The Chrestomanci Series

by Jones, Diana Wynne

  The rain stopped in the night, though the weather was still grey and chilly. Christopher went down to the village green with the Castle team, which was a motley mixture of Castle sorcerers, a footman, a gardener, a stable lad, Dr Simonson, Flavian, a young wizard who had come down from Oxford specially and, to Christopher’s great surprise, Miss Rosalie. Miss Rosalie looked pink and almost fetching in a white dress and white mittens. She tripped along in little white shoes, loudly bewailing the fact that the trap to catch the Wraith had gone wrong. “I told Gabriel all along that we’d have to patrol the World Edge,” she said. “By the time they get the stuff to London there are too many places for them to hide.”

  Gabriel himself met them on the village green, carrying his folding stool in one hand and a telegram in the other. He was dressed for the occasion in a striped blazer that looked about a hundred years old and a wide Panama hat. “Bad news,” he said. “Mordecai Roberts has dislocated his shoulder and is not coming.”

  “Oh no!” everyone exclaimed in the greatest dismay.

  “And how typical!” Miss Rosalie added. She pounced round on Christopher. “Can you bat, dear? Enough to come in at the end if necessary?”

  Christopher tried to keep a cool look on his face, but it was impossible. “I should hope so,” he said.

  The afternoon was pure bliss. One of the stable lads lent Christopher some rather large whites, which a sorcerer obligingly conjured down from the Castle for him, and he was sent to field on the boundary. The village batted first – and they made rather a lot of runs, because the missing Mordecai Roberts had been the Castle’s best bowler. Christopher got very cold in the chilly wind, but like a dream come true, he took a catch out there to dismiss the blacksmith. All the rest of the Castle people, standing round the green in warm clothes, clapped furiously.

  When the Castle began their innings, Christopher sat with the rest of the team waiting his turn – or rather, hoping that he would get a turn – and was fascinated to discover that Miss Rosalie was a fine and dashing batswoman. She hit balls all round the field in the way Christopher had always wanted to do. Unfortunately, the blacksmith turned out to be a demonically cunning spin bowler. He had all the tricks that Tacroy had so often described to Christopher. He got Dr Simonson out for one run and the Oxford wizard out for two. After that the Castle team collapsed round Miss Rosalie. But Miss Rosalie kept at it, with her hair coming down on one shoulder and her face glowing with effort. She did so well that, when Flavian went out to bat at number ten, the Castle only needed two runs to win. Christopher buckled on his borrowed pads, fairly sure he would never get a chance to bat.

  “You never know,” said the Castle boot-boy, who was working the scoreboard instead of Christopher. “Look at him. He’s hopeless!”

  Flavian was hopeless. Christopher had never seen anyone so bad. His bat either groped about like a blind man’s stick or made wild swings in the wrong place. It was obvious he was going to be out any second. Christopher picked up his borrowed bat hopefully. And Miss Rosalie was out instead. The blacksmith clean bowled her. The village people packed round the green roared, knowing they had won. Amid the roars, Christopher stood up.

  “Good luck!” said all the Castle people round him. The boot-boy was the only one who said it as if he thought Christopher had a chance.

  Christopher waded out to the middle of the green – the borrowed pads were two sizes too large – to the sound of shouts and catcalls. “Do your best, dear,” Miss Rosalie said rather hopelessly as she passed him coming in. Christopher waded on, surprised to find that he was not in the least nervous.

  As he took his guard, the village team licked its lips. They crowded in close round Christopher, crouching expectantly. Wherever he looked there were large horny hands spread out and brown faces wearing jeering grins.

  “Oh I say!” Flavian said at the other end. “He’s only a boy!”

  “We know,” said the village captain, grinning even wider.

  The blacksmith, equally contemptuous, bowled Christopher a slow, loopy ball. While Christopher was watching it arc up, he had time to remember every word of Tacroy’s coaching. And since the entire village team was crowded round him in a ring, he knew he only had to get the ball past that ring to score runs. He watched the ball all the way on to the bat with perfect self-possession. It turned a little, but not much. He cracked it firmly away into the covers.

