The Five Fakirs of Faizabad

by P. B. Kerr

  “What’s your favorite animal?” she said again.

  Miss Shoebottom shrugged. “Budgies,” she said. “I always liked budgies. I used to have one when I were a little girl. Cheeky, he was called. I loved that budgie.”

  “What color was he?”

  “The budgie? Blue. Powder blue. Why?”

  Philippa looked at the two mendicant fakirs. She’d never before turned people into animals. John had been obliged to turn Finlay McCreeby into a peregrine falcon once and had felt guilty about it for months, almost until the very moment when he’d found an opportunity to turn the falcon back into Finlay McCreeby. Of course, her mother had done it all the time, until she’d renounced her djinn power completely. For a long time her two uncles had lived with the Gaunts as the family pet dogs. And even the family cat, Monty, was a former contract killer called Montana Retch. And according to her father, it was thanks to Layla that New York’s Central Park Zoo had a Cuban solenodon, a hairy-nosed wombat, and an American red wolf, because these were all that remained of the three men who had kidnapped him the previous year.

  Philippa thought there was something terrible about turning a man into a hairy-nosed wombat. Maybe it was better just to send these men to prison like the others, after all.

  “FABULONGOSHOOMARVELISHLYWONDERPIPICAL!”

  As Philippa spoke her focus word, the two ferrets finally let go of their prey and disappeared under the sofa, while the two mendicant fakirs sank onto their knees holding their hands. But instead of being grateful, one of them looked at her with hate in his eyes.

  “You demon,” he said. “Now you’re in for it.” He stood up menacingly. “I’m going to clock you one, you devil. Just see if I don’t.”

  Philippa felt something harden inside her. A little iron in her soul. In truth, this iron in the soul was something she had inherited from her mother, although she did not know it. Anger took hold of her, which is never a good way to use djinn power. For one thing, it creates a strong smell of sulfur and often makes a loud bang.

  The fakir raised his fist to Philippa. “Demon,” he said.

  “FABULONGOSHOOMARVELISHLYWONDERPIPICAL!”

  There was a loud bang and a cloud of smoke and a strong smell of sulfur. Miss Shoebottom screamed and then reached for the air freshener.

  Two blue budgies were hopping on the carpet, with one of them still chirping the budgie word for “demon,” which sounds a lot like “cheep.” Philippa was just about to bend down and pick up the two budgies when the two ferrets beat her to it.

  “Darn it,” said Philippa, who’d quite forgotten about the two ferrets.

  Miss Shoebottom screamed again, grabbed a broom, and then shooed the greedy ferrets out the door. Still holding the budgies, they ran away along Muckhole Terrace to enjoy their unexpected meals.

  Miss Shoebottom dropped onto her sofa and closed her eyes. “What a morning!” she exclaimed.

  “Sorry about that,” said Philippa. “I sort of meant those birds to be pets for you.”

  “Don’t apologize. A pet’s the last thing I need right now, luvvy. A holiday’s what I really need. I have to get away from here, and soon.”

  “What about Mr. Swaraswati?” asked Moo.

  “What about him?”

  “After all these years of being buried alive, he’s keen to meet you,” said Philippa.

  “Is he now?” Miss Shoebottom’s mouth turned down. “Well, I’m not sure I want to meet him. Not anymore. Stuck here in this crummy little town all these years, like me dad and his dad before him, for generations, I tell you it’s me that feels buried alive. Not him. So. Now that he’s come back and he’s not in any danger, I’ve decided. I’m going on vacation in Spain and then I’m going to live my life.”

  “But what shall we tell Mr. Swaraswati?”

  “You can tell him what you like, love, but I’ve had enough,” said Miss Shoebottom. “My family’s been waiting here for centuries for that old man to turn up and I reckon I’ve done my bit by not leading those two characters to where he was staying. Of course, I knew where he was all the time. There’s not much that happens in Bumby I don’t know about, luvvy.”

  Miss Shoebottom sighed, kicked off her shoes, and rubbed her stockinged feet painfully.

