(no subject)
Just found this. I wrote it ages ago, the first time I had Summer sitting in my head and clouding it up with cigarette smoke, before I realised what I wanted to do with her. Now I know what I want to do with her and I have lost the ability to write. Feh.
This comes at the end of the first chapter to something I started and dropped pretty much immediately, but I like this part. Makes me think maybe I'm not *entirely* crap. I like it, anyway.
Summer was the last person on the planet who should have had her name. Such a pretty name . . .
When Leah arrived she was lying flat out on her bed with her boots on - the world's most wrecked Doc Martens - listening to Simon and Garfunkel and staring at her cigarette, held above her head.
"It's the smoke," she said, not even looking up as Leah knocked and poked her head into the room. "When you watch it . . ."
Summer's wild dark hair was spread in tangled waves across her pillow, her black-rimmed glasses knocked slightly crooked by her position. "Are you stoned?" Leah said carefully, picking her way across the floor - covered in dropped clothes and newspapers and books - to sit in the desk chair. Summer was a second year philosophy student and lived in college accommodation, which meant cramped and cold and full of students. Leah couldn't actually imagine Summer living in normal housing; Summer in a semi in the suburbs . . . ?
"I'm offended," Summer said, rolling to her bedside table and stubbing out her cigarette, then sitting up and rubbing her hair. "Don't do drugs, kid. You'll do in your brain."
Leah glanced at her and went back to reading the notes on top of Summer's laptop, scribbled on lined paper in pencil and full of question marks. "Are you legally required to say that to me or something?"
Summer turned her lighter over in her fingers, then closed her hand around it and waded across her floor to her sink, so she could blink at herself in the mirror. "When you came to me you were a whimpering little mouse of a kid. Now you're an evil-minded snarky bitch of a girl . . ."
"I did learn from the best."
"Huh." Summer snatched her notes off the laptop, screwed them into a ball and threw them into the already full bin, turned off her CD player and grabbed her red mackintosh from the hook on the back of the door. "Come on, then. We'll go for a walk."
"A walk? What part of my training is a walk?"
"Apparently you've learned from me all I can teach," Summer said, holding the door open. "Now we walk and we talk. Get up and get out the door."
Heading back downstairs Summer stopped to talk to a girl coming upstairs, and somewhere in the course of eavesdropping in their conversation Leah discovered the reason Summer was moving in slow motion today. As they walked outside, finally alone again, Leah said, "You're hungover."
Summer winced at the sun and resettled her glasses. "Don't drink to excess, kid. You'll do in your liver."
"You got trashed last night."
"I was depressed. Some friends came over to cheer me up."
"Did it work?"
Summer squinted at the blue, blue autumn sky. "No. How old are you?"
"Sixteen. You *never* remember."
"Can you go in pubs at your age?"
"You want to start drinking again? *Now*?"
"I want food not cooked in our disease-ridden kitchen," Summer muttered, rubbing her eyes under her glasses. "Where else can you get food? Not a pub?"
"How hungover are you?"
"Not very." She spread her arms and said resignedly, "This is just *me*, kid. No brain cells left. Those I was born with I killed stupidly . . . why'm I in charge of a kid . . . ?"
Kid. Leah hated being a kid to everyone.
"Let's go to Tatties and get you a breakfast." she muttered, taking Summer's arm and dragging her forward. "And a couple of pints of coffee."
After Summer had eaten and was staring into her cup of coffee, Leah put down her mug of hot chocolate and said, "Why *were* you put in charge of me?"
Summer shrugged, put a cigarette in her mouth and fumbled her lighter; Leah took it off her and Summer let her, brushed her long, wavy hair back, hard, with both hands. She slumped slowly so she was holding her head up in her hands, elbows on the table on either side of her empty breakfast plate, eyes fixed on the grease-slick that was all that remained of her meal.
"God knows," she muttered, and all Leah could see was the unlit cigarette jogging up and down, a white marker to her words. "Can't even look after myself, let alone a kid . . ."
