I nodded again, barely hearing a word he said. I wanted to make a new Tommy—make a new boyfriend and move on with my life.
“To the mound, then?” I asked, assuming that was where this work would happen.
“To the mound,” Pepper-Man confirmed, coming up close behind me.
* * *
Pepper-Man certainly didn’t lie when he said the work was hard and fickle, littered with mistakes and setbacks.
When we arrived at the mound, an old faerie woman I’d named Harriet met us at the opening, carrying milk and honey cakes for me. She chuckled quietly in a way that let me know the whole mound was already buzzing with the news of what had happened.
“You are a dangerous girl to love, Cassie.” Her nose was wriggling, whiskers shivering.
“I think it was the lack of love that did him in.” Gwen came up behind her. She wore an old-fashioned headscarf to hide her ears, but the golden eyes and the fur coating on her naked breasts still gave her away. She would never pass for human; I’m not sure if she ever wanted to.
“The water girls brought the prize.” Harriet hurried inside after us with the tray. “Big and fat it was.” She motioned to a wooden bowl placed on a chair before one of the many fireplaces. In it lay Tommy Tipp’s heart. The faeries, about a dozen of them, tall and small, stood around it, looking at it. When we arrived in the circle they made room: it was our prize, after all.
I had imagined the heart to be damaged somehow; small and shriveled or black with rot. It wasn’t. It was fresh and fine, deep red and glistening like a polished jewel. Mara came to stand beside me and hold my hand. She was a young girl then, about fourteen by human standards. She wore some green and brown cotton skirts I had given her; they swept the floors when she moved. Brown feathers adorned her unruly hair, and her pale skin was dusted with freckles.
“Not to worry,” she said, softly in my head. “He was already a lost cause.”
I squeezed her hand gratefully. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
“Better now, that we can make you a new one, than twenty years from now when you have slaved for him and strived for him.”
“It is a gift, I suppose.” I was still looking at the heart. “Not many girls can build their husbands from scratch.”
“Take away the bad, add the sweet.”
“We only want to help.” Harriet put down the tray.
One of the water girls had lingered in the mound. She sat pale-eyed and water-drenched on a table, drying her hair. “Tasted like wine.” She licked her lips. “But he was tart, too, and bitter at times.”
“Aren’t they all,” said Harriet.
“Give us some room,” said Pepper-Man, and the three of us stepped closer to the bowl while the others stepped back. Mara lifted her hand as if to touch the heart, but I stopped her halfway there.
“Don’t. I don’t trust him anymore.”
“He is dead,” said Mara.
“For the time being,” Pepper-Man reminded her.
Harriet, Francis, and Gwen brought bundles of twigs, heaped them onto the floor.
Francis sorted the twigs into piles by size. “Let’s make Cassie a husband,” he beamed and sat down cross-legged on the floor. We joined him there and, one by one, chose twigs from the piles and set to twisting and braiding.
The new Tommy was a sorry sight at first, hastily made as he was, but Pepper-Man said the heart had to be fresh, so we were working against the clock—the faerie clock, as it was, which sometimes moves faster than ours. Tommy Tipp’s new body looked much like a scarecrow, twig fingers pointing left and right, one leg slightly longer than the other, but Pepper-Man said that it wasn’t important, the important thing was the idea of the man, not the anatomical proportions. Mara stuffed his chest with leaves and flowers, Harriet poured honey on his pelvis, enhanced now with a large stick of oak. Pepper-Man blew sand into his empty skull, Francis gave him river stones for eyes, and Gwen gave him lips of down. Finally, I crowned him with a flower wreath; braided with the stems were long strands of my hair. I suppose it was so he would think of me only.
We had left an empty cavern in the chest and Pepper-Man lifted the heart from the bowl and carefully placed it in there. We sealed the cavern with more leaves, glossy and green, and Harriet poured more honey on top—to make him kind, I think.
