You Let Me In - Camilla Bruce Page 0,48
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 day 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