“What did he say?” Luka asked Ratatat, who had started jumping up and down on his shoulder, squeaking loudly.
“He says they’ll take it—your offer, that is,” squeaked Ratatat, in a voice that was simultaneously relieved and terrified. “You can take the Fire now. Hurry! What are you waiting for? Save your father! Save us all! Don’t just stand there! Move!”
Shadows rushed across the sky above their heads. “Well, will you look at that!” said the welcome voice of the Insultana of Ott. “I thought I was leading my loyal Otter Air Force on a doomed-but-gallant rescue attempt of an incompetent but oddly likable young fellow, because, in spite of your foolhardiness, in the final analysis I couldn’t stand by and leave you to your fate with only my Honorary Otter Ratatat to represent me; but I see—to my considerable surprise, considering what a foolish boy you are—that you have managed pretty well on your own.” There in the newly cloud-free, but also decaying, sky above the Mountain of Knowledge was the entire OAF on its flying carpets, with quantities of rotten vegetables and itching-powder paper planes at the ready, and Queen Soraya at their head aboard Resham, the Flying Carpet of King Solomon the Wise, along with Coyote, the decoy runner, the Elephant Birds (“We came, too!” they shouted down. “We don’t just want to remember stuff! We want to do stuff, too!”), and a male stranger of great age and improbable size who was also completely naked, with a heavily scarred midriff.…
Luka didn’t have time to reply to anyone, or to ask who the naked stranger was, or even to embrace Bear and Dog, who had jumped off the Horse King’s back and rushed to his side. “I have to get to the Fire,” he cried. “Every second counts.” Bear, the dog, reacted at once, and charged at breakneck speed into the Fire Temple, to return a few seconds later with a burning wooden brand between his teeth, ablaze with the brightest, most cheerful, most attractive, most hopeful fire Luka had ever seen; and Dog, the bear, climbed the columns of the Fire Temple and, with one great paw, hammered the golden ball over the entrance as hard as he could. Luka heard the telltale little ding, saw the number in the top right-hand corner of his field of vision click up to 8, grabbed the burning wood from Bear’s jaws, and plunged it into the Ott Pot, whereupon the little Ott Potatoes began to burn with the same heartwarming, optimistic cheeriness as the stick.
“Let’s go!” yelled Luka, hanging the Pot around his neck again. Its warmth felt comforting; and Soraya swooped down to allow Luka, Bear, and Dog to leap up onto King Solomon’s Carpet. “No faster mode of transport in the whole Magic World,” she cried. “Say your farewells and let’s be on our way.” Then Nuthog and her sisters and the squirrel Ratatat shouted, “No time for that! Good-bye! Good luck! Go!” And so they did. Soraya’s Carpet hurtled back through the rip in the sky. “You came in from the Right-Hand World, so that’s the way you’ll have to go back out,” she told him. The rest of the Otter Air Force followed, but the Carpet of King Solomon was flying at its very fastest, and the others were soon left behind.
“Don’t you worry,” said Soraya in her most determinedly cheerful voice. “I’ll get you back in time. After all, it turns out that you have our whole World to save as well as your dad.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Race Against Time
THE SKY WAS FALLING. They were flying through the hole in the sky, and parts of the heavens were dropping off and crashing down onto the Heart of Magic below. Luka (once again wrapped up for warmth in Soraya’s charmed shawl) could not feel the wind inside the defensive bubble Soraya had erected around the Flying Carpet, but he could see its effects on the world below. Whole trees had been uprooted and went flying through the air as if they had been blown off a huge dandelion clock; fierce leather-winged dragons were being tossed hither and yon like children’s toys; and the Gossamer Net Heaven, the most fragile area of the Heart of Magic, made up of fifty-five layers of glistening webs, had been torn to shreds. The “Great Pure Realm,” the legendary Library of Lingpao T’ien-tsun, which had survived for thousands of years in the Gossamer Net, was no more. Its ancient volumes were borne aloft, their torn pages fluttering like wings. “The Winds of Change are blowing,” cried the Elephant Drake, and the Elephant Duck mourned, “Our little knowledge counts for nothing when you compare it to the wisdom that is being destroyed today.” It was almost impossible for Luka to hear what they were saying because there was a screaming in the wind that seemed, well, alive. It was Coyote, his hair standing on end, who explained that the Wind Shriekers are loose, an when they get to shriekin, why the whole of creation is fit to come apart at the seam. Luka decided he didn’t want to ask who or what the Wind Shriekers might be.
