Текст книги "Believing Is Seeing"

Автор книги: Diana Jones

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Believing Is Seeing
Diana Wynne Jones

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Introduction

The Sage of Theare

The Master

Enna Hittims

The Girl Who Loved the Sun

Dragon Reserve, Home Eight

What the Cat Told Me

nad and Dan adn Quaffy

Excerpt from Howl’s Moving Castle

Chapter One: In Which Sophie Talks to Hats

Excerpt from The Merlin Conspiracy

Chapter One

Excerpt from Dark Lord of Derkholm

Chapter One

Excerpt from Archer’s Goon

Chapter One

About the Author

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

These stories were written at intervals over a long period, and it so happened that each time I had written one of them, someone asked me for a story for a collection. I began to feel positively precognitive.

The trouble is that the collection didn’t always match the story. “The Sage of Theare” started because I remembered, or thought I remembered, a story by Borges being read on the radio, in which a scholar arduously tracked down a learned man but never quite found him. I have never actually found that story either. If it exists, it behaves like its own plot. But years after I thought I remembered hearing it, I started having dreams about it—strange circular dreams in a strange city where gods took a hand—and the dream person never found the wise man he was looking for. In order to exorcise the dreams, I wrote the story. I was writing Chrestomanci books at the time, so the story fairly naturally included Chrestomanci, too. While I was finishing it, Susan Schwartz asked me for something for a collection called Hecate’s Cauldron, and with some doubts, I sent it to her. She used it, and to my dismay, it stuck out like a sore thumb. All the other stories were very female. Chrestomanci strides among them like a grasshopper in a beehive. His effect on the gods in the story is rather the same, too.

“The Master” was another dream, or maybe a nightmare, which I dreamed more than once and had again to exorcise by writing it down. I know it is really part of the complex of ideas out of which Fire and Hemlock got written, but I couldn’t explain how. It is, of course, about precognition. At that time, I was quite worried about the way most of my books came true at me after I had written them, but I am glad to say that the events in “The Master” have (so far) not happened to me.

One rainy afternoon quite a long time later I sat down and wrote “The Girl Who Loved the Sun.” I had been thinking about all those Greek stories where women get turned into plants and animals, and I kept wondering how and why: how it felt to the person it happened to and why they let it happen. It seemed to me that nothing that radical could happen to someone without their personal consent, and I wondered why one might consent. When I had done the first draft, I had two phone calls. The first was from my sister, who wanted to tell me she had been writing poems about women who were turned into plants and animals and asking much the same questions as I had (my sister and I seem to share trains of thought quite often), and the second was someone wanting a story about unhappy love. I sent this story, as doubtfully as I had earlier sent “The Sage of Theare,” because I was not sure it quite counted. But they said it did. You must see what you think.

Peculiarly, I do not remember why I wrote “Enna Hittims,” but I presume I was sick in bed and feeling bored. And when Greenwillow asked me for a new story for this collection, it was ready and waiting.

Much earlier than all of these, while I was thinking out the multiplicity of alternate worlds that occur in The Lives of Christopher Chant, I wrote “Dragon Reserve, Home Eight” almost by way of clarifying things. At that time, though, I was thinking of the worlds as rather like a wad of different colored paper handkerchiefs. If you were to take that wad and crumple it in one hand, each color would be separate, but wrapped in with the others. And I was also thinking of an enchanter’s gifts rather more as inborn psychic talents. As so often happens, when I came to write the actual book a good four years later, everything turned out differently, and probably no one would realize this story had anything to do with it unless I told them. Again, I had just done a rather rough and unsatisfactory first draft when Robin McKinley asked me for a fantasy story. I sent this one, but she refused it on the grounds that it was not fantasy. This struck me as fair and reasonable, even though I knew it was going to be fantasy later.

I asked myself for a story with “What the Cat Told Me.” When I wrote it, I was suffering cat deprivation. I was brought up with cats and didn’t have one at that time (this was four years ago, just before someone suddenly arrived and organized me a cat, so this one came true in a way). I love the exacting self-centeredness of cats. The story is about that. Then I was asked to compile a collection of fantasy stories, and I put this one in among the original selection, which I knew was going to be far too long. I mean, what can one leave out of a fantasy collection? My idea was to leave my own story out. But when it came to cutting the list down to publishable size, the editors, to my great surprise, insisted that this one stay in. I was glad. It was fun to write.

It was even more fun to write “nad and Dan adn Quaffy.” This one is a loving send-up of a well-known author whose writing I admire and read so avidly that I’m sure I know where a lot of it comes from. The idea for it came to me as I typed nad for and for the hundredth time, changed it, found it was now adn, reached for my coffee in frustration, and idly realized—among other things—that this other writer did this, too. Typos are a great inspiration. Depending on which side you hit the wrong key, coffee can be either xiddaw or voggrr, both of which are obviously alien substances that induce a state of altered consciousness. And yet again, when I was halfway through it, giggling as I wrote, I was asked for a story about computers.

