Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci (9 page)

And as he slid, his bare head hit the silver cross hanging from the Mother Superior’s waist. There was a strange crackling sound, followed by a strong smell. Master Spiderman jerked all over and hit the floor with an empty sort of flop. Cat found himself staring down at an old brown dead thing, that was so dried out and so withered that it might have been a mummified monkey. It looked as if it had died centuries before.

Cat’s first act was to look anxiously around for any sign of Master Spiderman’s soul. He did not want that getting into a baby. But it seemed almost as if any soul Master Spiderman had had was gone long ago. He could see and feel nothing of it. Then he looked down at the brown mummified thing again and thought, shuddering, If that’s an evil enchanter, I don’t want to be anything like
that
! At which point, he found he remembered who he was and that he was an enchanter, too. And he was suddenly so engulfed in feelings and memories that he could not move.

Around him the babies were all crying at full strength, and most of their mothers were cheering. The mother of the twins was sitting on her bed saying she felt rather queer.

“I’m not surprised!” said the Mother Superior. “You did very well, my dear. A good flush hit—one of the best I’ve ever seen.”

On the other side of the Mother Superior, Tonino was doing what Cat realized he should have been doing hours ago and shouting at the top of his strong, clear voice, “Chrestomanci! Chrestomanci, come here quickly!”

There was a blat of warm moving air, like a train passing, combined with a strange spicy smell from another universe entirely, and Chrestomanci was standing in the ward, almost face-to-face with the Mother Superior.

The effect was extremely odd. The Conclave of Mages seemed to require Chrestomanci to wear a skinny thigh-length white tunic above enormously baggy black trousers. It made him look even taller than the Mother Superior, and a great deal thinner.

“Ah, Mother Janissary,” he said. “Good evening. We met last year, I believe.”

“At the canonical conference, and my name is Mother Justinia,” the Mother Superior replied. “I am extremely glad to see you, Sir Christopher. We seem to have a spot of bother here.”

“So I see,” said Chrestomanci. He looked down at the remains of Master Spiderman and then across at Cat and Tonino. After that, his gaze traveled around the ward, the howling babies and the staring mothers, and he began to get his most bewildered look. “It seems a little late in the day for hospital visiting,” he said. “Perhaps someone will tell me why we are all here.” His brow creased and he made a little gesture, at which all the babies stopped crying and fell peacefully asleep. “That’s better,” he said. “Tonino, you explain.”

Tonino told it, clearly and well. There were several occasions when Cat might have interrupted with some further explanations, but he scarcely said anything, because he was so ashamed. It was not just that he, a nine-lifed enchanter, had let Master Spiderman cast a spell on him to make him forget what he was—and he knew he should have noticed the spell; it must have been inside that old hackney cab—but the fact that he, Cat, had been so busy resenting Tonino that he had nearly got both of them killed.

It made him feel worse that Tonino kept saying that Cat had behaved well and that Cat had been managing to work magic in spite of Master Spiderman’s spells. Cat did not think either of these things was true. The most he could say for himself was he was glad he had been sorry for the trapped souls, enough to help rescue them. And he supposed he was glad to find he liked Tonino after all. Tonino had been so calm and sturdy through it all—the perfect companion. And he suspected that Tonino’s backup magic had done twice as much as his own.

“So Gabriel de Witt is dead,” Chrestomanci said sadly.

“Not really,” Tonino said, gesturing around at the sleeping babies. “He is here somewhere.”

“Ah, yes, but I imagine he—or she—doesn’t know who he is now,” Chrestomanci answered. He sighed. “So Neville Spiderman was hiding out in a time bubble, collecting the souls of all the Chrestomancis, was he? And probably killing apprentices to prolong his own life while he waited. It was lucky he kidnapped the two of you. We’d never have caught him without that. But now we have, I think we’d better get rid of what’s left of him; it looks infectious to me. How old is this hospital?” he asked the Mother Superior.

“About seventy years old,” she replied, rather surprised.

“And what was here before it was built, do you know?” Chrestomanci asked.

She shrugged, rattling her headdress. “Just green fields, I think.”

