The Lives of Christopher Chant
Diana Wynne Jones
Glorious new rejacket of a Diana Wynne Jones favourite, exploring the childhood of Chrestmanci – now a book with extra bits!Discovering that he has nine lives and is destined to be the next ‘Chrestomanci’ is not part of Christopher’s plans for the future: he’d much rather play cricket and wander around his secret dream worlds. But he soon finds that destiny is difficult to avoid, and that having more than the usual number of lives is pretty inconvenient – especially when you lose them as easily as he does!Then an evil smuggler, known only as The Wraith, threatens the ways of the worlds and forces Christopher to take action…
Diana Wynne Jones
THE LIVES OF CHRISTOPHER CHANT
Illustrated by Tim Stevens
DEDICATION (#ulink_2fa152dd-7bd6-5c52-912d-5a0af3dfeed7)
This book is for Leo,who got hit on the headwith a cricket bat
CONTENTS
Cover (#u3f2b9025-508e-523d-8860-469e87315c0c)
Title Page (#u9d3995b2-7669-55d0-973e-162d1efe813e)
Dedication (#u2d1f3917-6af7-5c0a-81b2-4a20116c4747)
Chapter One (#u3700ff5c-fb76-5f72-958e-c6eabcf908b5)
Chapter Two (#u7ee9bb00-7730-5986-b3aa-c9953d406793)
Chapter Three (#u09975f54-aaa9-50d2-90a5-77150b2a4955)
Chapter Four (#u83298100-526b-5639-a27a-525e9e2cdcf5)
Chapter Five (#u65504162-7db1-5908-adb7-3e07d4dccc50)
Chapter Six (#u8c28f420-92ff-5bfe-bbd0-b5b704a96791)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Other Works (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_466981a2-1694-5099-9a4c-3a37da452f00)
It was years before Christopher told anyone about his dreams. This was because he mostly lived in the nurseries at the top of the big London house, and the nursery maids who looked after him changed every few months.
He scarcely saw his parents. When Christopher was small, he was terrified that he would meet Papa out walking in the park one day and not recognise him. He used to kneel down and look through the banisters on the rare days when Papa came home from the City before bedtime, hoping to fix Papa’s face in his mind. All he got was a foreshortened view of a figure in a frock coat with a great deal of well-combed black whisker, handing a tall black hat to the footman, and then a view of a very neat white parting in black hair, as Papa marched rapidly under the stairway and out of sight. Beyond knowing that Papa was taller than most footmen, Christopher knew little else.
Some evenings, Mama was on the stairs to meet Papa, blocking Christopher’s view with wide silk skirts and a multitude of frills and draperies. “Remind your master,” she would say icily to the footman, “that there is a Reception in this house tonight and that he is required, for once in his life, to act as host.”
Papa, hidden behind Mama’s wide clothing, would reply in a deep gloomy voice, “Tell Madam I have a great deal of work brought home from the office tonight. Tell her she should have warned me in advance.”
“Inform your master,” Mama would reply to the footman, “that if I’d warned him, he would have found an excuse not to be here. Point out to him that it is my money that finances his business and that I shall remove it if he does not do this small thing for me.”
Then Papa would sigh. “Tell Madam I am going up to dress,” he would say. “Under protest. Ask her to stand aside from the stairs.”
Mama never did stand aside, to Christopher’s disappointment. She always gathered up her skirts and sailed upstairs ahead of Papa, to make sure Papa did as she wanted. Mama had huge lustrous eyes, a perfect figure and piles of glossy brown curls. The nursery maids told Christopher Mama was a Beauty. At this stage in his life Christopher thought everyone’s parents were like this; but he did wish Mama would give him a view of Papa just once.
He thought everyone had the kind of dreams he had, too. He did not think they were worth mentioning. The dreams always began the same way. Christopher got out of bed and walked round the corner of the night-nursery wall – the part with the fireplace, which jutted out – on to a rocky path high on the side of a valley. The valley was green and steep, with a stream rushing from waterfall to waterfall down the middle, but Christopher never felt there was much point in following the stream down the valley. Instead he went up the path, round a large rock, into the part he always thought of as The Place Between. Christopher thought it was probably a left-over piece of the world, from before somebody came along and made the world properly.
Formless slopes of rock towered and slanted in all directions. Some of it was hard and steep, some of it piled and rubbly, and none of it had much shape. Nor did it have much colour – most of it was the ugly brown you get from mixing every colour in a paintbox. There was always a formless wet mist hanging round this place, adding to the vagueness of everything. You could never see the sky. In fact, Christopher sometimes thought there might not be a sky: he had an idea the formless rock went on and on in a great arch overhead – but when he thought about it, that did not seem possible.
Christopher always knew in his dream that you could get to Almost Anywhere from The Place Between. He called it Almost Anywhere, because there was one place that did not want you to go to it. It was quite near, but he always found himself avoiding it. He set off sliding, scrambling, edging across bulging wet rock, and climbing up or down, until he found another valley and another path. There were hundreds of them. He called them the Anywheres.
The Anywheres were mostly quite different from London. They were hotter or colder, with strange trees and stranger houses. Sometimes the people in them looked ordinary, sometimes their skin was bluish or reddish and their eyes were peculiar, but they were always very kind to Christopher. He had a new adventure every time he went on a dream. In the active adventures people helped him escape through cellars of odd buildings, or he helped them in wars, or in rounding up dangerous animals. In the calm adventures, he got new things to eat and people gave him toys. He lost most of the toys as he was scrambling back home over the rocks, but he did manage to bring back the shiny shell necklace the silly ladies gave him, because he could hang it round his neck.
He went to the Anywhere with the silly ladies several times. It had blue sea and white sand, perfect for digging and building in. There were ordinary people in it, but Christopher only saw them in the distance. The silly ladies came and sat on rocks out of the sea and giggled at him while he made sand-castles.
“Oh clistoffer!” they would coo, in lisping voices. “Tell uth what make you a clistoffer.” And they would all burst into screams of high laughter.
They were the only ladies he had seen without clothes on. Their skins were greenish and so was their hair. He was fascinated by the way the ends of them were big silvery tails that could curl and flip almost like a fish, and send powerful sprays of water over him from their big finned feet. He never could persuade them that he was not a strange animal called a clistoffer.
Every time he went to that Anywhere, the latest nursery maid complained about all the sand in his bed. He had learnt very early on that they complained even louder when they found his pyjamas muddy, wet and torn from climbing through The Place Between. He took a set of clothes out on to the rocky path and left them there to change into. He had to put new clothes there every year or so, when he grew out of the latest torn and muddy suit, but the nursery maids changed so often that none of them noticed. Nor did they notice the strange toys he brought back over the years. There was a clockwork dragon, a horse that was really a flute, and the necklace from the silly ladies which, when you looked closely, was a string of tiny pearl skulls.
Christopher thought about the silly ladies. He looked at his latest nursemaid’s feet, and he thought that her shoes were about big enough to hide flippers. But you could never see any more of any lady because of her skirts. He kept wondering how Mama and the nursery maid walked about on nothing but a big limber tail instead of legs.
His chance to find out came one afternoon when the nursery maid put him into an unpleasant sailor-suit and led him downstairs to the drawing room. Mama and some other ladies were there with someone called Lady Badgett, who was a kind of cousin of Papa’s. She had asked to see Christopher. Christopher stared at her long nose and her wrinkles. “Is she a witch, Mama?” he asked loudly.
Everyone except Lady Badgett – who went more wrinkled than ever – said, “Hush, dear!” After that, Christopher was glad to find they seemed to have forgotten him. He quietly lay down on his back on the carpet, and rolled from lady to lady. When they caught him, he was under the sofa gazing up Lady Badgett’s petticoats. He was dragged out of the room in disgrace, very disappointed to discover that all the ladies had big thick legs, except Lady Badgett: her legs were thin and yellow like a chicken’s.
Mama sent for him in her dressing-room later that day. “Oh, Christopher, how could you!” she said. “I’d just got Lady Badgett to the point of calling on me, and she’ll never come again. You’ve undone the work of years!”
It was very hard work, Christopher realised, being a Beauty. Mama was very busy in front of her mirror with all sorts of little cut glass bottles and jars. Behind her, a maid was even busier, far busier than the nursery maids ever were, working on Mama’s glossy curls. Christopher was so ashamed to have wasted all this work that he picked up a glass jar to hide his confusion.
Mama told him sharply to put it down. “Money isn’t everything, you see, Christopher,” she explained. “A good place in Society is worth far more. Lady Badgett could have helped us both. Why do you think I married your papa?”
Since Christopher had simply no idea what could have brought Mama and Papa together, he put out his hand to pick up the jar again. But he remembered in time that he was not supposed to touch it, and picked up a big pad of false hair instead. He turned it round in his hands while Mama talked.
“You are going to grow up with Papa’s good family and my money,” she said. “I want you to promise me now that you will take your place in Society alongside the very best people. Mama intends you to be a great man – Christopher, are you listening?”
Christopher had given up trying to understand Mama. He held the false hair out instead. “What’s this for?”
“Bulking out my hair,” Mama said. “Please attend, Christopher. It’s very important you begin now preparing yourself for the future. Put that hair down.”
Christopher put the pad of hair back. “I thought it might be a dead rat,” he said. And somehow Mama must have made a mistake because, to Christopher’s great interest, the thing really was a dead rat. Mama and her maid both screamed. Christopher was hustled away while a footman came running with a shovel.
After that, Mama called Christopher to her dressing-room and talked to him quite often. He stood trying to remember not to fiddle with the jars, staring at his reflection in her mirror, wondering why his curls were black and Mama’s rich brown, and why his eyes were so much more like coal than Mama’s. Something seemed to stop there ever being another dead rat, but sometimes a spider could be encouraged to let itself down in front of the mirror, whenever Mama’s talk became too alarming.
He understood that Mama cared very urgently about his future. He knew he was going to have to enter Society with the best people. But the only Society he had heard of was the Aid the Heathen Society that he had to give a penny to every Sunday in church, and he thought Mama meant that.
Christopher made careful enquiries from the nursery maid with the big feet. She told him Heathens were savages who ate people. Missionaries were the best people, and they were the ones Heathens ate. Christopher saw that he was going to be a missionary when he grew up. He found Mama’s talk increasingly alarming. He wished she had chosen another career for him.
He also asked the nursery maid about the kind of ladies who had tails like fish. “Oh, you mean mermaids!” the girl said, laughing. “Those aren’t real.”
Christopher knew mermaids were not real, because he only met them in dreams. Now he was convinced that he would meet Heathens too, if he went to the wrong Almost Anywhere. For a time, he was so frightened of meeting Heathens that when he came to a new valley from The Place Between, he lay down and looked carefully at the Anywhere it led to, to see what the people were like there before he went on. But after a while, when nobody tried to eat him, he decided that the Heathens probably lived in the Anywhere which stopped you going to it, and gave up worrying until he was older.
When he was a little older, people in the Anywheres sometimes gave him money. Christopher learnt to refuse coins. As soon as he touched them, everything just stopped. He landed in bed with a jolt and woke up sweating. Once this happened when a pretty lady, who reminded him of Mama, tried laughingly to hang an earring in his ear. Christopher would have asked the nursery maid with big feet about it, but she had left long ago. Most of the ones who came after simply said, “Don’t bother me now – I’m busy!” when he asked them things.
