Among Others

by Jo Walton

  I looked up at her as I wrote her name. She’s puttering about sticking labels in books at her desk. For all that she said she’s keeping her clients satisfied, she took me to the book club because of the magic. I know she did, and it makes me feel a little sick. Magic works on what’s there, so probably she liked me a little anyway, and noticed me. She got me The Republic. Though magic can make things happen before you do it. It can make things have happened. Maybe if I hadn’t done that magic, she wouldn’t have ordered the Plato. I don’t know if she likes me, really, or if it’s only the magic making her. If she doesn’t really like me, how can I like her back? How can it mean anything?

  And of course, the same goes for the others, really. Is it really a karass, if I used magic to make it happen? It’s like making the bus come, all those people, all those days, all those lives changed, just to make the bus be coming at the moment I want it. Only it’s more than that, making them like me. Making them be my karass.

  I didn’t think this through enough. I was thinking about a karass in too abstract a way, I didn’t think enough about the people, about manipulating them. I didn’t even know them, and I was doing it.

  Is this how she started? My mother, Liz?

  I wish I could talk to Glorfindel about this, or somebody who would understand. I don’t know if he would or not, but he’s the most likely to. I don’t understand why the fairies here are so unfriendly—uncaring is more like it. They should be getting used to me by now. When I go home after Christmas, I’ll find him and talk to him no matter what.

  Is using magic inherently bad? Is it if it’s for yourself? Am I supposed to leave myself totally vulnerable to her using it against me, then? Or was it only the karass magic that was bad, and the protection was okay? Or—always the trap with magic—was it all going to happen anyway and I only think the magic did it? No, look at the timing. It was my karass magic, and I think maybe it brought the whole book club (that’s been meeting for months) into existence. I never saw anything about it before, and I go to the library all the time. Maybe those people wouldn’t even exist. Maybe Harriet—who is the oldest—maybe her parents wouldn’t have had her, maybe her whole life, sixty years or more, exists just so there could be a book club and I could have a karass, so we could sit there discussing The Lathe of Heaven, which is the perfect book for this, and whether it’s like Dick.

  Gosh I do hope it isn’t like Dick. Like Dick doesn’t bear thinking about.

  I don’t want to be like her.

  I won’t use magic any more, or anyway, just to protect myself and other people and the world. It’s better to be like George Orr than have her win. I don’t know what she’s doing. There have been no more dreams, and no more poisonous letters either. I’m sort of worried that this means she’s planning something worse.

  What she really wants is to set herself up as a dark queen. I don’t know how that would have worked, but that’s what she wants. (She has read LOTR, and I don’t know if she read it identifying with all of the evil people and hoping the good ones wouldn’t resist their temptations, but I know she has read it because the first time I read it, it was her copy. This proves that just reading it isn’t enough. After all, the devil can quote scripture.) She wants everyone to love her and despair. That’s not a sane goal, but it’s what she wants. This is not what I want. What would be the point? It’s bad enough thinking about making Miss Carroll (who stopped shelving to smile at me when she saw me looking over at her) like me.

  How could anyone want a world of puppets?

  We were so right to stop her, and it really was worth it, worth dying, worth living on broken. If she’d done it, it would always have been the case that we’d loved our mother, that everyone did. I thought I knew how important it was, but I didn’t really.

  Morally, magic is just indefensible.

  I was going to say I wish I’d known that before, but I did really. I knew what happened after I threw the comb in the bog. I had thought about the bus. I knew about her. I should have applied that.

  SATURDAY 8TH DECEMBER 1979

  Greg wasn’t in the library this morning, and only three books I’d ordered, none of them very exciting. It felt a bit flat. I walked down to the bookshop. It was spitting icy rain from a very low sky, the sort of rain that seems to come from all directions. An umbrella’s no use against it, not that I can use an umbrella anyway with a cane in one hand and a bag in the other. Going down the hill towards the bookshop and the little pond the wind was blowing directly into my face. It kept blowing my hat off. It wasn’t the sort of rain you can enjoy, you just have to squinch your face up and endure that kind of thing.

