by P. B. Kerr
“Mmm-hmmm. Old-timer doesn’t see so good, neither.”
“He’s not exactly an old-timer,” said John. “If you don’t mind me saying so, Mrs. Morrison. He’s really only fifty. Which is old enough for a human, I guess. But not that old. Not as old as he looks, anyway. And he’s not normally as cantankerous as he seems right now. He’s really very nice, for a father.”
With one eye on her patient, the djinn nurse fixed the other on John and smiled approvingly. “It’s good that you say so,” she said. “Man’s lucky to have a boy like you. Fact is, even grown men need kindness and understanding. I reckon it’ll take two or three months for him to make a full recovery. Until then, we can relieve some of the worse symptoms of old age. And by the way, it’s not Mrs., and never Marion. Call me M. Or Doc.”
“Pardon?” said Mr. Gaunt.
“Now tell me all about the binding,” she said.
Nimrod explained the nature and timing of the binding and the fact that the children were supposed to have acted as inhibitors. Doc listened and then placed a finger inside one of Mr. Gaunt’s ears and another in one of his nostrils to take his temperature. Her eye lingered upon a bonsai tree that stood on top of the chest of drawers on the far side of the bedroom. It was a Japanese maple tree, just twenty-seven inches high.
“Is that there bonsai tree the genuine article, from the Far East? Or a piece of junk from a mail-order catalogue?”
“It’s the real thing, all right,” said Philippa. “It was a birthday present to my mom from my dad. He bought it in Hong Kong.”
Marion got up and looked more closely at the tree. “So this dirt is one hundred percent Chinese?”
“I guess so,” said Philippa. “Are you interested in bonsai trees?”
“Nope,” she said. “Can’t stand them.”
Marion helped herself to a small amount of earth from the bonsai plant, smelled it, tasted it, spat it out, and then nodded. A second later, she wrenched the ancient little tree out of its pot and threw it into the corner of the room.
“Hey,” said Philippa. “That tree cost twenty thousand dollars!”
“I don’t guess the size of people’s wallets has got anything to do with their brains.” She spat onto a handful of the earth and then heated the mixture in her hands with djinn power to make a kind of clay that she proceeded to smear onto Mr. Gaunt’s eyelids.
“This’ll improve his vision some,” she said. “Enough so he can read a newspaper or watch TV.”
She heated the remainder of the clay in her palm some more until it was a very fine powder. This she blew into Mr. Gaunt’s two hairy ear passages and up his nose.
“And that will fix his hearing so he can listen to the radio.”
“How does that work?” asked Philippa.
“Djinn saliva,” said Marion. “It contains healing properties. At least it does for humans. And mixed with Chinese earth it becomes a very powerful material that has an endless number of apparently supernatural properties.” Marion grinned. “It was a real stroke of luck, finding that bonsai here. I was running short of Chinese dirt.” She picked up the planter and poured the rest of the earth into a plastic bag she produced from her hip pocket. “I’ll put the rest in my saddlebags, if you don’t mind, in lieu of my fee.”
“I never knew that,” said Nimrod. “About djinn saliva and earth.”
“Ain’t you ever heard of Adam?” said Marion.
“Adam?”
“Feller made of dirt in the Bible. That’s what the name means. From the ground.”
Nimrod nodded. “Yes, of course,” he said.
“You’re not Layla,” Mr. Gaunt told Marion, suddenly piping up. It seemed his eyesight was already much restored.
“Take it easy, old-timer,” said Marion. “I’m a healer. We’re trying to fix you up, here.”
“Perhaps you could also heal Mrs. Trump,” said Philippa, and proceeded to explain what had happened to their beloved housekeeper.
“Mrs. Trump?” said Mr. Gaunt. “Why? What’s happened to her? And where’s my wife? Where’s Layla?”
“Take it easy, Dad,” John told his father. “Lie still. This lady is here to help you.”
“In the morning I’ll mosey ’round and take a look at her,” Doc told Philippa. “Only heads are complicated.”
On her way out of Mr. Gaunt’s bedroom, Marion bent down and picked up something off the floor. It was a pearl. She looked at it for a moment and then, before anyone could stop her, popped the pearl into her mouth and crunched it noisily, like a nut, something no human set of teeth could ever have done.
