And now you have reached the end of me. The end of this body of words.
Janus, I bet you’re groaning deeply, as you rise from the chair and stretch your stiff limbs. Penelope, you’re just sighing, and let the last pages flutter to the floor. Nothing for you to do now, is there, but lock up the house and drive away, arrive at the solicitor’s early tomorrow morning, fresh and ready after a good night’s sleep, and there you will say the magic word: THORN, and the manila envelope is opened and the treasure is yours. Yes. All of it. You are my heirs, as I have no one else. You are my heirs—isn’t that strange?
“But where is she?” Penelope may be asking, while looking at the pages on the floor. As if the innocent pink paper sheets can tell her.
Janus shrugs before he answers: “I don’t know.”
“Dead somewhere?” Penelope’s gaze is drawn to the window, to the branches of the apple tree lashing at the glass, at the rivulets of moisture from the rain. Imagining my bones, perhaps, licked clean by wind and frost, covered in fungus and crawling with ants.
“She would have us believe she’s off with the fairies,” Janus says. “She would like us to believe that she has mounted the silver stag and entered the woods for the very last time, her fairy protector behind her, gray hair whipping in the breeze…”
“What do you think?” Penelope looks like a child in that moment, lips parted, eyes wide.
“I think the same as you, she was a very confused woman, and she died.”
“That is certainly what Mom would say.”
“And right she would be, too. Did you read the things she wrote?”
“But still.” Penelope is a little enchanted. A part of her always wanted to believe in faeries and ghosts. “What if she is right and we are wrong?”
“Penelope, the woman was a killer.” While Janus speaks, his eyes scan the room. You flipped the light switch sometimes during your reading session, and a golden light spills from the brass chandelier in the ceiling, but the shadows still bleed from the corners. Shadows to hide in, to watch from. Faeries like the shadows best.
“I don’t like this house very much.” A shiver runs down Penelope’s spine. “I just wish that we knew where she was.”
“I can’t argue with that, it would certainly be comforting to have her safely buried.” In his mind, he sees me—well, not me, because he hasn’t really seen me for a while, and doesn’t know exactly what I look like, but some blue-haired woman in a faded pink cardigan running wild in his house with an axe.
“She went through so much, there’s so much pain in there.” The tip of Penelope’s high-heeled shoe gently touches the pages on the floor. “At least I hope her death was painless—if she is dead, that is.”
“Of course she is.” Janus would rather think of me that way, and erase the axe murderer from his mind.
“Why didn’t they find her, then?” Penelope is thinking of the search party that doubtlessly combed through the woods last summer. “Why are there no traces of her body?”
“Because she went into the fairy mound?” Janus is aiming for sarcasm, but the tremble in his voice gives him away. He is frightened of the mound. The idea of a place like that gives him the shivers, touches something tender in him that makes him feel things he hasn’t felt for years: that the night is vast and very dark and something lives in the closet.
Penelope speaks, “Uncle Ferdinand, though … do you think—”
“I don’t know, Penny … Something certainly happened there, but we will never know the truth.”
“Mom blames her, Aunt Cassie is right about that.”
“Mom always blames her. I don’t think she is very rational either, when it comes to this whole dratted mess. If a fuse pops or she runs out of hot water, what does she do? She curses Aunt Cassie, as if her sister was some evil witch, cooped up in the woods muttering spells. That whole generation of our family is deranged, if you ask me … At least Aunt Cassie made some money from it.”
“Thorn,” Penelope says the password out loud, as if to test it on her tongue.
“Just that. Let’s just hope she hasn’t fooled us … Even if she is alive, running about the woods somewhere, we have done everything by the book. We have legal claim to that money, all her instructions are followed to the letter.”
“I know.” Penelope’s gaze has glazed over, looks out in the room, dreamy and soft. It makes her brother worried.
“You don’t really believe it, do you? That she had a supernatural companion and visited the fairies? Come on, Penny, don’t buy into the madness.”
“It would explain a lot.” The poor girl is halfway down the rabbit hole already.
“No, it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t even make sense! Why would there be a fairy mound in the woods surrounding S—? With thousand-year-old dead people in it, no less. Where did they come from? Were there even people here a thousand years ago?”
“Maybe they can travel.” Her eyes are shiny with excitement, spots of red have appeared on her cheeks. “Maybe the fairies can move and resettle like everyone else.”