  Philippa looked at Moo and shrugged, hardly knowing what to do next.

  “She makes a fair point, Philippa,” said Moo.

  “Look,” said Miss Shoebottom. “Philippa, is it?”

  Philippa nodded.

  “You seem to know what you’re doing,” said Miss Shoebottom. “You look after him. All this Indian stuff is a complete mystery to me. I don’t even like curry. Hundreds of years ago, when my family first moved here, it probably meant something, but not anymore. Now it means zip. And I certainly wouldn’t know what to do with one of the great secrets of the universe. Not if I lived next door to Professor Stephen Hawking.”

  “You have no wish at all to meet him?” Moo sounded a little disappointed.

  “Stephen Hawking?”

  “No, Mr. Swaraswati.”

  Miss Shoebottom thought for a moment. “No.” She shook her head. “It’s been too much for me and my family, all these years. I just wish — I wish I was on holiday right now.”

  “Very well,” said Philippa.

  “You mean —?”

  “I do mean. If that’s really what you want. There ought to be some sort of reward for keeping faith with the fakir all these centuries.”

  “I’m glad you understand,” said Miss Shoebottom.

  “Spain, you say?”

  “Majorca’d be nice.”

  Philippa nodded. “FABULONGOSHOOMARVELISHLYWONDERPIPICAL!”

  And Miss Shoebottom disappeared.

  Philippa sat down on the sofa where Miss Shoebottom had been sitting and let out a sigh.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Moo.

  “I’m thinking we’ll have to take Mr. Swaraswati with us,” said Philippa. “And I’m also thinking I need a new focus word. That one is getting a little too easy to say.”

  “Why is that a problem?”

  “I’ve realized something important. Something I never knew before. If your focus word is too easy to say, it’s too easy to turn people into budgies. And that is a heck of a thing to do to anyone. When you turn a man into a budgie you take away all he had and all he’s ever going to be.” She smiled thinly. “As a man, that is. Not as a budgie.”

  CHAPTER 25

  RUMBLE IN THE FOREST

  Groanin had two things going for him as he ran away from the grizzly bear. One thing was that he’d been attacked by a large and fierce animal before — a white tiger — and, hardly wanting to repeat the experience, this helped to make him run much faster.

  On that previous occasion, the tiger had torn off his arm and eaten it and for a long time Groanin had lived his life as a butler with one arm. But then John and Philippa and their friend Dybbuk had been obliged to create a new arm for him so that he might more easily wind them up and down a well in an old British fortress in India. And, of course, being djinn they had endowed him with not just any old new arm but an arm that was much, much stronger than his previous one.

  That was the other thing he had going for him.

  The new, stronger arm was handy when removing very tight lids from those little pots of marmalade you got in hotels and showing off to young ladies who were struggling with heavy suitcases; it meant he could carry two bags of coal up from the cellar instead of one; and in Italy once, he’d had to fight an angel named Sam who fancied himself as a bit of an all-in wrestler. But apart from that, Groanin had not had much use for a significantly stronger arm. At least he hadn’t until now and, turning around to face the bear — for Groanin realized he could run no farther — Groanin punched it hard on the nose.

  The blow would certainly have rendered a grown man unconscious, but grizzlies can weigh up to a thousand pounds, which makes them a lot harder to knock out in a fistfight. Groanin punched the bear agai
n, which hardly encouraged the bear to feel any more kindly disposed toward him. The huge grizzly roared with pain and backed away, lashing out with its huge claws at Groanin. Fortunately, it missed. The bear was not, however, inclined to give up on a promising-looking meal — even one that packed a good right hand. Contrary to what most people believe about bears, they like meat, especially when late snow on the ground makes it harder to forage for the other things they like to eat.

  The bear rose up on its thick hind legs, lifting its vulnerable and already bloody nose clear of Groanin’s lightning right hook, and calculating that, in this way, the man wouldn’t have the reach of arm to hurt it again. It was a shrewd calculation. The man would have to come in close to land a blow in the bear’s belly, and risk getting mauled in the clinch.

