The Five Fakirs of Faizabad (15 page)

S
itting on top of the box of stores now occupying the last three or four square feet of the flying carpet that continued to smolder underneath him like a dying barbecue, Groanin prayed that he and it would stay aloft long enough to avoid a landing in the snow-covered tops of the trees that seemed uncomfortably close and pointed. Beyond the tall trees lay open fields of snow, which, he hoped, would be deep and soft enough to break his fall and not his neck. A thin plume of smoke drifted for miles behind him so that he felt he must have resembled a stricken airplane, or perhaps a meteor.

Groanin was reasonably sure he was over Yellowstone because a little earlier on, he’d seen an immense volume of water projected into the air to a height of more than a hundred feet for almost three minutes. He thought that this might be Old Faithful, which is the park’s largest geyser. The water was hot, too — hot enough for the steam to warm his face — because, as Nimrod had said back in Morocco,
Yellowstone is an active volcanic area and the geyser effect is the result of surface water coming into contact with hot, melted rock called magma.

Suddenly, the flying carpet stuttered a little and dropped several feet, narrowly missing the top of an immense lodgepole pine.

“Flipping heck,” yelled Groanin as the remnants of the flying carpet steered its way between the remaining treetops like a car on a fairground ride that had left the fairground far behind. After a couple of near misses with tree trunks and boughs, Groanin and the box of stores emerged safely beyond the tree line into the wide snowfield. The carpet, what was left of it, incapable of supporting its load anymore, dipped precipitously, and then died. Groanin and the stores flew on for several seconds before the realization that he was no longer flying but falling drew a loud yell from the frightened butler’s lungs that lasted for as long as it took gravity to bring him back down to earth.

For a while, Groanin lay winded in a snowdrift that was several feet deep and that had certainly saved his life. And hardly moving, he contemplated a life that, as an English butler, ought to have been, he thought, a little less packed with incident. But at last he stirred, picked snow out of his ears, nostrils, and mouth, and forced his way to the surface.

The snowfield was covered with bright sunlight but the air was cold and still, and Groanin’s angry, hot breath already erupted from his mouth like a mini-geyser. It was lucky he was wearing a thick fur coat because the temperature was well below freezing.

“I never signed on for any of this,” he moaned. “I say, I never signed on for any of this malarkey. And when I get back to London — if ever I get back to London — I am going to give His Lordship a piece of my mind. No, I’ll do more than that. I’ll tell him I quit. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll hand in me notice. He can stuff this job. Djinn or not.”

He looked around for the box of stores and saw that it had broken on impact with something harder than his own place of landing; and most of the stores were spread out over a distance of several hundred yards. Slowly, for the snow was very deep, he walked and sometimes crawled after his supplies. Fortunately for him, almost the first thing he found was a pair of snowshoes and as soon as he had put them on, he found it a little easier to travel across the snow and retrieve the remainder of his stores: a backpack containing food and fire-making materials, a one-man tent, a good sleeping bag, a pair of thick fur mittens, a fur hat, a compass, a rifle with spare ammunition, a pair of snow goggles, and — what he thought was probably Nimrod’s idea of a joke — a snorkel and a pair of flippers.

“Very amusing, I’m sure,” said Groanin. “I’ll show him where he can stick this snorkel when I see him again.” He shook his head. “Idiot even left the price tag on.” And he threw the snorkel and the flippers into the snow.

As soon as he was properly attired for cold weather — as Nimrod had said, he looked like something out of a novel by Jack London — Groanin searched his pocket for his cell phone. But switching it on, he found there was no signal and, cursing Nimrod for not adding a satellite phone to his stores,
Groanin thrust the cell phone back in his coat pocket and looked around, wondering which direction to go in. He decided his best hope was to find some sort of park guide who could direct him to a main road where he might hitch a lift to the nearest town.

Now that the flying carpet was no more, the idea of finding John in an area covering several thousand square miles seemed too remote a possibility. And it was only when he heard the howl of some wolves in the distance that he remembered exactly what Nimrod had told him: One rug could be directed to follow the other, much as a bloodhound could be encouraged to follow a scent.

