Among Others

right away, and I won’t do any anyway.
    I do want to go back to Arlinghurst, even though it’s moronic and the food is awful and there’s no privacy at all, because I have started to build my karass there. I have the book club, I have the library—both libraries. I can put up with everything else. I have been putting up with it. And I want to get my O Levels, and my A Levels if possible. I want to go to university and finally meet some people I can talk to. Gramma said I would find equals there, that it was worth pressing on. She always said that when I was discouraged about maths or memorising Latin or something. Even if I get O Levels, well, O Levels are a qualification. Anyone without them is going to be assumed to be an idiot, and there won’t be any jobs for them except idiot jobs. Being a poet, that doesn’t matter, there aren’t any qualifications for that, but I’m going to need to do something to keep food in the oven, and I’d rather it was something fun. I need O Levels at the very least. I need to either go back to Arlinghurst, which means staying on such terms with the aunts that they’ll pay for it, or finding another school somewhere.
    So anyway, yesterday.
    I went down and apologised for running off—limping off is more like it. I explained that I appreciated they’d meant it kindly but the thought of having my ears pierced distresses me inordinately—they must have picked that up. They didn’t try to persuade me any more, and the earring box had been taken away from my other presents. They said that we’d forget about it, and they brought me some cold turkey and stuffing, which was dry but not too awful. Then we played Monopoly, which one of them won, though I gave them a good game.
    The weird thing about Monopoly was that you could see how long they’d been playing together, the four of them. They all had favourite pieces which they instantly grabbed. Their pieces, when I occasionally had to move them a few squares on my side of the board to save leaning, were full of the magic of use and fondness. In the pieces, I could tell them apart for the first time. They always dress alike, but the dog, racing car and top hat know. The other weird thing about it was how we were sitting there playing it like a normal family, only not, because I don’t belong, but even leaving me out, they’re not. Normal families have different generations, and they’re all one generation. Normal families have married people. Daniel’s the only one of them to have married, and look who he picked! Normal families are not just forty-year-old children who are in charge now without having grown up. There were times in that game when they were squabbling with each other when I felt as if I was the oldest person at the table.
    Afterwards we ate Christmas cake, though I just crumbled mine on my plate because it would be a really obvious thing to magic, because it has all those connections to everything. Anyway I don’t like any fruitcake except Auntie Bessie’s. Then I followed Daniel into his study and got him talking about the books he’d sent me, especially Dune . Arrakis is such a great world. You could feel it was real, with the different cultures. You don’t see culture clash often enough in SF, and it’s very interesting. Paul going into the desert to the Fremen is someone going right into another culture, and there are secrets both ways. Daniel was quite lively talking about this, and though he’d poured a glass of whisky, he only sipped it. He was smoking the whole time, of course. He asked me what I’d been reading and about the book club and what I’d like to borrow, and all the time I didn’t say “Do you know your sisters are witches?” and he didn’t say “So, why did you freak out about the earring thing?” We weren’t saying those things so loudly you could almost hear them.
    Then I got him on the subject of Sam, which is the most human he ever is. They must not be able to mess with Sam, maybe because of his religion? But Sam is a stable point for Daniel, a sane point. The more I was talking to him the more I was wondering how much they control him, what things he isn’t able to think about, what things make him reach for the bottle. They have a tame brother. They have a man to manage the estate. That’s when I thought that what they want is a Nice Niece. Because if they’re not evil witches who want to take over the world—they’re not insane, they’re not like Liz—if