Among Others (17 page)

In
I Capture the Castle
, which isn’t what I expected it to be at all, there’s a bit where the heroine is in love with one man and a different man is in love with her, and she thinks she’ll make do with him, maybe, but she also knows it won’t work and it’s pointless and she doesn’t want to hurt him. The way she feels about it and not wanting to hurt him is a bit like I feel about Gill and this. I honestly don’t think it would be any different if it was a boy who was my friend. I’ll say this to Gill when I get the chance. Maybe Saturday, or tomorrow after chem?

One of the stones was knocked off the windowsill, but I put it back. This is only a temporary fix, but it’s holding for now. No more visitations.

T
HURSDAY
29
^TH
N
OVEMBER
1979

Terrible dreams. I really do need to do something about this. I can’t go on this way. I’ll do it tonight if it’s not raining.

Why aren’t I like other people?

I look at Deirdre and her life is completely unruffled. Or does it just seem that way to me? She came up to me at break and drew me aside and said, “Shagger said that she saw Gill coming on to you,” and she looked at me entirely trustingly.

“Shagger may have seen that, but I’m not interested in Gill and I mean to tell her so,” I said.

“It’s wrong,” Deirdre said, utterly sure.

“I don’t think it’s wrong if both people want it, but in this case, I don’t.”

Deirdre looked confused and backed away, but later she offered me a Polo mint to show there were no hard feelings. I should buy her a bun for Sunday.

No chance to talk to Gill after chem. I think she may have been avoiding me. Maybe we don’t need to have a conversation after all.

F
RIDAY
30
^TH
N
OVEMBER
1979

I got up in the deep heart of night and did magic. I climbed down the elm into the grounds, found the circle I’d made last time, and put it back together. The moon was making fitful appearances through the clouds. I didn’t make a fire this time.

I don’t want to write down what I did. I have a superstitious feeling about it, that it would be wrong, that I shouldn’t even have said so much as I have said. Maybe I should write it not just backwards but upside-down and in Latin? I think I know now why people don’t write real magic books. It’s just too difficult to put words around it when you’ve made it up yourself. Even so, even at the end I still felt as if I didn’t really know what I was doing and I was improvising like mad. It’s so different from doing what you’ve been told to do and you’re pretty sure will work. The moon has always been my friend. But even so.

Always before, they’d told us what to do. Glorfindel had told us about throwing the flowers in the water, told me about sinking the comb in the bog. Standing there in my circle I felt very inexperienced, and as if I was half playing and it couldn’t possibly work. Magic is very weird. I kept looking up through the bare branches at the moon in the clouds and waiting until it was clear for a moment. I made up a sort of poem to sing, which at least helped me get into the right frame of mind.

I was using things I remembered and things I was making up and things that seemed to fit. I was trying to do a magic for protection, and to find a karass. I had an apple—I’d had two and kept them together for a few days so they were used to each other, even if they didn’t come from the same tree, and then I ate one of them, so it was part of me, and I used the other one. Apples connect to apple trees and the tamed growing world, and to Eden and the Garden of Hesperides and Iduna and Eris—and also once I kept an apple in my desk, in the grammar school until it got ripe and riper and then soft and bruised and was a sweet-smelling sack of sap, and only when it started to mildew on the outside did I throw it away. That was a strong connection. In Ancient Persia, and now in some parts of India I think, they practice “sky burial” where they put dead bodies out on platforms and the birds eat them and they decay in sight. It must make for strong magic, but it must be terrible when there’s someone you know and you can watch them falling apart like that. Cremation might not be magical, but at least it’s clean.

Anyway, I also cut my finger a little bit and used blood, I know it’s dangerous, but I also know it’s powerful.

I saw the fairy who spoke to me that first time here, up in the tree. There were other eyes in the branches, but I didn’t recognise any of them and they didn’t speak. I don’t know how to make friends with them and get them to trust me. They’re different from our fairies, wilder, further from people.

Even with all that feeling like left luggage I have, even with Halloween, I have never felt so much like half a person as I did last night. It felt as if an arm had been cut off, as if I was accustomed to holding things in both hands and now I had to struggle along with one, only magically. And yet—I didn’t try to do a healing on that. I didn’t even think of it until now. Or on my leg either. I wonder if I could? It feels as if it’s dangerous to try, that even trying what I did was dangerous, trying for a karass. Maybe I shouldn’t have extended it beyond the protection, which I really
needed
to do. Doing magic for things you want yourself isn’t safe. Glorfindel told me that. Most of what I want I can’t have for years, if at all. I know that. But a karass shouldn’t be impossible, should it? Or too dangerous to try for?

Of course, it’s impossible to know whether it worked. That’s always the problem with magic. One of the problems. Among the problems …

I’m exhausted today. I nearly fell asleep over Dickens in English. Mind you, he’s snoozeworthy at the best of times. I keep yawning. But maybe tonight I will sleep without dreams. We’ll see.

S
ATURDAY
1
^ST
D
ECEMBER
1979

Today in the library, the male librarian stopped me. “You ordered
Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains
?” he asked.

I nodded.

“There’s never been a British edition, so I’m afraid we can’t get that for you.”

“Ah,” I said, disappointed. “Thank you anyway.”

“I’ve noticed you’ve been doing a lot of interlibrary loans,” he said.

“She said, the librarian said it would be all right,” I stammered. “She said it was free because I’m under sixteen.”

“There’s no problem, you order as many books as you want and we’ll get them for you,” he said.

