Adder stones have two primary functions: they are supposed to provide protection from harm, and they are supposed to grant ‘true sight’. Look through the hole, it is said, and you will see the essence of the world, fine and sharp and clear, and no fae folk will be able to fool you into believing false things using glamours or enchantments. These are the things I learned during the second hour of a three-and-a-half-hour diversion from study, methodically ploughing through every Wikipedia page I could find about folklore of the British Isles until my eyes ached and I could admit that I had slaughtered the evening and could no longer be expected to do anything about it.
When I explained all this to Sophia, she was not as dubious as I expected her to be, and I do not know what to make of that. I expected her to laugh at me—I had prepared for it and was looking forward to it a little. I was going to make a joke of this entire situation. I don’t properly believe in most of the things that I want to believe in, so her laughter could not have hurt me. Sophia and I are no longer the children who hunted unicorns in the cool fluorescence of abandoned school stairwells at lunchtime. Everything we do is real, now; it has Important Consequences for Our Futures, and most of it is graded on a curve. I think that’s why she's going along with this.
When I explained adder stones to Sophia, she asked one of the only two sensible questions you can ask about adder stones. We were in her room, and I was sitting on the wicker armchair that lives next to her bed, textbook technically open on my lap. I was opening and closing and opening and closing one of her pens, pressing the smoothness of its plastic casing against the pads of my fingertips until there was more of me in my fingers than in the rest of my body, and I could look up at her without flinching from the brightness of her face.
‘What do they protect you from, exactly?’ is what she asked.
‘From what I can tell,’ I told her, ‘it's mostly things that ancient people wanted to be protected from. Fire, floods, earthquakes.’
‘Acts of God,’ she summarised neatly. ‘Malaria.’
‘Basically. Failing crops.’
‘Lost left shoes,’ she offered. ‘Bird poo dropping on you.’
‘Ticket inspectors, definitely.’
‘So, they protect you from other people, too?’ she asked. ‘Things other people can do to you?’
She was at the centre of the cocoon, the swirl of blankets arrayed around her as if she had just burst forth from them with a great effort of will, as if she had torn through and poked her head out into the garden of her bedroom, still brand new from her transformation into Sophia. She hadn't washed her hair in days. It hung heavy and slick around her face, and unfortunately this did not make it easier to look at her without blinking or shielding my eyes. She’s developed a new habit of picking at her skin during this year of endless study, this last year in which we prove ourselves and pursue our Futures, and the shadows under her eyes aren't just purple but grey. One day, I fear, she’ll catch me looking at her, trying to sneak a glance at the sun without going blind, and she’ll blame it on these changes, and I won’t be able to tell her the truth.
I have not undergone these same transformations. I am protected by the great magic of not caring about my Future.
