We had good years, Pepper-Man and I, in the house you are standing in now. Mara too, when she wanted to. Since we moved further away from town, she was always welcome inside, but she is partial to the mound, my daughter—was born there, after all. Is a wild thing, always was. Just like Faerie.
It was here in the lilac house I flourished as a writer. The closeness to the mound was good for me, the closeness to my Mara. Money came trickling in even after Dr. Martin’s “Cassie fund” dried up.
Book money. Faerie money. Blood money.
All of which you are soon to have—if you only read a little further.
I spent years making this house what it is today; lived with carpenters, painters, and their rubble and tools. I ordered furniture and had strong men in overalls carry it inside. It was quite splendid in its prime, but as all things built on faerie land, the woods will always creep in and settle, line the bottoms of your shelves. What you see as decay is merely the woods taking back what once belonged to them.
We are just guests here, on this land—there will always be fungus in your bathtub, ants in your tea, and squirrels on your porch. Faerie woods are wild lands. Everything grows faster, higher. Everything is driven by an insatiable appetite, a hunger for life, hunger for living. In this, the lilac house is just an island. There is no point in trying to keep it neat.
I want you to know that I do know my facts from fiction. I would be a poor writer if I didn’t. I know that Ada in my first novel never went to Honolulu. I know that Ellie in my next one never fell in love with her sister’s widower. I know that Laura in my most recent novel, which was probably my last, never opened a hair salon and moved in with the janitor next door. I know that never happened. I know it never will. I have never had conversations with my characters; never dreamt of them at night. They are just images, pretend-people that my readers can relate to. My books are just me taking a sip of fairyland magic and running with it, spinning it, spooling out a story.
The faeries love my stories, just because of that humanity. To them, they are glimpses into our world, into the minds, hopes, and dreams of people still alive. They are also a payment for the faerie jars themselves. They give me inspiration and I bring them dreams. That is how such bargains have always worked—we sate each other’s hunger. Pepper-Man takes life from me, but gives me life as well. The faerie jars are a part of that life, and Mara is another. Tommy Tipp, or at least the wicker version that we made to save me, was a part of my faerie bargain, too.
But the regular readers, too, love my stories. At first it was morbid fascination, I think, that drew them to the shelves and made them pick up my little pink book. I had kept my married name, of course, and it was proudly displayed on the cover in golden letters with curlicues:
Golden Suns by Cassandra Tipp.
I was so proud of that book. The first one of many, as it turned out.
Later, when the memory of the trial and Dr. Martin’s book had faded, I became the sad widow who worked through her grief and family tragedy by writing about love and happy ever afters. They thought it was beautiful then, my readers, beautiful and romantic that I wrote of such things after having lost my one and only.
Mostly, though, it was habit that made my readers come back. They do that, you know, if you tell a good story. They crave more of that same feeling you gave them, want to immerse themselves in your waters again, swim deep in your lagoons and drink from that same well. I gave them a good swim forty-two times. You can count them all on that shelf in the parlor. Every one of them was fueled by a set of faerie jars; grown from rabbit’s teeth, flower buds, and leaves. I have read them all out loud in the mound, too, with golden eyes peering at me, the heat from the hearth licking my back. I received cakes and wine for my trouble, followed by ever more exquisite jars to quench my literary thirst.
But Dr. Martin was gone by the time Golden Suns hit the shelves.
Only four years after he published Away with the Fairies: A Study in Trauma-Induced Psychosis, he died quietly in his bed. “Natural causes,” as they say, though I had my own thoughts about that.
I have often wondered what he’d make of all this, the success that I’ve become. He, who wanted to commit me to a hospital and have me chew pills and get shots forevermore. Not out of some ill intent, but because to him, as much as he loved me, I was still his patient.
The first time I saw a Japanese translation of Golden Suns, I pretended he was there with me, his hand resting on my shoulder, and he said:
“Look at that, Cassie. I can see that I was wrong. You really have a purpose to fulfill in this world. It would have been a terrible mistake if you spent your life in a hospital.”
But that was just wishful thinking, mind you. I know that it wasn’t real.
Mara was never fond of Dr. Martin. To her he would always be the man who tried to take me away.
I had taught her to read, and she read a lot, and read his book too, shortly before he died.
I don’t know what she had expected it to be—perhaps another faerie mound fantasy, or the adventures of her mother, rescued by the woods—but of course it was not a happy story, it was gritty and harsh, littered with medical terms and regrets.
It left me little credit, truth be told.