Until he learnt to read, Christopher thought this was what all nursery maids did: they stayed a month, too busy to talk, and then set their mouths in a nasty line and flounced out. He was amazed to read of Old Retainers, who stayed with families for a whole lifetime and could be persuaded to tell long (and sometimes very boring) stories about the family in the past. In his house, none of the servants stayed more than six months.
The reason seemed to be that Mama and Papa had given up speaking to one another even through the footman. They handed the servants notes to give to one another instead. Since it never occurred to either Mama or Papa to seal the notes, sooner or later someone would bring the note up to the nursery floor and read it aloud to the nursery maid. Christopher learnt that Mama was always short and to the point.
“Mr Chant is requested to smoke cigars only in his own room.” Or, “Will Mr Chant please take note that the new laundry maid has complained of holes burnt in his shirts.” Or, “Mr Chant caused me much embarrassment by leaving in the middle of my Breakfast Party.”
Papa usually let the notes build up and then answered the lot in a kind of rambling rage.
My dear Miranda,
I shall smoke where I please and it is the job of that lazy laundry maid to deal with the results. But then your extravagance in employing foolish layabouts and rude louts is only for your own selfish comfort and never for mine. If you wish me to remain at your parties, try to employ a cook who knows bacon from old shoes and refrain from giving that idiotic tinkling laugh all the time.
Papa’s replies usually caused the servants to leave overnight.
Christopher rather enjoyed the insight these notes gave him. Papa seemed more like a person, somehow, even if he was so critical. It was quite a blow to Christopher when he was cut off from them by the arrival of his first governess.
Mama sent for him. She was in tears. “Your papa has overreached himself this time,” she said. “It’s a mother’s place to see to the education of her child. I want you to go to a good school, Christopher. It’s most important. But I don’t want to force you into learning. I want your ambition to flower as well. But your papa comes crashing in with his grim notions and goes behind my back by appointing this governess who, knowing your papa, is bound to be terrible! Oh my poor child!”
Christopher realised that the governess was his first step towards becoming a missionary. He felt solemn and alarmed. But when the governess came, she was simply a drab lady with pink eyes, who was far too discreet to talk to servants. She only stayed a month, to Mama’s jubilation.
“Now we can really start your education,” Mama said. “I shall choose the next governess myself.”
Mama said that quite often over the next two years, for governesses came and went just like nursery maids before them. They were all drab, discreet ladies, and Christopher got their names muddled up. He decided that the chief difference between a governess and a nursery maid was that a governess usually burst into tears before she left – and that was the only time a governess ever said anything interesting about Mama and Papa.
“I’m sorry to do this to you,” the third – or maybe the fourth – governess wept, “because you’re a nice little boy, even if you are a bit remote, but the atmosphere in this house! Every night he’s home – which thank God is rarely! – I have to sit at the dining-table with them in utter silence. And she passes me a note to give to him, and he passes me one for her. Then they open the notes and look daggers at one another and then at me. I can’t stand any more!”
The ninth – or maybe the tenth – governess was even more indiscreet. “I know they hate one another,” she sobbed, “but she’s no call to hate me too! She’s one of those who can’t abide other women. And she’s a sorceress, I think – I can’t be sure, because she only does little things – and he’s at least as strong as she is. He may even be an enchanter. Between them they make such an atmosphere – it’s no wonder they can’t keep any servants! Oh, Christopher, forgive me for talking like this about your parents!”
All the governesses asked Christopher to forgive them and he forgave them very readily, for this was the only time now that he had news of Mama and Papa. It gave him a wistful sort of feeling that perhaps other people had parents who were not like his. He was also sure that there was some sort of crisis brewing. The hushed thunder of it reached as far as the schoolroom, even though the governesses would not let him gossip with the servants any more.
He remembered the night the crisis broke, because that was the night when he went to an Anywhere where a man under a yellow umbrella gave him a sort of candlestick of little bells. It was so beautiful that Christopher was determined to bring it home. He held it in his teeth as he scrambled across the rocks of The Place Between. To his joy, it was in his bed when he woke up. But there was quite a different feeling to the house. The twelfth governess packed and left straight after breakfast.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_d068623d-eead-5b68-822d-9829a06c4f1f)
Christopher was called to Mama’s dressing-room that afternoon. There was a new governess sitting on the only hard chair, wearing the usual sort of ugly greyish clothes and a hat that was uglier than usual. Her drab cotton gloves were folded on her dull bag and her head hung down as if she were timid or put-upon, or both. Christopher found her of no interest. All the interest in the room was centred on the man standing behind Mama’s chair with his hand on Mama’s shoulder.
“Christopher, this is my brother,” Mama said happily. “Your Uncle Ralph.”
Mama pronounced it Rafe. It was more than a year before Christopher discovered it was the name he read as Ralph.
Uncle Ralph took his fancy completely. To begin with, he was smoking a cigar. The scents of the dressing-room were changed and mixed with the rich incense-like smoke, and Mama was not protesting by even so much as sniffing. That alone was enough to show that Uncle Ralph was in a class by himself. Then he was wearing tweeds, strong and tangy and almost fox-coloured, which were a little baggy here and there, but blended beautifully with the darker foxiness of Uncle Ralph’s hair and the redder foxiness of his moustache. Christopher had seldom seen a man in tweeds or without whiskers. This did even more to assure him that Uncle Ralph was someone special. As a final touch, Uncle Ralph smiled at him like sunlight on an autumn forest. It was such an engaging smile that Christopher’s face broke into a return smile almost of its own accord.
“Hallo, old chap,” said Uncle Ralph, rolling out blue smoke above Mama’s glossy hair. “I know this is not the best way for an uncle to recommend himself to a nephew, but I’ve been sorting the family affairs out, and I’m afraid I’ve had to do one or two quite shocking things, like bringing you a new governess and arranging for you to start school in autumn. Governess over there. Miss Bell. I hope you like one another. Enough to forgive me anyway.”
He smiled at Christopher in a sunny, humorous way which had Christopher rapidly approaching adoration. All the same, Christopher glanced dubiously at Miss Bell. She looked back, and there was an instant when a sort of hidden prettiness in her almost came out into the open. Then she blinked pale eyelashes and murmured, “Pleased to meet you,” in a voice as uninteresting as her clothes.
“She’ll be your last governess, I hope,” said Mama. Because of that, Christopher ever after thought of Miss Bell as the Last Governess. “She’s going to prepare you for school. I wasn’t meaning to send you away yet, but your uncle says—Anyway, a good education is important for your career and, to be blunt with you, Christopher, your papa has made a most vexatious hash of the money – which is mine, not his, as you know – and lost practically all of it. Luckily I had your uncle to turn to and—”
“And once turned to, I don’t let people down,” Uncle Ralph said, with a quick flick of a glance at the governess. Maybe he meant she should not be hearing this. “Fortunately, there’s plenty left to send you to school, and then your mama is going to recoup a bit by living abroad. She’ll like that – eh, Miranda? And Miss Bell is going to be found another post with glowing references. Everyone’s going to be fine.”
His smile went to all of them one by one, full of warmth and confidence. Mama laughed and dabbed scent behind her ears. The Last Governess almost smiled, so that the hidden prettiness half-emerged again. Christopher tried to grin a strong manly grin at Uncle Ralph, because that seemed to be the only way to express the huge, almost hopeless adoration that was growing in him. Uncle Ralph laughed, a golden brown laugh, and completed the conquest of Christopher by fishing in a tweed pocket and tipping his nephew a bright new sixpence.
Christopher would have died rather than spend that sixpence. Whenever he changed clothes, he transferred the sixpence to the new pockets. It was another way of expressing his adoration of Uncle Ralph. It was clear that Uncle Ralph had stepped in to save Mama from ruin, and this made him the first good man that Christopher had met. And on top of that, he was the only person outside the Anywheres who had bothered to speak to Christopher in that friendly man-to-man way.
Christopher tried to treasure the Last Governess too, for Uncle Ralph’s sake, but that was not so easy. She was so very boring. She had a drab, calm way of speaking, and she never raised her voice or showed impatience, even when he was stupid about Mental Arithmetic or Levitation, both of which all the other governesses had somehow missed out on.
“If a herring and a half cost three-ha’pence, Christopher,” she explained drearily, “that’s a penny and a half for a fish and a half. How much for a whole fish?”
“I don’t know,” he said, trying not to yawn.
“Very well,” the Last Governess said calmly. “We’ll think again tomorrow. Now look in this mirror and see if you can’t make it rise in the air just an inch.”
But Christopher could not move the mirror any more than he could understand what a herring cost. The Last Governess put the mirror aside and quietly went on to puzzle him about French. After a few days of this, Christopher tried to make her angry, hoping she would turn more interesting when she shouted. But she just said calmly, “Christopher, you’re getting silly. You may play with your toys now. But remember you only take one out at a time, and you put that back before you get out another. That is our rule.”
Christopher had become rapidly and dismally accustomed to this rule. It reduced the fun a lot. He had also become used to the Last Governess sitting beside him while he played. The other governesses had seized the chance to rest, but this one sat in a hard chair efficiently mending his clothes, which reduced the fun even more. Nevertheless, he got the candlestick of chiming bells out of the cupboard, because that was fascinating in its way. It was so arranged that it played different tunes, depending on which bell you touched first.
When he had finished with it, the Last Governess paused in her darning to say, “That goes in the middle of the top shelf. Put it back before you take that clockwork dragon.” She waited to listen to the chiming that showed Christopher had done what she said. Then, as she drove the needle into the sock again, she asked in her dullest way, “Who gave you the bells, Christopher?”
No one had ever asked Christopher about anything he had brought back from the Anywheres before. He was rather at a loss. “A man under a yellow umbrella,” he answered. “He said they bring luck on my house.”
“What man where?” the Last Governess wanted to know – except that she did not sound as if she cared if she knew or not.
“An Almost Anywhere,” Christopher said. “The hot one with the smells and the snake charmers. The man didn’t say his name.”
“That’s not an answer, Christopher,” the Last Governess said calmly, but she did not say anything more until the next time, two days later, when Christopher got out the chiming bells again. “Remember where they go when you’ve finished with them,” she said. “Have you thought yet where the man with the yellow umbrella was?”
“Outside a painted place where some gods live,” Christopher said, setting the small silvery bellcups ringing. “He was nice. He said it didn’t matter about money.”
“Very generous,” remarked the Last Governess. “Where was this painted house for gods, Christopher?”
“I told you. It was an Almost Anywhere,” Christopher said.
“And I told you that that is not an answer,” the Last Governess said. She folded up her darning. “Christopher, I insist that you tell me where those bells came from.”
“Why do you want to know?” Christopher asked, wishing she would leave him in peace.
“Because,” the Last Governess said with truly ominous calm, “you are not being frank and open like a nice boy should be. I suspect you stole those bells.”
At this monstrous injustice, Christopher’s face reddened and tears stood in his eyes. “I haven’t!” he cried out. “He gave them to me! People always give me things in the Anywheres, only I drop most of them. Look.” And regardless of her one-toy-at-a-time rule, he rushed to the cupboard, fetched the horse flute, the mermaids’ necklace and the clockwork dragon, and banged them down in her darning basket. “Look! These are from other Anywheres.”
