Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci (11 page)

“No, indeed. He has a weak chin,” Chrestomanci agreed.

Carol gasped and was just about to make a protest—which would have been a rather tearful one at that moment—when she recalled that Francis’s bristly chin had indeed looked rather small and wobbly under that cigar.

“Oh, you shouldn’t judge by chins,” said Melville. “Look at mine—and I’m no more a villain than Francis is a hero. But Francis has his petulant side, and Paul played on that, with the help of Bimbo and his whisky, and Lucy was with Paul anyway because she hated being forced to wear frilly dresses and simper at Francis. She and Norman want to take up farming. And Martha, who is a very frivolous girl to my mind, came in with them because she cannot abide having to clear up the scenery at such short notice. So then they all came to me.”

“And you held out?” asked Chrestomanci.

“All through
The Cripple of Monte Christo
and
The Arabian Knight
,” Melville admitted, ambling across the terrace to park his saucepan on the balustrade. “I am fond of Carol, you see, and I am quite ready to be three villains at once for her if that is what she wants. But when she started on the Fairground dream straight after
The Tyrant of London Town
, I had to admit that we were all being thoroughly overworked. None of us got any time to be ourselves. Dear me,” he added. “I think the cast of thousands is preparing to paint the town red.”

Chrestomanci came and leaned on the balustrade to see. “I fear so,” he said. “What do you think makes Carol work you all so hard? Ambition?”

There was now such a noise coming from the town that Carol could not resist getting up to look, too. Large numbers of the cast of thousands had made straight for the beach. They were joyously racing into the water, pulling little wheeled bathing huts after them, or simply casting their clothes away and plunging in. This was causing quite an outcry from the regular holidaymakers. More outcries came from the main square below the casino, where the cast of thousands had flooded into all the elegant cafés, shouting for ice cream, wine, and frogs’ legs.

“It looks rather fun,” said Melville. “No, not ambition exactly, sir. Say rather that Carol was caught up in success, and her mama was caught up with her. It is not easy to stop something when one’s mama expects one to go on and on.”

A horse-drawn cab was now galloping along the main street, pursued by shouting, scrambling, excited people. Pursuing these was a little posse of gendarmes. This seemed to be because the white-bearded person in the cab was throwing handfuls of jewels in all directions in the most abandoned way. Arabian jewels and pirates’ treasure mostly, Carol thought. She wondered if they would turn out to be glass or real jewels.

“Poor Bimbo,” said Melville. “He sees himself as a sort of kingly Santa Claus these days. He has played those parts too often. I think he should retire.”

“And what a pity your mama told your cab to wait,” Chrestomanci said to Carol. “Isn’t that Francis, Martha, and Paul there? Just going into the casino.”

They were, too. Carol saw them waltzing arm in arm up the marble steps, three people obviously going on a spree.

“Paul,” said Melville, “tells me he has a system to break the bank.”

“A fairly common delusion,” said Chrestomanci.

“But he can’t!” said Carol. “He hasn’t got any real money!” She chanced to look down as she spoke. Her diamond pendant was gone. So was her diamond brooch. Her sapphire bangles and every one of her gold ones were missing. Even the clasps of her handbag had been torn off. “They robbed me!” she cried out.

“That would be Martha,” Melville said sadly. “Remember she picked pockets in
The Tyrant of London Town
.”

“It sounds as if you owed them quite a sum in wages,” Chrestomanci said.

“But what shall I
do
?” Carol wailed. “How am I going to get everyone back?”

Melville looked worried for her. It came out as a villainous grimace, but Carol understood perfectly. Melville was sweet.

Chrestomanci just looked surprised and a little bored. “You mean you
want
all these people back?” he said.

Carol opened her mouth to say yes, of course she did! But she did not say it. They were having such fun. Bimbo was having the time of his life, galloping through the streets, throwing jewels. The people in the sea were a happy, splashing mass, and waiters were hurrying about down in the square, taking orders and slapping down plates and glasses in front of the cast of thousands in the cafés. Carol just hoped they were using real money. If she turned her head, she could see that some of the cast of thousands had now got as far as the golf course, where most of them seemed to be under the impression that golf was a team game that you played rather like hockey.

