The Lives of Christopher Chant

“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?”