Jo Walton - Among Others

“The way they speak really isn’t much like people, not even dead people,” I said. “What you’re saying makes sense, and it would fit perfectly in a story, but I’m not sure it feels right.”

“It would explain why they like ruins,” he said. “I went back there afterwards, on Saturday. I could sort of see them, out of the corner of my eye, when I was touching your rock.” He touched his pocket when he mentioned it. I liked the thought that he was carrying around something I’d had so long. It won’t really do anything except protect him from my mother—but goodness knows, that can’t be a bad thing.

“You should be able to see them,” I said. “They’re all over.”

“They’re ghosts,” he said. “You just think they’re fairies.”

“I don’t know what they are, and I don’t know that it really matters,” I said.

“Don’t you want to find out?” he asked, his eyes gleaming. That’s the spirit of science fiction.

“Yes,” I said, but I didn’t really mean it. They are what they are, that’s all.

“Well, what do you think they have to do with?”

“Places,” I said, very sure. “They don’t move around all that much. Glor—my friend did magic to make me come down to South Wales at Halloween, he didn’t come here and speak to me.”

“Well, that’s like ghosts, lingering where they come from.”

I shook my head.

“Will you teach me magic?” he asked next.

I jumped. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s so dangerous. If you don’t know what you’re doing, and I don’t mean you, I mean anyone, anyone who doesn’t know enough, it’s so hard not to do things that have wide-reaching effects and you don’t know what.” This was the perfect opportunity to tell him about the karass spell, and I knew it, but when it came to it, I didn’t want to. “Like George Orr in The Lathe of Heaven , only with magic, not with dreams.”

“Have you done anything that’s like that?” he asked.

So I had to tell him. “You’re not going to like it. But I was very lonely and very desperate. I was doing a magic for protection against my mother, because she kept sending me terrible dreams all the time. And while I was at it, I did a magic to find me a karass.”

He looked blank. “What’s a karass?”

“You haven’t read Vonnegut? Oh well, you’d like him I think. Start with Cat’s Cradle . But anyway, a karass is a group of people who are genuinely connected together. And the opposite is a granfalloon, a group that has a fake kind of connection, like all being in school together. I did a magic to find me friends.”

He actually recoiled, almost knocking his chair over. “And you think it worked ?”

“The day after, Greg invited me to the book group.” I let that hang there while he filled in the implications for himself.

“But we’d been meeting for months already. You just ... found us.”

“I hope so,” I said. “But I didn’t know anything about it before. I’d never seen any indication of it, or of fandom either.”

I looked at him. He was rarer than a unicorn, a beautiful boy in a red-checked shirt who read and thought and talked about books. How much of his life had my magic touched, to make him what he was? Had he even existed before? Or what had he been? There’s no knowing, no way to know. He was here now, and I was, and that was all.

“But I was there,” he said. “I was going to it. I know it was there. I was at Seacon in Brighton last summer.”

“ Er’ perrhenne ,” I said, with my best guess at pronunciation.

I am used to people being afraid of me, but I don’t really like it. I don’t suppose even Tiberius really liked it. But after a horrible instant his face softened. “It must have just found us for you. You couldn’t have changed all that,” he said, and picking up his Vimto, drained the bottle.

“I wanted to tell you, because there’s an ethical question about why you like me, if you like me because of that,” I said, to make it perfectly clear.

He laughed, a little shakily. “I’ll have to think about that,” he said.

We walked back through the wet streets to the station, not holding hands. But on the train, which was much emptier going back, we sat together, and our sides touched and after a moment he put his arm around me. “It’s a lot to take in,” he said. “I always wanted the world to have magic in it.”

“I’d prefer spaceships,” I said. “Or if there has to be magic, then less confusing magic, magic with easy rules, like in books.”

“Let’s talk about something normal,” he said. “Like, why do you have such short hair? I like it, but it’s really unusual.”

“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.

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.

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.