  Shuffling around in a circle, the two combatants faced each other off. The bear threw a couple of clumsy haymakers. Groanin kept his right hand up high, ready to throw it if the bear dropped down on all fours again. The Englishman figured he had the speed of his arm on his side while the bear’s raw power was its greatest strength. Now if he could only stay out of the clinch. There was little point in trying to take the fight to the bear. That would have been fatal. All he could do was shoot straight punches to the bear’s nose whenever it dropped on all fours.

  They did this for more than two hours.

  “Come on, tough guy,” said Groanin, taunting the bear. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  The bear roared back in the butler’s face — so loud it almost blew the fur hat off his head. And when the bear roared, Groanin had a perfect and unnerving sight of all of its teeth, which looked very large indeed. A white tiger looked like a little kitten next to this beast, he told himself.

  “My God, your breath doesn’t half stink, you stupid great fur rug,” yelled Groanin, who was trying desperately to keep his spirits up in the face of the grizzly’s obvious grizzliness.

  The bear was tiring now, knocked off balance by Groanin’s punches, which had taken a toll on the creature’s nose. Every time the bear dropped its head, blood dripped into the snow and if the fight had been fought according to the rules of the Marquess of Queensberry, the referee — assuming there had been one on hand — would have stopped the contest and given the decision to Groanin. And feeling its appetite for the fight beginning to drain away, and sensing it was now or never, the bear dropped onto all fours again and rushed the butler, ignoring the hard right that flashed in from nowhere straight onto the point of its wet black nose.

  Groanin let out a yell of terror as the bear knocked him flying with one sweep of its mighty paw. He flew through the cold air and landed ten yards away. Groanin turned on his belly and tried to crawl away, but the bear was on him in a second. He felt the heat of the animal’s breath on his neck and heard the low rasp of its angry growl in his ear. Something sharp against his shoulder made him cry out with pain and he felt himself lifted high in the air. Like a dog worrying a toy, the bear shook him in its mouth for almost half a minute, dropped him on the snow, and then pounded him with the full weight of its front feet.

  Feeling himself mortally wounded, Groanin turned to meet his fate, hoping to land one last good punch on the bear’s nose, and was just in time to see something gray and furry fly through the air and attach itself to the bear’s throat. For a moment his eyes, which were filled with blood from a cut on his head, struggled to separate the fur of the bear from whatever it was that had attacked it.

  And it was only when the bear flung off the attacking creature and finally ran away that Groanin realized he had been saved from being eaten by a bear by a wolf. And the question that now occupied him was why. Why had a wolf saved his life?

  The wolf picked itself up off the snow and limped toward him. Groanin found he could not move and laughed at the irony of his own situation.

  “I suppose you’re going to eat me now,” he said as the gray timber wolf got nearer. “My — what — big teeth — you have.” Groanin sighed and closed his eyes in resignation to his fate. “All the better to — eat you with, little Red Riding Hood.”

  But instead of eating him, the wolf bent down and started to lick his face. One of Groanin’s eyes blinked open, met the blue one of the wolf’s, and seemed to find a flicker of something he half recognized.

  “Don’t tell me,” he whispered. “Don’t tell me that’s you, Rakshasas. That really would be a coincidence. And a great blessing, old friend. Feel tired now. Like I was reading David Copperfield. One of the classic English novels. Great book for bedtime. Good night, old friend.”

  Then he closed his eyes again and this time he did not open them.

  Rakshasas, for it was he, sat down on his haunches. He licked his injured paw for a moment. Then he pointed his thin muzzle up at the breaking dawn and began to sing the lonely song of the wolf into the cold air.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE DREAM OF LIFE

  John recognized the howl of his old friend and hurried across the snow to find him, certain from the plaintive tone of the wolf’s howl that something was very wrong. Then, in the distance he saw a big grizzly bear running away and was gripped by a terrible feeling of déjà vu — as if somehow all of this had already happened to him before. This sensation was so strong that it made John nauseous and, for a moment, he stopped running and just stood there trying to rationalize it. Finally, he retched into the snow; and then, feeling a little better and telling himself that he was just worried about Groanin, he picked up his feet and carried on running along the huge tracks that had been left behind by Zagreus.

