A white bird burst out of the bushes as two girls skipped along the path on their way home from the lake. Out of control, it arced straight for the taller girl’s face, spraying blood from a badly injured wing. Batting frantically at it with both hands, the girl called Bo-Peep, because no one knew her real name, fell on her ass in the middle of the path and stayed there.

In shock, maybe? Staring at her hands—words bubbled from Bo-Peep’s lips; which wasn’t unusual for her, but rather than her typical garble, what came streaming out of her this time sounded like something real. Something significant.

As the thrashing dove got tangled in the tall grass beside them, Kasha crouched down to hear better.

“My sister used to call me glump,” said Bo-Peep in a tiny voice. “Always told me how much she loved me, even while doing horrible things. Hateful things.”

Kasha, who had never heard their guest articulate a coherent thought, leaned in, astonished. Kasha followed Bo-Peep’s gaze into the sky as a low-flying hawk swept past, apparently dissuaded from its prey by the presence of the girls as it arced back up and swung out toward the base of the Three Brothers mountains.

Thus distracted, Bo-Peep appeared to have lost the power of speech—or at least, the impetus.

Eager to keep her talking, Kasha prompted, “What kind of hateful things?”

Bo-Peep jerked her head back with a wild glare in her eye. The fury was gone when she looked back at Kasha, replaced by a wistful smile. “Not entirely hateful. Told me she could see my intelligence in the way my eyes flashed. Imagine that—flash, flash—bait to a hungry pike coming in for a bite.”

She leaned in as if sharing a confidence. “When they rescued me from the Carnivorous Forest, everybody thought I was dead. Brain dead. Nobody home. But my sister knew me, recognized me. She’d say, ‘C’mon Glump. That pesky kid is still inside you somewhere. Speak up!’”

“The forest?” Kasha asked. “What does this have to do with the forest?”

Ignoring her, Bo-Peep kept talking about her sister. “Always tried to answer her. I did. But the answers were hiding. I searched for them in the shallows, the shadows of the branches like swinging gallows. Hallowed, fallow, tallow….”

Kasha cocked her head, trying to make sense of what she was being told.

Blushing, Bo-Peep touched Kasha’s arm, pulling lightly on the sleeve of her dress as she tried to talk herself off the ledge of rhyming words. “The crowd was huge, frenzied. Schools of them swam out from the rocks all at once, taking bites out of me, tearing the answers to pieces. Lost it all in a bloody daze. All the slippery, slickety answers swam away, swam away, swam away, gone.”

Having spent the last three hours fishing and catching nothing worth keeping, the metaphors all made oddly perfect sense to Kasha, who nodded, twirling her hand for her friend to continue even as she was again distracted by the dove, which had fallen to earth and now just erupted into occasional spasms.

Kasha stood, poised to tend to the creature even while fixed to the spot by the outpouring from Bo-Peep. Another distraction could spell the end of the narrative altogether. With furrowed brow she bent back down.

Bo-Peep said, “Dor would repeat things to keep me focused. ‘Zero in,’ she’d say. She zeroed in. She listened. Only one ever listened. She knew I was grateful. Heard me say, ‘Thank you Dor,’ and held me at arms-length and stared at me. ‘Glory?’ She knew my name. Glory, not glump. ‘You really are in there, aren’t you?’ She hugged me. Hardly ever hugged me. I was worried there was a knife in her hand.”

Kasha dared interrupt. “Is that you? Are you Glory?”

Since the night Kasha’s father, Kemp, brought Glory home they had all called her Bo Peep—something someone in the band had suggested. Made sense. Lost her sheep. Lost her mind.

Now, suddenly, the girl was talking sense. Still a jumble but Kasha could puzzle it together if she listened hard.

“Glory, yah. Dor would brush my hair in the mirror. I’d get confused sometimes. Couldn’t tell us apart. She looks like me but her face is rounder. She scowls a lot. Has a different nose. Button nose. Doesn’t unbutton, though. That’s good. Don’t want to see inside her head.”

“Dor’s head?” Kasha asked.

Looking at Kasha, Glory batted her big hazel eyes with growing uncertainty. “But that was her. Dor, Adoris. I’m me. I think I’m me. Glory! Right?”

Kasha held up her hand. “Your sister is Adoris? The Executrix?”

“That’s right. And this is me, I’m free. Whee!” A song bubbled up.

“Hippity, hop-hop, hippity hop,

The fancy dancing never stops!

