ‘Once and for all,’ ” she began, “ ‘members of the Real World must be shown that they are not permitted the use of the Fire of Life. It cannot revive the Dead, for they have entered the Book of the Dead and are no longer Beings, but only Words. But to the Dying it gives new life, and in the healthy it can induce great longevity, even Immortality, which belongs to the gods alone. The Fire of Life must not cross the boundary and enter the Real World, and yet here is a Fire Thief who plans precisely to take it across that forbidden frontier. An example must be made.’ ”
“Oh, is that so?” said Luka. A fire of his own making had risen in his breast, and blazed through his eyes. The strange inner force that had gripped him after Nobodaddy’s disappearance rose up again and gave him the strength he needed. “As it happens,” he realized, “I know exactly what to say.” Then he called out so loudly to the assembled ex-gods that they stopped roaring and hissing and chirping and whinnying and making all the other weird noises they habitually made, and fell silent, and listened.
“It’s my turn to speak now,” Luka hollered at the assembled Supernatural Beings, “and, believe you me, I have a lot to say about all this poppycock, and you had better listen closely, and listen well, because your future depends upon it as much as mine does. You see, I know something you don’t know about this World of Magic … it isn’t your World! It doesn’t even belong to the Aalim, whoever they are, wherever they are lurking right now. This is my father’s World. I’m sure there are other Magic Worlds dreamed up by other people, Wonderlands and Narnias and Middle-earths and whatnot—and I don’t know, maybe there are some such Worlds that dreamed themselves up, I suppose that’s possible, and I won’t argue with you if you say it is—but this one, gods and goddesses, ogres and bats, monsters and slimy things, is the World of Rashid Khalifa, the well-known Ocean of Notions, the fabulous Shah of Blah. From start to finish; Level One to Level Nine and back again; lock, stock, and barrel; from soup to nuts, it’s his.
“He put it together this way, he gave it shape and laws, and he brought all of you here to populate it, because he has learned about you, thought about you, and even dreamed about you all his life. The reason this World is the way it is, is because, Right-Handed or Left-Handed, Nobody’s World or the World of Nonsense, this is the World inside his head! And I know about it—probably that’s why I was able to stumble to the right and step to the left and get here—because I’ve been hearing about it every day of my life, as bedtime stories and breakfast sagas and dinner-table yarns, and as tall tales told to audiences all over the city of Kahani and the country of Alifbay, and also as little secrets he whispered into my ears, just for me. So in a way it’s now my World, too. And the plain truth is that if I don’t get the Fire of Life to him before it’s too late, he isn’t the only one who will come to an end. Everything here will vanish, too; I don’t know what will become of you all exactly but, at the very least, you won’t have this comfortable World to live in anymore, this place where you can go on pretending you matter when actually nobody gives a hoot. And in the worst-case scenario you will disappear completely—poof!—as if you had never been, because let’s be frank, how many people other than Rashid Khalifa are really bothering to keep your story going nowadays? How many people know anymore about the Salamander that lives in Fire, or the Squonk that is so sad about being ugly that it actually dissolves into tears?
“Wake up and smell the coffee, old-timers! You’re extinct! You’re deceased! As gods and wonderful creatures, you have ceased to be! You say the Fire of Life mustn’t cross into the Real World? I’m telling you that if it doesn’t reach one particular member of the Real World double-quick, you’re done for. Your golden eggs have been fried, and your magic goose is cooked.”
“Wow,” Ratatat, the squirrel, whispered into his ear, “you’ve certainly got their attention now.”
The entire army of discarded divinities had been shocked into amazed silence. Luka under the Tree of Terror knew that he mustn’t let anything break the spell. And besides, he had plenty more to say.
“Shall I tell you who you are now?” he shouted. “Well, first I’ll go on reminding you who you aren’t. You aren’t really the gods of anywhere or anyone anymore. You no longer have the power of life and death and salvation and damnation. You can’t turn into bulls and capture Earth girls, or interfere in wars, or play any of those other games you used to play. Look at you! Instead of real Powers, you have Beauty Contests. It’s a bit on the feeble side, to be honest with you. Listen to me: it’s only through Stories that you can get out into the Real World and have some sort of power again. When your story is well told, people believe in you; not in the way they used to believe, not in a worshiping way, but in the way people believe in stories—happily, excitedly, wishing they wouldn’t end. You want Immortality? It’s only my father, and people like him, who can give it to you now. My father can make people forget that they forgot all about you, and start adoring you all over again and being interested in what you’ve been getting up to and wishing that you wouldn’t end. And you’re trying to stop me? You should be begging me to finish the work I came here to do. You should be helping me. You should be putting the fire into my Ott Pot, making sure it lights up my Ott Potatoes, and then escorting me all the way home. Who am I? I’m Luka Khalifa. I’m the only chance you’ve got.”
