The Underground City (3 page)

He was furiously angry but bit back his words as he glimpsed the Arabs and it was only their presence that stopped him from giving Lewis a real mouthful. Curbing his temper with an effort, he walked across to the bedouin and, recognizing old Sheikh Rashid, shook his hand.

“
As salaam aleikum
, Sheikh Rashid,” he smiled.

Sheikh Rashid touched his forehead. “
Wa aleikum as salaam
,” came the response.

“Thank you for coming out in such weather. We appreciate your being here and I will tell Mr Grant personally of your efforts on behalf of his son.”

“It’s nothing,” the sheikh disclaimed politely. “I saw him as he passed our tents.”

“Come here, Lewis,” Williams called, “and thank Sheikh Rashid for coming out in the
shimaal
to rescue you.”

As Lewis stammered his gratitude, the sheikh stiffened
suddenly
and took a step backwards. A curious expression crossed his face and ignoring Lewis’s outstretched hand, he bowed low. Very low.

Williams looked shrewdly at the old sheikh. Now what was up, he wondered. But the sheikh said nothing and the cars were waiting.

“
Fii amaan illah
,” Williams said, unsure now as to whether to offer his hand or not.

“
Fii amaan al kareem, Mr Williams
,” came the response and the sheikh held out his hand to him. Gareth shook it warmly and thanked the sheikh again for his help. Nice old chap, he thought, as he turned to take Lewis’s arm. His lips
tightened
. The sooner he got him back to the township the better. Goodness knows what his father was going to say when he heard the story!

Battling the howling wind, Gareth Williams guided Lewis across the sand to the vehicles and, bundling him in, struggled round to the driver’s door. The Arabs stood as he had left them, watching their departure. He gave a final wave and, slamming the door shut, took off in a swirl of dust.

Even as they left, the force of the wind seemed to quieten. Williams pondered over the old sheikh’s odd behaviour as they drove back through the waning storm; their powerful
headlights 
throwing into relief the moving, rippling sea of streaming sand that half obliterated the serrated ridges of the track. Half an hour, he reckoned, and they’d be home. Thank goodness they’d managed to find Lewis so quickly. But why had Rashid refused to shake the boy’s hand?

Back at the oasis, the huddled group of bedouin watched the red rear-lights of the 4x4s disappear into the night and made to mount their beasts.

Sheikh Rashid, however, gripped his camel’s halter and led the animal towards the dim outline of the ruined houses that loomed vaguely among the trees.

“Father,” Hassan gasped, running after him and grabbing his sleeve. “Father, where are you going? We can’t stay here at night, you know that! What about the djinn?”

His father turned and looked at them all as they stood amid the waving palms. “The djinn has gone,” he said calmly. “We can now return to the village of our ancestors and sleep safely.”

“But, Father,” Hassan gulped, “how do you
know
the djinn has gone?”

“You have much to learn, my son,” his father replied. “I looked into the eyes of that boy and the djinn looked back at me.”

“So
that’s
why you bowed to him as though he were a great sheikh!” Hassan said, his eyes sharpening. “I wondered at that!”

“So did Mr Williams,” Sheikh Rashid smiled, “and he will wonder even more when I tell him tomorrow that we want to leave our tents and move back to Al Antara.”

Robert Grant relaxed as the flight attendant removed the remains of his meal. He was completely exhausted. The Bahrain trip, he reflected, had really worn him out. Thank goodness for the chance to snatch a few hours sleep. He looked at his son who had been remarkably quiet since they’d boarded the flight. He must be missing his friends already, he decided. So many of them had called to say goodbye that they’d been late checking in.

“You all right, Lewis?” he asked casually.

“Yeah.”

“It’ll be nice to see your mum, won’t it? I talked to her this morning. She’s coming to the airport to meet us. She says she’s rented a lovely house for us. It belongs to an Edinburgh
professor
who has gone to America for a year. It even has its own library!”

“Yeah.”