And there you are: believing is seeing.

         Diana Wynne Jones

Bristol, 1999

THE SAGE OF THEARE

There 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 other 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!” brazed 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 watery 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 slowly 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 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, heavy-hearted. 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 was 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.

All that while Thasper knew nothing and remained three years old. Then, one day, the sphere of forgetfulness fell in two halves, and he blinked in sunlight somewhat less golden than he had known.

“So that’s what was causing all the disturbance,” a tall man murmured.

“Poor little soul!” said a lady.

There was a wood around Thasper, and people standing in it looking at him, but, as far as Thasper knew, nothing had happened since he soared to the middle region with his father. He went on with the question he had been in the middle of asking. “Why is the world round?” he said.

“Interesting question,” said the tall man. “The answer usually given is because the corners wore off spinning around the sun. But it could be designed to make us end where we began.”

“Sir, you’ll muddle him, talking like that,” said another lady. “He’s only little.”

“No, he’s interested,” said another man. “Look at him.”

Thasper was indeed interested. He approved of the tall man. He was a little puzzled about where he had come from, but he supposed the tall man must have been put there because he answered questions better than Imperion. He wondered where Imperion had got to. “Why aren’t you my dad?” he asked the tall man.

“Another most penetrating question,” said the tall man. “Because, as far as we can find out, your father lives in another world. Tell me your name.”

This was another point in the tall man’s favor. Thasper never answered questions; he only asked them. But this was a command. The tall man understood Thasper. “Thasper,” Thasper answered obediently.

“He’s sweet!” said the first lady. “I want to adopt him.” To which the other ladies gathered around most heartily agreed.

“Impossible,” said the tall man. His tone was mild as milk and rock firm. The ladies were reduced to begging to be able to look after Thasper for a day then. An hour. “No,” the tall man said mildly. “He must go back at once.” At which all the ladies cried out that Thasper might be in great danger in his own home. The tall man said, “I shall take care of that, of course.” Then he stretched out a hand and pulled Thasper up. “Come along, Thasper.”

As soon as Thasper was out of it, the two halves of the sphere vanished. One of the ladies took his other hand, and he was led away, first on a jiggly ride, which he much enjoyed, and then into a huge house, where there was a very perplexing room. In this room Thasper sat in a five-pointed star and pictures kept appearing around him. People kept shaking their heads. “No, not that world either.” The tall man answered all Thasper’s questions, and Thasper was too interested even to be annoyed when they would not allow him anything to eat.

“Why not?” he said.

“Because, just by being here, you are causing the world to jolt about,” the tall man explained. “If you put food inside you, food is a heavy part of this world, and it might jolt you to pieces.”

Soon after that a new picture appeared. Everyone said “Ah!” and the tall man said, “So it’s Theare!” He looked at Thasper in a surprised way. “You must have struck someone as disorderly,” he said. Then he looked at the picture again, in a lazy, careful kind of way. “No disorder,” he said. “No danger. Come with me.”

He took Thasper’s hand again and led him into the picture. As he did so, Thasper’s hair turned much darker. “A simple precaution,” the tall man murmured, a little apologetically, but Thasper did not even notice. He was not aware what color his hair had been to start with, and besides, he was taken up with surprise at how fast they were going. They whizzed into a city and stopped abruptly. It was a good house, just on the edge of a poorer district. “Here is someone who will do,” the tall man said, and he knocked at the door.

A sad-looking lady opened the door.

“I beg your pardon, madam,” said the tall man. “Have you by any chance lost a small boy?”

“Yes,” said the lady. “But this isn’t—” She blinked, “Yes, it is!” she cried out. “Oh, Thasper! How could you run off like that? Thank you so much, sir.” But the tall man had gone.

The lady’s name was Alina Altun, and she was so convinced that she was Thasper’s mother that Thasper was soon convinced, too. He settled in happily with her and her husband, who was a doctor, hardworking but not very rich. Thasper soon forgot the tall man, Imperion, and Nestara. Sometimes it did puzzle him—and his new mother, too—that when she showed him off to her friends, she always felt bound to say, “This is Badien, but we always call him Thasper.” Thanks to the tall man, none of them ever knew that the real Badien had wandered away the day Thasper came, and fell in the river, where an invisible dragon ate him.

If Thasper had remembered the tall man, he might also have wondered why his arrival seemed to start Dr. Altun on the road to prosperity. The people in the poorer district nearby suddenly discovered what a good doctor Dr. Altun was, and how little he charged. Alina was shortly able to afford to send Thasper to a very good school, where Thasper often exasperated his teachers by his many questions. He had, as his new mother often proudly said, a most inquiring mind. Although he learned quicker than most the Ten First Lessons and the Nine Graces of Childhood, his teachers were nevertheless often annoyed enough to snap, “Oh, go and ask an invisible dragon!” which is what people in Theare often said when they thought they were being pestered.