Then we waited. And waited. There was no magic spell, no potion to devour. Just waiting. All eyes on the wicker man on the floor, the new Tommy-to-be. There were more faeries around us now; at least twenty, maybe more. All of them were watching our handiwork. I still sat cross-legged on the dirt floor, closer than anyone to the lifeless wicker man. My heart kept fluttering, looking for signs; a twitch, a breath—anything that told me he was coming to life.
“Maybe we should have used roots.” Harriet was standing before me, hands on her broad hips.
“We could have filled him with the dirt soaked in his own blood from the place he fell,” Gwen added.
“Maybe his heart is too weak,” said Pepper-Man. “Maybe he was even less than I thought.”
I started to cry again then, had so dearly been hoping that this was the answer. Mara came to comfort me and pressed her soft cheek to mine.
“There will be a search now,” I said. “Annie’s mother may tell on me.”
“Who would miss him?” asked Pepper-Man. “They will think he left, he was that kind of man.”
I certainly couldn’t argue with that. “Maybe, but how can I escape the white room now?”
“Let us give it some more time,” said Harriet.
And we waited. And waited. The stick-Tommy didn’t rise. I dried my tears repeatedly, clutching Mara to my chest.
“There is another way,” said Pepper-Man. “It is not easy, but it can be done.”
“What?” I asked. “What can be done?”
“I can carry him for a while.” A gasp went through the assembly, whether in awe or mock surprise, I don’t know. “I could infuse the body with life, if I ate his heart.”
I shook my head in confusion. “It would be you, then?”
“Yes and no. I would remember Tommy as well. I could not stay in that wicker cage all the time, but enough to be your husband and rescue you from your mother’s house.”
“But you would have to work,” I reminded him. “Keep a garden and go to barbecue parties.” I just couldn’t picture it: Pepper-Man joining the world.
“I have always been hungry for life, as well you know. This way we can truly be together, you and I—man and wife—for a time.”
“Would you really do that for me?” I felt strangely touched.
“But of course I would,” he grinned. “Anything for you, my Cassandra. You know I will always protect you.”
And so it was that by the end of that long and awful day—my lover’s heart was once again removed from a chest and placed on a cracked china plate. Pepper-Man ate it raw, carving it with a silver knife. The rest of us gathered around him at the table, watching every mouthful traveling from plate to lips. He was a greedy one, my Pepper-Man; not a smidge remained on the plate when he was done.
When he was quite finished with the meal, Pepper-Man kissed me on the lips, leaving a residue of my lover’s heart behind.
“Not to worry, my love. It will all be good, just you see.”
Francis and Harriet had worked on the wicker man while Pepper-Man ate, removing all the stuffing we had left inside and hollowing out the back so Pepper-Man could climb inside. He wore the wicker like armor; it capsuled him in like a sarcophagus.
We all gathered up again, forming a circle around Pepper-Man in the wicker cage—and finally something happened: skin and tissue started to form and knit a coat of skin over the stick skeleton. The wood itself swelled and turned to meat and bone. The river stone eyes turned a glorious blue, and pupils bled forth from their depths. The oak stick turned soft and limp between his legs, the down became rosy lips. Under the wreath, golden hair sprouted forth, falling into glistening locks. His fin
gers flexed. His lips parted, showing off rows of white teeth.
Then he drew a breath.
The whole mound seemed to quiver around us by that first deep breath of air.
Faeries don’t usually breathe, mind you. It had been a very long time since Pepper-Man did that last.
Then he moved.
One step.
Two steps.
Then he hugged me, and kissed me, and looked like Tommy, and felt like Tommy, but smelled distinctly like Pepper-Man.
“I told you it would work,” he said in Tommy’s voice, even with Tommy’s sly accent.
Mara came to hug us both, overjoyed by this turn of events. “You can be together now. You can live on the surface like humans do.”
And yes, indeed, we could do just that: live on the surface like normal people, with a mortgage and flowerbeds and nine-to-five jobs.
Until the spell broke.
* * *
And that’s how it went when Pepper-Man became my husband, and why Tommy Tipp was not what you thought he was.
It lasted us a good twelve years, that spell, fueled by Tommy Tipp’s heart. When it finally ended, though, as we all know—it was a complete disaster.
