“Merciful morels!” Sorrel climbed off Firedrake’s back and sank up to her chest in creepers. “How are we ever supposed to find anything in this jungle?” She looked around uneasily.
“By starting to look for it,” said Firedrake, making his way through the thick undergrowth.
“Hang on, wait a minute!” Sorrel clutched his tail. “It’s all very well for you! You’re not up to your chin in all these leaves. Although,” she said, taking an experimental bite out of one, “they taste delicious. Absolutely yummy.”
“Want to get on my back again?” asked Firedrake, turning around.
“No, no,” said Sorrel dismissively. “It’s all right. I’ll manage on my own. Yum. Honest I will.” She was pulling leaf after leaf off the plants and stuffing them into her backpack. “These leaves are very, very tasty.”
Ben put Twigleg on his shoulder and grinned.
“Come along, Sorrel,” said Firedrake, impatiently swishing his tail back and forth. “You can stock up on provisions once we’ve found the djinn.”
He turned and went on. Ben followed, and the two of them had soon disappeared among the trees.
“I call that really mean of him!” said Sorrel crossly, trudging along behind them. “As if that djinn couldn’t wait another five minutes. It’s not as if I lived on nothing but moonlight. Does he want me to get so faint with hunger that I fall off his back?”
Firedrake was making his way along the river. The farther they went, the narrower the ravine became. At last a huge, fallen palm tree barred the dragon’s way. An untidy tangle of roots stuck up in the air, but its tall trunk rested on a couple of large boulders in the riverbed, so that it was lying like a bridge across the water.
“Wait a moment!” Ben put Twigleg down on Firedrake’s tail, climbed up on the trunk of the fallen tree, and clambered a little way along it.
“Look!” he called, pointing to the opposite bank. “There, among the red flowers!”
Firedrake took a step into the water and stretched his neck.
Yes, there it was. A large gray car overgrown with creepers and covered with fallen flower petals. Lizards basked on its hood in the sun.
Ben made his precarious way along the tree trunk and jumped down on the opposite bank. The dragon waded through the shallow water with Sorrel and Twigleg and then waited on the bank with them. Ben pushed the creepers aside and peered cautiously into the car. A large lizard sitting on the front seat hissed at him when he looked through the side window. Ben jumped back in alarm. The lizard rapidly disappeared between the seats.
“No glass in the windows,” said Ben quietly. “Just as the professor told us.”
Cautiously he put his head in through the car window again. There was no trace of the lizard now, although two snakes were coiled up on the backseat. Ben tightened his lips, put his hand through the window, and pressed the horn. Then he rapidly moved back.
Flocks of birds flew up, squawking. The lizards shot off the hot metal of the car and disappeared into the twining undergrowth.
All was silent again.
Warily Ben stepped back. The professor had told them to wait seventeen paces away from the car. Ben counted his footsteps. One … two … three … four … Seventeen paces were a lot. On purpose, he did not make his steps too large. After the seventeenth, he sat down on a rock and waited while Firedrake lay down behind him among the flowers and leaves. Sorrel and Twigleg sat on the dragon’s paws. They all stared at the car as if spellbound.
Asif didn’t keep them waiting long.
Blue-tinged smoke billowed out of the car and streamed higher and higher. Ben had to crane his neck to look up at the vast spiral. The drifting wisps merged together among the treetops, whirling around one another faster and faster until the gigantic pillar of smoke formed into a body, a body as blue as the night sky and so large that its shadow darkened the entire ravine. Asif’s thousand eyes, small and bright as jewels, sparkled all over his skin, his shoulders, his arms, and his fat belly.
Ben retreated until he felt Firedrake’s scales behind him. Sorrel and Twigleg huddled on the dragon’s back. Only Firedrake did not move but raised his head and gazed up at the djinn.
“Well, well! Look at this, then!” The djinn bent over them. A thousand eyes with a thousand images in them shone above their heads, and as he spoke Asif’s breath blew like the hot desert wind from one end of the ravine to the other.
“So what have we here?” boomed the djinn. “A dragon, a genuine dragon. Well, well, well!” His voice was as hollow as an echo, resounding from wall to wall of the rocky ravine. “So it was you making my skin itch so much that a thousand servants had to scratch it for me.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, djinn!” Firedrake called. “We’ve come to ask you a question.”
“Aaaaah!” The djinn’s mouth stretched into a smile. “I answer only human questions.”
“We know!” Ben jumped up, pushed the hair back from his forehead, and looked up at the huge djinn. “I’m going to ask you the question, Asif.”
“Oooooh!” breathed the djinn. “So this little fellow knows our name! What kind of a question is it? You know the rules?”
“Yes,” replied Ben.
“Good.” The djinn leaned a little farther down, his breath as hot as the steam rising from a saucepan. Perspiration was dripping off the end of Ben’s nose.
“Ask away!” breathed Asif. “I could just do with another servant! Someone small to clean my ears, for instance. Now you would be the ideal size for that.”
Ben gulped. Asif’s face was now directly above his head. Blue hairs as thick as saplings grew in his nostrils, and his pointed ears, rising high above his bald skull, were larger than Firedrake’s wings. Two huge eyes, green as the eyes of a giant cat, looked down mockingly on Ben. He saw his own reflection in them, tiny and forlorn. Asif’s many, many other eyes showed other scenes: snow fell on strange cities, ships capsized at sea.
Ben mopped the sweat off his nose and said in a loud voice, “Where does the Rim of Heaven lie?”
Sorrel narrowed her eyes. Firedrake held his breath, and Twigleg began shaking all over. But Ben, heart thumping, waited for the djinn’s answer.
“The Rim of Heaven!” repeated Asif.
He rose a few more meters into the air and then laughed so loud that stones broke away from the walls of the ravine and crashed into the depths. His fat belly wobbled above Ben’s head as if it might drop on him at any moment.
“Oh, little one, little one!” boomed the djinn, bending over the boy again.
Firedrake placed himself protectively in front of Ben, but Asif gently pushed the dragon aside with his huge hand.
“The Rim of Heaven!” he repeated. “You’re not putting that question for yourself, are you?”
Ben shook his head. “No,” he said. “My friends need to know. Why ask me that?”
“Why?” boomed Asif, so loud that Twigleg put his hands over his ears. “Because you are the first! The first not to ask for himself, my beetle-sized little human. The first in so many thousands of years that even I can’t count them. So I am doubly glad to answer your question. Although I really could have used you as a servant.”