“Good,” said Chrestomanci. “Then I can send him back in time without moving him. It’s a bit hard on the person who falls over him in the field, but it fits with what I remember. He was supposed to have been found dead in a ditch somewhere near Dulwich. Will everyone please stand back?”

Cat, Tonino, and Mother Justinia all backed away a pace. Before they had quite finished moving, a blue glow appeared around the monkeylike thing on the floor, and Neville Spiderman was gone. This was followed by a rapidly evaporating puddle with a strong smell of hospital.

“Disinfectant,” Chrestomanci explained. “Now, we have eight souls to account for still. Cat, can you remember which babies they all went to?”

Cat was more ashamed than ever. The babies all looked alike to him. And it had all been so confusing, with souls darting in all directions. “I’ve no idea,” he confessed. “One of the twins, but I don’t know which. And that’s all.”

“They all went everywhere,” Tonino explained. “Won’t their mothers know?”

“Most people,” said Chrestomanci, “can’t see souls. It takes magic. Oh, well. We’ll have to do it the hard way.”

He turned around and snapped his fingers. The young man who acted as Chrestomanci’s secretary jumped into existence farther up the ward. He was obviously not used to this kind of summons. He was in the middle of tying a spotted bow tie and almost dropped it. Cat could see him staring around at the mothers, the babies, and the Mother Superior and then at the filthy and disheveled boys, and trying to look as if he saw such things every day.

“Tom,” Chrestomanci said to him, “be a good fellow and go around and get the names and addresses of all the mothers and every baby here, will you?”

“Certainly, sir,” Tom said, trying to look efficient and understanding.

Some of the mothers looked indignant at this, and Mother Justinia said, “Is that really necessary? We like to be confidential here.”

“Absolutely necessary,” Chrestomanci said. He raised his voice so that all the mothers could hear him. “Some of your babies are going to grow up with very powerful magic. They might have strange memories, too, which could frighten both you and them. We want to be able to help them if this happens. We also want to educate them properly in the use of their magic. But since none of us knows
which
children are going to have these gifts, we are going to have to keep track of you all. So we are going to give each baby here a government grant of five hundred pounds a year until he or she is eighteen. Does this make you feel better about it?”

“You mean they get the money if they have magic or not?” somebody asked.

“Exactly,” said Chrestomanci. “Of course they only get the grant when they come to Chrestomanci Castle once a year for magical testing.”

“Mine might have magic anyway,” someone else murmured. “My mother’s father—”

The twins’ mother said, “Well, I’m taking the money. I was at my wits’ end how to give them all they need. I wasn’t reckoning on twins. Thank you, sir.”

“My pleasure, madam,” Chrestomanci said, bowing to her. “Tom will give you any further details.” Tom, who had just conjured himself a notebook and a pen, looked pleading and alarmed at this. Chrestomanci ignored him. “He can cope,” he said to Cat. “That’s what he’s paid for. You and Tonino look as if you need a bath and a square meal. Let’s take you both home.”

“But—” said Cat.

“But what?” asked Chrestomanci.

Cat did not know how to put the shame he felt. He was fairly sure he had been starting to turn into someone like Neville Spiderman, but he did not dare tell Chrestomanci that. “I don’t deserve anything,” he said.

“No more than those twins deserve five hundred pounds a year each,” Chrestomanci said cheerfully. “I don’t know what’s biting you, Cat, but it seems to me that you’ve managed rather well in a dangerous situation without thinking you can rely on magic to help you. Think about it.”

Beside Cat, Tonino exclaimed. Cat looked up from the floor to find they were in the grand central hall of Chrestomanci Castle, standing in the five-pointed star under the chandelier. Millie was rushing down the marble stairs to meet them.

“Oh, you
found
them!” she called out. “I’ve been so worried. Mordecai telephoned to say he put them in a cab that disappeared at the end of the street. He was terribly upset. And Gabriel de Witt died this evening, did you hear?”

“After a fashion,” Chrestomanci said. “In one way Gabriel’s still very much with us.” He looked from Millie to Cat and Tonino. “Dear, dear. Everyone looks exhausted. I tell you what. I can borrow a villa in the south of France once the measles have abated—with a swimming pool. Tonino can go on to Italy from there. Would you like that, Tonino?”