“While Carol makes up her mind,” said Chrestomanci, “what, Melville, is your personal opinion of her dreams? As one who has an inside view?”

Melville pulled his mustache unhappily. “I was afraid you were going to ask me that,” he said. “She has tremendous talent, of course, or she couldn’t do it at all, but I do sometimes feel that she—well—she repeats herself. Put it like this: I think maybe Carol doesn’t give herself a chance to be herself any more than she gives us.”

Melville, Carol realized, was the only one of her people she really liked. She was heartily sick of all the others. Though she had not admitted it, they had bored her for years, but she had never had time to think of anyone more interesting because she had always been so busy getting on with the next dream. Suppose she gave them all the sack? But wouldn’t that hurt Melville’s feelings?

“Melville,” she said anxiously, “do you enjoy being villains?”

“My dear,” said Melville, “it’s up to you entirely, but I confess that sometimes I would like to try being someone . . . well . . . not black-hearted. Say,
gray
-hearted, and a little more complicated.”

This was difficult. “If I did that,” Carol said, thinking about it, “I’d have to stop dreaming for a while and spend a time—maybe a long time—sort of getting a new outlook on people. Would you mind waiting? It might take over a year.”

“Not at all,” said Melville. “Just call me when you need me.” And he bent over and kissed Carol’s hand, in his best and most villainous manner. . .

*  *  *

. . . And Carol was once again sitting up in her deck chair. This time, however, she was rubbing her eyes, and the terrace was empty except for Chrestomanci, holding a broken deck chair, and talking in what seemed to be Italian to a skinny little boy. The boy seemed to have come up from the bathing pool. He was wearing bathing trunks and dripping water all over the paving.

“Oh!” said Carol. “So it was only a dream really!” She noticed she must have dropped her parasol while she was asleep and reached to pick it up. Someone seemed to have trodden on it. And there was a long trickle of fudge on her dress. Then of course she looked for her brooch, her pendant, and her bangles. They were gone. Someone had torn her dress pulling the brooch off. Her eyes leaped to the balustrade and found a small burned saucepan standing on it.

At that, Carol jumped and ran to the balustrade, hoping to see Melville on his way down the stairs from the terrace. The stairs were empty. But she was in time to see Bimbo’s cab, surrounded by gendarmes and stopped at the end of the parade. Bimbo did not seem to be in it. It looked as if he had worked the disappearing act she had invented for him in
The Cripple of Monte Christo
.

Down on the beach, crowds of the cast of thousands were coming out of the sea and lying down to sunbathe, or politely borrowing beach balls from the other holidaymakers. She could hardly tell them from the regular tourists, in fact. Out on the golf links, the cast of thousands there was being sorted out by a man in a red blazer and lined up to practice tee shots. Carol looked at the casino then, but there was no sign of Paul or Martha or Francis. Around the square, however, there was singing coming from the crowded cafés—steady, swelling singing, for of course there were several massed choirs among the cast of thousands. Carol turned and looked accusingly at Chrestomanci.

Chrestomanci broke off his Italian conversation in order to bring the small boy over by one wet, skinny shoulder. “Tonino here,” he said, “is a rather unusual magician. He reinforces other people’s magic. When I saw the way your thoughts were going, I thought we’d better have him up to back up your decision. I suspected you might do something like this. That’s why I didn’t want any reporters. Wouldn’t you like to come down to the pool now? I’m sure Janet can lend you a swimsuit and probably a clean dress as well.”

“Well . . . thank you . . . yes, please . . . but . . .” Carol began, when the small boy pointed to something behind her.

“I speak English,” he said. “You dropped your paper.”

Carol dived around and picked it up. In beautiful sloping writing, it said:

Carol Oneir hereby releases Francis, Lucy, Martha, Paul, and Bimbo from all further professional duties and gives the cast of thousands leave of indefinite absence. I am taking a holiday with your kind permission, and I remain

    Your servant,

        Melville

“Oh, good!” said Carol. “Oh, dear! What shall I do about Mr. Ploys? And how shall I break it to Mama?”