“You eat pearls?” said John.
“Sure do,” said Marion. “If you’re a djinn they’re good for you. Union of fire and water. The third eye, some call them. One of the eight treasures, they are for sure. A pearl is the crystallization of light, transcendent wisdom, spiritual consciousness, and the essence of the universe.” She grinned. “’Sides, they taste good.”
Later on that evening, after Marion and Mr. Groanin had gone to bed, and following a long conversation with Mr. Rakshasas, Nimrod summoned the children to the library. “We’ve been talking it over,” he said, “and we think there might just be a way to bring your mother back home.”
As usual, he was wearing a red suit, and as he stood next to Mr. Rakshasas, who was wearing a white one, these two djinn looked like the flag of Indonesia, which, as anyone knows, is a red stripe on top of a white one. Both of them were sitting very close to the fire — almost too close — but being djinn, of course, who are made of fire, they were as comfortable there as two pieces of hot, buttered toast.
“How?” asked Philippa, who had quite given up hope of ever really seeing her mother again for, as she knew only too well, becoming the Blue Djinn of Babylon involved putting yourself beyond good and evil and listening only to the cold hard voice of pure logic, like some awful math professor. Only in this way, it was believed, could the Blue Djinn act as the supreme judge between the three good tribes of djinn and the three evil tribes. And only in this way, it was generally held, could a balance of power exist between them. Philippa took off her suddenly steamy glasses and polished them furiously. Just the thought of never seeing her mother again had brought a tear to her eye.
“’Tis only an idea, mind,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “And it certainly wouldn’t do to go building all your hopes on Dingle Beach. Not until we’ve asked himself. And, for that matter, herself. Which will be no walk in Phoenix Park, I’m thinking.”
“Himself?” repeated John. “Herself? Who do you mean? Cut to the chase will you, Mr. Rakshasas?”
“Dybbuk,” said Nimrod. “And his sister, Faustina. We shall need their help.”
“But didn’t Faustina lose her body somewhere in England,” said Philippa, “after you exorcised her spirit from the prime minister?”
“That’s almost right,” said Nimrod. “When Guru Masamjhasara, or Dr. Warnakulasuriya, as he was then known, took a sample of blood from the prime minister, he unwittingly prevented Faustina from reclaiming her body again. At least not without the help of another djinn. A tiny part of her spirit was lost forever with that blood sample.”
“I don’t understand how she can help,” said Philippa.
“Me neither,” said John.
“If we could somehow reunite her body with her spirit,” said Nimrod, “there’s a very good chance that she could become the Blue Djinn instead of your mother.”
“’Twas always intended that Faustina should be the Blue Djinn one day,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “She was the anointed one. But sure, losing her own body banjaxed all that and no mistake.”
“But is it possible?” said Philippa. “To reunite her body and soul in the way you describe?”
“Well, yes,” said Nimrod. “Provided one knows where to look for the soul. And I didn’t until you told me, Philippa.”
“Me?”
“Didn’t you say that when you went to Bannermann’s Island, you heard the voice of an inv
isible girl whispering in your ear?”
Bannermann’s Island, in New York’s Hudson River, was where Dybbuk’s aunt Felicia lived in splendid but nonetheless creepy isolation.
“Yes,” said Philippa. “Just for a moment, anyway. And I felt something brush past me. Like a trailing cobweb. Are you saying Faustina’s spirit is hanging out there?”
“When Dybbuk was in danger, he fled to Bannermann’s Island because he felt safe there,” said John. “I’ll bet Faustina felt the same way.”
“But I thought that if you were out of your body for too long, you risked drifting off into space,” said Philippa. “That’s what you told us back in Egypt, anyway.”
“That’s true,” said Nimrod. “But only if you can’t get to a place that’s familiar to you. An old haunt, if you’ll pardon the expression. If you can find such a place, your spirit can hang on indefinitely. For Faustina, that would very likely be a place like Bannermann’s Island.”
“So all we have to do is go to Bannermann’s and reunite her body with her soul,” said Philippa.
“That’s not as simple as it sounds,” said Mr. Rakshasas.
“Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be,” John groaned.
“It will be necessary for someone to enter the ethereal world as a transubstantiated being,” said Nimrod. “That person will have to leave his or her own body behind and go through a portal in the wall of the other world to speak to Faustina.”
“What kind of a portal?” asked Philippa.
“An ancient temple,” said Nimrod. “Egyptian, Mayan, Babylonian. That’s really what they were designed for in the first place.”
“I’m thinking Egyptian is best,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “That way we’ll get a Ka servant to take care of any sinister characters that we might meet.”
“Who’s going to do it?” asked John.
“It will have to be someone of her own age, whom Faustina will trust,” said Nimrod.
“Dybbuk,” said John.
“Yes,” said Nimrod. “That’s what I thought.”
“He’ll do it,” said John. “He’ll have to do it. After all, Faustina is his sister.”
“Perhaps.” Mr. Rakshasas sighed. “But I’m thinking he’ll require some careful persuasion. Every foot is slow on an unknown path.”
“Of course he’ll do it,” insisted John. And for once he decided to answer Mr. Rakshasas in kind with a proverb: “After all, blood is thicker than water.”
“Yes,” Mr. Rakshasas said in a way that made John think he wasn’t sure at all. “Honey is sweet, but it takes a brave man to lick it off a beehive.”
“Mr. Rakshasas is right, John,” said Nimrod. “Kid gloves will be required to handle the poor chap. Dybbuk’s still recovering from the shock of learning who and what he is. But there’s not much time. In less than thirty days it will be too late for Faustina to do anything to take your mother’s place. I shall leave tonight and speak to him tomorrow.”
John was about to suggest that it might be best if he went along with Nimrod because he and Dybbuk were friends. But then John remembered his father, and the Methusaleh binding.
“I agree,” said Nimrod, for while he couldn’t read minds, he was very good at reading what was written on a boy’s face. “It might be a good idea to have you along, just to reinforce our case.”
“But how?” he asked Nimrod. “We have to stay here, don’t we? Me and Phil. Otherwise Dad’s going to start aging again.”
“There might be a way,” said Mr. Rakshasas, who, as the author of the Shorter Baghdad Rules, was an expert on what djinn could and could not do. “A Posse Commodata. That means a loan of power. Most djinn are reluctant to loan their power to another djinn since it requires an uncommon degree of trust. But I’m thinking that shouldn’t be a problem between twins. The binding is only affected by the proximity of djinn power, not your body, John.”
“All right then,” said John. “How do I do it? How do I give Phil all my power?”
“Don’t be a goose in a hurry to a fox’s den, young fellow me lad,” said Mr. Rakshasas. “Giving another djinn all your power is not something done lightly. What’s more, Posse Commodata is not always to someone’s taste. Before and after. The only way for one djinn to loan power to another is for that djinn to summon all his internal heat and then breathe into that other djinn’s ear.”
“Breathe into her ear?”
“For about sixty seconds,” said Mr. Rakshasas.
John looked at his sister’s ear and grimaced with disgust. “No way. You cannot be serious. I mean, if it was anyone else but her. That’s disgusting.”
“Believe me, the feeling’s mutual, bro,” Philippa said, coolly. “The thought of having your slobbery mouth on any part of me is totally gross.”
“What’s gross about it?” asked Mr. Rakshasas.
“For one thing, she’s my sister,” protested John.
“And for another, he’s my brother.”
“It’s just not the sort of thing brothers and sisters do,” said John. “Blow in each other’s ears.”
“We’re not doing it.”
Nimrod and Mr. Rakshasas stayed quiet and let the twins make their protestations of revulsion and disgust, knowing, as the children did themselves, that in spite of these spiteful words, they were going to have to do it. And after a while, when John and Philippa had stopped yelling and making faces at each other, they both looked at the two older djinn feeling a little embarrassed at this display of youthful petulance.
“Sorry for sounding off like that,” said John.
“Me, too,” said Philippa. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“As you get older,” said Mr. Rakshasas, “you’ll learn that silence is the fence around the field where the wisdom is stacked.” He smiled calmly. “In life, you must learn to take the little potato with the big potato.”
