Day of the Djinn Warriors (2 page)

I
nstead of another disaster waiting for them at home, they found Mr. Groanin in the kitchen polishing silver and making tea. Since gaining a second arm (for a long time, Groanin had existed with just one) Groanin had taken to always doing two things at once, such as hugging two children to his ample stomach instead of just one.

“I flew in from London this morning,” he explained. “The front door wasn’t locked. So I let myself in and made myself useful, as you can see.”

The twins were delighted to have Groanin with them. He might have been the gloomiest butler ever to pick up a tea tray or a dust cloth, but somehow he always managed to make them feel cheerier.

“It’s good to see you kids again,” he said in his loud Manchester accent. “I said, it’s good to see you again. Even if it is in such unhappy circumstances as these. Blimey! With
cheese as hard as yours, you could start your own flipping workhouse.”

The twins winced as Groanin’s words trampled all over their raw feelings like a pair of enormous hobnailed boots. Still, they knew the butler’s heart was in the right place even if his mouth was sometimes somewhere else.

“I hope it’s true that accidents come in threes, and that’s the end of it,” he said. “I say, I hope that’s the end of it. And that some of your ill luck doesn’t rub off on me.”

“Do shut up, Groanin,” said Nimrod.

Philippa fixed a smile to her face and hugged Groanin tighter in the hope that she might stop the butler’s runaway train of thought.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Groanin,” said Philippa.

“Don’t mention it, miss,” he said. “Besides, I had nothing better to do. And City is hardly playing its best right now.” Manchester City was the name of the soccer team Groanin supported.

“Same old Groanin,” said John.

Minutes later, the doorbell rang and Groanin, being a true butler, quickly removed his apron, put on his coat, and shimmered away to answer it.

“There’s an American person to see you,” he said, upon his equally smooth return. “A somewhat unusual-looking lady who says that she is expected and that her name is Miss Marion Morrison.”

“You’d better show her into the library,” said Nimrod.

Marion Morrison was indeed unusual. She was a tall, fat, old woman with a husky voice and two beady gray eyes that she was able to control so that she could look in two different directions at the same time. Her short, reddish-gray hair resembled rusted steel wool. She wore a red shirt, a pair of tan pants, a leather vest, and cowboy boots. In one fist she held a huge bean sandwich and in the other a mug of steaming black coffee.

“Howdy,” she said. “You must be Nimrod,” she said with one eye on the twins. “And you must be John and Philippa Gaunt,” she said with the other eye on Nimrod. “Heard a lot about you kids. Mostly good.” After a noisy slurp of coffee, she added, “Fixed myself some supper. Hope you don’t mind. Been riding a whirlwind all day to get here and I’m a little unraveled.”

“Did you have a good flight?” Philippa inquired politely.

“I’m here, ain’t I?” Marion Morrison grinned and took a large bite out of her sandwich. “That’s as good as it gets, I reckon.”

To Groanin’s fastidious horror several of the beans from her sandwich fell onto the expensive library rug, and her cowboy boots seemed quite muddy for someone who had been on a whirlwind all day. By the door was her bedroll and some saddlebags, as if she had just dismounted from a horse.

“Jenny Sachertorte said you are a djinn nurse,” said Nimrod.

“To djinn, maybe,” said the strange-looking woman. “But to humans, I’m a lot more than just a nurse. Doctor, healer, medicine woman. Mundanes have called me all of those things.” She sipped her coffee noisily again, and then threw the dregs onto the fire. “Now where’s the patient? If he’s been hit with a Methusaleh, time’s not on our side, so let’s mount up.”

Nimrod and the twins took their strange visitor upstairs and by the time they’d reached Mr. Gaunt’s bedroom, she had finished her huge sandwich. Entering the room she held up her hands like a scrubbed-up surgeon, and they crackled with a thin blue flame for a moment as she allowed a small quantity of djinn power to escape from her body and destroy the dirt and bacteria on them. The flame was powerful enough to singe the edges of her shirt cuffs.

John, who’d never before seen this, felt his jaw drop a little.

“’S’a matter, son?” she said. “Ain’t you ever seen anyone washing their hands afore?”

“Er, not with djinn power,” he said.

“Better than soap and water, by a long ways,” she said. “Never much liked the feeling of water on my skin. Seems unnatural for a djinn to go near water if you ask me.” Planting her enormous backside on Mr. Gaunt’s bed, she eyed him gently. “Hi there, old-timer,” she said.

Mr. Gaunt looked myopically straight past his new nurse and into thin air. “Who’s there?” he said, cupping one
incredibly hairy and elephantine ear with a shaking hand. “Pardon?”

“He’s a little deaf,” explained Philippa.

“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 invisible 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.”