The Last Governess gazed at them with terrible impassiveness. “Am I to believe you have stolen these too?” she said. She put the basket and the toys on the floor and stood up. “Come with me. This must be reported to your mama at once.”
She seized Christopher’s arm and in spite of his yells of “I didn’t, I didn’t!” she marched him inexorably downstairs.
Christopher leant backwards and dragged his feet and implored her not to. He knew he would never be able to explain to Mama. All the notice the Last Governess took was to say, “Stop that disgraceful noise. You’re a big boy now.”
This was something all the governesses agreed on. But Christopher no longer cared about being big. Tears poured disgracefully down his cheeks and he screamed the name of the one person he knew who saved people. “Uncle Ralph! I’ll explain to Uncle Ralph!”
The Last Governess glanced down at him at that. Just for a moment, the hidden prettiness flickered in her face. But to Christopher’s despair, she dragged him to Mama’s dressing-room and knocked on the door.
Mama turned from her mirror in surprise. She looked at Christopher, red-faced and gulping and wet with tears. She looked at the Last Governess. “Whatever is going on? Is he ill?”
“No, Madam,” the Last Governess said in her dullest way. “Something has happened which I think your brother should be informed of at once.”
“Ralph?” said Mama. “You mean I’m to write to Ralph? Or is it more urgent that that?”
“Urgent, Madam, I think,” the Last Governess said drearily. “Christopher said that he is willing to confess to his uncle. I suggest, if I may make so bold, that you summon him now.”
Mama yawned. This governess bored her terribly. “I’ll do my best,” she said, “but I don’t answer for my brother’s temper. He lives a very busy life, you know.” Carelessly, she pulled one of her dark glossy hairs out of the silver backed brush she had been using. Then, much more carefully, she began teasing hairs out of her silver and crystal hair-tidy.
Most of the hairs were Mama’s own dark ones, but Christopher, watching Mama’s beautiful pearly nails delicately pinching and pulling at the hairs, while he sobbed and swallowed and sobbed again, saw that one of the hairs was a much redder colour. This was the one Mama pulled out. She laid it across her own hair from the brush. Then, picking up what seemed to be a hatpin with a glittery knob, she laid that across both hairs and tapped it with one sharp, impatient nail. “Ralph,” she said, “Ralph Weatherby Argent. Miranda wants you.”
One of the mirrors of the dressing-table turned out to be a window, with Uncle Ralph looking through it, rather irritably, while he knotted his tie. “What is it?” he said. “I’m busy today.”
“When aren’t you?” asked Mama. “Listen, that governess is here looking like a wet week as usual. She’s brought Christopher. Something about a confession. Could you come and sort it out? It’s beyond me.”
“Is she?” said Uncle Ralph. He leaned sideways to look through the mirror – or window, or whatever – and when he saw Christopher, he winked and broke into his sunniest smile. “Dear, dear. This does look upsetting. I’ll be along at once.”
Christopher saw him leave the window and walk away to one side. Mama had only time to turn to the Last Governess and say, “There, I’ve done my best!” before the door of her dressing-room opened and Uncle Ralph strode in.
Christopher quite forgot his sobs in the interest of all this. He tried to think what was on the other side of the wall of Mama’s dressing-room. The stairs, as far as he knew. He supposed Uncle Ralph could have a secret room in the wall about one foot wide, but he was much more inclined to think he had been seeing real magic. As he decided this, Uncle Ralph secretly passed him a large white handkerchief and walked cheerfully into the middle of the room to allow Christopher time to wipe his face.
“Now what’s all this about?” he said.
“I’ve no idea,” said Mama. “She’ll explain, no doubt.”
Uncle Ralph cocked a ginger eyebrow at the Last Governess.
“I found Christopher playing with an artefact,” the Governess said tediously, “of a kind I have never seen before, made of metal that is totally unknown to me. He then revealed he had three more artefacts, each one different from the other, but he was unable to explain how he had come by them.”
Uncle Ralph looked at Christopher, who hid the handkerchief behind him and looked nervously back. “Enough to get anyone into hot water, old chap,” Uncle Ralph said. “Suppose you take me to look at these things and explain where they do come from?”
Christopher heaved a great happy sigh. He had known he could count on Uncle Ralph to save him. “Yes, please,” he said.
They went back upstairs with the Last Governess processing ahead and Christopher hanging gratefully on to Uncle Ralph’s large warm hand. When they got there, the Governess sat quietly down to her sewing again as if she felt she had done her bit. Uncle Ralph picked up the bells and jingled them. “By Jove!” he said. “These sound like nothing else in the universe!”
He took them to the window and carefully examined each bell. “Bullseye!” he said. “You clever woman! They are like nothing else in the universe. Some kind of strange alloy, I think, different for each bell. Handmade by the look of them.” He pointed genially to the tuffet by the fire. “Sit there, old chap, and oblige me by explaining what you did to get these bells here.”
Christopher sat down, full of willing eagerness. “I had to hold them in my mouth while I climbed through The Place Between,” he explained.
“No, no,” said Uncle Ralph. “That sounds like near the end. Start with what you did in the beginning before you got the bells.”
“I went down the valley to the snake-charming town,” Christopher said.
“No, before that, old chap,” said Uncle Ralph. “When you set off from here. What time of day was it, for instance? After breakfast? Before lunch?”
“No, in the night,” Christopher explained. “It was one of the dreams.”
In this way, by going carefully back every time Christopher missed out a step, Uncle Ralph got Christopher to tell him in detail about the dreams, and The Place Between, and the Almost Anywheres he came to down the valleys. Since Uncle Ralph, far from being angry, seemed steadily more delighted, Christopher told him everything he could think of.
“What did I tell you!” he said, possibly to the Governess. “I can always trust my hunches. Something had to come out of a heredity like this! By Jove, Christopher old chap, you must be the only person in the world who can bring back solid objects from a spirit trip! I doubt if even old de Witt can do that!”
Christopher glowed to find Uncle Ralph so pleased with him, but he could not help feeling resentful about the Last Governess. “She said I stole them.”
“Take no notice of her. Women are always jumping to the wrong conclusions,” Uncle Ralph said, lighting a cigar. At this, the Last Governess shrugged her shoulders up and smiled a little. The hidden prettiness came out stronger than Christopher had ever seen it, almost as if she was human and sharing a joke.
Uncle Ralph blew a roll of blue smoke over them both, beaming like the sun coming through the clouds. “Now the next thing, old chap,” he said, “is to do a few experiments to test this gift of yours. Can you control these dreams of yours? Can you say when you’re about to go off to your Almost Anywheres – or can’t you?”
Christopher thought about it. “I go when I want to,” he said.
“Then have you any objection to doing me a test run, say tomorrow night?” Uncle Ralph asked.
“I could go tonight,” Christopher offered.
“No, tomorrow,” said Uncle Ralph. “It’ll take me a day to get things set up. And when you go, this is what I want you to do.”
He leant forward and pointed his cigar at Christopher, to let him know he was serious. “You set out as usual when you’re ready and try to do two experiments for me. First, I’m going to arrange to have a man waiting for you in your Place Between. I want you to see if you can find him. You may have to shout to find him – I don’t know: I’m not a spirit traveller myself – but anyway, you climb about and see if you can make contact with him. If you do, then you do the second experiment. The man will tell you what that is. And if they both work, then we can experiment some more. Do you think you can do that? You’d like to help, wouldn’t you, old chap?”
“Yes!” said Christopher.
Uncle Ralph stood up and patted his shoulder. “Good lad. Don’t let anyone deceive you, old chap. You have a very exciting and important gift here. It’s so important that I advise you not to talk about it to anyone but me and Miss Bell over there. Don’t tell anyone, not even your mama. Right?”
“Right,” said Christopher. It was wonderful that Uncle Ralph thought him important. He was so glad and delighted that he would have done far more for Uncle Ralph than just not tell anyone. That was easy. There was no one to tell.
“So it’s our secret,” said Uncle Ralph, going to the door. “Just the three of us – and the man I’m going to send, of course. Don’t forget you may have to look quite hard to find him, will you?”
“I won’t forget,” Christopher promised eagerly.
“Good lad,” said Uncle Ralph, and went out of the door in a waft of cigar smoke.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_3bab18da-266d-54f0-ae5d-c74f647a1769)
Christopher thought he would never live through the time until tomorrow night. He burned to show Uncle Ralph what he could do. If it had not been for the Last Governess, he would have made himself ill with excitement, but she managed to be so boring that she somehow made everything else boring too. By the time Christopher went to bed that next night, he was almost wondering if it was worth dreaming.
But he did dream, because Uncle Ralph had asked him to, and got out of bed as usual and walked round the fireplace to the valley, where his clothes were lying on the rocky path as usual. By now this lot of clothes were torn, covered with mud and assorted filth from a hundred Almost Anywheres, and at least two sizes too small. Christopher put them on quickly, without bothering to do up buttons that would not meet. He never wore shoes because they got in the way as he climbed the rocks. He pattered round the crag in his bare feet into The Place Between.
It was formless and unfinished as ever, all slides and jumbles of rocks rearing in every direction and high overhead. The mist billowed as formlessly as the rocks. It was one of the times when rain slanted in it, driven this way and that by the hither-thither winds that blew in The Place Between. Christopher hoped he would not have to spend too long here hunting for Uncle Ralph’s man. It made him feel so small, besides being cold and wet. He dutifully braced himself on a slide of rubbly sand and shouted.
“Hallo!”
The Place Between made his voice sound no louder than a bird cheeping. The windy fog seemed to snatch the sound away and bury it in a flurry of rain. Christopher listened for a reply, but for minutes on end the only noise was the hissing hum of the wind.
He was wondering whether to shout again, when he heard a little cheeping thread of sound, wailing its thin way back to him across the rocks. “Hallooo!” It was his own shout. Christopher was sure of it. Right from the start of his dreams, he had known that The Place Between liked to have everything that did not belong back to the place it came from. That was why he always climbed back to bed faster than he did when he climbed out to a new valley. The Place pushed him back.
Christopher thought about this. It probably did no good to shout. If Uncle Ralph’s man was out there in the mist, he would not be able to stand and wait for very long, without getting pushed back to the valley he came from. So the man would have to wait in the mouth of a valley and hope that Christopher found him.
Christopher sighed. There were such thousands and thousands of valleys, high up, low down, turning off at every angle you could think of, and some valleys turned off other valleys – and that was only if you crawled round the side of the Place that was nearest. If you went the other way, towards the Anywhere that did not want people, there were probably many thousands more. On the other hand, Uncle Ralph would not want to make it too difficult. The man must be quite near.
Determined to make Uncle Ralph’s experiment a success if he could, Christopher set off, climbing, sliding, inching across wet rock with his face close to the cold hard smell of it. The first valley he came to was empty. “Hallo?” he called into it. But the river rushed down green empty space and he could see no one was there. He backed out and climbed up and sideways to the next. And there, before he reached the opening, he could see someone through the mist, dark and shiny with rain, crouching on a rock and scrabbling for a handhold overhead.
“Hallo?” Christopher asked.