"You're not here to *look after me*," Leah said. "You're meant to be teaching me to control my powers. And I'm not a kid."
"Yeah you are." Summer took the cigarette from her mouth and stared at it almost hungrily, then put it back in its packet. "Sixteen is a kid. Sure as hell doesn't feel like it when you're there but feelings don't mean much in age terms. Dun't mean you're not a person, still. Best time in your life to find out what sort of person you are, while you're still a kid . . ."
Leah folded her arms and sat back in her chair. "I'm less of a kid than you and you're meant to be teaching me."
Summer shrugged again. "When Dylan sang 'How many roads must a man walk down' he sure as hell didn't mean nineteen, you're right there."
"Woman."
"What?"
"You're not a man."
Summer waved a hand. "Whatever. The gender is irrelevant in terms of the sentiment. The point is . . . there's no number, hah, unless you want forty-two, right? No-one ever . . . it's not like . . . yeah. This is why I suck at philosophy." She brushed her hair back hard again and said, "Christ, I want a fag."
"We're in the no smoking section."
"You sat us here on purpose," Summer said sulkily.
"It's for your own good. And mine. Every time I'm with you I get one step closer to lung cancer."
Summer tapped her box of cigarettes on the table, turned it, tapped it, turned it, tapped it. Leah watched her for a long time.
"What did you get so depressed about?"
Taking a deep breath, Summer sat up properly and tapped her cigarette box three time on the table in quick succession. "Nothing you need to think about. So . . . any questions about magic?"
"Why won't you tell me?"
"Because it's none of your *damned* business. Magic is. Any questions?"
Leah was pretty used to Summer by now, but that tone startled her, knocked her off course; she felt young and shamed inside, small. It was all she could do to shake her head and breathe through lips that didn't feel like they belonged, stuck on as an afterthought, "No."
For her part, Summer resettled her glasses and looked a little ashamed, then sniffed and looked out of the window. "Coming up to exams," she said. "You're on GCSEs, right?"
". . . yes . . ."
Summer turned and tapped, turned and tapped. She stood up with a scrape of her chair.
"See?" she said. "Still a kid. Come on, there's something I want to show you. Christ, I've got a sick headache like you wouldn't believe . . ."
Summer led her out of the café, between the tables and past the counter - Summer nodded to the man at the till and he smiled - and into the street, heading towards Kings. Summer had to stop and squint again for a second on the doorstep and blaspheme while rubbing her eyes ("Damned sunlight, should never be this bloody bright, god Jesus I wish it was cloudy-"), and then they were off again, turning just before Caius down Trinity Lane, all tall, imposing chimneys, Trinity's side gate at the foot of the lane. Summer walked along with her hands in her pockets and her eyes half-closed against the morning.
"I need sunglasses. Or a hat. Right - look here."
The lane came between the sides of Trinity College and Gonville and Caius College, looking almost shabby next to Trinity, which was always immaculate. Summer had stopped beside the windows of Caius bar, and was looking at Leah as if she expected her to do something. Leah glanced at her, still uneasy from earlier - Summer was unnervingly unpredictable sometimes - and tried to work out what she was meant to be looking at. There, amongst the blackened brickwork, was a little chalk circle; quite a complicated design, divided up by squares or diamonds inside like the magic circles wizards used in cartoons. There were little symbols in the circle, only four of them, placed randomly as far as Leah could see.
"So?" Summer said, and when Leah looked at her she found the philosopher-mage had taken the time she wasn't paying attention to light a cigarette she was now drawing on like the elixir of life. Leah scowled and bent in closer to the circle.
"It's too dark down here, I can't see it properly-"
Summer held her lighter under the circle. Leah sighed, squinted closer.
". . . is that a crescent moon?"
Summer shrugged. With her it could mean *I don't know* or *yes* or *no* so Leah didn't find it very helpful.
"I give up. What are you trying to show me?"
