The Lives of Christopher Chant (7 page)

“She’s about the same age as us,” Christopher said and, since Oneir was looking at him for a further explanation and he was fairly sure Oneir was not going to believe in someone called the Goddess, he added, “I’ve got this cousin called Caroline.” This was quite true. Mama had once shown him a studio photo of his cousin, all lace and curls. Oneir was not to know that this had nothing whatsoever to do with the sentence that had gone before.

“Wait a sec then,” Oneir said, “and I’ll see if I can spot some of the real slush.” He wandered on along the shelf, leaving Christopher to flip through
The Arabian Nights.
It did look good, Christopher thought. Unfortunately he could see from the pictures that it was all about somewhere very like the Goddess’s own Anywhere. He suspected the Goddess would call it educational. “Ah, here we are! This is sure-fire slush!” Oneir called, pointing to a whole row of books. “These
Millie
books. Our house is full of the things.”

Millie Goes to School
, Christopher read,
Millie of Lowood House
,
Millie Plays the Game.
He picked up one called
Millie’s Finest Hour.
It had some very brightly colored schoolgirls on the front and in small print: “Another moral and uplifting story about your favorite schoolgirl. You will weep with Millie, rejoice with Millie, and meet all your friends from Lowood House School again . . .”

“Does your sister really like these?” he asked incredulously.

“Wallows in them,” said Oneir. “She reads them over and over again and cries every time.”

Though this seemed a funny way to enjoy a book, Christopher was sure Oneir knew best. The books were two and sixpence each. Christopher chose out the first five, up to
Millie in the Upper Fourth
, and bought
The Arabian Nights
for himself with the rest of the money. After all, it
was
his gold sovereign. “Could you wrap the
Millie
books in something waterproof?” he asked the assistant. “They have to go to a foreign country.” The assistant obligingly produced some sheets of waxed paper and, without being asked, made a handle for the parcel out of string.

That night Christopher hid the parcel in his bed. Oneir pinched a candle from the kitchens and read aloud from
The Arabian Nights,
which turned out to have been a remarkably good buy. “Unexpurgated” seemed to mean that all sorts of interestingly dirty bits had been put in. Christopher was so absorbed that he almost forgot to work out how he might get to The Place Between from the dormitory. It was probably important to go around a corner. He decided the best corner was the one beyond the washstands, just beside Fenning’s bed, and then settled down to listen to Oneir until the candle burned out. After that, he would be on his way.

To his exasperation, nothing happened at all. Christopher lay and listened to the snores, the mutters, and the heavy breathing of the other boys for hours. At length he got up with the parcel and tiptoed across the cold floor to the corner beyond Fenning’s bed. But he knew this was not right, even before he bumped into the washstands. He went back to bed, where he lay for further hours, and nothing happened even when he went to sleep.

The next day was Thursday, the day he was supposed to meet Tacroy. Knowing he would be too busy to deliver the books that night, Christopher left them in his bedside locker and read aloud from
The Arabian Nights
himself, so that he could control the time when everyone went to sleep. And so he did. All the other boys duly began to snore and mutter and puff as they always did, and Christopher was left lying awake alone, unable to get to The Place Between or to fall asleep either.

By this time he was seriously worried. Perhaps the only way to get to the Anywheres was from the night nursery of the house in London. Or perhaps it was an ability he had simply grown out of. He thought of Tacroy in a useless trance and the Goddess vowing the vengeance of Asheth on him, and he heard the birds beginning to sing before he got to sleep that night.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Matron noticed Christopher stumbling about, aching-eyed and scarcely awake. She pounced on him. “Can’t sleep, can you?” she said. “I always watch the ones with tooth-braces. I don’t think these dentists realize how uncomfortable they are. I’m going to come and take that away from you before lights-out tonight and you can come and fetch it in the morning. I make Mainwright Major do that too—it works wonders, you’ll see.”