“Well, I’ll be – is that Christopher?” the person asked. It was a strong young man’s voice. “Come on out where we can see one another.”
With a certain amount of heaving and slipping, both of them scrambled round a bulge of rock and dropped down into another valley, where the air was calm and warm. The grass here was lit pink by a sunset in the distance.
“Well, well,” said Uncle Ralph’s man. “You’re about half the size I expected. Pleased to meet you, Christopher. I’m Tacroy.”
He grinned down at Christopher. Tacroy was as strong and young as his voice, rather squarely and sturdily built, with a roundish brown face and merry-looking hazel eyes.
Christopher liked him at once – partly because Tacroy was the first grown man he had met who had curly hair like his own. It was not quite like. Where Christopher’s hair made loose black rounds, Tacroy’s hair coiled tight, like a mass of little pale brown springs. Christopher thought Tacroy’s hair must hurt when a governess or someone made him comb it. This made him notice that Tacroy’s curls were quite dry. Nor was there any trace of the shiny wetness that had been on his clothes a moment before. Tacroy was wearing a greenish worsted suit, rather shabby, but it was not even damp.
“How did you get dry so quickly?” Christopher asked him.
Tacroy laughed. “I’m not here quite as bodily as you seem to be. And you’re soaked through. How was that?”
“The rain in The Place Between,” Christopher said. “You were wet there too.”
“Was I?” said Tacroy. “I don’t visualise at all on the Passage – it’s more like night with a few stars to guide by. I find it quite hard to visualise even here on the World Edge – though I can see you quite well, of course, since we’re both willing it.”
He saw that Christopher was staring at him, not understanding more than a word of this, and screwed his eyes up thoughtfully. This made little laughing wrinkles all round Tacroy’s eyes. Christopher liked him better than ever. “Tell me,” Tacroy said, waving a brown hand towards the rest of the valley, “what do you see here?”
“A valley,” Christopher said, wondering what Tacroy saw, “with green grass. The sun’s setting and it’s making the stream down the middle look pink.”
“Is it now?” said Tacroy. “Then I expect it would surprise you very much to know that all I can see is a slightly pink fog.”
“Why?” said Christopher.
“Because I’m only here in spirit, while you seem to be actually here in the flesh,” Tacroy said. “Back in London, my valuable body is lying on a sofa in a deep trance, tucked up in blankets and warmed by stone hot-water bottles, while a beautiful and agreeable young lady plays tunes to me on her harp. I insisted on the young lady as part of my pay. Do you think you’re tucked up in bed somewhere too?”
When Tacroy saw that this question made Christopher both puzzled and impatient, his eyes screwed up again. “Let’s get going,” he said. “The next part of the experiment is to see if you can bring a prepared package back. I’ve made my mark. Make yours, and we’ll get down into this world.”
“Mark?” said Christopher.
“Mark,” said Tacroy. “If you don’t make a mark, how do you think you will find your way in and out of this world, or know which one it is when you come to it?”
“Valleys are quite easy to find,” Christopher protested. “And I can tell that I’ve been to this Anywhere before. It’s got the smallest stream of all of them.”
Tacroy shrugged with his eyes screwed right up. “My boy, you’re giving me the creeps. Be kind and please me and scratch the number nine on a rock or something. I don’t want to be the one who loses you.”
Christopher obligingly picked up a pointed flint and dug away at the mud of the path until he had made a large wobbly 9 there.
He looked up to find Tacroy staring as if he was a ghost. “What’s the matter?”
Tacroy gave a short wild-sounding laugh. “Oh nothing much. I can see it, that’s all. That’s only unheard of, that’s all. Can you see my mark?”
Christopher looked everywhere he could think of, including up at the sunset sky, and had to confess that he could see nothing like a mark.
“Thank Heaven!” said Tacroy. “At least that’s normal! But I’m still seriously wondering what you are. I begin to understand why your uncle got so excited.”
They sauntered together down the valley. Tacroy had his hands in his pockets and he seemed quite casual, but Christopher got the feeling, all the same, that Tacroy usually went into an Anywhere in some way that was quicker and quite different. He caught Tacroy glancing at him several times, as if Tacroy was not sure of the way to go and was waiting to see what Christopher did. He seemed very relieved when they came to the end of the valley and found themselves on the rutty road among huge jungle trees. The sun was almost down. There were lights at the windows of the tumbledown old inn in front of them.
This was one of the first Anywheres Christopher had been to. He remembered it hotter and wetter. The big trees had been bright green and dripping. Now they seemed brown and a bit wilted, as far as he could tell in the pink light. When he followed Tacroy on to the crazily-built wooden verandah of the inn, he saw that the blobs of coloured fungus that had fascinated him last time had all turned dry and white. He wondered if the landlord would remember him.
“Landlord!” Tacroy shouted. When nothing happened, he said to Christopher, “Can you bang on the table? I can’t.”
Christopher noticed that the bent boards of the verandah creaked under his own feet, but not under Tacroy’s. It did seem as if Tacroy was not really there in some way. He picked up a wooden bowl and rapped hard on the twisted table with it. It was another thing that made Tacroy’s eyes screw up.
When the landlord shuffled out, he was wrapped in at least three knitted shawls and too unhappy to notice Christopher, let alone remember him.
“Ralph’s messenger,” Tacroy said. “I believe you have a package for me.”
“Ah yes,” shivered the landlord. “Won’t you come inside out of this exceptionally bitter weather, sir? This is the hardest winter anyone has known for years.”
Tacroy’s eyebrows went up and he looked at Christopher. “I’m quite warm,” Christopher said.
“Then we’ll stay outside,” Tacroy said. “The package?”
“Directly, sir,” shivered the landlord. “But won’t you take something hot to warm you up? On the house, sir.”
“Yes, please,” Christopher said quickly. Last time he was here he had been given something chocolatish which was not cocoa but much nicer. The landlord nodded and smiled and shuffled shivering back indoors. Christopher sat at the table. Even though it was almost dark now, he felt deliciously warm. His clothes were drying nicely. Crowds of fleshy moth-things were flopping at the lighted windows, but enough light came between them for him to see Tacroy sit down in the air and then slide himself sideways on to the chair on the other side of the table.
“You’ll have to drink whatever-it-is for me,” Tacroy said.
“That won’t worry me,” Christopher said. “Why did you tell me to write the number nine?”
“Because this set of worlds is known as Series Nine,” Tacroy explained. “Your uncle seems to have a lot of dealings here. That was why it was easy to set the experiment up. If it works, I think he’s planning a whole set of trips, all along the Related Worlds. You’d find that a bit boring, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh no. I’d like it,” Christopher said. “How many are there after nine?”
“Ours is Twelve,” said Tacroy. “Then they go down to One, along the other way. Don’t ask me why they go back to front. It’s traditional.”
Christopher frowned over this. There were a great many more valleys than that in The Place Between, all arranged higgledy-piggledy, too, not in any neat way that made you need to count up to twelve. But he supposed there must be some way in which Tacroy knew best – or Uncle Ralph did.
The landlord shuffled hastily out again. He was carrying two cups that steamed out a dark chocolate smell, although this lovely aroma was rather spoilt by a much less pleasant smell coming from a round leather container on a long strap, which he dumped on the table beside the cups. “Here we are,” he said. “That’s the package and here’s to take the chill off you and drink to further dealings, sir. I don’t know how you two can stand it out here!”
“We come from a cold and misty climate,” Tacroy said. “Thanks,” he added to the landlord’s back, as the landlord scampered indoors again. “I suppose it must be tropical here usually,” he remarked as the door slammed. “I wouldn’t know. I can’t feel heat or cold in the spirit. Is that stuff nice?”
Christopher nodded happily. He had already drained one tiny cup. It was dark, hot and delicious. He pulled Tacroy’s cup over and drank that in sips, to make the taste last as long as possible. The round leather bottle smelt so offensive that it got in the way of the taste. Christopher put it on the floor out of the way.
“You can lift it, I see, and drink,” Tacroy said, watching him. “Your uncle told me to make quite sure, but I haven’t any doubt myself. He said you lose things on the Passage.”
“That’s because it’s hard carrying things across the rocks,” Christopher explained. “I need both hands for climbing.”
Tacroy thought. “Hm. That explains the strap on the bottle. But there could be all sorts of other reasons. I’d love to find out. For instance, have you ever tried to bring back something alive?”
“Like a mouse?” Christopher suggested. “I could put it in my pocket.”
A sudden gleeful look came into Tacroy’s face. He looked, Christopher thought, like a person about to be thoroughly naughty. “Let’s try it,” he said. “Let’s see if you can bring back a small animal next. I’ll persuade your uncle that we need to know that. I think I’ll die of curiosity if we don’t try it, even if it’s the last thing you do for us!”
After that Tacroy seemed to get more and more impatient. At last he stood up in such a hurry that he stood right through the chair as if it wasn’t there. “Haven’t you finished yet? Let’s get going.”
Christopher regretfully stood the tiny cup on his face to get at the last drops. He picked up the round bottle and hung it around his neck by the strap. Then he jumped off the verandah and set off down the rutty road, full of eagerness to show Tacroy the town. Fungus grew like corals on all the porches. Tacroy would like that.
Tacroy called after him. “Hey! Where are you off to?”
Christopher stopped and explained. “No way,” said Tacroy. “It doesn’t matter if the fungus is sky-blue-pink. I can’t hold this trance much longer, and I want to make sure you get back too.”
This was disappointing. But when Christopher came close and peered at him, Tacroy did seem to be developing a faint, fluttery look, as if he might dissolve into the dark, or turn into one of the moth-things beating at the windows of the inn. Rather alarmed by this, Christopher put a hand on Tacroy’s sleeve to hold him in place. For a moment, the arm hardly felt as if it was there – like the feathery balls of dust that grew under Christopher’s bed – but after that first moment it firmed up nicely. Tacroy’s outline grew hard and black against the dark trees. And Tacroy himself stood very still.
“I do believe,” he said, as if he did not believe it at all, “that you’ve done something to fix me. What did you do?”
“Hardened you up,” Christopher said. “You needed it so that we could go and look at the town. Come on.”
But Tacroy laughed and took a firm grip on Christopher’s arm – so firm that Christopher was sorry he had hardened him. “No, we’ll see the fungus another time. Now I know you can do this too, it’s going to be much easier. But I only contracted for an hour this trip. Come on.”
As they went back up the valley, Tacroy kept peering round. “If it wasn’t so dark,” he said, “I’m sure I’d be seeing this as a valley too. I can hear the stream. This is amazing!” But it was clear that he could not see The Place Between. When they got to it, Tacroy went on walking as if he thought it was still the valley. When the wind blew the mist aside, he was not there any more.
Christopher wondered whether to go back into Nine, or on into another valley. But it did not seem such fun without company, so he let The Place Between push him back home.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_6e7e207a-f52d-58cd-9463-db378ce4c9d1)
By the next morning, Christopher was heartily sick of the smell – it was more of a reek really – from the leather bottle. He put it under his bed, but it was still so bad that he had to get up and cover it with a pillow before he could get to sleep.
When the Last Governess came in to tell him to get up, she found it at once by the smell. “Dear Heavens above!” she said, dragging it out by its strap. “Would you credit this! I didn’t believe even your uncle could ask for a whole bottleful of this stuff! Didn’t he think of the danger?”