Thasper did, with difficulty, gradually cure himself of his habit of never answering questions. But he always preferred asking to answering. At home he asked questions all the time: “Why does the kitchen god go and report to Heaven once a year? Is it so I can steal biscuits? Why are there invisible dragons? Is there a god for everything? Why is there a god for everything? If the gods make people ill, how can Dad cure them? Why must I have a baby brother or sister?”

Alina Altun was a good mother. She most diligently answered all these questions, including the last. She told Thasper how babies were made, ending her account with, “Then, if the gods bless my womb, a baby will come.” She was a devout person.

“I don’t want you to be blessed!” Thasper said, resorting to a statement, which he only did when he was strongly moved.

He seemed to have no choice in the matter. By the time he was ten years old, the gods had thought fit to bless him with two brothers and two sisters. In Thasper’s opinion, they were, as blessings, very low grade. They were just too young to be any use. “Why can’t they be the same age as me?” he demanded, many times. He began to bear the gods a small but definite grudge about this.

Dr. Altun continued to prosper, and his earnings more than kept pace with his family. Alina employed a nursemaid, a cook, and a number of rather impermanent houseboys. It was one of these houseboys who, when Thasper was eleven, shyly presented Thasper with a folded square of paper. Wondering, Thasper unfolded it. It gave him a curious feeling to touch, as if the paper was vibrating a little in his fingers. It also gave out a very strong warning that he was not to mention it to anybody. It said:

Dear Thasper,

Your situation is an odd one. Make sure that you call me at the moment when you come face to face with yourself. I shall be watching and I will come at once.

Yrs,

Chrestomanci

Since Thasper by now had not the slightest recollection of his early life, this letter puzzled him extremely. He knew he was not supposed to tell anyone about it, but he also knew that this did not include the houseboy. With the letter in his hand, he hurried after the houseboy to the kitchen.

He was stopped at the head of the kitchen stairs by a tremendous smashing of china from below. This was followed immediately by the cook’s voice raised in nonstop abuse. Thasper knew it was no good trying to go into the kitchen. The houseboy—who went by the odd name of Cat—was in the process of getting fired, like all the other houseboys before him. He had better go and wait for Cat outside the back door. Thasper looked at the letter in his hand. As he did so, his fingers tingled. The letter vanished.

“It’s gone!” he exclaimed, showing by this statement how astonished he was. He never could account for what he did next. Instead of going to wait for the houseboy, he ran to the living room, intending to tell his mother about it, in spite of the warning. “Do you know what?” he began. He had invented this meaningless question so that he could tell people things and still make it into an inquiry. “Do you know what?” Alina looked up. Thasper, though he fully intended to tell her about the mysterious letter, found himself saying, “The cook’s just sacked the new houseboy.”

“Oh, bother!” said Alina. “I shall have to find another one now.”

Annoyed with himself, Thasper tried to tell her again. “Do you know what? I’m surprised the cook doesn’t sack the kitchen god, too.”

“Hush, dear. Don’t talk about the gods that way!” said the devout lady.

By this time the houseboy had left and Thasper lost the urge to tell anyone about the letter. It remained with him as his own personal exciting secret. He thought of it as the Letter from a Person Unknown. He sometimes whispered the strange name of the Person Unknown to himself when no one could hear. But nothing ever happened, even when he said the name out loud. He gave up doing that after a while. He had other things to think about. He became fascinated by Rules, Laws, and Systems.

Rules and Systems were an important part of the life of mankind in Theare. It stood to reason, with Heaven so well organized. People codified all behavior into things like the Seven Subtle Politenesses or the Hundred Roads to Godliness. Thasper had been taught these things from the time he was three years old. He was accustomed to hearing Alina argue the niceties of the Seventy-two Household Laws with her friends. Now Thasper suddenly discovered for himself that all Rules made a magnificent framework for one’s mind to clamber about in. He made lists of rules, and refinements on rules, and possible ways of doing the opposite of what the rules said while still keeping the rules. He invented new codes of rules. He filled books and made charts. He invented games with huge and complicated rules and played them with his friends. Onlookers found these games both rough and muddled, but Thasper and his friends reveled in them. The best moment in any game was when somebody stopped playing and shouted, “I’ve thought of a new rule!”

This obsession with rules lasted until Thasper was fifteen. He was walking home from school one day, thinking over a list of rules for Twenty Fashionable Hairstyles. From this it will be seen that Thasper was noticing girls, though none of the girls had so far seemed to notice him. And he was thinking which girl should wear which hairstyle when his attention was caught by words chalked on a wall: