Haroun and the Sea of Stories Read online

  ‘Never doubted you for a moment,’ replied Butt the Hoopoe without moving its beak. ‘Move the whole Moon by will-power? Mister, I thought, no problem.’

  Extraordinary things had begun to happen around them. The Chupwala searchers, racing towards Haroun on their dark sea-horses, began to shriek and hiss as the sunlight hit them; and then both Chupwalas and horses grew fuzzy at the edges, and began, as it seemed, to melt … into the poisoned, lethally acid Ocean they sank, turning into ordinary shadows, and then sizzling away altogether …‘Look,’ yelled Haroun. ‘Look what’s happening to the ship!’

  The sunlight had undone the black magic of the Cultmaster Khattam-Shud. Shadows could not remain solid in that brightness; and the huge ship itself had started to melt, had started losing its shape, as if it were a mountain of ice-cream left out in the sun by mistake.

  ‘Iff! Mali!’ shouted Haroun, and in spite of Butt’s warnings he rushed up the gangway (which was becoming softer by the minute) towards the heaving deck.

  ~ ~ ~

  By the time he reached the deck it was so sticky-soft that Haroun felt he was walking through fresh tar, or perhaps glue. Chupwala soldiers were screeching and rushing about madly, dissolving before Haroun’s eyes into pools of shadow, and then vanishing altogether, because once the sorcery of Khattam-Shud had been destroyed by the sunlight, no shadow could survive without someone or something to be attached to, to be the shadow of. The Cultmaster, or to be precise his Shadow-Self, was nowhere to be seen.

  Poison was evaporating from the cauldrons on deck; the cauldrons themselves were growing flabby and melting like dark butter. Even the gigantic crane, to which the Plug was attached by huge chains, was tilting and lolling in the shocking light of day.

  The Water Genie and the Floating Gardener had been suspended over two of the poison-cauldrons by ropes which had been looped around their middles and then fastened to the smaller cranes that stood by each of the poison tanks. Just as Haroun spotted them, the ropes broke (they were woven out of shadows, too); and Iff and Mali plunged out of sight into the evil cauldrons. Haroun gave an anguished cry.

  But the poison in the cauldrons had been boiled dry by the sun; and the cauldrons themselves had grown so soft that, as Haroun watched, Iff and Mali pulled away great sections with their bare hands, creating holes huge enough for them to step through. The cauldrons had been reduced to the consistency of melting cheese; and so had the deck itself. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Haroun suggested. The others followed him down the melting, rubbery gangway; Iff and Haroun leapt aboard Butt the Hoopoe, and Mali stepped on to the water beside them.

  ‘Mission accomplished,’ cried Haroun, joyfully. ‘Hoopoe, full speed ahead!’

  ‘Varoom,’ agreed Butt the Hoopoe without moving its beak. It began moving rapidly away from the Dark Ship, towards the channel which Mali had cut in the weed-jungle; and then there was an unhealthy-sounding noise, and a slight smell of burning from the Hoopoe’s brain-cavity, and they came to a halt.

  ‘He’s blown a fuse,’ Iff pointed out. Haroun was mortified. ‘I guess I didn’t make the right connections after all,’ he said. ‘And I thought I’d been so good; now he’s ruined, he’ll never work again!’

  ‘The great thing about a mechanical brain,’ Iff consoled him, ‘is that it can be fixed up, overhauled, even replaced. There’s always a spare at the Service Station in Gup City. If we could get the Hoopoe back there, it would be as right as rain, hunky-dory, first class.’

  ‘If we could get any of us back to anywhere,’ Haroun said. They were adrift in the Old Zone, with no prospect of help. After everything they had been through, Haroun thought, it just didn’t seem fair.

  ‘I’ll push for a while,’ Mali offered, and had just begun to do so when, with a strange, sad, sucking sound, the Dark Ship of Cultmaster Khattam-Shud finally melted right away. And the Plug, incomplete as it was, fell harmlessly on to the ocean-bed, leaving the Source of Stories entirely unblocked-up. Fresh stories would go on pouring out of it, and so, one day, the Ocean would be clean again, and all the stories, even the oldest ones, would taste as good as new.

  ~ ~ ~

  Mali could push them no further; he fell across the Hoopoe’s back, exhausted. It was mid-afternoon now (the Moon Kahani had settled down to a ‘normal’ speed of rotation), and they drifted across the Southern Polar Ocean, not knowing what to do next.

