incident that same spring, when a discarded crow’s corpse went bad behind a set of classic fairytales. “Why won’t you just stop?” she sighed and sat down on my stripped bed. For a moment I almost felt sorry for my mother then, she looked so tired and vulnerable, eyes so honest and blue. But pity was a feeling I just couldn’t afford.
“Why won’t you leave me alone?” I raged, pulled the white ribbon from my hair and threw it at her. It landed like a silken snake across her navy thighs. She picked it up and let it slide between her fingers, a thoughtful expression on her face.
“I put that in so you would look nice tonight,” she told me. “Father’s business associates are coming, you know that. I want us all to look our best.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s important that Father makes a good impression.” She reached the ribbon back to me. “Put it in … Go on…”
“I’d rather wear a turd on my head,” I said and stomped my foot, to no dramatic effect on the white carpet.
“I know you would.” Voice weary. “But just for tonight, Cassie, please be your best—”
“Maybe you should just hide me away up here,” I said. “Maybe you should leave me alone!”
“Yes,” she said, rising from the bed, lips a thin red line. “Maybe you’re right, maybe you should stay here for a while and think about what you’ve done.” She crossed the floor, paused in the doorway. “Put everything back in order,” she said, looking at the torn-up room. “You will be spending quite some time up here.” She went outside and closed the door. I could hear her footsteps as she disappeared down the hall, and later when she came back, jingling with the set of keys, heard her turn one in my door. Locking away the embarrassment that was me. I am sure she let out a breath of relief.
Unbidden tears formed in my eyes then, and I was sobbing as I hauled the mattress back onto the bedframe, dripping salt down on the bloodstains. I could hear the preparations downstairs: furniture pushed across the floor, bottles clinking together while they were put out on display. My father’s dark voice was a murmur through the floorboards, and young Olivia’s cheery voice giggled at something he said.
I shuddered.
I sat down on my unmade bed, pulled up my knees and cried, looked around at the mess Mother’s search had left. The books on the floor and the contents of emptied drawers: coloring pencils, notebooks, a collection of seashells and marbles littered the white sea of my floor.
I fell asleep on the bed, hugging my pillow.
I woke up due to the smell.
The room had grown dark around me; night had arrived. A cold draft came in through the window. Downstairs, I could hear them all, laughing and talking. Glasses clinked together; cutlery met china. But it was the peppery scent that engulfed me, and kept my attention enthralled.
My friend was with me, sitting by my side.
When Pepper-Man saw I was awake, he lifted a hand and put it on top of my head, tousling my hair in silent sympathy.
“They tore everything up,” I told him. “They threw all your gifts away.”
“Not to worry,” he said in my head. “I can make new gifts.”
“She will only find and throw away those, too,” I said.
“Then I will make even more.” His black lips split in a grin; his murky eyes blinked. A wreath of blackthorn twigs rested on his white, white hair. He took it off then, and placed it on my head instead. “You are my princess. It does not matter what your mother says or does, you will always, always have me.”
I smiled and touched the wreath he’d just given me, felt the prickly thorns against my skin. “They’re having a party downstairs,” I said. “But she has locked me up—I can’t go.”
“Would you like to?” His fingers were on my knee, caressing it softly.
“No, it’s a stupid thing. But I would like to eat. And I really need to pee.”
“Come with me, then, we will have a feast of our own, down by birch and brook, deep in the stones.”
“But I am locked up.”
“We won’t go through that door.”
“How will we go, then?” I looked at him wide-eyed.
He nodded to the window.
“It’s too far down. I can’t jump, I’ll break a leg.”
“Ride on my back, then,” he told me—and I did. I clung to his scrawny backside as his spindly legs entered the