to mine.
“There will be a search now,” I said. “Annie’s mother may tell on me.”
“Who would miss him?” asked Pepper-Man. “They will think he left, he was that kind of man.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that. “Maybe, but how can I escape the white room now?”
“Let us give it some more time,” said Harriet.
And we waited. And waited. The stick-Tommy didn’t rise. I dried my tears repeatedly, clutching Mara to my chest.
“There is another way,” said Pepper-Man. “It is not easy, but it can be done.”
“What?” I asked. “What can be done?”
“I can carry him for a while.” A gasp went through the assembly, whether in awe or mock surprise, I don’t know. “I could infuse the body with life, if I ate his heart.”
I shook my head in confusion. “It would be you, then?”
“Yes and no. I would remember Tommy as well. I could not stay in that wicker cage all the time, but enough to be your husband and rescue you from your mother’s house.”
“But you would have to work,” I reminded him. “Keep a garden and go to barbecue parties.” I just couldn’t picture it: Pepper-Man joining the world.
“I have always been hungry for life, as well you know. This way we can truly be together, you and I—man and wife—for a time.”
“Would you really do that for me?” I felt strangely touched.
“But of course I would,” he grinned. “Anything for you, my Cassandra. You know I will always protect you.”
And so it was that by the end of that long and awful day—my lover’s heart was once again removed from a chest and placed on a cracked china plate. Pepper-Man ate it raw, carving it with a silver knife. The rest of us gathered around him at the table, watching every mouthful traveling from plate to lips. He was a greedy one, my Pepper-Man; not a smidge remained on the plate when he was done.
When he was quite finished with the meal, Pepper-Man kissed me on the lips, leaving a residue of my lover’s heart behind.
“Not to worry, my love. It will all be good, just you see.”
Francis and Harriet had worked on the wicker man while Pepper-Man ate, removing all the stuffing we had left inside and hollowing out the back so Pepper-Man could climb inside. He wore the wicker like armor; it capsuled him in like a sarcophagus.
We all gathered up again, forming a circle around Pepper-Man in the wicker cage—and finally something happened: skin and tissue started to form and knit a coat of skin over the stick skeleton. The wood itself swelled and turned to meat and bone. The river stone eyes turned a glorious blue, and pupils bled forth from their depths. The oak stick turned soft and limp between his legs, the down became rosy lips. Under the wreath, golden hair sprouted forth, falling into glistening locks. His fingers flexed. His lips parted, showing off rows of white teeth.
Then he drew a breath.
The whole mound seemed to quiver around us by that first deep breath of air.
Faeries don’t usually breathe, mind you. It had been a very long time since Pepper-Man did that last.
Then he moved.
One step.
Two steps.
Then he hugged me, and kissed me, and looked like Tommy, and felt like Tommy, but smelled distinctly like Pepper-Man.
“I told you it would work,” he said in Tommy’s voice, even with Tommy’s sly accent.
Mara came to hug us both, overjoyed by this turn of events. “You can be together now. You can live on the surface like humans do.”
And yes, indeed, we could do just that: live on the surface like normal people, with a mortgage and flowerbeds and nine-to-five jobs.
Until the spell broke.
* * *
And that’s how it went when Pepper-Man became my husband, and why Tommy Tipp was not what you thought he was.
It lasted us a good twelve years, that spell, fueled by Tommy Tipp’s heart. When it finally ended, though, as we all know—it was a complete disaster.
But on the surface, Tommy—or what people assumed was Tommy—wasn’t much changed at all. Already on that first night, after we made him that body of twigs, leaves, and river stones, he would go back to Tommy’s parents’ house and climb into Tommy’s bed, with no one suspecting anything at all.
“How does it feel to be truly alive again?” I asked, looking at my lover in ash and oak. We were standing outside my parents’ house then; night chill had arrived with a breath of frost. Still he held me close,