“I can speak to Ploys,” said Chrestomanci, “but your mama is strictly your problem, though your father, when he gets back from the casin—er, fishing—will certainly back you up.”

Dad did back Carol up some hours later, and Mama was slightly easier to deal with than usual anyway, because she was so confused at the way she had mistaken Chrestomanci’s wife for a servant. By that time, however, the main thing Carol wanted to tell Dad was that she had been pushed off the diving board sixteen times and had learned to swim two strokes—well, almost.

T
here was a world called Theare in which Heaven was very well organized. Everything was so precisely worked out that every god knew his or her exact duties, correct prayers, right times for business, utterly exact character, and unmistakable place above or below the gods.

This was the case from Great Zond, the king of the gods, through every god, godlet, deity, minor deity, and numen, down to the most immaterial nymph. Even the invisible dragons that lived in the rivers had their invisible lines of demarcation. The universe ran like clockwork. Mankind was not always so regular, but the gods were there to set him right. It had been like this for centuries.

So it was a breach in the very nature of things when, in the middle of the yearly Festival of Water, at which only watery deities were entitled to be present, Great Zond looked up to see Imperion, god of the sun, storming toward him down the halls of Heaven.

“Go away!” cried Zond, aghast.

But Imperion swept on, causing the watery deities gathered there to steam and hiss, and arrived in a wave of heat and warm water at the foot of Zond’s high throne.

“Father!” Imperion cried urgently.

A high god like Imperion was entitled to call Zond Father. Zond did not recall whether or not he was actually Imperion’s father. The origins of the gods were not quite so orderly as their present existence. But Zond knew that, son of his or not, Imperion had breached all the rules. “Abase yourself,” Zond said sternly.

Imperion ignored this command, too. Perhaps this was just as well, since the floor of Heaven was awash already, and steaming. Imperion kept his flaming gaze on Zond. “Father! The Sage of Dissolution has been born!”

Zond shuddered in the clouds of hot vapor and tried to feel resigned. “It is written,” he said, “a Sage shall be born who shall question everything. His questions shall bring down the exquisite order of Heaven and cast all the gods into disorder. It is also written—”

Here Zond realized that Imperion had made him break the rules, too. The correct procedure was for Zond to summon the god of prophecy and have that god consult the Book of Heaven. Then he realized that Imperion
was
the god of prophecy. It was one of his precisely allocated duties. Zond rounded on Imperion. “What do you mean coming and telling me? You’re god of prophecy! Go and look in the Book of Heaven!”

“I already have, Father,” said Imperion. “I find I prophesied the coming of the Sage of Dissolution when the gods first began. It is written that the Sage shall be born and that I shall not know.”

“Then,” said Zond, scoring a point, “how is it you’re here telling me he
has
been born?”

“The mere fact,” Imperion said, “that I can come here and interrupt the Water Festival shows that the Sage has been born. Our Dissolution has obviously begun.”

There was a splash of consternation among the watery gods. They were gathered down the hall as far as they could get from Imperion, but they had all heard. Zond tried to gather his wits. What with the steam raised by Imperion and the spume of dismay thrown out by the rest, the halls of Heaven were in a state nearer chaos than he had known for millennia. Any more of this, and there would be no need for the Sage to ask questions.

“Leave us,” Zond said to the watery gods. “Events even beyond my control cause this festival to be stopped. You will be informed later of any decision I make.” To Zond’s dismay, the watery ones hesitated—further evidence of Dissolution. “I promise,” he said.

The watery ones made up their minds. They left in waves, all except one. This one was Ock, god of all oceans. Ock was equal in status to Imperion, and heat did not threaten him. He stayed where he was.

Zond was not pleased. Ock, it always seemed to him, was the least orderly of the gods. He did not know his place. He was as restless and unfathomable as mankind. But, with Dissolution already begun, what could Zond do?

