I had seen the pattern of the world. I had sent Mor through to where people are supposed to go when they die. I had been flame. My mother was a pathetic patchwork witch who had used magic so much to meddle in her own life that she had no integrity left and was nothing but a coil of hatreds consuming themselves in futility. We had already hedged her power, with the help of the fairies.
“I have nothing to say to you,” I said, loudly, and took a step forward.
I took another step, which was making my leg hurt quite a bit, but I ignored that, ignored her. I could tell that she was doing something magical, something aimed at me, but my protections, the ones I had made at school, held, and it drained harmlessly away into the ground, the way the pain does in acupuncture.
I took another step and passed her. She reached out and physically grabbed me. Her hands were like claws.
I turned and looked at her. Her eyes were terrifying, just like always. I took a deep breath. “Leave me alone,” I said, and shrugged her off.
She reached up to hit me, and I realised she really was reaching upwards. I was taller than she was. I pushed her, using the momentum of her own movement and the turning of the world. She fell. I took another step on beyond her, up the hill. I couldn’t run, I could barely limp, but I kept on limping upwards.
“How dare you,” she said, from where she had fallen. She sounded really surprised. Then she was drawing on magic again and like the time when Mor died, she sent illusory monstrous shapes swirling around me as I walked. Then, we’d ignored them as best we could. Now I took hold of them and drew them around me. They were sad hollow things without fear to feed them.
I heard a ripping sound, and turned, and gasped with horror. She had taken out the one-volume edition of The Lord of the Rings, which was hers, but the first one I had ever read, and torn out a page. She threw it at me, and it became a burning spear in the air between us. It was dark enough now that it lit everything up with strange extra shadows. I dodged it. She tore another page. I could hardly bear it. I know books are only the words, and I have two copies of it of my own, but I wanted to go back and grab the book from her. The spears weren’t as bad as the violation, they wouldn’t have been even if they’d hit me. How could she use books against me? But I could see how it would seem the obvious thing.
I could do the same. I drew the illusion monsters towards me and gave them a push towards her. They changed and became dragons and huge alien turtles and people in spacesuits and a boy and girl in armour with drawn swords, making a barrier between us, protecting me, rushing down through the dusk towards her. I took another step uphill and away.
She could ignore an illusion as well as I could, of course.
The spears kept coming. They weren’t on fire now, and they were harder to see. She must have torn out handfuls at once and been flinging them wildly. I stopped and reached out to the pattern of the world. They were paper. Paper was wood, so easy to make into a spear, but what did wood really want to be? One came so close I could feel the wind of it passing, and I knew, and laughed. It was what Mor had said here, so long before. It wasn’t even difficult. The spear that was a page became a tree. So did the others, the ones she had already thrown and which were stuck in the ground. For a moment they stood there, roots in the earth, branches reaching, oak and ash and thorn, beech and rowan and fir, huge beautiful mature trees in full leaf. Then they began to move downhill, Burnham Wood coming to Dunsinane. “Huorns will help,” I said, and there were tears in my eyes.
If you love books enough, books will love you back.
They weren’t illusion. They were trees. Trees are what paper was, and wants to be. I could just about see her through them. She was raving and screaming something at me. The pages were turning to trees as soon as she tore them, and sooner. The book, which was in her hands, became a huge mass of ivy and bramble, spreading everywhere. The whole desolation where the Phurnacite had been was a forest, with the ruins of the factory at the heart of it. There were fairies in among the trees. Of course there were. An owl swooped down over the dark pool.
“Sometimes it takes a little longer than you think,” I said.
I kept walking on, up and away from the Phurnacite. She was still raving, down there in the trees. I just kept walking away, as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast. I was out of her reach now. I took two more steps and I was out on the road.
Once there, I could hold on to the bars of the railings to help myself walk. This was useful, and almost as good as a stick. I only had to get to the bus stop. My old stick was in Grampar’s house. Then I saw that I was just like stupid Fanny Robin in Hardy’s stupid story, dragging myself along the railing, and I started to giggle.
As I came to the end of the railings, by the bus stop, still giggling a little, there they were in front of me.
I was more than a little surprised to see Wim, astonished to see Daniel (how had he got away?), and completely amazed to see Sam. The three of them had appeared seemingly out of nowhere like the Trinity, though of course it was all simple enough. Wim had decided to come and had telephoned Daniel who had telephoned Sam. They hadn’t seen me turn to flame and make the pages into trees, at least Daniel didn’t. I think Wim may have seen something out of the corner of his eye. I don’t know what Sam saw. He just smiled.
I didn’t need them in the least, but it was lovely to see them.
Wednesday 20th February 1980
We went in the car to collect my stick and all went to Fedw Hir and saw Grampar. He isn’t going to forgive Daniel any time soon, but that’s the way things are. Auntie Teg made dinner for everyone, with me helping, and then we decided to all spend the night in Grampar’s house, because there really isn’t room in the flat. It was like one of those dreams where everyone is in the wrong place. Grampar liked Wim. He always wanted a son. And Wim really likes Sam. It’s so strange them all being here.
And here I am, still alive, still in the world. It’s my intention to carry on being alive in the world, well, until I die. At Easter I’ll go to Glasgow and see what science fiction fandom is like. Next June I’ll take my exams and pass them, and have qualifications. Then I’ll do A Levels, as it best works out. I’ll go to university. I’ll live, and read, and have friends, a karass, people to talk to. I’ll grow and change and be myself. I’ll belong to libraries wherever I go. Maybe eventually I’ll belong to libraries on other planets. I’ll speak to fairies as I see them and do magic as it comes my way and prevents harm—I’m not going to forget anything. But I won’t use it to cheat or to make my life unreal or go against the pattern. Things will happen that I can’t imagine. I’ll change and grow into a future that will be unimaginably different from the past. I’ll be alive. I’ll be me. I’ll be reading my book. I’ll never drown my books or break my staff. I’ll learn while I live. Eventually I’ll come to death, and die, and I’ll go on through death to new life, or heaven, or whatever unknowable thing is supposed to happen to people when they die. I’ll die and rot and return my cells to life, in the pattern, whatever planet I happen to be on at the time.
That’s what life is, and how I intend to live it.
Gate of Ivrel turns out to be really brill.