We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have a little house all by myself on the moon.

liked my house on the moon, and I put a fireplace in it and a garden outside (what would flourish, growing on the moon? I must ask Constance) and I was going to have lunch outside in my garden on the moon. Things on the moon were very bright, and odd colors; my little house would be blue.

wondering if there was anything in this woman I could speak to,

I disliked eating anything while people were looking at me,

A woman born for tragedy, perhaps, although inclined to be a little silly.

I decided that I would choose three powerful words, words of strong protection, and so long as these great words were never spoken aloud no change would come. I wrote the first word—melody—in the apricot jam on my toast with the handle of a spoon and then put the toast in my mouth and ate it very quickly. I was one-third safe.

and the day fell apart around me.

“On the moon we have everything. Lettuce, and pumpkin pie and Amanita phalloides. We have cat-furred plants and horses dancing with their wings. All the locks are solid and tight, and there are no ghosts. On the moon Uncle Julian would be well and the sun would shine every day. You would wear our mother’s pearls and sing, and the sun would shine all the time.”

I wondered about going down to the creek, but I had no reason to suppose that the creek would even be there, since I never visited it on Tuesday mornings;

Sensible people don’t go around nailing this kind of valuable thing to trees.”

A spark from his pipe had left a tiny burn on the rose brocade of a chair in the drawing room; Constance had not yet noticed it and I thought not to tell her because I hoped that the house, injured, would reject him by itself.

“Where have you been, Merricat?” “Wandering. Where is my cat?”

I could feel at once that the house still held anger,

“They came in the night and took him away, and we stayed here on the moon.” “I’m glad to be here,” she said. “Thank you for bringing me.”

“I am thinking that we are on the moon, but it is not quite as I supposed it would be.” “It is a very happy place, though.”