  At the bookshop I saw the ginger-haired girl. She was looking at the children’s books. She saw me as soon as I came in, because the door banged in the wind and so of course she looked up. She was carrying a huge canvas bag over her shoulder, and clutching a pile of carrier bags as well. “Hi,” she said, taking a step towards me. “I saw you at the book club but I didn’t get your name.”

  “Likewise,” I said, trying to smile and look friendly, trying not to think about what the magic might have done to her, to the world to make her like me. I could feel her looking at me and wondered what she thought about me. She didn’t look quite as awful with a black coat instead of the purple blazer. Her hair was still ginger, and very unruly, but it just looked like a bit of a mess instead of an explosion at a paint factory.

  “I’m Janine,” she said.

  “I’m Mori.”

  “Brill name. What’s it short for?”

  “Morwenna,” I said.

  Janine laughed. “That’s a bit of a mouthful. Is it Welsh?”

  “Yes it is. It means a breaking wave.” Actually, literally it means white sea, but that’s what it must mean, that’s what white sea is, the foam on the breaking wave.

  We stood there for a moment in amity but without anything to say. Then she said “I’m Christmas shopping. Only two weeks to go.”

  “I haven’t bought anything yet!” I said, suddenly realising. “Are you buying everyone books?”

  “Most of my family wouldn’t appreciate them,” she said. “But I thought I might buy the Earthsea books for Diane, after all the talk about them the other night.”

  “Don’t you have them already?” I asked.

  “Nope, read them out of the kids’ library,” she said. “Besides, I’ve had to make a rule about the others never touching my stuff, so I’m not about to start lending them books just when I’ve got it into their heads.”

  “I could buy my father a book,” I said. “I certainly have to buy him something. But it’s so hard to know what he has.”

  “What does he like?” Janine asked.

  “Oh, SF,” I said.

  “Is that how you started liking it?”

  “No. I didn’t meet him until quite a short time ago, and I’ve been reading it for ages.”

  “You didn’t meet your—” she began, and then stopped and looked away. She shifted her bags to her other hand, and when she spoke it was in a falsely casual tone. “Oh, you mean divorce?”

  “Yes,” I said, though in fact the actual divorce is only now going through. Daniel had disappeared without bothering with any of the legalities.

  “It’s nice that he likes SF,” Janine said, diplomatically.

  “Yes. It gives us something to talk about. It’s so weird meeting someone who is your father and a stranger at the same time.” This was the first time I’d said anything about this to anyone.

  “You must have been really small.”

  “Just a baby really,” I said.

  “My parents are getting divorced,” she said, very quietly, looking not at me but at the shelves. “It’s awful. They were fighting all the time, and now Dad’s living at Gran’s and Mum cries into the soup.”

  “Maybe they’ll make it up,” I said, uncomfortably.

  “That’s what I’m hoping. Dad’s agreed to come home for Christmas Day, and I’m hoping being in t
he family, seeing us all, Christmas, he’ll realise he loves her and not Doreen.”

  “Who’s Doreen?”

  “She’s a girl that works on the petrol pumps in his garage,” Janine said. “She’s his girlfriend. She’s only twenty-two.”

  “I really hope he decides to come back,” I said. “Look, why don’t we go next door and sit down and get a cup of tea? We can come back in here and buy books afterwards.”

  “Okay,” Janine agreed.

  We sat in the window where I usually sat. There’s never anyone in there on a Saturday morning, I don’t know how they keep going. I ordered tea and honey buns for both of us, and two honey buns to take back to school for me and Deirdre tomorrow. “How did you find out about the book club?” I asked.

  “Pete told me about it. Pete’s the dark-haired boy, you must have seen him. He used to be my boyfriend, sort of, but we sort of broke up, only we’re still friends.” She poured herself tea and stirred in sugar.