“Yes, but I cannot swim,” Tonino said.

“Neither can I,” Cat said. “But we can both learn.”

Tonino beamed at him and Cat was glad to discover he still liked Tonino, rather a lot.

C
arol Oneir was the world’s youngest best-selling dreamer. The newspapers called her the Infant Genius. Her photograph appeared regularly in all the daily papers and monthly magazines, either sitting alone in an armchair looking soulful or nestling lovingly against her mama.

Mama was very proud of Carol. So were Carol’s publishers, Wizard Reverie Ltd. They marketed her product in big bright blue genie jars tied with cherry-colored satin ribbon; but you could also buy the Carol Oneir Omnibus Pillow, bright pink and heart-shaped, Carol’s Dreamie Comics, the Carol Oneir Dream Hatband, the Carol Oneir Charm Bracelet, and half a hundred other spin-offs.

Carol had discovered at the age of seven that she was one of those lucky people who can control what they dream about, and then loosen the dream in their minds so that a competent wizard can spin it off and bottle it for other people to enjoy. Carol loved dreaming. She had made no less than ninety-nine full-length dreams. She loved all the attention she got and all the expensive things her mama was able to buy for her. So it was a terrible blow to her when she lay down one night to start dreaming her hundredth dream and nothing happened at all.

It was a terrible blow to Mama, too, who had just ordered a champagne breakfast to celebrate Carol’s Dream Century. Wizard Reverie Ltd. was just as upset as Mama. Its nice Mr. Ploys got up in the middle of the night and came down to Surrey by the milk train. He soothed Mama, and he soothed Carol, and he persuaded Carol to lie down and try to dream again. But Carol still could not dream. She tried every day for the following week, but she had no dreams at all, not even the kinds of dreams ordinary people have.

The only person who took it calmly was Dad. He went fishing as soon as the crisis started. Mr. Ploys and Mama took Carol to all the best doctors, in case Carol was overtired or ill. But she wasn’t. So Mama took Carol up to Harley Street to consult Herman Mindelbaum, the famous mind wizard. But Mr. Mindelbaum could find nothing wrong either. He said Carol’s mind was in perfect order and that her self-confidence was rather surprisingly high, considering.

In the car going home, Mama wept and Carol sobbed. Mr. Ploys said frantically, “Whatever happens, we mustn’t let a
hint
of this get to the newspapers!” But of course it was too late. Next day the papers all had headlines saying
CAROL ONEIR SEES MIND SPECIALIST
and
IS CAROL ALL DREAMED OUT
? Mama burst into tears again, and Carol could not eat any breakfast.

Dad came home from fishing later that day to find reporters sitting in rows on the front steps. He prodded his way politely through them with his fishing rod, saying, “There is nothing to get excited about. My daughter is just very tired, and we’re taking her to Switzerland for a rest.” When he finally got indoors, he said, “We’re in luck. I’ve managed to arrange for Carol to see an expert.”

“Don’t be silly, dear. We saw Mr. Mindelbaum yesterday,” Mama sobbed.

“I know, dear. But I said an expert, not a specialist,” said Dad. “You see, I used to be at school with Chrestomanci—once, long ago, when we were both younger than Carol. In fact, he lost his first life because I hit him around the head with a cricket bat. Now, of course, being a nine-lifed enchanter, he’s a great deal more important than Carol is, and I had a lot of trouble getting hold of him. I was afraid he wouldn’t want to remember me, but he did. He said he’d see Carol. The snag is, he’s on holiday in the South of France, and he doesn’t want the resort filling with newspapermen—”

“I’ll see to all that,” Mr. Ploys cried joyfully. “Chrestomanci! Mr. Oneir, I’m
awed
. I’m struck dumb!”

Two days later Carol and her parents and Mr. Ploys boarded first-class sleepers in Calais on the Swiss Orient Express. The reporters boarded it, too, in second-class sleepers and third-class seats, and they were joined by French and German reporters standing in the corridors. The crowded train rattled away through France until, in the middle of the night, it came to Strasbourg, where a lot of shunting always went on. Carol’s sleeper, with Carol and her parents asleep in it, was shunted off and hitched to the back of the Riviera Golden Arrow, and the Swiss Orient went on to Zurich without her.

