So, what is this to you, you may ask? This isn’t the story you expected. You were expecting a repenting sinner’s last confession. Expecting me to cry on the page, admit my wrongdoings and beg your forgiveness. Instead you get this: childhood memories. I am sorry about that—sorry to disappoint, but the truth of it is, I cannot recall a world without Pepper-Man in it, and him being in it was the beginning of it all.
We will get to the bodies eventually.
I remember elementary school as a string of days of aching belly and sleep deprivation, a fear that my classmates or teachers would somehow see through me and figure out how I spent my nights. See it and punish me, like Mother did. You’d think it would make me shy, wouldn’t you? Think it would make me seek out the shadows, but it didn’t. It made me angry.
It wasn’t easy to blend in with a companion like Pepper-Man. The other girls in S— were sensible creatures stuffed in ruffles and lace. They had well-groomed hair and polished manners. Much like Olivia: good to the core. Mother was most adamant I kept quiet about it all: my visits in the woods, the sharp nibs at my flesh, and the gifts of bones and feathers that I got. I was never to speak of, draw, or in any other way express my wraith’s existence.
“They’ll think you’re mad,” she told me. “They’ll think you’re mad and then they’ll lock you up.”
I didn’t want that, of course, so I tried the best I could to abide by her rules. But it wasn’t easy. I was straddling two worlds: the one everyone could see, and the one that was forbidden. No child should be subjected to a fate like that. It wears you so thin, is such a burden. There is shame in there too, in that sense of being wrong.
And I was always worried that Pepper-Man would hurt someone. He was a wild thing on a leash, my friend, something I ought to, but could not, control.
It was quite a mission for a very young girl. A dreadful responsibility.
I remember Mother’s pale face when yet another parent had been at our door with her crying daughter in tow. I’d seen Pepper-Man watching her one day when he walked me to school. This girl, Carol, had been out playing in the schoolyard with the sunlight illuminating her butter-colored curls. Pepper-Man paused by the wrought-iron fence and looked at her for a very long time. The hunger I saw in his gaze then worried me so much I decided I’d rather just hurt her first, before he had time to braid her a crown and sink his teeth into her neck.
I was nine then, one of my worst years. Pepper-Man had been a snarling beast all winter, dancing around me always. I fell asleep with his teeth in my throat more often than not. He took to ogling Olivia’s fresh-faced friends with hunger in his gaze, even Olivia herself, with her polished copper braids. No matter how often he tasted me, it never seemed to quench his thirst. No matter what I did to appease him—telling him how I loved him, how much his gifts meant to me—he never seemed to be satisfied. I think I screamed and thrashed and lashed at those girls just so Pepper-Man wouldn’t. He had promised he needed only me, after all. Had promised me I was his only princess. The red marks that I left on their skin were warning signs, what little pain my scratching nails, hard little fists, and teeth could inflict were really nothing in comparison to what he could do.
“How dare you?” Mother cried at me, all flushed and angry, reading another letter from my deeply concerned teacher. “How dare you ruin our reputation like that? Fighting like a street rat! They’ll think you have no manners—no manners at all!”
I was rinsing beans by the kitchen table, guided by our housekeeper Fabia’s stern hand. Pepper-Man was sitting on the kitchen counter, sprawling, more like it, long limbs extended on the clean surface; looked like a spider, gray and spindly. I didn’t give a word in reply. What was there to say?
Mother shook her head, didn’t look as angry anymore, more afraid, or sad. “This won’t end well, Cassie. Not for you, not for anyone. Just think of your brother, what this will do to him. He doesn’t react well to all this upheaval.”
I nodded once. We both already knew there was disaster in the brewing.
“You are jealous, I think,” Pepper-Man said that same night, as he folded me in his embrace. “You do not want me to taste another, you want me to have only you.”
I reddened then, beneath the covers. I didn’t want it to be true. “You’ll hurt them,” I said. “You’ll make them bleed.”
“But so, my love, do you.”
Just as I said, two peas in a pod. We were always the same, my Pepper-Man and I.
I should have been unhappy that the other girls didn’t like me, but I wasn’t. I had many other friends to occupy my time, way more entertaining than my classmates. I was seven, maybe eight, the first time Pepper-Man took me to see his kin. It was early autumn, the leaves on the trees barely tinged with yellow. It was a Saturday, I believe, since I was home from school but had not been to church and the household was preparing for a dinner that night. Mother, always the perfectionist, was on a mission to make our home as spotless as possible before the important event. In consequence, she and Fabia were tearing my room apart. They had removed all the books from my shelves, laid them out in colorful rows on the soft white carpet on the floor. Golden-haired, red-lipped heroines and dark-haired sidekicks were grinning up at me from the covers. Mother and Fabia were looking for what was hidden behind them.
“Why do you keep doing this?” my mother complained, tossing wreaths of birch and oak, jewelry of bone and fur, down on the floor by my feet. Fabia held half a robin’s eggshell between two fingers, pinching her nose lightly. I looked down. There was a bracelet of dead raspberry leaves, a ring made from deer spine, a necklace of frogs’ legs and hawthorn. It was the debris from these gifts that gave them away. My mother couldn’t stand clutter, and natural matter tends to leave a trail, especially in a very white room.
