Among Others

by Jo Walton

  “That’s not normal,” I said. “We used to have long plaits. Gramma used to plait it, and then after she died we used to do each other’s. When Mor died, I couldn’t do my own, and in a fit of, well, furious grief I suppose, I cut them off with scissors. Then my hair was horribly uneven, and my friend Moira tried to even if off, cutting a bit off each side, until I had practically none. Since then, I’ve kept it short. It’s only just got to be the same length all over. It used to be really spiky.”

  “You poor old thing,” he said, and gave me a squeeze.

  “Why do you have long hair? For a man, I mean.”

  “I just like it,” he said, touching it self-consciously. Hair the colour of honey, or anyway, of honey buns.

  In Gobowen, he unchained his bike. “See you on Saturday,” he said.

  “In the little cafe by the bookshop?” I asked.

  “In Marios, so I can get some decent coffee,” he said.

  I think it’s important to Wim to be seen in public with me. I suppose it has to do with the Ruthie thing and his feeling of being a pariah.

  We kissed again before I got on the bus. I could feel it right down to my toes. That’s magic too, in a way, the same as the “chi” is.

  FRIDAY 8TH FEBRUARY 1980

  Aujourd’hui, rien.

  People were telling riddles at lunch today, and I asked the question about whether you’d rather meet an elf or a Plutonian. Deirdre didn’t know what a Plutonian was. “An alien from the planet Pluto,” I said. “Like a Martian, but more so.”

  “An elf, then,” she said. “How about you, Morwenna, which would you rather be?”

  It was a typical Deirdre mix-up between “meet” or “be,” but in a way it’s a more challenging question. Which you’d rather meet is about worldview, past and present, fantasy and science fiction. Which you’d rather be is—I keep thinking about Tiptree’s “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side,” which manages to be both.

  Doctor’s appointment made for Monday.

  SATURDAY 9TH FEBRUARY 1980

  Wim seems to be inherently early, except for the time when he had a puncture and was late for book group, the first time. He was waiting in Marios when I got there, and had even ordered me a coffee.

  He looked through my library books, tutting or nodding at them. Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy had come in, and he wanted to know what I saw in historical fiction, and when I said I’d already read it, what I saw in re-reading. Several girls I knew were in the cafe, with local boys, including Karen, who kept looking over at us and smirking.

  “Could we go somewhere else,” I said after a while, when Wim had finished his coffee.

  “Where?” he asked. “There’s nowhere to go. Unless you want to go ghost-hunting again?”

  “I don’t mind, if you do,” I said.

  Just then Karen came over to the table. “Come to the toilet with me. Commie,” she said.

  Wim raised his eyebrows at the name, but I was just relieved she hadn’t called me “Crip” or “Hopalong” in front of him.

  “Not right now,” I said.

  “No, come,” Karen said, making faces. She put her hand on my arm and pinched me quite hard. “Come on.”

  It was easier to go than to make a scene. Karen wasn’t my friend, exactly, but she was Sharon and Deirdre’s friend. I sighed and went off with her. The toilets were painted red and had a mirror with a row of bright bare lightbulbs over it. Karen checked her make-up in it—although make-up was just as strictly forbidden on Saturdays as any other day, she was caked in the stuff.

  “Craig, that’s my boyfriend, says he saw your boyfriend with another girl at the disco last night; Shirley who works in the laundry at the school.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I could hardly go to the disco with him, could I?”

  “You don’t care?” She sounded incredulous.

  I did care, of course I did, but I wasn’t about to let her know that. I just smiled and pushed the door open and went back to the table.

  Wim was still there, which I had briefly wondered about. I sat down and took his hand, because I knew Karen would be watching. “Let’s go,” I said.

  “What did she say to you?” he asked.

  “You know better than I do that in this town everybody knows everybody’s business,” I said. I stood up and put my coat on.

  His face fell, but he also had a look of calculation. “Mori, I—”

  “Come on,” I said. I wasn’t going to talk about it in there, in front of an over-appreciative audience.