  About a half mile farther up the trail, he found a trio of furry shapes that broke up as he got nearer. Rakshasas ran toward him and licked his hand and whined. Zagreus stood up and John saw that his large, low-set forehead was even lower on his huge, pointed head than before and his eyes were full of sadness.

  Only the third shape remained motionless on the snow.

  For a moment John did not recognize that it was Groanin. For a moment he thought it was Nimrod, for was that not Nimrod’s red fox fur coat he saw crumpled on the ground? For several seconds he just stood there until Zagreus mumbled a sentence that included Groanin’s name but which John, his ears singing with shock as if he had been struck by a bolt of electricity, could not otherwise understand.

  “Groanin?”

  John threw himself down on the ground and saw that the unconscious butler was gravely wounded. There was a large gash across his forehead, and as John unbuttoned his coat he saw that the fur had been cut through and was sticky underneath. Hardly hesitating now, he bent forward, placed his head on the butler’s chest, and gradually made out the irregular sound of a failing heartbeat. Groanin was dying.

  This realization drew John’s hands to his face and feeling them wet, he saw that they were covered with blood and instinctively he wiped them on the snow. Something fell out of the butler’s inside pocket and John picked it up and wondered why it seemed significant. It was Groanin’s fountain pen.

  And then he remembered what Mr. Burton had said….

  To be given a vision of the future is a rare thing. Upon seeing such a thing, however, it is difficult not to act on it. And yet you must also be aware that what you might see would only be a fragment and not the whole picture, therefore understanding might be similarly incomplete.

  John screamed very loudly and sat down in the snow. All was clear to him now where it had not been clear before — that much was obvious. The death foretold was not that of Nimrod but that of poor Groanin. And the only reason Groanin had followed John to Yellowstone was because John had gone there to seek advice from Mr. Rakshasas on what to do about the foretelling of Nimrod’s death that he thought he had seen in Mr. Burton’s ink spot. It was exactly as Mr. Burton had said.

  For some reason he could not explain, John looked up at the sky and for a fleeting second he saw in his mind’s eye the whole sky as black and shiny as an ink spot and behind the ink, the image of an enormous eye. His own. A
nd it was plain to John that he had had been right about one thing. It was all his fault.

  “You stupid idiot,” he said, punching the snow with both his fists. “You stupid, darned idiot.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” said Zagreus. “Well, maybe. He was foolish to cook those sausages, sure.”

  “Not him!” John screamed. “Me! I’m the idiot. If I hadn’t wanted to look into the future, none of this would have happened.”

  John threw himself into the snow and wished that he was dead and buried under several feet of the stuff.

  Rakshasas barked loudly and then nipped John on the elbow as if urging some more practical course of action than merely feeling incredibly sorry for Groanin and by extension, himself.

  “You’re right,” said John, wiping the tears from his face. “Maybe it’s not too late. Zagreus, pick him up and carry him back to the tent. I can go for help. Get him to a hospital.”

  Rakshasas barked and took hold of John’s sleeve.

  “What is it? You want me to come with you?” John shook his head. “I need to get started right away. I figure if I walk west I can reach a town, or maybe get a signal on my cell phone.”

  Rakshasas barked again and, gripping John’s sleeve, pulled him along the trail back to camp.

  “All right, all right,” said John. “I’ll come with you. But there’s not much I can do for him back at camp. I’ve got a small first aid kit but that’s hardly going to be enough to fix him up. Not with these injuries. He needs a hospital.”

  Rakshasas barked and, lolling his tongue out of his mouth, panted loudly, as if he was hot.

  “What the heck’s the matter with you?” John asked.

  Rakshasas did it again, only this time he splayed his legs out.

  “You’re pretending to be hot,” said John.

  Rakshasas barked once.

  “Of course, the sweat lodge.”