Janus shakes his head. “Careful now, Penny. You really don’t want to end up like Aunt Cassie—”
“I’m only saying that it would be neat if it did exist.”
“Would absolve Aunt Cassie from all the crimes, wouldn’t it?”
“Would absolve us all, I reckon … I’m not saying that Dr. Martin was right about everything, but Uncle Ferdinand snapping like that … Maybe there was something to what the old man wrote?”
“Never let Mom hear you speak like that.”
“Mom is old and biased. Maybe we should be open to new perspectives.”
“Like the ones Aunt Cassie proposes? Fairy magic and angry dead daughters?”
“Maybe, maybe not … but we may at least be open to the possibility that something was rotten in Grandmother and Grandfather’s house.”
“It always looked normal to me, if a little stiff.”
“Yes, they weren’t the kindest of people.”
“Didn’t make them child molesters, though.”
“It just seems a little too easy to blame it all on Aunt Cassie. How much damage can one person wreak, even a slightly insane one?”
“Quite a lot. Look at Hitler.” Janus thinks himself very clever.
“It had to have come from somewhere, though. All those ideas she had—they had to come from somewhere.”
“Or not. The mind is a curious thing, and she has a shelf full of books to prove that she was capable of making things up.”
“Let’s pretend for a moment that she was right—that she really paired up with Pepper-Man and that everything she wrote is true. Where would Aunt Cassie be now?” Penelope just can’t let go.
“Hibernating in the mound, I guess, waiting to be reborn as a fairy.”
“And Mara? Do you think she’s still around? Do you think she visits this house?”
“No. She isn’t real so she isn’t here, or anywhere else for that matter.”
“It’s a cruel and horrible story,” Penelope shudders. “It must have been terrible living with a truth like that, even if it wasn’t true.”
Janus collects the sheets of paper littering the desk. “Be that as it may, it’s not really up to us to judge, we have done what she asked and now it’s time to collect.”
“You really think that’s enough? To step into the solicitor’s office and say the word?”
“That is what it says.” His knuckles hit the stack of paper.
Penelope looks a little confused. “It seems so easy. After all this—just too easy.”
And right she is.
I am pleased that you have read this far, even if you have discovered the password. You could have been on your merry way right now, manuscript in the trash, password dancing at the tip of your tongues, ready to be spit out and used. There is a catch, of course there is—it would be too easy if there weren’t. I can see what you are thinking now, but don’t you worry, hatchlings, I won’t have you swearing off your mother or make you clear my name or any such nonsense. The catch has to do with the money itself.
It is faerie money.
Every last penny in my account is earned from the gifts they gave me, and as I told you before, it comes with a price. Every gift of Faerie does, even by extension.
The money is, quite literally, cursed.
If you choose to believe I am mad as a dog, and that every word I say is the raving of a lunatic—then by all means, be my guest. Take the money and be on your way.
If you believe I told you the truth, though—even if just a part of you does—you better think twice about this gift. It certainly comes with baggage.
The money won’t turn to leaves and stones like in the faerie stories of old. It isn’t that kind of faerie coins. Instead, it comes with faeries—how is that for passing on my legacy?
Everyone who keeps or spends from my funds will draw faeries to their home like a magnet. It’s an invitation, that money of yours, a path of breadcrumbs straight to your doors.
Penelope, when you come home tomorrow, after a taxing day at the bank depositing all that money, a red-eyed man with wings like a bat will sit perched outside your window looking in. He’ll see you, your red lips, your high heels, and he’ll want to own every part of you, wrap you up tight in his leather embrace, taste your dark blood and swallow your soul.
Janus, when you enter the shower after kissing your children goodnight, a water girl will be in there with you, ready to soap up your back. She’ll whisper stories in a tinkling voice like sunlight dancing on a brook, tell you what you taste like: blood and bone and marrow. She’ll cradle your daughters and sing them to sleep, tell them about how nice it is, dwelling in that cold, dark stream, and there won’t be anything you can do to stop her.
And that, my friends, is just the beginning. Soon there will be wizened leaves in your coffee, twigs in your pancakes, and mushrooms in your beds. The money comes with faeries, or it doesn’t come at all.
It is your choice, really. Your choice to make.
Believe and be safe. Don’t and be damned.
Maybe.