But on the surface, Tommy—or what people assumed was Tommy—wasn’t much changed at all. Already on that first night, after we made him that body of twigs, leaves, and river stones, he would go back to Tommy’s parents’ house and climb into Tommy’s bed, with no one suspecting anything at all.
“How does it feel to be truly alive again?” I asked, looking at my lover in ash and oak. We were standing outside my parents’ house then; night chill had arrived with a breath of frost. Still he held me close, tight to his chest, which was empty and void of heartbeats.
“Like I could eat a mountain of beef, dance all night, down a barrel of beer.”
“Be careful, though, you’re not used to this yet. Make sure no one finds out.”
“Oh, Cassandra,” he laughed, “don’t worry. I will make them all believe in me—in us, and the life we’ll have.”
After he kissed me farewell that night, pressed his down-soft lips to mine, he whispered in my ear: “It will be fine now, Cassie. It will all be fine, just you see.” He sounded like Tommy, the words were Tommy’s, phrases that Pepper-Man never used. He had ingested Tommy’s heart, after all, and tasted every emotion there. He remembered every day of Tommy’s life worth remembering. The scent was not Tommy’s, though—was strong and peppery, faerie sweet.
But life suited him well, it did. His cheeks were rosy red, his eyes sparkled merrily. There was a spring in his steps when he walked, moved those wicker feet down the sidewalk.
“Are you sure you know the way?” I called after his leather-clad back.
“Not to worry, Cassandra, my sweet. My head works just fine—just you see.”
XIV
The new Tommy Tipp was a better Tommy Tipp. He got up in the mornings and walked the streets of S— with his few good references in hand, one of them from the workshop at the prison, and finally landed an apprentice position with Barnaby, the local locksmith.
The irony wasn’t lost on people. That a former convict should mend their locks and secure their doors from intruders. Sense overruled their concern, though. There was no way a man would illegally enter a home where he’d just installed the locks himself. For this reason alone my husband became quite popular in his new profession. A good luck charm, if you will, a protection against malice.
To me it made perfect sense. Pepper-Man had always been good with his hands; those long, wiry fingers that could braid and twist branches into gifts. He was also fascinated with people’s homes, the way that they lived, and this job let him see quite a few. He was fast and efficient. Barnaby loved the new Tommy.
And all his nights were spent with me.
* * *
“Maybe Tommy was tired of playing around,” Dr. Martin said when I finally told him the truth. We were in the hospital, just before the trial. “Maybe you hitting him like that in the woods made him realize that he hurt people? Maybe he wanted another life, and some bloodshed made him realize how far off the track he’d wavered? You could have done him a favor by pushing him onto that rock. Maybe you helped him get his priorities straight?”
“Tommy Tipp didn’t feel anything at that point. He was dead and eaten by the water girls.”
“Don’t you think that the anger you felt in that moment of betrayal might have made you want to see Tommy dead? That it felt safer for you after what you saw in your love spot to stuff your old friend Pepper-Man inside him? It made it easier to relate, didn’t it, to a man that wasn’t a man?”
“He wasn’t a man. He was a faerie.”
Dr. Martin chuckled then, without any malice, mind you. “It’s usually the other way around, you know. Usually, if we see something ‘alien’ in our spouses, we get frightened, and sometimes, if we’re a little confused, we call that stranger in our loved one’s shell ‘the devil’ or ‘a demon’ or something along those lines … I have had other patients in my time who swore their husbands or wives turned into something else, some entity with evil intent. Hell, I think we all feel like that sometimes, when watching our partners change across the breakfast table, that something bad is afoot, destroying what we hold most dear … It is just people changing, though—falling out of love, perhaps. It is different for you, though, you wanted your Tommy replaced with a being. For you, that was the safer option. As a man among men, I can’t entirely blame you.”
“I didn’t have to want anything. Pepper-Man became Tommy because he wanted to—because I needed him to. Although I have been thinking lately that he might have planned that outcome all along. Maybe Pepper-Man wanted to be Tommy Tipp. Maybe that was his plan.”
“To experience humanity?”
