Among Others

getting married noises at me, so I broke up with her.”
    “You certainly get through them,” I said, because I didn’t know what to say.
    “It would be different with someone who wasn’t a moron,” he said, and he was looking at me carefully, and I thought maybe he meant he was interested, but he couldn’t be, not Wim, not in me, and I was feeling breathless enough without that.
    “Let’s go and see if I can find you an elf,” I said.
    He frowned. “Look, it’s all right,” he said. “I know you were just saying that because—well, I’d asked you a very strange question, and you were in a lot of pain on that thing and…”
    “No, it is real,” I said. “I don’t know if you’re going to be able to see them, because you have to believe first, but I think you nearly do. You don’t have pierced ears or anything that would stop you. Just promise you won’t get all sarcastic and hate me if you can’t see them.”
    “I don’t know what to think,” he said, standing up. “Look, Mori, you kind of like me, right?”
    “Right,” I said, cautiously, staying where I was. He was way up above me, but I didn’t want to be struggling to my feet.
    “I kind of like you too,” he said.
    For an instant, I felt wonderfully happy, and then I remembered about the karass magic. I’d cheated. I’d made it happen. He didn’t really like me, well, maybe he did, but he liked me because the magic had made him like me. That didn’t mean he didn’t really think he liked me now, of course, but it made it much more complicated.
    “Come on,” I said, and struggled to my feet, putting my coat on. Wim put on a scruffy brown duffle coat and went out. I followed him out onto the pavement.
    There was an Indian woman with a baby in a pushchair just coming out of the bookshop as we came out. She was wearing a headscarf, which made me think of Nasreen and wonder how she was getting on. We waited for her to pass us and then crossed the road to the pond, where the mallards were chasing each other.
    “You don’t want to talk about it?” Wim asked.
    “I don’t know what to say,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him about the karass magic, and I couldn’t think what was ethical, if I’d sort of accidentally bewitched him. It was a little bit exhilarating and a little bit terrifying, and it felt as if gravity wasn’t quite as strong as normally, or as if someone had decreased the oxygen or something.
    “I’ve never seen you at a loss for words,” he said.
    “Very few people have,” I said.
    He laughed, and followed me into the trees. “This magic thing, you’re not making it up?”
    “Why would I?” I didn’t get it. “It’s just that I really have sworn an oath not to do magic except to prevent harm, because it’s so difficult to understand the consequences. Anyway, magic is difficult to show, because it’s so deniable. You can say it would have happened anyway. And with the, um, the elves”—I didn’t want to say fairies, it sounded too babyish— “not everybody can see them, not all the time. You need to believe they’re there first, before you can.”
    “Can’t you give me a charm so I can see them? Or teach me their names? I’m not like stupid Thomas Covenant, you know.”
    “A charm is a good idea,” I said. I handed him my pocket rock and he rubbed it thoughtfully in his fingers. “This should help.” It wouldn’t exactly help him see the fairies, as all there was on it was general protection and specific protection against my mother, but if he thought it would, it might. “I haven’t read the Covenant books. I saw them, but it compared them to Tolkien on the cover so I didn’t want to read them.”
    “It isn’t the author’s fault what the publishers put on the cover,” he said. “Thomas Covenant is a leper who mopes his way around a fantasy world most of us would give our right arms to be in, refusing to believe anything is real.”
    “If it’s from the point of view of a depressed leper who doesn’t believe in it, I’m glad I haven’t read them!”
    He laughed. “There are some great giants. And it is a fantasy world, unless he’s mad, which he thinks he is and you can’t tell.”
    We were quite deep in among the trees now. It was muddy, as Harriet had said it would be. There were a few fairies in the trees. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to see, but hold tight to that rock and try looking there,” I said, pointing with my chin.
    Wim turned his head