Among Others

by Jo Walton

  Apart from the inspection, church was normal enough. St. Mark’s is a nice old stone church, with gothic arches and a crusader tomb that’s probably one of their ancestors, but I didn’t go and look. It was an English service, as I’d expect, and a normal enough Advent sermon. There was a crib set up in the church already, and the hymns were carols. The vicar talked to us nicely afterwards, and they introduced me as Daniel’s daughter. Daniel wasn’t there. I wonder why not?

  He was there for lunch, overcooked roast beef with oversalted potatoes and carrots. I wish they’d let me cook. I can understand why they wouldn’t want me to cook Sunday dinner right off, but they could have let me make some scones. Three more days. This is as bad as school. Worse, because no book club and no library to disappear into.

  I went for a walk after lunch, despite the rain and my leg, which actually isn’t too bad today, just grumbling, not screaming. It’s just like around school, not real countryside, just farms and fields and roads, no wild, no ruins and not a fairy in sight. I can’t think why anyone would choose to live here.

  MONDAY 24TH DECEMBER 1979, CHRISTMAS EVE

  The Russians have invaded Afghanistan. There’s a terrible inevitability to it. I’ve read so many stories with World War III that sometimes it seems as if it’s the inevitable future and there’s no use worrying about anything because it’s not as if I’ll grow up anyway.

  Daniel brought home a tree and we decorated it, with brittle Christmas cheer. The decorations are all very old and valuable, mostly glass. They’re exquisite, and very magical. I was almost afraid to touch them. Even the lights are antique—Venetian glass lanterns that used to hold candles but they’ve been refitted for electric bulbs. Two of the bulbs had gone and I changed them. I miss our old Christmas decorations, which Auntie Teg will be putting on the tree even now. She’ll be doing it on her own, if they’re only letting Grampar out for the day. I hope she can get it to stand up all right. The trouble we’ve had getting trees to stand up! Last year we had to tie it to the cupboard door. But it’s better not to think about last year, the worst Christmas of all time. Of course, the good thing about that is that no matter how awful this is, it can’t even compete.

  Our Christmas decorations are also old, mostly, though some of them are new, bought in our lifetimes. They’re mostly plastic, though the fairy that goes on the top is china. The Old Hall tree doesn’t have a fairy, which seems strange. It has Father Christmas on the top. Ours don’t match, except in being such a mixture they do match, and we have lots of tinsel, not thin silver strands, big thick twists of it. I hope it isn’t too much for Auntie Teg to do all on her own. I hope my mother doesn’t turn up there tomorrow like the bad fairy at the christening. At least that won’t happen here.

  I have wrapped all my presents and put them under the tree. My paper’s nice, dark red with silver threads. We lit the lanterns when everyone had put their presents under—and another bulb went, and I changed it. Then we lit them again and admired it. I put my presents from Deirdre and Miss Carroll under it too.

  Christmas is a time when people ought to be at home. If they have a home, which I suppose I don’t. But I wish I could be with Grampar and Auntie Teg, which is the closest I can get. When I’m grown up, I’ll never go anywhere for Christmas. People can come and see me if they want, but I’ll never go away anywhere.

  They’re playing a record of Christmas carols down there now, I can hear them through the floor. What am I doing here?

  But it’s worse in Afghanistan where the tanks are rolling.

  TUESDAY 25TH DECEMBER 1979, CHRISTMAS DAY

  This isn’t going to be the entry I thought it was going to be, which would have been a list of boring presents.

  I was woken by the sound of carols, their record again, which is carols from a cathedral. It’s nice enough, I suppose, and I couldn’t help having a kind of excited moment thinking it was Christmas Day, even if I am here. I went down and we all ate breakfast, cold toast and boiled eggs just like any day. I don’t understand why they make toast that way. They make it in the kitchen and put it into a toast rack where it gets cold and crisp and disgusting. Toast needs butter right away.

