“Why are they numbered back to front?” Christopher asked.
“Because we think One was the original world of the twelve,” Flavian said. “Anyway it was the great Mages of One who first discovered the other worlds, and they did the numbering.”
This was a much better explanation than the one Tacroy had given. Christopher felt obliged to Flavian for it. So that when Flavian asked, “Now what do you think makes us call these twelve the Related Worlds?” Christopher felt he owed him an answer.
“They all speak the same languages,” he said.
“Very good!” said Flavian. His pale face went pink with surprise and pleasure. “You are a good pupil!”
“Oh, I’m absolutely brilliant,” Christopher said bitterly.
Unfortunately, when Flavian turned to practical magic on alternate afternoons, Christopher was anything but brilliant. With Dr Pawson he had become used to spells that really did something. But with Flavian he went back to small elementary magics of the kind he had been doing at school. They bored Christopher stiff. He yawned and he spilt things and usually, keeping a special vague look on his face so that Flavian would not notice what he was doing, he made the spells work without going through more than half the steps.
“Oh, no,” Flavian said anxiously, when he did notice. “That’s enchanter’s magic. We’ll be starting on that in a couple of weeks. But you have to know basic witchcraft first. It’s most important for you to know whether a witch or wizard is misusing the craft when you come to be the next Chrestomanci.”
That was the trouble with Flavian. He was always saying, “When you come to be the next Chrestomanci.” Christopher felt bitterly angry.
“Is Gabriel de Witt going to die soon?” he said.
“I don’t imagine so. He still has eight lives left,” said Flavian. “Why do you ask?”
“It was a whim,” Christopher said, thinking angrily of Papa.
“Oh dear,” Flavian said, worrying because he was failing to keep his pupil interested. “I know – we’ll go out into the gardens and study the properties of herbs. You may like that part of witchcraft better.”
Down into the gardens they went, into a raw grey day. It was one of those summers that was more like winter than many winters are. Flavian stopped under a huge cedar and invited Christopher to consider the ancient lore about cedarwood. Christopher was in fact quite interested to hear that cedar was part of the funeral pyre from which the Phoenix was reborn, but he was not going to let Flavian see he was.
As Flavian talked, his eye fell on the separate ruined piece of castle, and he knew that if he asked about that Flavian would only tell him that they would be doing misdirection spells next month – which put another thing he wanted to know into his mind. “When am I going to learn how to fasten a person’s feet to the spot?” he asked.
Flavian gave him a sideways look. “We won’t be doing magic that affects other people until next year,” he said. “Come over to the laurel bushes now and let’s consider those.”
Christopher sighed as he followed Flavian over to the big laurels by the drive. He might have known Flavian was not going to teach him anything useful! As they approached the nearest bush, a ginger cat emerged from among the shiny leaves, stretching and glaring irritably. When it saw Flavian and Christopher, it advanced on them at a trot, purpose all over its savage, lop-eared face.
“Look out!” Flavian said urgently.
Christopher did not need telling. He knew what this particular cat could do. But he was so astonished at seeing Throgmorten here at Chrestomanci Castle that he forgot to move. “Who – whose cat is that?” he said.
Throgmorten recognised Christopher too. His tail went up, thinner and more snaky than ever, and he stopped and stared. “Wong?” he said incredulously. And he advanced again, but in a much more stately way, like a Prime Minister greeting a foreign President. “Wong,” he said.
“Careful!” said Flavian, prudently backing behind Christopher. “It’s an Asheth Temple cat. It’s safest not to go near it.”
Christopher of course knew that, but Throgmorten was so evidently meaning to be polite that he risked squatting down and cautiously holding out his hand. “Yes, wong to you too,” he said. Throgmorten put forward his moth-eaten-looking orange nose and dabbed at Christopher’s hand with it.
