Haroun and the Sea of Stories Read online

  ‘Don’t think all Chupwalas follow Khattam-Shud or worship his Bezaban,’ Mudra said in his silent, dancing way (and Rashid translated his ‘words’ into ordinary speech). ‘Mostly they are simply terrified of the Cultmaster’s great powers of sorcery. But if he were defeated, most people in Chup would turn to me; and though my Shadow and I are warriors, we are both in favour of Peace.’

  Now it was the Shadow’s turn to ‘speak’. ‘You must understand that in the Land of Chup, Shadows are considered the equals of the people to whom they are joined,’ it began (with Rashid translating again). ‘Chupwalas live in the dark, you know, and in the dark a Shadow doesn’t have to be one single shape all the time. Some Shadows—such as my goodself—learn how to change ourselves, simply by wishing to do so. Imagine the advantages! If a Shadow doesn’t care for the clothes sense or hairstyle of the person to whom it’s attached, it can simply choose a style for itself! A Chupwala’s Shadow can be graceful as a dancer even if its owner is clumsy as an oaf. You comprehend? What’s more: in the Land of Chup, a Shadow very often has a stronger personality than the Person, or Self, or Substance to whom or to which it is joined! So often the Shadow leads, and it is the Person or Self or Substance that follows. And of course there can be quarrels between the Shadow and the Substance or Self or Person; they can pull in opposite directions—how often have I witnessed that!—but just as often there is a true partnership, and mutual respect. —So Peace with the Chupwalas means Peace with their Shadows, too. —And among the Shadows, also, Cultmaster Khattam-Shud has made terrible trouble.’

  Mudra the Shadow Warrior resumed the narrative. Quicker and quicker moved his hands; and his facial muscles rippled and twitched in a most excited way; and his legs danced nimbly and fast. Rashid had to work very hard to keep up with him. ‘Khattam-Shud’s black magic has had fearsome results,’ Mudra revealed. ‘He has plunged so deeply into the Dark Art of sorcery that he has become Shadowy himself—changeable, dark, more like a Shadow than a Person. And as he has become more Shadowy, so his Shadow has come to be more like a Person. And the point has come at which it’s no longer possible to tell which is Khattam-Shud’s Shadow and which his substantial Self—because he has done what no other Chupwala has ever dreamt of—that is, he has separated himself from his Shadow! He goes about in the darkness, entirely Shadowless, and his Shadow goes wherever it wishes. The Cultmaster Khattam-Shud can be in two places at once!’

  At this point Blabbermouth, who had been gazing at the Shadow Warrior with something very like adoration or devotion, burst out, ‘But that’s the worst news in the world! It was going to be almost impossible to defeat him once—and now you tell us we’ll have to beat him twice?’

  ‘Precisely so,’ said the grim gestures of Mudra’s Shadow. ‘Furthermore, this new, doubled Khattam-Shud, this man-shadow and shadow-man, has had a very harmful effect on the friendships between Chupwalas and their Shadows. Now many Shadows are resentful of being joined to Chupwalas at the feet; and there are many quarrels.’

  ‘It is a sad time,’ Mudra’s gestures concluded, ‘when a Chupwala cannot even trust his own Shadow.’

  A silence fell, as General Kitab and Prince Bolo mulled over everything that Mudra and his Shadow had ‘said’. Then Prince Bolo burst out, ‘Why should we believe this creature? Hasn’t he admitted he’s a traitor to his own leader? Must we do business with traitors now? How do we know this isn’t more of his treason—some deep-laid plan, some sort of trap?’

  Now General Kitab, as Haroun had observed, was as a rule the mildest of men, who liked nothing so much as a good argument; but on this occasion he went pink in the face and seemed to swell up slightly. ‘Hang it all, your highness,’ he finally said, ‘I am in command here. Hold your tongue or you’ll be on your way back to Gup City, and someone else will have to rescue your Batcheat on your behalf; and you wouldn’t like that, I’d guess, spots and fogs, you wouldn’t.’ Blabbermouth looked delighted at this reprimand; Bolo looked murderous, but held his tongue.

  Which was just as well, because Mudra’s Shadow had responded to Bolo’s outburst by going into a positive frenzy of changes, growing enormous, scratching itself all over, turning into the silhouette of a flame-breathing dragon, and then into other creatures: a gryphon, a basilisk, a manticore, a troll. And while the Shadow behaved in this agitated fashion, Mudra himself retreated a few steps, leant on a tree-stump and pretended to have grown very bored indeed, examining his fingernails, yawning, twiddling his thumbs. ‘This Warrior and his Shadow are a fine team,’ Haroun thought. ‘They put on opposite acts, so nobody knows what they really feel; which may of course be a third thing completely.’