Mr. Ploys went to Switzerland with it. He told Carol that, although he was really a dream wizard, he had skill enough to keep the reporters thinking Carol was still on the train. “If Chrestomanci wants to be private,” he said, “it could cost me my job if I let one of these near him.”

By the time the reporters discovered the deception, Carol and her parents had arrived in the seaside resort of Teignes on the French Riviera. There Dad—not without one or two wistful looks at the casino—unpacked his rods and went fishing. Mama and Carol took a horse-drawn cab up the hill to the private villa where Chrestomanci was staying.

They dressed in their best for the appointment. Neither of them had met anyone before who was more important than Carol. Carol wore ruched blue satin the same color as her genie bottles, with no less than three hand-embroidered lace petticoats underneath it. She had on matching button boots and a blue ribbon in her carefully curled hair, and she carried a blue satin parasol. She also wore her diamond heart pendant, her brooch that said
CAROL
in diamonds, her two sapphire bracelets, and all six of her gold bangles. Her blue satin bag had diamond clasps in the shape of two C’s. Mama was even more magnificent in a cherry-colored Paris gown, a pink hat, and all her emeralds.

They were shown up to a terrace by a rather plain lady who, as Mama whispered to Carol behind her fan, was really rather overdressed for a servant. Carol envied Mama her fan.

There were so many stairs to the terrace that she was too hot to speak when they got there. She let Mama exclaim at the wonderful view. You could see the sea and the beach and look into the streets of Teignes from here. As Mama said, the casino looked charming and the golf links so peaceful. On the other side, the villa had its own private swimming pool. This was full of splashing, screaming children, and to Carol’s mind, it rather spoiled the view.

Chrestomanci was sitting reading in a deck chair. He looked up and blinked a little as they came. Then he seemed to remember who they were and stood up with great politeness to shake hands. He was wearing a beautifully tailored natural silk suit. Carol saw at a glance that it had cost at least as much as Mama’s Paris gown. But her first thought on seeing Chrestomanci was, Oh, my! He’s twice as good-looking as Francis! She pushed that thought down quickly and trod it under. It belonged to the thoughts she never even told Mama. But it meant that she rather despised Chrestomanci for being quite so tall and for having hair so black and such flashing dark eyes. She knew he was going to be no more help than Mr. Mindelbaum, and Mr. Mindelbaum had reminded her of Melville.

Mama meanwhile was holding Chrestomanci’s hand between both of hers and saying, “Oh, sir! This is so good of you to interrupt your holiday on our account! But when even Mr. Mindelbaum couldn’t find out what’s stopping her dreams—”

“Not at all,” Chrestomanci said, wrestling for his hand rather. “To be frank, I was intrigued by a case even Mindelbaum couldn’t fathom.” He signaled to the serving lady who had brought them to the terrace. “Millie, do you think you could take Mrs. . . . er . . . O’Dear downstairs while I talk to Carol?”

“There’s no need for that, sir,” Mama said, smiling. “I always go everywhere with my darling. Carol knows I’ll sit quite quietly and not interrupt.”

“No wonder Mindelbaum got nowhere,” Chrestomanci murmured.

Then—Carol, who prided herself on being very observant, was never quite sure how it happened—Mama was suddenly not on the terrace anymore. Carol herself was sitting in a deck chair facing Chrestomanci in his deck chair, listening to Mama’s voice floating up from below somewhere. “I never let Carol go anywhere alone. She’s my one ewe lamb. . . .”

Chrestomanci leaned back comfortably and crossed his elegant legs. “Now,” he said, “be kind enough to tell me exactly what you do when you make a dream.”

This was something Carol had done hundreds of times by now. She smiled graciously and began, “I get a feeling in my head first, which means a dream is ready to happen. Dreams come when they will, you know, and there is no stopping them or putting them off. So I tell Mama, and we go up to my boudoir, where she helps me to get settled on the special couch Mr. Ploys had made for me. Then Mama sets the spin-off spool turning and tiptoes away, and I drop off to sleep to the sound of it gently humming and whirling. Then the dream takes me. . . .”