“You have our permission to stay,” he said graciously to Ock, and to Imperion: “Well, how did you know the Sage was born?”

“I was consulting the Book of Heaven on another matter,” said Imperion, “and the page opened at my prophecy concerning the Sage of Dissolution. Since it said that I would not know the day and hour when the Sage was born, it followed that he has already been born, or I would not have known. The rest of the prophecy was commendably precise, however. Twenty years from now, he will start questioning Heaven. What shall we do to stop him?”

“I don’t see what we can do,” Zond said hopelessly. “A prophecy is a prophecy.”

“But we must do something!” blazed Imperion. “I insist! I am a god of order, even more than you are. Think what would happen if the sun went inaccurate! This means more to me than anyone. I want the Sage of Dissolution found and killed before he can ask questions.”

Zond was shocked. “I can’t do that! If the prophecy says he has to ask questions, then he has to ask them.”

Here Ock approached. “Every prophecy has a loophole,” he said.

“Of course,” snapped Imperion. “I can see the loophole as well as you. I’m taking advantage of the disorder caused by the birth of the Sage to ask Great Zond to kill him and overthrow the prophecy. Thus restoring order.”

“Logic chopping is not what I meant,” said Ock.

The two gods faced one another. Steam from Ock suffused Imperion and then rained back on Ock, as regularly as breathing. “What
did
you mean, then?” said Imperion.

“The prophecy,” said Ock, “does not appear to say which world the Sage will ask his questions in. There are many other worlds. Mankind calls them if-worlds, meaning that they were once the same world as Theare, but split off and went their own ways after each doubtful event in history. Each if-world has its own Heaven. There must be one world in which the gods are not as orderly as we are here. Let the Sage be put in that world. Let him ask his predestined questions there.”

“Good idea!” Zond clapped his hands in relief, causing untoward tempests in all Theare. “Agreed, Imperion?”

“Yes,” said Imperion. He flamed with relief. And being unguarded, he at once became prophetic. “But I must warn you,” he said, “that strange things happen when destiny is tampered with.”

“Strange things maybe, but never disorderly,” Zond asserted. He called the water gods back and, with them, every god in Theare. He told them that an infant had just been born who was destined to spread Dissolution, and he ordered each one of them to search the ends of the earth for this child.

(“The ends of the earth” was a legal formula. Zond did not believe that Theare was flat. But the expression had been unchanged for centuries, just like the rest of Heaven. It meant “Look everywhere.”)

The whole of Heaven looked high and low. Nymphs and godlets scanned mountains, caves, and woods. Household gods peered into cradles. Watery gods searched beaches, banks, and margins. The goddess of love went deeply into her records, to find who the Sage’s parents might be. The invisible dragons swam to look inside barges and houseboats. Since there was a god for everything in Theare, nowhere was missed, nothing was omitted. Imperion searched harder than any, blazing into every nook and crevice on one side of the world, and exhorting the moon goddess to do the same on the other side.

And nobody found the Sage. There were one or two false alarms, such as when a household goddess reported an infant that never stopped crying. This baby, she said, was driving her up the wall and, if this was not Dissolution, she would like to know what was. There were also several reports of infants born with teeth, or six fingers, or suchlike strangeness. But in each case Zond was able to prove that the child had nothing to do with Dissolution. After a month it became clear that the infant Sage was not going to be found.

Imperion was in despair, for as he had told Zond, order meant more to him than to any other god. He became so worried that he was actually causing the sun to lose heat. At length the goddess of love advised him to go off and relax with a mortal woman before he brought about Dissolution himself.

Imperion saw she was right. He went down to visit the human woman he had loved for some years. It was established custom for gods to love mortals. Some visited their loves in all sorts of fanciful shapes, and some had many loves at once. But Imperion was both honest and faithful. He never visited Nestara as anything but a handsome man, and he loved her devotedly. Three years ago she had borne him a son, whom Imperion loved almost as much as he loved Nestara. Before the Sage was born to trouble him, Imperion had been trying to bend the rules of Heaven a little, to get his son approved as a god, too.

