Haroun and the Sea of Stories

This is one of my favourite children's stories of all time. I can't think why more people haven't read it and adored it the way I do. It was difficult trying to figure out just which excerpt to pick, and I finally settled for the one where we meet Mali, the Floating Gardener and Goopy and Bagha, who are Plentimaw fish. Iff and Butt are already in the picture - and together, the form Haroun's army - to go and fight Khattam Shud who is attempting to destroy the source of stories and bring the whole world into silence. And endless night.

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Haroun had not forgotten what his father had said about Khattam-Shud. "Too many fancy notions are turning out to be true," he thought. At once Butt the Hoopoe answered, without moving its beak: "A strange sort of Story Moon our Kahani would be, if storybook things weren't everywhere to be found." And Haroun had to admit that that was a reasonable remark.

They were speeding south to Gup City. The Hoopoe had chosen to remain on the water, zooming along like a speedboat, spraying Story Streams in every direction. "Doesn't it muddle up the stories?" Haround inquired. "All this turbulence. It must mix things up dreadfully."

"No problem!" cried Butt the Hoopoe. "Any story worth its salt can handle a little shaking up! Va-voom!"

Abandoning what was clearly not a profitable line of conversation, Haroun returned to more important matters. "Tell me more about this Khattam-Shud," he requested, and was utterly amazed when Iff replied in almost the very same words that Rashid Khalifa had used: "He is the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of Language itself. He is the Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech. At least", and here the Water Genie abandoned the somewhat too sonorous tone of the preceding sentences, "that's what they say. When it comes to the Land of Chup and its people the Chupwalas, it's all mostly gossip and flim-flam, because its generations since any of us went across the Twilight Strip into the Perpetual Night."

"You'll have to forgive me," Haroun broke in, "but I'm going to need a little help with the geography."

"Hmf," sniffed Butt the Hoopoe. "Poorly educated, I see."

"That's totally illogical," Haroun retorted. "You're the one who's been boasting about how Speed has hidden this Moon from people on Earth. So it's unreasonable to expect us to know about its topographical features, principal exports and the like."

But Butt's eye was twinkling. Really, there were major difficulties involved in talking to machines, Haroun thought. With their deadpan expressions, it was impossible to know when they were pulling your leg.

"Thanks to genius of the Eggheads at P2C2E House," Butt began, taking pity on Haroun, "the rotation of Kahani has been brought under control. As a result the Land of Gup is bathed in Endless Sunshine, while over in Chup it's always the middle of the night. In between the two lies the Twilight Strip, in which at the Grand Comptroller's command, Guppees long ago constructed an unbreakable (and also invisible) Wall of Force. Its goodname is Chattergy's Wall, named after our King, who of course had absolutely nothing to do with building it."

"Hold on a minute," Haroun frowned. "If Kahani goes round the Earth, even if it goes very fast indeed, there must be moments when the Earth is between it and the sun. So it can't be true that one half is always in the daylight; you're telling stories again."

"Naturally I'm telling stories," Butt the Hoopoe replied. "And if you have any arguments, please take them up with the Walrus. Now excuse me, please, while I pay attention ahead. Volume of traffic has dramatically increased."

Haroun had plenty more questions to ask - why did the Chupwalas live in Permanent Night? Must it not be very cold indeed if the sun never shone at all? And what was Bezaban, or a Cultmaster, come to that? - but they were evidently nearing Gup City, because the waters around them and the skies above were filling up with mechanical birds every bit as fanciful as Butt the Hoopoe: birds with snake-heads and peacock-tails, flying fishes, dogbirds. And on the backs of the birds were Water Genies with whiskers of every possible hue, all wearing turbans and embroidered waistcoats and aubergine-shaped pajamas, and all looking so much like Iff that it was a good thing, in Haroun's opinion, that the colours of their whiskers were different enough to make it possible to tell the apart.

"Something most serious has occured," Iff commented. "All units have been ordered back to base. Now if I had my Disconnecting Tool," he added sharply, "I would have received the order myself, because, as of course Thieflets do not know, there is a highly advanced transreceiver built into the handle."

"Luckily, however," Haroun came back, just as sharply, "since you half-poisoned me with that dirty story, you worked things out; so there's no harm done, except, perhaps, to me."

Iff ignored this. And Haroun's attention was distracted as well, because he noticed that a large patch of what looked like a particularly thick and tough type of weed or vegetable of some sort was actually racing along right beside them, keeping pace with Butt the Hoopoe without apparent effort, while it waved vegetable-tentacles inn the air in a most disturbing fashion. At the centre of the mobile vegetable patch was a single lilac flower with thick, fleshy leaves, of a type that Haroun had never seen before. "What's that?" he inquired, pointing, even though he knew it was impolite to do so.

"A Floating Gardener, naturally," said Butt the Hoopoe without moving its beak. That made no sense. "You mean a Floating Garden. "Haroun corrected the bird, which gave a little snort. "That's all you know," it harrumphed. At that moment the high-speed vegetation actually reared up out of the water and proceeded to wind and knot itself around and about, until it had taken something like the shape of a man, with the lilac-coloured flower positioned in its 'head' where a mouth should be, and a cluster of weeds forming a rustic-looking hat. "So it is a Floating Gardener after all," Haroun realized.

The Floating Gardener was now running lightly over the surface of the water, showing no sign of sinking. "How could he sink?" Butt the Hoopoe interjected. "Would he not be a Sinking Gardener in that case? Whereas, as you observe, he floats; he runs, he walks, he hops. No problem."

Iff called across to the Gardener, who at once nodded a brief greeting. "Got a stranger with you. Very odd. Still. Your own business," he said. His voice was as soft as flower petals (after all, he was actually speaking through those lilac lips) but his manner was somewhat abrupt. "I thought all you Guppees were chatterboxes," Haroun whispered to Iff. "But this Gardener doesn't say much."