  “How is this supposed to work anyway if I can only see you at book club and on Saturday afternoons, and for a couple of hours on Thursday hanging around in Shrewsbury?” he asked, belligerently, as we walked up the hill, past Smiths and BHS. “You couldn’t ever go to a party with me.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “I can’t help being stuck in school. Maybe it isn’t going to work.”

  “So you could break up with me because I went dancing with Shirley?” He looked down at me inquiringly.

  “More because I don’t want to be humiliated about it, than because you did. I mean, obviously, even if I wasn’t stuck in school I couldn’t go dancing.”

  “It isn’t that,” he said, very quickly. “I don’t care about dancing especially, it’s just something to do.”

  “And you don’t care about Shirley either, she’s also just something to do?” I asked, cattily.

  “Or I could break up with you because I can hardly ever see you and it’s too inconvenient,” he said, in a strange musing tone.

  We had come to the corner by Thorntons, where we’d turn down if we were going to the bookshop and Poacher’s Wood. I stopped, and he stopped too. “Are you supposed to be making any sense?” I asked, exasperated. Boys are weird.

  “Do you agree that we could break up right now, on this corner, and never say a kind word to each other again?” he demanded. The wind was blowing his hair back, and he had never looked more gorgeous.

  “Yes!” I said. I could imagine it all too well, saying things at book group about books and never looking at each other.

  “Then it’s all right. If we could break up right now then whatever magic you did didn’t make it destiny that we would be together,” he said.

  “What?” Then I got it. “Oh.”

  He grinned. “So if we’re not together because the magic forced us to be, that’s all right.”

  It was the most backwards way of looking at it that I could imagine. “So, what, you were doing a scientific experiment with Shirley in the disco?”

  He did have the grace to look a little abashed. “Sort of. I hate the idea of being forced into things. I hate the idea of True Love and Finding the Right One and you know, being tied down, marriage, and the thought that the magic had made me—”

  “Wim, I admitted I kind of like you,” I said. “When you asked me. I did not and would not say anything about destiny, true love, marriage, ever after or any of that crap. That is not what I am looking for, that is not what I want. I want friends, not True bloody Love. I don’t plan to marry ever, and anyway not for years and years.”

  “That’s you,” he said, starting to walk again, so I started to walk too, downhill now. “That’s not the magic. I like you, I really do. But I thought if we could break up, and you agreed we could, then it wasn’t doing that, and it would be all right.”

  “So you don’t actually want to break up?”

  “Not if you don’t,” he said.

  What I know about magic that he doesn’t is how tricky it is, and how much easier it is to get people to do things they want to do anyway. It would only prove anything if we did break up, not if we just agreed that we theoretically could. But . . . I didn’t want to. “I don’t want to,” I said.

  “What did you say to her?”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Little Miss Hitler, back in the cafe?”

  I snorted. “Her name’s Karen. I said obviously I
couldn’t go to a disco, and then I just smiled. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.” We were coming down to the bookshop, and he stopped again.

  “Then just keep smiling. I won’t see Shirley again.”

  “I don’t care if you see Shirley, as long as I know about it,” I said. “. . . I think.” I was really clear on the theory of this from Heinlein, I wasn’t quite so sure about the practice.

  “She’s a moron,” he said, which was very reassuring. It’s nice to be wanted for something real.

  We crossed into Poacher’s Wood, and walked down to where the ruined walls are. The snowdrops were dead. There were leaves coming through, but no other flowers yet. The place was swarming with fairies, mostly gnarly treelike ones, who didn’t pay any attention to us. Wim could sort of see them, he said he could see them sideways. We sat on the wall for a while, looking at them. Then when we started to get up, he happened to brush against my walking stick, and made a choking sound. “Now I can really see them,” he said. He sat down again beside me, holding the stick on his lap. “Man,” he exclaimed, rather inadequately.

  Ages afterwards, after he’d been watching the fairies for a long time, I said it was time to go, and reached for my stick back. Without it he was back to only half-seeing them. “I wish I knew what they were,” he said, as we walked back up into town. “Could I have that stick? I mean, do you have another one of those?”

