Part 17 (1/2)

”But why didn't he know?” Janet demanded. ”It always makes me angry not to know things, and I feel especially angry about this, because it seems so hard on Cat.”

”It is, I agree,” said Chrestomanci. ”But it's something in the nature of enchanters' magic, I think.

Something the same happened to me. I couldn't do magic either. I couldn't do anything. But they found I had nine lives-I lost them at such a rate that it soon became obvious-and they told me I had to be the next Chrestomanci when I grew up, which absolutely appalled me, because I couldn't work the simplest spell. So they sent me to a tutor, the most terrifying old person, who was supposed to find what the trouble was. And he took one look at me and snarled, 'Empty your pockets, Chant!' Which I did. I was too scared not to. I took out my silver watch, and one and sixpence, and a silver charm from my G.o.dmother, and a silver tiepin I had forgotten to wear, and a silver brace I was supposed to wear in my teeth. And as soon as they were gone, I did some truly startling things. As I remember, the roof of the tutor's house came off.”

”Is it really true about silver, then?” Janet said.

”For me, yes,” said Chrestomanci.

”Yes, poor darling,” Millie said, smiling at him. ”It's so awkward with money. He can only handle pound notes and coppers.”

”He has to give us our pocket money in pennies, if Michael hasn't got it,” said Roger. ”Imagine sixty pennies in your pocket.” ”The really difficult thing is mealtimes,” said Millie. ”He can't do a thing with a knife and fork in his hands-and Gwendolen would do awful things during dinner.”

”How stupid!” said Janet. ”Why on earth don't you use stainless steel cutlery?”

Millie and Chrestomanci looked at one another. ”I never thought of it!” said Millie. ”Janet, my love, it's a very good thing you're staying here!”

Janet looked at Cat and laughed. And Cat, though he was still a little lonely and tearful, managed to laugh too.

The Lives of Christopher Chant

NOTE.

Everything in this book happens at least twenty-five years before the story told in Charmed Life.

For Leo, who got hit on the head with a cricket bat

1.

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 recognize 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 mult.i.tude 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 anexcuse 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 l.u.s.trous eyes, a perfect figure and piles of glossy black 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 around the corner of the night nursery wall-the part with the fireplace, which jutted out-onto a rocky path high on the side of a valley. The valley was green and steep, with a stream rus.h.i.+ng 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, around a large rock, into the part he always thought of as The Place Between.

Christopher thought it was probably a leftover 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 color-most of it was the ugly brown you get from mixing every color in a paintbox. There was always a formless wet mist hanging around 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 that 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 s.h.i.+ny sh.e.l.l necklace the silly ladies gave him, because he could hang it around 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 could, and send powerful sprays of water over him from their big finned feet. He never couldpersuade 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 learned very early on that they complained even louder when they found his pajamas muddy, wet and torn from climbing through The Place Between. He took a set of clothes out onto 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 the flippers at the end of her tail. 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 a big limber tail and flippers, instead of legs and feet.

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 realized, being a Beauty. Mama was very busy in front of her mirror with all sorts of little cut gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 around 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.