Christopher had absolutely no faith in this idea. Everyone knew this was one of the bees in Matron’s bonnet. But, to his surprise, it worked. He found himself dropping asleep as soon as Fenning began reading
The Arabian Nights.
He had just presence of mind to fumble the parcel of books from his locker, before he was dead to the world. And here an even more surprising thing happened. He got out of bed, carrying the parcel, and walked across the dormitory without anyone appearing to notice him at all. He walked right beside Fenning, and Fenning just went on reading with the stolen candle balanced on his pillow. Nobody seemed to realize when Christopher walked around the corner, out of the dormitory and onto the valley path.

His clothes were lying in the path and he put them on, hanging the parcel from his belt so that he would have both hands free for The Place Between. And there was The Place Between.

So much had happened since Christopher had last been here that he saw it as if this was the first time. His eyes tried to make sense of the shapeless way the rocks slanted, and couldn’t. The formlessness stirred a formless kind of fear in him, which the wind and the mist and the rain beating in the mist made worse. The utter emptiness was more frightening still. As Christopher set off climbing and sliding down to Series Ten, with the wind wailing around him and the fog drops making the rocks wet and slippery, he thought he had been right to think, when he was small, that this was the part left over when all the worlds were made. The Place Between was exactly that. There was no one here to help him if he slipped and broke a leg. When the parcel of books unbalanced him, and he did slip, and skidded twenty feet before he could stop, his heart was in his mouth. If he had not known that he had climbed across here a hundred times, he would have known he was mad to try.

It was quite a relief to clamber into the hot valley and walk down to the muddy-walled city. The old men were still charming snakes outside it. Inside was the same hot clamor of smells and goats and people under umbrellas. And Christopher found he was still afraid, except that now he was afraid of someone pointing at him and shouting, “There’s the thief that stole the Temple cat!” He kept feeling that spear thudding into his chest. He began to get annoyed with himself. It was as if school had taught him how to be frightened.

When he got to the alley beside the Temple wall—where turnips had been thrown away this time—he was almost too scared to go on. He had to make himself push into the spiked wall by counting to a hundred and then telling himself he had to go. And when he was most of the way through, he stopped again, staring through the creepers at the cats in the blazing sun, and did not seem to be able to go on. But the cats took no notice of him. No one was about. Christopher told himself that it was
silly
to come all this way just to stand in a wall. He pulled himself out of the creepers and tiptoed to the overgrown archway, with the parcel of books butting him heavily with every step.

The Goddess was sitting on the ground in the middle of the shady yard, playing with a large family of kittens. Two of them were ginger, with a strong look of Throgmorten. When she saw Christopher, the Goddess jumped to her feet with an energetic clash of jewelry, scattering kittens in all directions.

“You’ve brought the books!” she said. “I never thought you would.”

“I always keep my word,” Christopher said, showing off a little.

The Goddess watched him unhitch the parcel from his belt as if she could still scarcely believe it. Her hands trembled a little as she took the waxy parcel, and trembled even more as she knelt on the tiles and tore and ripped and pulled until the paper and string came off. The kittens seized on the string and the wrappings and did all sorts of acrobatics with them, but the Goddess had eyes only for the books. She knelt and gazed. “Ooh! Five of them!”

“Just like Christmas,” Christopher remarked.

“What’s Christmas?” the Goddess asked absently. She was absorbed in stroking the covers of the books. When she had done that, she opened each one, peeped inside, and then shut it hastily as if the sight was too much. “Oh, I remember,” she said. “Christmas is a Heathen festival, isn’t it?”

“The other way around,” said Christopher. “You’re the Heathens.”

“No we’re not. Asheth’s true,” said the Goddess, not really attending. “Five,” she said. “That should last me a week if I read slowly on purpose. Which is the best one to start with?”

“I brought you the first five,” Christopher said. “Start with
Millie Goes to School.
”

“You mean there are
more
!” the Goddess exclaimed. “How many?”

“I didn’t count—about five,” Christopher said.

“
Five!
You don’t want another cat, do you?” said the Goddess.

