All in all, travelling by flying carpet was rather an odd experience. At first, Theo and Bozo clung together in the centre of the carpet, terrified that they might slip off and go tumbling through the sky. Gradually, though, their courage returned and they began tentatively to crawl around, testing the rug’s strength and firmness. They soon found out that even if they stood on the corners, the carpet held as flat and strong as a metal tray. When they discovered this, Bozo did a back flip in excitement and almost fell clean off in the process. He clutched on to the tassels for dear life and it took all of Theo’s strength to haul the Bloon back up again. Another thing about the flying carpet was that there was no windscreen of any kind. As a result, Theo’s straggly hair swept tightly behind him, and Bozo had to wrap them both in his tail to stay warm. When they passed through a low-flying cloud, everything turned white and damp. They couldn’t even see their bodies. They froze for fear of falling off, until at last the carpet burst through the layers of clouds and emerged into a blue heaven flooded with sunlight.
There was no need to try and steer the thing, either. The flying carpet knew exactly where it was taking them and held to a bearing of southsouth-east. The sun dried off the moisture from the clouds and the harrowing events of the day seemed far behind them. The air was crisp and sharp, the sunlight fell like melted gold on puffed up beds of clouds, and there wasn’t another living being in sight.
‘You know, it’s strange,’ Theo mused. ‘I don’t feel in the least bit scared, even though there’s only an inch or so between me and certain death.’
‘How much is there usually?’ Bozo grinned, and they both laughed. For the first time in days the pressure was off and, at 1,000 metres altitude, they felt safer than ever.
Presently, night fell and the air grew a little chilly. Exhausted, Theo and Bozo lay down to sleep. The moment they did so, the carpet rolled up its rear to cover them like a blanket. They were wrapped so tightly that there was no chance of falling off the edge, and moments later they were both snoring heavily.
Bozo spent the night dreaming of the blue-cheese dunes of Bloonland and the antics of his distant friends. In between breaths he giggled in his sleep, occasionally laughing so loudly that he woke himself up.
Theo didn’t slumber so easily. The visions of the crystal ball tumbled through his head like clothes in a drier. The brutality and suffering he had witnessed haunted his dreams, and several times he shook awake, sweating with fear. Then he’d stare up at the moonlit sky and count the stars until he fell asleep again.
He knew that the history of Hoomanity wasn’t a pretty one, but to see it like that had made it much more real. He had felt the suffering of the men and women killed in war, of the slaves in those terrible ships and the fear of the old woman accused of being a witch….
Suddenly it occurred to Theo that the face of the woman burnt at the stake bore a strong resemblance to Lou: she had the same kind eyes, ruddy cheeks, and, though she was a good deal thinner, she even had the same wrinkles on her forehead. But how could that be? Lou had said that the witch hunts had taken place hundreds of years before. But then hadn’t Simon hinted that he’d been alive for centuries? Theo couldn’t put it all together in his head.
And then there was the Storyteller. All the hours Theo had spent reading diagnosis books in the hospital, and it turned out that the old man was simply cracking up. It reminded Theo of a comic he’d read recently: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – a doctor who drank a potion that brought out the evil half of his split personality. It would have been hard for Theo to imagine any evil in the Storyteller if he hadn’t seen the vision of his alter ego, the Enemy. He wondered if the Storyteller and the Enemy were active at the same time or if one took over while the other slept.
Eventually these thoughts took too firm a hold on Theo’s mind to let him sleep anymore. The stars were beginning to fade and the air was freezing. Bozo’s eyes flickered open for a moment as he had an attack of the giggles. Theo nudged him in the ribs and whispered, ‘Bozo, are you awake?’
‘I am now,’ came the disgusted reply, and the Bloon wiped the dust from his eyes with a frown.
‘Bozo, where do you suppose we’re going?’
‘Somewhere warmer, I hope. No one thought to give me a jacket.’ The Bloon sniffed.
Theo swallowed a lump of guilt. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, unfolding the jacket he’d used as a pillow. ‘Do you want to wear it now? I slept on it last night and …hey! What were you resting your head on?’ he cried, as he noticed for the first time a rolled up ball of cloth.
Bozo flinched guiltily. ‘Oh, that. It’s nothing. Just …a memento that I picked up….’