“Great heavens! The thing actually likes you!” said Flavian. “Nobody else dares get within yards of it. Gabriel’s had to give all the outdoor staff special shielding spells or they said they’d leave. It tears strips off people through ordinary spells.”
“How did it get here?” Christopher said, letting Throgmorten politely investigate his hand.
“Nobody knows – at least how it wandered in here from Series Ten,” Flavian said. “Mordecai found it in London, brave man, and brought it here in a basket. He recognised it by its aura, and he said if he could, then most wizards would too and they’d kill it for its magical properties. Most of us think that wouldn’t be much loss, but Gabriel agreed with Mordecai.”
Christopher had still not learnt the names of all the sober-suited men round the Sunday lunch-table. “Which one is Mr Mordecai?” he said.
“Mordecai Roberts – he’s a particular friend of mine, but you won’t have met him yet,” said Flavian. “He works for us in London these days. Perhaps we could get on with herb lore now.”
At that moment, a strange noise broke from Throgmorten’s throat, a sound like wooden cogwheels not connecting very well. Throgmorten was purring. Christopher was unexpectedly touched. “Does he have a name?” he asked.
“Most people just call him That Thing,” said Flavian.
“I shall call him Throgmorten,” said Christopher, at which Throgmorten’s cogwheels went round more noisily than ever.
“It suits him,” said Flavian. “Now, please – consider this laurel.”
With Throgmorten sauntering amiably beside him, Christopher heard all about laurels and found it all much easier to take. It amused him the way Flavian took care to keep well out of reach of Throgmorten.
From then on, in a stand-offish way, Throgmorten became Christopher’s only friend in the Castle. They both seemed to have the same opinion of the people in it. Christopher once saw Throgmorten encounter Gabriel de Witt coming down the pink marble stairs. Throgmorten spat and flew at Gabriel’s long thin legs, and Christopher was charmed and delighted at the speed with which those long thin legs raced up the stairs again to get away.
Christopher hated Gabriel more every time he had a lesson with him. He decided that the reason Gabriel’s room always seemed so dark in spite of all its windows was because it reflected Gabriel’s personality.
Gabriel never laughed. He had no patience with slowness, or mistakes, and he seemed to think Christopher ought to know everything he taught him at once, by instinct.
The trouble was that, the first week, when Flavian and Gabriel were teaching him about the Related Worlds, Christopher had known all about them, from the Anywheres, and this seemed to have given Gabriel the idea that Christopher was a good learner. But after that, they went on to the different kinds of magics, and Christopher just could not seem to get it through his head why witchcraft and enchanters’ magic were not the same, or how wizardry differed from sorcery and both from magicians’ magic.
It was always a great relief to Christopher when his lesson with Gabriel was over. Afterwards, Christopher usually sneaked Throgmorten indoors and the two of them explored the Castle together. Throgmorten was not allowed inside the Castle, which was why Christopher liked to have him there.
Once or twice, with luck and cunning from both of them, Throgmorten spent the night on the end of Christopher’s bed, purring like a football rattle. But Miss Rosalie had a way of knowing where Throgmorten was. She nearly always arrived wearing gardening gloves and chased Throgmorten out with a besom. Luckily Miss Rosalie was often busy straight after lessons, so Throgmorten galloped beside Christopher down the long corridors and through the rambling a
ttics, thrusting his face into odd corners and remarking “Wong!” from time to time.
The Castle was huge. The weighty, baffling spells hung heavily over most of it, but there were parts that nobody used, where the spells seemed to have worn thin. Christopher and Throgmorten were both happiest in those parts. The third week, they discovered a big round room in a tower, which looked to have been a wizard’s workshop at one time. It had shelves round the walls, three long workbenches, and a pentagram painted on the stone floor. But it was deserted and dusty and stuffy with the smell of old, old magic.
“Wong,” Throgmorten said happily.
“Yes,” Christopher agreed. It seemed a waste of a good room. When I’m the next Chrestomanci, he thought, I shall make sure this room is used. Then he was angry with himself, because he was not going to be the next Chrestomanci. He had caught the habit from Flavian.
