The next day started out in the same way: I was all alone. I had barely pulled clothes on and put up my hair when I set out again, searching the woods. When the path still refused to reveal itself, I tried all the tricks I could think of: I walked widdershins around an ancient oak, built circles of stones with incantations; I burned bundles of oak and thorn, and drank teas from wild herbs and flowers. Nothing helped. Faerie was still closed to me. I cried and I wished. I cut myself and let the water in the brook lick the blood from my skin. I pleaded with Pepper-Man to please let me in. I called for Mara, screamed for her.
Still I got no answer.
When I came home again, dawn was nearly there, coloring the sky in a bleak, white light. I went to the bathroom and into the shower, stood there for a while to let the warm water soften my aching limbs. I cried again, for all that I had lost. Tears and snot ran off my face and into the drain while I slowly began to wash myself. It was then that I saw it, through the transparent plastic curtain, a swirl in the mist from the water and the heat. It was not exactly a man, but a shape; a hand, maybe, moving in the fog. Something that could be the outline of a face, eyes in there too, a pair of dark hollows.
I took heart then and swallowed all my doubts, chose to believe that what I’d seen was a sign; that the Otherworld wasn’t all lost to me after all, and that maybe one day I would see them again, my Pepper-Man and my Mara. Suddenly, I was laughing instead of crying, standing there in the shower, while the water from the showerhead slowly went from warm to cold and the mist in the bathroom was no more.
When I woke up the next day, long past noon, Pepper-Man was there.
He was sitting on top of the chest of drawers watching me. He looked just like before—when we were married—with his slanted green eyes and chiseled cheekbones, broad shoulders and narrow hips. His hair, which had gradually turned a soft shade of brown, was pooling down in his lap, though it looked more knotted than usual. Relief flooded me and nearly had me in tears again, but then Pepper-Man saw that I was awake and jumped down on the floor.
“So you can see me now? I thought we would have to do this for weeks, running about in the woods, screaming and shouting—”
I couldn’t help but laugh, even if I was crying. “I thought I had lost you for good. You and Mara both.”
“They poisoned you against me,” he raged. “They rose walls between us, lacing your veins with toxins—can you feel it? Feel it slithering through you like a snake?”
“Are you talking about the pills they gave me?” It had never even occurred to me that they would have any effect on my ability to see faeries, even though Dr. Martin had told me that was the very point.
“Of course,” said Pepper-Man, “they are weapons meant to blind you.”
“I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Well, now you do.”
“I threw them all away yesterday.”
“Good riddance, then,” he huffed.
“I thought they only worked on crazy people—”
“Well, women like you, running with faeries, are crazy—whatever that means.”
“Then I’d rather be the crazy one.” I stifled a fresh bout of tears.
He kissed my head then, lay down with me on the bed—the very same bed we had shared while living together as husband and wife. “Do you remember how I told you that everything in nature can be eaten by something? Your pills are nature too; those concoctions that you swallow can eat everything faerie. Do not let them feed you those things again.”
“I won’t.” I laced my fingers in his hair, was so grateful in that moment just to have him back beside me, I didn’t even mind if he scolded me a bit.
“We ran with you last night, Mara and I, and Harriet too, answering your calls and your summons. The gates to the mounds stood open wide, and the water girls licked the blood from your skin, and yet you could not see us. Mara was quite distressed, Gwen had to brew her a calming drought and send her to sleep in the yew tree. It is a dangerous power, the one your Dr. Martin wields, that can make a mother blind to her child.”
“I don’t think he believes himself to be particularly powerful.”
“Even more reason to be scared, then. A sorcerer with no understanding of his craft can do great damage.”
“But I’m here now,” I said, “and the drugs are wearing off. Come and feast.” I pushed the laces of the nightgown away from my neck, lay back, and closed my eyes.
Home at last.
Later that same day I saw Mara. My girl was waiting for me by the edge of the woods, curly hair wild down her back. I cannot describe the joy I felt, holding her in my arms. My beautiful shadow child, for a brief moment lost to me. She kissed me and hugged me and took me by the hand, led me with her into the woods, into the mound where I told her all that had happened; every accusation and every insult, every nasty headline. All my anger came pouring out of me, even the anger I nourished for my family and long kept suppressed.
In hindsight, I should maybe not have done that—but you must understand that I had no idea what she could do.
What damage she would wreak later on.
* * *
Your mother did an interview with the S— Gazette shortly after I came back from my undeserved stint in the hospital. She felt she had to, I suppose, to save face, or to rescue whatever was left of her dignity after I had so rudely spoiled it. This was before Away with the Fairies: A Study in Trauma-Induced Psychosis, mind you. There was no coming back after that.
Mara read it aloud to me, all those pretty things Olivia said. “We always believed in her innocence,” she read with a sneer on her face. “My sister is incapable of violence like that…” Mara took a cinnamon bun from the tray on the table and munched on it while scanning the page, frowning as she did. Marveling, perhaps, at the praise from an aunt who had never showed her mother much warmth before.
