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 my youth in constant worry. I hated being separated from her, never truly let out my breath as I went through my days, but I knew Pepper-Man cared for her, and that they spoke of me often in the mound. I knew that Harriet fed her blood and cakes, knew Gwen taught her how to shoot with bow and arrows. Francis took good care of her too, teaching her how to play the violin.
Her education then was vast but unconventional, made her fit for the mound but nowhere else. She could survive and thrive as a faerie, though she could never live with me. When we found a bird’s nest full of screaming pink fledglings, she put them in her mouth and chewed until the screaming stopped. When we came across a rabbit who was hurt, my daughter brought out her bone knife and slit its throat, watched calmly until it was dead. She never sought out pain, but she didn’t shy from it either. She didn’t share my empathy, had never felt vulnerable and soft, had always been hard, quick and able. Fit for the woods, but not for suburbia—or so I thought at the time.
Now I rather think she’d be a good match: a tiger hiding in the buzz from the wasp nest; a raven among the crows. We could have cleaned her up and groomed her hair, put her in a pink dress and sent her to ballet. Pretended she was a tangerine-marzipan girl, not a hard and red-fleshed poison fruit at all. It would have worked just fine, too, for a while.
But then, we had danced in the woods, Mara and I, while Francis played the flute. We sent boatloads of caged dragonflies down the brook for the water girls to find. We played with shimmering balls of nothing, sending them across the sky. I was a child too, you know, barely sixteen then. She was my dream doll: all mine and beautiful, and growing up so fast. Her white teeth shining, thick hair cascading down her back. And she was always happy too, back when she was little. Her hoarse laughter filled the woods and sent birds flying from the treetops, foxes fleeing the burrows. When she was just weaned from my milk, Mara bonded with a hawk she’d seen, sitting in a grove of pines. Pepper-Man was utterly proud of her then, when she called the bird in herself. He was a gorgeous creature, huge and brown. She fed from him for years; flew with him high in the sky. When he was old and couldn’t sustain her, she found herself another one, just as big and gorgeous as the first.
My Mara is very partial to hawks.
She has a temper, though, just like her mother. As she grew older, it grew too. The tantrums of childhood were gone and it their place came searing fire.
“She is a warrior, that one,” said Gwen.
“But who will she be fighting?” I asked.
Gwen shrugged, golden eyes gleaming. “It will come to her, just you see. Strife will always follow the one who knows how to fight.”
I remember feeling uncomfortable from what she said. I never envisioned my girl having to fight, since she had already fought so hard to be born. Like all mothers, I wished for her days to be light and bright, wanted her to smile far more than she cried. Wished for marzipan, not bitter wine.
Of course, we have very little control of such things; our children are who they are, for better or for worse. My daughter flew with hawks and held a warrior’s soul, and there was nothing I could do to change that. My measly attempt to tempt her from that path was merely to teach her how to read. I figured it would do her good to learn a little more about people and the world, that there were other ways to think and act. She loved reading from the start, but it only made her brighter, not more compassionate or soft.
It’s what you get from letting your child be raised by faeries; they don’t become tame, any of them. They yield to the drums and the pipes; hallow the moon and the night. All life is sacred because they must have it. Blood, birch, and bone. Water, roots, and stones. No sympathy can grow from those things.
Love, though. Love can still grow.
Lately, we have been talking a lot about those times, Pepper-Man and I. Those happy days at the mound when Mara was a girl, and ran through the woods in her dresses of hide. It’s a privilege of the sunset years to reminiscence, no one expects you to do much anymore, you are allowed to live in the past—and I do, spend hours on the porch, just talking with my Pepper-Man.
Mara is all grown up now, of course, has been so since long before the second death of Tommy Tipp. She takes off for days, hunting with her latest hawk, or creating mischief with Francis. The latter has a knack for it, stirring up trouble. He wants to take a child, she’s told me, a new and unspoiled child for the mound. Means to make it himself, in the belly of a woman. Means to raise it as his own, just like Pepper-Man did.
“It’s such a horribly male thing,” I said while watching the bleeding sunset, “that need to reproduce to prove one’s worth.” I have taken up knitting in my old days, to keep my typing fingers spry, and the needles were clicking merrily while we spoke.
“I do not believe it is particular for males. I think the need disregards both gender and species.” Pepper-Man has been wearing a uniform lately, a faded blue one with shiny buttons, complete with a bayonet. I’m not sure if he knows it himself, that he has donned these new colors. I’m thinking it’s an echo from his past, from way back then when he was alive. I could be wrong, of course, it could just as well be that I have warfare on my mind. He is what he eats—always was. Maybe it is my death greeting me, dressing my lover in a soldier’s guise.
“Whatever the reason, I would rather not see her entangled in a scheme like that. It’s not an easy thing, growing up between the worlds. She of all should know that.”
“I do not believe she thinks of such things. Our daughter is not a creature of compassion.”
“No,” I agreed. “She is many things, but neither tender nor soft.”
And that, I believe, is what caused all the problems.
We are entering murky waters now. We are close to the parts that concern you the most. We shall speak of the events that pierced your childish contentment and ruptured your lives. The things that have haunted you ever since.
We are nearing the end of the family Thorn.