Among Others

by Jo Walton

  Afterwards we ate Christmas cake, though I just crumbled mine on my plate because it would be a really obvious thing to magic, because it has all those connections to everything. Anyway I don’t like any fruitcake except Auntie Bessie’s. Then I followed Daniel into his study and got him talking about the books he’d sent me, especially Dune. Arrakis is such a great world. You could feel it was real, with the different cultures. You don’t see culture clash often enough in SF, and it’s very interesting. Paul going into the desert to the Fremen is someone going right into another culture, and there are secrets both ways. Daniel was quite lively talking about this, and though he’d poured a glass of whisky, he only sipped it. He was smoking the whole time, of course. He asked me what I’d been reading and about the book club and what I’d like to borrow, and all the time I didn’t say “Do you know your sisters are witches?” and he didn’t say “So, why did you freak out about the earring thing?” We weren’t saying those things so loudly you could almost hear them.

  Then I got him on the subject of Sam, which is the most human he ever is. They must not be able to mess with Sam, maybe because of his religion? But Sam is a stable point for Daniel, a sane point. The more I was talking to him the more I was wondering how much they control him, what things he isn’t able to think about, what things make him reach for the bottle. They have a tame brother. They have a man to manage the estate. That’s when I thought that what they want is a Nice Niece. Because if they’re not evil witches who want to take over the world—they’re not insane, they’re not like Liz—if they’re pretty much what they seem to be, three women who haven’t grown up properly living together and maybe using a bit of magic to arrange their lives the way they want, then that makes the most sense.

  “Are we going to see Sam?” I asked.

  “There isn’t really time if you’ve told your Auntie Teg that you’ll go down on Thursday,” he said.

  “We could do what we did last time,” I said. “We could do it tomorrow.”

  “They wouldn’t want me to be away on Boxing Day,” he said, and I could see that they wouldn’t. They have their Boxing Day rituals like their Christmas Day ones. They’re his sisters and his employers and they have a magic hold on him; how can I compete?

  I can look at Daniel now. I feel sorry for him. He’s as kind as he knows how to be, as he can be in the limits of what he is, and he can’t see the walls they’ve built around him. No wonder it was my mother he married, really. It would have to be someone else who had magic to get him away from them. Magic and sex, and maybe it took the getting pregnant too, because that would make a strong strong connection, yuck. No wonder they look so prune faced in the photographs. It didn’t take them long to get him back though.

  Then today, which was sunny and frosty, we all went for a walk on the estate. It was very feudal. I’ve never seen anything like it. Class, yes, class is everywhere, but not people touching their caps. We had lunch in a little old pub built literally into the side of a hill, called the Farrier’s Arms. The lunch was great. I had steak and kidney pie which came in a bowl, with chips and a feeble winter salad. It was still the best meal I’ve had for ages. There were a lot of people there they knew, people kept coming over and saying hello. Then after we came back, lots of those people came around for mince pies and tea. They let me hand round mince pies. I played Nice Niece as well as I could, said I was enjoying school and coming third in the class. Several of the women had been to Arlinghurst, but only one of them asked about the Cup. I realised that meeting all those people was good, because they were the aunts’ friends. If their friends have met me, Daniel’s daughter, I can’t just disappear without embarrassing them.

  After they’d all gone, I offered to wash dishes, but they wouldn’t let me. They’re determined to keep me out of the kitchen. Daniel retreated into his study, and I retreated up here, supposedly to bed.

  To Cardiff tomorrow, by train. I hope Auntie Teg meets me. She didn’t reply to my letter. If not, I’ll get the bus up the valley. I have the key to Grampar’s house. I have to talk to Glorfindel, not that getting straight answers from fairies is the easiest thing in the world. But I have to try.