I, for one, was happy. “Maybe she wants us to reconcile,” I suggested. “Maybe our differences are all in the past.” And in that moment, I truly believed it. So I guess you can imagine my surprise, then, when days went by after I’d returned from the hospital without as much as a word from my sister. I even tried to call her—twice, leaving messages with your help. Olivia never called me back, though, nor did I hear anything from Mother, but that was of course to be expected. Ferdinand came by the brown house one time, standing pale and uncomfortable at the door, refusing to come inside.
“I am glad you are free, Cassie,” he said.
“Well, thank you, Ferdinand,” said I. “To tell you the truth, so am I.”
* * *
I have sometimes wondered what would have happened if I had insisted on him coming inside that day. If I had served him coffee or a cup of tea and taken the time to speak with him—would it have changed what happened later? If I had somehow made him feel less alone, less burdened with guilt, could the later disaster have been avoided?
Mara says no, and Pepper-Man too, but I just can’t help but wonder.
He was always such a gentle soul, my brother, so easy to lead astray. Maybe I could have saved him.
Maybe it was already too late.
XX
It was never easy raising a child of the mound, I want you both to know that. Even before the controversy with Dr. Martin’s book, there were issues.
The first big obstacle was my age. I was fourteen when I had Mara, and wasn’t free to come and go as I pleased. I had school and chores; a different life. I was also horribly unprepared for what motherhood was, not only for the responsibility and the amount of work it would take raising her from that little thing she was at first, but for the onslaught of love that came with it. There was a new moon and a new star on my horizon; a new sun to drizzle gold, and sometimes fire, on my days. Maybe if I had been an older woman I would have seen that coming—but as it was, I didn’t. I never knew how much that child would mean to me.
Every day after school, I set out into the woods, heart aching with longing and worry for the da
y I’d missed. Had she slept all right? Had she cried for me? Were her gums still itching from teething? How much had she eaten—and what had she eaten?
They say it takes a village to raise a child. I will forever be grateful to the mound that raised mine. Not only did the faeries feed and shelter her, they cared for her and protected her—treated her like one of their own. They taught her to fend for herself, catch fish with her hands, set snares and call birds, sing life from a tree and into a fox, spin stories and spin them all over again, dance winter in and summer out, walk three times around the mound. Sometimes I would bring her gifts from my world, toys I might have treasured myself as a child—china dolls with painted lips; stuffed animals with soft fur; flowery tea sets and coloring books—but she would always prefer the toys from the mound. Pepper-Man made her gifts, then: boats of bark and wood to send spinning down the brook, loaded with leaves and acorns, soldiers of twigs and thorns who fought each other on the mossy ground till it ran red with sap of yew, animals carved from teeth and bone where you could still feel life vibrating within them. He made her fans of feathers to wear in her hair, dresses of hide and scarves of down.
She was always Pepper-Man’s daughter—not Pepper-Man’s daughter at all.
Had he not taken such good care of her, I think I’d have spent the rest of my youth in constant worry. I hated being separated from her, never truly let out my breath as I went through my days, but I knew Pepper-Man cared for her, and that they spoke of me often in the mound. I knew that Harriet fed her blood and cakes, knew Gwen taught her how to shoot with bow and arrows. Francis took good care of her too, teaching her how to play the violin.
Her education then was vast but unconventional, made her fit for the mound but nowhere else. She could survive and thrive as a faerie, though she could never live with me. When we found a bird’s nest full of screaming pink fledglings, she put them in her mouth and chewed until the screaming stopped. When we came across a rabbit who was hurt, my daughter brought out her bone knife and slit its throat, watched calmly until it was dead. She never sought out pain, but she didn’t shy from it either. She didn’t share my empathy, had never felt vulnerable and soft, had always been hard, quick and able. Fit for the woods, but not for suburbia—or so I thought at the time.
Now I rather think she’d be a good match: a tiger hiding in the buzz from the wasp nest; a raven among the crows. We could have cleaned her up and groomed her hair, put her in a pink dress and sent her to ballet. Pretended she was a tangerine-marzipan girl, not a hard and red-fleshed poison fruit at all. It would have worked just fine, too, for a while.
But then, we had danced in the woods, Mara and I, while Francis played the flute. We sent boatloads of caged dragonflies down the brook for the water girls to find. We played with shimmering balls of nothing, sending them across the sky. I was a child too, you know, barely sixteen then. She was my dream doll: all mine and beautiful, and growing up so fast. Her white teeth shining, thick hair cascading down her back. And she was always happy too, back when she was little. Her hoarse laughter filled the woods and sent birds flying from the treetops, foxes fleeing the burrows. When she was just weaned from my milk, Mara bonded with a hawk she’d seen, sitting in a grove of pines. Pepper-Man was utterly proud of her then, when she called the bird in herself. He was a gorgeous creature, huge and brown. She fed from him for years; flew with him high in the sky. When he was old and couldn’t sustain her, she found herself another one, just as big and gorgeous as the first.
My Mara is very partial to hawks.
She has a temper, though, just like her mother. As she grew older, it grew too. The tantrums of childhood were gone and it their place came searing fire.
“She is a warrior, that one,” said Gwen.
“But who will she be fighting?” I asked.
