I saw the fairy who spoke to me that first time here, up in the tree. There were other eyes in the branches, but I didn’t recognise any of them and they didn’t speak. I don’t know how to make friends with them and get them to trust me. They’re different from our fairies, wilder, further from people.
Even with all that feeling like left luggage I have, even with Halloween, I have never felt so much like half a person as I did last night. It felt as if an arm had been cut off, as if I was accustomed to holding things in both hands and now I had to struggle along with one, only magically. And yet—I didn’t try to do a healing on that. I didn’t even think of it until now. Or on my leg either. I wonder if I could? It feels as if it’s dangerous to try, that even trying what I did was dangerous, trying for a karass. Maybe I shouldn’t have extended it beyond the protection, which I really needed to do. Doing magic for things you want yourself isn’t safe. Glorfindel told me that. Most of what I want I can’t have for years, if at all. I know that. But a karass shouldn’t be impossible, should it? Or too dangerous to try for?
Of course, it’s impossible to know whether it worked. That’s always the problem with magic. One of the problems. Among the problems …
I’m exhausted today. I nearly fell asleep over Dickens in English. Mind you, he’s snoozeworthy at the best of times. I keep yawning. But maybe tonight I will sleep without dreams. We’ll see.
SATURDAY 1ST DECEMBER 1979
Today in the library, the male librarian stopped me. “You ordered Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains?” he asked.
I nodded.
“There’s never been a British edition, so I’m afraid we can’t get that for you.”
“Ah,” I said, disappointed. “Thank you anyway.”
“I’ve noticed you’ve been doing a lot of interlibrary loans,” he said.
“She said, the librarian said it would be all right,” I stammered. “She said it was free because I’m under sixteen.”
“There’s no problem, you order as many books as you want and we’ll get them for you,” he said.
I relaxed and smiled at him.
“I just noticed that a lot of them are SF, and I wondered if you’d like to join our Tuesday evening SF book club.”
A karass, I thought. Magic does work. My eyes filled up with tears and I couldn’t speak for a moment because I was choking on them. “I don’t know if they’ll let me come in from school,” I said, ungraciously. “What time is it?”
“We start at six, and usually go on until about eight. It’s right here in the library. I understand that the process for girls from Arlinghurst who want to go to outside classes or educational activities is that they need a parent’s signature, and a teacher or a librarian’s signature.”
“They agreed about the library,” I said.
“They did.” He smiled at me. He’s going a bit bald on top, but he’s not very old, and he has a lovely smile.
“And it would be very educational,” I went on.
“It certainly would,” he agreed. “I don’t know if you could get a signature by this Tuesday, when we’re discussing Le Guin, but the Tuesday after we’re discussing Robert Silverberg, who I’ve noticed you seem to like.”
I wrote down the information about it and collected my books and went and sat in the bakery cafe so happy I could sing. A karass, or the start of one! Oh I hope I can get there this Tuesday! I only haven’t ordered any Le Guin from the library because I’ve read it all already, or at least I think so. I’d have a lot to say about her. A karass! Epic! I could sing with delight.
SUNDAY 2ND DECEMBER 1979
Miss Carroll has signed the form for me to leave school for the book club! She says I’d have to have all my prep done ahead, but that’s no trouble. She said they’d see it would be no trouble from my marks, but my marks had better not drop because of the book club. I said they certainly wouldn’t. She asked if I’d liked the Tey, and I said I had enjoyed it a lot, which is true.
Carpenter says in the Inklings book that Lewis meant Aslan to be Jesus. I can sort of see it, but all the same it feels like a betrayal. It feels like allegory. No wonder Tolkien was cross. I’d have been cross too. I also feel tricked, because I didn’t notice all this time. Sometimes I’m so stupid—but Aslan was always so much himself. I don’t know what I think about Jesus, but I know what I think about Aslan.
I wrote to Grampar and Auntie Teg, telling them about the book club. And I wrote to Daniel begging him to sign the book club thing. I’m pretty sure he will. I also told him about the Aslan/Jesus conflation thing because it would be interesting to see what he thinks, and I asked him again about going home for Christmas. I told Grampar I’d try to.
I had a conversation with Gill, finally. It was pouring buckets, so people were doing dancing in the hall instead of games this afternoon, and she was hanging back instead of going to change afterwards, while I was coming out of the prep room where I’d been writing letters. She didn’t say anything directly, but I said “Gill, I don’t know if I’ve got the wrong idea here, but I wanted to say I like you as a friend, but I’m not interested in a physical relationship with you.”