John had come in pursuit of Mr. Rakshasas in his new incarnation as a Yellowstone timber wolf. Was it possible, Groanin asked himself, that the flying carpet had brought him nearer John than he might have supposed?

Encouraged by this idea, Groanin cupped his mouth with his hands and shouted John’s name several times. And then comforted by the fact that he had a loaded rifle and could shoot anything that tried to eat him, he started to walk toward the sound of the howling wolves in the hope that one of them might be Mr. Rakshasas, and that John might be somewhere nearby.

Even in the snowshoes it was hard work walking across the snowfield, and after a couple of hours he had reached some trees where, with the sun already beginning to set, he decided to make camp for the night.

Groanin had little experience of camping beyond the kind of luxury, five-star camping practiced by his master,
and he knew nothing about bear safety while camping. He had wolves on his mind and had quite forgotten that Yellowstone Park also has some of the largest grizzly bears in the world. If Groanin had remembered this, he might have taken a few elementary precautions such as cooking his food downwind of his tent, burning his garbage, and suspending his stores — even his toothpaste — from a tree. Bears have a very keen sense of smell, not to mention a keen and omnivorous appetite. Groanin took none of these precautions — but then he wasn’t Jack London, but an English butler camping in the wilderness. And having made himself a pot of tea, he set about frying some pork sausages over the campfire in front of his tent, quite unaware that smelly, greasy food — which was, of course, the kind of food Groanin liked best of all — should always be avoided in bear country. If he had stuck to the jars of baby food Nimrod had also put in the butler’s stores, it is certain he would not have encountered any problems. Worst of all, Groanin, whose eyes were always larger than his stomach, fried far too many sausages and was obliged to throw several away, thinking that some hungry birds would probably be grateful for them. In short, Groanin made every mistake that it was possible to make, including the mistake of not washing his frying pan after using it. Short of sending a bear a gold-edged and heavily embossed invitation to a picnic, there wasn’t much else he could have done to ensure that he would have an unwelcome nocturnal visitor.

Not long after he had finished dinner, it started to snow heavily.

“That’s all I flipping need,” he muttered. “As if things weren’t miserable enough out here. I hope that lad had the good sense to equip himself properly for this trip. Because there’s fat chance of his djinn power working in these temperatures.”

Groanin went inside his tent and, still wearing his coat for it was fearfully cold, he climbed inside his sleeping bag. Turning the lamp up, he tried to read a bit of
David Copperfield
before going to sleep. Or to be more exact, he tried to read a bit of
David Copperfield
so that it might send him to sleep. Some people take sleeping pills. Some people have hot cocoa. Some people count sheep. Groanin always read
David Copperfield.
He had been using this book as a sleep-inducing technique for many years and it had always worked, with the result that he had read no further than chapter nine, in which David has a memorable birthday. Reading this might have prompted Groanin to remember that it was in fact his own birthday and if, in the minutes after his crash, he had searched the bottom of the store box a little more thoroughly, he would have found the birthday cake and card that Nimrod had thoughtfully provided for his journey. The snorkel and the flippers he had tossed angrily away had been Nimrod’s birthday present to his butler and the price tag had in fact been a birthday tag.

Despite the absence of cake and card and a present, however, Groanin was about to have a very memorable birthday of his own.

David Copperfield
fell out of his fingers about halfway down the second page of chapter nine, and sleepily Groanin
yawned and reached up to turn down the light. He was just drifting nicely off to sleep when he heard a short and muffled growl outside the tent.

The butler’s eyes opened wide, and very slowly, he reached for the rifle, which was just visible in the dimly lit tent.

Slowly, he sat up and, cradling the rifle on his lap, listened carefully. Something was moving about in the snow outside his tent. Something large. Groanin swallowed loudly and tried to keep calm, even when something tore at the bottom of his tent.

“Flipping heck,” he whispered. “Must be a bear.”