Luka, along with Coyote, the Elephant Birds, Bear, the dog, and Dog, the bear, sat tensely near the leading edge of the Flying Carpet, watching the turbulent World flash past. Behind them, at the carpet’s center, Soraya stood with her eyes closed and her arms outstretched, forcing Resham to achieve speeds it had never touched before; and behind her, with his hands on her shoulders, lending her his strength, knelt the gigantic old naked man whom Luka had never met. It’s him, Coyote hissed into Luka’s ear. The Old Boy. First an greatest. Heard bout your run an came out to lend a hand. The Old Boy. After all this time. It’s a fine thing, kid. It honors us all.
They flew out of the Heart of Magic and the Forking Paths were below them, their waters boiling, leaping into the air to form hanging walls of liquid, then falling back again in floods. “So this is Level Nine,” Luka heard himself saying, and Soraya answered grimly, “No, this is the End of the World.”
The Inescapable Whirlpool and the El Tiempo time-trap were swirling around faster and faster, sucking material into their mouths with ever greater force, and Soraya had to take the Flying Carpet dangerously high, sixty-one miles above the Earth’s surface, less than a mile from the Kármán line, but there was still a moment when Soraya had to take the Flying Carpet dangerously high, sixty-one miles above the Earth’s surface, less than a mile from the Kármán line, but there was still a moment when Soraya had to take the Flying Carpet dangerously high, sixty-one miles above the Earth’s surface, less than a mile from the Kármán line, but there was still a moment when Soraya had to take the Flying Carpet dangerously high, sixty-one miles above the Earth’s surface, less than a mile from the Kármán line, but there was still a moment when—They were almost trapped, and then they broke free and flew like a missile from a boy’s slingshot in a direction which Soraya was unable to control. The Flying Carpet was spinning around and around like a coin, and its passengers clung to one another for dear life. Luka didn’t notice the Great Stagnation below them, and then they were at the Mists of Time. The Mists were in trouble, too: large holes and tears had appeared in that formerly impenetrable wall of gray. Inside the Mists the Carpet was still spinning, and the Memory Birds wept with the fear of Oblivion, and Coyote howled, and things could have become unbearable if the “Old Boy,” the Titan Prometheus, had not risen to his feet and spoken for the first time, using words of Power. “Khulo!” he roared at the swirling fog of nothingness. “I did not escape the Bird of Zeus to perish in a fog! Dafa ho! Begone, foul Curtain, and let us be on our way.” And at once the Flying Carpet emerged from the Mists, and Luka could see where they were.
It was not a cheerful sight. They had been blown far away from the River. The City of Dreams was below them now, and as Soraya fought to steer the Flying Carpet in the right direction, Luka could see the towers of the Dream City toppling like card palaces, its homes lying in roofless ruin, and he saw, too, many of the unhoused Dreams, which flourished only behind drawn curtains in comfortable darkness, staggering into the bright streets to collapse and wither in the light. Nightmares galloped blindly down the City’s roads, and only a few citizens seemed unaffected; but even these were wandering about vaguely, not paying attention to the chaos around them, as if they lived in worlds of their own. “Those must be Daydreams,” Luka guessed.
The collapse of the World of Magic terrified him, because it could only mean
that Rashid Khalifa’s life was sliding down its last slope, and so, while Luka watched in horror the crumbling of the fields and farms of the Land of Lost Childhood, while he saw the smoke rising from the forest fires burning on the Blue Remembered Hills, while he witnessed the collapse of the City of Hope, all he could think was, “Get me back in time, please don’t let me be too late, just get me back in time.”