“What do I have to do?” John asked, not entirely sure he understood what Mr. Rakshasas was talking about.
Nimrod directed Philippa to lie down on the floor and then told John to put his fingers around his sister’s ear. “Now then, John, take a deep breath and press your mouth over her whole ear, just as if you were trying to eat it. Then you must breathe deeply into it, until I tell you to stop.”
“I hope your ears are clean,” said John.
“Cleaner than yours, I bet,” said Philippa.
John looked at Nimrod and raised his eyebrows, as if asking him to recognize this latest provocation.
“Come on, you idiot,” said Philippa, and closed her eyes.
Holding his sister’s ear, John bent forward.
“Ugh,” said Philippa. “His breath. It feels really hot.”
“That’s the whole idea, Philippa,” explained Nimrod.
As soon as John had finished, Philippa rolled quickly away and wiped her ear with her forearm. “Ugh. That was really horrible. Like having a lamprey attached to my ear.”
The distaste John felt at having pressed his mouth against his sister’s ear was quite overtaken by a dreadful feeling of mortal ordinariness. It was as if a small part of him had died. He stood up, sat down again almost immediately, and hung his head in his hands. “What’s a lamprey?” he whispered.
“A jawless fish,” she said cruelly, “with a toothed, funnellike sucking mouth. A little like an eel.”
John smiled wearily.
“How do you feel?” Nimrod asked the boy.
“Wasted,” said John.
“And you, Philippa?” asked Nimrod. “How do you feel?”
“Twice as strong,” she said. “Like I just plugged myself into the electricity and then had a cup of really strong coffee.”
“I think it worked,” said Nimrod.
“Is this what it feels like to be mundane?” said John.
“How does it feel?” asked Philippa, placing a concerned, sisterly hand on his shoulder, and already regretting some of the nasty things she’d said to him.
“Like I just came in last in
the New York City Marathon and, somewhere along the way, managed to lose something very, very valuable. Like a limb. I feel like I’m coming down with some kind of virus.”
“Sure, you never miss the water until the well runs dry,” said Mr. Rakshasas.
“That’s for sure,” said John. He took a deep breath and stood up. “When do we leave?”
“Now,” said Nimrod. “There’s really no time to lose.”
They went out of the house, and into New York’s Central Park, which, late at night, is mostly deserted. There, in an open patch of ground, Nimrod whipped up a powerful but invisible tornado that was marked only by a discarded newspaper swirling around the base of the vortex. In a matter of a few seconds, he and John started to rise up on top of this column of air as if they had been summoned to appear before some celestial court. Philippa and Mr. Rakshasas watched them until they were almost fifty feet in the air, at which point, Nimrod turned the funnel of wind westward and, at a speed of almost 261 mph — an F5 on the Enhanced Fujita-Pearson Tornado Intensity Scale — they disappeared into the Manhattan night sky.
CHAPTER 3
MYSTIFIER
Dybbuk wanted to meet his real father.
That’s normal, isn’t it? Iblis might be the wickedest djinn in the world, but I’m still his son. What could be wrong with me wanting to meet the guy? Every kid wants to meet his old man, even if he is a sort of monster.
At the same time, however, he knew his mother, Jenny Sachertorte, would never permit such a thing. For one thing, she was frightened of Iblis. Most sensible people were. And for another, she would worry that meeting Iblis would only tempt Dybbuk somehow to go bad.
I don’t know what she’s worrying about. It’s not like I’m wicked or anything, like him. Sure, I do something wild now and again. What kid doesn’t? But that doesn’t make me a bad person. Maybe, if he met me, that might help Iblis not to be bad himself anymore. It could be that not having had me around all his life has just made him worse.
Dybbuk knew where his father was to be found. Every djinn knew that it was the Ifrit who controlled Las Vegas, not the Mafia, like most humans thought. And Vegas wasn’t actually very far away from Palm Springs where Dybbuk lived. It was just a question of getting there. But how was he ever to persuade his mother to let him go? Since his arrival back from India, she was keeping a pretty close eye on him. What was worse, she’d made him swear an oath that he wouldn’t start any whirlwinds and fly off somewhere on his own. He was grounded.