But I could make this a secret workshop of my own, he thought. I could sneak stuff up here bit by bit.
The next day, he and Throgmorten went exploring for a new attic where there might be things Christopher could use to furnish the tower room. And they discovered a second tower up a second, smaller winding stair. The spells were worn away almost entirely here, because this tower was ruinous. It was smaller than the other tower room and half its roof was missing. Half the floor was wet with that afternoon’s rain. Beyond that there was what had once been a mullioned window. It was now a slope of wet rubbly wall with one stone pillar standing out of it.
“Wong, wong!” Throgmorten uttered approvingly. He went trotting over the wet floor and jumped up on to the broken wall.
Christopher followed him eagerly. They both climbed out on to the slope of rubble beyond what was left of the window and looked down at the smooth lawn and the tops of the cedar trees. Christopher caught a glimpse of the separate piece of castle with the misdirection spell on it. It was almost out of sight beyond the knobbly stonework of the tower, but he thought he should be high enough to see into it over the trees growing on top of it. Holding on to the pillar that had been part of the window, he stepped further out on the broken slope and leaned right out to see.
The pillar snapped in half.
Christopher’s feet shot forward on the slippery stones. He felt himself plunge through the air and saw the cedars rushing past upside down. Bother! he thought. Another life! He remembered that the ground stopped him with a terrible jolt. And he had a vague notion that Throgmorten somehow followed him down and then proceeded to make an appalling noise.
They said he had broken his neck this time. Miss Rosalie told him that the spells on the Castle should have stopped his falling, or at least alerted people when he did fall. But as the spells were worn out there, it had been Throgmorten’s howls that had fetched a horrified gardener. Because of this, Throgmorten was respectfully allowed to spend that night on the end of Christopher’s bed, until the maids complained of the smell in the morning. Then Miss Rosalie appeared with her gardening gloves and her broom and chased Throgmorten out.
Christopher thought resentfully that there was very little difference between the way the Castle people treated Throgmorten and the way they treated him. The bearded Dr Simonson, when he was not instructing everyone how to put tinctures to fire, turned out to be a medical magician. He came the following morning and, in an off-handed disapproving way, examined Christopher’s neck.
“As I thought,” he said. “Now the new life has taken over there is no sign of the break. Better stay in bed today because of the shock. Gabriel is going to want to talk to you about this escapade.”
Then he went away and nobody else came near Christopher apart from maids with trays, except Flavian, who came and stood in the doorway sniffing cautiously at the strong odour Throgmorten had left in the room.
“It’s all right,” Christopher said. “Miss Rosalie’s just chased him out.”
“Good,” said Flavian and he came over to Christopher’s bed carrying a big armful of books.
“Oh wonderful!” Christopher said, eyeing the armful. “Lots of lovely work. I’ve been lying here itching to get on with some algebra!”
Flavian looked a little injured. “Well, no,” he said. “These are things from the Castle library that I thought you might like.” And he went away.
Christopher looked through the books and found they were stories from different parts of the world. Some were from different worlds. All of them looked pretty good. Christopher had not realised there was anything worth reading in the Castle library before and, as he settled down to read, he decided he would go and have a look for himself tomorrow.
But the smell of Throgmorten interrupted him. The combination of the smell and the books kept reminding him of the Goddess, and he kept remembering that he still had not paid for the hundredth part of Throgmorten. It took him quite an effort to forget about Series Ten and concentrate on his book, and as soon as he did, Miss Rosalie came in, flushed and breathless from a long pursuit of Throgmorten, and interrupted him again.
“Gabriel wants to see you about that fall,” she said. “You’re to go to his office at nine o’clock tomorrow.” As she turned to go, she said, “I see you’ve got some books. Is there anything else I can get you? Games? You’ve got Snakes and Ladders, haven’t you?”