  After breakfast we went in and opened presents. They had a very fixed ritual about who opens what first, quite different from the way my family do it. We used to take turns opening one present each around a circle. They do it so each person opens all their presents and then the next person opens all theirs. I was last, because I’m the youngest.

  They were pleased enough with their scarves, though I’d got the colours wrong and two of them swapped when they thought I wasn’t looking. I still can’t tell them apart. (Were Mor and I as alike as that? Would we still have been when we were forty years old?) They’d bought each other appointments for manicures and hair dos and that sort of thing. Daniel thanked me for The Mote in God’s Eye and for the jacket. They bought him whisky, some special kind, and more clothes.

  I had a great pile, far more than I’d expected. Deirdre had got me something I never heard of called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is no doubt science fiction of a kind, and Miss Carroll’s thoughtful choice was The Dispossessed, which she knew I’d read but didn’t own. Daniel gave me a pile of books, and one of these lockable notebooks, which is always useful. His sisters gave me clothes, mostly things I wouldn’t be seen dead in, a box of Neapolitans, which I can certainly eat, and a small box which I could tell as soon as I touched it was powerfully magical. I didn’t think anything though; after all, their tree ornaments were magical and they didn’t seem to notice. I opened the box carefully, and inside were three pairs of earrings, which I could tell even without touching them were absolutely bursting with magic.

  The first pair was a set of simple silver hoops, the second were hoops each with a tiny diamond, and the third were pearls dangling on silver. “The pearls were our mother’s,” one of them said. “We wanted you to have them.”

  “I don’t have pierced ears,” I said, as if regretfully, and offered the box back.

  “That’s the real present.”

  “We’ll take you into town on Thursday morning and have them done.”

  “You’ll have to wear the plain rings at first, and you can work your way up to the others.” She smiled, they all three smiled with the same smile. With that same smile and their bland faces they looked like shop-window mannequins come alive and reaching for me, which is a bad dream I have sometimes.

  “I don’t want to have my ears pierced,” I said, as politely and firmly as I could, but I know my voice quavered in the middle.

  I had never thought about it before, but as soon as I did, it was quite obvious to me that having your ears pierced would stop you being able to do magic. The holes, the things in the holes, there they’d be, and it wouldn’t be possible to reach out. I knew it the way I knew everything about magic. I didn’t know it with my mind but felt it through my whole body, with an almost erotic tingling. I dropped the box and clapped my hands to my ear lobes.

  “All teenage girls have it done now,” one of them said.

  “It’s the fashion,” another added.

  “Don’t be so silly, it doesn’t hurt,” the third said.

  “You haven’t had it done,” I said, and it was true, they haven’t, none of them, because of course they know what I know, and they haven’t had it done because they do magic. They are witches, they must be, and they’ve been very clever up to now and I have been very stupid, because I hadn’t guessed at all. I should have been suspicious because there are three of them, and I should have been suspicious because they wouldn’t let me cook, and most of all at the way they all live here and do nothing and control Daniel. I totally missed it because they’re bland and English and smile, the whole thing just went right past me because I thought they really were obsessed with Scott winning the cup.

  They must have been horrified when Daniel brought me home. They sent me to Arlinghurst to get me away from magic, as well as away from
them. It didn’t work as well as they thought. They must have known when I did the magic about the karass, though they probably wouldn’t have known what it was, only that I was reaching out. Now they wanted to control me entirely, which is what the earrings would have done.

  “It wasn’t the fashion then,” one of them said.

  “But all the girls have it done now . . .”

  “You’ll look lovely in our mother’s pearls. It’s our way of welcoming you to the family.”

  I looked desperately at Daniel, who was looking puzzled. I saw that he was my only hope. There are three of them and they’re grown up, and presumably have no scruples about magic, any more than she does. Whatever it is they’d done to the earrings, they’d done it knowingly. The magic in them is directed at me personally, I could tell that now from holding the open box. They controlled Daniel in some ways, but they didn’t want him to know about it, so this was all going over his head. “Don’t let them make me have my ears pierced!” I appealed to him. I knew I was sounding hysterical, but I really was frantic.