  Just then there was a bubbling and a frothing in the water beside them; and Haroun recognized, with immense relief, the many smiling mouths of the Plentimaw Fishes.

  ‘Goopy! Bagha!’ he greeted them happily. They replied:

  ‘Have no worries! Have no fear!’

  ‘We’ll soon get you out of here!’

  ‘You’ve done enough! Throw down the reins!’

  ‘We’ll soon have you safe again!’

  So Bagha and Goopy, taking the reins of Butt the Hoopoe in their mouths, towed the companions out of the Old Zone. ‘I wonder what became of Khattam-Shud,’ Haroun finally said. Iff gave a contented shrug. ‘Done for; I can vouch for that,’ he said. ‘No escape for the Cultmaster. He melted away like the rest of them. It’s curtains for him, he’s history, goodnight Charlie. I.e.: he’s khattam-shud.’

  ‘This was only the Shadow-Self, remember,’ Haroun pointed out soberly. ‘The other Cultmaster, the “real” one, is probably battling it out right now with General Kitab and the Pages, and Mudra, and my father—and Blabbermouth.’ Blabbermouth, he thought privately. I wonder if she missed me, just a little bit?

  What had been the Twilight Strip was now bathed in the last light of the sun. ‘From now on, Kahani will be a sensible Moon,’ Haroun thought, ‘with sensible days and nights.’ In the distance, to the north-east, he saw, lit up by the evening sun for the first time in many an age, the coastline of the Land of Chup.

  Chapter 11

  Princess Batcheat

  Now I must tell you quickly about everything that happened while Haroun was away in the Old Zone: Princess Batcheat Chattergy, you will remember, was being held prisoner in the topmost room of the topmost tower of the Citadel of Chup, the huge castle built entirely of black ice, which loomed over Chup City like an enormous Pterodactyl or Archaeopteryx. So it was to Chup City that the Guppee Army came, with General Kitab, Prince Bolo and Mudra the Shadow Warrior at its head.

  Chup City was in the deep heart of the Perpetual Darkness, and the air was so cold that it would freeze into icicles on people’s noses, and hang there until it was broken off. For this reason, the Chupwalas who lived there wore little spherical nosewarmers that gave them the look of circus clowns, except that the nosewarmers were black.

  Red nosewarmers were issued to the Pages of Gup as they marched into the Darkness. ‘Really, this is beginning to look like a war between buffoons,’ thought Rashid the storyteller as he put on his false red nose. Prince Bolo, who found the things distinctly undignified, knew that a frozen, icicle-dangling nose would be even worse. So he sulked terribly but stuck his nosewarmer on as well.

  Then there were the helmets. The Pages of Gup had been allocated the oddest headgear Rashid had ever seen (by courtesy of the Walrus and Eggheads back at P2C2E House). Around the rim of each helmet was a sort of hatband that lit up brightly when the helmet was worn. This made the Pages of Gup look rather like a regiment of angels or saints, because they all had shining haloes around their heads. The combined wattage of all these ‘haloes’ would just about enable the Guppees to see their opponents, even in the Perpetual Darkness; while the Chupwalas, even with their fashionable wrap-around dark glasses on, might be somewhat dazzled by the glare.

  ‘This certainly is state-of-the-art warfare,’ thought Rashid ironically. ‘Neither army will even be able to see properly during the fight.’

  Outside Chup City lay the battlefield, the wide plain of Bat-Mat-Karo, which had little hills at each end, where the rival commanders could pitch their tents and watch the battle’s course. General Kitab, Prince Bolo and Mudra were joined on t
he Guppee command hill by Rashid the storyteller (who was needed, because only he could translate Mudra’s Gesture Language to the others) and a detachment—or ‘Pamphlet’—of Pages, including Blabbermouth, to act as messengers and guards. The Guppee commanders, all looking slightly silly in their red noses, sat down to a light pre-battle dinner in their tent; and while they were eating a Chupwala rode up to meet them, a little clerky fellow wearing, on his hooded cloak, the Sign of the Zipped Lips, and carrying a white flag of truce.

  ‘Well, Chupwala,’ said Prince Bolo dashingly and rather foolishly, ‘what’s your business? My, my,’ he added, impolitely, ‘what a measly, weaselly, snivelling, drivelling sort of fellow you are.’

  ‘Spots and fogs, Bolo,’ boomed General Kitab, ‘that’s no way to address an ambassador who comes under a white flag.’

