Among Others

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.”