does it make now? Ferdinand is good and dead.”
“Do you remember the color of his tie when he died?”
“Blue, I think—with little birds on it.” She always had exceptional sight.
“Doves?” I asked, heart fluttering.
“Swallows, I think.” So much for poetry, for symbols and signs.
“What was the last thing he said to you?”
“He wasn’t speaking, he was retching.”
“He wouldn’t have brought that spear back inside.”
“No, he wouldn’t, but Pepper-Man would, if he was to place the blame.”
I sat back, clasped my hands in my lap. I felt thoroughly and utterly defeated. “Are you feeling better now, Mara? Do you feel like your revenge has made a difference in your life? Did it set you free as you hoped?”
She shrugged again. “I never expected it to make much difference. It was just something that needed to be done.”
“Your ‘purpose in life,’ isn’t that what you called it? So what now, when the deed is done?”
“Now”—she leaned back in the chair, stretched out her legs—“I keep going.”
* * *
I remember discussing Mara with Dr. Martin once. It was just after he released the book—was just a conversation, not a session.
“Do you think it was a coincidence that Mara was born after your trip to the clinic?” he asked me.
“Not at all. She was born then because else she would die.”
“Daughter, huh? Shadow self—does that term mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“It’s like an evil twin that lives inside your mind; someone you don’t want to relate to. It’s a part of you, even if you don’t want it to be. Sometimes it’s small, barely there at all, other times it’s strong and overpowering. It’s where we put all our unwanted feelings and emotions; those destructive impulses we don’t want to act on.”
“She does that, though. She acts on her impulses all the time.”
“Because you can’t.”
“Because it’s how she is.”
I wonder what he would have made of all this, Dr. Martin. What questions he would have asked me had he known about the bear pit, the spear with his words on it, and the spinning body of a dove. I still pretend to hear him sometimes, hear him in my head:
“Isn’t it possible, Cassie, that you talked to your brother about what happened in your shared childhood home, and that the two of you together came up with this plan, just like your mother and sister think?”
“No,” I would have replied. “I never was one for vengeance.”
“Yet vengeance is the legacy you passed on to Mara, isn’t it?”
“That was just bad luck,” I would say. “I never wanted Mara to have to deal with it at all.”
“But didn’t you, somewhere deep inside? Isn’t it a very human quality to seek vengeance—or justice, as we call it these days? Isn’t it fair to say that the need for restoration of ego and soul after a betrayal is so deeply embedded in us that the need will push forth, no matter how deep we bury it?”
“It depends on the person, I guess,” I would say then.
“Exactly … And you, Cassie, what kind of person are you? Are you the kind who can obliterate the need to strike back if you’re hit, or will you just find other ways to do it?”
“Like having a vengeful daughter?”
“Just that. A daughter with a ‘warrior soul.’”
“I never wanted this,” I would say again.
“No,” he would say then. “But she did.”
XXX
I suppose you think me mild for not coming down on your cousin harder, but when you’re dealing with faeries there is one thing you must understand: life goes on forever, and they are all stuck in the mound. They don’t bear grudges for what happened last year, nor a hundred years ago. To me, that has always been one of the most appealing things about them, the way time flows and erases all that was—the only thing that matters is the here and now.
I used to find solace in that, it was my touching stone for years. My past didn’t define me when I lived among the faeries; nothing that happened to me tainted me forever. Mara wasn’t like that, though—was always looking back. I was hoping that the bear hunt would release her from all that; that she would be free now, and stop moving against the tide. It never even entered my mind to let our disagreement continue. What good would that do, arguing with my daughter? It wouldn’t solve a thing, now that it was done. Ferdinand and Father were dead, and our continued disagreement wouldn’t change that. The