LITMIR.BIZ

      From then on, Uncle Ralph arranged a new experiment every week. He had, Tacroy said, been very pleased because the carriage and the packages had arrived in Tacroy’s garret with no hitch at all. Two wizards and a sorcerer had refined the spell on it until it could stay in another Anywhere for up to a day. The experiments became much more fun. Tacroy and Christopher would tow the carriage to the place where the load was waiting, always carefully wrapped in packages the right size for Christopher to handle. After Christopher had loaded them, he and Tacroy would go exploring.

      Tacroy insisted on the exploring. “It’s his perks,” he explained to the people with the packages. “We’ll be back in an hour or so.”

      In Series One they went and looked at the amazing ring-trains, where the rings were on pylons high above the ground and miles apart, and the trains went hurtling through them with a noise like the sky tearing, without even touching the rings. In Series Two they wandered a maze of bridges over a tangle of rivers and looked down at giant eels resting their chins on sandbars, while even stranger creatures grunted and stirred in the mud under the bridges. Christopher suspected that Tacroy enjoyed exploring as much as he did. He was always very cheerful during this part.

      “It makes a change from sloping ceilings and peeling walls. I don’t get out of London very much,” Tacroy confessed while he was advising Christopher how to build a better sand-castle on the sea-shore in Series Five. Series Five turned out to be the Anywhere where Christopher had met the silly ladies. It was all islands. “This is better than a Bank Holiday at Brighton any day!” Tacroy said, looking out across the bright blue crashing waves. “Almost as good as an afternoon’s cricket. I wish I could afford to get away more.”

      “Have you lost all your money then?” Christopher asked sympathetically.

      “I never had any money to lose,” Tacroy said. “I was a foundling child.”

      Christopher did not ask any more just then, because he was busy hoping that the mermaids would appear the way they used to. But though he looked and waited, not a single mermaid came.

      He went back to the subject the following week in Series Seven. As they followed a gypsy-looking man who was guiding them to see the Great Glacier, he asked Tacroy what it meant to be a foundling child.

      “It means someone found me,” Tacroy said cheerfully. “The someone in my case was a very agreeable and very devout Sea Captain, who picked me up as a baby on an island somewhere. He said the Lord had sent me. I don’t know who my parents were.”

      Christopher was impressed. “Is that why you’re always so cheerful?”

      Tacroy laughed. “I’m mostly cheerful,” he said. “But today I feel particularly good because I’ve got rid of the flute-playing girl at last. Your uncle’s found me a nice grandmotherly person who plays the violin quite well. And maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s your influence, but I feel firmer with every step.”

      Christopher looked at him, walking ahead along the mountain path. Tacroy looked as hard as the rocks towering on one side and as real as the gypsy-looking man striding ahead of them both. “I think you’re getting better at it,” he said.

      “Could be,” said Tacroy. “I think you’ve raised my standards. And yet, do you know, young Christopher, until you came along, I was considered the best spirit traveller in the country?”

      Here the gypsy man shouted and waved to them to come and look at the glacier. It sat above them in the rocks in a huge dirty-white V. Christopher did not think much of it. He could see it was mostly just dirty old snow – though it was certainly very big. Its giant icy lip hung over them, almost transparent grey, and water dribbled and poured off it. Series Seven was a strange world, all mountains and snow, but surprisingly hot too. Where the water poured off the glacier, the heat had caused a great growth of strident green ferns and flowing tropical trees. Violent green moss grew scarlet cups as big as hats, all dewed with water. It was like looking at the North Pole and the Equator at once. The three of them seemed tiny beneath it.

      “Impressive,” said Tacroy. “I know two people who are like this thing. One of them is your uncle.”

      Christopher thought that was a silly thing to say. Uncle Ralph was nothing like the Giant Glacier. He was annoyed with Tacroy all the following week. But he relented when the Last Governess suddenly presented him with a heap of new clothes, all sturdy and practical things. “You’re to wear these when you go on the next experiment,” she said. “Your uncle’s man has been making a fuss. He says you always wear rags and your teeth were chattering in the snow last time. We don’t want you ill, do we?”

      Christopher never noticed being cold, but he was grateful to Tacroy. His old clothes had got so much too small that they got in the way when he climbed through The Place Between. He decided he liked Tacroy after all.

      “I say,” he said, as he loaded packages in a huge metal shed in Series Four, “can I come and visit you in your garret? We live in London too.”

      “You live in quite a different part,” Tacroy said hastily. “You wouldn’t like the

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