  General Kitab approached Mudra with great, even exaggerated respect. ‘Blow it all, Mudra, will you help us? It isn’t going to be easy in the Darkness of Chup. We could do with a fellow like you. Mighty Warrior and all that. What do you say?’

  Prince Bolo sulked at the edge of the clearing while Mudra paced and thought. Then he began to gesture once again. Rashid translated his ‘words’.

  ‘Yes, I will help,’ the Shadow Warrior said. ‘For the Cultmaster must surely be defeated. But there is a decision you must make.’

  ‘I bet I know what it is,’ Blabbermouth hissed at Haroun. ‘It’s the same one that should have been made before we even set out: what do we save first? Batcheat or the Ocean? —By the way,’ she added, blushing slightly, ‘isn’t he something? Isn’t he wicked, awesome, sharp? —Mudra, I mean.’

  ‘I know who you mean,’ said Haroun, with a pang of what might have been jealousy. ‘He’s okay, I suppose.’

  ‘Okay?’ hissed Blabbermouth. ‘Only okay? How can you even say …’

  But here she broke off, because Mudra’s ‘words’ were being translated by Rashid. ‘As I told you, there are now two Khattam-Shuds. One of them, at this very moment, has Princess Batcheat captive in the Citadel of Chup, and is planning to sew up her lips on the Feast of Bezaban. The other, as you should know, is in the Old Zone, where he is plotting the ruination of the Ocean of the Streams of Story.’

  An immense stubbornness came over Prince Bolo of Gup. ‘Say what you will, General,’ he cried, ‘but a Person must come before an Ocean, no matter how great the peril to both! It must be Batcheat first; Batcheat, my love, my only girl. Her cherry lips must be saved from the Cultmaster’s needle, and without further delay! What are you people? Have you not blood in your veins? General, and you, too, Sir Mudra: are you men or … or … Shadows?’

  ‘There is no need to insult Shadows any further,’ Mudra’s Shadow gestured with quiet dignity. (Bolo ignored it.)

  ‘Very well,’ General Kitab agreed. ‘Rot it all, very well. But we must send someone to investigate the Old Zone situation. But whom? —Now let me see … Harrumph …’

  It was at this instant that Haroun cleared his throat.

  ‘I’ll go,’ he volunteered.

  All eyes turned to stare at him as he stood there in his red nightshirt with the purple patches, feeling fairly ridiculous. ‘Hmm? What’s that you say?’ Prince Bolo irritably demanded.

  ‘Once you thought my father was spying for Khattam-Shud against you,’ Haroun said. ‘Now, if you and the General wish, I’ll spy for you upon Khattam-Shud, or his Shadow, whichever of them is down there in the Old Zone, poisoning the Ocean.’

  ‘And why—stap and blast me!—d’you volunteer for this dangerous job?’ General Kitab wanted to know. Good question, Haroun thought. I must be a very great fool. But what he said aloud was this:

  ‘Well, sir, it’s like this. All my life I’ve heard about the wonderful Sea of Stories, and Water Genies, and everything; but I started believing only when I saw Iff in my bathroom the other night. And now that I’ve actually come to Kahani and seen with my own eyes how beautiful the Ocean is, with its Story Streams in colours whose names I don’t even know, and its Floating Gardeners and Plentimaw Fishes and all, well, it turns out I may be too late, because the whole Ocean’s going to be dead any minute if we
don’t do something. And it turns out that I don’t like the idea of that, sir, not one bit. I don’t like the idea that all the good stories in the world will go wrong for ever and ever, or just die. As I say, I only just started believing in the Ocean, but maybe it isn’t too late for me to do my bit.’

  There, he thought, you’ve really done it now: made yourself look a complete idiot. But Blabbermouth was looking at him in much the same way as she’d been staring at Mudra for some time, and that was pleasant, it couldn’t be denied. And then he caught sight of his father’s expression, and oh no, he thought, I know exactly what he’s going to say …

  ‘There’s more to you, young Haroun Khalifa, than meets the blinking eye,’ said Rashid.

  ‘Forget it,’ mumbled Haroun furiously. ‘Forget I even spoke.’

  Prince Bolo strode over and thumped Haroun on the back, leaving him winded. ‘Out of the question!’ Bolo was shouting. ‘Forget you spoke? Young man, it will never be forgotten! General, I ask you: is this not the perfect fellow for the job? For he is, like me, a slave to Love.’ Here Haroun avoided looking at Blabbermouth, and blushed.

  ‘Yes, indeed!’ Prince Bolo continued, striding about and waving his arms in a dashing (and somewhat foolish) way. ‘Just as my great passion, my Amour, leads me to Batcheat, always towards Batcheat, so this boy’s destiny is to rescue what he loves: that is, the Ocean of Stories.’

  ‘Very well,’ General Kitab gave in. ‘Young master Haroun, you will be our spy. Drat it all! You deserve it. Take your pick of companions, and begone.’ His voice sounded gruff, as if he were hiding his worries beneath a façade of sternness. ‘That’s finished it,’ Haroun thought. ‘Too late to back out now.’

  ‘Keep a sharp look out! Skulk in the shadows! See without being seen!’ cried Bolo, dramatically. ‘In a way, you’ll be a Shadow Warrior, too.’

  ~ ~ ~

  To reach the Old Zone of Kahani it was necessary to travel south through the Twilight Strip, hugging the shoreline of the Land of Chup, until that dark and silent continent was left behind, and the Southern Polar Ocean of Kahani stretched in every direction. Haroun and Iff the Water Genie set off on this route within an hour of Haroun’s volunteering. Their chosen companions were the Plentimaw Fishes, Goopy and Bagha, who bubbled along in their wake, and the gnarled old Floating Gardener, Mali, with his lilac lips and hat of roots. Mali walked on the water at their side. (Haroun had wanted to take Blabbermouth, but a shyness overcame him, and besides, she seemed to want to stay with Mudra the Shadow Warrior. And Rashid had been needed to translate Mudra’s Gesture Language to the General and the Prince.)

  After several hours of high-speed travel through the Twilight Strip, they found themselves in the Southern Polar Ocean. Here the waters had lost even more of their colouring, and the water temperature had dropped even lower.

  ‘We’re going the right way! We can tell!’

  ‘Before, it was filthy! Now it’s Hell!’

  said Goopy and Bagha, coughing and spluttering.

  Mali loped along over the water’s surface without any sign of discomfort. ‘If that water is so badly poisoned, doesn’t it hurt your feet?’ Haroun asked him. Mali shook his head. ‘Take more’n that. A little poison, bah. A little acid, pah. A Gardener’s a tough old bird. It won’t stop me.’

  Then, to Haroun’s surprise, he burst into a little, rough-voiced song:

  You can stop a cheque,

  You can stop a leak or three,

  You can stop traffic, but

  You can’t stop me!

  ‘What we are here to stop,’ Haroun reminded him, adopting what he hoped was an authoritative, leader-like tone of voice, ‘is the work of the Cultmaster, Khattam-Shud.’

  ‘If it’s true that there is a Wellspring, or Source of Stories, near the South Pole,’ suggested Iff, ‘then that’s where Khattam-Shud will be, you can be sure of it.’

  ‘Very well, then,’ Haroun agreed. ‘To the South Pole!’

  The first disaster struck soon afterwards. Goopy and Bagha, uttering piteous whimpering noises, confessed that they couldn’t go any further.

  ‘Never thought it’d be so bad!’

  ‘We have failed you! We feel sad!’

  ‘I feel terrible! She feels worse!’

  ‘We can hardly speak in verse.’

  The waters of the Ocean were growing thicker by the mile, thicker and colder; many of the Streams of Story were full of a dark, slow-moving substance that looked like molasses. ‘Whatever is doing this can’t be very far away,’ Haroun thought. To the Plentimaw Fishes he said sadly: ‘Stay here and keep watch. We’ll go on without you.’ Of course, even if there is danger, they won’t be able to warn us, Haroun realized, but the Plentimaw Fishes were already so miserable that he kept this thought to himself.

  The light was poor now (they were at the very edge of the Twilight Strip, very near the hemisphere of Perpetual Darkness). They travelled on towards the Pole; and when Haroun saw a forest standing up from the Ocean, its tall growths waving in a light breeze, the absence of light added to the mystification. ‘Land?’ Haroun asked. ‘Surely there’s not meant to be any land here?’

  ‘Neglected waters is what it is,’ said Mali in disgust. ‘Overgrown. Gone to weed. Run down. Nobody to keep the place in trim. It’s a disgrace. Give me a year and the whole place’d look like new.’ It was quite a speech for the Floating Gardener. He was plainly upset.