Summer's eyes flicked, for barely a second, up and down the lane; a bike whizzed past them and someone was struggling with too many shopping bags at the foot of the street, but neither were very close.
"So you know all you need to know about auras. From now you just have to practise, make your aura stronger. But there's more to magic than just what comes naturally like your aura. From now on the booklearning begins."
"Booklearning?"
"I had the greatest stroke of genius last night," Summer said cheerfully, cigarette in her mouth as she fished in her mac pockets for something. "Not only did I put the book in here in readiness, I also put a post-it on my mirror telling myself I put it there. Harharr-"
The book was small, messily sewn together and bound in floppy old leather, tied up with a leather thong. Summer passed it to Leah. "Copy it out and give it back, I have to give it back to Jinny . . . and when you are done, we shall discuss it."
"Copy it out?" Leah said doubtfully. It was a small book, but it was thick.
Summer shrugged again. "It's a rare book and you need your own copy. Anyway, you'll remember it better that way."
"And then what? What is it?"
Summer ran her fingers over the circle on the wall and for a second the dark red light of her aura glowed between her fingertips and the old stone.
"They're exactly what they look like. Magic circles. They kind of . . . solidify your aura's magic. Make it easier to direct in precise ways. I've never been so good with them," she added, dropping what was left of her cigarette and swivelling her boot on it. "But a lifetime of formal education has taught me that competence within a subject has nothing to do with ability to teach it."
"I still don't think I understand," Leah said, looking at the book in her hand. "What can you do with them? What was that one for?"
She nodded at the circle on the wall. Summer stared at it, brows lowered slightly, and then turned from it with a flick of her long coat. "Portal," she said. "Come on, back to my place. I'll give you a live demonstration, then you have to sod off. I have a history of ancient essay to write and I feel like death."
"A portal to where?" Leah said, stumbling after her.
"Somewhere else. Work it out with that book, that's your homework."
"I seem to have a hell of a lot of homework this week," Leah said darkly.
"Yeah. Should keep you out of trouble." Summer squinted in the bright morning as they left the lane and said, "We have got to reschedule these meetings. I just don't do mornings."
This comes at the end of the first chapter to something I started and dropped pretty much immediately, but I like this part. Makes me think maybe I'm not *entirely* crap. I like it, anyway.
Summer was the last person on the planet who should have had her name. Such a pretty name . . .
When Leah arrived she was lying flat out on her bed with her boots on - the world's most wrecked Doc Martens - listening to Simon and Garfunkel and staring at her cigarette, held above her head.
"It's the smoke," she said, not even looking up as Leah knocked and poked her head into the room. "When you watch it . . ."
Summer's wild dark hair was spread in tangled waves across her pillow, her black-rimmed glasses knocked slightly crooked by her position. "Are you stoned?" Leah said carefully, picking her way across the floor - covered in dropped clothes and newspapers and books - to sit in the desk chair. Summer was a second year philosophy student and lived in college accommodation, which meant cramped and cold and full of students. Leah couldn't actually imagine Summer living in normal housing; Summer in a semi in the suburbs . . . ?
"I'm offended," Summer said, rolling to her bedside table and stubbing out her cigarette, then sitting up and rubbing her hair. "Don't do drugs, kid. You'll do in your brain."
Leah glanced at her and went back to reading the notes on top of Summer's laptop, scribbled on lined paper in pencil and full of question marks. "Are you legally required to say that to me or something?"
Summer turned her lighter over in her fingers, then closed her hand around it and waded across her floor to her sink, so she could blink at herself in the mirror. "When you came to me you were a whimpering little mouse of a kid. Now you're an evil-minded snarky bitch of a girl . . ."
"I did learn from the best."
"Huh." Summer snatched her notes off the laptop, screwed them into a ball and threw them into the already full bin, turned off her CD player and grabbed her red mackintosh from the hook on the back of the door. "Come on, then. We'll go for a walk."
"A walk? What part of my training is a walk?"
