Charmed Life (UK)

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “The really difficult thing is mealtimes,” said Millie. “He can’t do a thing with a knife and fork in his hands – and Gwendolen would do awful things during dinner.”

  “How stupid!” said Janet. “Why on earth don’t you use stainless steel cutlery?”

  Millie and Chrestomanci looked at one another. “I never thought of it!” said Millie. “Janet, my love, it’s a good thing you’re staying here!”

  Janet looked at Cat and laughed. And Cat, though he was still a little lonely and tearful, managed to laugh too.

  The Magicians of Caprona

  Read The Magicians of Caprona, the next in the Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones now!

  Read The Land of Ingary trilogy.

  Discover the the land of Ingary, where magic and adventure awaits… Howl’s Moving Castle is the first book in this spellbinding trilogy from ‘the Godmother of Fantasy’, Diana Wynne Jones.

  Click on the cover to read more.

  Read The Chrestomanci Series by Diana Wynne Jones.

  Click on the cover to read more.

  BEYOND THE BOOK

  SPOTLIGHT ON DIANA WYNNE JONES

  HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED?

  WIZARDS, WITCHES AND ENCHANTERS

  MAGICIANS AND ILLUSIONISTS

  PARALLEL WORLDS

  Spotlight on… Diana Wynne Jones

  What inspired you to write Charmed Life?

  Charmed Life just came into my head – or at least the moment did when Cat goes into Gwendolen’s room and finds it’s not Gwendolen in the bed. I knew exactly what the room looked like, and Cat and Gwendolen, and what they said. And I was so curious to know what was going on that the entire book spread outwards from there almost at once.

  After that I was in a fever to write the book, so I went to where my sons had every toy they possessed spread out all over the sitting room and asked them what had become of all the paper. They had used all of it except three sheets that the dog had walked on. Then I said what had they done with all the pens. They had lost them all except for a mapping pen – these have long, thin bendy nibs so that you can go round the edges of countries with a thin black line, which is fine for maps but hopeless for writing with. But I was in such a fever to get the book written that I wrote the first chapter then and there on paper covered with muddy paw prints and with a pen that bent and spread and spluttered, and I didn’t mind a bit, just so long as I could get the story down.

  Where were you when you wrote it?

  We were living in Oxford at the time, in a newly built house that had everything possible wrong with it. My writing of the book kept being interrupted by such things as water pouring in around the light fitments, the loos flushing boiling water and huge cracks appearing in the beams that supported the second floor. The house had a flat roof that was soluble in water, so that when builders came to find out why it was leaking, one of them fell right through and came down angrily holding a soggy piece of roof that was exactly workman-shaped. “Look at this!” he kept saying. “Just take a look!”

  When you had finished writing Charmed Life, what surprised you most about it?

  What surprised me most, when I had finished the book, was how quickly it got written. In spite of all the interruptions, it took me just over a fortnight to finish the first draft. I was also surprised by the number of other worlds there were. I hadn’t known anything about the twelve Related Worlds until I was writing the book.

  Is the character of Chrestomanci based on a real person?

  No, Chrestomanci is not based on anyone real. He came into being while I wrote the book, first as a shadowy, powerful figure with a dashing signature, and then as an exceedingly well dressed Dark Stranger, and then as himself in the Castle. I was as surprised as anyone to discover that he had a dressing gown for every day of the year (and one extra for leap years) and a few others for emergencies.

  Do you think Chrestomanci, Cat or any of the other characters will feature in future stories?

  Yes, I think they will, but not yet. When they are older.

  Are there any funny incidents that happened while you were writing Charmed Life?

  You mean apart from the house dissolving around us? There was the time when I was so engrossed in writing that when the kids came home from school it was really difficult to stop. I felt as if I came out of the story with a vast sucking-noise and I kept the (slightly muddy) paper on top of the fridge, so that I could write a bit more while I was cooking supper. Then a sense of something rather wrong came to me. I tracked it to the oven, where I found that I had been thinking so much about Charmed Life that I had put a huge muddy pair of my husband’s shoes in there to cook.

  Parts of your stories always come true. What came true in Charmed Life?

  Charmed Life came true twice. First was when I actually met a real enchanter – I mean REAL – who was called Cat. Second was when a friend, whose family all read my books, wrote to me about an experience her husband had had. He is a businessman and he was flying back from Europe and had to change planes. While he waited for his flight, he went into the VIP lounge, where people travelling business class sat and had bottles of wine, coffee, snacks and even, I think, massage, all completely free as long as they had these things in the lounge. The friend’s husband took his coffee to a chair by the door and sat quietly there, until he noticed a very smart-suited businessman tiptoeing towards the door with a bottle of wine under his arm. Knowing that the bottle shouldn’t go out of the lounge, the husband murmured to himself, “I belong to Chrestomanci Castle!”

  The businessman heard him and stopped. He said, “Ah yes, but under this smart suit I am in fact wearing a richly embroidered dressing gown.” Then he carried his bottle away out of the lounge, leaving my friend’s husband flabbergasted.

  Have you ever caused something magical to happen?

  Oh yes. I was at an American convention where everyone was not only very unpleasant but also claimed to be witches. I was Guest of Honour and was made to sit on panel after panel, all about magic: Magic and this, Magic and that, until I was tired out and utterly fed up. The final panel was called ‘Music and Magic’, with about ten people on it, who all went on and on about music not being the same as magic, which is not really true. Some of the most remarkable magic is connected with music – look at Orpheus.

  So when it came to my turn to speak, I stood up and hooked my fingers together and said, “Music and magic are together, like this.” Instantly, all the loudspeakers in the hall went wrong and started to blast out Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. There were shouts of amazement and I sat down rather hurriedly. The music stopped at once.

  Your travel jinx has stranded you on a desert island. Which book would you like to have with you?

  My choice at the moment would be The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. But I keep changing my preference.

  Which character from fiction would you like to meet there?

  Chestomanci of course.

  Which real person would you like to meet?

  Robin Hood. I want to know what he was really like.

  Who would you hope wasn’t there?

  Aunt Maria.

  What essential item would you need to keep you happy until you found your way home?

  The only thing that would keep me happy would be a large pad of paper and a bundle of pens.

  What’s the strangest dream you’ve ever had?

  I dream often and always in colour. Often I dream the next bit in a book. But my most remarkable dream lately was that I was with a friend at some kind of conference. We both got fed up with the nonsense being talked there and decided to go for a walk in a wood beside the grounds of the conference building. It was autumn and full of brown dead leaves and also very wet. The muddy path we walked on was squishy, until at last it got so wet that there was a shallow stream across the path, full of dead leaves and stones. On the other side of it, we saw a little brown sparrow struggling in the water.

  My friend exclaimed, “Oh
the poor thing! It’s drowning!” But I watched the sparrow and it wasn’t drowning. It was swimming. It swam rapidly and splashily over to some stones in the middle of the stream, where it caught a frog and ate it.

  I said, pompously, “No it’s not drowning. It’s changing its habits because of global warming.” Then I woke up.

  What advice would you give to a new writer?

  Only write about things that really interest you.

  Have you ever wondered?

  If you were a nine-lived enchanter, where would you hide your spare lives to stop you from losing them?

  What do you think all the insects and creatures felt like when Gwendolen was using them in her spells?

  If you cast a spell which took you permanently into another world, what do you think your replacements would be like?

  How could you use magic to help you improve your lessons, your games and the things you have to do at home?

  If you travelled through Chrestomanci’s magic portal, where and when would you like to go?

  Wizards, Witches and Enchanters

  Wizard of Oz

  Merlin

  Gandalf

  Ged

  Baba Yaga

  Mildred Hubble

  Jadis the White Witch

  Glinda the Good

  Harry Potter

  Prospero

  Howl

  Rincewind

  Witch of Endor

  Serafina Pekkala

  Magicians and Illusionists

  David Copperfield

  David Blaine

  Paul Daniels

  Derren Brown

  Harry Blackstone

  Tommy Cooper

  Harry Houdini

  Penn & Teller

  David Nixon

  Ali Bongo

  Siegfried & Roy

  Chung Ling Soo

  Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin

  Parallel Worlds

  As anyone reading these books knows by now, there are hundreds of different worlds, and some are nicer than others. A new world is formed when there is a big event in History, like a battle or an earthquake, when the outcome can be two or more quite different things. Both those things can happen but they cannot exist together, so the world splits into two and History goes its separate ways.

  Chrestomanci and his team know about other worlds and a number of them have been visited. There are twelve known Related Worlds and each of these worlds is divided into sets, called Series (there are usually nine of these), which are categorised according to the events in History which were the same in them. The numbering of the Related Worlds goes from twelve to one. The numbers go backwards because it’s thought that Series One is the original world and the great Mages of One who first discovered the other worlds did the numbering.