I kept silent, bit my lower lip. I knew it would do no good at all, telling them the truth. The older I got, the less patient my mother grew with Pepper-Man and his antics. Telling her that these were his gifts would only anger her more.
“We can buy some nice glass beads,” she said. “If you really want to make things, there are classes for that. You could learn embroidery, or knitting.”
Fabia bent down and looked in under the bed, her scrawny behind jutting out in the room, auburn hair bun bobbing. “Oh,” she uttered, pulling forth a gaggle of fresh finds: owls’ eyes, dried up and shriveled in a nest of roughly woven twigs. A crown made from pine needles and apple wood, a bird made from rowan and daisies.
“If you want to keep running around in the woods alone, you have to stop bringing these things home,” said Mother. “What do you want all these dead things for, anyway? It’s not pretty, Cassie. It’s repulsive.”
I didn’t disagree.
Fabia crossed herself as she tossed a pendant of claws and teeth onto the growing heap. Mother caught her in the act.
“Don’t be foolish,” she said curtly. “They were already dead when Cassie found them, weren’t they, Cassie?” I nodded. “She isn’t that mad,” Mother muttered, sending me a furious look.
They tore apart the bed next; fluffy pillows in lace casings, sheets and mattress, everything was thrown to the floor.
“Oh, Cassie, again?” Mother complained when she saw the rusty stains I so stealthily had tried to hide, first by scrubbing the mattress with a washcloth, then by turning it over. “I don’t get where this comes from, why won’t you tell me?” She was looking me over, searching my skin for scabs. I rubbed my neck, knowing very well that like Pepper-Man himself, she couldn’t see the damage done. I could, though. Every day in the mirror, I could see the traces of his love, etched onto my skin in deep punctures. The wounds were just as much part of me as the color of my hair, or the freckles on my nose—just there, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Fabia caught my mother’s eyes, motioned discreetly to her lower region.
“No, no, no,” Mother shook her head, “it’s far too early for that.”
Fabia gave me a lingering look and pulled a pair of yellow rubber gloves from the pocket of her apron, started filling the trash bag with gifts.
Mother stood before me, towering above me. “Is that all?” she asked in her sternest voice. “Talk to me,” she implored when I just stood there, wringing my hands in my skirt. “Why won’t you say something, Cassie?”
I shook my head, looked down at my toes.
“No excuses? No apologies?”
I kept shaking my head. Why should I have to apologize for what Pepper-Man did? I even felt a bit sorry for him, all his lovely gifts tossed and burned.
“Maybe your teacher is right,” Mother said in a quiet voice when Fabia left with the bag. “Maybe you ought to see a doctor—the special kind.” She made it sound like a threat. “I don’t know what to do with you.” Her hands were on her hips now, fingernails like claws on the slick navy fabric. “I give you everything a girl could want, a lovely room with lovely toys, a wardrobe filled with dresses, and what do I get in return? Dead frogs and brown leaves, a goddamn forest under your mattress—”
“I don’t want your stupid toys,” I told her, lifted my gaze and met hers. Suddenly I was furious, outraged at the unfairness of me being punished like that, all my things scattered and tossed, when he was the one who did it. He was the one who brought the gifts inside. He was the one who said to hide it.
“Well, I can see that,” said Mother. Even in her rage, her curls stayed all in place. “You would rather have eyes for marbles and rowan sticks for dolls.”
“They are pretty,” I muttered, eyes on the floor again.
“They are dirty and crude, and sometimes they rot.” She was referring to an 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 windowsill and the cold night air hit my skin. Pepper-Man crouched there, with me on his back, then he swung us both into the night.
A word on faeries, because I think you might be confused: they are not what you think they are. It always baffles me to see faeries in films and recent novels. Either they are happy elementals, strolling about in the woods looking after all living creatures like guardians of the earth, or they’re an alien race living among us since time immemorial, hiding behind some veil or deep underground; monsters, pagan gods, and stuff of nightmares. The latter is the more correct approach, of course. People used to be afraid of them; they stole milk and children, abducted brides and handsome men, tricked and cursed. Nothing to love. Fairytales were warnings, not an invitation.
Faeries are neither alien nor truly inhuman, though. They are just no longer alive.
Not that all dead people are faeries. I have come to believe that it’s all about the will to life, the strength of the Ki, the power of one’s essence. They are not the walking dead of movies, either, but spirits that have transformed and morphed into something new, a different kind of being. Faeries rarely remember ever being human; some barely look like people anymore. They live in the wild and feed off the land, attach themselves to life like leeches. They adopt traits and manners from their sources of life: trees, brooks, animals, us. They are a ragged band; some ugly, some strange. None of them are shimmering, unless they live near water, few of them have gossamer wings, unless they feed off dragonflies. I have never experienced them as particularly wise or kind. How clever can a farmer from the seventh century be, even after some hundred years living as a fox-hugging faerie? Still, they retain some humanity, a root. Desire, for one, a drive to reproduce—hence all those stories about faerie children and maidens lost. Hunger for riches is a human thing too, and vengeance is another. Those who live on humans are of course better at acting—and looking—like one.
Knowing what living humans want.
My Pepper-Man claims to have lived mainly on birch trees and ash before he found me. It was through his transformation that I realized how it all had to be. I will tell you more about that later, but for now, let’s continue further into the woods.