But Theo had already snatched away the cloth to reveal Lou’s crystal ball shimmering pink in the dawning sky. Theo stared severely at his friend from beneath his eyebrows in reproach. Bozo shrugged. ‘Well, you know, I figured we might need it more than her…. I expect that she would have liked us to have it but, what with all the excitement, she forgot. At least now we’ll be able to stay in touch with the Storyteller….’
‘How could you?’ Theo cried. ‘After all that Lou did for us – after all the risks she took, you repay her with theft.’
‘If she couldn’t see that coming, then what kind of fortune-teller is she?’ Bozo snapped, bored of being apologetic. ‘Everyone knows that a Bloon can resist anything except temptation.’
Theo huffed in disbelief and turned his back on his sticky-fingered friend. Bozo sniffed and did the same. The crystal ball lay on the carpet between them.
Although the eastern horizon was now daubed with streaks of pink and yellow, the sun had yet to arrive and it was hard to make out the land below. A carpet is a very small place to share with someone you’re mad at, and so it was understandable that curiosity overcame their rift. Theo glanced edgily over his shoulder and met Bozo’s eyes doing the same. They both looked away indignantly but the tension was unbearable.
Theo was the first to crack. ‘I suppose now that it’s here…’ he began hesitantly. Bozo wrinkled his nose but also turned around to examine the orb.
‘Do you remember how the Storyteller said it was a crystallised dragon tear?’ Theo asked, as he leant forwards to see if there were any markings on the ball. He didn’t dare touch it yet, but the sides seemed flawlessly smooth.
‘Are there really such things as dragons?’ said Bozo, his curiosity aflame.
‘I think maybe there were,’ Theo replied doubtfully. ‘I don’t suppose the tales could have come from nowhere….’
‘How would you make a dragon cry?’ Bozo wondered. He didn’t suppose that fire-breathing lizards with wings were exactly sentimental types.
‘I don’t think we need to know that badly,’ Theo began, trying not to sound enthusiastic. ‘And it would be playing with fire to ask….’
But Bozo had grabbed the crystal ball and already craggy mountains were coming into view within it. The rocky slopes were bright red and covered in a thin green forest that died out some way before the top. They could see dark fissures in the mountains that they supposed were caves. At the top there was a particularly large opening with a long, scaled tail dangling outside in the sunlight. The orb zoomed in and they saw curled up inside the cave an enormous green dragon that must have been 20 metres long at full stretch. The dragon awoke with a bored yawn and glanced around the cave for something to do.
The sounds of the local women gathering firewood floated up from the slopes below and the dragon stuck his snout out of the cave to have a look. There was no malice or hunger in his eyes, only (it seemed to Theo and Bozo) a profound loneliness. However, at the sight of this enormous beast the women abandoned their baskets and ran screaming down the mountainside.
The dragon’s eyes filled with dismay and he beat his wings to take off after them, perhaps hoping to explain. But before he got very far, he was met with a hail of arrows from a local patrol of the village men. The arrows bounced off the dragon’s scaled chest harmlessly but his heart ached at such a hostile reception. With a melancholy sweep, he returned to the sanctuary of his cave and slumped on the ground in depression.
The dragon was beautiful and majestic, yet utterly alone. He was simply too grand and intimidating a creature for the Hoomans to understand or love. His long, scaled body shook with grief and his large eyes became glassy. Finally, a single tear dropped out of his left eye, rolled down his long snout and fell to the ground with a resounding ching. The dragon tear crystallised on contact with the ground, and bounced out of the cave and on down the slopes, crashing into an encampment of gypsies in the forest below.
Theo and Bozo then saw a collage of scenes: long journeys by horse and by boat, money changing hands and the crystal ball passing from clan to clan. In the last scene, they saw it reach the hands of the old woman who looked like Lou and who had met with such a terrible end.
The vision faded and Bozo removed his hands, highly impressed. ‘I reckon this baby will tell us anything we want to know!’ he whooped. ‘Not such a bad idea to bring it along, eh?’
Theo grinned excitedly, though his conscience still troubled him. He went quiet for a moment as an Idea floated in through his ears. As he let it settle in, the sun climbed over the horizon and they were bathed in amber morning light.
‘Bozo,’ Theo began thoughtfully. ‘Yesterday the crystal ball told us why the Storyteller is dying. Do you think it might tell us what the Cure could be?’