Groanin worked the bolt-action rifle and prepared to fire even as a long, hairy, very muscular,
apelike
arm came under the bottom of the tent and an almost
human-looking
hand started to feel around the groundsheet that covered the floor. Groanin knew nothing about bears except that they were dangerous, but even he could see that this was no bear, but something rather more horribly mysterious and perhaps rare.

“Flipping heck,” he remarked. “Must be a bigfoot.”

But the rarity and mystery of bigfoot were lost on the terrified Groanin and, raising the rifle to his shoulder, he pointed the barrel at the wall of the tent and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. Nothing happened for the simple reason that Groanin had forgotten to release the safety catch on his rifle. This was just as well for the creature — whatever it was — that had thrust its importunate arm into Groanin’s tent, but it left the butler in a state of near panic as he squeezed the trigger once again and, once again, the rifle refused to fire.

Bellowing loudly with fear, Groanin scrambled out of his tent and started to run away from the tent, which was enough to scare the shy humanoid creature away. In the full moonlight, the butler caught a glimpse of something tall and shaggy and vaguely apelike running into the darkness. Then, recognizing that he had scared the bigfoot away — by now he had little doubt that this was what he had seen — he walked back to camp, his heart still beating like the sound of feet on a fast treadmill.

“Flipping heck,” he breathed. “That was frightening. I say, that was frightening.” Full of bravado now that he had scared the bigfoot away, Groanin yelled after it:

“Now I know why it’s called Yellowstone Park,” he cried. “Because them as are daft enough to live in it are yellow themselves. I say, them as are daft enough to live in it are yellow themselves.”

Chuckling nervously, Groanin was about to reenter his tent when he saw an enormous human footprint in the snow. A bare footprint about fifteen or sixteen inches long.

“Blimey,” he said. “That’s a big foot, all right.”

Inside his tent, he climbed back into his sleeping bag and, wide awake with jangled nerves, he returned to chapter nine of
David Copperfield.
This time he managed to read as far as chapter twelve, in which David forms a great resolution, before he felt his eyelids droop.

“Can’t beat a bit of
David Copperfield
at settling you down for the night,” he said to himself and was reaching for the light when once more he heard a muffled growl. Thinking that the bigfoot had come back, Groanin cursed its nerve
and crawled outside, intent on scaring the creature off again. As soon as he was outside he waved the lamp in the air and yelled loudly, expecting to see the apelike creature legging it into the trees. Instead, he found himself face-to-face with an enormous grizzly bear. Bears do not care to be yelled at, especially when they are licking a frying pan clean of sausage fat. Moreover, it’s rare that a grizzly bear gives way to anything except perhaps an Abrams tank, or another grizzly. It’s certain there’s no record of one ever having given way to an English butler in a fur coat.

The bear reared up on its hind legs to a height of nine or ten feet and roared a terrible roar that lasted ten or fifteen seconds. Even before it ended, Groanin was already running for his life, which, as most bear experts will tell you, is as bad an idea as yelling at one, since bears are capable of running faster than most humans and certainly faster than a portly English butler.

The grizzly finished licking the frying pan and then gave enthusiastic chase.

Y
ou could be forgiven for thinking that finding just one timber wolf among all the wolves that live in Yellowstone National Park would be impossible. In fact, there are just one hundred and twenty-four wolves living in Yellowstone, as John was to discover when he wished that he might have several books on the subject to read aboard the flying carpet en route from Morocco. Having also wished to have the power of speed-reading — something Philippa had told him about but that he had never before seen the point of, since he really didn’t like to read at all — John quickly read all there was to know about wolves and their habits. And by the time John and Zagreus arrived in Yellowstone, the boy was already something of an expert on all things lupine, which is to say he knew a lot about wolves and their behavior. He had also applied a great deal of djinn power to put some of this new knowledge into practice.

First of all, John had wished with all his power to see and hear again the image of the howling wolf he had glimpsed in Mr. Burton’s ink spot, only this time he wished that he might see a larger and more detailed version of the ink spot image that was lodged only very opaquely in his memory, so that he might study it minutely.