“No,” Christopher said firmly. “One Throgmorten is quite enough, thanks.”

“But I’ve nothing else to swap!” said the Goddess. “I
must
have those other five books!” She jumped up with an impetuous clash of jewelry and began wrestling to unwind a snakelike bracelet from the top of her arm. “Perhaps Mother Proudfoot won’t notice if this is missing. There’s a whole chest of bracelets in there.”

Christopher wondered what she thought he would do with the bracelet. Wear it? He knew what school would think of that. “Hadn’t you better read these books first? You might not like them,” he pointed out.

“I know they’re perfect,” said the Goddess, still wrestling.

“I’ll bring you the other books as a present,” Christopher said hastily.

“But that means I’ll have to do something for you. Asheth always pays her debts,” the Goddess said. The bracelet came off with a twang. “Here. I’ll
buy
the books from you with this. Take it.” She pushed the bracelet into Christopher’s hand.

The moment it touched him, Christopher found himself falling through everything that was there. The yard, the creepers, the kittens, all turned to mist—as did the Goddess’s round face, frozen in the middle of changing from eagerness to astonishment—and Christopher fell out of it, down and down, and landed violently on his bed in the dark dormitory. CRASH!

“What was that?” said Fenning, quavering a little, and Oneir remarked, apparently in his sleep, “Help, someone’s fallen off the ceiling.”

“Shall I fetch Matron?” asked someone else.

“Don’t be an ass. I just had a dream,” Christopher said, rather irritably, because it had given him quite a shock. It was a further shock to find he was in pajamas and not in the clothes he
knew
he had put on in the valley. When the other boys had settled down, he felt all over his bed for the parcel of books, and when they did not seem to be there, felt for the bracelet instead. He could not find that either. He searched again in the morning, but there was no sign of it. He supposed that was not so surprising, when he thought how much Uncle Ralph had said Throgmorten was worth. Twelve-and-sixpenceworth of books was a pretty poor swap for several thousand poundsworth of cat. Something must have noticed that he was cheating the Goddess.

He knew he was going to have to find the money for those other five books somehow and take them to the Goddess. Meanwhile, he had missed Tacroy, and he supposed he had better try to meet him next Thursday instead. He was not looking forward to it. Tacroy was bound to be pretty annoyed by now.

When Thursday came, Christopher nearly forgot Tacroy. It was only by accident that he happened to fall asleep during a particularly tedious story in
The Arabian Nights. The Arabian Nights
had become the dormitory’s favorite reading. They took it in turns to steal a candle and read aloud to the others. It was Oneir’s turn that night, and Oneir read all on one note like the school Chaplain reading the Bible. And that night he was deep into a confusing set of people who were called Calendars—Fenning made everyone groan by suggesting they got their name from living in the part of the world where dates grew—and Christopher dropped off to sleep. Next thing he knew, he was walking out into the valley.

Tacroy was sitting in the path beside the heap of Christopher’s clothes. Christopher eyed those clothes and wondered how they got there. Tacroy was sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees as if he were resigned to a long wait, and he seemed quite surprised to see Christopher.

“I didn’t expect to see you!” he said, and he grinned, though he looked tired.

Christopher felt ashamed and awkward. “I suppose you must be pretty angry—” he began.

“Stow it,” said Tacroy. “I get paid for going into trances and you don’t. It’s just a job for me—though I must say I miss you being around to firm me up.” He stretched his legs out across the path, and Christopher could see stones and grass through the green worsted trousers. Then he stretched his arms above his head and yawned. “You don’t really want to go on with these experiments, do you?” he asked. “You’ve been busy with school, and that’s much more fun than climbing into valleys of a night, isn’t it?”

Because Tacroy was being so nice about it, Christopher felt more ashamed than ever. He had forgotten how nice Tacroy was. Now he thought about it, he had missed him quite badly. “Of course I want to go on,” he said. “Where are we going tonight?”

