‘That’s too big a sacrifice,’ said Luka, overwhelmed by his dog’s loyalty and selfless courage. ‘I can’t ask you to make it.’
‘I’m not asking you to ask me,’ said Bear the dog.
‘That dog is a lot noisier than I recall,’ Rashid said. ‘Luka, can’t you quieten him down?’
‘An Immortality,’ said the Creature in the corner hungrily. ‘Mmm! Yes, yes! To swallow an Immortality! To suck it out of the Immortal and fill up with it, leaving the ex-Immortal behind in mortal form! Oh yes. That would be very sweet indeed.’
‘Ahem,’ said Dog the bear suddenly. ‘There is something I would like to confess.’ At that moment, Luka thought, Dog looked sheepish, not bearish at all. ‘You know that story I told you – about being a prince who could spin air into gold? And Bulbul Dev the bird-headed ogre, and so on?’
‘Of course I remember,’ Luka said.
‘See, husband, now the bear is growling, and the boy is talking to the bear,’ said Soraya helplessly. ‘These animals – and your son as well – are really getting to be impossible to control.’
‘It wasn’t true,’ admitted Dog the bear, hanging his head in shame. ‘The only thing I spun out of thin air was that yarn, that shaggy-dog story – or shaggy-bear story, maybe I should say. I just thought I ought to have a good story to tell. I thought it was expected of me at the time, especially after Bear here sang that song about himself. I made it up to make myself look good. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Luka. ‘This is a storyteller’s house. You should know what it’s like by now. Everybody here makes up stories all the time.’
‘That’s settled, then,’ said Bear the dog. ‘Only one of us has an immortal life to give up, and that one is me.’ And without waiting for any further discussion he ran to the corner where the Creature was crouching, and leapt; and Luka saw the Creature open a ghastly sort-of-mouth impossibly wide, and he saw Bear being swallowed up by that mouth; and then Bear was ejected again, looking the same, only different, and the Creature had become Bear-shaped too: No-Bear, instead of Nobodaddy. ‘Ohh,’ cried the Creature, ‘Ohh, ecstasy, ecstasy!’ And there was a sort of backwards flash, as if light were being sucked into a point instead of exploding out from a point, and the Bear-Creature imploded, whoommpppfff, and then it wasn’t there any more.
‘Woof,’ said Bear the dog, wagging his tail.
‘What do you mean, “woof”?’ Luka demanded. ‘Cat got your tongue?’
‘Growl,’ said Dog the bear.
‘Oh,’ said Luka, understanding. ‘The magic part really is over now, isn’t it? And from now on you’re just my ordinary dog and my ordinary bear, and I’m just ordinary me.’
‘Woof,’ said Bear the dog, and jumped up against Luka and licked his face. Luka hugged him tightly. ‘After what you just did,’ he said, ‘I’ll never let anybody think of dogs as bad-luck animals, because it was a lucky day for all of us when you became my dog.’
‘Will somebody please tell me what is going on?’ Soraya said faintly.
‘It’s okay, Mum,’ said Luka, hugging her as tightly as he could. ‘Calm down. Life is finally back to being ordinary again.’
‘There’s nothing ordinary about you,’ his mother answered, kissing the top of his head. ‘And, ordinary life? In this family, we know there’s no such thing.’
On the flat roof of the Khalifa house, that cool evening, a dinner table was set out under the stars – yes, the stars had come out again! – and a feast was eaten, a feast of delicious slowly roasted meat and quickly pan-fried vegetables, of sour pickles and sweetmeats and cold pomegranate juice and hot tea, but also of some rarer foods and drinks – happiness soup, curried excitement and great-relief ice cream. At the very centre of the table, in their little Ott Pot, were the remaining five Ott Potatoes, glowing softly with the Fire of Life. ‘So this other Soraya you became so fond of,’ said Soraya Khalifa to Luka, just a little too sweetly, ‘she said that if a healthy person eats one of these it can give them long life, and maybe even let them live for ever?’
Luka shook his head. ‘No, Mum,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t the Insultana of Ott who said that. It was Ra the Supreme.’
In spite of a life spent with the fabled Shah of Blah, Soraya Khalifa had never entirely liked this fanciful stuff, which she now had to put up with from both her sons as well as her storyteller husband. Tonight, though, she was making a real effort. ‘And this Ra…’ she began, and Luka finished the sentence for her, ‘… told me that personally, speaking in Hieroglyph, which was translated for me by a talking squirrel named Ratatat.’
‘Oh, never mind,’ said Soraya, giving up. ‘All’s well that ends well, and as for these so-called “Ott Potatoes”, I’ll just tuck them away in the pantry, and we can decide what to do with them on another day.’
Luka had just been wondering how it would be if he, his brother, his mother and his father could all live for ever. The idea struck him as more frightening than exciting. Maybe his dog Bear had been right, and it was better to do without Immortality, or even the possibility of it. Yes – maybe it would be better if Soraya hid the Ott Potatoes somewhere, so that all the Khalifas could slowly forget about their existence; and then maybe they, the Potatoes in their Pot, would finally get bored of waiting to be eaten, and would slip back across the Frontier into the World of Magic, and the Real World would be Real again, and life would be just that, life, and that would be more than enough.
The night sky was full of stars. ‘As we know,’ said Rashid Khalifa, ‘sometimes the stars start dancing, and then anything can happen. But some nights it’s good to see everything just staying put in its rightful place, so that we can all relax.’
‘Relax my foot,’ said Soraya. ‘The stars may not be dancing, but we’re certainly going to.’
She clapped her hands, and at once Dog the bear got up on his hind legs and began to stamp out the African Gumboot Dance, and Bear the dog jumped up and began to howl a Top Ten melody, and then the Khalifa family leapt to its feet and began to jig about energetically, and to join in the dog’s song as well. And we’ll leave them there, the rescued father, the loving mother, the older brother, and the young boy home from his great adventure, along with his lucky dog and his brotherly bear, up on the roof of their home on a cool night under the stationary, unchanging stars, singing and dancing.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Contents
Copyright
Also by Salman Rushdie
1 The Terrible Thing That Happened on the Beautiful Starry Night
2 Nobodaddy
3 The Left Bank of the River of Time
4 The Insultana of Ott
5 The Path to the Three Fiery Doughnuts
6 Into the Heart of Magic
7 The Fire of Life
8 The Race Against Time