His father sighed as he watched his son bury his head in a comic. Couldn’t Lewis find something decent to read instead of comics? When they finally moved to Aberdeen he’d really have to be around for him more. Take him to football matches and the like; he might even take him fishing. He wanted to do all these things but the pressure of work was enormous. He’d been really angry when he’d got back that morning and Williams had told him about the desert escapade. He sighed. Lewis had been left to his own devices for far too long and his grandmother’s illness hadn’t helped. His wife, Margaret, had had to stay in Edinburgh to be near the hospital and he supposed that they’d
all stay there for a few months. It might actually work out quite well, he thought. He’d managed to get Lewis a place at George Heriot’s, his old school, until Christmas. With any luck, he mused, he’d have found a suitable house in Aberdeen by then. His thoughts drifted and as unresolved problems floated round his mind, he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Lewis lifted his eyes from his comic. He could tell from his father’s steady breathing that he was asleep. He looked
unseeingly
at the back of the chair in front of him, his face set and his eyes petrified. How it had happened, he hadn’t a clue. In fact, he couldn’t believe it even now, but memories of that morning were still vivid in his mind. He’d been brushing his teeth and when he rinsed his mouth and looked at the mirror he had almost died of fright for it wasn’t his own reflection that stared back at him but the face of a rather sour-looking old man.

“Good morning, Lewis,” the man in the mirror said. “Er … may I introduce myself? My name is Casimir. Prince Casimir, actually.”

Lewis did the first thing that came into his head. He grabbed the bar of soap and scrubbed the mirror with it but when he wiped just a little of it off to have a peek, he could see that the awful man was still there.

“I’m afraid I can’t be wiped away that easily, Lewis,” Casimir sneered. “I’m
inside
you, you see.”

“Well, get out of me,” Lewis shot back at him. “I don’t want you inside me! Get out, right now!”

“No, I don’t think so. You see, Lewis, it suits me to live inside you.”

Memories of what he had read in Peter’s comic suddenly came back to him with sickening clarity. It couldn’t be, surely! “A djinn!” Lewis gasped in dawning understanding. “You’re a djinn!”

Casimir looked offended. “Well, sort of,” he admitted.
“Actually, I’m a magician,” he said shortly, “but if it suits you to call me a djinn then so be it.”

Lewis’s mind winged its way back to the face he had glimpsed in the swirling waters of the well. “It was you, wasn’t it?” he said, looking appalled. “You were in the well! I saw you in the water!”

“If you don’t mind, we won’t talk about the well,” the face scowled fleetingly.

“What’ll we talk about then? What do you want?”

“I think I want to be you, Lewis,” Casimir answered gently. “You see, I need a body to live in and you are suitable in so many ways. Young, not too bright, doting family …”

“No way!” said Lewis, furious at being termed ‘not too bright.’ He rushed back to his room and, searching frantically through the pile of comics that he was taking with him on the flight, found the one that Peter had given him the day before. “It says here that djinns, genies, whatever you call yourself, can grant wishes. Nothing about taking people over! This is my body, I’ll have you know, and I’m keeping it!”

Casimir’s eyes hooded as he foresaw trouble ahead. Lewis wasn’t going to be the pushover he’d thought and the last thing he wanted him to do was tell the whole story to his parents. They’d make enquiries at Al Antara and he frowned at the thought of the mistake he’d made there; for, triumphant in his freedom, he’d looked at the old sheikh through Lewis’s eyes. And the sheikh had known him. Much better to compromise, he thought wisely. Make a bargain. After all, he was sure to win. No youngster could hope to outwit him. It would all come to the same thing in the end and wishes seemed as good a way as any of keeping this young hothead on a string.

“Shall we make a bargain, Lewis?” he suggested. “I will grant you one wish every day and if, by any chance, I can’t do what you ask then my magic will revert to you. If
you
can’t make a
wish, however, I will take over your body and I will live in it for ever.”

Lewis thought about it. It seemed a fair deal. There were millions of things in the world to wish for, after all, and he was quite sure that if he put his mind to it he would be able to think of something the magician couldn’t do. Like moving
mountains
! I mean, surely this old man couldn’t shift something like Mount Everest … but still …

“I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “I don’t really want anybody living inside me. Why don’t you just get lost! Or find somebody else!”

“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for the moment, Lewis,” Casimir answered, eyeing him coldly, “and, quite frankly, you’d be wise to make the best of it.”