Bozo gazed back at him, awestruck. He nodded in wonder as Theo leaned forwards to take the ball in his hands. The boy felt the energy of the orb pulse through his fingers, and he held his breath in expectation as it swirled a rainbow of colours. Just as the vision seemed to begin, though, the ball turned silver and reflected only their hopeful faces.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ Bozo demanded. ‘Try tapping it on the side.’
Theo pulled his hands away and shook his head. ‘Maybe it doesn’t work in sunlight,’ he said, a little discouraged. It was like opening a wrapped present only to find an empty box. However, his spirits returned a moment later when he looked over the edge of the carpet. ‘Have you seen where we are?’ he said.
They both crawled to the edge of the carpet and looked down. The clouds had vanished and they gazed through a perfectly blue sky to a landscape of sand. Undulating dunes swept to each horizon and the sand glowed scarlet in the dawn light. The dunes swelled up out of the desert and cast long shadows to the west like the paint strokes of an artist. Gazing down at the harmonious waves of sand, Theo had the impression of seeing an ocean frozen in time. In the driest place in the world, he could think only of water.
The flying carpet began its descent, and soon Bozo and Theo were coasting along just a few metres above the sand, soaring and dipping with each rise and fall of the slopes. The desert was enormous, but it was made of the tiniest granules of sand that washed up each ridge to form a perfectly straight line along the top.
The shadows were shrinking now and the view on all sides was of the endless desert stretching away to the horizon. The heat was already rising, and the air seemed to bend and distort close to the sand. The travellers hoped the carpet knew where it was going.
Then to the east they saw a tiny cluster of dots that stood out only because there was nothing else to see. The carpet made straight for this landmark and before long they could see that it was an oasis – an orchard of date palms with wild grass and bushes growing around it. As the pair grew closer, they could make out a tall, thin man in long, white robes attending to a camel in the shade of a palm tree.
The carpet gave a final dramatic arc through the air and then swooped down gracefully to land in the middle of the oasis. The man in robes turned around to take in the new arrivals. He seemed to frown, and his eyes were dark and grim. A dark green cloth around his head cast his features into shadow, but it already seemed that he wasn’t a man who smiled all that much.
‘Welcome. A thousand welcomes,’ he muttered in a voice that seemed anything but welcoming. ‘I expect the fortune-teller forgot to tell you to remove your sandals when sitting on the carpet.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Theo stammered, quite flustered by such a cool reception. ‘I didn’t know it was rude to keep them on.’
As he took off his sandals, their host picked up two glasses from the remains of a fire and carried them to the camel. The beast snorted and spat but the man whispered calming words in its ear. Then he bent beneath the animal and filled the glasses with milk fresh from its udders.
‘A Bedouin can live off the milk of a camel if he has to,’ he said, as he handed Theo and Bozo each a glass.
Bozo took a deep gulp and at once spat out the liquid. ‘Ugh!’ he exclaimed. ‘But why would anyone want to?’
The Bedouin focused his gaze on Bozo and his eyes seemed to bore holes into the Bloon’s head. Bozo couldn’t bear to meet the look. He began to feel very small. He covered his face with his hands and seemed to shrink where he sat, looking for something to hide behind.
Theo stepped in to save him. ‘Excuse me, but are you the Sandman that Lou told us about?’
Reluctantly, the man withdrew his searing gaze from Bozo’s trembling form and switched his attention to Theo. ‘Sandman?’ he repeated with a wince. ‘Is that what she called me? My name is Ali Aziz Abdullah Mohammed and my family has walked these sands since the Storyteller first breathed life into the Hoomans. I, who have seen civilisations rise and fall, dust returning unto dust; I, Ali, whose name is known, respected and feared in all corners of the desert – and she calls me the Sandman?’ Ali snorted and tipped back his head to stare at the sky as though it were a mirror.
‘I’m sorry if I offended you,’ Theo mumbled. ‘I’m sure Lou didn’t mean any harm by it – and she apologises for keeping your carpet so long.’
‘The only flying carpet left in the Story,’ Ali snapped, tilting his head to look down his long nose at Theo. ‘Made from the feathers of a thousand birds and sewn with winds captured from the heart of the desert. And where has it been for the past century? Gathering dust in the cellar of some cheap teller of fortunes in a drab suburb of Paris.’