  THURSDAY 27TH DECEMBER 1979

  On the train, in the corner of a little carriage I have to myself, at least so far. The countryside is frosted as if it has been sprinkled with icing sugar. The sun peeps out of the clouds every so often as the train rushes along, and when we go around a bend I can see the Welsh mountains in the distance, and coming closer. I love the train. Sitting here I feel connected to the last time I sat here, and the train to London too. It is in-between, suspended; and in rapid motion towards and away from, it is also poised between. There’s a magic in that, not a magic you can work, a magic that’s just there, giving a little colour and exhilaration to everything.

  I have not let them make holes in my head to hang jewellery from, and to take magic from me. And I am free, at least for now, at least as the train swoops through Church Stretton and Craven Arms, with Shrewsbury left behind and a long time yet before we come to Cardiff. There’s a bit about this in Four Quartets, I’ll see if I can find it when I have the book.

  If there’s an easier form of magic than making somebody do what they want, with things that want to do it too, I don’t know what it is. They buy his clothes. They buy his shoes. They buy him glasses and whisky. They own the house and the furniture. He wants to drink the whisky, and the chair wants that and the glass, and of course nothing could be easier than making him drink so much he can’t get up to drive me to the station. The only strange thing is that I didn’t think of it myself. But I don’t know that I could have stopped him, without magic, and even apart from the fact that it wouldn’t be a good idea, I wouldn’t do that, even if they do. If he loved them to start with, if he was grateful, they’d do anything to keep that. Probably over the years they’ve done more and more little things, not meant to hurt him, but never letting him go, binding him up in spider-strands of magic so that he stays, he does what they want, he has no will. It would take something very strong to get through that.

  Poor Daniel. The only place where he’s free is with Sam, and in his books. It’s hard to use books for magic. In the first place, the more mass-produced and newer something is, the harder it is for it to be individually magical, rather than part of the magic of the whole thing. There’s a magic of mass production, but it’s spread out and hard to hold. And with books especially, books as objects are not what books are, it’s not what’s important about them, and magic works with objects, mostly. (I should never have done that karass magic, I didn’t know half of what I was doing, and the more I think about it the more I see it. I can’t be truly sorry I did it, because having people to talk to is worth more than rubies, more than anything at all, but I know I wouldn’t have done it if I’d been wiser. Or less desperate.)

  Anthea drove me to the station. I know it was Anthea because she told me so, though of course she could easily have been lying. That’s very easy to do when you’re twins. I should know. (I wonder if Daniel can reliably tell them apart. I should ask him about that.) Two of them stayed home to keep an eye on him, I think. “Daniel’s a bit hung over this morning,” one of them said, smiling as she put the rack of disgusting cold toast down on the breakfast table. “So Anthea will drive you to the station.”

  “I’m not having my ears pierced,” I said, putting my hands over them again.

  “No, dear. Maybe you’ll be sensible about it when you’re older.”

  In the car, Anthea didn’t talk about the ear-piercing thing. I talked cheerily about school, about Arlinghurst and the prefects and the houses, and tried my hardest to seem like I’d turned into Nice Niece spontaneously without the need of any magical intervention. It was hard, because of course I hadn’t been doing it before, so perhaps I should have started more gradually if I wanted to be plausible, rather than going into a full-blooded imitation of Lorraine Pargeter right off. Her car is a silver thing, middle sized, I�
�m not sure what kind, though if I were really Nice Niece I’d have checked to compare it with the others when I got back to school. The inside has leathery upholstery, and it’s much newer than Daniel’s car. There’s a mirror in the passenger side sun flap. I’d been in the car before, when we all went shopping, but I had always sat in the back. I know they take turns driving, and sitting in the front passenger seat. They’re very peculiar really. There are all kinds of things they could be doing. They could be working on Dutch elm disease. They could see the world.

  When we got to Shrewsbury, instead of going to the station, she parked outside a jewellers with a sign in the window that said “Ear Piercing.” “There’s just time before the train,” she said. “I’ve brought your hoops.”

  “I’ll scream,” I said. “You won’t get me in there without dragging me.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t be so silly,” Anthea said, in that “more in sorrow than in anger” voice adults use.

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what she knew, how much she knew about why I was objecting. It seemed to me, and it still seems right, that it’s best to keep as much as possible unspoken. If I started talking about magic not only would she know, but she’d have every reason to tell Daniel I was deranged.

  “I absolutely will not have my ears pierced,” I said, as firmly as possible. I clutched my bag, which was on my lap, and which helped to centre me. “I don’t want to behave badly, I don’t want to cause a scene in the street or in the shop, but I will if I have to, Aunt Anthea.”

  As I was talking, I put one hand on the lever that opens the car door, ready to leap out if I had to. I had another bag in the boot, with books and some clothes in, but everything I really needed was in my bag on my lap. I’d be sorry to lose some of the books, but you can always buy them again if you have to. Heinlein says you have to be prepared to abandon baggage, and I was. I know I can’t literally run, but I thought that if I leapt out of the car and hobbled down the street, she’d have to chase after me, and there might be people she knew and she’d be embarrassed. There were already some people about, though it was quite early. If it came to physically fighting, there was for the time being only one of her. I might have a bad leg but that also means I have a stick.

  We sat like that for a while, and then she grimaced and turned the key and drove off. We came to the station where she bought my return ticket and then kissed my cheek and told me to have a good time. She didn’t come up to the platform. She looked—I don’t know. I don’t think she’s used to being thwarted.

  Magic isn’t inherently evil. But it does seem to be terribly bad for people.

  FRIDAY 28TH DECEMBER 1979

  By the time the train got to Cardiff it was raining, and all the exhilaration of frost on distant hills was lost in city rain. Auntie Teg wasn’t in the station to meet me. I thought she must be too cross with me not coming to help on Christmas Day to want to see me at all. I walked out of the station and across through the bus station to find the bus up the valley and realised that I still only had 24p, two tens and two twos in my purse, big as cartwheels and just as useless. I couldn’t think how I could get some more money. I have a few pounds in the post office, but I didn’t have the book. There are people I could borrow money from, but none of them were in Cardiff station today at lunchtime in the rain. And my stupid leg was stupidly hurting again. Fortunately, before I got to the point where I started hitchhiking, which I have done but only when I was running away, I spotted Auntie Teg’s little orange car turning in to the car park. I limped across slowly to intercept her before she put money in the meter. She was very pleased to see me and didn’t reproach me. She’d been expecting me to come on the next train. I think I probably caught the earlier one because of Anthea wanting the time to have my ears pierced.

  This is the second time, the second time running, that I’ve got off a train and not been met and realised I can’t cope. I have got to stop doing this. I need better organisation and I need more money. I need to keep emergency money in my bag. As soon as I get some, I’m keeping at least five pounds for that. And maybe I should keep a pound in the back of my purse too, in case I use the other, or only need a bit. Also, maybe I should start saving running-away money again, just in case. It would be lovely to have my life in order enough not to need it, but let’s face it, I’m not there yet.

  Auntie Teg lives in a little modern flat in a neat modern estate. It was all built about ten years ago, I think. There’s a little curving parade of shops, including a terrific bread and buns shop, and blocks of six flats, each three floors high, set out with grass in between them. Her flat is a middle one. It isn’t—I mean, I’d hate to live there. It’s very new and clean and smart but it has no character and the rooms are all rectangular and the ceilings are very low. I think Auntie Teg chose it because it was what she could afford at the time and a safe place for a single woman. Or maybe because she wanted to make her own place something really different from home, with modern furniture and no magic. She had always, logically, sensibly, associated magic and fairies and everything like that with my mother, who is four years older than she is. Auntie Teg therefore wants nothing to do with them, any more than she does with Liz. She lives on her own with her beautiful but incredibly spoiled cat Persimmon. Persimmon goes out through the window, jumping down to the awning over the front door and from there to the ground. She can’t get back in that way, though, she comes up the stairs and cries outside the front door.

