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As a girl, I used to line up my Barbies and matchmake them until every doll was joined with another, endowing them with backstories long enough to justify entire seasons of a TV show, rewarding them with outrageous weddings and lavish honeymoons in my backyard.
I have amazing friends and the plucking night wind and the stars and now the slow mist creeping over the dig site from the loch, wreathing the bent trees nearby and whispering at the base of the tomb. A pretty Halloween picture, just for me.
“Yes,” I say, palpating the ground like I’m Aragorn looking for hobbit tracks.
“We came from forever and a daydream away,” the woman says, smiling. The man—Maynard—shakes his head. “We came from only a whisper away. From a thought away.”
“Come with us, Janneth, and you will have every wish fulfilled. Come, and you’ll know not hunger nor cold nor the stale kiss of death. I will sing to you of your own whispers and your own thoughts; I will croon to you of secrets untold for lifetimes. And you will know the taste of your own longing only as a garnish, not as its own meal, for in our world, there is only ever surfeit, never any lack.”
Because I’d like her to. Because even though I was kidnapped by someone named Maynard and carried to a mushroom castle, even though I’m so very certain this is a dream, it would be a very good mushroom castle dream if she put her fingers in my mouth.
“Are you asking why someone might want to have a toy, Janneth Carter? You who so like to be one?”
“Because mortal toys are more fun,” he says. “And more beloved. And when beloved things bleed, the land sings.”
I’m just a mortal girl in fairyland, with nothing but myself to offer.
Some people have princess fantasies—I have fantasies about getting railed in a princess dress. To each their own, I guess.
Why have I been pressing myself into the shape of someone easy, someone composed and guarded and temperate, when I’m none of those things? When I don’t even really want to be? When what I really want is to be as hungry as I can be, as messy as I can be, as much?
It’s the terror of wanting someone so much that it feels like my bones are about to punch their way out of my skin.
“I love you,” I say, stopping her right there. “I love you so much it hurts, in the very best way. I love you so much that I still wanted to save you, even when I thought you wanted to kill me. Where you are is my home. For always.”