  “I don’t see that Morwenna needs to have it done if she doesn’t want to,” he said. “She can wait a while and have it done in a year or two.”

  “We made an appointment.”

  “And she won’t be able to wear Mother’s earrings.”

  “And we wanted to welcome her to the family.”

  They sounded so bloody reasonable and adult and sane, and I knew I sounded unreasonable and childish and crazy. “Please,” I said. I still had my hands at the sides of my head. “Not my ears.”

  “She’s terrified,” Daniel said. “The earrings can wait. She doesn’t need them yet.”

  “You’re just encouraging her to be silly.”

  “They’d look so lovely, especially now her hair has grown a little.”

  “It only hurts for a second.”

  Daniel looked puzzled. He’s a weak man and he’s not used to standing up to his sisters. He never has done it. They took over his life when he was younger, and they’ve probably been manipulating him with magic all this time. I think though, that they’ve kept it quiet and not done it directly. I don’t know why. Maybe because of the puppet thing. Maybe they want him to love them. Not many people love witches. Look at my mother. Nobody loves her. They have each other, but would that be enough? I was sobbing and I kept looking at him pleadingly, because he is the one thing standing between me and them.

  “There’s no urgency, surely,” he said.

  “I won’t, I won’t,” I said. I snatched up my books and ran upstairs.

  “Typical teenage tantrum about nothing,” one of them said.

  “You have to be firm with her, Daniel.”

  “She’s too used to getting her own way.”

  The door doesn’t lock, but I have put a chair in front of it so nobody can come in. They came up and asked me to come down for Christmas dinner, but I didn’t go. It’ll be overcooked and dry anyway. I don’t know what to do. Should I run away again? It worked last time, or it almost did. I don’t know what they want. They seem sane enough, but so can she if you don’t know her. They want to control me. They want to stop me doing magic. It’s not that I want to do magic—in fact I swore I wouldn’t. I swore I wouldn’t except to prevent harm. I want to be able to prevent harm. This is harm. This is mutilation. I thought my leg was mutilation, but that’s nothing. If I wore those earrings, I couldn’t see the fairies. I don’t know if the controlling thing would work, but having the holes would stop it. If it’s true that my whole generation is having it done, that means a whole generation of women who won’t see fairies. It doesn’t sound so bad, it sounds like immunization, doesn’t it, one little prick and away goes all the arcane side. But it is bad, because like immunization it only works if it’s everyone. They won’t do it, and nobody will be able to stop them.

  Anyway, while most people can’t see fairies anyway because they don’t believe in them, seeing them isn’t a bad thing. Some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen have been fairies.

  I suppose I could get out of the window, though there isn’t a convenient tree the way there is in school. Or I could walk out of the back door in the night when they’re all asleep. I have the map. Only it’s Christmas and there are no trains, and no trains tomorrow either. Also, I don’t have any money, I spent it all on presents. I have 24p. Daniel would probably give me money, but he wouldn’t want to hear anything against them, he probably literally can’t hear anything against them. Also he’s my father-of-record and my legal guardian. When I ran away before and they put me in the Home, it was him they found. If I run away, where can I go? I can’t go to Grampar, he’s probably back in hospital by now and anyway they won’t let me live with him, or with Auntie Teg. I could try her anyway, but Auntie Teg’s is the first place Daniel would look. The rest of the family let me down before, they knew about Liz and they still thought it would be all right to leave me with her. I won’t be sixteen until June, six whole months, and where can I go on my own without a National Insurance Number and looking younger than my age?

  I have to make it through the rest of today and tomorrow, and then I can go down to South Wales and talk to Auntie Teg and Glorfindel and see what I can do. If they’d leave me alone I can cope with school, at least for this year. When you’re sixteen you can live alone. I could do what Janine said, get a job and do A Levels part time, like Wim. I could do that.