  “I do, but the other one is metal and hideous, and this one gives me strength. The fairies gave it to me.”

  “Maybe they gave it to you so I could see them,” he suggested. “All of those colours and shapes.” He sounded drunk. They were just fairies, and not even doing anything especially interesting.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I need it now, anyway.”

  He took my hand as we went through the trees.

  “I’m sorry about the dancing thing,” he said. “I don’t mean Shirley, I did that on purpose, I mean the actual dancing. I wasn’t thinking about that, and I wouldn’t want to make you feel bad about not being able to do it.”

  “That’s all right,” I said, though it wasn’t. My leg is about back to where it was before the traction wrecked it. I have good days and bad days. They said it was going to keep on being like that. Maybe the acupuncture will help, and maybe I can learn to do it myself, and that would help, but I’m not going to be dancing any time soon.

  It was almost time to catch the bus, so we walked on through town. “So, Tuesday night, Thursday afternoon and next Saturday? If that’s all that’s on offer, then I’ll take it,” he said.

  “Next weekend is half term,” I said. “All of next week is. So Saturday’s out.”

  “Are you going away?”

  “I’m going to spend one night in the Old Hall with Daniel, and then go down to Aberdare for a few days, to see Auntie Teg and my grandfather.”

  “And kill your mother?” he asked. “No, I know, but I could. That wouldn’t be against any ancient prohibitions.”

  “In the ancient prohibitions I’ve seen, I wouldn’t even be able to share a meal with someone who had killed my mother, whatever I thought of her,” I said, though I was mainly going from Mary Renault, and not any actual ancient prohibitions. Funny how nobody teaches ancient prohibitions any more. “Anyway, there’s no need.”

  “I could come down with you.”

  “Don’t be silly, where would you stay?” I asked. “Anyway, you have to work. I’ll see you when I come home.”

  “I’ll miss you,” he said, and kissed me very gently for a long time.

  Well, at least it isn’t boring.

  SATURDAY 10TH FEBRUARY 1980

  There was a frost this morning. When I woke up and looked out of the window everything was crisply outlined in white. It had melted by the time we went to church.

  The sermon was all about giving thanks, and how we shouldn’t just skim through our blessings but choose two special things to give thanks for. So, mentally, when it was prayertime, I gave thanks for Wim and the interlibrary loan system.

  I wrote to Auntie Teg saying I’d be there next Sunday. I hadn’t bought a card for Grampar yesterday, or last week either, because Wim distracted me both times. I’ll take one with me.

  My new worry about Wim is that it’s the possibility of magic that he wants, not really me.

  MONDAY 11TH FEBRUARY 1980

  The Persian Boy is so wonderful. It might be her best book. Stimulated not by it directly but by the general thought of her books, I have also raced through the Phaedrus and started The Laws and got a bit bogged down.

  Miss Carroll seems to approve of me reading things that aren’t SF. She started a conversation about ancient Greece, and mentioned the possibility of me doing an O Level in Greek while I’m doing my A Levels. I don’t know if I’m going to be doing A Levels here or what, but if I am and I do, that would be a really good plan. I don’t think they’d let me do what Wim’s doing and keep mixing arts and sciences. Besides, I’d like to do English, history, and Latin, which is a very usual and conventional mix. I’d like to keep on with either physics or chemistry too, but as Miss Carroll pointed out, not having the maths would make that difficult. I might just scrape a pass in maths, if I’m lucky, but that’s the best I can hope for.

  At the doctor’s, I asked if I was seeing him in confidence, and he said of course. Then I asked if he’d give me a prescription for the Pill. He asked if I was sexually active, and I said not yet, but I was thinking of becoming so. He looked at my date of birth and tutted a little, but he gave me the prescription. He said I’d have to take it for a whole month before it would work, that I had to start taking it on the day after a period, and that if I missed one pill after that I’d be okay, but no more than that, and I should take them at the same time every day. I picked the prescription up in Boots on the way back. I also bought a packet of condoms (be prepared) and a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, which was more to disguise the other things than because I wanted it, though I ate it anyway.