  “Two!” he called crisply to Flavian.

  Flavian gave him a startled look and ran. Christopher ran, with the borrowed pads going flurp, flurp, flurp at every stride. The village team turned and chased the ball frantically, but Flavian and Christopher had plenty of time to make two runs. They had time to have run three, even with the borrowed pads. The Castle had won. Christopher went warm with pride and joy.

  The Castle watchers cheered. Gabriel congratulated him. The boot-boy shook his hand. Miss Rosalie, with her hair still trailing, banged him on the back. Everyone crowded round Christopher saying that they did not need Mordecai Roberts after all, and the sun came out behind the church tower for the first time that day. For that short time, Christopher felt that living in the Castle was not so bad after all.

  But by Sunday lunch-time it was back to the usual ways. The talk at lunch was all about anxious schemes to catch the Wraith gang, except that Mr Wilkinson, the elderly sorcerer who looked after the Castle library, kept saying, “Those three rare books are still missing. I cannot imagine who would wish to make away with three girl’s books from World B, but I cannot detect them anywhere in the Castle.”

  Since they were girl’s books, Mr Wilkinson obviously did not suspect Christopher. In fact, neither he nor anyone else remembered Christopher was there unless they wanted him to pass the salt.

  On Monday, Christopher said acidly to Flavian, “Doesn’t it occur to anyone that I could help catch the Wraith?” This was the nearest he had ever come to mentioning the Anywheres to Flavian. Sunday had driven him to it.

  “For heaven’s sake! People who can cut up mermaids would soon make short work of you!” Flavian said.

  Christopher sighed. “Mermaids don’t come to life again. I do,” he pointed out.

  “The whole Wraith thing makes me sick,” Flavian said and changed the subject.

  Christopher felt, more than ever, that he was in a tunnel with no way out. He was worse off than the Goddess, too, because she could stop being the Living Asheth when she grew up, while he had to go on and turn into someone like Gabriel de Witt. His feelings were not improved when, later that week, he had a letter from Papa. This one had been opened and sealed up also, but unlike the letter from Mama, it had the most interesting stamps. Papa was in Japan.

  My son,

  My spells assure me that a time of utmost danger is coming for you. I implore you to be careful and not to endanger your future.

  Your loving

  Papa

  From the date on the letter, it had been written a month ago. “Bother my future!” Christopher said. “His spells probably mean the lives I’ve just lost.” And the worst of it, he thought, going back to his misery, was that he could not look forward to seeing Tacroy any more.

  All the same, that Thursday night, Christopher went out through the split in the spell, hoping Tacroy would be there. But the valley was empty. He stood there for a moment feeling blank. Then he went back into his room, put on his clothes and set off through The Place Between to visit the Goddess again. She was the only other person he knew who did not try to make use of him.

  The Goddess was in her bedroom-place, sitting cross-legged on the white cushions with her chin on her fists, evidently brooding. Though she did not look ill any more, there was a new feeling about her, like thunder in the air, which Christopher rather wondered about as he came in.

  The Goddess’s jewellery went tunk as she looked up and saw him. “Oh good,” she said. “I’d been hoping you’d come back soon. I’ve got to talk to you – you’re the only person I know who’ll understand.”
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br />   “The same goes for me,” Christopher said, and he sat down on the tiles with his back against the wall. “There’s you shut up here with your Priestesses, and me shut up in the Castle with Gabriel’s people. Both of us are in this tunnel—”

  “But that’s just my trouble,” the Goddess interrupted. “I’m not sure there is a tunnel for me. Tunnels have ends, after all.” Her voice filled with the new thunderous feeling as she said this. The white cat knew at once. It got up from among the cushions and climbed heavily into her lap.

  “What do you mean?” Christopher asked, thinking once more that girls really were a Complete Mystery.