  “Are you going out with the other one now?”

  Janine snorted. “Hugh? You’re kidding. He’s shorter than I am, and he’s only fifteen. He’s still in the fourth form.”

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Sixteen. How about you?”

  “Oh, I’m only fifteen too, and in what a sensible school would call the fourth form, but which Arlinghurst calls the lower fifth.” I fussed with the tea and made mine mostly hot water. It’s not so bad like that.

  “I thought you were older,” she said. “You certainly have read a lot for fifteen.”

  “It’s about all I have done,” I said. “Did Pete get you reading SF?”

  “Yes, though I always liked things like that. He used to lend me books, well, he still does, and he took me to the club. My mum says SF is childish and for boys, but she’s just wrong about that. I tried to get her to read The Left Hand of Darkness, but well, she doesn’t read much and when she does she likes a nice romance. I’ve just found one for her called The Kissing Gate. Just her kind of thing.” She sighed at the thought of it.

  “How many of you are there?” I asked.

  “Sixteen people I have to buy presents for,” she said promptly. “Three sisters, Mum and Dad, four grandparents, two aunties and one uncle and four cousins, one of them a baby. I’ve got him a teddy. How about you?”

  I hesitated. “It’s all so different this year. My grandfather, my Auntie Teg, another aunt, three cousins, my father, his sisters I suppose—I don’t know what I can get for them.”

  “What about your mum?” she asked.

  “I’m not buying her anything,” I said, fiercely.

  “Like that, is it?” she said, though I had no idea what she imagined it was like.

  “Oh, and there’s Sam,” I said, thinking of him belatedly. “Except Sam’s Jewish, so I don’t know if a Christmas present would be quite the thing.”

  “Who’s Sam?” she asked, through a mouthful of honey bun.

  “My father’s father,” I said.

  “He’s your grandfather then,” she said.

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “Are you Jewish, then?”

  “No. You have to have a Jewish mother to be Jewish, apparently.”

  “I don’t think Jewish people celebrate Christmas. Probably better just to get him something really nice when it’s his birthday,” she advised.

  I nodded. “I really ought to buy something for Miss Carroll too because she’s been really good to me, taking me to the book club and getting books for me specially.”

  “Is that who you were with? She was very quiet. Who is she?”

  “She’s the school librarian. She won’t be coming with me normally, I can come on the bus and Greg’s going to take me home.”

  Janine considered this, chewing. “You should get something for Greg too, then,” she said. “Greg’s easy. He likes dark chocolate. You could get him some Black Magic or something.”

  “I don’t suppose a book would be quite right for a librarian,” I said.

  “Talk about coals to Newcastle,” she said, and laughed. “You should probably get chocolates for your Miss Carroll too. I expect you’ve got lots of money.”

  “I do, just at the moment,” I said, and then I realised what she’d said. “I’m not—I know I go to Arlinghurst, but that doesn’t mean I’m rich. The opposite. My father’s paying for me to go there, or really his sisters are. They’re rich, and stuck up too I think. My family, my own family, are from South Wales and they’re all teachers.”

  “Why are your aunties sending you to Arlinghurst then?”

  “I really don’t feel as if my father’s relations are my family,” I said. “It feels really weird when you call them my aunties, or Sam my grandfather.” I bit my honey bun and felt the honey squirt on my tongue. “They’re paying for me to go away to school so they can get rid of me, I think. They know Daniel’s stuck with me now, and this way they don’t have to see me very much. But they want me there for Christmas, which I don’t understand. I could go to Auntie Teg’s. But they don’t want me to.”

  “I never thought of boarding schools as dumping grounds before,” she said, licking honey off her lip.

  “That’s just what it is,” I said. “I hate it. But I don’t have any choice.”

  “You could leave next year when you’re sixteen,” she said. “You could get a job.”

  “I’ve thought of that. But I want to go to university, and how can I do that without any qualifications?”