Chrestomanci did not take notes like Mr. Mindelbaum and the reporters. He did not nod at her encouragingly the way Mr. Mindelbaum had. He simply stared vaguely out to sea. Carol thought that the least he might do was to tell those children in the pool to keep quiet. The screaming and splashing were so loud that she almost had to shout. Carol thought he was being very inconsiderate, but she kept on.

“I have learned not to be frightened and to go where the dream takes me. It is like a voyage of discovery—”

“When is this?” Chrestomanci interrupted in an offhand sort of way. “Does this dreaming happen at night?”

“It can happen at any time,” said Carol. “If a dream is ready, I can go to my couch and sleep during the day.”

“How very useful,” murmured Chrestomanci. “So you can put up your hand in a dull lesson and say, ‘Please can I be excused to go and dream?’ Do they let you go home?”

“I ought to have explained,” Carol said, keeping her dignity with an effort, “that Mama arranges lessons for me at home so that I can dream anytime I need to. It’s like a voyage of discovery, sometimes in caves underground, sometimes in palaces in the clouds—”

“Yes. And how long do you dream for? Six hours? Ten minutes?” Chrestomanci interrupted again.

“About half an hour,” said Carol. “Sometimes in the clouds or maybe in the southern seas. I never know where I will go or whom I will meet on my journey—”

“Do you finish a whole dream in half an hour?” Chrestomanci interrupted yet again.

“Of course not. Some of my dreams last for more than three hours,” Carol said. “As for the people I meet, they are strange and wonderful—”

“So you dream in half-hour stretches,” said Chrestomanci. “And I suppose you have to take a dream up again exactly where you left it at the end of the half hour before.”

“Obviously,” said Carol. “People must have told you: I can
control
my dreams. And I do my best work in regular half-hour stints. I wish you wouldn’t keep interrupting when I’m doing my best to tell you!”

Chrestomanci turned his face from the sea and looked at her. He seemed surprised. “My dear young lady, you are
not
doing your best to tell me. I do read the papers, you know. You are giving me precisely the same flannel you gave the
Times
and the
Croydon Gazette
and the
People’s Monthly
and doubtless poor Mindelbaum as well. You are telling me your dreams come unbidden—but you have one for half an hour every day—and that you never know where you’ll go in them or what will happen—but you can control your dreams perfectly. That can’t all be true, can it?”

Carol slid the bangles up and down her arm and tried to keep her temper. It was difficult to do when the sun was so hot and the noise coming from that pool so loud. She thought seriously of demoting Melville and making Chrestomanci into the villain in her next dream—until she remembered that there might not
be
a next dream unless Chrestomanci helped her. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“Let’s talk about the dreams themselves then,” said Chrestomanci. He pointed down the terrace steps to the blue, blue water of the pool. “There you see my ward, Janet. She’s the fair-haired girl the others are just pushing off the diving board. She loves your dreams. She has all ninety-nine of them, though I am afraid Julia and the boys are very contemptuous about it. They say your dreams are slush and all exactly the same.”

Naturally Carol was deeply hurt that anyone could call her dreams slush, but she knew better than to say so. She smiled graciously down at the large splash that was all she could see of Janet.

“Janet is hoping to meet you later,” said Chrestomanci. Carol’s smile broadened. She loved meeting admirers. “When I heard you were coming,” Chrestomanci said, “I borrowed Janet’s latest Omnibus Pillow.” Carol’s smile narrowed a bit. Chrestomanci did not seem the kind of person who would enjoy her dreams at all.

“I enjoyed it rather,” Chrestomanci confessed. Carol’s smile widened. Well! “But Julia and the boys are right, you know,” Chrestomanci went on. “Your happy endings are pretty slushy, and the same sort of things happen in all of them.” Carol’s smile narrowed again distinctly at this. “But they’re terribly lively,” Chrestomanci said. “There’s so much action and so many people. I like all those crowds—what your blurbs call your ‘cast of thousands’—but I must confess I don’t find your settings very convincing. That Arabian setting in the ninety-sixth dream was awful, even making allowances for how young you are. On the other hand, your fairground in the latest dream seemed to show the makings of a real gift.”