‘Look at what’s happening around you,’ Luka shouted back. ‘Can’t you see it? The calamity of this whole World? Don’t you want to save it? That’s what I’m trying to do, and all you have to do is get out of my way and let me get home –’
‘It is of no consequence to us whether this World lives or dies,’ came the reply.
Luka was shocked. ‘You don’t care?’ he asked disbelievingly.
‘Compassion is not our affair,’ the Aalim replied. ‘The ages go by heartlessly whether people wish them to do so or not. All things must pass. Only Time itself endures. If this World ends, another will continue. Happiness, friendship, love, suffering, pain are fleeting illusions, like shadows on a wall. The seconds march forward into minutes, the minutes into days, the days into years, unfeelingly. There is no “care”. Only this knowledge is Wisdom. This wisdom alone is Knowledge.’
The seconds were indeed marching forward, and at home in Kahani Rashid Khalifa’s life was ebbing away. ‘The Aalim are my mortal enemies,’ he had said, and so they were. Passion rose up in Luka, and a scream of angry love burst out of him. ‘Then I curse you, just as I cursed Captain Aag!’ he yelled at the Three Jos. ‘He caged his animals, and treated them cruelly, and you’re exactly the same, to be honest with you. You think you have everyone in your cage and so you can ignore us and torment us and make us do what you want, and you don’t care about anything except yourselves. Well, curse you, all three of you! What are you, anyway? Jo-Hua, the Past has gone and will never return, and if it lives on, it’s only in our memories – and the memories of the Elephant Birds, of course – and it’s certainly not standing up there on the ramparts of this Cloud Fortress, wearing a stupid hood. As for you, Jo-Hai, the Present hardly exists, even a boy my age knows that. It vanishes into the Past every time I blink an eye, and nothing as, um, temporary as that has much power over me. And Jo-Aiga? The Future? Give me a break. The Future is a dream, and nobody knows how it will turn out. The only sure thing is that we – Bear, Dog, my family, my friends and – we will make it whatever it is, good or bad, happy or sad, and we certainly don’t need you to tell us what it is. Time isn’t a trap, you phoneys. It’s just the road I’m on, and I’m in a real hurry right now, so get out of my way. Everyone here has been scared of you for too long. May they lose their fear and – and – and put you on ice for a change. Stop bothering me now. I – I snap my fingers at you.’
So there it was. He had defied Time’s power, just as his mother (and, later, his father) had said he could, and all he had at the end of it was his recently acquired ability to snap his fingers loudly. It wasn’t much of a weapon, really. But it was interesting, wasn’t it, that the Aalim had been stopped in their tracks by his curse, and that they had put their heads together and were muttering and murmuring – it seemed to Luka – helplessly? Was that possible? Might it be that they were powerless against Luka Khalifa’s famous Cursing Power? Could it be that they knew that he was one of the Particular Children who would not be the victims of Time? If this was Rashid Khalifa’s Magic World, then were the Aalim his creation, too, and therefore subject to his laws? Very deliberately, like a sorcerer casting a spell, Luka lifted his left hand high above his head and snapped his fingers with all his might.
Right on cue, the encircling Cloud Fortress of Baadal-Garh began to shake like cheap theatre scenery, and, as the prisoners on the flying carpet watched in astonishment, large sections of the crenellated walls of that aerial jail began to crack and fall. ‘It’s under attack from the outside!’ Luka yelled, and everyone on the flying carpet began to cheer as the Aalim disappeared from view to face the unexpected assault. ‘Who is it?’ Soraya asked, gathering her strength and looking extremely embarrassed about her moment of weakness. ‘Is it the Otter Air Force? If so, they’re on a suicide mission, I’m afraid.’ The naked Titan shook his head, and a slow grin spread over his huge face. ‘It’s not the Otters,’ he said. ‘The gods are revolting.’
‘Well, on the whole we agree about what the gods are like,’ said the Elephant Birds, ‘but there’s no need to be rude.’
‘I mean,’ said the Old Boy with a sigh, ‘that the gods have risen in revolt.’
And so they had. Looking back on these events later in his life, Luka was never sure if the Revolt of the Gods had been provoked by his speech under the Tree of Torment, when he had tried to persuade the forgotten deities that their survival depended on his father’s; or if it had been conjured up by his Curse, whose purpose had been to break the stranglehold of the Aalim over the affairs of both Worlds, the Real and the Magical; or if the retired immortals had decided that enough was enough, and Luka and his friends had just been around at the right time to witness the consequences. Whatever the reason, the hornet-swarm of the ex-gods of the Heart of Magic flew through the rip in the sky and descended in wrath upon the Cloud Fortress of Baadal-Garh. Bast the Cat Goddess of Egypt, Hadadu the Akkadian Thunder God, Gong Gong the Flood God of China whose head was so strong that it could crack the Pillar of Heaven, Nyx the Greek Night Goddess, the savage Nordic Fenris Wolf, Quetzalcoatl the Plumed Serpent of Mexico, and assorted Demons, Valkyries, Rakshasas and Goblins could be seen alongside the big fellows – Ra, Zeus, Tlaloc, Odin, Anzu, Vulcan and the rest – burning the Cloud Fortress, hurling tsunamis against its wall, blasting it with lightning, headbutting it, and, in the case of Aphrodite and the other Beauty goddesses, complaining loudly about the Ravages of Time on their complexions, their figures and their hair.
If there had been a force field protecting the Cloud Fortress, the Assault of Magic1 had been too much for it. And as the collected might of all the former deities demolished the Aalim’s stronghold, and a loud, strange, screechy, miaowing sound was heard, Luka shouted at Soraya, ‘This is our chance!’ and at once the flying carpet rose high into the sky and bore its passengers away at speed.
The getaway wasn’t easy. The Aalim were making their last stand; their day was ending, but they still had some loyal servants to call on. Soraya had only just set a course for the Bund, the embankment on the River Silsila where Luka would have to leap back into the Real World, when a squadron of bizarre one-legged birds, the fabled Shang Yang, or Rainbirds of China, assaulted the flying carpet from above. The Shang Yang carried whole rivers in their beaks and poured them over the Resham in an attempt to extinguish the Fire burning in the Ott Pot around Luka’s neck. The carpet lurched sideways and plunged downwards under the weight of the falling avalanches of water; but then, showing remarkable powers of recovery, it straightened itself out and flew onwards. The assault of the Rainbirds continued; five, six, seven times the floods fell from the sky, and the carpet’s passengers fell over, collided with one another, and rolled dangerously near the edges of the carpet. Still the defensive bubble held firm. At last the Shang Yang’s water supply ran dry and they flapped bad-temperedly away. ‘Yes, it’s good to have resisted this attack, but it’s not the end of the trouble,’ Soraya warned the cheering Luka. ‘The Aalim have made one more desperate effort to prevent the Fire of Life from crossing over into the Real World. You heard that dreadful, piteous miaowing sound that filled the air as we left the Cloud Fortress? That was the Aalim playing their final card. I’m sorry to tell you that that noise was the Summons that unleashes the deadly Rain Cats.’