As a result, John was able to pinpoint some distinctive geographical features of that part of the park where Mr. Rakshasas and his wolf pack were living. He already knew where the twelve wolf packs in Yellowstone were located. After that, it was simply a matter of matching these twelve locations against the geographical features in the clearer image he now carried in his memory. In this way, he was able to steer his carpet to a spot within only a few hundred yards from where the pack to which Mr. Rakshasas belonged was now living.

As soon as John landed, he quickly set up camp with the stores he had made in the minutes before djinn power finally deserted him in the cold. For this same reason, John’s camp included an Indian sweat lodge.

“We’re on our own now,” he announced as he made supper for himself and the Jinx.

“How do you mean?” asked Zagreus.

“I mean that djinn power doesn’t work in the cold. Well, not for me, anyway. I’m a young djinn, see? And it takes a while for the power that’s inside of me to mature and get really warmed up. Djinn are made of fire, so the colder I get the less power I have. That’s why I built the sweat lodge. In case I need to get hot in a hurry.”

“What about the flying carpet?”

“That’s just a carpet, not something living,” said John. “As far as I know, the carpet works no matter how cold things get.”

Zagreus shrugged. “It’s not that cold.”

“Well, I think it is.”

“But either way, we can leave whenever we want?” said Zagreus.

“Yes.” John sneered at the Jinx. “Don’t worry. We’re only going to stay as long as it takes for me to find Mr. Rakshasas. It’s getting dark now. So I guess we’ll look for him first thing in the morning. He’ll tell me the best way to deal with what Mr. Burton showed me in his ink spot. As soon as I’ve spoken to him we’ll be out of here, I promise.” John grinned humorlessly. “Man, you must hate this place.”

“On the contrary,” said Zagreus. “You know, it’s weird, but I feel kind of at home here. This place is really, really beautiful.”

“You surprise me.”

“You’re
surprised. Think how I feel.” Zagreus looked at himself. “And another thing. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this. But my hair seems to be getting longer and darker.”

“Hey, you’re right,” said John. “It is. Not only that. But you’re getting bigger.”

“Maybe,” said Zagreus.

“There’s no maybe about it. Look at the size of your feet.” Zagreus looked at his own feet and nodded. There was no getting away from the fact that John was right. His feet
seemed huge. “Oh, wow, you’re right,” he said. “I didn’t notice.”

“Well, you don’t, do you?” said John. “I dunno, but it seems to me that every time my mom takes me to buy a pair of shoes my feet are a size bigger. And I realize I’ve never noticed it before. Your feet seem to have doubled in size.”

“You don’t suppose that I’m no longer a Jinx,” said Zagreus. “That I’ve started to make the complete transition from being a Greek man to being an ape?”

“That’s not such a big transition,” observed John. “I’ve been on a beach in Greece. Some guys there were so hairy they already looked like apes.”

“Very funny.”

“I don’t know about a transition,” sad John. “After all, you can still talk and I don’t know how many apes can speak English. Or Greek.”

“True,” said Zagreus. “Nevertheless, it all seems to have happened since we arrived here in Yellowstone.”

“True,” said John. “Here, have some coffee.”

When supper was over they went to bed.

Zagreus slept hardly at all. For one thing he felt stifled inside the tent, and for another he dreamed a very vivid dream. But when early the next morning they emptied out of the tent, it was plain that Zagreus had kept on growing throughout the night.

“Holy smoke, look at you,” said John.

“What do you mean?” asked Zagreus.

“Well, look at you, dude.”

“I’m darker, yes. And my feet are bigger. So what?”

“Not just your feet, dummy. Stand up.”

Zagreus stood up and it was plain to see that he was now six or seven feet tall, with a shaggy brown coat of hair, like Highland cattle, and long, immensely strong arms.

“Also, the top of your head has gone all pointy and crested,” said John. “Like the crest of a male gorilla.”