Then he saw the Cloud Fortress of Baadal-Garh heading toward them at high speed, its massive fortifications intact, the Cloud upon which it stood boiling and bubbling like a sped-up film of itself, and with a sinking heart he understood that his final battle still lay ahead. His left hand clutched at the Ott Pot hanging around his neck, and its warmth gave him a little strength. He crawled on all fours along the Flying Carpet until he reached Soraya—it was impossible to walk on that rippling, zooming, wind-tossed rug—and he asked, already knowing the answers, “Who is in charge of that Fortress? Do they mean us any harm?” Soraya’s face and body were filled with tension. “I wish we hadn’t outrun the Otter Air Force,” she said, almost to herself. “But, anyway, they wouldn’t have been much use against this enemy.” Then she turned sadly to Luka and answered him. “In my heart of hearts I knew this would happen,” she said. “I didn’t know where or how or when, but I knew they would not stand back. It is the Aalim, Luka—the Guardians of the Fire, the lords of Time: Jo-Hua, Jo-Hai, Jo-Aiga. A harsher Trinity you never will see. And with them, just as I suspected, there is a traitor and a turncoat. Look, there upon the battlement. That vermilion bush shirt. That battered Panama hat. There is the scoundrel, among the ranks of your deadliest foes.”
Yes, it was Nobodaddy, no longer a transparent specter, but looking as solid as any man. Rage and misery wrestled with each other in Luka’s heart, but he fought them both back. This was a situation for calm minds. The Fortress City of Baadal-Garh was upon them, and as it neared, it grew. The Cloud upon which it stood spread around the Flying Carpet of King Solomon the Wise, and as it encircled them, so did the Fortress’s lengthening walls. They were in a prison in the sky, Luka realized, and even though the air above them was clear he was sure that some unseen barrier would block their way if they attempted to escape. They were the prisoners of Time, and the Flying Carpet came to a halt right below the battlement where the creature Luka had known as Nobodaddy stood, looking down at them with scorn.
“Look at me,” he said. “As you see, you are already too late.”
Luka had to fight for self-control then, but he managed to shout back, “That can’t be true, otherwise you’d no longer be around, would you? If you were telling the truth about what happens when your work is done then you’d have done that opposite-of-the-Bang thing, you’d—whatever you called it—‘un-become,’ and you told me you didn’t want to do that …”
“Un-Be,” Nobodaddy corrected him. “You should know the terminology by now. Oh, and when I said I didn’t want to do that? I lied. Why would any creature not want to do the thing it was created for? If you’re born to dance, you dance. If you’re born to sing, you don’t sit around keeping your mouth shut. And if you come into being in order to eat a man’s life, then finishing the job and Un-Being after it’s done is the supreme achievement, the absolutely satisfying climax. Yes! A thing of ecstasy.”
“It sounds like you’re in love with death, to be honest with you,” said Luka, and then understood the meaning of what he’d said.
“Quite,” said Nobodaddy. “Now you get it. I do confess to a measure of self-love. And that is not a noble quality, I readily concede the point. But, I repeat: ecstasy. All the more so in a case like this one. Your father has fought me with all his might, I should tell you. My compliments to him. He clearly feels he has powerful reasons to stay alive, and maybe you are one of those reasons. But I have my hand on his throat now. And you are right: when I said you were too late, I lied again. Look.”
He held up his right hand, and Luka could see that half of the middle finger was missing. “That’s all the life he has left,” said Nobodaddy. “And while we’re talking, he’s emptying out, and I am filling up. Who knows? Maybe you’ll still be around to witness the great event. You can certainly forget about getting home in time to save him, even if you do have the Fire of Life in that Ott Pot around your neck. Congratulations on getting that far, by the way. Level Eight! Quite an achievement. But now, let’s not forget, Time is on my side.”
“You turned out to be a nasty piece of work, and no mistake,” said Luka. “What a fool I was to be taken in by you.”
Nobodaddy laughed a cold laugh. “Ah, but if you hadn’t gone along with me, there would have been none of this fun,” he said. “You’ve made the wait so much more enjoyable. I really have to thank you for that.”
“It’s all been just a game to you!” Luka shouted, but Nobodaddy wagged the half-finger at him. “No, no,” he said reprovingly. “Never just a game. It’s a matter of life and death.”
Dog, the bear, stood up on his hind legs and growled, “I can’t stand this fellow anymore. Let me at him.” But Nobodaddy was out of Dog’s reach up there on his rampart, and there seemed to be no way up. Then, in his deep, deep voice, the Titan spoke, the scarred Old Boy himself. “Leave him to me,” he said, and got up from his kneeling position behind Soraya; and rose; and rose; and rose. When a Titan grows to his full size, the universe trembles. (The universe also tries to look away, because nakedness enlarged in this way is much, much bigger than regular-sized nakedness, and harder to ignore.) Long ago, the Old Boy’s uncle had risen up like this and destroyed the sky itself. After that, the battle of the Greek gods against the Twelve Titans had shaken the Earth as the colossi fought and fell. The Old Boy, a veteran and hero of that war, scorning clothes as Greek Heroes and Ancients always had, rose up and grew so big that Soraya had to hurry to enlarge the Flying Carpet to its maximum size, before they were all pushed off it by the Old Boy’s enlarging feet. Luka was pleased to note the look of fear on Nobodaddy’s face as the Titan reached out an enormous left hand, grabbed him, and held him fast. “Let me go,” squealed Nobodaddy—his voice was sounding inhuman now, Luka thought. It was goblinish, demonic, and, at this precise moment, it was shriekingly scared.