Ali went on with his angry monologue but Theo’s attention was distracted by the smell of something burning close behind him. He met Bozo’s eye and they turned round with the dreadful certainty that there was something very wrong. To their horror, they saw that sunlight, magnified by the crystal ball, was searing a dark hole in the carpet. They jumped up to move the orb but were too slow. Flames sprang up and the carpet shook itself free of its passengers, sending them head over heels into the sand. ‘A flying carpet such as this would once have fetched the price of ten thousand camels…’ Ali declared, but broke off as the carpet sprang up in pain and tried to smother itself against the sand. But it was too late. Flames engulfed the fabric and within seconds it was reduced to ashes. The winds trapped inside the carpet burst free and tore through the oasis with delight, throwing sand in everyone’s faces and charging out into the desert sky to freedom.
Bozo and Theo looked up at Ali in trepidation. Ali pulled back the shawl around his head to reveal a thick, black beard and an expressionless leather face. He strode forward and picked up the crystal ball as though it were a piece of camel dung. ‘An eye for an eye,’ he muttered. ‘And a crystal ball for a flying carpet.’ He leant back and hurled it with surprising strength some 50 metres into the side of a dune. It landed with a thud and rolled down a little way before being swallowed in an avalanche of sand.
‘It is fated that we must cross the desert by camel,’ the Bedouin declared with a resigned tone of voice. He turned and went to untie the animal from its tether on the palm tree.
‘Are you sure this guy is an AO?’ Bozo whispered.
Theo shrugged. ‘I guess he must be if he knows about the Storyteller. And the carpet did bring us here. But I know what you mean. I thought all of the AOs were going to be nice.’
‘Maybe a person gets like that after a lifetime of drinking camel milk.’ Bozo giggled but then swallowed his laughter as he looked up to see Ali towering over him with his hand on the camel’s head.
‘It is time to leave. If you will please take your seats.’ He made the camel kneel down so that they could clamber on to the saddle between the hump and its long, curving neck. As Bozo hopped on, the camel sniffed and then spat a thick ball of green mucus into Ali’s face. He paused for a moment with a comic blank expression and then wiped it off with his sleeve. ‘As much as my heart and soul belong to the desert,’ he said, with no trace or irony, ‘I sometimes wonder if it’s really worth it.’
He handed them long white cloths to wrap around their heads and, to their surprise, the extra clothing served not only as protection against the sun but also kept them cool. The camel rose and they set off at a slow pace, Ali steering the animal by its harness. He guided them in silence.
While the prospect of riding a camel seemed exciting to Theo, he could never have guessed how uncomfortable it would be. His seat was just behind the camel’s neck, and it dipped and swayed with each step the beast took. The glare of the sand in the midday sun made him feel even more dizzy, and only the fear of falling off kept him awake. Bozo resolved this problem by tying his tail around the hump, and he now snored contentedly behind Theo.
There was nothing to see except a landscape of blinding sand and the cloudless blue sky. Ali still said nothing as he led them. His eyes were trained on the horizon. He stopped only to check the direction of the wind by wetting a finger and holding it above his head. The camel seemed quite content and gave the impression that it could march 1,000 miles on just a teaspoonful of water.
Time passed slower than Theo had ever known it. It seemed to him that they were forever climbing or descending the same dune, and the view never appeared to change. The desert was so empty and vast that he felt they might be swallowed up at any moment.
Theo wondered whether he would die first from heat or exhaustion, or simply from boredom. Why had the Storyteller written deserts into the Story? Were there places in the Storyteller’s mind that were as bare and empty as this landscape? There was no sign of life anywhere, and Theo asked himself if the desert might be a part of the Storyteller’s mind that had already died.
Somehow the day passed and, as the fierce sun reluctantly sank lower in the sky, the desert again recovered its beauty. Shadows grew around the dunes and the grains of sand began to glow with a nostalgic light. By the time the sun was setting in an eruption of red, green and blue, Theo was almost beginning to like the place again.
‘We will camp here for the night and tomorrow you will continue to Cairo, where you will meet my nephew, Omar,’ Ali said, as he helped Theo climb down from the camel. ‘He knows everyone there is to know and will manage your onward transport.’
‘Where to?’ Bozo grumbled, hoping it might be somewhere that served cool drinks.