“Wow, you’re right. I’m huge. I was dreaming I was getting bigger all night and now I am.” He frowned. “Hey, do you think I’m a gorilla?”

“Not a gorilla,” John said. “You’re too big.” Then he smacked his fist into the palm of his hand. “Of course,” he said. “It’s the only possible explanation.”

“What?” asked Zagreus.

“You’re not an ape at all,” said John. “At least, not an ape that zoology would recognize. Which is to say you’re not an ape like a gorilla, or a chimpanzee, or an orangutan, or for that matter a man. You’re an unknown species, most probably an ape-man.”

“You mean like Tarzan.”

“No. He lived in Africa. My best guess? You’re new incarnation is to be a bigfoot. A Sasquatch. Like a yeti. Only a yeti is something different. I’ve met a yeti and that turned out to be a German pretending to be a yeti to scare off tourists in the Himalayas. So there’s no such thing. Quite a few people were of the opinion that the Sasquatch was also a hoax. However, that would appear not to be the case, since, without question, you, my friend, are very definitely a Sasquatch.
Probably, it was coming here that triggered your full transition.”

“You mean you think I’m home?”

“Yup. I’d say so. Congratulations, buddy.”

“So, let me get this straight,” said Zagreus. “I’m this legendary creature, a Sasquatch, that everyone thinks is just a hoax.”

John nodded. “Does that bother you?” he asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, I dunno, someone like that might easily feel rejected,” said John. “A person could get a complex about that.”

Zagreus shook his head. “On the contrary,” he said. “I kind of like the fact that people think I don’t exist. Really I do. When I was human I always enjoyed my own company. Athens is a very busy city. Full of people. Especially in summer. And much, much too hot. I used to wish I lived somewhere cold where I could just be on my own.”

John shrugged. “Looks like your wish came true.” He looked around the snowy landscape. “Out here you couldn’t be more on your own if you lived up on the moon.”

After breakfast, John put on his snowshoes and picked up his backpack and told Zagreus that he was going to look for Mr. Rakshasas.

“Tell me, how are you going to recognize your friend Mr. Rakshasas?” asked Zagreus. “I’m no expert like you are, but it seems to me that all wolves are pretty much alike.”

“I already thought of that,” explained John. “When I still had my djinn power I wished that I might be able to
recognize Mr. Rakshasas’s wolf howl so that I might more easily distinguish him from the rest of his pack. Apparently, no two wolves howl in the same way.”

“Want me to come with you?”

John shook his head. “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. No offense, but those wolves would take one look at you and skedaddle. I would skedaddle myself if I didn’t already know you, Zagreus. You look pretty frightening. A grizzly bear with a machine gun would probably be frightened by you now.”

“Suppose you meet a bear,” said Zagreus. “What then?”

“I’ll be fine,” said John. “I know what to do to keep safe in bear country.”

“Hmm. What shall I do while you’re away?”

“I dunno. I guess you should do what the Sasquatch normally does in this part of the world at this time of year. Forage. Lurk around a bit. Skulk in some trees. Frighten a camper if you see one.”

“Good idea,” said Zagreus. “What will you do when you find your friend?”

“Depends on whether or not he recognizes me,” said John. “If he doesn’t, I’ll probably come back here and sweat my spirit out in the lodge. Then go and find him again and climb inside his skin.”

“You can do that, too?”

“Sure.”

“Isn’t it a bit crowded with two people inside the one skin?”

“It can be, yes. But it’s only for a short while. Just long enough for me and Mr. Rakshasas to have a chat.”

“But he’s a wolf now. Won’t that make communication a little difficult? Even at a spiritual level?”

“You might think so, yes. But once I’m inside the wolf’s skin, I’ll become a little bit of a wolf myself and that way we’ll be able to talk about a great many things.”

“Such as seeing your uncle dead in your vision of the future?”

“And me with his blood on my hands,” said John. “That’s the part that worries me. I’m sure Mr. Rakshasas will know what to do. He usually does.”

“Impressive.”

“I’m a djinn. That’s what I do.”