  I’m keeping the pills and the condoms in my bag, because there isn’t anywhere else safe.

  TUESDAY 12TH FEBRUARY 1980

  Deirdre nearly got caught copying my Virgil today. There are two verbs, “progredior” and “proficiscor” and they’re both weirdly in the passive all the time, and they both start “pro” and one means “advance” and the other “set out” and I always confuse them, and I did in my prep, which Deirdre had copied. Miss Martin, who’s very sharp, gave us both a stern look when Deirdre read that bit aloud, and she said that mistakes with passive verbs seem to be catching, and then she had Deirdre come up to the front and do the next bit, the bit we hadn’t been set to prepare. She didn’t make too bad a muck of it, so I thought we’d got away with it. Then she made me construe the next part, again unseen. After class, while the bell was ringing and everyone was charging off down the corridor for physics, she stopped me and said “Did you and Deirdre co-operate a little on that piece of Virgil, Morwenna?”

  “She was a bit stuck,” I said, which was the truth, and sounded much better than saying she copied all of mine.

  “She’ll never learn if she doesn’t learn to learn on her own,” Miss Martin said, which sounds like an aphorism, and maybe is one in Latin, where it would be about three words, no six, maybe seven.

  Letter from Daniel saying he’ll collect me on Friday and it’s fine to go to Aberdare on Sunday, also saying I might get a surprise before that. I wonder what he means? Maybe he’s sent books separately?

  Book club tonight, talking about Pavane.

  WEDNESDAY 13TH FEBRUARY 1980

  Hussein led the meeting, and we didn’t just talk about Pavane, but also Brunner’s brilliant Times Without Number and Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (which I haven’t read) and Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee and the whole idea of having para-history. We also mentioned Up the Line and Guardians of Time and Christopher Priest’s A Dream of Wessex (must order!) which Wim says is brill. There was a question of whether
they were really SF, which they obviously are, and whether there was a difference between the kind of “paratime” thing, like Lord Kalvan of Other-when and a book like Pavane which is all in one universe where things went differently.

  We kept coming back to Pavane and the way Pavane covers such a span of time, which, Greg says, is what makes it SF, the perspective. Then Brian mentioned the Lord Darcy books (I adore Randall Garrett!) and asked whether they were SF, which was a cheat, as they’re obviously fantasy, except that they’re not at all like fantasy, and they are exactly like SF. Harriet said she felt they belonged rather with things like Dunsany’s club stories and tall tales, they were whimsical. I disagreed (probably talking too much and too vehemently) because I think the way in which they’re like SF is the opposite of whimsy, they’re taking magic and treating it as another bit of science, especially in Too Many Magicians.

  Janine doesn’t seem to be speaking to me, or Pete either. They’ll get over it, Wim says. I hope so.

  Hugh looked a bit confused. Greg thinks—he said in the car—that Hugh thought he and I would automatically become an item, because we were the same age. I never heard anything so stupid in my life, and said so, because while I like Hugh I never thought of him in that way for two seconds. Greg just laughed and said these things sort themselves out, and had I read McCaffrey? I don’t know what that has to do with anything, but we talked about Impressing dragons all the rest of the way back.

  Wim’s meeting me in Gobowen again tomorrow. He seems to think this isn’t very often to see each other, but I think it’s loads. I need time in between to think—and to write it all down! I don’t suppose he does that.

  It has just belatedly occurred to me that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I don’t suppose he’ll take any notice of it—or will he? I don’t have the foggiest. Miss Carroll thinks he might, and that I should have something ready to produce if he does. The problem with that is that I don’t have anything. She suggested a book—well, she would!—and that would be a terrific idea if there was time to go to a bookshop. I could make him a card. Well, except that nobody would want a card I’d made. I could write him a poem, or more to the point, write out neatly one of the poems I have already written about him. But what if he didn’t like it? I’ve never talked to him about poetry, I have no idea whether he likes it or not. If he didn’t hate Heinlein I could give him The Number of the Beast, but he does, so I can’t. I don’t have anything else new, and he probably has everything I have here.