Free The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones

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 traveler 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 gray, 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 area my garret’s in at all.”
    Christopher protested that this didn’t matter. He wanted to see Tacroy in the flesh and he was very curious to see the garret. But Tacroy kept making excuses. Christopher kept on asking, at least twice every experiment, until they went to bleak and stony Series Eight again, where Christopher was exceedingly glad of his warm clothes. There, while Christopher stood over the farmhouse fire warming his fingers around a mug of bitter malty tea, gratitude to Tacroy made him say yet again, “Oh please can’t I visit you in your garret?”
    “Oh do stow it, Christopher,” Tacroy said, sounding rather tired of it all. “I’d invite you like a shot, but your uncle made a condition that you only see me like this while we’re on an experiment. If I told you where I live, I’d lose this job. It’s as simple as that.”
    “I could go around all the garrets,” Christopher suggested cunningly, “and shout Tacroy and ask people until I found you.”
    “You could not ,” said Tacroy. “You’d draw a complete blank if you tried. Tacroy is my spirit name. I have quite a different name in the flesh.”
    Christopher had to give in and accept it, though he did not understand in the least.
    Meanwhile, the time when he was to go to school was suddenly almost there. Christopher tried carefully not to think of it, but it was hard to forget when he had to spend such a lot of time trying on new clothes. The