Jo Walton - Among Others

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.”