“It takes two to play that,” Christopher told her pointedly.
“Oh dear,” Miss Rosalie said. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about games.” Then she went away again.
Christopher laid his book down and stared round his brown empty room, hating the Castle and all the people in it quite passionately. The room now had his school trunk in one corner, which made it seem emptier than ever by reminding him of all the company he was missing at school. There was an ideal corner for getting to the Anywheres between the trunk and the bare fireplace. He wished he could run away to somewhere where even magic could not find him, and never come back.
Then he realised that he could get away, after a fashion, by going to an Anywhere. He wondered why he had not tried all the time he had been at the Castle. He put it down to the Castle spells. They muffled your mind so. But now, either the shock of breaking his neck, or the new life he could feel sturdily and healthily inside him, or both, had started him thinking again. Perhaps he could go to an Anywhere and stay there for good.
The trouble was, when he went to the Anywheres, he seemed to have to leave a piece of himself behind in bed. But it must be possible to take the whole of yourself. From the things Flavian and Gabriel had said when they talked about the Related Worlds, Christopher was sure that some people did go to worlds in the other Series. He would just have to wait and learn how it was done. Meanwhile, there was nothing to stop him looking round for a suitable Anywhere to escape to.
Christopher read his books innocently until the maid came and turned out his gaslight for the night. Then he lay staring into the dark, trying to detach the part of himself that could go to the Anywheres. For quite a while, he could not do it. The Castle spells lay heavy on him, squashing all the parts of him into a whole. Then, as he got sleepier, he realised the way, and slipped out sideways from himself and went padding round the corner between the trunk and the fireplace.
There, it was like walking into a sheet of thick rubber that bounced him back into the room. The Castle spells again. Christopher set his teeth, turned his shoulder into the rubberiness, and pushed. And pushed, and pushed, and walked forward a little with each push, but quietly and gently, not to alert anyone in the Castle – until, after about half an hour, he had the spell stretched as thin as it would go. Then he took a pinch of it in each hand and tore it gently apart.
It was wonderful to walk out through the split he had made, into the valley, and find his clothes still lying there, a little damp and too small again, but there. He put them on. Then, instead of going into The Place Between, he set off the other way, down the valley. It stood to reason that the valley led to one of the other worlds in Series Twelve. Christopher hoped it would be World B. One
of his cunning ideas had been to hide quite near in the non-magical world, where he was sure no one, even Gabriel de Witt, would think of looking.
Probably it was World B, but he only stayed there half a minute. When he got to the end of the valley it was raining, pouring – souping down steadily sideways. Christopher found himself in a city full of rushing machines, speeding all round him on wheels that hissed on the wet black road. A loud noise made him look round just in time to see a huge red machine charging down on him out of the white curtain of rain. He saw a number on it and the words TUFNELL PARK, and sheets of water flew over him as he got frantically out of its way.
Christopher escaped up the valley again, soaking wet. World B was the worst Anywhere he had ever been in. But he still had his other cunning idea, and that was to go to World Eleven, the world nobody ever went to. He went up the valley and round the jutting rock into The Place Between.
The Place was so desolate, so shapeless and so empty, that if he had not just been somewhere even more terrible he might have turned back. As it was, Christopher felt the same lonely horror he had felt the first time he had gone to The Place Between from school. But he ignored it and set off resolutely in the direction of the Anywhere that did not want you to get to it. He was sure now that this must be Eleven.
The way was across the mouth of his own valley, down, and then up a cliff of sheer slippery rock. Christopher had to cling with fingers and toes that were already cold and wet from World B. The Anywhere above kept pushing him away and the wind sweeping across reminded him of Mama’s attack in Cambridge. Up, cling. Feel for a foothold. Then a handhold. Cling. Up.
Half-way up his foot slipped. A new gust of wind made his cold fingers too weak to hang on, and he fell.
The Chrestomanci Series Page 70