  They must do everything in the kitchen and their rooms, the parts of the house I haven’t seen. I have to stay near Daniel. He thinks I’m being irrationally hysterical, but he’ll humour me. He’s not too bad. I think he kind of likes me. They’re eating down there, and drinking, and I’m going to go down and say I’m sorry I was hysterical but the thought of piercing my ears fills me with a terrible dread and fear and if they’ll promise never to mention it again I’ll promise never to run out of the room and barricade myself in my room. If I need to, I’ll promise to go right away and never see them again after June. They are the ones paying for school, not Daniel. I could say I’ll pay them back when I can.

  I’m not absolutely sure they know I know—I mean know that it isn’t just an irrational fear. In front of Daniel they’ll pretend to agree. Daniel’s their weak point. Anyway, they can’t actually do it until Thursday. Deep breath. I’m going down.

  WEDNESDAY 26TH DECEMBER 1979

  On the other hand, how do I know they’re evil? Why is that my assumption? Maybe they are exactly what they seem, except with a bit of magic, and they know nothing about me except the obvious. Maybe all they want is to make me into a nice niece. (A nice niece from Nice ate a nice Nice biscuit and an iced bun . . .)

  I know having those holes bored would take me away from magic. I’m sure they know that, or they wouldn’t be so adamant, but I’m not sure if they know I know about magic. Most people don’t. For most people, it would be no loss. Though it’s girls, boys mostly don’t get their ears pierced. Can men do magic? I’m sure they can, but I don’t seem to meet them. What I was thinking about vaccination, maybe they were thinking of it like that, to make me safe from the temptation of doing magic. I thought those earrings were to control me, but maybe they were to make me more like everyone else. They have a tame brother. Maybe they want a tame niece. In that case, they’d probably be okay with me going back to school and not trying again until half term, or even Easter. School is where they want me to be. School is insulated from magic, as I noticed right away, and I won’t do any anyway.

  I do want to go back to Arlinghurst, even though it’s moronic and the food is awful and there’s no privacy at all, because I have started to build my karass there. I have the book club, I have the library—both libraries. I can put up with everything else. I have been putting up with it. And I want to get my O Levels, and my A Levels if possible. I want to go to university and finally meet some people I can talk to. Gramma said I would find equals there, that it was worth pressing on. She always said that when I was discouraged abou
t maths or memorising Latin or something. Even if I get O Levels, well, O Levels are a qualification. Anyone without them is going to be assumed to be an idiot, and there won’t be any jobs for them except idiot jobs. Being a poet, that doesn’t matter, there aren’t any qualifications for that, but I’m going to need to do something to keep food in the oven, and I’d rather it was something fun. I need O Levels at the very least. I need to either go back to Arlinghurst, which means staying on such terms with the aunts that they’ll pay for it, or finding another school somewhere.

  So anyway, yesterday.

  I went down and apologised for running off—limping off is more like it. I explained that I appreciated they’d meant it kindly but the thought of having my ears pierced distresses me inordinately—they must have picked that up. They didn’t try to persuade me any more, and the earring box had been taken away from my other presents. They said that we’d forget about it, and they brought me some cold turkey and stuffing, which was dry but not too awful. Then we played Monopoly, which one of them won, though I gave them a good game.

  The weird thing about Monopoly was that you could see how long they’d been playing together, the four of them. They all had favourite pieces which they instantly grabbed. Their pieces, when I occasionally had to move them a few squares on my side of the board to save leaning, were full of the magic of use and fondness. In the pieces, I could tell them apart for the first time. They always dress alike, but the dog, racing car and top hat know. The other weird thing about it was how we were sitting there playing it like a normal family, only not, because I don’t belong, but even leaving me out, they’re not. Normal families have different generations, and they’re all one generation. Normal families have married people. Daniel’s the only one of them to have married, and look who he picked! Normal families are not just forty-year-old children who are in charge now without having grown up. There were times in that game when they were squabbling with each other when I felt as if I was the oldest person at the table.