“Nowhere,” said Tacroy. “I’m nearly out of this trance as it is. This was just an effort to contact you. But if you really want to go on, your uncle is sending the carriage to Series Six next Thursday—you know, the place that’s living in an Ice Age. You
do
want to go on—really?” Tacroy looked up at Christopher with his eyes screwed into anxious lines. “You don’t have to, you know.”

“Yes, but I will,” Christopher said. “See you next Thursday.” And he dashed back to bed, where, to his delight, something seemed to be happening to the Calendars at last.

The rest of that term passed very swiftly, from lesson to lesson, from tale to tale in
The Arabian Nights
, from Thursday to Thursday. The longest parts were the weekly magic lessons. Climbing across The Place Between to meet Tacroy the first Thursday, Christopher still felt quite frightened, but it made a difference knowing that Tacroy was waiting for him outside the fifth valley along. Soon he was used to it again, and the experiments went on as before.

Someone had arranged for Christopher to stay for the Christmas holidays with Uncle Charles and Aunt Alice, the parents of his cousin Caroline. They lived in a big house in the country quite near, in Surrey too, and Cousin Caroline, in spite of being three years younger and a girl, turned out to be good fun. Christopher enjoyed learning all the things people did in the country, including snowballing with the stable lads and Caroline, and trying to sit on Caroline’s fat pony, but he was puzzled that no one mentioned Papa. Uncle Charles was Papa’s brother. He realized that Papa must be in disgrace with his whole family. In spite of this, Aunt Alice made sure he had a good Christmas, which was kind of her. Christopher’s most welcome Christmas present was another gold sovereign inside a card from Uncle Ralph. That meant he could afford more books for the Goddess.

As soon as school started again, he went down to the bookshop and bought the other five
Millie
books, and had them wrapped in waxed paper like the others. That was another twelve-and-sixpence towards the cost of Throgmorten. At this rate, he thought, he would be carrying parcels of books across The Place Between for the rest of his life.

In the Temple, the Goddess was in her dimly lit room bent over
Millie’s Finest Hour.
When Christopher came in, she jumped and stuffed the book guiltily under her cushions. “Oh it’s only you!” she said. “Don’t ever come in quietly like that again, or I shall be a Dead Asheth on the spot! Whatever happened last time? You turned into a ghost and went down through the floor.”

“I’ve no idea,” said Christopher, “except that I fell on my bed with a crash. I’ve brought you the other five books.”

“
Wonderfu
—!” the Goddess began eagerly. Then she stopped and said soberly, “It’s very kind of you, but I’m not sure Asheth wants me to have them, after what happened when I tried to give you the bracelet.”

“No,” said Christopher. “I think Asheth must know that Throgmorten’s worth thousands of pounds. I could bring you the whole school library and it still wouldn’t pay for him.”

“Oh,” said the Goddess. “In that case—How
is
Throgmorten, by the way?”

Since Christopher had no idea, he said airily, “Trotting around bullying other cats and scratching people,” and changed the subject before the Goddess realized he was only guessing. “Were the first five books all right?”

The Goddess’s round face became all smile, so much smile that her face could hardly hold it and she spread her arms out as well. “They’re the most marvelous books in this world! It’s like really
being
at Lowood House School. I cry every time I read them.”

Oneir had got it right, Christopher thought, watching the Goddess unwrap the new parcel with little cries of pleasure and much chinking of bracelets. “Oh Millie
does
get to be Head Girl!” she cried out, picking up
Head Girl Millie.
“I’ve been wondering and wondering whether she would. She must have got the better of that awful prig Delphinia after all.” She stroked the book lovingly, and then took Christopher by surprise by asking, “What happened when you took Throgmorten? Mother Proudfoot told me that the Arm of Asheth killed the thief.”

“They tried,” Christopher said awkwardly, trying to sound casual.

“In that case,” said the Goddess, “you were very brave to honor the swap and you deserve to be rewarded. Would you like a reward—not a swap or a payment, a reward?”