Gwen shrugged, golden eyes gleaming. “It will come to her, just you see. Strife will always follow the one who knows how to fight.”
I remember feeling uncomfortable from what she said. I never envisioned my girl having to fight, since she had already fought so hard to be born. Like all mothers, I wished for her days to be light and bright, wanted her to smile far more than she cried. Wished for marzipan, not bitter wine.
Of course, we have very little control of such things; our children are who they are, for better or for worse. My daughter flew with hawks and held a warrior’s soul, and there was nothing I could do to change that. My measly attempt to tempt her from that path was merely to teach her how to read. I figured it would do her good to learn a little more about people and the world, that there were other ways to think and act. She loved reading from the start, but it only made her brighter, not more compassionate or soft.
It’s what you get from letting your child be raised by faeries; they don’t become tame, any of them. They yield to the drums and the pipes; hallow the moon and the night. All life is sacred because they must have it. Blood, birch, and bone. Water, roots, and stones. No sympathy can grow from those things.
Love, though. Love can still grow.
* * *
Lately, we have been talking a lot about those times, Pepper-Man and I. Those happy days at the mound when Mara was a girl, and ran through the woods in her dresses of hide. It’s a privilege of the sunset years to reminiscence, no one expects you to do much anymore, you are allowed to live in the past—and I do, spend hours on the porch, just talking with my Pepper-Man.
Mara is all grown up now, of course, has been so since long before the second death of Tommy Tipp. She takes off for days, hunting with her latest hawk, or creating mischief with Francis. The latter has a knack for it, stirring up trouble. He wants to take a child, she’s told me, a new and unspoiled child for the mound. Means to make it himself, in the belly of a woman. Means to raise it as his own, just like Pepper-Man did.
“It’s such a horribly male thing,” I said while watching the bleeding sunset, “that need to reproduce to prove one’s worth.” I have taken up knitting in my old days, to keep my typing fingers spry, and the needles were clicking merrily while we spoke.
“I do not believe it is particular for males. I think the need disregards both gender and species.” Pepper-Man has been wearing a uniform lately, a faded blue one with shiny buttons, complete with a bayonet. I’m not sure if he knows it himself, that he has donned these new colors. I’m thinking it’s an echo from his past, from way back then when he was alive. I could be wrong, of course, it could just as well be that I have warfare on my mind. He is what he eats—always was. Maybe it is my death greeting me, dressing my lover in a soldier’s guise.
“Whatever the reason, I would rather not see her entangled in a scheme like that. It’s not an easy thing, growing up between the worlds. She of all should know that.”
“I do not believe she thinks of such things. Our daughter is not a creature of compassion.”
“No,” I agreed. “She is many things, but neither tender nor soft.”
And that, I believe, is what caused all the problems.
* * *
We are entering murky waters now. We are close to the parts that concern you the most. We shall speak of the events that pierced your childish contentment and ruptured your lives. The things that have haunted you ever since.
We are nearing the end of the family Thorn.
XXI
We had good years, Pepper-Man and I, in the house you are standing in now. Mara too, when she wanted to. Since we moved further away from town, she was always welcome inside, but she is partial to the mound, my daughter—was born there, after all. Is a wild thing, always was. Just like Faerie.
It was here in the lilac house I flourished as a writer. The closeness to the mound was good for me, the closeness to my Mara. Money came trickling in even after Dr. Martin’s “Cassie fund” dried up.
Book money. Faerie money. Blood money.
All of which you are soon to have—if you only read a little further.
I spent years making this house what it is tod
ay; lived with carpenters, painters, and their rubble and tools. I ordered furniture and had strong men in overalls carry it inside. It was quite splendid in its prime, but as all things built on faerie land, the woods will always creep in and settle, line the bottoms of your shelves. What you see as decay is merely the woods taking back what once belonged to them.
We are just guests here, on this land—there will always be fungus in your bathtub, ants in your tea, and squirrels on your porch. Faerie woods are wild lands. Everything grows faster, higher. Everything is driven by an insatiable appetite, a hunger for life, hunger for living. In this, the lilac house is just an island. There is no point in trying to keep it neat.
* * *
I want you to know that I do know my facts from fiction. I would be a poor writer if I didn’t. I know that Ada in my first novel never went to Honolulu. I know that Ellie in my next one never fell in love with her sister’s widower. I know that Laura in my most recent novel, which was probably my last, never opened a hair salon and moved in with the janitor next door. I know that never happened. I know it never will. I have never had conversations with my characters; never dreamt of them at night. They are just images, pretend-people that my readers can relate to. My books are just me taking a sip of fairyland magic and running with it, spinning it, spooling out a story.
The faeries love my stories, just because of that humanity. To them, they are glimpses into our world, into the minds, hopes, and dreams of people still alive. They are also a payment for the faerie jars themselves. They give me inspiration and I bring them dreams. That is how such bargains have always worked—we sate each other’s hunger. Pepper-Man takes life from me, but gives me life as well. The faerie jars are a part of that life, and Mara is another. Tommy Tipp, or at least the wicker version that we made to save me, was a part of my faerie bargain, too.
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