  “Poor Bethi,” the Goddess said, stroking the white cat with a rhythmic tink-tink of bracelets. “She’s going to have kittens again. I wish she wouldn’t keep on having them – it wears her out. What I meant is that I’ve been thinking of all sorts of things since I was ill. I’ve been thinking of you and wondering how you manage to keep coming here from another world. Isn’t it difficult?”

  “No, it’s easy,” said Christopher. “Or it is for me. I think it’s because I’ve got several lives. What I think I do is leave one of them behind in bed and set the other ones loose to wander.”

  “The luck of it!” the Goddess said. “But I mean what do you do to get to this world?”

  Christopher told her about the valley and The Place Between and how he always had to find a corner in the bedroom to go round.

  The Goddess’s eyes travelled reflectively round the dim archways of her room. “I wish I had more than one life,” she said. “But with me – you remember how you said when you were here last that I’d stop being the Living Asheth when I grew up?”

  “You told me that when I first came here,” Christopher reminded her. “You said, ‘The Living Asheth is always a little girl.’ Don’t you remember?”

  “Yes, but nobody said it the way round that you did,” the Goddess said. “It made me think. What happens to the Living Asheth when she isn’t a little girl any longer? I’m not little now. I’m nearly the age when other people are officially women.”

  That must happen remarkably early in Series Ten, Christopher thought. He wished he was anything like officially a man. “Don’t you get made into a Priestess?”

  “No,” said the Goddess. “I’ve listened and I’ve asked and read all their records – and none of the Priestesses were ever the Goddess.” She began sticking the white cat’s fur up in ridges between fingers that trembled slightly. “When I asked,” she said, “Mother Proudfoot said I wasn’t to bother my head because Asheth takes care of all that. What do you think that means?”

  She seemed to Christopher to be getting all emotional again. “I think you just get shoved out of the Temple and go home,” he said soothingly. The idea made him feel envious. “But you’ve got all your Asheth gifts. You must be able to use those to find out for certain.”

  “What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” the Goddess all but screamed. Her bracelets chanked as she tossed the unfortunate Bethi aside and bounded to her feet, glaring at Christopher. “You stupid boy! I’ve thought and thought, all this week, until my head buzzes!”

  Christopher hurriedly got to his feet and pressed his back to the wall, ready to go through it at once if the Goddess went for him. But all she did was to jump up and down in front of him, screaming.

  “Think of a way I can find out, if you’re so clever! Think of a WAY!”

  As always when the Goddess screamed, feet flapped in the rooms beyond and a breathless voice called, “I’m coming, Goddess! What is it?”

  Christopher backed away into the wall, swiftly and gently. The Goddess flung him a brief look that seemed to be of triumph and went rushing into the arms of the skinny old woman who appeared in the archway. “Oh, Mother Proudfoot! I had such an awful dream again!”

  Christopher, to his horror, found that he was stuck in the wall. He could not come out forwards and he could not push through backwards. The only thing he could seem to do was use what Flavian had taught him to make himself invisible. He did that at once. He had been moving with his face forward and his rear out, so that most of his head was outside the wall. Invisible or not, he felt like one of the stuffed animal heads on the walls of the Castle dining room.

  At least he could see and hear and breathe, he thought in a stunned way. He was confounded at the treachery of the Goddess.

  She was led away into the further rooms, with soothing murmurs. After about ten minutes, by which time Christopher had a cricked neck and cramp in one leg, she came back again, looking perfectly calm.

  “There’s no point in looking invisible,” she said. “Everyone here has witch-sight, even if you don’t. Look, I’m sorry about this, but I do terribly need help and I promise I’ll let you go when you’ve helped me.”

  Christopher did not make himself visible again. He felt safer like that. “You don’t need help – you need hitting over the head,” he said angrily. “How can I help anyone like this? I’m dying of discomfort.”

  “Then get comfortable and then help me,” the Goddess said.

  Christopher found he could move a little. The wall round him seemed to turn jelly-like, so that he could straighten up and move his arms a little and get his legs into a proper standing position. He tried doing some rapid squirming, in hopes that the jelly would give enough to let him out, but it would not. He could tell that what was holding him there was the same thing that the Goddess had used to fasten his feet to the floor when he first met her, and that was still just as mysterious to him as it had been then. “How do you want me to help?” he asked resignedly.