Christopher blinked up at her. He had never seen her so emotional. All her hidden prettiness had come out and she was staring at the bottle as if she did not know whether to be angry or scared or pleased. “What’s in it?” he said.
“Dragons’ blood,” said the Last Governess. “And it’s not even dried! I’m going to get this straight off to your uncle while you get dressed, or your mama will throw fits.” She hurried away with the bottle at arm’s length, swinging on its strap. “I think your uncle’s going to be very pleased,” she called over her shoulder.
There was no doubt about that. A day later a big parcel arrived for Christopher. The Last Governess brought it up to the schoolroom with some scissors and let him cut the string for himself, which added much to the excitement. Inside was a huge box of chocolates, with a vast red bow and a picture of a boy blowing bubbles on the top. Chocolates were so rare in Christopher’s life that he almost failed to notice the envelope tucked into the bow. It had a gold sovereign in it and a note from Uncle Ralph.
Well done!!!! it said. Next experiment in a week. Miss Bell will tell you when. Congratulations from your loving uncle.
This so delighted Christopher that he let the Last Governess have first pick from the chocolates. “I think,” she said dryly, as she picked the nutty kind that Christopher never liked, “that your Mama would like to be offered one before too many are gone.” Then she plucked the note out of Christopher’s fingers and put it in the fire as a hint that he was not to explain to Mama what he had done to earn the chocolates.
Christopher prudently ate the first layer before he offered the box to Mama. “Oh dear, these are so bad for your teeth!” Mama said, while her fingers hovered over the strawberry and then the truffle. “You do seem to have taken your uncle’s fancy – and that’s just as well, since I’ve had to put all my money in his hands. It’ll be your money one day,” she said as her fingers closed on the fudge. “Don’t let my brother spoil him too much,” she said to the Last Governess. “And I think you’d better take him to a dentist.”
“Yes, Madam,” said the Last Governess, all meek and drab.
It was clear that Mama did not have the least suspicion what the chocolates were really about. Christopher was pleased to have been so faithful to Uncle Ralph’s wishes, though he did wish Mama had not chosen the fudge.
The rest of the chocolates did not last quite the whole week, but they did take Christopher’s mind off the excitement of the next experiment. In fact, when the Last Governess said calmly, the next Friday before bedtime, “Your uncle wants you to go on another dream tonight,” Christopher felt more business-like than excited. “You are to try to get to Series Ten,” said the Last Governess, “and meet the same man as before. Do you think you can do that?”
“Easy!” Christopher said loftily. “I could do it standing on my head.”
“Which is getting a little swelled,” remarked the Last Governess. “Don’t forget to brush your hair and clean your teeth and don’t get too confident. This is not really a game.”
Christopher did honestly try not to feel too confident, but it was easy. He went out on to the path, where he put on his muddy clothes, and then climbed through The Place Between looking for Tacroy. The only difficulty was that the valleys were not arranged in the right order. Number Ten was not next one on from Nine, but quite a way lower down and further on. Christopher almost thought he was not going to find it. But at length he slid down a long slope of yellowish scree and saw Tacroy shining wetly through the mist as he crouched uncomfortably on the valley’s lip. He held out a dripping arm to Christopher.
“Lord!” he said. “I thought you were never coming. Firm me up, will you? I’m fading back already. The latest girl is nothing like so effective.”
Christopher took hold of Tacroy’s cold woolly-feeling hand. Tacroy began firming up at once. Soon he was hard and wet and as solid as Christopher, and very pleased about it too. “This was the part your uncle found hardest to believe,” he said while they climbed into the valley. “But I swore to him that I’d be able to see – oh – um. What do you see, Christopher?”
“It’s the Anywhere where I got my bells,” Christopher said, smiling round the steep green slopes. He remembered it perfectly. This Anywhere had a particular twist to the stream half-way down. But there was something new here – a sort of mistiness just beside the path. “What’s that?” he asked, forgetting that Tacroy could not see the valley.
But Tacroy evidently could see the valley now he was firmed up. He stared at the mistiness with his eyes ruefully wrinkled.
“Part of your uncle’s experiment that doesn’t seem to have worked,” he said. “It’s supposed to be a horseless carriage. He was trying to send it through to meet us. Do you think you can firm that up too?”
Christopher went to the mistiness and tried to put his hand on it. But the thing did not seem to be there enough for him to touch. His hand just went through.
“Never mind,” said Tacroy. “Your uncle will just have to think again. And the carriage was only one of three experiments tonight.” He insisted that Christopher wrote a big 10 in the dirt of the path, and then they set off down the valley. “If the carriage had worked,” Tacroy explained, “we’d have tried for something bulky. As it is, I get my way and we try for an animal. Lordy! I’m glad you came when you did. I was almost as bad as that carriage. It’s all that girl’s fault.”
“The lovely young lady with the harp?” asked Christopher.
“Alas, no,” Tacroy said regretfully. “She took a fit when you firmed me up last time. It seems my body there in London went down to a thread of mist and she thought I was a goner. Screamed and broke her harp strings. Left as soon as I came back. She said she wasn’t paid to harbour ghosts, pointed out that her contract was only for one trance, and refused to come back for twice the money. Pity. I hoped she was made of sterner stuff. She reminded me very much of another young lady with a harp who was once the light of my life.” For a short while, he looked as sad as someone with such a merry face could. Then he smiled. “But I couldn’t ask either of them to share my garret,” he said. “So it’s probably just as well.”
“Did you need to get another one?” Christopher asked.
“I can’t do without, unfortunately, unlike you,” Tacroy said. “A professional spirit traveller has to have another medium to keep him anchored – music’s the best way – and to call him back in case of trouble, and keep him warm, and make sure he’s not interrupted by tradesmen with bills and so forth. So your uncle found this new girl in a bit of a hurry. She’s stern stuff all right. Voice like a hatchet. Plays the flute like someone using wet chalk on a blackboard.” Tacroy shuddered slightly. “I can hear it faintly all the time if I listen.”
Christopher could hear a squealing noise too, but he thought it was probably the pipes of the snake charmers who sat in rows against the city wall in this Anywhere. They could see the city now. It was very hot here, far hotter than Nine. The high muddy-looking walls and the strange-shaped domes above them quivered in the heat, like things under water. Sandy dust blew up in clouds, almost hiding the dirty-white row of old men squatting in front of baskets blowing into pipes. Christopher looked nervously at the fat snakes, each one swaying upright in its basket.
Tacroy laughed. “Don’t worry. Your uncle doesn’t want a snake any more than you do!”
The City had a towering but narrow gate. By the time they reached it both were covered in sandy dust and Christopher was sweating through it, in trickles. Tacroy seemed enviably cool. Inside the walls it was even hotter. This was the one drawback to a thoroughly nice Anywhere.
The shady edges of the streets were crowded with people and goats and makeshift stalls under coloured umbrellas, so that Christopher was forced to walk with Tacroy down the blinding stripe of sun in the middle. Everyone shouted and chattered cheerfully. The air was thick with strange smells, the bleating of goats, the squawks of chickens, and strange clinking music. All the colours were bright, and brightest of all were the small gilded dolls-house things at the corners of streets. These were always heaped with flowers and dishes of food. Christopher thought they must belong to very small gods.
A lady under an electric blue umbrella gave him some of the sweetmeat she was selling. It was like a crisp bird’s-nest soaked in honey. Christopher gave some to Tacroy, but Tacroy said he could only taste it the way you tasted food in dreams, even when Christopher firmed him up again.
“Does Uncle Ralph want me to fetch a goat?” Christopher asked, licking honey from his fingers.
“We’d have tried if the carriage had worked,” Tacroy said. “But what your uncle’s really hoping for is a cat from one of the temples. We have to find the Temple of Asheth.”
Christopher led the way to the big square where all the large houses for gods were. The man with the yellow umbrella was still there, on the steps of the largest temple. “Ah yes. That’s it,” Tacroy said. But when Christopher set off hopefully to talk to the man with the yellow umbrella again, Tacroy said, “No, I think our best bet is to get in round the side somewhere.”
They found their way down narrow side alleys that ran all round the temple. There were no other doors to the temple at all, nor did it have any windows. The walls were high and muddy-looking and totally blank except for wicked spikes on the top. Tacroy stopped quite cheerfully in a baking alley where someone had thrown away a cartload of old cabbages and looked up at the spikes. The ends of flowering creepers were twined among the spikes from the other side of the wall.
“This looks promising,” he said, and leant against the wall. His cheerful look vanished. For a moment he looked frustrated and rather annoyed. “Here’s a turn-up,” he said. “You’ve made me too solid to get through, darn it!” He thought about it, and shrugged. “This was supposed to be experiment three anyway. Your uncle thought that if you could broach a way between the worlds, you could probably pass through a wall too. Are you game to try? Do you think you can get in and pick up a cat without me?”
Tacroy seemed very nervous and worried about it. Christopher looked at the frowning wall and thought that it was probably impossible. “I can try,” he said, and largely to console Tacroy, he stepped up against the hot stones of the wall and tried to push himself through them. At first it was impossible. But after a moment, he found that if he turned himself sort of sideways in a peculiar way, he began to sink into the stones. He turned and smiled encouragingly at Tacroy’s worried face. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“I don’t like letting you go on your own,” Tacroy was saying, when there came a noise like SHLUCK! and Christopher found himself on the other side of the wall all mixed up in creepers. For a second he was blinded in the sun there. He could see and hear and feel that things were moving all over the yard in front of him, rushing away from him in a stealthy, blurred way that had him almost paralysed with terror. Snakes! he thought, and blinked and squinted and blinked again, trying to see them properly.
They were only cats, running away from the noise he had made coming through the wall. Most of them were well out of reach by the time he could see. Some had climbed high up the creepers and the rest had bolted for the various dark archways round the yard. But one white cat was slower than the others and was left trotting uncertainly and heavily across the harsh shadow in one corner.
That was the one to get. Christopher set off after it.
By the time he had torn himself free of the creepers, the white cat had taken fright. It ran. Christopher ran after it, through an archway hung with more creepers, across another, shadier yard, and then through a doorway with a curtain instead of a door. The cat slipped round the curtain. Christopher flung the curtain aside and dived after it, only to find it was so dark beyond that he was once more blinded.
“Who are you?” said a voice from the darkness. It sounded surprised and haughty. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Who are you?” Christopher said cautiously, wishing he could see something besides blue and green dazzle.
“I’m the Goddess of course,” said the voice. “The Living Asheth. What are you doing here? I’m not supposed to see anyone but priestesses until the Day of Festival.”
“I only came to get a cat,” said Christopher. “I’ll go away when I have.”
“You’re not allowed to,” said the Goddess. “Cats are sacred to Asheth. Besides, if it’s Bethi you’re after, she’s mine, and she’s going to have kittens again.”
Christopher’s eyes were adjusting. If he peered hard at the corner where the voice came from, he could see someone about the same size as he was, sitting on what seemed to be a pile of cushions, and pick out the white hump of the cat clutched in the person’s arms. He took a step forward to see better.
“Stay where you are,” said the Goddess, “or I’ll call down fire to blast you!”
