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Firedrake still remained silent.
“Oh, come on, let’s go and see him,” said Ben. “I’m not afraid. And I’m the one who’ll be doing the asking, right?”
He knelt down again beside Barnabas Greenbloom and pored over the map. “Show me exactly where the ravine is, will you, Professor?”
Barnabas Greenbloom glanced inquiringly first at the boy, then at Firedrake and Sorrel. The brownie girl merely shrugged her shoulders.
“He’s right. He’ll be doing the asking, after all,” she said. “And if this djinn really does know the answer then we’ll save ourselves no end of time.”
The dragon stood there saying nothing, just flicking his tail uneasily back and forth.
o;Can you show me the fishing village where your dracologist friend is at the moment?” he asked.
Barnabas Greenbloom bent over the map in amazement. “Young man, this is remarkable,” he said. “A true masterpiece of cartography, I’d call it. Where did you get it?”
“From a rat,” replied Sorrel. “Not that it’s been all that much use to us so far.”
“A rat! Well, well …” murmured the professor, examining Gilbert Graytail’s masterpiece more closely. “I wouldn’t mind having that rat make a map for me. These areas of yellow shading, for instance, are very interesting. I know some of them. What does the yellow mean? Ah,” he said, reading the key to the colors. “Yes, I see. Yellow means bad luck, danger. Yes, indeed, I can confirm that. And here, do you see?” He placed a finger on the map. “This is where we are now. All yellow. Your map should have warned you about this cave.”
“Well, we weren’t really supposed to land here at all, you see,” Ben explained. “Last night’s storm drove us westward and off our course. See that?” He pointed to the golden line that Gilbert Graytail had drawn. “This is the route we were meant to take. I don’t suppose it passes near your friend’s village, does it?”
Barnabas Greenbloom shook his head thoughtfully. “No, but stopping off there wouldn’t take you too far out of your way. You’d just have to set a course a few hundred kilometers farther south, which wouldn’t make much difference to the vast distances you still have to go. Although,” added the professor, frowning, “as I was saying earlier, Zubeida won’t be able to help you in your search for the Rim of Heaven. She’s already tried to find it herself, and she got nowhere. No, as for that quest of yours,” said Barnabas Greenbloom, shaking his head, “I doubt if anyone can help you. The location of the Rim of Heaven is one of the world’s great mysteries.”
“We’ll just have to look everywhere then,” said Ben, folding up the map again. “Even if we have to fly all over the Himalayas.”
“The Himalayas are vast, my boy,” said Barnabas Greenbloom. “Unimaginably vast.”
He ran his fingers through his gray hair and then drew some hieroglyphs in the dust with a little stick. One of them looked like a narrow eye.
“What do those signs mean?” asked Ben curiously.
“These? Ah, well …” The professor suddenly straightened up and looked at the dragon.
Firedrake returned his gaze in surprise.
“What is it?” asked Ben.
“The djinn!” cried the professor. “The djinn with the thousand eyes!”
“A thousand eyes?” murmured Sorrel, licking her bowl clean. “I don’t even know anyone with three eyes.”
“Listen!” The professor leaned forward in excitement. “So far the fact that you attract other fabulous creatures has done you more harm than good, right? Or, at least, you haven’t reaped any benefits from it?”
The dragon shook his head.
“But suppose,” continued the professor, “suppose you were to attract a fabulous being who could help you in your quest?”
“Meaning this djinn?” asked Ben. “The kind that comes out of a bottle?”
The professor laughed. “Asif is unlikely to let anyone put him in a bottle, my boy. He’s a rather important djinn. They say he can be as large as the moon or as small as a grain of sand. His skin is blue as the evening sky and covered with a thousand eyes that reflect a thousand parts of the world. And every time Asif blinks, a thousand different places appear in the pupils of those eyes.”
“Doesn’t sound like someone I’d fancy meeting,” growled Sorrel. “Why would we want to attract his attention?”
The professor lowered his voice. “Because this djinn knows the answer to every question in the world.”
“Every question?” asked Ben skeptically.
Barnabas Greenbloom nodded. “Why not fly to see him? Ask him where the Rim of Heaven lies.”