  ‘We haven’t got a year,’ Haroun said. ‘And I don’t want to fly over it. Too easy to spot, and we couldn’t take you with us, anyway.’

  ‘Don’t you go worrying about me,’ said Mali. ‘And don’t be thinking about flying, either. I’ll clear a way.’ And with that, he put on a great burst of speed and disappeared into the floating jungle. A few moments later Haroun saw huge clumps of vegetation flying into the air, as Mali got to work. The creatures who lived in this weed-jungle rushed out in alarm: giant albino moths, large grey birds that were all bone and no meat, long whitish worms with heads like shovel blades. ‘Even the wildlife is Old here,’ Haroun thought. ‘Will there be dinosaurs further in? —Well, not dinosaurs exactly, but the water-dwelling ones—that’s right—ichthyosaurs.’ The idea of seeing an ichthyosaur’s head poking out of the water was both scary and exciting. ‘Anyhow, they are vegetarians—were vegetarians,’ he comforted himself. ‘At least, I think so.’

  Mali strode back across the water to give a progress report. ‘Bit of weeding. Bit of pest control. Have a channel ready in no time.’ And back in he went.

  When the channel was clear, Haroun directed Butt the Hoopoe to enter. Mali was nowhere to be seen. ‘Where have you got to?’ Haroun called. ‘This is no time for hide-and-seek.’ But there was no reply.

  It was a narrow channel, with roots and weeds still floating on the surface … and they were deep inside the heart of the weed-jungle when the second catastrophe occurred. Haroun heard a faint, hissing sound, and an instant later saw something enormous being thrown in their direction—something that looked like a colossal net, a net that had been spun out of the darkness itself. It fell over them, and held them tight.

  ‘It is a Web of Night,’ said Butt the Hoopoe usefully. ‘A legendary Chupwala weapon. Struggle is useless; the more you fight, the harder it grips. Our goose, I regret to inform, is cooked.’

  Haroun heard noises outside the Web of Night: hisses, little satisfied chuckles. And there were eyes, too, eyes staring through the net, eyes like Mudra’s, with blacks instead of whites—but these eyes were not friendly in the least. —And where was Mali?

  ‘So we’re prisoners already,’ Haroun fumed. ‘Some hero I turned out to be.’

  Chapter 9

  The Dark Ship

  They were being pulled slowly forwards. Their captors, whose shadowy shapes Haroun started to be able to make out as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, were drawing the Web along by invisible but powerful super-strings of some sort. Forward to what, though? Here Haroun’s imagination failed him. All he
could see in his mind’s eye was a huge black hole, yawning at him like a great mouth, and sucking him slowly in.

  ‘Up the creek, pretty pickle, had our chips,’ Iff disconsolately remarked. Butt the Hoopoe was in an equally cheerless state of mind. ‘To Khattam-Shud we go, all neatly wrapped and tied up like a present!’ the Hoopoe wailed without moving its beak. ‘Then it’s zap, bam, phutt, finito for us all. There he sits at the heart of darkness—at the bottom of a black hole, so they say—and he eats light, eats it, raw with his bare hands, and lets none of it escape. —He eats words, too. —And he can be in two places at one time, and there is no getting away. Woe is us! Alas, alack-a-day! Hai-hai-hai!’

  ‘You’re a fine pair of companions and no mistake,’ Haroun said as light-heartedly as he could manage. To Butt the Hoopoe he added, ‘Some machine! You swallow every spooky story you hear, even the ones you find in other people’s minds. That black hole, for example: I was thinking about that, and you just pinched it and then let it frighten you. Honestly, Hoopoe, pull yourself together.’

  ‘How to pull myself, together or anywhere else,’ Butt the Hoopoe lamented without moving its beak, ‘when other persons, Chupwala persons, are pulling me wherever they desire?’

  ‘Look down,’ Iff broke in. ‘Look down at the Ocean.’

  The thick, dark poison was everywhere now, obliterating the colours of the Streams of Story, which Haroun could no longer tell apart. A cold, clammy feeling rose up from the water, which was near freezing point, ‘as cold as death’, Haroun found himself thinking. Iff’s grief began to overflow. ‘It’s our own fault,’ he wept. ‘We are the Guardians of the Ocean, and we didn’t guard it. Look at the Ocean, look at it! The oldest stories ever made, and look at them now. We let them rot, we abandoned them, long before this poisoning. We lost touch with our beginnings, with our roots, our Wellspring, our Source. Boring, we said, not in demand, surplus to requirements. And now, look, just look! No colour, no life, no nothing. Spoilt!’