  I like the flat and don’t like it at the same time. I admire it being so clean and neat with floppy brown Habitat sofas (too low for me, especially today), and blue-painted tables. I can see that the heat-grilles are efficient. When she first bought it, a little while before Gramma died, we were both terribly impressed with how modern it is. But really, I just prefer old things and clutter and fireplaces, and I suspect Auntie Teg does too, though nothing would make her say so.

  “My” room here is small, with a bed and bookshelves with Auntie Teg’s art books on them. There’s a terrific pair of pictures by Hokusai on the wall—they’re clearly part of a story. One is of two Japanese men looking frightened fighting a giant octopus; the other is of the same two men laughing and cutting their way through a huge spider-web. I don’t know their names and I don’t know their stories, but they have tons of personality and I like lying here looking at them and imagining their other adventures. Mor and I used to tell each other stories about them. Auntie Teg bought them in Bath, along with the brown and cream Moroccan blanket that hangs on the wall in the lounge.

  Lying here writing this, every so often Persimmon cries outside the door to come in to my room. If I don’t open it, she keeps on doing it. If I do get up and hobble over to the door, every step a minor victory, she walks in, looks at me disdainfully, then turns around and leaves. She’s a tortoiseshell cat with a white chin and stomach. She sees fairies—in Aberdare where there are fairies, obviously, not here. I’ve seen her see them and turn the same look of disdain on them as she does on me, while keeping a wary eye to make sure we don’t get up to anything. Auntie Teg has done an oil painting of her lying in front of the Moroccan blanket—the colours are wonderful together—where she looks like the loveliest gentlest most beautiful cat. In reality she likes to be petted for about thirty seconds, after which she turns on you and attacks your hand. I’ve had more bites and scratches from Persimmon than from all the other cats in the world put together, and Auntie Teg often has scratch marks on her wrists. Having said that, she adores her and talks to her in baby talk. I can hear her cooing now, “Who’s the best? Who’s the best cat in the world?” She might be in the running for most beautiful, with her lovely markings and aristocratic carriage, but I think the best cat would have better manners.

  We’re going up to see Grampar tomorrow. It’s not like at half term, Auntie Teg isn’t in school. It’s not going to be easy to get time to go to find the fairies, though she is going away for a few days over New Year and I should have a chance t
hen. Auntie Teg isn’t old, only thirty-six. She has a boyfriend, a secret boyfriend. It’s very tragic actually, a bit like Jane Eyre. He’s married to a madwoman, and he can’t get divorced from her because he’s a politician, and anyway he feels an obligation to her because he married her when she was young and pretty and sparkling. In fact, he was Auntie Teg’s childhood sweetheart and kissed her on the way back from her twenty-first birthday party. Then he went to university and met his mad wife, though she wasn’t mad yet, and married her, and only later realised that he’d really loved Auntie Teg all along, and by then it was clear that his wife was mad. I’m not sure this version is quite accurate. For instance, his wife’s father was someone who could help him get a parliamentary seat. I wonder if there was some self-interest going on. And would it really ruin his career to get divorced and remarry? It would much more ruin it if it came out that he was involved with Auntie Teg. However, she says she’s happy as she is, she likes living alone with Persimmon and having a few days with him now and then.

  I got to help make dinner. You can’t imagine the pleasure of wiping mushrooms and grating cheese when you haven’t had a chance to do it for a long time. Then eating food you have cooked, or help cook, always tastes so much better. Auntie Teg makes the world’s best cauliflower cheese.

  It’s also very nice to relax and be looked after for a bit.

  SATURDAY 29TH DECEMBER 1979

  Not much of this year left. Good. It’s been a rotten year. Maybe 1980 will be better. A new year. A new decade. A decade in which I shall grow up and start to achieve things. I wonder what the eighties will bring? I can just remember 1970. I remember going out into the garden and thinking that it was 1970 and that it sounded like yellow flags flying, and saying that to Mor and she agreed, and running up and down the garden with our arms stretched out, pretending to fly. 1980 sounds more rotund, and maroon. It’s funny how the sounds of words have colours. Nobody except Mor ever understood that.