Among Others

there tomorrow like the bad fairy at the christening. At least that won’t happen here.
    I have wrapped all my presents and put them under the tree. My paper’s nice, dark red with silver threads. We lit the lanterns when everyone had put their presents under—and another bulb went, and I changed it. Then we lit them again and admired it. I put my presents from Deirdre and Miss Carroll under it too.
    Christmas is a time when people ought to be at home. If they have a home, which I suppose I don’t. But I wish I could be with Grampar and Auntie Teg, which is the closest I can get. When I’m grown up, I’ll never go anywhere for Christmas. People can come and see me if they want, but I’ll never go away anywhere.
    They’re playing a record of Christmas carols down there now, I can hear them through the floor. What am I doing here?
    But it’s worse in Afghanistan where the tanks are rolling.
    T UESDAY 25 TH D ECEMBER 1979, C HRISTMAS D AY
    This isn’t going to be the entry I thought it was going to be, which would have been a list of boring presents.
    I was woken by the sound of carols, their record again, which is carols from a cathedral. It’s nice enough, I suppose, and I couldn’t help having a kind of excited moment thinking it was Christmas Day, even if I am here. I went down and we all ate breakfast, cold toast and boiled eggs just like any day. I don’t understand why they make toast that way. They make it in the kitchen and put it into a toast rack where it gets cold and crisp and disgusting. Toast needs butter right away.
    After breakfast we went in and opened presents. They had a very fixed ritual about who opens what first, quite different from the way my family do it. We used to take turns opening one present each around a circle. They do it so each person opens all their presents and then the next person opens all theirs. I was last, because I’m the youngest.
    They were pleased enough with their scarves, though I’d got the colours wrong and two of them swapped when they thought I wasn’t looking. I still can’t tell them apart. (Were Mor and I as alike as that? Would we still have been when we were forty years old?) They’d bought each other appointments for manicures and hair dos and that sort of thing. Daniel thanked me for The Mote in God’s Eye and for the jacket. They bought him whisky, some special kind, and more clothes.
    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