“It says in here that you are making me up,” she confronted me one day. I was in the kitchen, making a pie.
“It is just what Dr. Martin thinks, it doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “You know how it is with faeries and humans. You are the hidden people, after all, and should stay that way, too, for many reasons.” A lesson I myself should have taken to heart a very long time ago.
“But he is spreading these lies to the world,” she said. “He makes you sound stupid, or insane.”
“They aren’t really lies when he thinks they are true. For him I suppose I am quite insane.”
“But how can he be so sure you are making us up—has he ever seen a faerie?”
“No, my sweet, I think that is the point.” I wiped the flour off my hands on the apron. “People who don’t believe in faeries have usually never met one.”
“But people believe in a lot of things they have never seen, like black holes or deep water fish.”
“That is easier to prove, although I don’t think everyone believes in black holes. For many people that’s just a story, too, being so very far off as to be unreal.”
“I still don’t think it is right, though, him talking about you like this, for money.”
“The money from that book got us this house.” I bent down to check on the pie. “Dr. Martin and I agree to disagree,” I said while I rose back up. “I leave him to his convictions, he leaves me to mine.”
“But he doesn’t,” she argued. “He wanted to treat you with pills, it says so here in the book, and it says other things too, about me … and my father.”
“I think we should leave that alone.” I turned my back on her, unable to meet her eyes. I busied my hands cleaning the kitchen counter, wishing against all odds she would leave the matter be. She was all grown up by then, though. I couldn’t forbid her anything. I couldn’t protect her from going where she shouldn’t.
“But is it true, Mother?” she asked. “Did you suffer like that when you were a child? Am I a daughter of your pain…? Did you take me to the mound to bury me there?” Her voice rose behind me.
“Of course not, Mara, of course not.” I spun around and placed my arms on her shoulders, made to pull her into my embrace. She wouldn’t have it, though, and forced my arms away. “I brought you to the mound so that you could live,” I told her, standing before her. “You are a child of Faerie. You have always been a child of Faerie.”
“But Faerie is the opposite of life, isn’t it?”
“No—not quite.”
“But why would you even have me live, then?” Her voice broke, and she looked utterly crushed. My heart ached, bled salt. “If my beginning was like it says in the book? Why didn’t you just let me die? You were so young and so broken. So sad and so alone—”
“So I wouldn’t be,” I interrupted her. “I wouldn’t be sad and alone if I had you. You were always mine, you see, ever since you were the size of a finger, sleeping on an oak leaf in Harriet’s palm, and before that too, you were mine. I will never regret having you.”
“But those who hurt you so, will you ever make them pay?”
“Whatever good would come of that?”
“I don’t believe in letting the world deal its blows, I believe in fighting back.”
“For what, Mara? Fight for what?”
“For justice and pride … for your dignity.”
“Nothing good ever comes from any of those things—what is justice, anyway? What is pride or dignity? It doesn’t matter, Mara, none of it does. I survived. That is all.”
“So it is true, then, what he says?”
“Well, the ‘trauma’ in the title does come from a place, but everything is very confusing … I don’t really know what happened back then—”
“Seems from what he wrote that you deserve a lot more in this life than to merely survive.”
“Why? I have it all: a beautiful daughter, a wonderful home…” Suddenly she’d made me feel so small, like the tiniest of mice living under the floorboards. Made me feel like I should have taken up arms, not kept my head low and pretend it didn’t blow. Your children can do that, make you feel that shame. “I let him write that book,” I defended my lack of courage. “I let him tell the story there.”
“But it is his story about you, not your own.”
“Still,” I shrugged. “And remember, Mara, some of it is true, but some of it is not. There are certainly a lot of things that never happened in there, too. It’s all just so horribly mixed up.”
“But you let your family rage at you and cast you aside. You let them say that it is all lies, let them live in such denial—”
“I don’t know that they could be blamed—”
“I understand that you are hurting, Mother, maybe too much to fight and burn, but I will fight this one for you. For your sake and for mine.”
My blood ran cold in my veins. “No, please, Mara, I wish you wouldn’t.” Why poke at a resting bear?
She lifted her chin up high, eyes glowing like crushed embers. “If I don’t, who will?”
“It was all such a long time ago, they are so old now, they will soon die—”
“And never have to pay?”
“Yes, just that. Let there be peace now. That is all I want from life.”
“You are growing old.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Only old people say such things. People with no hope left. People who have given in.”
“Maybe I have,” I shrugged again. “And maybe it is enough to have survived.”