"Apparently you've learned from me all I can teach," Summer said, holding the door open. "Now we walk and we talk. Get up and get out the door."
Heading back downstairs Summer stopped to talk to a girl coming upstairs, and somewhere in the course of eavesdropping in their conversation Leah discovered the reason Summer was moving in slow motion today. As they walked outside, finally alone again, Leah said, "You're hungover."
Summer winced at the sun and resettled her glasses. "Don't drink to excess, kid. You'll do in your liver."
"You got trashed last night."
"I was depressed. Some friends came over to cheer me up."
"Did it work?"
Summer squinted at the blue, blue autumn sky. "No. How old are you?"
"Sixteen. You *never* remember."
"Can you go in pubs at your age?"
"You want to start drinking again? *Now*?"
"I want food not cooked in our disease-ridden kitchen," Summer muttered, rubbing her eyes under her glasses. "Where else can you get food? Not a pub?"
"How hungover are you?"
"Not very." She spread her arms and said resignedly, "This is just *me*, kid. No brain cells left. Those I was born with I killed stupidly . . . why'm I in charge of a kid . . . ?"
Kid. Leah hated being a kid to everyone.
"Let's go to Tatties and get you a breakfast." she muttered, taking Summer's arm and dragging her forward. "And a couple of pints of coffee."
After Summer had eaten and was staring into her cup of coffee, Leah put down her mug of hot chocolate and said, "Why *were* you put in charge of me?"
Summer shrugged, put a cigarette in her mouth and fumbled her lighter; Leah took it off her and Summer let her, brushed her long, wavy hair back, hard, with both hands. She slumped slowly so she was holding her head up in her hands, elbows on the table on either side of her empty breakfast plate, eyes fixed on the grease-slick that was all that remained of her meal.
"God knows," she muttered, and all Leah could see was the unlit cigarette jogging up and down, a white marker to her words. "Can't even look after myself, let alone a kid . . ."
"You're not here to *look after me*," Leah said. "You're meant to be teaching me to control my powers. And I'm not a kid."
"Yeah you are." Summer took the cigarette from her mouth and stared at it almost hungrily, then put it back in its packet. "Sixteen is a kid. Sure as hell doesn't feel like it when you're there but feelings don't mean much in age terms. Dun't mean you're not a person, still. Best time in your life to find out what sort of person you are, while you're still a kid . . ."
Leah folded her arms and sat back in her chair. "I'm less of a kid than you and you're meant to be teaching me."
Summer shrugged again. "When Dylan sang 'How many roads must a man walk down' he sure as hell didn't mean nineteen, you're right there."
"Woman."
"What?"
"You're not a man."
Summer waved a hand. "Whatever. The gender is irrelevant in terms of the sentiment. The point is . . . there's no number, hah, unless you want forty-two, right? No-one ever . . . it's not like . . . yeah. This is why I suck at philosophy." She brushed her hair back hard again and said, "Christ, I want a fag."
"We're in the no smoking section."
"You sat us here on purpose," Summer said sulkily.
"It's for your own good. And mine. Every time I'm with you I get one step closer to lung cancer."
Summer tapped her box of cigarettes on the table, turned it, tapped it, turned it, tapped it. Leah watched her for a long time.
"What did you get so depressed about?"
Taking a deep breath, Summer sat up properly and tapped her cigarette box three time on the table in quick succession. "Nothing you need to think about. So . . . any questions about magic?"
"Why won't you tell me?"
"Because it's none of your *damned* business. Magic is. Any questions?"
Leah was pretty used to Summer by now, but that tone startled her, knocked her off course; she felt young and shamed inside, small. It was all she could do to shake her head and breathe through lips that didn't feel like they belonged, stuck on as an afterthought, "No."
For her part, Summer resettled her glasses and looked a little ashamed, then sniffed and looked out of the window. "Coming up to exams," she said. "You're on GCSEs, right?"
". . . yes . . ."
Summer turned and tapped, turned and tapped. She stood up with a scrape of her chair.