  “By taking me with you to your world,” the Goddess said eagerly, “so that I can go to a school like the one in the Millie books. I thought you could hide me somewhere in your Castle while I looked round for a school.”

  Christopher thought of Gabriel de Witt discovering the Goddess hiding in an attic. “No,” he said. “I can’t. I absolutely can’t. And what’s more I won’t. Now let me out of here!”

  “You took Throgmorten,” said the Goddess. “You can take me.”

  “Throgmorten’s a cat,” said Christopher. “He has nine lives like me. I told you I could only get here by leaving one of my lives behind. You’ve only got one life, so it stands to reason that I can’t get you to my world because you’d be dead if I did!”

  “That’s just the point!” the Goddess whispered at him ferociously. He could tell she was trying very hard not to scream again. Tears rolled down her face. “I know I’ve only got one life and I don’t want to lose it. Take me with you.”

  “Just so that you can go to a school out of a book!” Christopher snarled back, feeling more than ever like an animal head on a wall. “Stop being so stupid!”

  “Then you can just stay in that wall until you change your mind!” the Goddess said, and flounced away with a chank and a jingle.

  Christopher stood, sagging into the jelly of the wall, and cursed the day he had brought the Goddess those Millie books. Then he cursed himself for thinking the Goddess was sympathetic. She was just as selfish and ruthless as everyone else he knew. He squirmed and struggled and heaved to get out of the wall, but since he had not the first idea what had gone into the spell, it held him as fast as ever.

  The worst of it was that now the Temple had woken up from its midday sleep, it was a decidedly busy place. Behind him, through the wall, Christopher could hear a crowd of people in the hot yard counting the cats and feeding them. Mixed with those sounds was a female voice barking orders, and the sound of armour clashing and spear butts thumping on the ground. Christopher began to be terribly afraid that his invisible backside was sticking out of the wall into that yard. He kept imagining a spear plunging into him there, and he squirmed and squidged and pulled himself in to make sure that it was not. He was not sure which he dreaded most: the feeling of a spear driving into him, or what Gabriel would do if he lost another life.

  From in front of him, beyond the archway,
he could hear the Goddess talking with at least three Priestesses and then all their voices muttering prayers. Why hadn’t Flavian taught him any useful magic? There were probably six hundred quiet ways of breaking this spell and sliding invisibly out of the wall, and Christopher did not know one. He wondered if he could do it by blasting loose in a combined levitation, whirlwind and fire-conjuring. Maybe – although it would be terribly hard without his hands free – and people would still come running after him with spears. He decided he would try argument and cunning first.

  Before long, the Goddess came in to see if he had changed his mind.

  “I’ll fetch it, dear,” said one of the Priestesses beyond the archway.

  “No, I want to have another look at Bethi, too,” the Goddess said over her shoulder. For honesty’s sake, she went over to look at the white cat, which was lying on her bed cushions panting and looking sorry for itself. The Goddess stroked it before she came over and put her face close to Christopher’s.

  “Well? Are you going to help me?”

  “What happens,” asked Christopher, “if one of them comes in and notices my face sticking out of the wall?”

  “You’d better agree to help before they do. They’d kill you,” the Goddess whispered back.

  “But I wouldn’t be any use to you dead,” Christopher pointed out. “Let me go or I’ll start yelling.”

  “You dare!” said the Goddess, and flounced out.

  The trouble was Christopher did not dare. That line of argument only seemed to end in deadlock. Next time she came in, he tried a different line. “Look,” he said, “I really am being awfully considerate. I could easily blast a huge hole in the Temple and get away this minute, but I’m not doing it because I don’t want to give you away. Asheth and your Priestesses are not going to be pleased if they find out you’re trying to go to another world, are they?”

  Tears flooded the Goddess’s eyes. “I’m not asking very much,” she said, twisting a bangle miserably. “I thought you were kind.”