it again: the hospital bed, the sad tray of food and the white, bitter pills in a plastic cup. “What did you do?” I asked Ferdinand. “What did she do?”
“She trapped him.” He sounded amazed.
“Trapped him, how?”
“She came to me last night. Wanted me to help her dig a hole in my garden.”
“A hole, huh?”
“Yes, and I did. It was fun.”
“Digging a hole isn’t ‘fun,’ my brother. I think you may have had far too little fun in your life.”
“With her it was,” Ferdinand insisted. “We laughed, and we sang, and she told me all these amazing stories—”
“I bet she did.”
“—about the woods and the mounds and the places she had gone with her hawk.”
“And?”
“Then I brought a bottle of wine outside, and I drank a few glasses while we whittled the spikes.”
“You drank wine while you crafted weapons to kill your father?” I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.
“Yes.” The exuberant tone in his voice had dwindled some. “And we made holes for the spikes at the bottom of the pit, and planted the spikes down there.”
“Yes—and?”
“She cut down a young birch, removed all the bark, and made a spear out of it.”
“Really now?” I felt sick.
“Then dawn was coming and she said I was to get some sleep, because tonight it was all about to happen. She took the spear with her, I don’t know what she did with it, but when she came back it was all black with letters—”
“From Away with the Fairies: A Study in Trauma-Induced Psychosis, no doubt.”
“Yes, how did you know that?”
“Oh,” I sighed. “Just a hunch I had.” That book had become the very symbol of everything that she loathed. “And then what happened, when she came back?”
“She told me to go and fetch Father. I was going to tell him there was an intruder on my—their—property. A crazy woman, she said. I was to tell him that there was a crazy woman…”
“And did you?”
“Yes. I let myself in with the spare key and woke him up, very careful as not to wake her up. We didn’t want Mother out there, it would only cause unnecessary trouble…”
“Of course.”
“He came at once, lumbering in his pajamas, even brought his old rifle along. He always liked a hunt, you know. When we came to the garden, though—he saw her, Cassie, I swear he did, dancing before him in the wan moonlight. She danced and she laughed and she egged him on. ‘Come and get me, old man—let’s see if you still can, you vicious worm, you filthy bear…’ She kept saying things like that. It was actually kind of vile, but I don’t get how he saw her, Cassie…”
“The faeries have their ways…”
“Do you think he had the sight like us?”
“I doubt it.”
“But you don’t know that for sure, do you?”
“No.”
“Anyway, he finally had enough of the teasing and came launching at her, bellowing from his chest. It was so loud and ugly I felt sure all the neighbors would wake up and come running.”
“But they didn’t?”
“No, and not when he fell in, either, though the sounds he made then were even worse. Those screams, Cassie, those screams … and the mess down there … I didn’t know there could be so much blood. Didn’t know it could come from so many places at once. I think, Cassie”—his voice became brittle and shivering—“I think it wasn’t all real to me before then. I don’t think I realized what I was part of—that we were actually going to do it … kill Father…”
“What did you think was going to happen? That you and Mara would sit out there under the moon drinking wine and whittling stakes just for the ‘fun’ of it?” I couldn’t keep my voice from shaking, couldn’t keep the acid in check.
“No, I … I just didn’t think—”
“No. You really didn’t, did you?”
“But then she lifted the spear. It was already there, resting on the grass by the pit, and she took it in her hands and she ended the screaming. Easy like that, with one single blow. She must be terribly strong.”
“You’re not saying…”
“I think she rammed it into his heart. There was a big, black hole there afterward, where his heart should have been—but wasn’t.”
“Maybe he never had a heart?”
“I threw up then, in the flowerbed. My head was buzzing like crazy.”
“And she?”
“She laughed and declared them even. ‘A life for a life,’ she said, and then she took off, into the woods, as she does.”
“… As she