It was the greatest speech of his life as a performer, delivered on the most important stage on which he had ever set foot; and he had used every ounce of skill and passion in his body, that was true—but had he carried his audience with him? “Maybe so,” he thought worriedly, “and maybe no.”
Bear, the dog, and Dog, the bear, still on the Horse King’s back, were shouting out supportively, yelling “That’s telling them!” and so on, but the silence of the gods grew so dense, so oppressive, that in the end even Bear held his tongue. That awful silence went on thickening, like a fog, and the dark skies grew darker until the only light Luka could see was the glow from the Fire Temple, and in that flickering radiance he saw the slow movements of giant shadows all around him, shadows that looked like they were closing in on the Tree of Terror and the boy who stood captive beneath it with a Sumerian thunder demon as his guard. Closer and closer the shadows came, forming themselves into a single giant fist that was closing around Luka, and would, any minute now, squeeze the life out of him like water from a sponge. “This is it, then,” he thought. “My speech didn’t work, they didn’t buy it, and so here’s an end to it all.” He wished he could hug his dog and his bear once more. He wished the people he loved were there to hold his hand. He wished he could wish himself out of this jam. He wished …
The Mountain of Knowledge began to shake violently, as if some invisible colossus were jumping up and down on its slopes. The trunk of the Tree of Terror cracked from top to bottom, and the Tree fell in ruins to the ground, its crashing branches narrowly missing Luka and the thunder demon. One falling branch struck Mimir the Head, and he unleashed an injured yelp. From among the ranks of the gods and monsters there were many more cries—of anguish, bewilderment, and fear. Then came the most terrifying events of all. There were instants, very brief, fractions of seconds, when everything completely disappeared, and Luka, Bear, and Dog—the three visitors from the Real World—remained suspended in an appalling, colorless, soundless, motionless, lawless, everything-less absence. Then the Magic World came back again, but a horrible realization began to dawn on everyone and everything there: the World of Magic was in trouble. Its deepest foundations were shaking, its geography was becoming uncertain, its very existence had begun to be an intermittent, on-off affair. What if the “off” moments started getting longer? What if they began to last longer than the “on” ones? What if the “on” moments, the periods of the World’s existence, diminished to split seconds, or even vanished entirely? What if everything the Fire Thief had just told them was the naked truth, in which they had until now refused to believe, clothed as they all were in the tatters of their o
ld divine glory and the remnants of their pride? Was this the bare, unvarnished reality: that their survival was tied to the ebbing life of a sick and dying man? These were the questions plaguing all the inhabitants of the Magic World, but in Luka’s panicked, racing mind there was a simpler, more horrifying query.
Was Rashid Khalifa about to die?
Anzu, the thunder demon, fell to its knees and began to plead with Luka in a soft, sad, piteous voice, “: .” Ratatat was so scared that her voice shook as she translated the Sumerian. “ ‘Save us, sir! Only, please, sir, we don’t want to be just fairy tales. We want to be revered again! We want to be … divine.’ ”
“Sir, huh?” Luka thought. “That’s a change of tone if ever I heard one.” Hope surged through his body, fighting against his despair; he rallied all his strength to make one last effort, and said with all the force he could command, “Take it or leave it, all of you. It’s the best offer you’re going to get.”
The darkness stopped closing in around him; the wrath of the gods wavered; overcome by their fear, it broke into pieces and dissipated completely, to be replaced by abject terror. The clouds of anger parted, the daylight returned, and everyone could see that the rip in the sky through which the god-swarm had poured had grown ten times as large as before; that there were actually cracks running across the heavens from horizon to horizon; and that the army of mythological figures was itself deteriorating—aging, cracking, fading, weakening, diminishing, and losing the ability to be. Aphrodite, Hathor, Venus, and the other Beauty Goddesses looked at the wrinkled skin on their hands and arms and shrieked, “Smash all the mirrors!” And the immense figure of the falcon-headed Egyptian Supreme Deity fell to its knees just like Anzu had, its body beginning to crumble like an ancient monument; and all the other gods followed Ra’s lead—or at least those of them who had knees. In a low, respectful, frightened voice, Ra the Supreme said, “.”