Bippity, bop, bop. Boppity-boom.

It zips across the room.

After the singing stopped, more words flowed out. “Don’t just buy a broom, buy an Abraxas Vacuum. Vroom-vroom across the room. Scritch, scratch, 20 cats. An astonishing 182 cats per square kilometre in the Metro area. 182 squared is 33,124. Times 11 it’s magic. If you whisper ‘364’ 364 times, an evil mathematician will come down and lay his hands on you. Then poof.”

She made a ‘poof’ sound effect and smiled vacantly at Kasha, who supposed it was now too late to get her back to the earlier topic.

But she’d given her something. More than a little.

This girl was the missing sister of Adoris, the Executrix, the most feared and powerful person in Hope—or anywhere, really. The Executrix of the Testator. There must be a big reward. Huge reward! Kemp and the band were playing some gigs up on Triple Creek at the base of the Brothers. She’d have to wait a fortnight ‘til they got home to tell them about this.

A corner of Kasha’s apron was still damp from fishing. Her hands were shaking as she used it to wipe the blood off Bo Peep’s…no, Glory’s face—before wandering into the grass and putting the still-flapping bird out of its misery. She came back out, holding it by its feet. “A dove doesn’t have much meat, barely worth preparing. But we don’t have much to eat this week and it will add flavour to our pie.”

She reached for her friend’s hand and pulled her back to her feet. “Let’s go home. Then we’ll work out how to get you back to your sister.” With a shriek and a look of sheer terror on her face, Glory pulled her hand away, turning and running back the way they’d come.

As Kasha pursued her, she wondered what was causing these sudden mood shifts. The first one, the bird, made her open up in a way Kasha had never heard before—eloquent and strange as that minstrel fella, Tall Jeffty, who sometimes made rounds with Kemp and the band. But when it stopped, it left her in this jumpy manic state.

If Glory kept running this speed, she’d reach the lake in minutes. At least there was a limit to where she could go from there.

However true that observation may have seemed, it took half the afternoon to track her down along the shoreline. In this time of the harvest moon, days were getting short and the mountain nights were too cold to stay out after dark without extra layers. Kasha found her crouched under bushes, staring out at the water, rocking back and forth and babbling claptrap.

Glory’s rocking slowly stopped when Kasha sat down beside her.

“I’m sorry if I said something that frightened you?” said Kasha.

With a scowl, Glory shook her head and started rocking again.

Kasha pressed on. “You were telling me about Adoris and I…”

Glory sat down with a thump, locked Kasha in a glare and picked up a rock, half again the size of her hand. Kasha couldn’t say why it made her nervous. She didn’t believe Glory would throw it at her or hit her with it. But she also had trouble believing what Glory finally did with it, splaying the fingers of her left hand on the rocky soil and smashing her own fingertips. She cried out, clutching her injured hand to her chest, pushing Kasha back when she tried to help.

“Wackity-wack. Adoris came back. Always came back. 40 whacks squared. When I gave her one answer, she wanted the rest. All the answers in the world! When I couldn’t find them, she’d pinch me and poke me. Pinch and poke and pinch and poke until I screamed. She wouldn’t stop until I found the answers and gave them to her.”

“And when the pinches didn’t work came the blades.” She bent over and parted her hair. “Always brushing my hair, telling me how thick, how pretty, how red.” 

Wherever she parted it, Kasha saw the evidence—made more three dimensional in the late afternoon sun. What she’d thought was a skin condition was nothing so natural. The girl’s head was scored in a matrix of tiny scars.

All in one breath Glory said, “Pain makes focus. Blood makes it manifest night after night. Looking for answers ‘til she figured out how to fetch them herself then ‘sorry, glump, can’t let you uncork the secrets for anyone else.’ Imagine the anarchy if Deacon Kenosis or any of the elders dreamed they could continue the Reinvention without me?”

“I’m sorry,” Kasha stammered. “Too fast. I couldn’t catch all that.”

Glory eyes went big and round and she said slowly and clearly, “The man she hired didn’t kill me like he was supposed to. Then your daddy killed him.”

She started singing a song that Kemp had taught them, about wrestling a grizzly bear. Jumping up every morning, ready to fight, even though you knew you couldn’t last. Until the bear was so impressed by your energy and determination it finally just walked away.

Now that Kasha understood Glory’s real relationship with her sister, she knew they had to keep her here – protect her, even if Adoris sent an army. But it was not her decision to make.