Among Others

entirely human.
    I mean, I know I am. I shouldn’t think my mother is beyond sleeping with the fairies—no, that’s not how you say it. “Sleeping with the fairies” means dead. I shouldn’t think she’s beyond having sex with fairies, but if she did she’d boast about it. She’s never so much as hinted. She wouldn’t have said it was Daniel and made him marry her. Besides, Daniel does kind of look like us, Sam said so. And children of fairies in songs and stories are always great heroes—though come to think I never heard what happened to Tam Lin’s Janet’s child. But look at Earendil and Elwing. No, that’s not what I mean.
    What I mean is, when I look at other people, other girls in school, and see what they like and what they’re happy with and what they want, I don’t feel as if I’m part of their species. And sometimes—sometimes I don’t care. I care about so few people really. Sometimes it feels as if it’s only books that make life worth living, like on Halloween when I wanted to be alive because I hadn’t finished Babel 17 . I’m sure that isn’t normal. I care more about the people in books than the people I see every day. Sometimes Deirdre gets on my wick so much I want to be cruel to her, to call her Dreary the way everyone does, to yell at her that she’s stupid. I only don’t out of sheer selfishness, because she’s practically the only one who talks to me. And Gill, sometimes Gill gives me the creeps. Who could help wanting to Impress a dragon in preference? Who wouldn’t want to be Paul Atreides?
    S UNDAY 25 TH N OVEMBER 1979
    Wrote to Auntie Teg, gratefully. She asked about whether I’d be there for Christmas, so I wrote to Daniel and asked about that. I expect he’ll be fine with it, it’ll get me out of the way. I also wrote to Sam about The Republic , at length. And I wrote in the card to Grampar too—it’s nice, it has an elephant in bed, with a thermometer sticking out beside his trunk.
    I miss Grampar. It’s not that I’d have a lot to talk to him about really, like Sam, it’s just that he’s an essential part of life. He fits into my life. Grampar and Gramma brought us up, and they didn’t need to really, they could have left us with my mother, only they never would.
    Grampar taught us about trees, and Gramma taught us about poetry. He knew every kind of tree and wildflower, and taught us to tell trees from their leaves first, and later from their buds and bark so we would know them in winter. He taught us to plait grass too, and to card wool. Gramma didn’t care about nature so much, though she’d quote “With the kiss of the sun for pardon and the song of the birds for mirth, one is nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on Earth.” But it was the words she loved really, not the garden. She taught us to cook, and to memorise poetry in Welsh and English.
    They were a funny couple in a way. They didn’t agree about all that much. Often they exasperated each other. They didn’t even have all that many interests in common. They met doing amateur dramatics, but she loved plays and he loved being on the stage. Yet they loved each other. The way she used to say “Oh, Luke !” in a fond and exasperated way.
    I think she felt confined by her life. She was a teacher, and a mother and a grandmother. I think she would have liked more poetry in her life, one way or another. She certainly encouraged me to write it. I wonder what she would have thought of T. S. Eliot?
    M ONDAY 26 TH N OVEMBER 1979
    I woke up in the night—this was not a dream. I woke up and I couldn’t move at all, I was absolutely paralysed, and she was in the room, hovering over me, I know she was. I tried to cry out and wake someone but I couldn’t. I could feel her coming nearer, coming down over my face. I couldn’t move or speak, there was nothing to use against her. I started repeating the Litany Against Fear from Dune , in my head, “Fear is the mind killer, fear is the little-death,” and then she was gone and I could move again. I got out of bed and went to get a drink of water and my hand was shaking so much that I poured half of it down my front.
    If she can get in, another time she might kill me.
    The fairies here won’t talk to me, and I can’t write to Glorfindel or Titania and ask them how to stop her. Even if Daniel lets me go there for Christmas, that’s a month, well, close enough.
    I have got two little stones I used in part of the circle last time I