I relaxed and smiled at him.

“I just noticed that a lot of them are SF, and I wondered if you’d like to join our Tuesday evening SF book club.”

A karass, I thought. Magic does work. My eyes filled up with tears and I couldn’t speak for a moment because I was choking on them. “I don’t know if they’ll let me come in from school,” I said, ungraciously. “What time is it?”

“We start at six, and usually go on until about eight. It’s right here in the library. I understand that the process for girls from Arlinghurst who want to go to outside classes or educational activities is that they need a parent’s signature, and a teacher or a librarian’s signature.”

“They agreed about the library,” I said.

“They did.” He smiled at me. He’s going a bit bald on top, but he’s not very old, and he has a lovely smile.

“And it would be very educational,” I went on.

“It certainly would,” he agreed. “I don’t know if you could get a signature by this Tuesday, when we’re discussing Le Guin, but the Tuesday after we’re discussing Robert Silverberg, who I’ve noticed you seem to like.”

I wrote down the information about it and collected my books and went and sat in the bakery cafe so happy I could sing. A karass, or the start of one! Oh I hope I can get there this Tuesday! I only haven’t ordered any Le Guin from the library because I’ve read it all already, or at least I think so. I’d have a lot to say about her. A karass! Epic! I could sing with delight.

S
UNDAY
2
^ND
D
ECEMBER
1979

Miss Carroll has signed the form for me to leave school for the book club! She says I’d have to have all my prep done ahead, but that’s no trouble. She said they’d see it would be no trouble from my marks, but my marks had better not drop because of the book club. I said they certainly wouldn’t. She asked if I’d liked the Tey, and I said I had enjoyed it a lot, which is true.

Carpenter says in the Inklings book that Lewis meant Aslan to be Jesus. I can sort of see it, but all the same it feels like a betrayal. It feels like allegory. No wonder Tolkien was cross. I’d have been cross too. I also feel tricked, because I didn’t notice all this time. Sometimes I’m so stupid—but Aslan was always so much himself. I don’t know what I think about Jesus, but I know what I think about Aslan.

I wrote to Grampar and Auntie Teg, telling them about the book club. And I wrote to Daniel begging him to sign the book club thing. I’m pretty sure he will. I also told him about the Aslan/Jesus conflation thing because it would be interesting to see what he thinks, and I asked him
again
about going home for Christmas. I told Grampar I’d try to.

I had a conversation with Gill, finally. It was pouring buckets, so people were doing dancing in the hall instead of games this afternoon, and she was hanging back instead of going to change afterwards, while I was coming out of the prep room where I’d been writing letters. She didn’t say anything directly, but I said “Gill, I don’t know if I’ve got the wrong idea here, but I wanted to say I like you as a friend, but I’m not interested in a physical relationship with you.”

“You said you didn’t like boys,” she said.

I had too, I remembered it. “That doesn’t mean I like girls,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, I think most people are interested in both, but I don’t seem to be. Sorry. I expect I’m just peculiar.”

This was all in the doorway to the prep room, and someone came up behind me and pushed past then, and Gill just waved and ran off to change. I hope it’s all right. It does make things so complicated!

M
ONDAY
3
^RD
D
ECEMBER
1979

Letter from Daniel with another ten pounds and saying they want me at the Old Hall for Christmas but I can go down to South Wales for a few days afterwards. Feh. Why do they want me there? What good am I to them? I’d much rather go and help Auntie Teg with Grampar, especially if he really can come out for the day. They’ve never shown any sign at the Old Hall of anything but wanting to be rid of me as soon as they can. Daniel, well, I don’t know what to think about him. I’m grateful he took me out of the Children’s Home, but school isn’t all that much better. He seems to want a connection, after not having one all that time. But I’m sure he and his sisters would have a better time if I wasn’t there. And what on earth can I give them? I can’t just give them a box of chocolates if I’m actually going to be there on Christmas Day. It’ll be excruciating. Oh well, at least I can go down to South Wales afterwards I suppose.

T
UESDAY
4
^TH
D
ECEMBER
1979

Of course no letter from Daniel with the signed form. It’s unfair to even expect it, because the post would hardly have had time to get the form there and back. But it’s my karass, and it’s happening without me tonight, and they’re going to be talking about
The Dispossessed
, so I can’t help feeling cross. I suppose it’s been happening every Tuesday all the time I’ve been here, but I didn’t know, and now I do. That is unless the magic made it happen, instead of just making him ask me. The more I think about magic, what it does and how it influences things, the less I think I ought to mess with it.

School is being particularly tedious. I’m used to the girls calling me names, but some of them have started singing a little song about “Jake the Peg” when I pass by, or just humming it if there are teachers near. They want to infuriate me, so I just ignore them, which is much easier to do outwardly than inwardly. They do the same to Deirdre with “Danny Boy” and sometimes reduce her to tears. The awful thing about Deirdre is that she’s such a cliche. She’s Irish, and she’s not the brightest bulb in the box. Karen gave her a bite of a muesli bar and she said it tasted like uncooked Christmas tree. She meant to say cake, of course, because that is what they taste like, but now everyone makes jokes about them cooking Christmas trees in Ireland. I had to laugh when I heard it, just because it’s so surreal. I mean she laughed herself. That wasn’t unkind. It’s going on and on about it that’s unkind, and of course that’s what they’re doing, because they see it hurts her. I have to make sure they don’t see that I care about the stupid “Jake the Peg with his extra leg” nonsense.