‘Is it not enough to appreciate where you are?’ Ali barked, and Bozo fell silent before he got another withering stare. But the AO was too engrossed in the majesty of the evening sky to pay the Bloon further attention. ‘Is it not beautiful?’ he gasped, his stern eyes melting in awe. ‘No matter if I have seen a million desert nights fall, no matter if I have counted the stars so often that I can see them with my eyes closed, the arrival of evening in the desert never fails to move me.’
Ali raised his arms and inhaled deeply the cool air. In that moment a lone plastic bag came tumbling across the dunes and plastered itself to the side of Ali’s face. He snatched it away and turned to Theo. ‘Do you see? The Enemy at work,’ he spat into the sands. ‘What is plastic? It is oil, the blood of the desert sucked up by giant machines. Then it is burnt and the fumes poison the sky and turn our lungs black. The waste is thrown into the rivers and fish die and float to the surface. And for what? So that a plastic bag may be used for an instant before it is thrown away.
‘And do you know how long it will take before this plastic bag decomposes?’ Ali demanded, pouring grains of sand through his fingers.
‘A rather long time, I expect,’ Theo shrugged, with a sympathetic smile.
‘Three thousand years. And that’s being hopeful.’ Ali let go of the bag in disgust and it continued across the desert, carried along by the evening breeze. ‘Still, to sand it will return in the end, like everything else,’ he muttered, as he turned his back and wandered off to gather some branches of wild shrubs for the evening fire.
Bozo and Theo turned to each other and exchanged looks of disbelief.
‘Do you suppose he was always like that?’ Bozo asked.‘’ ‘I think he’s been alone for too long,’ Theo sighed. He jumped down from the camel, which then wandered off to graze on wild bushes. ‘I don’t think he intends to be so mean and scary. I think he’s forgotten how to talk to people out here in the desert.’
‘What a dump,’ Bozo muttered. ‘The dunes remind me of Bloonland. I keep forgetting that these ones aren’t made of powdered cheese.’ He stuck out his tongue in disgust and tried to extract a few grains of sand that were embedded in his gums.
With nightfall, the heat of the day vanished without ceremony and they shivered at a sudden cool breeze. Ali was trying to coax life out of some dry leaves. They went to join him. The Bedouin crouched over the kindling and rubbed two sticks together furiously. A faint wisp of smoke rose and he blew to encourage the fire. ‘The jinni are a little reluctant to join us tonight,’ he declared, after some minutes of unsuccessfully wooing the fire.
‘Excuse me, but I don’t know what jinni are,’ Theo said.
‘I do,’ Bozo announced smugly. ‘The Storyteller told us all about them. They’re the spirits of fire. They’re all around us in the air but they only come alive when there’s a spark. Then they squeeze through it and burst into flame.’
‘I’m sorry for my friend,’ Theo interrupted. ‘He can speak a lot of nonsense at times.’
‘On the contrary, the Bloon is quite correct,’ Ali said, eyeing Bozo with a new respect. ‘There are many kinds of jinni, but they especially love to manifest themselves in fire. But they are a mischievous, capricious lot, and they enjoy the sight of cold, tired travellers.’
‘But fire isn’t alive,’ Theo objected.
‘Then what is it?’ Ali snapped.
‘It’s …well, it’s just a …thing, that’s all,’ he concluded doubtfully. Bozo and Ali looked at him unimpressed. ‘OK, OK, so they’re spirits. Whatever.’ Theo gave in. ‘So what do we have to do to make them come? I’m freezing.’
‘It requires patience to call the jinni,’ Ali told him. ‘Which is ironic, as they are the most impatient and frivolous beings in the entire Story. They are hungry, restless spirits who long to feed on the material world. Once they set their teeth into something, they will spread and devour all they can until they are either put out or there is nothing left to burn. Then – poof! They fade back into the air.
‘As for summoning a jinn now, why don’t you try yourself?’ Ali gestured towards the pile of sticks and leaves. Theo leant forwards doubtfully and blew as the Bedouin rubbed the sticks together. In response, he received nothing more than a face full of sand.
‘Try again,’ Ali encouraged him. ‘But this time think of how much you want to be warm this night. The jinni are creatures of desire, after all.’
