The Lie Tree

"I want to be a bad example."

“I have lived long enough to see the death of wonders. Like many others, I have dedicated my life to investigating the marvels and mysteries of Creation, the better to understand the designs of our Maker. Instead, our discoveries have brought us doubt and darkness. Within our lifetime, we have seen Heaven’s lamp smashed and our sacred place in the world snatched from us. We have been dethroned and flung down among the beasts.
We thought ourselves kings of the ages. Now we find that all our civilization has been nothing but a brief, brightly lit nursery, where we have played with paper crowns and wooden sceptres. Beyond the door are the dark wastes where Leviathans wrestled for millennia. We are a blink of an eye, a joke amidst a tragedy.”

“Choose a lie that others wish to believe, her father had written.”

“Myrtle had once explained to Faith that there was a right way to give an order to a servant. You phrased it as a question to be polite. Will you fetch the tea? Could you please speak with Cook? But instead of your voice pitch going up at the end, you let it droop downward, to show that it was not really a question, and they were not expected to say no.
It occurred to Faith that that was the way her mother talked to her.”

“Faith was full of questions, coiling and writhing like the snake in the crate.”

“There was a hunger in her, and girls were not supposed to be hungry. They were supposed to nibble sparingly when at table, and their minds were supposed to be satisfied with a slim diet too. A few stale lessons from tired governesses, dull walks, unthinking pastimes. But it was not enough. All knowledge – any knowledge – called to Faith, and there was a delicious, poisonous pleasure in stealing it unseen.”

“She had always known that she was rated less than Howard, the treasured son. Now, however, she knew that she was ranked somewhere below ‘miscellaneous cuttings’.”

“Listen, Faith. A girl cannot be brave, or clever, or skilled as a boy can. If she is not good, she is nothing. Do you understand?"

“People were animals, and animals were nothing but teeth. You bit first, and you bit often. That was the only way to survive.”

“She did not feel hot or helpless any more. She felt the way snakes looked when they moved.”

"It could be kindness. Faith felt hollow at the thought. She had needed kindness before, and had received none. Now it was too late, and she did not know what to do with it.”

“There was a creeping sensation under Faith’s skin. Just for a moment she wished that she could shed herself like a snake’s skin, and slide away to be somebody new.”

“This was the hardest part. It was easier to be the witch, the harpy. Being human was dangerous.”

“Who had they been, all these mothers and sisters and wives? What were they now? Moons, blank and faceless, gleaming with borrowed light, each spinning loyally around a bigger sphere.
‘Invisible,’ said Faith under her breath. Women and girls were so often unseen, forgotten, afterthoughts. Faith herself had used it to good effect, hiding in plain sight and living a double life. But she had been blinded by exactly the same invisibility-of-the-mind, and was only just realizing it.”

“Faith had always told herself that she was not like other ladies. But neither, it seemed, were other ladies.”