"See?" she said. "Still a kid. Come on, there's something I want to show you. Christ, I've got a sick headache like you wouldn't believe . . ."
Summer led her out of the café, between the tables and past the counter - Summer nodded to the man at the till and he smiled - and into the street, heading towards Kings. Summer had to stop and squint again for a second on the doorstep and blaspheme while rubbing her eyes ("Damned sunlight, should never be this bloody bright, god Jesus I wish it was cloudy-"), and then they were off again, turning just before Caius down Trinity Lane, all tall, imposing chimneys, Trinity's side gate at the foot of the lane. Summer walked along with her hands in her pockets and her eyes half-closed against the morning.
"I need sunglasses. Or a hat. Right - look here."
The lane came between the sides of Trinity College and Gonville and Caius College, looking almost shabby next to Trinity, which was always immaculate. Summer had stopped beside the windows of Caius bar, and was looking at Leah as if she expected her to do something. Leah glanced at her, still uneasy from earlier - Summer was unnervingly unpredictable sometimes - and tried to work out what she was meant to be looking at. There, amongst the blackened brickwork, was a little chalk circle; quite a complicated design, divided up by squares or diamonds inside like the magic circles wizards used in cartoons. There were little symbols in the circle, only four of them, placed randomly as far as Leah could see.
"So?" Summer said, and when Leah looked at her she found the philosopher-mage had taken the time she wasn't paying attention to light a cigarette she was now drawing on like the elixir of life. Leah scowled and bent in closer to the circle.
"It's too dark down here, I can't see it properly-"
Summer held her lighter under the circle. Leah sighed, squinted closer.
". . . is that a crescent moon?"
Summer shrugged. With her it could mean *I don't know* or *yes* or *no* so Leah didn't find it very helpful.
"I give up. What are you trying to show me?"
Summer's eyes flicked, for barely a second, up and down the lane; a bike whizzed past them and someone was struggling with too many shopping bags at the foot of the street, but neither were very close.
"So you know all you need to know about auras. From now you just have to practise, make your aura stronger. But there's more to magic than just what comes naturally like your aura. From now on the booklearning begins."
"Booklearning?"
"I had the greatest stroke of genius last night," Summer said cheerfully, cigarette in her mouth as she fished in her mac pockets for something. "Not only did I put the book in here in readiness, I also put a post-it on my mirror telling myself I put it there. Harharr-"
The book was small, messily sewn together and bound in floppy old leather, tied up with a leather thong. Summer passed it to Leah. "Copy it out and give it back, I have to give it back to Jinny . . . and when you are done, we shall discuss it."
"Copy it out?" Leah said doubtfully. It was a small book, but it was thick.
Summer shrugged again. "It's a rare book and you need your own copy. Anyway, you'll remember it better that way."
"And then what? What is it?"
Summer ran her fingers over the circle on the wall and for a second the dark red light of her aura glowed between her fingertips and the old stone.
"They're exactly what they look like. Magic circles. They kind of . . . solidify your aura's magic. Make it easier to direct in precise ways. I've never been so good with them," she added, dropping what was left of her cigarette and swivelling her boot on it. "But a lifetime of formal education has taught me that competence within a subject has nothing to do with ability to teach it."
"I still don't think I understand," Leah said, looking at the book in her hand. "What can you do with them? What was that one for?"
She nodded at the circle on the wall. Summer stared at it, brows lowered slightly, and then turned from it with a flick of her long coat. "Portal," she said. "Come on, back to my place. I'll give you a live demonstration, then you have to sod off. I have a history of ancient essay to write and I feel like death."
"A portal to where?" Leah said, stumbling after her.
"Somewhere else. Work it out with that book, that's your homework."
"I seem to have a hell of a lot of homework this week," Leah said darkly.
"Yeah. Should keep you out of trouble." Summer squinted in the bright morning as they left the lane and said, "We have got to reschedule these meetings. I just don't do mornings."