The child’s name was Thasper. As Imperion descended to earth, he could see Thasper digging in some sand outside Nestara’s house—a beautiful child, fair-haired and blue-eyed. Imperion wondered fondly if Thasper was talking properly yet. Nestara had been worried about how slow he was learning to speak.

Imperion alighted beside his son. “Hello, Thasper. What are you digging so busily?”

Instead of answering, Thasper raised his golden head and shouted. “Mum!” he yelled. “Why does it go so bright when Dad comes?”

All Imperion’s pleasure vanished. Of course no one could ask questions until he had learned to speak. But it would be too cruel if his own son turned out to be the Sage of Dissolution. “Why shouldn’t it go bright?” he asked defensively.

Thasper scowled up at him. “I want to know.
Why
does it?”

“Perhaps because you feel happy to see me,” Imperion suggested.

“I’m not happy,” Thasper said. His lower lip came out. Tears filled his big blue eyes. “Why does it go bright? I want to know. Mum! I’m not happy!”

Nestara came racing out of the house, almost too concerned to smile at Imperion. “Thasper love, what’s the matter?”

“I want to
know
!” wailed Thasper.

“What do you want to know? I’ve never known such an inquiring mind,” Nestara said proudly to Imperion, as she picked Thasper up. “That’s why he was so slow talking. He wouldn’t speak until he’d found out how to ask questions. And if you don’t give him an exact answer, he’ll cry for hours.”

“When did he first start asking questions?” Imperion inquired tensely.

“About a month ago,” said Nestara.

This made Imperion truly miserable, but he concealed it. It was clear to him that Thasper was indeed the Sage of Dissolution and he was going to have to take him away to another world. He smiled and said, “My love, I have wonderful news for you. Thasper has been accepted as a god. Great Zond himself will have him as cupbearer.”

“Oh, not now!” cried Nestara. “He’s so little!”

She made numerous other objections, too. But, in the end she let Imperion take Thasper. After all, what better future could there be for a child? She put Thasper into Imperion’s arms with all sorts of anxious advice about what he ate and when he went to bed. Imperion kissed her good-bye, heavyhearted. He was not a god of deception. He knew he dared not see her again for fear he told her the truth.

Then, with Thasper in his arms, Imperion went up to the middle regions below Heaven, to look for another world.

Thasper looked down with interest at the great blue curve of the world. “Why—” he began.

Imperion hastily enclosed him in a sphere of forgetfulness. He could not afford to let Thasper ask things here. Questions that spread Dissolution on earth would have an even more powerful effect in the middle region. The sphere was a silver globe, neither transparent nor opaque. In it, Thasper would stay seemingly asleep, not moving and not growing, until the sphere was opened. With the child thus safe, Imperion hung the sphere from one shoulder and stepped into the next-door world.

He went from world to world. He was pleased to find there were an almost infinite number of them, for the choice proved supremely difficult. Some worlds were so disorderly that he shrank from leaving Thasper in them. In some, the gods resented Imperion’s intrusion and shouted at him to be off. In others, it was mankind that was resentful. One world he came to was so rational that, to his horror, he found the gods were dead. There were many others he thought might do, until he let the spirit of prophecy blow through him, and in each case this told him that harm would come to Thasper here.

But at last he found a good world. It seemed calm and elegant. The few gods there seemed civilized but casual. Indeed, Imperion was a little puzzled to find that these gods seemed to share quite a lot of their power with mankind. But mankind did not seem to abuse this power, and the spirit of prophecy assured him that if he left Thasper here inside his sphere of forgetfulness, it would be opened by someone who would treat the boy well.

Imperion put the sphere down in a wood and sped back to Theare, heartily relieved. There he reported what he had done to Zond, and all Heaven rejoiced. Imperion made sure that Nestara married a very rich man who gave her not only wealth and happiness but plenty of children to replace Thasper. Then, a little sadly, he went back to the ordered life of Heaven. The exquisite organization of Theare went on untroubled by Dissolution.

Seven years passed.