But no one wanted my story, even with its teeth pulled. The last piece of mail I received from my editor was a notice that they were turning my books back into pulp, to make room in the warehouses.
I was not surprised. My studies carried on as they always had, except I stopped drawing in the evenings.
I grew restless and strange over the years. I took to carrying the sword with me from room to room, as if I thought the Beasts might come for me at any hour of the day.
And then, one evening, one came knocking at my door. This Beast wore a suit and a wide smile, but I knew him too well to be fooled: the youngest Gravely brother, the last of my flesh and blood, come for me at last.
My uncle Robert informed me that the time had come for Gravely Brothers Coal & Power to pursue their claim to the mineral rights to my property. I’d gotten the fortune and the land, he said, but the company owned the coal.
I was not a frightened little girl anymore. I told him I would fight him tooth and nail before I let him touch my land.
And my uncle—the kindest of the Gravelys, the one who used to slip me extra crumbs for the birds, the one I had almost forgotten to fear—smiled at me. Then he told me all the things he could do to me, with nothing but a friendly drink and a firm handshake with the right person.
He could tell the sheriff he saw me murder his brothers in cold blood. He could tell the preacher I was a witch, practicing devilish magics. He could tell the judge I was mad and ought to be locked up.
They would all believe him. Can you imagine it? A world that bent to your every whim, where any story you chose to tell became the truth, simply because you said it?
I felt the floor thinning beneath my feet, the walls turning weak as damp paper. Everything I believed was mine, everything I suffered and killed for, would be taken away from me. My name, my house, my money, my safety.
No one would listen to me. No one would save me. I was damned, well and truly.
But I would take him down to Hell with me. I gave my uncle one final chance. I told him he could leave and swear never to speak of this again, or he could die like his brothers. His smile faltered, but just for a moment. It’s difficult for predators to imagine teeth closing around their own throats. They don’t have the right instincts.
As soon as he left I did three things in quick succession. First I drafted a small addition to The Underland and addressed it to my editor, in the event that a new edition was ever published. Second, I wrote a letter to the boatman. In all of Eden, he was the only one that did not deserve what came next.
Third, I dug the key from around the sycamore roots. I’d buried it years before, perhaps in an effort to avoid the awful temptation to go back to Underland. But hunger always wins, in the end.
I returned to the river deep below everything. I drank and drank and drank, so that I would sleep and never wake.
My Beasts were waiting for me. They were subtly changed, closer to the childish drawings from my book than my memory of them. I understood then that they were my own creations, born of my own desperate nightmares. I found I no longer feared them, but loved them as a mother would love her children, however monstrous.
I let them run in the world above sometimes. When I feel the mist rising off the water, when I sense a crack in the defenses of that damn house and its keepers. When I think of my father and my uncles and the sins they committed against me, and of the town that turned the other cheek instead of giving me an eye for an eye.
I thought Starling House was my home, but I was wrong. This place—where I am never alone, where no one can hurt me, where the truth is what I dream it—this is my home, and always will be.
THIRTY-ONE
Eleanor Starling tells her story, and I listen, and when it’s over I think, numbly: That was it. That was the story I’ve been chasing since I cut my hand on the gates of Starling House, since long before that—since the first night I dreamed of Starling House. I’ve found pieces of it, the details blurred by time, transmuted by each teller, but still legible. I can see them all now, truths and lies all lying one atop the other. The Gravely brothers, who were respected businessmen and enslavers and predators. Eden, which was a good little town and a terrible little town, full of good and terrible people. Eleanor, who was a frightened girl and a murderer and eventually a ghost that haunts us all still.
I thought finding this first, truest story would feel like snapping the last piece into a jigsaw. I thought I would feel satisfied, triumphant, maybe a little proud of myself. But now there’s a vicious, lonely little girl sitting in front of me, her eyes hard and accusatory, and all I feel is sorry.
So I say, inadequately, “I’m sorry.”
Eleanor’s gaze doesn’t falter. “They were, too.”
“Who?”
“Everyone!” The sudden vehemence sends me a half step backward. “The neighbors’ maid, the woman who brought eggs and milk every Tuesday, the preacher who married us and the judge who signed the papers. They looked at the tin ring on my finger and they were all so sorry,but what good did that do me?”
“You’re sure they knew?” I shouldn’t have asked, but some part of me is still in desperate, nauseous denial. “They knew that he was your—that you were—”
Eleanor’s lip curls in an expression of chill disdain no natural child has ever worn before. “Of course they knew. My father greeted me by name on the riverboat. Half the county called me ‘the Gravely girl’ rather than learn my name. But when my uncle John asked them to look aside—when they weighed my life against his coal company, his generous donations to charity and his big white house on the hill—they did not hesitate.”
I open my mouth, close it, and say again, “I’m sorry.”
Eleanor gives me an up-and-down look, her eyes picking out each torn seam, each stain. “You grew up here, didn’t you? You should know.”
And I do know. I know what it is for your own people to turn their backs on you as easily as turning a page. I know all about cold shoulders and sideways looks, about being the only girl in sixth grade who didn’t get a birthday invitation. I know the way people talk loud and slow to my brother, as if he might not speak English, the way they watch him in grocery stores even though everybody knows I’m the thief. Now I know about my mother, who was cast out for the ordinary sin of sex, and the far greater sin of refusing to be sorry about it.
The circle of sky I can see through the attic windows is boiling black now. In the world above, you could see the power plant from here, an unwavering light, but not here.
I press my forehead to the glass of the round window and look down. The Beasts are larger and brighter than they were before, their limbs long and thin as femurs. They seethe and twist, a writhing mass of beautiful, monstrous flesh. They’re gathered around something, but I can’t see it clearly, and I can’t seem to remember what it is.
I picture them running loose in the world above. Perhaps chasing down the county road after Constable Mayhew. Perhaps plucking Don Gravely from his big house like the soft meat of an oyster from its shell. They would deserve it, God knows.
“You could stay here with me, you know.” Eleanor’s voice slinks over my shoulder like a warm hand. “A few others have found their way down here—lost children who went too deep in the mines, treasure hunters who followed strange stories—but they didn’t last long.”
“What do you mean?”
“Their dreams were weak, unformed things, too soft to survive in my Underland.” I can hear the shrug in her voice. “But you—you’re hungry, and you like the dark. You’re like me.”