Luka and the Fire of Life: A Novel by Salman Rushdie

Author:Salman Rushdie
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Voyages and travels, Myths, Fables, Legends, Action & Adventure, Boys, Juvenile Fiction, Fathers and sons, Fantasy & Magic, General, Literary, Fantasy, Family, Boys & Men, Fiction, Parents
ISBN: 9780679463368
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-11-16T09:04:08.864000+00:00

6

Into the Heart of Magic

‘Is this an illusion, too?’ Luka boldly asked Captain Aag. ‘Is this another of your pesky magic tricks?’ Captain Aag gave what might have been intended as a laugh but came out as a sort of snarl. ‘Security,’ he said, ‘is not an Illusion. Security is the Foundation of any World. Alas! Those of us who labour in the field of Security are often misunderstood, regularly abused, and frequently ignored by those whose safety and values we protect, and yet we struggle on. The Maintenance of Security, young feller-me-lad, is a Thankless Task, I’ll have you know; and yet Security must be Maintained. No, Security is not a Deception. It is a Burden, and it has fallen upon me. Fortunately, I do not work alone; and a loyal Fire Bug’ – here Luka saw the little telltale flame hovering at Aag’s shoulder – ‘who makes haste, overcoming all obstacles and distractions, to bring me word that thieves are on their way, a heroic Fire Bug such as we have here, such a Bug is not the creation of flimflam or prestidigitation. Such a Bug is Virtue’s Child. Nor is the murderous and terrifying Dragon Nuthog the product of any conjuring trick – as you will soon discover.’

He was a man of hair and anger, this Aag, whose henna-tinted locks stood out from his head like wrathful orange serpents; a man, too, of chin hair, whose russet beard stuck out in all directions like the rays of an ill-tempered sun; a man of eyebrows, quarrelsome scarlet bushes which curled upwards and outwards above a pair of glaring black eyes; and a man also of ear hair, long, stiff, crimson strands of ear hair, that corkscrewed outwards from both those fleshy organs of hearing. Blood-red hair sprouted up from Aag’s shirt at the collar and out from his pirate’s greatcoat at the cuffs, and Luka imagined the Captain’s entire body covered in a luxuriant growth, as if that body were a farm and hair its only crop. Soraya, also a flame-haired person, whispered in Luka’s right ear that this Grandmaster’s bushy excessivity of hair might give all redheads a bad name.

The hair was Aag’s anger made visible. Luka could see that from the way it waved around, shaking itself in his direction as if it were a fist. Why was he so angry? Well, there was the little matter of the destruction of his circus by Luka’s curse, that much was obvious; but, in the first place, that circus was now revealed to be a side issue, merely the minor Real World plaything of the Gatekeeper of the Heart of Magic, and, in the second place, that hair had been growing for a long, long time, so Captain Aag had plainly been furious all his life, or, if he was by some chance immortal, then he must have been angry since the beginnings of Time.

‘His original name was Menetius,’ Nobodaddy whispered into Luka’s left ear, ‘and he was

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