  Although each world is different, they may contain some elements that are the same. For example, you might have a number of counterparts in the Related Worlds, but while you and your counterpart may be exact doubles, the chances are your characters will be quite different. If you wanted to find out more about Related Worlds, a book like Otherworld Studies, Series III would come in handy.

  If you didn’t know about Related Worlds or Series, then you might call them the Anywheres or Almost Anywheres. But if you have studied the Related Worlds you would know how different each Series can be: you may not want to visit Series Eight, a bleak and stony world, or Series Six, where the worlds are covered in ice. And don’t be fooled by Series Eleven, as it’s not a Series at all, but just one world. But you may like Series Five, with its islands and mermaids. And if you’re looking for a good cup of hot chocolate, Series Nine is the place for you.

  Janet Chant’s world is the one that most resembles our own, with its machinery and science and signs to Tufnell Park. And the Angela Brazil books that Christopher sees in The Lives of Christopher Chant are considered to be Rare Books, imported from her world, Twelve B. Like Cat Chant, Janet’s world is in Series Twelve, but whereas World A (Cat’s world) is orientated on magic, Janet’s world split off in the Fourteenth Century and turned to science and machinery.

  If you find yourself suddenly transported from your own world to another you could survive as all the Related Worlds speak the same language (hence their name) but not knowing the history of that particular world can make life very tricky. However, you could always fall back on a good game of conkers, the rules for which seem to be the same in a number of different worlds.

  How do you get from one world to another? If you are Chrestomanci, a call for help is enough transport you there. It’s not that easy for everyone else, but there are a number of ways: you can move in body, i.e. move your physical body from one world to the next, and you can also move in spirit, on what is known as a ‘spirit trip’ or ‘spirit travelling’. The difference between the two, is that the person who is spirit travelling needs another medium to anchor him to his own world. This might take the form of a pretty young lady playing a musical instrument. And it’s not possible for a spirit traveller to bring back solid objects from another world. If you are able to spirit travel without a second medium and you are able to bring back solid objects, you are obviously very special.

  So how do you physically travel from one world to another? Well, for this you would need a gateway. This may not be an actual gate as such, but an opening between worlds. You may be living very near a way through to another world, but unless you know how to look at something in a different way, you may never find it. And it does help if you have witch-sight as this enables you see through magical disguises. It is also possible to set up a gateway to another world. This is rather effectively done within a pentangle in The Lives of Christopher Chant, but it does take very strong magic.

  When you do travel from one world to the next, you usually have to leave a part of you behind. Unless, of course, you wish to move more permanently. By using very strong magic it is possible to relocate yourself in another world, but be warned – this will set up a chain reaction whereby your counterparts will be dragged through behind you, replacing the gaps left behind in each world!

  Before you get to another world, you may have to travel through The World Edge which, if you didn’t know any better, you might call The Place Between. Not all travellers can see The Place Between, but it’s always like a left-over piece of world. At its worst, The Place Between can be shapeless and empty, which may be enough to put the most hardened traveller off going any further, but it also functions as the mechanism that draws you back to your own world, which prevents you from getting lost.

  Once you’ve made it into another world, it’s a good idea to proceed with caution, as you never know when you might stumble across a dragon, for example. You should also be careful what you do in other worlds, for your actions may affect the natural laws in your own world. One thing is certain, Related Worlds and parallel universes are not to be toyed with!

  Read The Land of Ingary trilogy.

  Discover the the land of Ingary, where magic and adventure awaits… Howl’s Moving Castle is the first book in this spellbinding trilogy from ‘the Godmother of Fantasy’, Diana Wynne Jones.

  Click on the cover to read more.

  Read The Chrestomanci Series by Diana Wynne Jones.

  Click on the cover to read more.

  Other Works

  Other titles by Diana Wynne Jones

  Chrestomanci Series

  The Magicians of Caprona*

  Witch Week*

  The Lives of Christopher Chant*

  Mixed Magics*

  Conrad’s Fate*

  The Pinhoe Egg

  Archer’s Goon*

  Black Maria*

  Castle in the Air*

  Dogsbody

  Eight Days of Luke

  The Homeward Bounders

  Howl’s Moving Castle*

  The Ogre Downstairs

  Power of Three

  Stopping for a Spell

  A Tale of Time City

  Wilkins’ Tooth


  For older readers

  Fire and Hemlock

  Hexwood

  The Time of the Ghost

  The Merlin Conspiracy*

  For younger readers

  Wild Robert

  *Also available on audio

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