Unnatural Creatures

The striped undergarments Chrestomanci was wearing did look a little thin. Thasper slowly unwound his turban. To go before gods bareheaded was probably no worse than going in nightclothes, he supposed. Besides, he did not believe there were any gods. He handed the turban over. Chrestomanci tied the length of pale blue cloth around his black and yellow gown and seemed to feel more comfortable. “Now hang on to me,” he said, “and you’ll be all right.” He took Thasper’s arm again and walked up into the sky, dragging Thasper with him.

For a while, Thasper was too stunned to speak. He could only marvel at the way they were treading up the sky as if there were invisible stairs in it. Chrestomanci was doing it in the most matter of fact way, coughing from time to time, and shivering a little, but keeping very tight hold of Thasper nevertheless. In no time, the town was a clutter of prettily lit dolls’ houses below, with two red blots where two of them were burning. The stars were unwinding about them, above and below, as they had already climbed above some of them.

“It’s a long climb to Heaven,” Chrestomanci observed. “Is there anything you’d like to know on the way?”

“Yes,” said Thasper. “Did you say the gods were trying to kill me?”

“They are trying to eliminate the Sage of Dissolution,” said Chrestomanci, “which they may not realize is the same thing. You see, you are the Sage.”

“But I’m not!” Thasper insisted. “The Sage is a lot older than me, and he asks questions I never even thought of until I heard of him.”

“Ah yes,” said Chrestomanci. “I’m afraid there is an awful circularity to this. It’s the fault of whoever tried to put you away as a small child. As far as I can work out, you stayed three years old for seven years—until you were making such a disturbance in our world that we had to find you and let you out. But in this world of Theare, highly organized and fixed as it is, the prophecy stated that you would begin preaching Dissolution at the age of twenty-three, or at least in this very year. Therefore the preaching had to begin this year. You did not need to appear. Did you ever speak to anyone who had actually heard the Sage preach?”

“No,” said Thasper. “Come to think of it.”

“Nobody did,” said Chrestomanci. “You started in a small way anyway. First you wrote a book, which no one paid much heed to—”

“No, that’s wrong,” objected Thasper. “He-I-er, the Sage was writing a book after the preaching.”

“But don’t you see,” said Chrestomanci, “because you were back in Theare by then, the facts had to try to catch you up. They did this by running backwards until it was possible for you to arrive where you were supposed to be. Which was in that room in the inn there at the start of your career. I suppose you are just old enough to start by now. And I suspect our celestial friends up here tumbled to this belatedly and tried to finish you off. It wouldn’t have done them any good, as I shall shortly tell them.” He began coughing again. They had climbed to where it was bitterly cold.

By this time, the world was a dark arch below them. Thasper could see the blush of the sun, beginning to show underneath the world. They climbed on. The light grew. The sun appeared, a huge brightness in the distance underneath. A dim memory came again to Thasper. He struggled to believe that none of this was true, and he did not succeed.

“How do you know all this?” he asked bluntly.

“Have you heard of a god called Ock?” Chrestomanci coughed. “He came to talk to me when you should have been the age you are now. He was worried—” He coughed again. “I shall have to save the rest of my breath for Heaven.”

They climbed on, and the stars swam around them, until the stuff they were climbing changed and became solider. Soon they were climbing a dark ramp, which flushed pearly as they went upwards. Here, Chrestomanci let go of Thasper’s arm and blew his nose on a gold-edged handkerchief, with an air of relief. The pearl of the ramp grew to silver and the silver to dazzling white. At length, they were walking on level whiteness, through hall after hall after hall.

The gods were gathered to meet them. None of them looked cordial.

“I fear we are not properly dressed,” Chrestomanci murmured.

Thasper looked at the gods, and then at Chrestomanci, and squirmed with embarrassment. Fanciful and queer as Chrestomanci’s garb was, it was still most obviously nightwear. The things on his feet were fur bedroom slippers. And there, looking like a piece of blue string around Chrestomanci’s waist, was the turban Thasper should have been wearing. The gods were magnificent, in golden trousers and jeweled turbans, and got more so as they approached the greater gods. Thasper’s eye was caught by a god in shining cloth of gold, who surprised him by beaming a friendly, almost anxious look at him. Opposite him was a huge liquid-looking figure draped in pearls and diamonds. This god swiftly, but quite definitely, winked. Thasper was too awed to react, but Chrestomanci calmly winked back.

At the end of the halls, upon a massive throne, towered the mighty figure of Great Zond, clothed in white and purple, with a crown on his head. Chrestomanci looked up at Zond and thoughtfully blew his nose. It was hardly respectful.

“For what reason do two mortals trespass in our halls?” Zond thundered coldly.

Chrestomanci sneezed. “Because of your own folly,” he said. “You gods of Theare have had everything so well worked out for so long that you can’t see beyond your own routine.”

“I shall blast you for that,” Zond announced.

“Not if any of you wish to survive,” Chrestomanci said.

There was a long murmur of protest from the other gods. They wished to survive. They were trying to work out what Chrestomanci meant. Zond saw it as a threat to his authority and thought he had better be cautious. “Proceed,” he said.

“One of your most efficient features,” Chrestomanci said, “is that your prophecies always come true. So why, when a prophecy is unpleasant to you, do you think you can alter it? That, my good gods, is rank folly. Besides, no one can halt his own Dissolution, least of all you gods of Theare. But you forgot. You forgot you had deprived both yourselves and mankind of any kind of free will, by organizing yourselves so precisely. You pushed Thasper, the Sage of Dissolution, into my world, forgetting that there is still chance in my world. By chance, Thasper was discovered after only seven years. Lucky for Theare that he was. I shudder to think what might have happened if Thasper had remained three years old for all his allotted lifetime.”