Christopher, much to his surprise, found he could not move from the spot. He shuffled his feet to make sure. It was as if his bare soles were fastened to the tiles with strong rubbery glue. While he shuffled, his eyes started working properly.
The Goddess was a girl with a round, ordinary face and long mouse-coloured hair. She was wearing a sleeveless rust-brown robe and rather a lot of turquoise jewellery, including at least twenty bracelets and a little turquoise-studded coronet. She looked a bit younger than he was – much too young to be able to fasten someone’s feet to the floor. Christopher was impressed. “How did you do it?” he said.
The Goddess shrugged. “The power of the Living Asheth,” she said. “I was chosen from among all the other applicants because I’m the best vessel for her power. Asheth picked me out by giving me the mark of a cat on my foot. Look.” She tipped herself sideways on her cushions and stretched one bare foot with an anklet round it towards Christopher. It had a big purple birthmark on the sole. Christopher did not think it looked much like a cat, even when he screwed his eyes up so much that he felt like Tacroy. “You don’t believe me,” the Goddess said, rather accusingly.
“I don’t know,” said Christopher. “I’ve never met a goddess before. What do you do?”
“I stay in the temple unseen, except for one day every year, when I ride through the city and bless it,” said the Goddess. Christopher thought that this did not sound very interesting, but before he could say so, the Goddess added, “It’s not much fun, actually, but that’s the way things are when you’re honoured like I am. The Living Asheth always has to be a young girl, you see,”
“Do you stop being Asheth when you grow up then?” Christopher asked.
The Goddess frowned. Clearly she was not sure. “Well, the Living Asheth never is grown up, so I suppose so – they haven’t said.” Her round, solemn face brightened up. “That’s something to look forward to, eh Bethi?” she said, stroking the white cat.
“If I can’t have that cat, will you let me have another one?” Christopher asked.
“It depends,” said the Goddess. “I don’t think I’m allowed to give them away. What do you want it for?”
“My uncle wants one,” Christopher explained. “We’re doing an experiment to see if I can fetch a live animal from your Anywhere to ours. Yours is Ten and ours is Twelve. And it’s quite difficult climbing across The Place Between, so if you do let me have a cat, could you lend me a basket too, please?”
The Goddess considered. “How many Anywheres are there?” she asked in a testing kind of way.
“Hundreds,” said Christopher, “but Tacroy thinks there’s only twelve.”
“The priestesses say there are twelve known Otherwheres,” the Goddess said, nodding. “But Mother Proudfoot is fairly sure there are many more than that. Yes, and how did you get into the Temple?”
“Through the wall,” said Christopher. “Nobody saw me.”
“Then you could get in and out again if you wanted to?” said the Goddess.
“Easy!” said Christopher.
“Good,” said the Goddess. She dumped the white cat in the cushions and sprang to her feet, with a smart jangle and clack from all her jewellery. “I’ll swop you a cat,” she said. “But first you must swear by the Goddess to come back and bring me what I want in exchange, or I’ll keep your feet stuck to the floor and shout for the Arm of Asheth to come and kill you.”
“What do you want in exchange?” asked Christopher.
“Swear first,” said the Goddess.
“I swear,” said Christopher. But that was not enough. The Goddess hooked her thumbs into her jewelled sash and stared stonily. She was actually a little shorter than Christopher, but that did not make the stare any less impressive. “I swear by the Goddess that I’ll come back with what you want in exchange for the cat – will that do?” said Christopher. “Now what do you want?”
“Books to read,” said the Goddess. “I’m bored,” she explained. She did not say it in a whine, but in a brisk way that made Christopher see it was true.
“Aren’t there any books here?” he said.
“Hundreds,” the Goddess said gloomily. “But they’re all educational or holy. And the Living Goddess isn’t allowed to touch anything in this world outside the Temple. Anything in this world. Do you understand?”
Christopher nodded. He understood perfectly. “Which cat can I have?”
“Throgmorten,” said the Goddess. Upon that word, Christopher’s feet came loose from the tiles. He was able to walk beside the Goddess as she lifted the curtain from the doorway and went out into the shady yard. “I don’t mind you taking Throgmorten,” she said. “He smells and he scratches and he bullies all the other cats. I hate him. But we’ll have to be quick about catching him. The priestesses will be waking up from siesta quite soon. Just a moment!”
She dashed aside into an archway in a clash of anklets that made Christopher jump. She whirled back almost at once, a whirl of rusty robe, flying girdle, and swirling mouse-coloured hair. She was carrying a basket with a lid. “This should do,” she said. “The lid has a good strong fastening.” She led the way through the creeper-hung archway into the courtyard with the blinding sunlight. “He’s usually lording it over the other cats somewhere here,” she said. “Yes, there he is – that’s him in the corner.”
Throgmorten was ginger. He was at that moment glaring at a black and white female cat, who had lowered herself into a miserable crouch while she tried to back humbly away. Throgmorten swaggered towards her, lashing a stripy snake-like tail, until the black and white cat’s nerve broke and she bolted. Then he turned to see what Christopher and the Goddess wanted.
“Isn’t he horrible?” said the Goddess. She thrust the basket at Christopher. “Hold it open and shut the lid down quick after I’ve got him into it.”
Throgmorten was, Christopher had to admit, a truly unpleasant cat. His yellow eyes stared at them with a blank and insolent leer, and there was something about the set of his ears – one higher than the other – which told Christopher that Throgmorten would attack viciously anything that got in his way. This being so, he was puzzled that Throgmorten should remind him remarkably much of Uncle Ralph. He supposed it must be the gingerness.
At this moment, Throgmorten sensed they were after him. His back arched incredulously. Then, he fairly levitated up into the creepers on the wall, racing and scrambling higher and higher, until he was far above their heads.
“No, you don’t!” said the Goddess.
And Throgmorten’s arched ginger body came flying out of the creepers like a furry orange boomerang and landed slap in the basket. Christopher was deeply impressed – so impressed that he was a bit slow getting the lid down. Throgmorten came pouring over the edge of the basket again in an instant ginger stream. The Goddess seized him and crammed him back, whereupon a large number of flailing ginger legs – at least seven, to Christopher’s bemused eyes – clawed hold of her bracelets and her robe and her legs under the robe, and tore pieces off them.
Christopher waited and aimed for an instant when one of Throgmorten’s heads – he seemed to have at least three, each with more fangs than seemed possible – came into range. Then he banged the basket lid on it, hard. Throgmorten, for the blink of an eye, became an ordinary dazed cat instead of a fighting devil. The Goddess shook him off into the basket. Christopher slapped the lid on. A huge ginger paw loaded with long pink razors at once oozed itself out of the latch hole and tore several strips off Christopher while he fastened the basket.
“Thanks,” he said, sucking his wounds.
“I’m glad to see the back of him,” said the Goddess, licking a slash on her arm and mopping blood off her leg with her torn robe.
A melodious voice called from the creeper-hung archway. “Goddess, dear! Where are you?”
“I have to go,” whispered the Goddess. “Don’t forget the books. You swore to a swop. Coming!” she called, and went running back to the archway, clash-tink, clash-tink.
Christopher turned quickly to the wall and tried to go through it. And he could not. No matter how he tried turning that peculiar sideways way, it would not work. He knew it was Throgmorten. Holding a live cat snarling in a basket made him part of this Anywhere and he had to obey its usual rules. What was he to do? More melodious voices were calling to the Goddess in the distance, and he could see people moving inside at least two more of the archways round the yard. He never really considered putting the basket down. Uncle Ralph wanted this cat. Christopher ran for it instead, sprinting for the nearest archway that seemed to be empty.
Unfortunately the jigging of the basket assured Throgmorten that he was certainly being kidnapped. He protested about it at the top of his voice – and Christopher would never have believed that a mere cat could make such a powerful noise. Throgmorten’s voice filled the dark passages beyond the archway, wailing, throbbing, rising to a shriek like a dying vampire’s, and then falling to a strong curdled contralto howl. Then it went up to a shriek again.
Before Christopher had run twenty yards, there were shouts behind him, and the slap of sandals and the thumping of bare feet. He ran faster than ever, twisting into a new passage whenever he came to one, and sprinting down that, but all the time Throgmorten kept up his yells of protest from the basket, showing the pursuers exactly where to follow. Worse, he fetched more. There were twice the number of shouts and thumping feet behind by the time Christopher saw daylight. He burst out into it, followed by a jostling mob.
And it was not really daylight, but a huge confusing temple, full of worshippers and statues and fat painted pillars. The daylight was coming from great open doors a hundred yards away. Christopher could see the man with the yellow umbrella outlined beyond the doors and knew exactly where he was. He dashed for the doors, dodging pillars and sprinting round people praying. “Wong – wong – WONG-WONG!” howled Throgmorten from the basket in his hand.
“Stop thief!” screamed the people chasing him. “Arm of Asheth!”
Christopher saw a man in a silver mask, or maybe a woman – a silver-masked person anyway – standing on a flight of steps carefully aiming a spear at him. He tried to dodge, but there was no time, or the spear followed him somehow. It crashed into his chest with a jolting thud.
Things seemed to go very slowly then. Christopher stood still, clutching the howling basket, and stared disbelievingly at the shaft of the spear sticking out of his chest through his dirty shirt. He saw it in tremendous detail. It was made of beautifully polished brown wood, with words and pictures carved along it. About half-way up was a shiny silver hand-grip which had designs that were almost rubbed out with wear. A few drops of blood were coming out where the wood met his shirt. The spear-head must be buried deep inside him. He looked up to see the masked person advancing triumphantly towards him. Beyond, in the doorway, Tacroy must have been fetched by the noise. He was standing frozen there, staring in horror.
Falteringly, Christopher put out his free hand and took hold of the spear by the hand-grip to pull it out. And everything stopped with a bump.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_0a271cd1-eb28-5799-bd2e-49601b5aa380)
It was early morning. Christopher realised that what had woken him were angry cat noises from the basket lying on its side in the middle of the floor. Throgmorten wanted out. Instantly. Christopher sat up beaming with triumph because he had proved he could bring a live animal from an Anywhere. Then he remembered he had a spear sticking out of his chest. He looked down. There was no sign of a spear. There was no blood. Nothing hurt. He felt his chest. Then he undid his pyjamas and looked. Incredibly he saw only smooth pale skin without a sign of a wound.
He was all right. The Anywheres were really only a kind of dream after all. He laughed.
“Wong!” Throgmorten said angrily, making the basket roll about.
Christopher supposed he had better let the beast out. Remembering those spiked tearing claws, he stood up on his bed and unhitched the heavy bar that held the curtains. It was hard to manoeuvre with the curtains hanging from it and sliding about, but Christopher rather thought he might need the curtains to shield him from Throgmorten’s rage, so he kept them in a bunch in front of him. After a bit of swaying and prodding, he managed to get the brass point at the end of the curtain bar under the latch of the lid and open the basket.
The cat sounds stopped. Throgmorten seemed to have decided that this was a trick. Christopher waited, gently bouncing on his bed and clutching the bar and the bundle of curtain, for Throgmorten to attack. But nothing happened. Christopher leant forward cautiously until he could see into the basket. It contained a round ginger bundle gently moving up and down. Throgmorten, disdaining freedom now he had it, had curled up and gone to sleep.