Theo shrugged and blew once more, but this time he painted a picture in his mind of sitting in front of a cosy campfire. He imagined it so vividly that he could almost feel the warmth of the flames chasing away the darkness. Suddenly, a small, yellow jinn leapt up from beneath the twigs, puffing smoke to announce his arrival. He danced about from stick to stick and, as Ali fed him more branches, he grew to twice his size, consuming the twigs with a ravenous appetite.
It was the first time Theo had ever imagined fire to be alive and it made him a little nervous. ‘Is it dangerous?’ he asked, afraid that the jinn might leap on to him and set his clothes alight.
‘Most certainly,’ Ali replied, settling on some coals a tin kettle. ‘The jinni are the spirits of desire and that is what makes the world turn. Yet they in themselves are not evil. One may desire many things for the good, too. All too often, however, the Enemy has used the jinni to stir the self-destructive impulses in Hoomans.’ A branch fell from the fire and he reset it on top of the flames. ‘The fire jinni are easily managed, but there are others that are far more powerful: the jinni of desire that enter the hearts of Hoomans and move them to greed, ambition, lust…’
‘Or maybe even hunger?’ Bozo added hopefully.
Ali dealt him a sharp look, but his stare was less effective by firelight and Bozo just smiled back. Ali gave up and rummaged around in his shoulder bag, producing some hard, flat bread and lumps of dried cheese. As pitiful a supper as it might have been, after a day of nothing to eat it seemed like a banquet to Theo and Bozo. Especially when the kettle boiled and Ali served them sweet mint tea to wash it down. Even the jinn seemed calmer, chewing on old branches and laying down to rest in red embers.
Theo finished his meal and straightened his legs to warm his feet by the fire. He stretched out his arms and looked up at the sparkling desert sky. He almost began to feel at ease. Almost. There was a tingling at the bottom of his spine that invaded his sense of wellbeing like an unwelcome visitor. It was the same sense of imminent fear that he’d felt in Lou’s garden. He peered into the shadows and had the disconcerting feeling of being watched.
The desert was still but light breezes rustled around Theo’s body and he was glad he wasn’t alone. Bozo chewed on a stale piece of bread and Ali sat opposite, staring fixedly at the dying jinn. Theo remembered that he was supposed to learn something from each AO if he was ever to find the Cure for the Storyteller. ‘Mister Ali,’ he began respectfully. ‘I’m finding it quite hard to understand. The Enemy and the Storyteller are the same person, right?’
‘Think of it as two sides of the same coin,’ Ali replied, withdrawing from a pocket in his robes an old bronze coin. ‘On one side, you have the Storyteller who first dreamt up all of this. On the other, you have the Enemy – the self-destructive urge within the Storyteller. Catch.’ With a surprisingly quick flick of the wrist, he sent the coin over the sleepy jinn to where Theo sat. The coin landed neatly on its edge in the sand.
‘And if it lands on its edge?’ Bozo asked, much intrigued by this new possibility.
‘The edge represents your quest.’ Ali frowned. ‘Either you will save the Storyteller, or the Enemy will prevail and all will come to an end. For myself, I hold little hope.’
‘What do you mean?’ Theo asked.
‘Look at the coin.’
Bozo picked it up and eyed it curiously. He shrugged and passed it to Theo.
‘But it doesn’t say anything,’ the boy objected. ‘All the writing has worn smooth.’
‘That coin is 1,000 years old. It was made by a king who thought his empire would last for ever. He built great cities and founded temples and monuments to his gods. It was one of the greatest civilisations to arise in the Story. And do you know what has become of it?’ His guests shook their heads. Ali raised a handful of sand and let it slip between his fingers.
‘It all goes back to sand in the end,’ he declared. ‘If there’s one thing the desert has taught me, it’s that there’s no point in doing anything. All of our hopes, dreams and ambitions eventually fade away. Every living thing will one day die, be forgotten and turn to dust.
‘Do you know where you sit now? On this very spot, great kings and philosophers of centuries past lived their finest hours. What were their names? Nobody remembers. What did they do? Nobody knows. What is left of them?’ Ali picked up another handful of sand and let it pour though his fingers in answer, daring his guests to meet his gaze.
‘But even if Hoomans must die, surely the Story still has meaning?’ Theo protested, unable to accept such a gloomy philosophy. ‘Surely it’s still worth restoring the Storyteller to health?’
‘What makes you think that you can?’ Ali taunted. ‘Because an Italian actress, a deranged street preacher and a delusional old fortune-teller told you so? And just