The Lives of Christopher Chant. Diana Wynne Jones

      It was years before Christopher told anyone about his dreams. This was because he mostly lived in the nurseries at the top of the big London house, and the nursery maids who looked after him changed every few months.

      He scarcely saw his parents. When Christopher was small, he was terrified that he would meet Papa out walking in the park one day and not recognise him. He used to kneel down and look through the banisters on the rare days when Papa came home from the City before bedtime, hoping to fix Papa’s face in his mind. All he got was a foreshortened view of a figure in a frock coat with a great deal of well-combed black whisker, handing a tall black hat to the footman, and then a view of a very neat white parting in black hair, as Papa marched rapidly under the stairway and out of sight. Beyond knowing that Papa was taller than most footmen, Christopher knew little else.

      Some evenings, Mama was on the stairs to meet Papa, blocking Christopher’s view with wide silk skirts and a multitude of frills and draperies. “Remind your master,” she would say icily to the footman, “that there is a Reception in this house tonight and that he is required, for once in his life, to act as host.”

      Papa, hidden behind Mama’s wide clothing, would reply in a deep gloomy voice, “Tell Madam I have a great deal of work brought home from the office tonight. Tell her she should have warned me in advance.”

      “Inform your master,” Mama would reply to the footman, “that if I’d warned him, he would have found an excuse not to be here. Point out to him that it is my money that finances his business and that I shall remove it if he does not do this small thing for me.”

      Then Papa would sigh. “Tell Madam I am going up to dress,” he would say. “Under protest. Ask her to stand aside from the stairs.”

      Mama never did stand aside, to Christopher’s disappointment. She always gathered up her skirts and sailed upstairs ahead of Papa, to make sure Papa did as she wanted. Mama had huge lustrous eyes, a perfect figure and piles of glossy brown curls. The nursery maids told Christopher Mama was a Beauty. At this stage in his life Christopher thought everyone’s parents were like this; but he did wish Mama would give him a view of Papa just once.

      He thought everyone had the kind of dreams he had, too. He did not think they were worth mentioning. The dreams always began the same way. Christopher got out of bed and walked round the corner of the night-nursery wall – the part with the fireplace, which jutted out – on to a rocky path high on the side of a valley. The valley was green and steep, with a stream rushing from waterfall to waterfall down the middle, but Christopher never felt there was much point in following the stream down the valley. Instead he went up the path, round a large rock, into the part he always thought of as The Place Between. Christopher

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