“All right then,” said Christopher. “Be like that!” With a bit of a struggle, he hitched the curtain pole back on its supports again and went to sleep himself.
Next time he woke, Throgmorten was exploring the room. Christopher lay on his back and warily watched Throgmorten jump from one piece of furniture to another all round the room. As far as he could tell, Throgmorten was not angry any more. He seemed simply full of curiosity.
Or maybe, Christopher thought, as Throgmorten gathered himself and jumped from the top of the wardrobe to the curtain pole, Throgmorten had a bet on with himself that he could get all round the night-nursery without touching the floor. As Throgmorten began scrambling along the pole, hanging on to it and the curtains with those remarkable claws of his, Christopher was sure of it.
What happened then was definitely not Throgmorten’s fault. Christopher knew it was his own fault for not putting the curtain pole back properly. The end furthest from Throgmorten and nearest Christopher came loose and plunged down like a harpoon, with the curtains rattling along it and Throgmorten hanging on frantically.
For an instant, Christopher had Throgmorten’s terror-stricken eyes glaring into his own as Throgmorten rode the pole down. Then the brass end hit the middle of Christopher’s chest. It went in like the spear. It was not sharp and it was not heavy, but it went right into him all the same. Throgmorten landed on his stomach an instant later, all claws and panic. Christopher thought he screamed. Anyway, either he or Throgmorten made enough noise to fetch the Last Governess running. The last thing Christopher saw for the time being was the Last Governess in her white night dress, grey with horror, moving her hands in quick peculiar gestures and gabbling very odd words…
He woke up a long time later, in the afternoon by the light, very sore in front and not too sure of very much, to hear Uncle Ralph’s voice.
“This is a damned nuisance, Effie, just when things were looking so promising! Is he going to be all right?”
“I think so,” the Last Governess replied. The two of them were standing by Christopher’s bed. “I got there in time to say a staunching spell and it seems to be healing.” While Christopher was thinking, Funny, I didn’t know she was a witch! she went on, “I haven’t dared breathe a word to your sister.”
“Don’t,” said Uncle Ralph. “She has her plans for him cut and dried, and she’ll put a stop to mine if she finds out. Drat that cat! I’ve got things set up all over the Related Worlds on the strength of that first run and I don’t want to cancel them. You think he’ll recover?”
“In time,” said the Last Governess. “There’s a strong spell in the dressing.”
“Then I shall have to postpone everything,” Uncle Ralph said, not sounding at all pleased. “At least we’ve got the cat. Where’s the thing got to?”
“Under the bed. I tried to fetch it out but I just got scratched for my pains,” said the Last Governess.
“Women!” said Uncle Ralph. “I’ll get it.” Christopher heard his knees thump on the floor. His voice came up from underneath. “Here. Nice pussy. Come here, pussy.”
There was a very serious outbreak of cat noises.
Uncle Ralph’s knees went thumping away backwards and his voice said quite a string of bad words. “The creature’s a perfect devil!” he added. “It’s torn lumps off me!” Then his voice came from higher up and further away. “Don’t let it get away. Put a holding spell on this room until I get back.”
“Where are you going?” the Last Governess asked.
“To fetch some thick leather gloves and a vet,” Uncle Ralph said from by the door. “That’s an Asheth Temple cat. It’s almost priceless. Wizards will pay five hundred pounds just for an inch of its guts or one of its claws. Its eyes will fetch several thousand pounds each – so make sure you set a good tight spell. It may take me an hour or so to find a vet.”
There was silence after that. Christopher dozed. He woke up feeling so much better that he sat up and took a look at his wound. The Last Governess had efficiently covered it with smooth white bandage. Christopher peered down inside it with great interest. The wound was a round red hole, much smaller than he expected. It hardly hurt at all.
While he wondered how to find out how deep it was, there was a piercing wail from the windowsill behind him. He looked round. The window was open – the Last Governess had a passion for fresh air – and Throgmorten was crouched on the sill beside it, glaring appealingly. When he saw Christopher was looking, Throgmorten put out one of his razor-loaded paws and scraped it down the space between the window and the frame. The empty air made a sound like someone scratching a blackboard.
“Wong,” Throgmorten commanded.
Christopher wondered why Throgmorten should think he was on his side. One way or another, Throgmorten had half killed him.
“Wong?” Throgmorten asked piteously.
On the other hand, Christopher thought, none of the half-killing had been Throgmorten’s fault. And though Throgmorten was probably the ugliest and most vicious cat in any Anywhere, it did not seem fair to kidnap him and drag him to a strange world and then let him be sold to wizards, parcel by parcel.
“All right,” he said and climbed out of bed. Throgmorten stood up eagerly, with his thin ginger snake of a tail straight up behind. “Yes, but I’m not sure how to break spells,” Christopher said, approaching very cautiously. Throgmorten backed away and made no attempt to scratch. Christopher put his hand out to the open part of the window. The empty space felt rubbery and gave when he pressed it, but he could not put his hand through even if he shoved it hard. So he did the only thing he could think of and opened the window wider. He felt the spell tear like a rather tough cobweb.
“Wong!” Throgmorten uttered appreciatively. Then he was off. Christopher watching him gallop down a slanting drain and levitate to a windowsill when the drain stopped. From there it was an easy jump to the top of a bay window and then to the ground. Throgmorten’s ginger shape went trotting away into the bushes and squeezed under the next-door fence, already with the air of looking for birds to kill and other cats to bully. Christopher put the window carefully back the way it had been and got back to bed.
When he woke up next, Mama was outside the door saying anxiously, “How is he? I hope it’s not infectious.”
“Not in the least, Madam,” said the Last Governess.
So Mama came in, filling the room with her scents – which was just as well, since Throgmorten had left his own penetrating odour under the bed – and looked at Christopher. “He seems a bit pale,” she said. “Do we need a doctor?”
“I saw to all that, Madam,” said the Last Governess.
“Thank you,” said Mama. “Make sure it doesn’t interrupt his education.”
When Mama had gone, the Last Governess fetched her umbrella and poked it under the bed and behind the furniture, looking for Throgmorten. “Where has it got to?” she said, climbing up to jab at the space on top of the wardrobe.
“I don’t know,” Christopher said truthfully, since he knew Throgmorten would be many streets away by now. “He was here before I went to sleep.”
“It’s vanished!” said the Last Governess. “A cat can’t just vanish!”
Christopher said experimentally, “He was an Asheth Temple cat.”
“True,” said the Last Governess. “They are wildly magic by all accounts. But your uncle’s not going to be at all pleased to find it gone.”
This made Christopher feel decidedly guilty. He could not go back to sleep, and when, about an hour later, he heard brisk heavy feet approaching the door, he sat up at once, wondering what he was going to say to Uncle Ralph.
But the man who came in was not Uncle Ralph. He was a total stranger – no, it was Papa! Christopher recognised the black whiskers. Papa’s face was fairly familiar too, because it was quite like his own, except for the whiskers and a solemn, anxious look. Christopher was astonished because he had somehow thought – without anyone ever having exactly said so – that Papa had left the house in disgrace after whatever went wrong with the money.
“Are you all right, son?” Papa said, and the hurried, worried way he spoke, and the way he looked round nervously at the door, told Christopher that Papa had indeed left the house and did not want to be found here. This made it plain that Papa had come specially to see Christopher, which astonished Christopher even more.
“I’m quite well, thank you,” Christopher said politely. He had not the least idea how to talk to Papa, face to face. Politeness seemed safest.
“Are you sure?” Papa asked, staring attentively at him. “The life-spell I have for you showed—In fact it stopped, as if you were – um—Frankly I thought you might be dead.”
Christopher was more astonished still. “Oh no, I’m feeling much better now,” he said.
“Thank God for that!” said Papa. “I must have made an error setting the spell – it seems a habit with me just now. But I have drawn up your horoscope too, and checked it several times, and I must warn you that the next year and a half will be a time of acute danger for you, my son. You must be very careful.”
“Yes,” said Christopher. “I will.” He meant it. He could still see the curtain rod coming down if he shut his eyes. And he had to keep trying not to think at all of the way the spear had stuck out of him.
Papa leant a little closer and looked furtively at the door again. “That brother of your mama’s – Ralph Argent – I hear he’s managing your mama’s affairs,” he said. “Try to have as little to do with him as you can, my son. He is not a nice person to know.” And having said that, Papa patted Christopher’s shoulder and hurried away. Christopher was quite relieved. One way and another, Papa had made him very uncomfortable. Now he was even more worried about what he would say to Uncle Ralph.
But to his great relief, the Last Governess told him that Uncle Ralph was not coming. He said that he was too annoyed about losing Throgmorten to make a good sick-visitor.
Christopher sighed thankfully and settled down to enjoy being an invalid. He drew pictures, he ate grapes, he read books, and he spun out his illness as long as he could. This was not easy. The next morning his wound was only a round itchy scab, and on the third day it was hardly there at all. On the fourth day, the Last Governess made him get up and have lessons as usual; but it had been lovely while it lasted.
On the day after that, the Last Governess said, “Your uncle wants to try another experiment tomorrow. He wants you to meet the man at Series Eight this time. Do you think you feel well enough?”
Christopher felt perfectly well, and provided nobody wanted him to go near Series Ten again, he was quite willing to go on another dream.
Series Eight turned out to be the bleak and stony Anywhere up above Nine. Christopher had not cared for it much when he had explored it on his own, but Tacroy was so glad to see him that it would have made up for a far worse place.
“Am I glad to see you!” Tacroy said, while Christopher was firming him up. “I’d resigned myself to being the cause of your death. I could kick myself for persuading your uncle to get you to fetch an animal! Everyone knows living creatures cause all sorts of problems, and I’ve told him we’re never going to try that again. Are you really all right?”
“Fine,” said Christopher. “My chest was smooth when I woke up.” In fact the funny thing about both accidents was that Throgmorten’s scratches had taken twice as long to heal as either wound. But Tacroy seemed to find this so hard to believe and to be so full of self-blame that Christopher got embarrassed and changed the subject. “Have you still got the young lady who’s stern stuff?”
“Sterner than ever,” Tacroy said, becoming much more cheerful at once. “The wretched girl’s setting my teeth on edge with that flute at this moment. Take a look down the valley. Your uncle’s been busy since you – since your accident.”
Uncle Ralph had perfected the horseless carriage. It was sitting on the sparse stony grass beside the stream as firm as anything, though it looked more like a rough wooden sled than any kind of carriage. Something had been done so that Tacroy was able to take hold of the rope fastened to the front. When he pulled, the carriage came gliding down the valley after him without really touching the ground.
“It’s supposed to return to London with me when I go back to my garret,” he explained. “I know that doesn’t seem likely, but your uncle swears he’s got it right this time. The question is, will it go back with a load on it, or will the load stay behind? That’s what tonight’s experiment is to find out.”
Christopher had to help Tacroy haul the sled up the long stony trail beyond the valley. Tacroy was never quite firm enough to give a good pull. At length they came to a bleak stone farm crouched half-way up the hill, where a group of thick-armed silent women were waiting in the yard beside a heap of packages carefully wrapped in oiled silk. The packages smelt odd, but that smell was drowned by the thick garlic breath from the women. As soon as the sled came to a stop, garlic rolled out in waves as the women picked up the packages and tried to load them on the sled. The parcels dropped straight through it and fell on the ground.
