Unnatural Creatures

by Neil Gaiman

  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 said 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 goodbye, heavyhearted. 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 were 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 dragons invisible? 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 enquiry. “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 revelled 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 the wall:

  IF RULES MAKE A FRAMEWORK FOR THE MIND TO CLIMB ABOUT IN, WHY SHOULD THE MIND NOT CLIMB RIGHT OUT, SAYS THE SAGE OF DISSOLUTION.

  That same day, there was consternation again in Heaven. Zond summoned all the high gods to his throne. “The Sage of Dissolution has started to preach,” he announced direfully. “Imperion, I thought you got rid of him.”

  “I thought I did,” Imperion said. He was even more appalled than Zond. If the Sage had started to preach, it meant that Imperion had got rid of Thasper and deprived himself of Nestara quite unnecessarily. “I must have been mistaken,” he admitted.

  Here Ock spoke up, steaming gently. “Father Zond,” he said, “may I respectfully suggest that you deal with the Sage yourself, so that there will be no mistake this time?”

  “That was just what I was about to suggest,” Zond said gratefully. “Are you all agreed?”

  All the gods agreed. They were too used to order to do otherwise.

  As for Thasper, he was staring at the chalked words, shivering to the soles of his sandals. What was this? Who was using his own private thoughts about rules? Who was this Sage of Dissolution? Thasper was ashamed. He, who was so good at asking questions, had never thought of asking this one. Why should one’s mind not climb right out of the rules, after all?

  He went home and asked his parents about the Sage of Dissolution. He fully expected them to know. He was quite agitated when they did not. But they had a neighbor, who sent Thasper to another neig
hbor, who had a friend, who, when Thasper finally found his house, said he had heard that the Sage was a clever young man who made a living by mocking the gods.

  The next day, someone had washed the words off. But the day after that, a badly printed poster appeared on the same wall. THE SAGE OF DISSOLUTION ASKS BY WHOSE ORDER IS ORDER ANYWAY?? COME TO SMALL UNCTION SUBLIME CONCERT HALL TONITE 6:30.

  At 6:20, Thasper was having supper. At 6:24, he made up his mind and left the table. At 6:32, he arrived panting at Small Unction Hall. It proved to be a small shabby building quite near where he lived. Nobody was there. As far as Thasper could gather from the grumpy caretaker, the meeting had been the night before. Thasper turned away, deeply disappointed. Who ordered the order was a question he now longed to know the answer to. It was deep. He had a notion that the man who called himself the Sage of Dissolution was truly brilliant.

  By way of feeding his own disappointment, he went to school the next day by a route which took him past the Small Unction Concert Hall. It had burnt down in the night. There were only blackened brick walls left. When he got to school, a number of people were talking about it. They said it had burst into flames just before 7:00 the night before.

  “Did you know,” Thasper said, “that the Sage of Dissolution was there the day before yesterday?”

  That was how he discovered he was not the only one interested in the Sage. Half his class were admirers of Dissolution. That, too, was when the girls deigned to notice him. “He’s amazing about the gods,” one girl told him. “No one ever asked questions like that before.” Most of the class, however, girls and boys alike, only knew a little more than Thasper, and most of what they knew was secondhand. But a boy showed him a carefully cut out newspaper article in which a well-known scholar discussed what he called the so-called Doctrine of Dissolution. It said, longwindedly, that the Sage and his followers were rude to the gods and against all the rules. It did not tell Thasper much, but it was something. He saw, rather ruefully, that his obsession with rules had been quite wrong-headed and had, into the bargain, caused him to fall behind the rest of his class in learning of this wonderful new doctrine. He became a Disciple of Dissolution on the spot. He joined the rest of his class in finding out all they could about the Sage. He went round with them, writing up on walls DISSOLUTION RULES OK.