The colours of the world were strange, the sky too blue, the dirt too brown, the house pinker and greener than normal … and his father was not his father, not unless Rashid Khalifa had somehow become partly transparent. This Rashid Khalifa looked exactly like the famous Shah of Blah; he was wearing his panama hat and his vermilion bush shirt, and when he walked and talked it became obvious that his voice was Rashid’s voice, and the way he moved was an exact copy of the original, too; but this Rashid Khalifa could be seen through, not clearly but murkily, as if he were half real and half a trick of the light. As the first whispers of dawn murmured in the sky above, the figure’s transparency became even more obvious. Luka’s head began to spin. Had something happened to his father? Was this see-through father some sort of … some sort of …
‘Are you some sort of ghost?’ he asked in a weak voice. ‘You are certainly something peculiar and surprising, to say the very least.’
‘Am I wearing a white sheet? Am I clanking chains? Do I look ghoulish to you?’ demanded the phantom dismissively. ‘Am I scary? Okay, don’t answer that. The truth is that there are no such things as ghosts or spectres and therefore I am not one. And may I point out that right now I am just as surprised as you?’
Bear’s hair was standing on end, and Dog was shaking his head in a puzzled way, as if he had just begun to remember something.
‘Why are you so surprised?’ Luka asked, trying to sound confident. ‘You’re not the one who can see through me, after all.’ The see-through Rashid Khalifa came closer and Luka had to force himself not to run away. ‘I’m not here for you,’ he said. ‘So it is, hmm, unusual for you to have crossed over when you’re in perfect health. And your dog and bear, too, by the by. The whole thing is exceedingly irregular. The Frontier is not supposed to be this easily ignored.’
‘What do you mean?’ Luka demanded. ‘What Frontier? Who are you here for?’ The moment he asked the second question, he knew the answer, and it drove the first question out of his mind. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh. Then is my father …?’
‘Not yet,’ said the see-through Rashid. ‘But I’m the patient type.’
‘Go away,’ Luka said. ‘You’re not wanted around here, Mr … what is your name, anyway?’
The see-through Rashid smiled a friendly smile that somehow wasn’t entirely friendly. ‘I,’ he began to explain, in a kindly voice that somehow didn’t feel completely kind, ‘I am your father’s dea—’
‘Don’t say that word!’ Luka shouted.
‘The point I’m trying to make, if I may be allowed to continue,’ the phantom insisted, ‘is that everyone’s dea—’
‘Don’t say it!’ Luka yelled.
‘—is different,’ the phantom said. ‘No two are alike. Each living being is an individual unlike all others; their lives have unique and personal beginnings, personal and unique middles, and consequently, at the end, it follows that everyone has their own unique and personal dea—’
‘Don’t!’ Luka screamed.
‘—and I am your father’s, or I will be soon enough, and at that time you will no longer be able to see through me, because then I will be the real thing and he, I’m sorry to say, will no longer be at all.’
‘Nobody is going to take my father away,’ Luka cried. ‘Not even you, Mr – whatever your name is – with your scary tales.’
‘Nobody,’ said the see-through Rashid. ‘Yes, you can call me that. That’s who I am. Nobody is going to take your father away: that is exactly right, and I am the Nobody in question. I am your, you might say, Nobodaddy.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ said Luka.
‘No, no,’ the see-through Rashid corrected him. ‘I’m afraid that Nonsense is not involved. You will discover that I am a no-Nonsense kind of guy.’
Luka sat down on the front step of the house and put his head in his hands. Nobodaddy. He understood what the see-through Rashid was telling him. As his father faded away, the phantom Rashid would grow stronger, and in the end there would be only this Nobodaddy and no father at all. But he was very sure of one thing: he was not ready to do without a father. He would never be ready for that. The certainty of this knowledge grew in him and gave him strength. There was only one thing for it, he told