“To experience humanity—again.”
“That doesn’t sound much like the Pepper-Man of your childhood. The one who gave you such sleepless nights. Why do you think he changed?”
I didn’t answer the question truthfully, as I knew Dr. Martin would not understand. I don’t think Pepper-Man changed to suit my needs, as he himself would have me believe. I think he changed because I changed. That is the curse of the faeries, you see, they are ever changing, evolving, adapting—struggling to hold on to a core of self. They are like air, in a way, or water: they react to shifts in temperature and environment, and, of course, to what they eat.
The key is in the diet. Always.
He changed because he’d fed from me for so long and adopted traits of humanity through his nourishment. Through me, he learned to be a man again, but let me make one thing clear: Pepper-Man is ever self-serving, just like any other faerie. My well-being is his well-being; my path is his path—he needs me more than I need him. Back then, when he was Tommy, I was still the source of the experience he craved—as well as his source of life.
Was there ever romance between us? Sure. But it was always so much more than that. The love was just a game—the hunger was always what counted. And Pepper-Man liked living through me; grew strong and fat and very lucid—vivid—when he fed from me. I think my blood resonated more deeply with his almost forgotten humanity than, say, the sap of a birch tree or the heart blood of a fox.
I think he was a very dangerous man when he was alive, way back in time. He must have had a honeyed tongue and persuasion must have been his gift. I picture him a merchant prince, counting golden coins. There’s no point in asking, he doesn’t remember a thing. But it’s still there, the template, the basic blueprint of who he once was. Ruthless and cunning, that’s my Pepper-Man, no matter his pleasing exterior.
Maybe I adapted too, and learned to live with the monster instead of struggling against it. If I did, it happened such a long time ago, I cannot recall how that felt, being afraid of Pepper-Man. He was ugly at first, for sure, and I always worried about what he would do, but then—he was always there beside me, a steady companion who knew me more intimately than anyone else,
and my only champion for so long. There was much comfort in that. He did what Mother could not and gave me a sense of self-worth. To him I was precious—even if only as his source of existence.
You can’t get more important than that, after all.
These latter years he has changed again, paling to a dusty gray.
I think that means I might be changing too, slowly shedding my colors with age. I wonder what I will look like at the end. When I walk out the door to this house for the very last time.
Will I even recognize myself in the mirror?
* * *
After he became Pepper-Man, drinking and gambling was no longer Tommy’s habit. That first winter of his new life, before we got married, he left his human vices behind, and instead we would go for long walks through the streets of S— and have ice cream by the sea. He took me to the movies and bought me pastries and roses.
The women Tommy Tipp used to have relations with observed this new development with suspicion and jealousy. Soon there was a rumor that I had fallen pregnant, and that Tommy stood by me because it was “the right thing to do,” and he was a good man, really. When time went on and no baby was in sight, they said I’d either tricked him or miscarried.
The rumors made Mother uncomfortable.
“He should make a decent woman out of you,” she said. “No need to feed the gossip mill. God knows it would be better for all of us if you left this house for good.”
She didn’t care at all that Tommy Tipp had so recently been considered “bad news.” I think any man would have done for her, as long as someone pulled me out of her hair. I think that if she could, she would have rather just forgotten I existed.
After seven months as Tommy the locksmith, Pepper-Man did as Mother wished, and married me the first day of May. The wedding took place at the S— town hall. Tommy Tipp’s mother and aunts donned dresses in powder blue and salmon pink, pulled straw hats down their ears, and came to throw rice as we exited the stairs. His parents hosted a barbecue after the short ceremony; there was beer and food and we popped champagne. My dress was blue silk; bought at a second-hand store. The diamond on my finger was new, bought with locksmith money. My parents were absent, though they sent flowers and a card. Olivia and Ferdinand, the latter freshly dropped out of college, made an appearance late at the barbecue. My sister wore a champagne-colored dress that made her look old and matronly. Ferdinand wore a wrinkled shirt and a tie with tiny elephants on it. He had a beer. Olivia nibbled on a chicken leg.
You Let Me In Page 8