  The ambassador gave an evil little grin of unconcern, and then spoke. ‘The High Cultmaster, Khattam-Shud, has granted me special release from my vows of silence so that this message may be delivered,’ he said in a low, hissing voice. ‘He sends you greetings and informs you that you are all trespassing on the sacred soil of Chup. He will neither negotiate with you, nor give up your spying nosy-parker of a Batcheat. —And O, but she’s noisy, too,’ the ambassador added, clearly speaking for himself now. ‘She torments our ears with her songs! And as for her nose, her teeth …’

  ‘There’s no need to go into that,’ interrupted General Kitab. ‘Drat it all! We aren’t interested in your opinions. Complete your confounded message.’

  The Chupwala ambassador cleared his throat. ‘Khattam-Shud therefore warns you that, unless you retreat at once, your illegal invasion will be punished by annihilation; and Prince Bolo of Gup will be brought in chains to the Citadel, so that he may personally witness the Sewing-Up of Batcheat Chattergy’s caterwauling mouth.’

  ‘Knave, scoundrel, rapscallion, bounder, rogue!’ shouted Prince Bolo. ‘I should cut off your ears, have them sautéed in a little butter and garlic, and served to the hounds!’

  ‘However,’ continued the Chupwala ambassador, ignoring Bolo’s outburst completely, ‘before your utter defeat, I am commanded to entertain you for a moment, if you permit. I am, if I may immodestly say it, the finest juggler in Chup City; and am ordered to juggle, if you should so wish, for your delight.’

  Blabbermouth, who was standing behind Prince Bolo’s chair, here burst out: ‘Don’t trust him—it’s a trick …’

  General Kitab, with his love of argument, seemed perfectly willing to discuss this possibility, but Bolo waved a royal arm and cried, ‘Silence, Page! The rules of chivalry demand our acceptance!’ And to the Chupwala ambassador he said, as haughtily as he could manage: ‘Fellow, we will see you juggle.’

  The ambassador began his performance. From the depths of his cloak he produced a bewildering variety of objects—ebony balls, nine-pins, jade statuettes, porcelain tea-cups, live terrapins, lighted cigarettes, hats—and flung them into the air in mesmerizing hoops and whirls. The faster he juggled, the more complicated the juggling became; and his audience was so completely hypnotized by his skill that only one person in the tent saw the moment at which one extra object was added to the flying cavalcade, a little, heavy, rectangular box out of which protruded a short, burning fuse …

  ‘Will you for Pete’s sake look out?’ yelled Blabbermouth, rushing forwards and sending Prince Bolo (and his chair) flying sideways. ‘The guy’s got a live bomb!’

  She had reached the Chupwala ambassador in two strides, and, using her sharp eye and every ounce of her own juggling skills, she plucked the bomb right out of the rising, falling, dancing array of objects in the air. Other Pages seized the Chupwala, and statuettes and tea-cups and terrapins all plummeted to the ground … but Blabbermouth was rushing to the edge of the command hill as fast as her legs would carry her, and when she reached the edge she threw the bomb away down the hillside, where it exploded in an enormous (but now harmless) ball of glowing black flames.

  The helmet had fallen from her head. Her long hair cascaded around her shoulders for all to see.

  Bolo, the General, Mudra and Rashid rushed out of the tent when they heard the explosion. Blabbermouth was out of breath, but grinning happily. ‘So, we just about got that in time,’ she said. ‘What a creep that Chupwala was. He was ready to commit suicide, to get blown up right along with us. I told you it was a trick.’

  Prince Bolo, who didn’t like his Pages to say ‘I told you so’, snapped back: ‘What’s this, Blabbermouth? Are you a girl?’

  ‘You noticed, sire,’ said Blabbermouth. ‘No point pretending any more.’

  ‘You tricked us,’ said Bolo, blushing. ‘You tricked me.’

  Blabbermouth was outraged by Bolo’s ingratitude. ‘Tricking you isn’t exacly difficult, excuse me,’ she cried. ‘Jugglers can do it, so why not girls?’

  Bolo went red in the face behind his red nosewarmer. ‘You’re fired,’ he shouted at the top of his voice.

  ‘Bolo, hang it all …’ began General Kitab.

  ‘Oh, no, I’m not,’ Blabbermouth shouted back. ‘Mister, I quit.’

