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In Mary’s head she is a singing screaming writhing mass of cicadas, crying their song out for all the summer to hear. The sweat clings to her layers of fabric, and no matter how freeing they paste to her like thick parchment in water, like a billowing dress dunked in the creek in the summertime, mud pasted to her hairy legs before her mother found a way to do away with all of that.
In the corner of this summer house there is a shed that she has claimed as her own. She sleeps in a bundle of blankets on a mattress that could only be described as so thin it barely qualifies for a cot and while they have their piecemeal family in the house, she sweats and boils far away from the rest of them.
She cannot describe the way it feels to sleep. To feel all of them come over her in a cool panic, sweat staining her mattress and dread pooling in her stomach.
She will never recover. She will lie in bed and rot and the tendrils Silas explained resided in her stomach will grow out and expand until they tether her to this spot.
In the house, they roast meat on the fireplace and fill the living room with smoke and laughter as they tear off the soft flesh into a pot of broth, boiling potatoes and carrots and saying it’s too warm for such winter type foods, and in the corner she recedes, sulking, glaring at the food as if it’s at fault for bringing her out of her corner.
It’s not that Mary revels in being alone.
It’s that the last time she was alone she was pinching and shoving Agnes, calling Isabella a slut, mocking Silas’ haircut as a bitch to a little forrest fairy, dragging Charlotte’s beautiful hair through her hand and pulling until she tumbled through the grass, splashing in the mud, and Mary is drawing further and further in on herself until all that was left was sharp barbs of glass, cemented into her walls. Whoever crosses will get their shoes and feet shredded to pieces, and they will lie bleeding in front of her before she will let them get to her.
Mary will never forgive them.
She has nothing to hold in her heart but unwarranted contempt, lumping them all into one smiling mass that will never leave her alone.
As the noise raises and they all chatter amongst themselves, she glances over to the corner, to Daphne sitting with her small bowl in her lap, picking at the meat with the nice silver that is the only silver in this house.
She grew up with a spoon up her ass.
Daphne got to be a girl because when she was out she got to revel in every single thing that Mary hated. She got to look on and cry out and desire for every little evil thing and despite all of it, she and Silas are the reason that not only did she get her freedom, but they are in this large and beautiful and splendid house, with a quaint little down and cobblestone roads and wild horses roaming the pastures and every beautiful and sequestered bit of freedom that Mary has been clawing towards her entire life. Her fingernails are chipped and cracked and caked with dirt and bleeding and there was a hand extended out from that impossibly deep grave that she never would have found her way out alone, because Mary is an aimless rage. She has no target and still has a fire that threatens to envelope every single thing she has ever loved.
Mary realizes exactly how long she has been staring at the tall, gangly girl that makes Silas lift from his shell but seems to live entirely in a shell of her own when their eyes meet.
Daphne has a stillness to her that Mary never quite understood. From the permanently shut window in the shed she could see her on the warmer days, spread out in a loose undershirt and underskirt letting the wind ride up her legs, leaning against the base of a tree with a book in her lap.
Mary always assumed she looked perfectly content.
In their respective corners, though, there is a certain hollowness in her eyes while she watches Silas, like she just doesn’t know how to fit herself into their little group.
Mary knows the feeling. She’d done it to herself.
Her appetite drains from her body like vomit down a city street drain and she leaves her dish near the bucket of water that whoever didn’t cook will use to wash up when this is all done.
Even though she does not care, she knows it should be her turn to pull her weight.
Behind her, the gravity of the door slams itself when she releases it.
She knows from the lack of a second clack that someone pushes the door open past her.
Every muscle in her back tenses, up through her neck and to her head, as she stands upright like a prim and proper lady and pushes her feet forwards and forwards. Bare on the cool grass she can feel the freeze begin to set in, and she realizes how long she must have spent in that room, eyes unfocusing on her soup, while they chatted the night away.
Unaware.
Completely and totally unaware.
She hears a voice unlike the rest call out her name and she knows, she knows that she’s aware and she knows that the voice is aware and they’re all fucking aware, but the whirling wind around her head spins and spins until all that exists is the constant beeping of a telegram, like the howling wind in a milk bottle, like a hollow of a cave she never got to visit because clay stains don’t wash out of white dresses and-
She’s in her shed.
Boxed into the corner.
Like a rat in a trap.
Daphne extends one bowl of soup, the spoon haven fallen into it.
“You didn’t, um.”
She bites her lip and looks down, shuffling her feet so the door is open and a clever exit is provided.
“You didn’t eat. Very much.”
She sets their two bowls on the bed, and when Mary does nothing but stare, she sits, holding the side of the porcelain so that the liquid doesn’t spill out and leave the entire place smelling of meat and salt for as long as it would take Mary to muster up the energy to wash up. And even then, the stench would linger.
“You’re too timid,” she snaps.
Daphne’s head falls, her hair in her eyes as she avoids Mary’s gaze.
“Stop it. It’s horrible,” she bites, “I can't take it. Trailing around after everyone like a goddamn kicked dog and you can’t even ask for what you want. Tell me what it is or go away.”
Theres silence, and when she’s close to lashing out once more, Daphne raises her voice to a speaking tone.
“I don’t want to be like this anymore.”
The words penetrate the silence and she’s left with more and more of the sick dread that she thought that hurting the girl who’s not even a girl would muster.
“What?”
“I don’t want to be so…” She gestures helplessly. “I don’t want to fade into the back of every room. I don’t want to look to everyone else for answers. I want to speak eloquently like the men in my books and I don’t want to be like them at all and I want to be able to be just as mean as you are, but I want a purpose.”
“And I don’t have a purpose?”
Mary clenches her fists at her side and achieves nothing.
Daphne raises her head, and Mary catches that first glimpse of defiance she thought couldn’t be mustered.
“No. I don’t think so.”
Mary knows she’s right, and the hatred wraps its clawed talon around her heart so tight it threatens to pop.
“It’s better in here,” Daphne hums. “Away from all the noise.”
“I like the girls,” Mary blurts out. “And- and Silas. Of course. I like them.”
“But can’t they get…”
“Loud? Tiring?”
“Overwhelming.”
“Yeah.” Mary sits down on the edge of her bed, taking her own bowl of soup. It’s long been cold. “Overwhelming.”
They eat side by side, and they do not talk, and maybe, just maybe, the blood in Mary’s veins stops running quite so cold.