“No good,” said Tacroy. “I thought you were warned. Let Christopher do it.”
It was hard work. The women watched untrustingly while Christopher loaded the parcels and tied them in place with rope. Tacroy tried to help, but he was not firm enough and his hands went through the parcels. Christopher got tired and cold in the strong wind. When one of the women gave a stern, friendly smile and asked him if he would like to come indoors for a drink, he said yes gladly.
“Not today, thank you,” Tacroy said. “This thing’s still experimental and we’re not sure how long the spells will hold. We’d better get back.” He could see Christopher was disappointed. As they towed the sled away downhill, he said, “I don’t blame you. Call this just a business trip. Your uncle aims to get this carriage corrected by the way it performs tonight. My devout hope is that he can make it firm enough to be loaded by the people who bring the load, and then we can count you out of it altogether.”
“But I like helping,” Christopher protested. “Besides, how would you pull it if I’m not there to firm you up?”
“There is that,” Tacroy said. He thought about it while they got to the bottom of the hill and he started plodding up the valley with the rope straining over his shoulder. “There’s something I must say to you,” he panted. “Are you learning magic at all?”
“I don’t think so,” Christopher said.
“Well you should be,” Tacroy panted. “You must have the strongest talent I’ve ever encountered. Ask your mother to let you have lessons.”
“I think Mama wants me to be a missionary,” Christopher said.
Tacroy screwed his eyes up over that. “Are you sure? Might you have misheard her? Wouldn’t the word be magician?”
“No,” said Christopher. “She says I’m to go into Society.”
“Ah Society!” Tacroy panted wistfully. “I have dreams of myself in Society, looking handsome in a velvet suit and surrounded by young ladies playing harps.”
“Do missionaries wear velvet suits?” asked Christopher. “Or do you mean Heaven?”
Tacroy looked up at the stormy grey sky. “I don’t think this conversation is getting anywhere,” he remarked to it. “Try again. Your uncle tells me you’re going away to school soon. If it’s any kind of a decent school, they should teach magic as an extra. Promise me that you’ll ask to be allowed to take it.”
“All right,” said Christopher. The mention of school gave him a jab of nerves somewhere deep in his stomach. “What are schools like?”
“Full of children,” said Tacroy. “I won’t prejudice you.” By this time he had laboured his way to the top of the valley, where the mists of The Place Between were swirling in front of them. “Now comes the tricky part,” he said. “Your uncle thought this thing might have more chance of arriving with its load if you gave it a push as I leave. But before I go – next time you find yourself in a Heathen Temple and they start chasing you, drop everything and get out through the nearest wall. Understand? By the look of things, I’ll be seeing you in a week or so.”
Christopher put his shoulder against the back of the carriage and shoved as Tacroy stepped off into the mist holding the rope. The carriage tilted and slid downwards after him. As soon as it was in the mists it looked all light and papery like a kite, and like a kite it plunged and wallowed down out of sight.
Christopher climbed back home thoughtfully. It shook him to find he had been in the Anywhere where the Heathens lived without knowing it. He had been right to be nervous of Heathens. Nothing, he thought, would possess him to go back to Series Ten now. And he did wish that Mama had not decided that he should be a missionary.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_738471f2-7a3c-5e1a-9408-fcfc53c3cf55)
From then on, Uncle Ralph arranged a new experiment every week. He had, Tacroy said, been very pleased because the carriage and the packages had arrived in Tacroy’s garret with no hitch at all. Two wizards and a sorcerer had refined the spell on it until it could stay in another Anywhere for up to a day. The experiments became much more fun. Tacroy and Christopher would tow the carriage to the place where the load was waiting, always carefully wrapped in packages the right size for Christopher to handle. After Christopher had loaded them, he and Tacroy would go exploring.
Tacroy insisted on the exploring. “It’s his perks,” he explained to the people with the packages. “We’ll be back in an hour or so.”
In Series One they went and looked at the amazing ring-trains, where the rings were on pylons high above the ground and miles apart, and the trains went hurtling through them with a noise like the sky tearing, without even touching the rings. In Series Two they wandered a maze of bridges over a tangle of rivers and looked down at giant eels resting their chins on sandbars, while even stranger creatures grunted and stirred in the mud under the bridges. Christopher suspected that Tacroy enjoyed exploring as much as he did. He was always very cheerful during this part.
“It makes a change from sloping ceilings and peeling walls. I don’t get out of London very much,” Tacroy confessed while he was advising Christopher how to build a better sand-castle on the sea-shore in Series Five. Series Five turned out to be the Anywhere where Christopher had met the silly ladies. It was all islands. “This is better than a Bank Holiday at Brighton any day!” Tacroy said, looking out across the bright blue crashing waves. “Almost as good as an afternoon’s cricket. I wish I could afford to get away more.”
“Have you lost all your money then?” Christopher asked sympathetically.
“I never had any money to lose,” Tacroy said. “I was a foundling child.”
Christopher did not ask any more just then, because he was busy hoping that the mermaids would appear the way they used to. But though he looked and waited, not a single mermaid came.
He went back to the subject the following week in Series Seven. As they followed a gypsy-looking man who was guiding them to see the Great Glacier, he asked Tacroy what it meant to be a foundling child.
“It means someone found me,” Tacroy said cheerfully. “The someone in my case was a very agreeable and very devout Sea Captain, who picked me up as a baby on an island somewhere. He said the Lord had sent me. I don’t know who my parents were.”
Christopher was impressed. “Is that why you’re always so cheerful?”
Tacroy laughed. “I’m mostly cheerful,” he said. “But today I feel particularly good because I’ve got rid of the flute-playing girl at last. Your uncle’s found me a nice grandmotherly person who plays the violin quite well. And maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s your influence, but I feel firmer with every step.”
Christopher looked at him, walking ahead along the mountain path. Tacroy looked as hard as the rocks towering on one side and as real as the gypsy-looking man striding ahead of them both. “I think you’re getting better at it,” he said.
“Could be,” said Tacroy. “I think you’ve raised my standards. And yet, do you know, young Christopher, until you came along, I was considered the best spirit traveller in the country?”
Here the gypsy man shouted and waved to them to come and look at the glacier. It sat above them in the rocks in a huge dirty-white V. Christopher did not think much of it. He could see it was mostly just dirty old snow – though it was certainly very big. Its giant icy lip hung over them, almost transparent grey, and water dribbled and poured off it. Series Seven was a strange world, all mountains and snow, but surprisingly hot too. Where the water poured off the glacier, the heat had caused a great growth of strident green ferns and flowing tropical trees. Violent green moss grew scarlet cups as big as hats, all dewed with water. It was like looking at the North Pole and the Equator at once. The three of them seemed tiny beneath it.
“Impressive,” said Tacroy. “I know two people who are like this thing. One of them is your uncle.”
Christopher thought that was a silly thing to say. Uncle Ralph was nothing like the Giant Glacier. He was annoyed with Tacroy all the following week. But he relented when the Last Governess suddenly presented him with a heap of new clothes, all sturdy and practical things. “You’re to wear these when you go on the next experiment,” she said. “Your uncle’s man has been making a fuss. He says you always wear rags and your teeth were chattering in the snow last time. We don’t want you ill, do we?”
Christopher never noticed being cold, but he was grateful to Tacroy. His old clothes had got so much too small that they got in the way when he climbed through The Place Between. He decided he liked Tacroy after all.
“I say,” he said, as he loaded packages in a huge metal shed in Series Four, “can I come and visit you in your garret? We live in London too.”
“You live in quite a different part,” Tacroy said hastily. “You wouldn’t like the area my garret’s in at all.”
Christopher protested that this didn’t matter. He wanted to see Tacroy in the flesh and he was very curious to see the garret. But Tacroy kept making excuses. Christopher kept on asking, at least twice every experiment, until they went to bleak and stony Series Eight again, where Christopher was exceedingly glad of his warm clothes. There, while Christopher stood over the farmhouse fire warming his fingers round a mug of bitter malty tea, gratitude to Tacroy made him say yet again, “Oh, please can’t I visit you in your garret?”
“Oh, do stow it, Christopher,” Tacroy said, sounding rather tired of it all. “I’d invite you like a shot, but your uncle made a condition that you only see me like this while we’re on an experiment. If I told you where I live, I’d lose this job. It’s as simple as that.”
“I could go round all the garrets,” Christopher suggested cunningly, “and shout Tacroy and ask people until I found you.”
“You could not,” said Tacroy. “You’d draw a complete blank if you tried. Tacroy is my spirit name. I have quite a different name in the flesh.”
Christopher had to give in and accept it, though he did not understand in the least.
Meanwhile, the time when he was to go to school was suddenly almost there. Christopher tried carefully not to think of it, but it was hard to forget when he had to spend such a lot of time trying on new clothes. The Last Governess sewed name tapes – C. CHANT – on the clothes and packed them in a shiny black tin trunk – also labelled C. CHANT in bold white letters. This trunk was shortly taken away by a carrier whose thick arms reminded Christopher of the women in Series Eight, and the same carrier took away all Mama’s trunks too, only hers were addressed to Baden Baden while Christopher’s said, ‘Penge School, Surrey’.
The day after that, Mama left for Baden Baden. She came to say goodbye to Christopher, dabbing her eyes with a blue lace handkerchief that matched her travelling suit. “Remember to be good and learn a lot,” she said. “And don’t forget your mama wants to be very proud of you when you grow up.” She put her scented cheek down for Christopher to kiss and said to the Last Governess, “Mind you take him to the dentist now.”
“I won’t forget, Madam,” the Last Governess said in her dreariest way. Somehow her hidden prettiness never seemed to come out in front of Mama.
Christopher did not enjoy the dentist. After banging and scraping round Christopher’s teeth as if he were trying to make them fall out, the dentist made a long speech about how crooked and out of place they were, until Christopher began to think of himself with fangs like Throgmorten’s. He made Christopher wear a big shiny toothbrace, which he was supposed never to take out, even at night. Christopher hated the brace. He hated it so much that it almost took his mind off his fears about school.
The servants covered the furniture with dust sheets and left one by one, until Christopher and the Last Governess were the only people in the house. The Last Governess took him to the station in a cab that afternoon and put him on the train to school.
On the platform, now the time had come, Christopher was suddenly scared stiff. This really was the first step on the road to becoming a missionary and being eaten by Heathens. Terror seemed to drain the life out of him, down from his face, which went stiff, and out through his legs, which went wobbly. It seemed to make his terror worse that he had not the slightest idea what school was like.
He hardly heard the Last Governess say, “Goodbye, Christopher. Your uncle says he’ll give you a month at school to settle down. He’ll expect you to meet his man as usual on October the eighth in Series Six. October the eighth. Have you got that?”
“Yes,” Christopher said, not attending to a word, and got into the carriage like someone going to be executed.
There were two other new boys in the carriage. The small thin one called Fenning was so nervous that he had to keep leaning out of the window to be sick. The other one was called Oneir, and he was restfully ordinary. By the time the train drew into the school station, Christopher was firm friends with them both. They decided to call themselves the Terrible Three, but in fact everyone in the school called them the Three Bears. “Someone’s been sitting in my
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