  Mudra, the Shadow Warrior, had been observing these goings on with an utterly inscrutable expression on his green face. Now, however, his hands began to move, his legs to adopt eloquent positions, his facial muscles to ripple and twitch. Rashid translated: ‘We must not quarrel when the battle is about to begin. If Prince Bolo has no further need of so courageous a Page, then perhaps Miss Blabbermouth would care to work for me?’

  At which Prince Bolo of Gup looked crestfallen and ashamed, and Miss Blabbermouth looked exceptionally pleased.

  ~ ~ ~

  The battle was joined at last.

  Rashid Khalifa, watching the action from the Guppee command hill, was very much afraid that the Pages of Gup would be beaten badly. ‘Tom up would be the right term for Pages, I suppose,’ he reflected, ‘or perhaps burned.’ His sudden capacity for bloodthirsty thoughts amazed him. ‘I suppose war makes people crude,’ he told himself.

  The black-nosed Chupwala Army, whose menacing silence hung over it like a fog, looked too frightening to lose. Meanwhile the Guppees were still busily arguing over every little detail. Every order sent down from the command hill had to be debated fully, with all its pro’s and con’s, even if it came from General Kitab himself. ‘How is it possible to fight a battle with all this chatter and natter?’ Rashid wondered, perplexed.

  But then the armies rushed at each other; and Rashid saw, to his great surprise, that the Chupwalas were quite unable to resist the Guppees. The Pages of Gup, now that they had talked through everything so fully, fought hard, remained united, supported each other when required to do so, and in general looked like a force with a common purpose. All those arguments and debates, all that openness, had created powerful bonds of fellowship between them. The Chupwalas, on the other hand, turned out to be a disunited rabble. Just as Mudra the Shadow Warrior had predicted, many of them actually had to fight their own, treacherous shadows! And as for the rest, well, their vows of silence and their habits of secrecy had made them suspicious and distrustful of one another. They had no faith in their generals, either. The upshot was that the Chupwalas did not stand shoulder to shoulder, but betrayed one another, stabbed one another in the back, mutinied, hid, deserted … and, after the shortest clash imaginable, simply threw down all their weapons and ran away.

  ~ ~ ~

  After the Victory of Bat-Mat-Karo, the army or ‘Library’ of Gup entered Chup City in triumph. At the sight of Mudra, many Chupwalas threw in their lot with the Guppees. Chupwala maidens rushed black-nosed into the icy streets and garlanded the red-nosed and halo-headed Guppees with black snowdrops; and kissed them, too; and called them ‘Liberators of Chup’.

  Blabbermouth, her loose, flowing hair no longer concealed beneath velvet cap or halo-helmet, attracted the attention of several of the young lads of Chup City. But she stayed as close as she could to Mudra, as did Rashid Khalifa; and both Rashid and B
labbermouth found their thoughts turning constantly to Haroun. Where was he? Was he safe? When would he return?

  Prince Bolo, who was out in front on his prancing mechanical horse, began to shout out in his habitual dashing but rather foolish way: ‘Where are you, Khattam-Shud? Come out; your minions are defeated, and now it’s your turn! Batcheat, never fear; Bolo is here! Where are you, Batcheat, my golden girl, my love? Batcheat, O Batcheat mine!’

  ‘If you’d be quiet for a moment, you’d know soon enough where your Batcheat waits,’ a Chupwala voice called out from the crowd that had gathered to greet the Guppees. (Many Chupwalas had started breaking the Laws of Silence now, cheering, shouting and so on.) ‘Yes, use your ears,’ a woman’s voice agreed. ‘Can’t you hear that racket that’s been driving us all to drink?’

  ‘She sings?’ Prince Bolo exclaimed, cupping a hand around an ear. ‘My Batcheat sings? Then hush, friends, and hearken to her song.’ He raised an arm. The Guppee parade came to a halt. And now, wafting down to them from the Citadel of Chup, came a woman’s voice singing songs of love. It was the most horrible voice Rashid Khalifa, the Shah of Blah, had heard in all his life.

  ‘If that’s Batcheat,’ he thought—but did not dare to say—‘then you can almost understand why the Cultmaster wants to shut her up for good.’

  ‘Oooh I’m talking ’bout my Bolo

  And I ain’t got time for nothin’ else,’

  sang Batcheat, and glass shattered in shop windows. ‘I’m sure I know that song, but the words seem different,’ puzzled Rashid.

  ‘Lemme tell you ’bout a boy I know,

  He’s my Bolo and I love him so,’