  She shrugged. “You could do A Levels part time. That’s what Wim’s doing.”

  “Who’s Wim?” I asked.

  “Wim’s the long-haired bastard who was sitting opposite you on Tuesday night. He got thrown out of school, our school, Fitzalan, and now he’s working in Spitals and finishing his A Levels at the college.”

  “He’s a bastard?” I asked, disappointed. He was so gorgeous, it didn’t seem possible.

  She lowered her voice, though there was nobody else in earshot. “Yes he is. I saw you looking at him, and I agree he’s easy on the eyes, but he’s a double-dyed bastard. He got thrown out of school for getting a girl pregnant, and they say she had to have an abortion. And that’s what I broke up with Pete over, because he’s still friends with Wim after all that, and he said it was Ruthie’s fault. That’s the girl, Ruthie Brackett.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Nice enough. Not as clever as Wim, not interested in poetry and books and that kind of thing. I don’t know her very well. But I do know that when a girl falls pregnant, you don’t only blame her.”

  “Good point,” I said. I had finished my honey bun without noticing. “I think it was very moral of you to break up with Pete over that.”

  “We’re still friends,” she said quickly. “But I wasn’t going to keep going out with him if that’s what he thinks.”

  “How old is Wim?” I asked.

  “Seventeen. His birthday’s in March and he’ll turn eighteen then. You keep away from him.”

  “I will. Not that he’d look at me anyway,” I added.

  “He might think you don’t know. None of the girls who do know are going to spend any time with him. And anyway, he was looking at you last week. You’re not so bad. If you let your hair grow a bit and tried some mascara maybe. But not for Wim!”

  I was about to tease her back, when I remembered about the magic, and that maybe I’d inadvertantly made all these things happen so there’d be a place for me. The honey bun felt like iron in my stomach and I couldn’t talk naturally.

  Janine didn’t notice. “Come on, I’ll help you find some presents if you like,” she said.

  We went back into the bookshop, and then up the hill to a little shop where I bought pretty Indian silk scarves in different colours for Anthea, Dorothy and Frederica, and a dressing gown with a dragon on it for Auntie Teg, and a little brass elephant paperweight for Grampar. Then we went to British Home Stores and Janine helped me buy a bra—she was very knowledgeab
le about it. I couldn’t bear some of them with seams and lace, but we managed to find a sports bra with a plain cup and no frills. Sports is a laugh. She didn’t ask me about the stick at all, not a word, as if it was normal. I don’t know if that’s tact or magic or just obliviousness.

  I had to rush to catch the bus. Gill was on it, but she was sitting at the back and she didn’t come up to me or speak to me at all.

  Apart from the magic thing, which it is too late to change, but which worries me a lot, I like Janine. It was like shopping with my friends at home, only better, because she has read a lot of things I’ve read. She wishes she could Impress a dragon. She said she’d see me at the book club and if I wanted she’d meet me next Saturday and we could finish our Christmas shopping. It’s so nice to spend an afternoon with someone who isn’t a moron for a change. Coming back in to the dorm to put things in my locker I overheard a chorus of “Dreary Dreary Drip Drip . . .” followed by poor Deirdre running out with her hands over her face.

  I went after her of course, but I couldn’t help contrasting her with Janine.

  It’s a pity about Wim.

  SUNDAY 9TH DECEMBER 1979

  If church—if religion—if Jesus, Aslan . . . but I don’t think it is. There’s a way it’s true, but it’s a layered way, not a literal way. It isn’t a way that’s going to help. Otherwise I could just have gone to the vicar about her, and said “Reverend Price, do something about my mother!” And he wouldn’t have said “Eh, what? What’s that? Maureen isn’t it, or are you the other one? How’s your grandmother, eh?” He’d have taken up his crozier, well, he doesn’t have a crozier, he isn’t a bishop, maybe he’d have snatched up the churchwarden’s staff and gone out to cast demons out of her. It’s hard to imagine.