"He is talkative," Iff rejoined. "For a Gardener, anyhow."

"How do you do," Haroun called across to the Gardener, thinking that, as he was the stranger, it was his business to introduce himself. "Who are you?" the Gardener asked in his soft but abrupt way, without breaking his stride. Haroun told him his name and the Gardener gave another curt nod.

"Mali," he said. "Floating Gardener First Class."

"Please," Haroun said in his nicest voice, "what does a Floating Gardener do?"

"Maintenance," answered Mali. "Untwisting twisted Story Streams. Also unlooping same. Weeding. In short: Gardening."

"Think of the Ocean as a head of hair," said Butt the Hoopoe, helpfully. "Imagine it's as full of Story Streams as a thick mane is full of soft, flowing strands. The longer and thicker a head of hair, the knottier and more tangled it gets. Floating Gardeners, you can say, are like the hairdressers of the Sea of Stories. Brush, clean, wash, condition. So now you know."

Iff asked Mali. "What's this pollution? When did it start? How bad is it?"

Mali answered the questions in sequence. "Lethal. But nature as yet unknown. Started only recently, but spread is very rapid. How bad? Very bad. Certain types of stories may take years to clean up."

"For example?" Haroun piped up.

"Certain popular romances have become just long lists of shopping expeditions. Children's stories also. For instance, there is an outbreak of taking helicopter anecdotes."

With that, Mali fell silent, and the rush to Gup City continued. A few minutes later, however, Haroun heard more new voices. They were like choruses, many voices at a time speaking in perfect unison, and they were full of froth and bubbles. Finally Haroun worked out that they were actually coming up from beneath the surface of the Ocean. He looked down into the waters and saw two fearsome sea-monsters right beside the racing Hoopoe, swimming so close to the surface that they were almost surfing on the spray thrown up by Butt as it sped along.

From their roughly triangular shape and their iridescent colouring, Haroun deduced that they were Angel Fish of some variety, though they were as big as giant sharks and had literally dozens of mouths, all over their bodies. These mouths were constantly at work, sucking in Story Streams and blowing them out again, pausing only to speak. When they did so, Haroun noted, each mouth spoke with its own voice, but all the mouths on each individual fish spoke perfectly synchronised words.

"Hurry! Hurry! Don't be late!" bubbled the first fish.

"Ocean's ailing! Cure can't wait!" the second went on.

Butt the Hoopoe was once again kind enough to enlighten Haroun. "These are Plentimaw Fishes," it said. "They acquire their goodname from the fact that you have no doubt registered, viz. that they have plenty of maws, i.e., mouths."

"So," thought Haroun, filled with wonder, "there really are Plentimaw Fish in the Sea, just as old Snooty Buttoo said; and I have travelled a long way, just as my father said, and I've learned that a Plentimaw Fish can be an Angel Fish as well."

"Plentimaw Fishes always go in two's," Butt added without moving its beak. "They are faithful to partners for life. To express this perfect union they speak, only and always, in rhyme."

These particular Plentimaw Fishes seemed unhealthy to Haroun. Their multiple mouths frequently spluttered and coughed, and their eyes looked inflamed and pink. "I'm no expert," Haroun called to them, "but are you both quite well?"

The replies came swiftly, punctuated by bubbling coughs:

"All this bad taste! Ocean starts to hurt!"

"Call me Bagha! This is Goopy!"

"Excuse our rudeness! We feel droopy!"

"Eyes feel rheumy! Throat feels sore!"

"When we're better, we'll talk more."

"As you correctly guessed, all Guppees love to talk," Iff said in an aside. "Silence is often considered rude. Hence the Plentimaws' apology." - "They seem to be talking okay to me," Haroun replied. - "Normally, each mouth says something different," Iff explained. "That makes plenty more talk. For them, this is like silence."

Whereas for a Floating Gardener, a few short sentences are called talkativeness," Haroun sighed. "I don't think I'll ever get the hang of this place. What do the fish do, anyway?"

Iff replied that the Plentimaw Fishes were what he called 'hunger artists' - "Because when they are hungry they swallow stories through every mouth and in their innards miracles occur; a little bit of one story joins on to an idea from another, and hey presto, when they spew the stories out they are not old tales but new ones. Nothing comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old - it is the new combinations that make them new. So you see, our artistic Plentimaw Fishes really create new stories in their digestive systems - so just think how sick they must be feeling now! All these filthied-up sagas passing through their insides, front to back, top to bottom, side to side - no wonder they look green about the gills!"

The Plentimaws surfaced to utter one more wheezy couplet:

"Things are worse than we've ever known!"

"And the worst place is down in our Old Zone."

On hearing this, the Water Genie clapped his hand to his forehead, almost dislodging his turban. "What? What?" Haroun insisted on knowing; and so a now-even-more-preoccupied Iff grudgingly explained that the Old Zone in the southern polar region of Kahani was an area to which hardly anybody went any more. There was little demand for the ancient stories, flowing there. "You know how people are, new things, always new. The old tales, nobody cares."

So the Old Zone had fallen into disuse; but it was believed that all the Streams of Story had originated long ago in one of the currents flowing north across the Ocean from the Wellspring, or Source of Stories, that was located, according to legend, near the Moon's South Pole.

"And if the Source itself is poisoned, what will happen to the Ocean - to us all?" Iff almost wailed. "We have ignored it for too long, and now we pay the price."

"Hold on to hats," Butt the Hoopoe interrupted. "Hitting the brake now. Gup City dead ahead. Record time! Va-va-va-voom! No problem."

"It's amazing what you can get accustomed to, and at what speed," Haroun reflected. "This new world, these new friends: I've just arrived, and already none of it seens very strange at all."