Luka looked at his front door, and saw, standing on the doorstep, glistening in the day’s first light, a large golden orb: the Saving Point for the end of Level Nine, the end of the ‘game’ that hadn’t been a game at all but, as Nobodaddy had said, a matter of life and death. ‘Come on,’ he shouted to Dog and Bear, ‘let’s go home.’ He ran towards the Saving Point and just as he reached it he stumbled, as he had known he would; he managed to kick the point with his left leg as he lurched awkwardly to his right; he heard, for the last time, the tell tale ding that confirmed his achievement; he saw all the numbers vanish from his field of vision; he felt oddly giddy for a moment; then he regained his balance, and saw that the golden orb had vanished, and the colours of the world had returned to normal. He understood that he had left the World of Magic behind, and was back where he needed to be. ‘And it looks like the same exact time it was when I left,’ he marvelled. ‘So all of that never happened, except, of course, that it did.’ The Ott Pot was still hanging from his neck, and he could feel its warmth on his chest. He took a deep breath and ran indoors and up the stairs as fast as he could run, and Bear the dog and Dog the bear came too.
The sweet smells of home welcomed him back: his mother’s perfume, the thousand and one mysteries of the kitchen, the freshness of clean sheets, the accumulated fragrances of everything that had happened between those walls during all the years of his life, and the older, more obscure scents that had hung in the air since before he was born. And at the top of the stairs was his brother Haroun, with a strange expression on his face. ‘You’ve been somewhere, haven’t you?’ Haroun said. ‘You’ve been up to something. I can see it on your face.’ Luka charged past him, saying, ‘I don’t have time to explain it right now, to be honest with you,’ and Haroun turned and ran after him. ‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘You’ve had your adventure! So come on, out with it! And by the way, what’s that hanging from your neck?’ Luka ran on without replying, and Bear the dog and Dog the bear pushed their way past Haroun as Luka rushed into his father’s bedroom. They had been part of the adventure, too, and they didn’t intend to miss the final scene.
Rashid Khalifa lay in his bed, Asleep with his mouth open, just as he had been when Luka had last seen him, and the tubes were still running into his arm, and the monitor by his bedside showed that his heart was still beating, but very, very faintly. He looked happy, though, he still looked happy, as if he were being told a story that he loved. And by his bedside stood Luka’s mother Soraya, with her fingers fluttering at her lips, and Luka understood, the moment he ran into the room and saw her, that she was about to kiss her fingertips and then touch Rashid’s mouth, because she was saying goodbye.
‘What on earth are you doing, running in here like a crazy person?’ Soraya cried, and then Bear the dog, Dog the bear and Haroun charged in as well. ‘Stop it, all of you,’ she demanded. ‘What is this? A playground? A circus? What?’
‘Please, Mum,’ Luka begged, ‘there’s no time to explain – please just let me do what I have to do.’ And without waiting for his mother’s reply, he popped an Ott Potato, glowing with the Fire of Life, into his father’s open mouth, where, to his amazement, it dissolved instantly. Luka, staring fiercely through his father’s lips, saw little tongues of fire dive down into Rashid’s insides; and then they were gone, and for an instant nothing happened, and Luka’s heart sank. ‘Aah,’ his mother was complaining, ‘what on earth have you done, you silly boy …?’ But then the scolding words died on her lips because she, and everyone else in the room, saw the colour return to Rashid’s face; after which a glow of health spread across his cheeks, almost as if he were blushing with embarrassment; and the monitor by the bedside began to drum out a firm, regular heartbeat.
Rashid’s hands began to move. His right hand darted out without warning and started tickling Luka, and Soraya gasped to see it, half with delight at the miracle of it, half with something like fear. ‘Stop tickling me, Dad,’ Luka said joyfully, and Rashid Khalifa said without opening his eyes, ‘I’m not tickling you – Nobody is,’ and then he turned over on his side to attack Luka with his left hand as well. ‘You are, you are tickling me,’ Luka laughed, and Rashid Khalifa, opening his eyes, and grinning widely, said innocently, ‘Me? Tickling you? No, no. That’s just Nonsense.’
Rashid sat up, stretched, yawned, and gave Luka a funny, inquisitive look. ‘I’ve been having the strangest dream about you,’ he said. ‘Let me see if I can remember it. You went adventuring in the World of Magic, I think that was it, and the whole place was falling apart. Hmm, and there were Elephant Birds, and Respecto-Rats, and a real, honest-to-goodness Flying Carpet, and then there was the little matter of becoming a Fire Thief and stealing the Fire of Life. You wouldn’t by any chance know anything about that dream, young Luka? You wouldn’t by some unlikely chance be able to fill in the blanks?’
‘Maybe so and maybe no,’ said Luka shyly, ‘but you should know already, Dad, because, to be honest with you, it felt like you were right there with me all the time, advising me and filling me in, and I’d have been lost without you.’
‘That makes two of us, then,’ said the Shah of Blah, ‘because I’d be lost right now if it wasn’t for your little exploit, that’s for sure. Or, your not-so-little exploit. Or, in fact, your super-colossal ultra-exploit. Not that I want you to grow a big head or anything. But the Fire of Life. Really. Quite a feat. Hmm, hmm. Ott Potatoes, is it? And could that thing hanging from your neck in fact be an actual Ott Pot?’
‘I don’t know what you two are talking about,’ said Soraya Khalifa contentedly, ‘but it’s good to hear the old rubbish being spoken in this house again.’
That wasn’t the end of the story, however. Just as Luka was relaxing, certain that his job was done at last, he heard an unpleasant bubbling noise welling up from a corner of his father’s bedroom and there, to his horror, was a Creature he thought he had seen for the last time when the Old Boy hurled him out into the deeps of space. It wasn’t wearing a vermilion bush shirt or a panama hat any more; it was colourless and faceless, because Rashid Khalifa had gone back into himself, and though this vile death-thing was plainly trying to gather itself into some sort of human shape, it succeeded only in looking twisted and hideous and sort of sticky, as if it were made out of glue. ‘You dont’ get rid of me as easily as that,’ it hissed. ‘You know why. Somebody has to die. I told you at the beginning there was a catch, and that’s it. Once I’ve been called into being, I don’t leave until I’ve swallowed a life. No arguments, okay? Somebody has to die.’
‘Go away,’ Luka shouted. ‘You lost. My father’s fine now. Just bubble off to wherever it is you go.’
Rashid, Soraya and Haroun looked at him in amazement. ‘Who are you talking to?’ Haroun asked. ‘There’s nothing in that corner, you know.’ But Bear the dog and Dog the bear could see the Creature all right, and before Luka could say any more it was Bear who interrupted. ‘How about,’ he asked the Creature, ‘if an immortal being gives up his Immortality?’
‘Why is Bear barking like that?’ Soraya asked, bewildered. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening.’
‘Remember?’ Bear asked Luka urgently. ‘I am Barak of the It-Barak, a thousand years old and more? Turned into a dog by a Chinese curse? You didn’t like it much when I told you that, because you wanted me to be your dog and nothing else. Well, now that’s all I want to be, too. After a thousand years, that’s it. To hell with the past! And who wants to live for another thousand years? Enough of all that! I just want to be your dog, Bear.’