Among Others

He looked at me seriously with his beautiful eyes. And even if he’s wrong about some fairly fundamental things, he is prepared to listen. I feel a little shiver when I think about him looking at me. How about those three with the purple blazers, who are my own age? (Must find out their names too, but with a less burning urgency.) I’d certainly like to get to know them better, and they are interested in books. I’ll try to talk to them next time. Harriet? I didn’t connect with her much, but she’s very intelligent. Brian? Keith? I don’t know. The others, who I didn’t really meet properly? Too early to tell. Greg? Maybe. Miss Carroll? (Alison…)
    I looked up at her as I wrote her name. She’s puttering about sticking labels in books at her desk. For all that she said she’s keeping her clients satisfied, she took me to the book club because of the magic. I know she did, and it makes me feel a little sick. Magic works on what’s there, so probably she liked me a little anyway, and noticed me. She got me The Republic . Though magic can make things happen before you do it. It can make things have happened. Maybe if I hadn’t done that magic, she wouldn’t have ordered the Plato. I don’t know if she likes me, really, or if it’s only the magic making her. If she doesn’t really like me, how can I like her back? How can it mean anything?
    And of course, the same goes for the others, really. Is it really a karass, if I used magic to make it happen? It’s like making the bus come, all those people, all those days, all those lives changed, just to make the bus be coming at the moment I want it. Only it’s more than that, making them like me. Making them be my karass.
    I didn’t think this through enough. I was thinking about a karass in too abstract a way, I didn’t think enough about the people, about manipulating them. I didn’t even know them, and I was doing it.
    Is this how she started? My mother, Liz?
    I wish I could talk to Glorfindel about this, or somebody who would understand. I don’t know if he would or not, but he’s the most likely to. I don’t understand why the fairies here are so unfriendly—uncaring is more like it. They should be getting used to me by now. When I go home after Christmas, I’ll find him and talk to him no matter what.
    Is using magic inherently bad? Is it if it’s for yourself? Am I supposed to leave myself totally vulnerable to her using it against me, then? Or was it only the karass magic that was bad, and the protection was okay? Or—always the trap with magic—was it all going to happen anyway and I only think the magic did it? No, look at the timing. It was my karass magic, and I think maybe it brought the whole book club (that’s been meeting for months) into existence. I never saw anything about it before, and I go to the library all the time. Maybe those people wouldn’t even exist. Maybe Harriet—who is the oldest—maybe her parents wouldn’t have had her, maybe her whole life, sixty years or more, exists just so there could be a book club and I could have a karass, so we could sit there discussing The Lathe of Heaven , which is the perfect book for this, and whether it’s like Dick.
    Gosh I do hope it isn’t like Dick. Like Dick doesn’t bear thinking about.
    I don’t want to be like her.
    I won’t use magic any more, or anyway, just to protect myself and other people and the world. It’s better to be like George Orr than have her win. I don’t know what she’s doing. There have been no more dreams, and no more poisonous letters either. I’m sort of worried that this means she’s planning something worse.
    What she really wants is to set herself up as a dark queen. I don’t know how that would have worked, but that’s what she wants. (She has read LOTR, and I don’t know if she read it identifying with all of the evil people and hoping the good ones wouldn’t resist their temptations, but I know she has read it because the first time I read it, it was her copy. This proves that just reading it isn’t enough. After all, the devil can quote scripture.) She wants everyone to love her and despair. That’s not a sane goal, but it’s what she wants. This is not what I want. What would be the point? It’s bad enough thinking about making Miss Carroll (who stopped shelving to smile at me when she saw me looking over at her) like me.
    How could anyone want a world of puppets?
    We were so right to stop her, and it really was worth it,