Lewis, however, still looked undecided. Casimir sighed and tried to tempt him. “You can wish for anything, you know,” he reminded him. “Money, a fast car, a …”

“What would
I
do with a fast car,” Lewis said disgustedly. “I can’t sit my driving test for a couple of years yet and my parents would ask me where I’d got it from.”

“Well, what would you like to wish for?”

Lewis looked thoughtful. What he wanted most of all was to punish Peter, Jack and Colin for daring him to go to Al Antara in the first place. “Could you make someone …” He had been going to say “suffer” but the sneering, knowing look in Casimir’s eyes stopped him.

Now, underneath his abominable manners, Lewis was not, actually, all that bad. He was an only child, more than a bit spoiled and because his parents were always on the move
jobwise
, found it hard to mix and make new friends. “Could you make somebody like me?” he blurted out.

“The whole country if you like,” offered Casimir obligingly.

“No, no. Just Peter, Jack and Colin and … and … perhaps the
people at school. You know, the teachers as well.”

“Done,” Casimir smiled triumphantly.

And with a sinking heart, Lewis realized too late that he had been very neatly outsmarted. It was then that the phone had started to ring. It hardly stopped all morning and most of his class came to say goodbye. Peter, Jack and Colin, he thought, had been really sorry about the dare but with the djinn’s magic floating round the place, he couldn’t be sure if they were telling the truth. The class had given him a wonderful send off but knowing that their feelings were the result of magic, left Lewis less than impressed and looking back on it, he was furious with himself for wasting his first wish.

He shifted in his seat and sighed as he took stock of the situation. Mind you, it wasn’t all bad, he reckoned. Most of the time, he forgot that the djinn was there at all for it didn’t interrupt his thoughts or speak to him the whole time. In fact, it seemed that the only time he could talk to the djinn was when he was standing in front of a mirror. In this, he was totally mistaken, as he was soon to find out, but at the time he believed it and relaxed. It might, actually, work out quite well, he thought, looking on the bright side. Not everybody, after all, could have a wish granted every day. He might even have some fun!

His mother didn’t stop talking from the time she met them at Edinburgh Airport till they reached the huge house she’d rented in Heriot Row. It had been pouring with rain when they’d landed and Lewis wasn’t at all sure if he was going to like living in Edinburgh. He looked round. The house was grey, the street was grey and the rain was grey. Even his father felt it. “We’re going to miss the sun and the sand, Lewis,” he said tiredly. “And, if anything, Aberdeen is greyer than Edinburgh!”

“This is Mrs Sinclair, Bob,” his mother said as the door opened. “Lewis, say hello to Mrs Sinclair, our housekeeper.
She has kindly agreed to stay on while the Robinsons are in America. I’ve been telling Lewis,” she said to the housekeeper, “that he’ll have to keep his room tidy so that you don’t have to climb all those stairs every day!”

“That’s very kind of you, Mrs Grant,” the housekeeper replied, looking dubiously at Lewis. Jeans, long, black hair and very strange eyes. She hardly heard what Mrs Grant was saying as she tried to shrug off the feeling of unease that shivered through her.

“Your room is right at the top of the house, I’m afraid, Lewis,” his mother was saying apologetically. “It’s a nuisance but none of these old Edinburgh houses have lifts.”

Lewis looked at the housekeeper, a prim, starched-looking lady with iron-grey hair. “Don’t worry about me, Mrs Sinclair,” he said in his politest voice. “I’ll make my own bed and keep my room clean and tidy.”

Had his mother not been so anxious to keep on the right side of Mrs Sinclair, she might well have shown some
suspicion
at this announcement. Since when had Lewis ever lifted a duster, made his own bed or picked up his clothes?

Somehow Lewis managed to keep the smile on his face but his mind was in turmoil — for it hadn’t been him that had
spoken
, it had been the djinn! He felt slightly sick at the thought that the djinn had been able to make him say words that weren’t his own. Goodness knows what trouble that could land him in! He trembled slightly as he watched the suitcases being brought into the house, devastated by the knowledge that the djinn had more power over him than he’d thought!

Nevertheless, he quickly cottoned on to the reason for his words. If his room was at the top of the house then he reckoned that Mrs Sinclair would be more than glad to leave him well alone.