“Unhand me,” shrieked Nobodaddy. “You have no right to do this!”
The Old Boy grinned a grin the size of a stadium. “Ah, but I have a left,” he said, “and we left-handers stick together, you know.”
With that, he drew back his hand as far as it would go, with Nobodaddy kicking and squeaking in his grip, and then he hurled that dreadful, deceiving, life-sucking creature far, far away, up into the sky, howling all the way to the edge of the atmosphere and then out beyond the Kármán line, where the world ended and the blackness of outer space began.
“We’re still trapped,” Dog, the bear, pointed out grouchily, because he felt a little upstaged by the Titan’s titanic effort. Then, too loudly, and in too challenging a manner, he added, “Where are these Aalim, anyway? Let them show themselves, unless they’re too scared to face us.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” said Soraya hurriedly, but it was too late.
“It is not known,” said Rashid Khalifa, “if the Aalim have actual physical form. Perhaps they do have bodies, or perhaps they can simply take on bodily shapes when they need to, and at other times they are disembodied entities, spreading out through space—because Time is everywhere, after all; there’s nowhere that doesn’t have its Yesterdays, that doesn’t live in a Today, that doesn’t hope for a good Tomorrow. Anyway, the Aalim are known for their extreme reluctance to appear in public, preferring to work in silence and behind the scenes. When they have been glimpsed, they have always been hidden inside hooded cloaks, like monks. Nobody has ever seen their faces, and everyone is afraid of their passing—except for a few particular children …”
“A few particular children,” Luka said aloud, remembering, “who can defy Time’s power just by being born, and make us all young again.” It had been his mo
ther who had said that first, or something very like it—he knew this because she had made a point of telling him so—but soon enough the idea became a part of Rashid’s inexhaustible storehouse of tall stories. “Yes,” he admitted to Luka with a shameless grin, “I stole that from your ma. Don’t forget: if you’re going to be a thief, steal the good stuff.”
“Well,” thought Luka the Thief of the Fire of Life, “I acted on your advice, Dad, and look what I stole, and you see where it’s got me now.”
The three hooded figures standing on the battlements of the Cloud Fortress of Baadal-Garh were neither large nor imposing. Their faces were invisible and their arms were crossed, as if they were cradling babies. They said nothing, but they didn’t need to. It was plain from the expression on Soraya’s face, and from Coyote’s cringing whine (Madre de Dios, if I warnt on a carpet in the sky right now I’d jus make a run for it an take my chances), and the quivering of the Elephant Birds (“Okay, maybe we don’t want to do stuff after all! Maybe we just want to live, and remember stuff, like we’re supposed to!”), that their mere appearance struck terror into the people of the Magic World. Even the grizzled Old Boy, the great Titan himself, was fidgeting nervously. Luka knew that they were all thinking fearfully about Sniffelheim, about being imprisoned forever in solid blocks of ice. Or possibly they were worrying about liver-eating birds. “Hmm,” he thought, “it looks like our Magic Friends aren’t going to be much use in this situation. It’s up to the Real World team to pull this off somehow.”
Then the Aalim spoke, in unison, three low, unearthly voices whose triple coldness felt steely, like three invincible swords. Even courageous Soraya quailed at the sound. “I never thought I would be forced to hear the Voices of Time,” she cried, and put her hands over her ears. “Oh, oh! It’s unbearable! I can’t stand it!” and she fell to her knees in pain. The other magic beings were similarly distressed and writhed around on the Flying Carpet in evident agony, except for the Old Boy, whose tolerance for pain was obviously very great after that eternity at the mercy of the liver-munching Bird of Zeus. Dog, the bear, looked unimpressed, however, and Bear, the dog, whose hackles were up, bared his teeth in an angry snarl.